She wished she could pull over to take the call but it would be dangerous to sit on the shoulder of the eight-lane freeway, let alone try to get back into the heavily congested traffic lanes afterward.
She took the call and tried to concentrate on her driving while she spoke.
“Dan? What’s up?”
“I found your mother, Renée. And she’s alive.”
Ballard didn’t respond at first. She had prepared herself for a call confirming the opposite news. For months she had assumed the woman who had birthed her but had done little else as a mother would be among the casualties of the fires in Maui. She had prepared herself for losing her without a chance for confrontation or reconciliation. In a moment that had changed, and she wasn’t prepared for it.
“Renée?”
“Yes, I’m here. It’s just that... I wasn’t expecting this. Where is she?”
“Right now she’s at Maui Community Correctional in Wailuku. But they are going to ROR her today.”
“She was arrested?”
“Yeah, on warrants. Unpaid traffic stuff, I guess a lot of them. I don’t know the details. But I had put a BOLO into the system after you filed the missing person report. I got the heads-up a little while ago and I knew you would want to know.”
Ballard went silent again.
“Still there?”
“Yes, I’m just thinking. Did she give a home address?”
“She would have had to give something and I can get that for you. I’m here in what’s left of Lahaina, and Wailuku is on the other side of the island. I’m not going to be able to go over there today.”
“Sure, I understand.”
She was in a daze. She couldn’t think of what else to say. She thought about Farley having put the BOLO into the system. Be on the lookout — that said it all about her relationship with her mother. All the early years looking for her, hoping to find her.
“Um, I’m going to close this file,” Farley said. “But if you come over to see her, you have my number. I don’t know, I could show you around, show you what we’re doing here. I mean, if you’re interested.”
“Uh, sure, Dan,” Ballard said. “I’ll call you.”
Ballard snapped out of her fugue and realized that this man had done so much for her.
“And Dan, thank you,” she said. “You went all out for her. For me. She might not have been worth it, but cop to cop, I appreciate it.”
“Of course,” Farley said. “That’s what we do here. And this is one of the better endings, believe me. You take care, Renée, and I hope knowing your mother is still alive leads to something good between you two.”
“Yeah, me too. Thank you.”
She continued the drive west but passed by the transition to the south 405 that would have taken her back to Ahmanson. Instead, she continued west and took the curve through the tunnel where the freeway became the Pacific Coast Highway.
She headed toward the water.
Friday, 9:00 A.M
51
Her hair still wet from a morning surf at Trancas, Ballard entered the unit at Ahmanson, Starbucks cup in her hand. She expected to see Colleen Hatteras in place at the raft, but instead she saw Maddie Bosch.
“Maddie, what are you doing here?” she said. “It’s Friday. You have a shift tonight.”
Maddie looked up from her screen.
“I know, but I had to come in,” she said. “We already got results from the FFI and it’s a match. No qualifiers, no percentages. It’s a confirmed match. The woman in Thawyer’s photos is Elizabeth Short.”
Ballard put her cup and computer bag on her desk and walked around to Maddie’s station.
“Show me what you’ve got,” she said.
Maddie pushed her screen back so Ballard, who was standing, had a good angle on it. There was a document on the screen with letterhead from the Film Forensics Institute. It was addressed to Officer Madeline Bosch. It stated that Cameriere ear analysis between the photos submitted confirmed a match. It was the same woman in each photo. The letter said that two technicians, Paul Buckley and James Camp, conducted independent analyses of the photos and came to the same conclusion and that both techs were qualified experts who would be available to testify in court about their findings.
“Okay, this is good,” Ballard said.
“Who do we submit to?” Maddie asked. “Plovc, or do we go right to the DA with it?”
“We start with Carol. We need to stay in our lane. If it goes across the street to the DA again, she has to take it over.”
“Okay.”
“Send that to me and I’ll send it and follow with a call. I want it in front of them today.”
Ballard looked around to check the raft once more. There was no one else in yet, not even Hatteras.
“You haven’t seen Colleen, have you?” she asked.
“Not since yesterday,” Maddie said. “You need me to do something?”
“No, it’s just that she’s usually here.”
“She’s probably at home sulking because you’re so mean to her.”
“Really? You think I’m mean to her?”
Maddie smiled. “I’m just kidding,” she said. “She just gets too in-your-face, you know what I mean?”
“Of course I do,” Ballard said. “That’s why I’m so mean to her.”
Maddie laughed and then got serious.
“Will you let me know how Plovc or anybody in the DA’s office responds to the ear match?”
“As soon as I know something.”
“I might go, then. I have to do some stuff and I want to work out before I go in.”
“Then get out of here. And thank you for sticking with this. We’ll see what happens.”
“They’d better sign off on it. We fucking solved it.”
“We did. You did. But we’ll see whether they can see the light. I’ll call when I know.”
“Thanks.”
Ballard headed to her desk. She opened her email to retrieve the FFI letter Maddie had just sent. She then composed a new message addressed to Carol Plovc.
Maddie came by her desk on her way out.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “I was talking to my dad last night and he said Captain Gandle called him up out of the blue.”
“Really?” Ballard said. “Why?”
“I think to see what he thought of me volunteering for the unit. But then Gandle asked about you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I guess to see if you were doing okay with, you know, the pressures of the job. Anyway, he said to tell you that Gandle called but that everything is fine.”
“Well, okay, I guess. Thanks.”
“So, I’m heading out.”
“Okay. As soon as I hear something I’ll call you.”
Ballard watched her go. She knew what Harry’s real message was: He had backed Ballard’s story when Gandle called. Her only disappointment was that the captain had called Bosch to check the story out, which meant she had not entirely convinced him earlier. At least the whole badge caper was behind her now and she could concentrate on the cases in front of her.
She finished the email to Carol Plovc explaining the new analysis. She sent it with the letter from FFI attached.
Ballard had another reason for urgently wanting to officially clear the Black Dahlia case. She knew that if they cleared L.A.’s greatest mystery, the credit would rightly go to Maddie Bosch and that would make it politically difficult, if not impossible, for Gandle to have her cut from the Open-Unsolved Unit. Ballard wanted it done through official channels, with Captain Gandle agreeing to rescind his order and keep her on. She also knew that if the DA’s office failed to sign off on the clearance again, there were other ways to keep Maddie on the team.