“It’s okay. I just don’t need his permission. I’d like to volunteer. Can we talk about it? Do you have time?”
“Yes, of course. Let’s go to the cafeteria so we can sit down and talk a little more privately. There’s not a lot of privacy in the bullpen here.”
They walked down the main hall and turned right to a smaller hallway that led to the cafeteria. Ballard got a coffee and Maddie a hot tea. The place was largely deserted because it was between the breakfast and lunch rushes. There was a sea of empty tables and they took one that would afford the most privacy for their conversation.
“I haven’t been back here since I was in the academy,” Maddie said.
“I trained in the old place in Chavez Ravine,” Ballard said.
“I almost never go there.”
“So, I take it you know what we do here.”
“Well, you work cold cases. Murders mostly. From what I understand, you have all the murder books right here. You review them to see if modern forensic technology can be used to identify suspects and bring closure to families that lost people.”
“We close cases but I’m not sure we ever bring closure to the families. We give answers, but answers don’t end the grief people carry.”
“Harry always said the same thing.”
“Then you know. A lot of the people who want to volunteer for the unit come with a specific case in mind. Like a friend or a family member, someone from the neighborhood where they grew up. Is there a case like that with you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Okay, well, I know I could talk to Harry about a recommendation and—”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I’d really like to do this on my own.”
“I understand that, but Harry’s my friend and I think it would be odd if I didn’t at least tell him we’re going to work together.”
“Can you do that after you decide? I brought a sheet with me.” She took a printed sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolded it.
“This has the names and numbers of my supervisors,” she said. “Has my TO on there, though I’m no longer a boot. But she could tell you what a quick learner I am and how I react under pressure.”
Ballard took the paper and looked at it. She didn’t recognize any of the names, even though, until just a few years ago, she had been assigned to Hollywood Division as the midnight-shift detective.
“Man, it looks like a complete turnover of command staff since I was there,” she said.
“Yeah, just about everybody is new,” Maddie said.
Ballard nodded and continued to stare at the paper.
“So, what do you think?” Maddie prompted.
Ballard looked up at her. “Well, a couple of things I want you to know first,” she said. “I expect members of the unit to put in one day a week. I prefer two but I’ll take one. They don’t have to be eight-hour shifts, but I want to see you in here at least once a week. Will that be a problem?”
“No, not at all,” Maddie said. “Like I said, I have a lot of free time. The only thing that might be a scheduling conflict is if I have court. But that doesn’t happen a lot. What else?”
“If you’re running with a case, you stick with it or hand it off. And if you’re not running down a case, I want you pulling cases and reviewing them to see if there’s a shot at getting something done. We have a whole protocol for determining that. But there are six thousand unsolved cases going back to 1960. Right now the sweet spot is the eighties and early nineties. The cases are recent enough that there might be a live suspect out there, and those cases were originally worked before DNA was part of the landscape.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Um, the cases here, they go back only to 1960?”
“No, we’ve got cases from way earlier than that, but our cutoff point is currently 1975. With anything before that, it’s unlikely that anyone involved would be alive — suspects or immediate family.”
“Oh, right. I get it.”
“Yeah. So, anything else I can answer?”
“Not really... except when will you decide if you’ll take me on?”
“Well, I have to do a couple of things first. I have to talk to my captain and see if he’ll approve taking on someone who’s already full-time in the department. That hasn’t happened before. But I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell him: It would be really good to have someone else in the unit with a badge. It would take a lot of stuff off my shoulders. A lot of things come up that only a badge can do, like make arrests and testify in court. And I’m the only one. It would be nice to have you in the unit. Real nice, in fact.”
“Well, good. I hope you can convince the captain.”
“Me too.”
Ballard held out the paper she had been given. “Do these people know that I might call them?” she asked.
“Not really,” Maddie said. “Should I tell them?”
“Uh, no, it will be better if I call them cold. Do you want to see the unit and where you’ll be if this works out? A couple of the other volunteers are here today.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
11
Ballard parked on Speedway in front of a garage door at the rear of a walled residence. Three signs on the shabby gray door warned of the consequences of blocking it. But Ballard wasn’t planning on leaving her vehicle. The spot gave her a prime view of Dean Delsey’s second-floor apartment in a run-down complex that had been built seventy-five years ago and designed to look like a boat. The windows in the complex were round like portholes, and the exterior front corner of the retaining wall surrounding the property had anchors attached to it as if it were the prow of a ship. Before settling in to watch, Ballard had done a walk around the apartment complex and had determined that Delsey’s DL address corresponded with the apartment at the east end of the second floor.
The apartment had a balcony that overlooked Speedway. Stacked against its side wall were three or four surfboards. Ballard could see that the sliding door to the apartment was open, and faint, unidentifiable music was floating through.
Someone was home.
Ballard settled in for what she knew could be an hours-long surveillance. She wasn’t sure what her next move would be but she hoped at a minimum to get a look at Delsey before she called it a day.
She thought of something she should have done before leaving the office and decided to risk drawing Hatteras into her off-the-books actions. She called her on her cell.
“Renée, you all right?”
“I’m fine. But I need you to do something for me.”
“Sure.”
“All right, go over to my terminal. I should still be signed in.”
“You got it.”
Ballard waited until Colleen said she was in place and that Ballard was still signed in to the department network. Ballard then walked her through accessing the DMV database and putting Delsey’s address into the search engine to see if the same address happened to be on anyone else’s driver’s license.
“Two names come up,” Hatteras said.
“One is Dean Delsey,” Ballard said. “Give me the other one.”
“Robert Delsey. Must be his brother. Or, wait, no, this may be his father. He’s older.”
“What’s his DOB?”
Hatteras gave a birth date in 1981, making Robert twice Dean’s age. It also doubled Ballard’s interest in the pair. Another father-and-son case, the second in two days. Ballard did not put much stock in so-called coincidences — Harry Bosch had taught her that — but she thought this one must be a genuine one.
She directed Hatteras to open a search on the department’s criminal records index. Hatteras reported that Robert Delsey had a criminal history much longer than Dean’s. It included a nine-year stretch in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. Nine years meant it was no bar fight or skirmish over surf territory. It told Ballard that he had probably come close to killing someone, and that meant he was a dangerous man.