“I just want to go home.”
“I know, but this is a necessary stage in the investigation. We need to do this. Okay?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Okay, you wait here. Officer Gardner is going to be outside the door at all times, and I’ll be back soon.”
When she stepped out through the door, Dvorek was gone. Gardner gave her a head wave and they walked up the hall so they could confer without Chloe hearing them. Gardner had ten years on the job, all of them at Hollywood Division. She was petite and wore her dark hair tied up in the back.
“She has her cell,” Gardner said. “I heard her whispering on a call.”
“Okay,” Ballard said.
“Just so you know, I heard her say, ‘This guy’s going to pay. I’m going to be rich.’”
Ballard pointed to the body cam affixed to her uniform.
“You think that picked it up?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Make sure I get the video file at end of shift. I want you to write up a report as well. Anything else?”
“No, just that.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure thing.”
Ballard found Dvorek in the entertaining area and asked him to take her to the bedroom.
It was a large, round room with a round bed and a round mirror on the ceiling above it. Ballard kept her hands in her pockets as she leaned over the bed and looked down at the knot of sheets and pillows. She saw no blood or anything else that might constitute evidence. She went into the bathroom, which featured a large round Jacuzzi in the center. She inspected a large white-tiled shower stall but saw no blood or other evidence. In a wastebasket next to the toilet she saw a wad of blood-stained tissues.
“Okay, we’re going to need to call out a field unit to collect everything,” she said. “Can you make the call while I talk to the suspect?”
“You got it,” Dvorek said. “I’ll take you over to him first.”
Danny Monahan was sitting behind a desk that was notable to Ballard because it wasn’t big and it wasn’t round. It was old and scratched, and that told her it had sentimental value to the comic genius sitting behind it.
“You notice the desk, huh?” he said. “I was a schoolteacher once. Not many people know that.”
Monahan was midthirties, paunchy with success, his red hair too long, overly styled, and cut to look like he had just rolled out of bed and run his hands through it. A guy who cared about his looks but trying to look like he didn’t.
Ballard ignored the reveal about the desk.
“Mr. Monahan, I’m Detective Ballard. Has anyone read you your rights?”
“My rights? No. Come on, this is a shakedown. She wants money. She told me she would bleed me dry.”
Ballard showed him her digital recorder and turned it on. She then recited the Miranda rights warning and asked Monahan if he understood them.
“Look, it might have gotten a little rough but it wasn’t anything she didn’t ask for,” he said.
“Mr. Monahan,” Ballard insisted. “If you want to talk to me and explain what happened, then you need to acknowledge that you understand the rights I have recited to you. If not, then we’re done here and you are under arrest.”
“Arrest? That is fucking absurd. This was completely consensual.”
Ballard paused for a moment before speaking calmly and slowly.
“One more time,” she said. “Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?”
“Yes, I understand my rights,” Monahan said. “Happy now?”
“Do you want to talk to me about what happened here in your home tonight?”
“Sure, I’ll talk, because it’s all bullshit. It’s a con — she wants money, Detective. You can’t see that?”
Ballard put the recorder down on Monahan’s old teaching desk. She again stated the time and location as well as Monahan’s name and his agreement to give a recorded statement.
“Tell me what happened. This is your chance.”
Monahan spoke matter-of-factly, as if describing what he had had for dinner.
“I met her at the club tonight and then I took her home and fucked her. That’s what happened and it’s what I do all the time. But this time, she gets up and runs into the bathroom, locks the door, and starts yelling rape.”
“Did you try to break through the door to the bathroom?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s go back to the sex. Did she at any time say no or tell you to stop?”
“No, she stuck her ass up and said go for it. Anything else is a lie.”
It was a classic he-said-she-said case, as Lieutenant Munroe had warned and as many rape cases reported to the LAPD were. But Ballard had seen the blood in the wastebasket and she knew that would tip consideration toward Chloe’s side of the story. The results of the examination at the rape treatment center could also be probative if the victim’s injuries were quantifiable. The blood in the basket seemed to indicate that they would be.
Arresting a celebrity in a celebrity town was risky business. The cases drew massive attention and the accused usually hired the best and brightest legal teams. The defense would do a deep dive into Ballard’s life and career, and she knew as surely she was standing there that her history as a complainant about sexual harassment in the department would be brought up and likely used to paint her as biased in favor of the female.
She realized she could back out at this point. The celebrity involvement would easily qualify this investigation as a downtown case. The newly formed sexual harassment task force should be called out. But Ballard also realized that the way the system worked could put other women in jeopardy. Her passing the buck here would result in a slow and methodical investigation during which Monahan would not be arrested or in any way removed from his life and routines. It might be weeks before the case was presented to the District Attorney’s Office for charges.
But Monahan had just said he did this often — brought a woman up from the comedy clubs down below. Did he do what he did to Chloe to every woman he brought to the round bedroom? Ballard could not risk that her acting out of career caution or department protocol might lead to other women being victimized.
Ballard called Dvorek in from the hallway, then turned back to Monahan.
“Mr. Monahan, stand up,” she said. “You’re under arrest for—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Monahan yelled. “Okay, okay. Look, I didn’t want to do this but I can prove to you there was no rape. Just let me show you. There will be no arrest. I guarantee it.”
Ballard looked at him for a moment, then glanced at Dvorek.
“You have five minutes,” she said.
“We have to go to my bedroom,” Monahan said.
“That’s a crime scene.”
“No, it’s not a crime scene. I have the whole thing on video. You look at it, you’ll see. No rape.”
Ballard realized she should have seen that coming. The mirror on the ceiling. Monahan was a voyeur.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Monahan led the police procession to the bedroom, stating his case along the way.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not a creep,” he said. “But with all this MeToo stuff starting up last year, I thought I needed protection, you know?”
“You put in cameras,” Ballard said.
“Damn right. I knew it might come to this. I didn’t do it for me to watch — that would be sick. I just needed the protection.”
In the bedroom he went to a remote control on a stand next to the bed and turned on a large screen that mirrored the curve of the wall. Soon the screen split into sixteen views from security cameras around the house. He highlighted one of the squares and expanded it. Ballard was now looking at an overhead view of the room that included her, Dvorek, and Monahan. Ballard turned to locate the camera and focused on the ornate frame of a painting on the wall near the head of the bed.