“No one. I swear.”
Bennett used his free hand to reach back into the briefcase. He pulled out a plastic bag containing coiled snap ties.
“You expect me to believe you came down here without telling another soul?”
“I had to.”
Bennett laughed.
“You had to? Why would you have to?”
“Because I came down here to kill you. For Colleen.”
Bennett’s laugh rose sharply.
“And how’s that working out for you?”
“Pretty well, actually... except all of a sudden, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you dead, Bennett. I want you to rot in the living hell of prison. For Colleen and all the women you’ve killed and hurt.”
“Well, there’s one problem with that plan.”
He waggled the gun he held and smiled. Ballard saw the flat, dead eyes then. She thought about him calling himself the devil a few minutes before. If the devil was a psychopath who had no empathy or other emotions, then Bennett had nailed it.
“No, that’s your problem,” she said. “Because...”
As she spoke, she casually reached down to the left cuff of her pants, pulled the Ruger from her ankle holster, and straightened up with it pointed at Bennett’s chest.
“My gun has bullets,” she continued. “And yours does not.”
Bennett immediately pulled the trigger on the Glock. It snapped on an empty chamber. His eyes widened, and he pulled three more times, all with the same result. Ballard read his expression as he realized the mistake he had made leaving the briefcase unattended in the kitchen while he prepared the house for showing. He focused on the Ruger, and Ballard read him again.
“It’s small but it carries seven rounds and I’m good with it,” she said. “You make a move and I’ll put both your eyes out.”
Bennett made an odd sound as if giving voice to the fight-or-flight impulse taking over his brain. He then calmed himself and offered a half smile of surrender.
“I want you to put the gun down on the counter and slide it across to me,” Ballard said.
Bennett complied, shoving the gun hard enough that it would have flown off the counter if Ballard hadn’t reached with her free hand to catch it.
“Now get down on your knees, hands flat on the counter,” she ordered.
“This will never work,” Bennett said. “No one’s going to—”
“Do it, Bennett, or we go back to plan A. Is that what you want?”
“Okay, okay, I’m doing it.”
He started to sink down behind the counter, his hands holding the edge for balance. Ballard moved quickly past the island to his left, grabbing the bag of snap ties.
“Okay, hands behind your head,” she ordered. “Now.”
Bennett did as instructed. Ballard opened the baggie and grabbed a handful of ties, regretting her decision to leave her handcuffs in the Defender. She moved in behind Bennett and put the muzzle of the Ruger against the skin behind his right ear.
“Do not move or you’re going to have a lead slug bouncing around inside your skull. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll scramble your brain. You’ll need somebody to wipe your ass for the rest of your life.”
“Not moving. Just do your thing.”
He said it in a tone that suggested he was bored. A few of the plastic ties had already been looped for quick use by Bennett. Ballard now used them the same way.
“Hold your left hand up. Slowly.”
Bennett complied, and Ballard looped a tie over it and pulled it tight at the wrist. She followed the same procedure with the right hand, then stepped back and ordered Bennett to get facedown on the floor with his hands behind his back. After he did, she quickly wove one of the open ties through the loops on his wrists and then pulled the free end through the snap-lock.
Bennett was now secure.
“Don’t move,” she said. “You move and I’ll use the rest of these to hog-tie you like you did to all the women you raped.”
Bennett turned his head on the floor so he could look up at her.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“LAPD. And you are under arrest for the murder of Colleen Hatteras, with many more charges to come.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, you’re bullshit, Bennett. You’re done. And you know what? She led me right to you. Colleen got you.”
Ballard stepped back behind his feet and pulled out her phone. She called Charlotte Goring’s cell and the detective answered with an accusation.
“You lied to me, Ballard.”
“Don’t worry about it. I just—”
“No, I’m worried about it. I just got a call from Chuck Pell and he said Hatteras’s computer was accessed yesterday at three fifty-five p.-fucking-m. You were in the office then, Ballard, and you told me you didn’t know the password.”
“Charlotte, listen to me. I just arrested Andrew Bennett. I’ve got the Glock and he literally just confessed. I need to transport him from Laguna to L.A. Do you want to come down and get him, or do you want to worry about what I said and did yesterday?”
There was no response at first. Ballard could tell Goring had covered the phone and was talking to someone, most likely her partner, Dubose. Then she finally came back to the call.
“Where exactly are you?” she asked.
“I’ll text you the address,” Ballard said.
Bennett raised his head off the floor and screamed.
“She said she’s going to kill me!”
Ballard stepped over, leaned down, and pulled the plastic band between his wrists up off his back, putting pain and stress into his shoulders. He lowered his head back to the floor.
“You shut the fuck up, Bennett, or I’m going to take your socks off and stick them down your throat. Got it?”
Bennett didn’t answer. She yanked on his arms again.
“Yes, I got it,” he said.
Ballard stood back up and spoke into the phone.
“Charlotte, are you there?”
“Ballard, we’re on our way. He’d better be alive when we get there.”
“Then don’t take too long.”
Ballard disconnected.
“Sounds like this isn’t going to go too well for you,” Bennett said.
“Maybe not,” Ballard said. “But it’s going to be far worse for you. You hear those waves out there? This is it. You’ll never hear or see or taste freedom again.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Yeah, we will.”
Bennett went silent. Ballard texted the address to Goring. As she did so, she heard someone come in the front door. It was time for the open house to begin. She quickly grabbed more of the snap ties and used them to bind Bennett at the ankles, then pulled his feet up to hog-tie them to his wrists.
“Help,” he yelled. “Somebody call the police!”
Ballard jumped up and turned toward the hallway. A pair of prospective buyers stood there, eyes wide with shock. The man, the arms of a sweater tied around his neck, raised his hands.
“We don’t want any trouble,” he said.
“Don’t worry, I am the police,” Ballard said. “This man is under arrest and the open house is over.”
Sunday, 12:00 P.M
56
The press conference on the tenth floor of the PAB started precisely on time. As choreographed by the captain of the media relations unit, Ballard led her full team from the Open-Unsolved Unit into the windowless press room. They were followed by Goring and Dubose and then Captain Gandle and the police chief himself, Carl Detry.
Detry was only two years into the job, having been appointed by the mayor and approved by the L.A. Police Commission after the prior chief’s surprise retirement. Detry’s tenure had started out rough with the political clash caused by his endorsement of Ernest O’Fallon’s opponent for district attorney. He had backed the wrong horse and O’Fallon never missed a chance to take the chief and the LAPD to task for any misdeeds. But Detry had come up through the ranks and knew the importance of the media. He knew how a press conference announcing the arrest of a serial predator could swing the needle of approval toward his department and himself. By city law, a police chief was appointed for a five-year term with a possible second term to follow with the police commission’s approval. So far, no chief in the modern era had posted a full ten years in the job. If Detry wanted to buck the trend, he needed to court and keep the media on his side.