Pennington said serial offenders rarely stop committing crimes unless stopped by police.
“You have to realize that even if the police had gone public with their investigation, it is unlikely that these two men would have stopped their crimes,” he said. “Instead, they would have changed their patterns. But most likely there would still have been additional victims. And that’s the dilemma we face in deciding whether to go public. It’s a no-win situation for the police.”
Ballard’s face had grown hot while she read the article. Two paragraphs in, she knew that the department would likely peg her as the anonymous source for the story, since the only named villain was the man who had sought her suspension. She also knew this would not be the end of it. The Times was the paper of record and, as such, set the example for most of the other media in the city. There was no doubt that every local news broadcast would jump on this story, and the department would be under the magnifying glass once again.
She read the article one more time and this time took heart in what it didn’t reveal. It made no mention of the attacks all occurring on holidays, and it did not reveal the pattern of streetlight tampering. The source of the story had been careful about what information about the case got out to the public.
Ballard was confident that she knew who the source was. She picked up her phone and called Lisa Moore. With each ring she grew angrier, so that when the call finally went to voice mail, she was ready to fire with both barrels.
“Lisa, I know it was you. I’ll probably get blamed but I know it was you. You jeopardized an entire investigation just to spite Robinson-Reynolds for putting you on nights. And I know you calculated that I would get the blame for this. So fuck you, Lisa.”
She disconnected, almost immediately regretting the message she had left.
39
The story played for two days on the TV, radio, and Internet news, largely fueled by a hastily called press conference at the PAB in which an official department spokesman downplayed the Times report, saying that evidentiary connections between the crimes were tenuous, but the fact that each case involved two perpetrators seemed to connect the cases. Luckily for the department, the Capitol insurrection clogged airtime and newspaper space, and the story disappeared in the undertow of the larger story. Ballard never heard from Robinson-Reynolds, though his silence seemed to confirm his belief that she was the initial leak. Ballard also never heard back from Lisa Moore, even to deny the accusation she had left in her message.
Another story that didn’t get any traction was the arrest of a well-respected dentist in a murder conspiracy. Ballard was now an outsider on the case but she gathered from a call to Ross Bettany that the investigation was moving slowly. While the arrest of Jason Abbott was put out to the media, the involvement of Dennis Hoyle as a cooperating witness and ex-cop Christopher Bonner as a hit man had been successfully kept quiet. Ballard knew it wouldn’t stay quiet forever, especially when court hearings started, but the department had always operated according to the unspoken policy of spreading out the hits to its reputation whenever it possibly could.
On Saturday Ballard took a call from Garrett Single, who asked if she and her new dog wanted to come for a hike. Ballard had texted him a photo of Pinto earlier. He suggested Elysian Park because there was so much shade along the way. Ballard had not hiked Elysian since she was a cadet at the nearby police academy. She thought Pinto might enjoy it and, as Single had pointed out, the trail was dog-friendly and likely to be less crowded than other popular hiking spots. Ballard agreed to meet there, as Single was coming in from his home in Acton, which was far on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains. Ballard knew of the community as a place where many firefighters lived because they only went to and from work once a week, working three days on and sleeping in the firehouse, then getting four days off. A couple two-hour drives a week were not a big deal.
Monday morning Ballard woke up in Acton, having spent the last thirty-six hours with Single. His home was wedged into a rugged mountainside in the Antelope Valley, where, he had warned her, coyotes and bobcats roamed freely. She made coffee while Garrett showered, and stepped out onto a back deck that overlooked a garden that he told her he had been working on for months. She had a blanket from the couch wrapped around her shoulders. The time with Single had been good but Ballard had felt uneasy and frustrated the whole time. She had been pushed out of everything. The Raffa case had moved into the prosecutorial phase, so that didn’t bother her as much as being completely out of the Midnight Men investigation. What doubled the frustration was the fact that she had been vilified by Cindy Carpenter and had heard nothing from Lisa Moore on how the case was being pursued. It left her with little confidence that anyone was getting closer to identifying and apprehending the tag team rapists.
She was pacing in the brush and running the facts of the case through her mind when she heard Single come up behind her. He put one arm around and used the other to pull her hair back from the nape of her neck. He kissed her there.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“About what?” she asked.
“The view. I mean, look at this place.”
Ballard hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t been looking past her thoughts on the case.
“It’s pretty,” she said. “Stark.”
“It is,” Single said. “It’s why I like it.”
“No, you like it for the real-estate value and the wide-open space. Cops and firefighters always want space.”
“True. But I gotta be honest. I like the sharp ridges out here.”
“Then I gotta be honest. It’s too far away from the water.”
“What do you mean? We got the Santa Clara River right over that ridge.”
“Yeah, I’m talking about an ocean. The Pacific Ocean. Last I heard, you can’t surf the Santa Clara River — even when there is water in it.”
“But it’s a good counterpoint, mountains and oceans, isn’t it? The desert and beach have got at least one thing in common.”
“Sand?”
“You guessed it.”
Single laughed, and when he stopped, Ballard could hear her phone buzzing on the kitchen counter inside. It was the first time in thirty-six hours, and she had thought she was outside the limit of her cell service, but here it was: a call.
“Let me try to grab that,” she said.
“Come on,” Single said. “We’re talking about the future here.”
She hurried in through the door but the phone’s buzz died before she reached it. She saw the number was a city exchange but didn’t recognize it. She hesitated calling back blindly. It could be about her Board of Rights hearing. She still didn’t know if it would take place as scheduled after she had been taken off suspension and then placed back on. She waited and soon a voice-mail message notice appeared on the screen. She reluctantly played it back.
“Detective Ballard, Carl Schaeffer here from the Bureau of Street Lighting. I saw all the fuss on the news about the so-called Midnight Men and I’m guessing that’s your case and the cat is sort of out of the bag. But just in case it still matters, I wanted to let you know we got a maintenance call today on a light over in Hancock Park and I’m here if you want to know the details.”
Ballard immediately called Schaeffer back.
“Detective, how are you?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Schaeffer. I got your message. Did you send anyone out to repair the light?”
“No, not yet. I thought I’d check with you first.”
“Who called it in?”