“Yeah, I’ve heard that before and I think it was from you.”
But Beltran turned away from his screen and took the bag from Ballard. She knew she had him.
“What’s the case number?” he asked. “I’ll have to see if a vaper is free.”
The vaper was the glass case where small objects were exposed to vaporized cyanoacrylate, which crystallized on the ridges of fingerprints, raising them and turning them white. They could then be collected by tape or photographed and compared to other prints in the databases.
But whether or not the vaper was free was not Ballard’s immediate problem. All work submitted to the latent-prints section for processing and comparison had to be filed under a case number. The problem was that Ballard had no case number because there was no official investigation into the theft of her badge, gun, and other property. Ballard had to be careful about which legitimate case number to give. If she gave Beltran a case that was solved someday, her request for a print run would become part of discovery during a prosecution and could hand a defense attorney all that was needed to question the integrity of the case.
This was why Ballard was prepared with a murder case that would never be solved. She gave Beltran the number, 88-0394, and the name, Jeffrey Haskell. Beltran wrote the information down and realized the case was more than three decades old.
“Eighty-eight?” he said. “How can this be a priority?”
“I’ll tell you how,” Ballard said. “Because that Red Bull can was touched by a suspect we watched yesterday, and I need to know his identity and see if he connects to any other cases.”
The truth was that the 1988 case had been reviewed by members of the Open-Unsolved Unit earlier in the year and Ballard had signed off on their assessment that it was not solvable using any contemporary forensic tools. There was no DNA. There were no ballistics. There were no fingerprints. There weren’t any witnesses, and there was no murder weapon. The case was the murder of a twenty-two-year-old Malibu kid named Jeffrey Haskell who had driven into a crime-ridden area of South Central to buy drugs in a housing project. Instead of scoring, he was robbed, stabbed with an unknown instrument, and left to bleed out in the car he had borrowed from his mother after telling her he was going to a bookstore. Thirty-plus years later, there were no leads to follow and no suspects. It was a cold case that was destined to forever be on a shelf in the murder archives.
Not every case could be solved. Ballard knew this but also knew the value of a case number and name that could be used to get lab work done on items that were not part of an active investigation. She had committed Jeffrey Haskell’s name and his case number to memory. She knew she would never be able to get justice for Haskell, but in a way only she knew about, he might help solve another crime.
“Okay,” Beltran said. “I have your cell. I’ll call you if I get anything.”
“No, I’m staying,” Ballard said. “That way I know you won’t back-burner it the minute I walk out the door.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“So you say.”
“Okay, fine. Stay as long as you like. I’m going to go fume it.”
He stood up, took the evidence bag, and headed to the lab doors at the back of the room. Ballard knew she couldn’t follow him. There were strict protocols in place to ensure that evidence in the lab was not contaminated or tainted by nonessential personnel.
“Okay, so you’ll let me know when you have something?” she called after him. She hated how her tone verged on pleading.
“I said I would,” Beltran said without breaking stride or turning back to her.
Ballard watched him go through the doors and then checked the time on her phone. It was only 8:20, and if she left now, she could be to the Ahmanson Center before anyone — other than Colleen Hatteras — realized she was late.
10
Hatteras let Ballard into the unit through the emergency door, and Ballard went right to the phone at her desk at the end of the raft. Beltran had not answered a call from her on the drive out to the west side and Ballard believed it was because he knew her cell number and chose to ignore her when he saw it on the caller ID screen.
She dialed his direct line now and tried to slow her breathing. She was frustrated with Beltran but knew this was not the time to confront him. This was an off-the-books investigation that she did not want to draw any attention to. As she’d expected, Beltran picked up on the first ring. Ballard swallowed her frustration and went with her routine-casework voice.
“Rico, it’s Ballard. Just checking to see if you’ve got something for me.”
“Yeah, what I got, Ballard, is a complete waste of my time.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“There’s no way this is your guy from that ’88 case. He wasn’t even born in ’88.”
Ballard realized that she’d told Beltran that the Red Bull can had been handled by a suspect in the case. That was a misstep. She tried to cover the discrepancy with a quick comeback question. “Well, then, who is he?” she asked.
“The prints on that can came back to a Dean Delsey, age twenty-fucking-two. You can’t pull me off the important shit on my plate to run down these long shots that are a complete waste of time.”
Ballard did a slow burn in silence.
“Ballard, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Give me his DOB and anything else you came up with.”
Beltran grudgingly gave her Delsey’s birth date and added that he had a record of arrests for minor crimes and assaults. No prison time but he was currently on probation for an auto-theft conviction.
“Thank you,” Ballard said with zero sincerity. “What I’ll do is talk to Doreen and ask her to put Open-Unsolved cases with a different print tech from now on.”
Even though this was an off-the-books investigation, Ballard felt she had to draw a line with Beltran because his attitude could hinder her unit’s legitimate investigations. Doreen was Doreen Hudson, the longtime director of the LAPD crime lab and a woman who had undoubtedly put up with her share of obstructive male tactics in her rise from an entry-level criminalist nearly four decades before. By referring to her by her first name, Ballard was signaling that she knew Hudson well and that the sisterhood was not to be fucked with. The truth was that she didn’t know Hudson well enough to call her directly and complain about Beltran or ask for a new tech to be assigned. She was counting on Beltran’s not knowing that.
“Oh, well, you don’t have to do that,” Beltran said quickly. “We can—”
“It’s not a problem,” Ballard said sweetly, cutting him off. “If you think what we’re doing out here is a complete waste of time, then that’s not a great fit and I’ll take care of it. Have a good one!”
Before Beltran could respond, Ballard pushed the button to disconnect the call.
“Whoa, who was that?” Hatteras said.
Ballard glanced up to see Hatteras looking over the partition, as usual.
“Never mind, Colleen,” Ballard said. “Just some jerk. Is Paul back yet?”
“Here,” Masser said.
Ballard turned in her chair and saw him walking in. He held up a document and came right to Ballard’s station.
“Got a copy of the birth certificate,” he said.
He put the document on her desk and pointed to the date of birth for Nicholas Purcell and then to a second date in a box marked RECORDED. The birth certificate had been recorded two days after his birth at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank.
“What’s it mean?” Hatteras asked.
“It means Nicholas Purcell was not adopted,” Masser said. “To adopt, a judge issues a decree, and a new birth certificate is created. The giveaway is that it’s usually weeks between the date of birth and the date of recording at the county registrar. Two days between dates means no adoption. Nicholas is the son of Jonathan and Vivian Purcell.”