She must have heard the tail end of their conversation because she looked at Maddie and said, “You get paid?”
“Uh, well...” Maddie began.
“She gets a stipend,” Ballard said. “I had to do that or the union would block it, and we needed another badge on the team.”
“Oh,” Hatteras said.
“I’d appreciate it, Colleen, if you kept that to yourself,” Ballard said.
“Sure,” Hatteras said. “I always said I would do this work for free.”
“And the city and I owe you our thanks,” Ballard said. “Let’s get back to this. Maddie, what can this private company do with the photos that our own lab didn’t do?”
“He said law enforcement lags behind in the use of identifiers that help in cases like these,” Maddie said.
“Like what?” Ballard asked. “This just sounds like a sales pitch.”
“Like ears,” Maddie said. “There are a number of studies out there that say the lines of the external ear — you know, the lobe, the helix, something called the concha, and various other shapes — all combine to be as unique an identifier as a fingerprint. There is this thing called Cameriere’s ear identification method that can be used to compare and confirm identity.”
“Wow, interesting,” Hatteras interjected.
Ballard realized that Hatteras was still standing behind her listening to the conversation.
“You showed me the file of photos you turned over to our lab,” Maddie said. “It had photos of the Thawyer victim named Betty that showed her right ear, but all the known photos of Elizabeth Short you submitted were headshots that didn’t show much of a side view of either ear. So I don’t think the lab did this kind of comparison.”
“I think I would have heard about it if they had,” Ballard said.
“I went online,” Maddie said. “Even the side-view mug shot of Short taken during her 1943 arrest in Santa Barbara didn’t have it. Her hair is over her ear.”
“So we have nothing to compare?” Ballard asked.
“No, we do,” Maddie said excitedly. “I found several, actually. They’re all from the crime scene on Norton Avenue where the killer left her body. In those photos, her face is turned to the side in the grass and you see her full right ear. But you didn’t include any of those shots in the lab package.”
“Because her face was bloodied and her cheeks were cut through like the Joker in that Batman movie,” Ballard said. “Horrible. And I didn’t think they were good photos for comparison.”
“They weren’t, not for normal facial comparison,” Maddie said. “But now we have clear images of her right ear to compare. I really think it’s worth a shot, and the guy said they would jump on it right away.”
“I think it’s worth a shot too,” Hatteras said.
Ballard turned to take in Hatteras again.
“Colleen,” she said, “why don’t you go to your pod and get ready to walk us through what you found yesterday.”
“No need,” Hatteras said. “I’m ready to go. I was waiting for you.”
“Well, go over there and we’ll join you in a minute, okay?”
“Okay.”
She said it like a child being sent to her room and walked away with her head down. Ballard turned her attention back to Maddie.
“Okay, go ahead with it,” she said. “Quietly. And I want you to write up some kind of confidentiality agreement and get Camerero or whatever his name is to sign it. I don’t want word of this leaking out.”
“No, Cameriere is the guy who invented the comparison index. The guy I talked to at FFI is named Ortiz, first name Lukas.”
“Okay, well, you can tell Mr. Lukas Ortiz to put a rush on it and that we’ll pay his people by the hour.”
“Okay, cool. I’m excited. I think it’s going to work.”
“That’s only going to be half the battle. Even if they call it a complete match, we’ll still need to convince the district attorney,” said Ballard.
“If this is as good as fingerprints, he’ll have to sign off.”
“Maybe. But this was good, you coming up with this, Maddie. Get it going.”
“I’ll head there now.”
48
No video from the roller-hockey player had come in from the captain. Ballard tried to push the problem she was facing with him out of her mind as she pulled her chair around the raft and sat down next to Hatteras.
“Finally,” she said. “Colleen, show me what you’ve got on our boys from St. Vincent’s.”
“Well, good and bad news,” Hatteras said. “I’m pretty sure I located all three. The bad news is that Weeks is in Hollywood Forever.”
“He’s dead?”
“Died in a car accident three years ago.”
“Where?”
“He hit a tree on Los Feliz Boulevard driving home after a concert at the Greek. I found a story in the Pasadena Star-News. I guess because he grew up there and had sort of made good in Hollywood, they ran a story.”
“What did he do in Hollywood?”
“He was a producer of independent films. None that I ever heard of, but stuff that made the festival circuits.”
“Can you pull up the story? I’d like to read it.”
“I have a printout.”
Hatteras opened a file folder and took out a sheet of paper. Ballard scanned the story and noted that there had been a female passenger in the car who survived but sustained critical injuries. Her name was not given in the article. At that time, the accident was under investigation by the LAPD traffic division.
“Then there’s this,” Hatteras said.
She handed Ballard another document from the folder, a printout of a four-page lawsuit against the estate of Taylor Weeks filed by Amanda Sheridan, the passenger in the car crash. Her lawsuit said Weeks was driving under the influence of alcohol and Ecstasy at the time of the crash and had refused Sheridan’s repeated requests to pull over and let her drive. According to the lawsuit, an angry Weeks yelled, “How about if I pull over here?” and drove intentionally into an oak tree ten feet off the road, killing himself and seriously injuring Sheridan.
“This is good stuff, Colleen,” Ballard said. “They would have drawn blood during the autopsy, and it should still be at the coroner’s office if this lawsuit is still active.”
She flipped to the front page of the lawsuit to check the court stamp.
“Filed in September of ’22,” she said. “It’s probably still winding its way through the courts. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get his DNA.”
“I was hoping that would be the case,” Hatteras said.
“I have to go downtown in a bit. I’ll go by the coroner’s office and see what they have.”
“You have to see the captain?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Is something wrong? I feel like there is.”
“Everything’s fine, Colleen. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Hatteras was the last person Ballard wanted to confide in about her predicament. She changed the subject.
“What about Bennett and Best? You found them?”
“Yes. Van Ness had the wrong island — Victor Best is currently the head chef of a restaurant in Kona on the Big Island. I don’t have his home address but I have the restaurant’s.”
She started typing on her computer.
“Good,” Ballard said. “Did you look for any news stories on serial rapists over there?”
“I did but didn’t find anything. But here is the restaurant.”
A website for a restaurant called Olu Olu came up on the screen. It showed outdoor seating with a stunning ocean view. Hatteras opened a pull-down menu and clicked on Who We Are. A photo and bio of the restaurant manager appeared. She scrolled down to the next photo, and Ballard was looking at a man wearing a white chef’s jacket and smiling warmly at the camera.