“I need to confirm some information related to streetlight repairs,” Ballard said.
“We cover Alvarado to Westwood and the ten north to Mulholland,” Schaeffer said. “If that’s where you’re looking, then I’m your guy. How can I help?”
“I’m looking for repair records for Deep Dell Terrace for... let’s go back the last two months.”
“Okay, that one I know without looking because we’re sending a truck up there today.”
“What’s going on up there?”
“Sounds like we have a tampering situation. A homeowner says two of our guys cut power to the post, but we didn’t have any guys up there. Sounds like it was vandalism.”
“When was this?”
“Happened December thirtieth according to the homeowner.”
“Can you cancel the service up there today?”
“Uh, sure I can. How come?”
“I’m going to have the post and access plate processed for fingerprints. There was a crime committed in the area and the suspects may have cut the light ahead of time.”
“What kind of crime? Was it a murder?”
“No.”
Schaeffer waited for Ballard to say more but she didn’t. He got the message.
“But you think somebody cut the light so no one could see them?”
“Possibly. Do you have any records of other work orders for Deep Dell?”
“No. I can go back and look but I would remember anything recent. They got a guy lives up there — whenever they lose a light, we hear from him, and this one on Deep Dell Terrace was the first time I’ve heard from him in about a year.”
“Jack Kersey?”
“Sounds like he calls you folks, too.”
“I ran into him up there.”
“He’s a character. Keeps us on our toes, I’ll tell you that.”
“I can tell.”
“What else can I do for you, Detective?”
“I have two other streets I want to check to see if you’ve had repair orders there recently.”
She did not give him the dates or exact addresses of the first two sexual assaults. She just asked if there had been any repairs to streetlights in the last three months in the 600 block of Lucerne Boulevard or the 1300 block of Vista Street. For these Schaeffer could not answer from memory. He punched the addresses into his computer and then sent two pages to his printer.
“The answer is yes,” he said. “I’m printing it out for you. We got calls on both streets. On Lucerne we got the complaint December second and repaired it the fourth. On Vista it came in on the twenty-eighth and we were shorthanded because everybody wants that week off. Repairs on Vista are going out today as well.”
“I want you to stop that repair too,” Ballard said.
“Not a problem.”
“Thank you. I have a couple more questions. On the Lucerne repair, did you get a report on what the problem was there?”
“Yeah, it’s on the printout. That was vandalism — wires cut at the base.”
“Multiple wires?”
Schaeffer checked his computer screen.
“We had to replace the whole circuit there,” he said. “The feed line and the loop.”
That was the street where the first rape occurred. Ballard considered that the Midnight Men had cut two wires there because they didn’t know which was the feed. By the time of the Deep Dell attack they had learned.
“So they actually disabled several lights at once?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Schaeffer said. “And we got complaints from multiple residents.”
By learning to cut just one light — the one nearest the intended victim’s house — the Midnight Men were improving their MO and less likely to draw immediate attention to their nefarious efforts.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “I noticed that most of your trucks are out in the field, but there are two in the bays. Do you use white vans for service calls?”
“Vans? No. We use flatbeds, so when we have to replace a post or a whole light assembly, we can take what we need on the work truck. You can’t put a fourteen-foot streetlight in a van, and that’s what we’re most often doing — replacing the whole assembly. People like hitting them with their cars.”
He smiled at his own attempt at humor.
“Got it,” Ballard said. “And your flatbeds are clearly marked as city vehicles? With the city seal and department name?”
“Always,” Schaeffer said.
“No vans?”
“Not a one. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Is somebody doing some shit and saying he’s with us?”
“I wish I could tell you, Mr. Schaeffer — you’ve been very helpful. But I can’t, and I need you to keep this confidential. Don’t talk about it with anyone.”
“What am I going to tell? I don’t know what’s going on.”
Ballard reached into her pocket for a business card. It had her cell number on it.
“One last thing,” she said. “I need to know about any reported light outages in the Hollywood area for the next two weeks. I don’t care if it’s a weekend or not, I need you to call me as soon as a report comes in that there’s a streetlight out. I don’t need to know about car accidents. Just lights that are burned out, malfunctioning, vandalized, whatever. Can you do that?”
“Of course, not a problem,” Schaeffer said.
“Thank you, sir. When this is all over, I’ll be able to tell you more about it.”
“Whatever it is, I hope you catch the bastard. Especially if he’s the one out there cutting our wires.”
He handed her the printouts with the details of the first two streetlight outages. Ballard thanked him again and left. As she returned to her car, she acknowledged to herself that it was more likely than not that the next report of a vandalized streetlight in Hollywood would come in after it was too late and the next attack had already occurred.
From the work yard, Ballard drove by the exact locations of the streetlights noted on the printouts. In each case, the light where the wiring had been cut was in close proximity to the house where one of the sexual assaults had taken place. It left Ballard with no doubt that the Midnight Men had tampered with the lights before the attacks to further cloak their activities in darkness. She also noticed that in both locations the streetlights were different from the glass acorns in the Dell.
She called SID and requested that a print tech come out and process the access plate at the base of the light on Vista, as well as the light up on Deep Dell Terrace. It was a long shot but Ballard knew that long shots never paid off if you didn’t take them. A fingerprint could change the trajectory of the investigation in an instant. She left the Lucerne address off the request because that light had already been repaired and any fingerprint evidence left by the Midnight Men would likely be gone.
She checked her phone and saw that it was almost eight and her lieutenant should be in his office by the time she got back.
Along the way, she took a call from an autopsy coordinator at the County Medical Examiner’s Office. With more than a thousand autopsies conducted a week, the coroner needed a coordinator just to set the schedule and make notifications to investigators and families of the dead. She was informed that the autopsy of Javier Raffa was set for 11 a.m. with deputy medical examiner Dr. Steven Zvader.
Ballard said she would be there.
Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds was behind his desk when Ballard got back to the detective bureau. Ballard knocked on the window next to his open door and he signaled her in.
“Ballard,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d already gone home. How’s the head?”