Ballard knew it would not be her case but she pulled out her phone and took photos of the body and the scene, including close-ups of the overturned camping heater, the presumed source of the blaze. She then opened the temperature app on the phone and noted that the current temperature listed for Hollywood was 52 degrees. That would go in her report and be forwarded to the Fire Department’s arson unit.
She stepped back and looked around. It was 3:15 a.m. and Cole Avenue was largely deserted, except for the homeless people who had come out of the tents and cardboard shanties that lined the sidewalk running alongside the Hollywood Recreation Center. They stared both wide-eyed and addled as the investigation into the death of one of their own proceeded.
“How’d we get this?” Ballard asked.
Stan Dvorek, the patrol sergeant who had called her out, stepped over. He had worked the late-show shift longer than anybody at Hollywood Division — more than ten years. Others on the shift called him “The Relic,” but not to his face.
“FD called us,” he said. “They got it from communications. Somebody driving by saw the flames and called it in as a fire.”
“They get a name on the PR?” Ballard asked.
“He didn’t give one. Called it in, kept driving.”
“Nice.”
Two fire trucks were still on scene, having made the journey just three blocks down from Station 27 to douse the burning tent. The crews were standing by to be questioned.
“I’m going to take the fire guys,” Ballard said. “Why don’t you have your guys talk to some of these people, see if anybody saw anything.”
“Isn’t that arson’s job?” Dvorek asked. “They’re just going to have to reinterview if we find anybody worth talking to.”
“First on scene, Devo. We need to do this right.”
Ballard walked away, ending the debate. Dvorek might be the patrol supervisor but Ballard was in charge of the crime scene. Until it was determined that the fatal fire was an accident she would treat it as a crime scene.
She walked over to the waiting firefighters and asked which of the two crews was first on scene. She then asked the six firefighters assigned to the first truck what they saw. The information she received from them was thin. The tent fire had almost burned itself out by the time the fire-rescue team arrived. Nobody saw anyone around the blaze or nearby in the park. No witnesses, no suspects. A fire extinguisher from the truck had been used to douse the remaining flames, and the victim was pronounced dead and was therefore not transported to a hospital.
From there Ballard took a walk up and down the block, looking for cameras. The homeless encampment ran along the city park’s outdoor basketball courts, where there were no security cameras. On the west side of Cole was a line of one-story warehouses inhabited by prop houses and equipment-rental houses catering to the film and television industry. Ballard saw a few cameras but suspected that they were either dummies or set at angles that would not be helpful to the investigation.
When she got back to the scene, she saw Dvorek conferring with two of his patrol officers. Ballard recognized them from the morning-watch roll call at Hollywood Division.
“Anything?” Ballard asked.
“About what you’d expect,” Dvorek said. “‘I didn’t see nothin’, I didn’t hear nothin’, I don’t know nothin’.’ Waste of time.”
Ballard nodded. “Had to be done,” she said.
“So where the fuck is arson?” Dvorek asked. “I need to get my people back out.”
“Last I heard, in transit. They don’t run twenty-four hours, so they had to roust a team from home.”
“Jesus, we’ll be waiting out here all night. Did you roll the coroner out yet?”
“On the way. You can probably clear half your guys and yourself. Just leave one car here.”
“You got it.”
Dvorek went off to issue new orders to his officers. Ballard walked back to the immediate crime scene and looked at the tent that had melted over the dead man like a shroud. She was staring down at it when peripheral movement caught her eye. She looked up to see a woman and a girl climbing out of a shelter made of a blue plastic tarp tied to the fence that surrounded the basketball court. Ballard moved quickly to them and redirected them away from the body.
“Honey, you don’t want to go over there,” she said. “Come this way.”
She walked them down the sidewalk to the end of the encampment.
“What happened?” the woman asked.
Ballard studied the girl as she answered.
“Somebody got burned,” she said. “Did you see anything? It happened about an hour ago.”
“We were sleeping,” the woman said. “She’s got school in the morning.”
The girl had still not said anything.
“Why aren’t you in a shelter?” Ballard asked. “This is dangerous out here. That fire could’ve spread.”
She looked from the mother to the daughter.
“How old are you?”
The girl had large brown eyes and brown hair and was slightly overweight. The woman stepped in front of her and answered Ballard.
“Please don’t take her from me.”
Ballard saw the pleading look in the woman’s brown eyes.
“I’m not here to do that. I just want to make sure she’s safe. You’re her mother?”
“Yes. My daughter.”
“What’s her name?”
“Amanda — Mandy.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
Ballard leaned down to talk to the girl. She had her eyes cast down.
“Mandy? Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Would you want me to try to get you and your mother into a shelter for women and children? It might be better than being out here.”
Mandy looked up at her mother when she answered.
“No. I want to stay here with my mother.”
“I’m not going to separate you. I will take you and your mother if you want.”
The girl looked up at her mother again for guidance.
“You put us in there and they will take her away,” the mother said. “I know they will.”
“No, I’ll stay here,” the girl said quickly.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “I won’t do anything, but I don’t think this is where you should be. It’s not safe out here for either of you.”
“The shelters aren’t safe either,” the mother said. “People steal all your stuff.”
Ballard pulled out a business card and handed it to her.
“Call me if you need anything,” she said. “I work the midnight shift. I’ll be around if you need me.”
The mother took the card and nodded. Ballard’s thoughts returned to the case. She turned and gestured toward the crime scene.
“Did you know him?” she asked.
“A little,” the mother said. “He minded his own business.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Uh, I think it was Ed. Eddie, he said.”
“Okay. Had he been here a long time?”
“A couple months. He said he had been over at Blessed Sacrament but it was getting too crowded for him.”
Ballard knew that Blessed Sacrament on Sunset allowed the homeless to camp on the front portico. She drove by it often and knew it to be heavily crowded at night with tents and makeshift shelters, all of which disappeared at daylight before church services began.
Hollywood was a different place in the dark hours, after the neon and glitter had dimmed. Ballard saw the change every night. It became a place of predators and prey and nothing in between, a place where the haves were comfortably and safely behind their locked doors and the have-nots freely roamed. Ballard always remembered the words of a late-show patrol poet. He called them human tumbleweeds moving with the winds of fate.