“Send me that report too,” she said. “Then that’s enough for today, Colleen. I’ll see you tomorrow at the team meeting.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me for anything else?” Hatteras asked.
“Not today. It’s supposed to be a holiday, remember? I’m leaving too after I get some paperwork done.”
Ballard knew that if she went to the lockdown room now to retrieve the suitcase, Hatteras would never leave; she would stay and look over Ballard’s shoulder. So instead Ballard went to her desk, opened her terminal, and started writing a summary of the interview with Jackie Todd to send to Captain Gandle.
It was a waiting game. Hatteras was taking her time finishing up her work and shutting down. Ballard wrote a two-page summary on the interview, and Hatteras was still at her desk. Ballard could hear her keyboard clicking on the other side of the partition.
Once she filed the report and sent a copy to Gandle, she started an email to the captain requesting his approval for a trip to Las Vegas to interview Rodney Van Ness. She carefully outlined his connection to the Pillowcase Rapist case. Van Ness could be a key witness, a person of interest, or even a suspect, and she explained that he had to be approached in person so his reactions and answers could be properly gauged. Ballard wrote that the trip was critical and that money from her unit’s NIJ grant would pay for her and Officer Bosch to make the likely two-day road trip to Nevada and back.
“What’s that?”
Hatteras had come around the raft and walked up behind her without Ballard’s noticing while she was doing a final read of the email. She immediately clicked the send button. She turned to look at Hatteras, who had car keys in her hand. Finally, she was leaving.
“An email to the captain,” Ballard said. “You’re going home now?”
“Yes,” Hatteras said. “But are you going to Las Vegas?”
She had obviously spied the subject line of the email before Ballard sent it.
“I don’t know yet, and it’s not something you need to worry about,” Ballard said.
“I was just going to say I could go with you,” Hatteras said. “To help.”
“Colleen, it’s fieldwork and we talked about that. You need additional training if you want to do anything in the field.”
“Then sign me up,” Hatteras said. “I’m tired of being a computer nerd.”
“Colleen, you’re not a nerd. You are a very important part of this unit. Look at all the leads you have come up with in just the past few days. But this is a team, and every member of the team needs to do their part so that we can get the best results on our cases. I’m sorry I have to keep explaining this to you.”
“I know, I know. I just wish—”
“Look, you’ve put in a long day and I want you to go home and rest up. I need your best work when you come in tomorrow. Okay, Colleen?”
Hatteras frowned and nodded. “Are you leaving now? I’ll walk out with you.”
“No, I still have more paperwork and emails to do,” Ballard said. “And this is only delaying it. I want you to go home, Colleen.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. I’m leaving.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Nine o’clock?”
“Right, though we both know you’ll be in before that.”
Hatteras smiled slightly and nodded again. She turned and finally headed to the door.
Ballard waited, half expecting to see Colleen round the corner by the first row of the murder archives and come back to the raft.
Luckily, she didn’t.
When she was sure Hatteras was gone, Ballard stood, opened her desk drawer, and grabbed the key to the lockdown room. She picked up the file containing Thawyer’s photos of Elizabeth Short and went to open her suitcase.
Tuesday, 6:25 A.M
38
Ballard called Seth Dawson, hoping he was up and about, maybe even surfing. But when he answered, she could tell he was in a moving car with the windows open. She was in a moving car herself.
“It’s Detective Ballard,” she said. “Are you going to the water?”
“You guessed it.”
“Which break? I’m on my way out too, and I have something for you.”
“Zuma. Going with the app.”
Ballard had checked the Surf’s Up app herself and knew that Zuma was the recommendation. She was already heading toward Venice and she’d have to turn around on the PCH to get back to Zuma. She tried to judge how much time she’d get on the water going all the way up there.
“I’ll meet you there,” she said.
She finished the call and made a U-turn in front of Pepperdine. Thirty minutes later, she was on her board, waiting for her first wave. There was no sign of Dawson.
She got in two long runs on five-footers before she saw Dawson carrying his board across the beach. She paddled parallel to the shore to meet him on the break.
“Hey,” he said after paddling out. “How is it?”
“Not bad,” Ballard said. “Fives and sevens. Fives mostly.”
She paddled closer and turned her board so they were side by side.
“Got something for you,” she said.
She had the Breitling watch on her arm almost all the way to the elbow of her wetsuit. She slid it down and over her hand, then held it out to Dawson.
“No way!” he exclaimed, taking the watch. “You found it?”
“Check the back,” Ballard said.
He did, then gripped the watch in his hand.
“That’s it,” he said. “I told my dad it was gone. He won’t believe this. How’d you get it back?”
“Well, I can’t tell you everything,” Ballard said. “It’s part of an ongoing investigation. But the person who stole it took it to a fence that cooperated with us. So we found it.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Glad to return it to you. I know it means a lot. Now I’m looking for one more wave and then I gotta go to work.”
Ballard glanced over her shoulder. The next set was coming in. It looked like more of the same — five-footers. She leaned forward and started paddling. She called back to Dawson, “That’s my wave. See you.”
Dawson started paddling too.
“Thank you!” he called after her.
They both got up on the wave but Dawson bailed early to go back out for more. Ballard was done for the day. She rode it all the way in, then stepped off the board in the shallows. She turned back to see Dawson holding up his hand, his fingers spread wide — a familiar surfer goodbye. She returned the gesture and lifted her board out of the surf.
39
The full team was there for the meeting when Ballard entered at nine, coffee and computer bag in hand. She put both down on her desk and immediately went to her usual spot in front of the whiteboards.
“Okay, let’s get started,” she said. “We’ve got a lot going on.”
“How was the water?” Masser asked.
Ballard looked at him, surprised, then realized her hair was the giveaway. It was still wet.
“It was nice,” she said. “But too short.”
She waited to see if there were any questions from the others. There weren’t.
“Okay, let’s go with old business before we see where we are on the Pillowcase and Black Dahlia cases.”
Ballard turned to look at the whiteboards.
“Tom, you have an update on Shaquilla Washington?” she asked.
“I do,” Laffont said. “We got a genetic match to a man who is twenty-two years into a twenty-five-to-life sentence at Soledad. Gerald Grover, a gangster, formerly from Inglewood.”
“Well done,” Ballard said. “You take it to John Lewin?”