“Okay, we’ll take a look around now,” Bosch said.
Ballard and Bosch split up and checked the windows and locks in each of the front rooms as Sally Barnes sat watching.
“What kind of crime was it?” she asked.
“A homicide,” Ballard said.
“Here, in this house?” Sally asked.
“We’re not sure, but probably not.”
“Emmitt Thawyer’s dead — if he’s your man.”
“Yes, we know. How did you know?”
“I think it was Mr. Mann from the historical society who told me. But that was many years ago.”
“You don’t seem shocked or surprised that Thawyer might be our suspect. Why?”
“Oh, the neighbors. When we first moved in, they told us they were happy to have a regular couple here. They said Mr. Thawyer was a strange man with his cameras and lights. He kept odd hours, sometimes worked all night. They’d see the flashes from the camera, you see.”
“From inside the house?”
“Well, of course. I’m going to move back to the kitchen, where I have my work.”
“Do you need help?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Okay, and we’ll finish our security survey. We won’t take long.”
Ballard and Bosch quickly moved through the house, checking doors and windows, finally ending up in the kitchen, where Sally Barnes sat at a table with a spread of eight-by-ten glossy black-and-white photos. She was signing them with a felt-tip pen. Ballard stepped over and recognized a much younger Sally Barnes in the photos. They were old publicity shots.
“I thought I recognized you,” she said. “Were you in the movies?”
“Television,” Barnes said. “I was on Police Woman in a recurring role. I did Baretta, Rockford Files, Barnaby Jones, McMillan & Wife, all of them.”
“Police Woman — that’s where I recognized you from. I went back and watched that whole series recently. Angie Dickinson kicked butt.”
“In more ways than one. I played a prostitute and I was her snitch. I got killed by my pimp when Angie thought I was getting too much fan mail. Written out.”
“Wow, that wasn’t fair.”
“Hollywood was never meant to be fair. Bruce wrote for TV, and when we got married, I retired. I became like that joke about the blonde who married the writer. But Bruce did well in TV and took good care of us. He bought this place with his residuals. We raised two sons here.”
Ballard nodded and gestured toward the photos on the table. “Well, people obviously remember you.”
“They do. And I thank them for it. I only charge for postage and handling.”
“Those neighbors who said Emmitt Thawyer was strange — are any of them still around?”
“No, they all died or moved away.”
Ballard nodded again and Maddie joined them in the kitchen. She shook her head, telling Ballard that she had noticed nothing of import. Ballard looked back at Sally.
“Well, Mrs. Barnes, your house is pretty solid,” Ballard said. “You’ve done a good job of keeping it secure. All right if we check your garage? Then we’ll get out of your hair.”
“Go ahead,” Sally said. “I don’t keep a car anymore. My eyes are bad.”
“Is there an automatic opener?” Maddie asked.
“There’s a button by the back door,” Sally said.
Ballard and Maddie found the button by the door and pressed it. They went out and crossed a small sunburned lawn as the double-wide garage door creaked open. The space was mostly bare. No car, no workbench. Just cardboard boxes marked CHRISTMAS stacked in the middle of one of the bays.
Ballard scanned the concrete floor but saw no drain. She went over to the boxes and shoved the stack aside to see if they were covering one; they weren’t.
“Damn,” Ballard said. “And this was looking so good too.”
“Well, maybe he had an office or a lab somewhere,” Maddie suggested.
“With a concrete floor and an iron-grated drain? I doubt it.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah. Go back in and tell the old lady thanks. Remind her to keep her doors locked. I’ll meet you on the street.”
“Okay.”
They split up; Maddie went to the back door while Ballard walked down the driveway toward the street. She pulled her phone to check for messages. There were none. As she put the phone away she noticed the three trash cans lined up between the house and the driveway. Behind them she saw a casement window. Her first thought was that a flash from there could have been seen by the neighbors next door.
Ballard turned and trotted around the corner to the back of the house. The door was already locked but she saw Maddie in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Barnes. She knocked rapidly on the glass. Maddie opened the door.
“There’s a basement,” Ballard said. “Mrs. Barnes, where are the stairs to the basement?”
Sally looked up from her autographing.
“Right behind you,” she said.
Ballard and Maddie turned. The wall behind them was composed of floor-to-ceiling cabinets. Ballard reached out and pulled on the handle of one of the cabinet doors. It was a false front. The whole assembly opened, top to bottom, revealing a doorway and a set of stairs going down into murky darkness.
24
Ballard reached through the doorway and swept her hand up and down to find a light.
“I forgot to mention the basement,” Sally said. “The light is on the left.”
Ballard switched sides and found the light, and the stairs down were illuminated.
“Did you and your husband put in this cabinet?” Maddie asked.
“Oh, no, it came that way with the house,” Sally said. “Mr. Thawyer built that, and Bruce thought it was pretty unique, so we kept it. Not many houses in Los Angeles have basements, you know.”
“Almost none,” Ballard said.
“I can’t do the stairs anymore,” Sally said. “Watch for spiderwebs down there.”
“We will,” Maddie said.
Ballard locked eyes with Maddie, and they shared a look of excitement and dread. Then Ballard started down the steps with Maddie right behind her.
Some of the lights attached to the rafters were dead. Gray light came in at angles from four casement windows, two on the driveway side, two on the opposite side. There were pull-down shades that were rolled up. The basement was wide open, no partitions or storage rooms. Four thick oak pillars supported the main crossbeams of the house.
The floor was concrete, poured and smoothed at a barely discernible down angle toward an iron-grated drain in the middle.
“Maddie, go back to my car and get those files,” Ballard said. “Here.” She handed over her key fob. Maddie turned and headed up the steps without a word.
“Also, in the back of my car, there’s a crime scene kit that has a pump bottle with luminol in it. Says it on the label. Bring that too.”
“You got it,” Maddie said.
Left alone, Ballard crouched next to the drain. She believed that horrible things had happened here. It was a long time ago but there were ghosts here, waiting for someone — waiting for her — to set them free.
She felt a solemn duty to them. As with the library of lost souls in the archives at Ahmanson, she carried the burden.
Maddie was soon back with the files and luminol. Ballard opened the file marked Betty and held the photos up under a bulb to compare them to the room they were in. The drain grate was a match. The rough surface of the concrete and the sweep patterns left by a trowel were a match.
“No doubt,” Maddie said. “Those were shot down here.”
“Can you go up the steps and turn off the lights?” Ballard asked. “And be careful coming back down in the dark.”