“Dyson, come here,” Ballard called. “Now!”
Behind her, Ballard heard the officer enter the RV. She kept her light on the face of the woman in the bed. She was bedraggled, her hair in unkempt dreadlocks. There were scabs on her face and neck. A person at the dead end of addiction.
“Take her out of here,” Ballard said.
Dyson moved in, yanked back the sheets, and pulled the woman, who was fully clothed in multiple layers of sweaters and jackets, off the bed. She walked her out and Ballard continued to search.
Seeing nothing that was of value to her investigation, she backed out of the bedroom area. There was a kitchenette section opposite what once was a tiny bathroom but had long since gone unused. The two-burner grill was probably now used mostly to cook spoons of heroin or crystal meth. Ballard started opening the overhead cabinets, half expecting to find rats skittering in the back shadows. Instead, she found a small empty box that had once held a disposable phone. The box looked fairly new, unlike the rest of the junk in the RV.
Ballard stepped out of the RV and over to where Beatty and the woman were standing, heads down, next to the two unies. She held the box up to Beatty.
“Is this yours?” she asked.
Beatty looked at it and then looked away.
“Nope, not mine,” he said. “That was there.”
“Was it Ramona’s?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I never saw it before.”
Ballard assumed that the box had belonged to Ramona. If there was anything on or in the box that revealed a serial or product number, then she had a shot at running down calls made on the phone even though the phone itself was missing and supposedly untraceable. If there were calls that linked Ramona to Trent, then that evidence would be usable at trial, and the whole roust, and her breathing in the putrid air of the RV, would not be for naught.
“Okay, thank you for your cooperation,” she said.
She gave Herrera and Dyson the nod to release the two inhabitants of the RV and they immediately scurried back inside. She then turned to Denver and signaled him over for a private discussion.
“Thank you for your help on this, Denver. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. That’s my job here.”
“When we first talked about Ramona, you said she had been gone a week.”
“Yeah, we have a rule. Nobody squats in another guy’s spot unless they haven’t been around for four days. ’Cause you know, people get arrested, and that can take you out for seventy-two hours. So we wait four days before a spot is up for grabs.”
“So you’re sure she was gone four days before Stormy moved in two days ago?”
“I’m sure. Yeah.”
Ballard nodded. It was an indication that Ramona might have been held captive by her attacker for as long as five days of pain and torture before being dumped in the parking lot the previous night and left for dead. It was a grim thought to consider.
Ballard thanked Denver again and this time she shook his hand. She wasn’t sure if he noticed that she still had the latex gloves on.
Back at the Hollywood Station by 1:30 a.m., Ballard wandered through the watch office before heading back to the D bureau. Munroe was at his desk and another officer was at the report-writing desk at the far end of the room.
“Anything happening?” she asked.
“Quiet,” Munroe said. “After last night, I’ll take it.”
“The crims are still at the Dancers?”
“I wouldn’t know. The forensic unit doesn’t answer to me.”
“Well, maybe since it’s so slow, I’ll go over and see if they need some help.”
“Not ours, Ballard. You need to stay here just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
“In case we need you.”
Ballard had no intention of going by the Dancers. She had just wanted to see how Munroe would react, and his agitation and quick response confirmed that he had gotten word to keep Ballard and possibly all Hollywood Division personnel away from that crime scene.
Munroe tried to change the subject.
“How’s your victim?” he asked.
“Hanging in there,” Ballard said. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Looks like she’s going to make it. I’m worried the suspect might get wind and try to finish the job.”
“What, he’s going to sneak into the hospital? Smother the vic with a pillow?”
“I don’t know, maybe. There hasn’t been any press on the case but—”
“You’ve watched The Godfather too many times. If this is about me putting somebody on this whore’s door, it’s not going to happen, Ballard. Not from my end. I’ve got no people for that. I’m not going to leave myself short on the street to have a guy twiddling his thumbs or making time at the nurses’ station. You can shoot a request down to Metro Division, but if you ask me, they’ll evaluate this and take a pass too.”
“Okay. Got it.”
When she returned to her borrowed desk in the detective bureau, Ballard put down the phone box she had collected from the RV and was prepared to spend the rest of her shift attempting to trace the phone it had once contained. But then she saw the pink message slip she had picked up earlier. She sat down and lifted the desk phone. Calling the number in the middle of the night did not give her pause. It was a toll-free number, which meant it most likely connected to a business. It would be either open or closed, so she would not be waking anybody up in the middle of the night.
While she waited for the call to go through, she once again tried to decipher the name written on the slip of paper. It was impossible. But as soon as her call was answered, she realized who had called and left the message.
“Cardholder services. How can I help you?”
She heard an English-Indian accent—like from the men from Mumbai that she had spoken to on Mrs. Lantana’s phone the night before.
“May I speak to Irfan?”
“Which one? We have three.”
Ballard looked at the pink slip. It looked like it said Cohen. She turned the C to a K and thought she had it.
“Khan. Irfan Khan.”
“Hold the line, please.”
Thirty seconds later, a new voice came on the line and Ballard thought she recognized it.
“This is Detective Ballard, Los Angeles Police Department. You left a message for me.”
“Yes, Detective. We spoke on the phone a little over twenty-four hours ago. I tracked you down.”
“Yes, you did. Why?”
“Because I have received permission to share with you the intended delivery address of the attempted fraudulent purchase on the credit card that was stolen.”
“You got court approval?”
“No, my department head gave me approval. I went to him and said we should do this because you were very insistent, you see.”
“To be honest, I am surprised. Thank you for following up.”
“Not a problem. Happy to help.”
“What is the address, then?”
Khan gave her an apartment number and address on Santa Monica Boulevard and Ballard could tell it was not far from El Centro Avenue and the home of Leslie Anne Lantana. It was probably walking distance.
Ballard checked the urge to tell Khan that the chances of her being able to make an arrest on the case were hampered by the twenty-four-hour delay in getting the address. Instead, she thanked him for pursuing the matter with the department head and ended the call.
She then grabbed her rover and the key to the plain wrap and headed for the door.
14
The address that came from Mumbai corresponded to a run-down motel called the Siesta Village. It was a two-story U-shaped complex with parking inside the U, as well as a small pool and an office. A sign out front said FREE WI-FI AND HBO. Ballard pulled in and cruised the lot. Each room had a large plate-glass window that looked out on the center of the complex. It was the kind of place that would still have box TVs in each room, locked to the
bureau with a metal frame.
Ballard located room 18 and saw no lights on behind its curtained window. She noted the beat-up Ford pickup parked in front of its door. Eighteen was the last room before a well-lit alcove that contained an ice dispenser and Coke machine housed in a steel cage with cutouts for depositing money and removing drinks. She kept moving and parked the city-ride on the other side of the office so that it would not be seen should someone in room 18 split the curtain and look out the window. The car could be identified as a police car a mile away.
Before getting out, she used the rover to request a wants- and-warrants check on the pickup. It came back clean and registered to a Judith Nettles of Poway, a small town Ballard knew was down in San Diego County. Nettles had no record and no warrants on the computer.
Ballard proceeded on foot to the motel office, where she had to push a button on the glass door and wait until a man came out from a back room located behind the counter. Ballard had her badge up already and he buzzed her in.
“Hey there,” Ballard said as she entered. “I’m Detective Ballard from the Hollywood Station. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“Evening,” said the counterman. “Ask away, I guess.”
He stifled a yawn as he sat down. Behind him on the wall were several clocks showing the time in cities all over the world, as if the place catered to the international traveler who had to keep tabs on business around the globe. Ballard could hear the sound of a TV coming from the back room. It was the audience laughter of a late-night talk show.
“Do you have a guest in room eighteen tonight?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, yes, eighteen is occupied,” the man said.
“What’s that guest’s name?”
“Don’t you need a warrant to ask that?”
Ballard put her hands on the counter and leaned toward the man.
“You watch too much TV in that back room, sir. I don’t need a warrant to ask questions and you don’t need to be presented with a warrant to answer them. You just need to choose right now to either help the LAPD with an investigation or hinder the LAPD.”
He stared at her for a moment and then turned the seat clockwise until he was facing a computer screen to his right. He hit the space bar and the screen came to life. He then pulled up the motel’s occupancy chart and clicked on room 18.
“His name is Christopher Nettles,” he said.
“He alone in there?” Ballard asked.
“Supposed to be. Registered as a single.”
“How long has he been here?”
The man referred to his screen again.
“Nine days.”
“Spell the first and last name for me.”
After getting the spellings, Ballard told the clerk she would be right back. She grabbed a couple of pamphlets for a Homes of the Stars bus tour off a stack on the counter and used them to keep the door from latching. She stepped into the parking lot to be out of the counterman’s earshot and used the rover to call communications and check Christopher Nettles for wants and warrants. He came up clean but Ballard was smart enough to know not to leave it there. She pulled her phone and called the Hollywood Station watch office and asked a desk uni to run the name through the national crime index database.
She paced on the asphalt while waiting for the results and noticed that there was no water in the motel pool. She walked around to the corner of the office so she could get another visual on room 18. It was still dark behind the curtain. She checked the pickup truck and pegged it as at least twenty years old. It likely didn’t have an alarm and would not be useful in drawing Nettles out of the room.
The desk officer came back on the line and reported that there was a Christopher Nettles in the system with a 2014 conviction on multiple theft charges, including burglary of an occupied dwelling. This Christopher Nettles was white, twenty-four years old, and on parole after serving two years in state prison for the convictions.
Ballard asked the officer to put Lieutenant Munroe on the line.
“L-T, it’s Ballard. I’m at Siesta Village and I have a line on a suspect in the four-five-nine on El Centro last night. Can you send me a unit?”
“I can do that. I had all hands on a domestic but it’s calm now and I’ll pull a car off and send them your way. They’re ten out.”
“Okay, have them hold a block back and go to Tact four and I’ll call them in. I want to try to caper this guy out of the room.”
“Roger that, Ballard. You got a name I can write down?”
He was asking for the suspect’s name in case things went sideways and they had to go hunting for him without Ballard’s help. She gave him the details she had on Nettles and then disconnected. She switched her rover to the Tactical 4 frequency and went back into the office, where the counterman was waiting.
“How has Mr. Nettles been paying for his room?” she asked.
“He pays with cash,” he said. “Every three days he pays for three days in advance. He’s good till Monday.”
“Has he been getting deliveries here?”
“Deliveries?”
“You know, boxes, mail. Have people been sending him stuff?”
“I wouldn’t really know. I work during the night. The only deliveries are pizza deliveries. Matter of fact, I think Nettles got a pizza a couple hours ago.”
“So you’ve seen him? You know what he looks like?”
“Yeah, he’s come in and paid for the room a couple times at night.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know. Twenties, I’d say. Young. I’m not good at that stuff.”
“Big or small?”
“I’d say on the big side. Looks like he works out.”
“Tell me about the free Wi-Fi.”
“What can I tell you? It’s free. That’s it.”
“Does every room have a router, or is there a main router for the whole place?”
“We got the setup in the back here.”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the room behind him. Ballard knew that the router’s history could be examined for proof that Nettles had attempted to make purchases online with Leslie Anne Lantana’s credit card, but that would require a warrant and a commitment of time and money from the department’s Commercial Crimes Division that outweighed the importance of the case. It would never happen unless Ballard or someone working the daytime burglary unit did it.
“What about phones? Are there phone lines in the rooms?”
“Yes, we have phones. Except for a couple rooms where they got stolen. We haven’t replaced them.”
“But eighteen has a phone?”
“Yes, there’s a phone.”
Ballard nodded as she considered a plan for getting Nettles out of his room so she could question and possibly arrest him.
“Can you turn the light off in that alcove with the Coke machine?”
“Uh, yeah. I have a switch here. But it turns out the light on the second floor alcove too.”
“That’s okay, turn them both off. Then I need you to call his room and get him to come to the office.”
“How do I do that? It’s almost three o’clock in the morning.”
He pointed over his shoulder toward the wall of clocks to underline that it was too late for him to call Nettles’s room. As if on cue, her rover squawked and she heard her call code. She brought the rover up to respond.
“Six-William-twenty-six, you guys in position?”
“That’s a roger.”
She recognized the voice. It was Smith. She knew she had a solid cop and a gung-ho boot as backup.
“Okay, hold there. When I call you in, drive in the main entrance and don’t let anyone out. Suspect has a 1990s Ford one-fifty, silver in color.”
“Roger that. Weapons?”
“No known weapons.”
Smith clicked twice on the radio to acknowledge.
“Okay, five minutes,” Ballard said. “I’ll give you a standby pop, followed by a go sig
n.”
The counterman was looking wide-eyed at her when Ballard turned her attention back to him.
“Okay, so now I need you to call room eighteen and tell Nettles that the police were just here asking about him,” she said.
“Why would I do that?” the clerk said.
“Because it’s what just happened. And because you want to continue to cooperate with the LAPD.”
The counterman didn’t say anything. He looked very concerned about being pulled into something.
“Look,” Ballard said. “You’re not lying to the guy. You are telling him exactly what just happened. Keep it simple. Say something like ‘Sorry to wake you up but a police detective was just here asking about you.’ He’ll then ask you if the police are still here and you say you think they left. That’s it. If he asks anything else, tell him you’ve got another call and have to go. Short and simple.”
“But how come you want him to know you were here?” the clerk asked.
“I’m just trying to spook him and get him to come out of that room and make it safer to approach him. Now give me three minutes and make the call. You good?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated by your police department.”
Ballard left the office and followed the walkway in front of the rooms until she got to room 18. She walked by and entered the alcove to the right of its window. The overhead light in the alcove was now off but the plastic front of the Coke machine was brightly lit, and Ballard needed cover, not illumination. She reached behind the machine and pulled the plug, plunging the recessed area into full darkness. She stood back in the shadow and waited, checking her watch to see when three minutes had passed.
Just as she did so, she heard the ringing of a phone through the wall between the alcove and room 18. Four rings went by before it was answered with a muffled but gruff response. She keyed the mic on her rover twice, sending the standby alert to the backup team waiting in the street.