“The photos are not in the report?” she asked.
“No photos,” Persson said.
“Should they be in there?” Hatteras asked.
“If the officer took them with his phone, they should be attached,” Ballard said. “It’s part of the protocol on domestic calls.”
“I wonder if he did and if the DA saw them,” Hatteras said.
“That’s the question,” Ballard said. She got up, went to the murder box, lifted it, and headed to her desk. “So, listen to me,” she said. “Neither of you talk about this case outside of this room. No one else knows about the case or the judge or any of it. Understand?”
Hatteras and Persson nodded somberly.
“Good,” Ballard said. “Anders, send me that report.”
She put the box down on her desk and lifted the top off. It contained six plastic binders, placed in the box spine up, with the dates marked and in order. She remembered from her first look at the box two years ago that the first five binders were task force reports on the series of assaults attributed to the Pillowcase Rapist. The sixth binder was dedicated to the last case, the killing of Abby Sinclair. She pulled this binder out of the box and sat down to get reacquainted with the murder investigation.
But before she opened the binder, she opened the contacts list on her cell and called Laffont.
“What’s up, Renée?”
“Did you leave?”
“Yeah, I thought we were done. Meeting a friend for lunch. I was planning to come back when I hear from Darcy on my case. I’ll get my hours in after that.”
“I need you back here after your lunch. We just got a hot shot that I want to move on today.”
“Uh, sure. I could also come back now. I’m only ten minutes away. I stopped to shoot the shit with Captain LaBrava. He saw me in the parking lot and asked about our door alarm this morning.”
LaBrava was the commander of operations at the Ahmanson Center. That put him in charge of the building but not of the Open-Unsolved Unit, which fell under the command of the Robbery-Homicide Division downtown.
“Jesus, this guy and that back door,” Ballard said. “Doesn’t he have more important things to worry about?”
“He should,” Laffont said. “But I think I smoothed it over. I said we had a lizard in the archives we were trying to save by getting it outside the quickest way we could.”
“A lizard? And he bought it?”
“I don’t know, but it gave him a reason to drop it. I don’t think he’ll bring it up again.”
“We’ll see.”
“So, what’s the hot shot?”
Ballard told him that one of the first cases she, as head of the unit, had sent to the lab for familial DNA comparison had just produced a hit. And that hit led to the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Laffont whistled, loud enough that Ballard had to pull her cell away from her ear.
“Did you ever appear before Purcell?” he asked.
“Not that I remember,” Ballard said. “I think he was mostly in civil. And now he’s the chief judge, but that’s primarily an administrative position.”
“Too bad he’s not in court. I’d like to get a look at him.”
“Well, you will. I want to get some DNA off him as soon as possible.”
“Surreptitiously?”
“Unless you know another way. I don’t think going to the courthouse, knocking on the door of his chambers, and saying, ‘Hey, Judge, mind if we take a swab?’ is going to work.”
“Nah, I don’t think so either. So what are you thinking?”
With a solid lead in a very big unsolved case, Ballard did not want to delay the investigation for a day, an hour, or even a minute. This was a case she had prioritized from the day she’d rebooted the unit. “Well, I haven’t thought too much about it, but judges get to park in a garage under the CCB. I’m thinking we pick him up as he’s coming out at the end of the day and go from there.”
“Sounds like a plan. You sure I can keep my lunch date and come back after? We won’t need to get downtown till four or so, right?”
“Yes, but I want you to be familiar with the case. I just pulled the box.”
“I’ll be back by two, how’s that?”
“Good. I have a lunch scheduled too. See you this afternoon.”
“We aren’t going to do this by ourselves, are we?”
“No, I’ll try to get Paul and Lilia to come back in.”
“Good. See you at two.”
“Right.”
Ballard disconnected and checked her watch. She had a half hour before she had to leave for her appointment. She opened her laptop and went online to check recent purchases on the credit cards that had been in her wallet. She was hoping that at least one card had been used and she’d be able to track that purchase back to the thief, but there’d been no new activity on either.
She leaned back and thought about this. Usually stolen cards and their numbers were sold off quickly by thieves to a second tier of criminals who worked furiously in a race against time before the victim of the theft canceled the cards. That apparently had not happened yet. Disappointed, she considered the possible reasons for this and wondered whether she should cancel the cards or leave them live with the potential of generating a clue trail.
Hatteras popped her head up over the divider but didn’t say anything.
“What is it, Colleen?”
“Just wondering if there’s anything you need me to do.”
“No, I’m going out for an appointment. You don’t need to stay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay, then.”
Ballard looked back at the screen and started the procedure for reporting her credit cards stolen and requesting new ones.
5
Dr. Cathy Elingburg’s office was north of the airport in Playa Vista, an area known as Silicon Beach because of all the tech companies and start-ups located there. Elingburg’s practice was largely made up of young tech types with competition paranoia and sleep disorders. As far as Ballard knew, she was the only law enforcement officer on Elingburg’s roster of clients, and that was how Ballard preferred it. She wanted no one with a badge to possibly know she was seeing a therapist on a weekly basis. It might be well into the twenty-first century, but a cop seeing a therapist was still viewed by other cops as a sign of weakness.
She arrived early and sat in the waiting room, studying the framed diplomas from UNC Chapel Hill and Elon. Both were awarded to Helen Catherine Sharpe, an indication that Elingburg was a surname she took through marriage. In the eight or so months Ballard had been seeing her, she had not gotten around to asking how someone who had been schooled in North Carolina ended up in Silicon Beach.
At noon, Ballard heard the exit door from the office open and close. The office was designed so that a departing client did not pass through the waiting room where the next client was sitting. It was a privacy that Ballard appreciated.
Moments later, the door to the office opened and the doctor welcomed Ballard into the rectangular space. To the left was a desk; to the right was a seating area that looked like a basic living room, with two couches, one on either side of a coffee table, and solo seats on the ends. Their habit was to sit across from each other on the couches, and Ballard took her usual spot.
“Water?” Elingburg asked. “Coffee?”
“No, I’m fine,” Ballard said.
Elingburg started with a discussion about the next Monday being Presidents’ Day and a holiday. She told Ballard that she wouldn’t be seeing clients in the office that day, and they could either move their standing appointment to a different day or do it by Zoom with Elingburg connecting from her home. They decided on an office appointment on the following Tuesday and then got to work.