Hatteras had added details on the four men as information came in. Birth dates, addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, marital and employment status — everything she and the other members of the team had gathered, here in one neat file. She had included the photo of Andrew Bennett standing in front of the SOLD sign. Ballard stared at Bennett’s eyes, and it suddenly became clear to her what Colleen Hatteras had done that might have gotten her killed.
Her cell phone buzzed and she saw it was Carol Plovc again. She had forgotten to return the call.
“Sorry, Carol, I was going to call you back.”
“I’m leaving early today and I just wanted to make sure you heard that O’Fallon declined again.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know, I know. I would have signed off on this but he won’t. He called the ear identification you got junk science.”
“He’s junk science. This is just political bullshit.”
“I’m not disagreeing.”
“So is there anything else we can do?”
“Outside of finding a signed confession from Thawyer in his files, probably not.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Please tell Officer Bosch I’m sorry. I think you guys have it nailed. But my hands are tied.”
“I understand.”
Plovc’s voice dropped down to a whisper: “You know there’s a recall effort starting, right?” she said.
“Yeah, I heard,” Ballard said.
“Well, if it works and we get a new DA, you bring this to me again.”
“But when will that be, in a year? Elyse Ford’s sister is in her eighties. She’s waited all her life to know who took her sister. And now thanks to the politics of this town, she may die waiting.”
“I’m sorry. I hope you or Officer Bosch can tell her that it might not be officially closed, but that you consider the case solved.”
Ballard was silent as she remembered that it was Hatteras who had been dealing directly with the Ford family. She looked at a photo pinned to the workstation’s privacy wall. It was Colleen and her two teenage daughters sitting at a table behind a birthday cake with lit candles. Ballard knew those girls had just gotten or were about to get news that would permanently alter their lives.
“All right, well, I’m in the middle of something here, Carol,” she said. “Thanks for fighting the good fight on this.”
“Anytime,” Plovc said. “I’m here when you need me.”
They disconnected. Ballard reached over and unpinned the photo of Colleen and her daughters. She got up and went to her workstation, pinned the snapshot to her own privacy wall, and stared at it for a long moment.
She knew she needed to call Maddie Bosch and tell her the bad news about the Thawyer case, but that could wait. She opened the email Hatteras had sent her with the details from Andrew Bennett’s DMV record. She typed his Laguna Hills address into her phone’s GPS and saw that the estimated drive time was ninety-three minutes. If she waited until rush hour, that number would balloon and possibly even double.
She wanted to get on the road but had to wait. She wondered if Goring and Dubose had been held up at the crime scene by Captain Gandle. Though she had put Persson on Hatteras’s phone records only an hour before, she called him.
“Anders, you got anything yet?”
“I just got the call records, yes.”
“Good, give me the last calls. Give me the time and length.”
“The last two were to her daughters. Do you want them?”
“How do you know they were calls to the daughters?”
“They are on her family plan.”
“Got it. What time did she make those calls, and how long was she on?”
“She called the first number at seven last night and it was only one minute. She probably left a message. Then the last call was one minute later, and she talked for nine minutes.”
Ballard wrote the information down on a fresh page in her notebook.
“What was the call before that?” she asked.
“That was to me,” he said. “She said you were mad about the password. I am very—”
“We can skip that one for now. Go to the one before that.”
Persson gave her a number with a 714 area code and told her the call lasted twenty-nine minutes.
“When was the call made?”
“It began at four thirty-three and lasted until five oh-two.”
Ballard wrote it all down, then flipped back to her previous notes. She found the page where she had written down the information Hatteras gave her about Andrew Bennett. The number Persson had just given her matched the number Bennett listed below his bio on the real estate website.
“Does it say whether this was an outgoing or incoming call?” she asked.
“Outgoing,” Persson said. “These are all outgoing calls.”
Hatteras had called Bennett and they had talked for almost half an hour.
“Okay, previous to that?” Ballard said. “Any other calls yesterday?”
“She made a call yesterday morning at nine twenty,” Persson said. “That was to me too.”
“And what was that about?”
Ballard heard the door on the other side of the murder archive shelves open and then a pair of shoes walking on the linoleum.
“One of us called the other every day,” Persson said. “You know, just to check in and see what was going on. She called me yest—”
“Uh, Anders, I have to go,” Ballard interrupted. “I’ll call you back if I need to, but for now you can stand down on that.”
“Do you want me to send this to you?”
Ballard saw Goring come out of the aisle that ran along the murder library.
“No, that’s fine,” Ballard said. “I’ll be in touch.”
She disconnected the call and greeted Goring. “Where’s your partner?”
“I left him in the neighborhood. He was knocking on doors and collecting video.”
Ballard nodded. The collecting of video from neighborhood Ring cameras and the like was often more important than finding witnesses. Cameras didn’t have memory issues and biases.
“Did you get anything good yet?” Ballard asked.
“The guy came into the neighborhood on foot,” Goring said. “Head down, wearing a hoodie. So far, no angles that would give us an ID. He was good. That sound like any of your persons of interest?”
“Sounds like it could be anyone. He broke in? What time?”
“We’re piecing together video — that’s why Winston is still out there and I need to get back. But we have the guy entering the house at twelve thirty a.m. and leaving just before one. He was quick and it looked like he had a tool that opened the door.”
“What kind of tool?”
“You know what a fireman’s friend is?”
“Hmm, no.”
“You can google it. It’s like a T-shaped blade that slides into a doorjamb and pops the lock. Supposedly a guy on the LAFD invented it for getting into burning houses — hence the name.”
“Wow.”
“When the killer left, he had her computer and the extra hard drive under his arm.” Goring looked at the desks on the raft. “Which spot was the victim’s?”