“My father went to Vietnam,” she said. “You remind me of him.”
“That right?” Bosch said. “He live here in L.A.?”
“No, I lost him when I was fourteen. But during the war, he came to Hawaii on... what was it called, furlough?”
“Yeah, or liberty. I went to Hawaii a few times. They didn’t let you go back to CONUS, so you could go to Hong Kong, Sydney, a few other places. But Hawaii was the best.”
“What was CONUS?”
“Continental United States. They didn’t want you going back to the mainland because of all the protests. But if you worked things right in Honolulu, you could sneak onto a flight in civvies and get back to L.A.”
“I don’t think my dad did that. He met my mother in Hawaii and then after the war he came back and stayed.”
“A lot of guys did that.”
“He was from Ventura originally, and after I was born, we would visit my grandmother there — once a year — but he didn’t like coming back. He saw it like you do. A fucked-up world. He just wanted to camp on the beach and surf.”
Bosch nodded.
“I get that. He was smart and I was the fool. I came back and thought I could do something about things.”
Before Ballard could respond, Bosch got out of the car and closed the door. Ballard watched him walk toward the building where they kept the space shuttle. She noticed a slight limp in his walk.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Harry,” she said out loud.
30
By the time Ballard switched vehicles, drove out to Venice, picked up Lola, and got to the beach it was midmorning and the wind had kicked up a two-foot chop on the surface that would make paddling a challenge instead of the therapy she usually drew from it. As much as she needed the exercise, she knew she needed sleep more. She pitched her tent, posted Lola at the front, and crawled in to rest. She thought about her father as she trailed off, remembering him straddling his favorite board and telling her about Vietnam and about killing people, putting it the way Bosch had put it, saying he’d had to do it and then had to live with it. He wrapped all of his Vietnam experiences into one phrase, “Sin loi.” Tough shit.
Four hours later her watch vibrated her awake. She had been in deep, and waking was slow and disorienting. Finally, she sat up, split the tent flaps with her hand and checked on Lola. The dog was there, sunning herself. She looked back at Ballard with expectant eyes.
“You hungry, girl?”
Ballard climbed out of the tent and stretched. She checked the Rose Avenue tower and saw Aaron Hayes in the nest, gazing out at sea. There were no swimmers out there.
“Come on, Lola.”
She walked down the sand toward the lifeguard tower. The dog followed behind her.
“Aaron,” she called up to the tower.
Hayes turned and looked down at her from his perch.
“Renée. I saw your tent but didn’t want to wake you up. You doing all right?”
“Yeah. What about you?”
“You know, back on the bench. But pretty quiet today.”
Ballard glanced out toward the water as if to confirm the paucity of swimmers.
“You want to grab dinner tonight?” he asked.
“I think I have to work,” Ballard said. “Let me make a call and see what’s what, then I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll be here.”
“You have your phone?”
“Got my phone.”
He was breaking a rule, having a personal phone with him while in the tower. A scandal had rocked a rescue crew up the coast a year before when a texting lifeguard missed seeing a drowning woman waving for help. Ballard knew Aaron would not text or take calls, but he could play back messages without taking his eyes off the water.
She walked back to the tent, pulled her phone out of the pocket of her beach sweats, and called the number given to her by Travis Lee, one of the homicide detectives who took over the Jacob Cady case that morning. He answered and she asked what the status of the case was. Lee had remarked to her early that morning that it was an unusual set of circumstances for him and his partner Rahim Rogers. They came into the case with the admitted killer in custody, thanks to Ballard, and the detective work would be in finding the remains of the victim.
“We traced the truck that made the pickup on the dumpster,” Lee said. “It first went to a sorting center in Sunland, then what was not picked out for recycling was dumped at the landfill in Sylmar. Believe it or not, it’s called Sunshine Canyon. We’re putting on moon suits now and about to start picking.”
“You have an extra moon suit?” Ballard asked.
“You volunteering, Ballard?”
“I am. I want to see it through.”
“Come on, then. We’ll fix you up.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
After packing up and dropping Lola at doggy day care, Ballard took the 405 freeway directly north, through the charred hills in the Sepulveda Pass and into the Valley. She called Aaron along the way and told him dinner was not going to happen.
Sylmar was at the north end and Sunshine Canyon was in the armpit created by the intersection of the 405 and 14 freeways. Ballard could smell it long before she got to it. Slapping a name like Sunshine Canyon on a landfill was typical iconography. Take something ugly or horrible and put a pretty name on it.
Upon arrival, Ballard was driven out to the search site on an all-terrain vehicle. Lee and Rogers and a forensics team were already using what looked like ski poles to pick through an area of refuse that had been cordoned off with yellow tape. It was about thirty yards long and ten wide, and Ballard assumed that this was the spread of refuse from the garbage truck that had picked up Jacob Cady’s condo dumpster on its route.
There was a table under a mobile canopy set up by the forensics team on the dirt road that skirted the landfill’s drop zone. Extra equipment was spread across it, including plastic hazmat coveralls, breathing masks, eye guards, glove and bootie boxes, hard hats, duct tape, and a case of bottled water. A barrel next to the table had extra search picks, some of which had orange flags attached for marking finds.
Ballard was dropped off with an advisory from the ATV’s driver that hard hats were required to be worn in the debris zones of the landfill. She put on a breathing mask first. It didn’t do much to cut the odor but it was comforting to know it might cut down on the intake of larger particulate garbage. She pulled a moon suit on over her clothes next and noticed that none of the searchers on the debris pile had pulled the hood up on their hazmat suits. She did, tucking her midlength hair completely into the plastic and pulling the slip line that tightened the hood around her face.
She put on gloves and booties and then used the duct tape to seal the cuffs of the suit around her wrists and ankles. She put on the eye guard and topped the outfit off with an orange hard hat with the number 23 on both sides of it. She was ready. She grabbed one of the picks from the barrel and started crossing the debris toward the other searchers. There were five of them in a line, working their way up the search zone.
Because they had not pulled up their hoods Ballard easily identified Lee and Rogers.
“You guys want me to squeeze into the line here or do something else?” she asked.
“Is that you, Ballard?” Lee said. “Yeah, squeeze in. Better chance we don’t miss anything.”
Lee moved left and Rogers moved right, making room for Ballard to join the line.
“Black plastic bags, Ballard,” Rogers said. “With blue pull straps.”
“Got it,” Ballard said.
“Everybody, this is Renée,” Lee said. “She’s the one we have to thank for being here today. Renée, this is everybody.”