Майкл Коннелли - Dark Sacred Night

“How about Western Avenue? Was that a place you stopped?”

“Most likely — if that’s where the pros were working.”

“Do you remember specifically stopping at Hollywood and Western to recruit women for the films?”

“No. Been too long.”

“Do you remember the name Daisy from back then?”

“Uh...”

He shook his head. Ballard knew she wasn’t getting anywhere. She went in a new direction.

“What was in the van?” she asked.

“You mean, like, inside the VW?” Pascal asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Stuff, you know? He always had a fucking carton of rubbers. He had to. And there was a mattress. All the seats were taken out and a mattress was on the floor. And he had extra sheets and all of that. Some costumes. Sometimes the girls would only work if they had on a disguise, you know?”

“How’d he store it?”

“He, uh, he had boxes and cartons and shit that he put it all in.”

“What kind of cartons?”

“You know, like plastic containers for putting shit in.”

“How big?”

“What?”

“How big were the plastic containers?”

“I don’t know. Like this.”

He used his hands to shape a box in the air in front of him. He delineated a square that was maybe two feet by two feet. It would be difficult to fit a body into such a space.

“I really gotta go now,” Pascal said. “I have a wax at five. I’ve got work tomorrow.”

“Just a few more questions,” Ballard said. “You’ve been very helpful. Do you know what happened to the van you and Mr. Gayley used?”

“No, but I doubt it’s around anymore. It was a real piece of shit back then. What else?”

“The films you made in the van with Mr. Gayley, do you have copies?”

Pascal laughed.

“Fuck, no. I wouldn’t keep that shit. But it’s all gotta be out there somewhere on the internet, right? Everything’s on the net.”

Ballard looked at Bosch to see if he had any questions. He gave a quick head shake.

“Can I go now?” Pascal said.

“Do you have a driver’s license?” Ballard asked.

“No, I don’t drive anymore. I Uber.”

“Where do you live, then?”

“Why do you need that?”

“In case we have follow-up questions.”

“You can call my agent. He’ll find me.”

“You’re not going to give me your home address?”

“Not if I don’t have to. I don’t want it in some police file somewhere, you know?”

“What about your cell-phone number?”

“Same answer.”

Ballard stared at him for a long moment. She knew there would be many ways to find Pascal later. She wasn’t worried about that. The moment was more about cooperation and what his refusal meant in terms of her suspicions about him. It was also the moment when she needed to make a decision. If she wanted to shift things and go at him hard with questions about Daisy Clayton and his possible involvement with her murder, then she would need to advise him of his rights to have an attorney present and to choose not to speak to the police. Considering the reluctance to talk that Pascal had already shown, such an advisement would most likely bring the interview to an abrupt end and put Pascal on notice that they considered him a suspect.

She decided it was too soon for that. She hoped Bosch was on the same page with her.

“Okay, Mr. Pascal, you can go now,” she finally said. “We’ll find you if we need to.”

Ballard and Bosch didn’t discuss the interview until after they thanked Beatrice Beaupre for her help and got back into the van.

“So?” she asked.

“I’d put him on the long-shot list,” Bosch said.

“Really? Why?”

“I think if he had anything to do with Daisy, he wouldn’t have said what he said.”

“What do you mean? He didn’t say shit.”

“He picked out her picture. Not a good move if he and Gayley killed her.”

“Nobody said the guy’s a genius. He makes his living with his dick.”

“Look, don’t get upset. I’m just giving you my reaction. I’m not saying he’s in the clear or we should drop it. I’m just saying I didn’t get the vibe, you know what I mean?”

“I’m not upset. I’m just not ready to move on from these guys yet.”

She started the van’s engine.

“Where to?” she asked. “Back to San Fernando?”

“You mind taking me to my house?” Bosch asked.

“Is it safe?”

“Supposedly they put a car on it. I’m just going to get some fresh clothes and my Jeep. Be good to get mobile again. You going that way?”

“Not a problem.”

Ballard backed out of the parking slot in front of the warehouse and drove off. She headed south on surface streets, wanting to avoid the freeways at this point in the day. As she drove, she thought about Bosch’s take on Pascal and the interview. She had to decide if her suspicions were based on solid underpinnings of circumstantial evidence or simply her hopes that a creep like Pascal would be guilty because society would be better off without him. After a while she had to admit to herself that she may have let her feelings about Pascal and what he did for a living skew her judgment of things. Her way of acknowledging this to Bosch was indirect.

“So, there’s still some of the culled shake cards to go through and run down,” she said. “You going to be around tonight? We could split them up.”

“Hey, I’m not telling you to drop Pascal,” Bosch said. “Let’s do a deep dive on Gayley. We locate him and see if what he says matches up with Pascal. We get them telling different stories and we might have something.”

Ballard nodded.

“We can do that,” she said.

They drove in silence for a while, with Ballard thinking about next moves in trying to locate Gayley. She had only scratched the surface in her prior search.

Bosch directed her to take a shortcut on Vineland up into the hills. It would lead them to Mulholland Drive and that would lead them to his street.

“So, have you figured out how they knew where you lived?” Ballard asked. “The men who grabbed you, I mean.”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Bosch said. “But once Cortez was wired in through Luzon, he could have had people on my tail since early in the week. I drove home with them on me.”

“Is Luzon the cop who set you up?”

“He was the leak that got my witness killed. How much he knew about setting me up is not yet determined.”

“Where is he?”

“The hospital. He tried to kill himself. He’s still in a coma.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“So, the SIS setup on Cortez — how’d they get PC if Luzon’s in a coma and nobody else is talking?”

“You don’t need probable cause to watch somebody. And if he flushes, they have a reason to pull him over. Child support. He’s got a judgment against him for three kids and a standing subpoena from a children’s court judge.”

That darkened the picture for Ballard. If the SIS was operating without probable cause to arrest Cortez, then following and pulling him over would seemingly have only one purpose; to see if he made the wrong move.

She dropped that part of the conversation. In a few minutes she turned off Mulholland onto Woodrow Wilson Drive. Then, as they came around the last bend before his house, Bosch leaned tensely forward and released his seatbelt.

“Damn it,” he said.

“What?” Ballard asked.

There was a patrol car parked in front of the house. There was also a Volkswagen Beetle. As she got closer, she could read the Chapman sticker on the back window.

“Your daughter?” she asked.

“I told her not to come up,” Bosch said.

“So did I.”