Ballard and Compton exchanged a look, though they said nothing. They had what they needed for now. A yellow door and yellow car on Sierra Vista. It wouldn’t be hard to find.
35
There was no yellow door on Sierra Vista. Ballard and Compton drove up and down its four-block stretch four times in the Taurus but saw no door painted yellow.
“You think Nettles intentionally fucked us?” Ballard asked.
“If he did, he only fucked himself,” Compton said. “The deal is based on results.”
Compton turned and looked out the side window, a sign to Ballard that he was holding something back.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Come on, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, maybe you should have stuck with the plan and let me handle the questions.”
“You were taking too long and I got him describing the house. Don’t pout.”
“I’m not pouting, Renée. But here we are, Sierra Vista. Where’s the yellow door?”
He gestured through the windshield. Ballard ignored the complaint. It was unfounded. If he hadn’t believed Nettles, he would have said something in the interview room. He didn’t, and now he was blaming Ballard for the seeming failure of the move.
She came to a point where Sierra Vista dead-ended into a T and she pulled over. She looked at the map on her phone screen to see if the street continued elsewhere. She found nothing and used her thumb and finger to expand the map. She checked other streets in the neighborhood to see if there was another Sierra. There wasn’t, but there was a Serrano Place two blocks south. She put the phone down and pulled the car away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” Compton asked.
“I want to check out another street over here,” Ballard said. “Serrano, Sierra—maybe Nettles got it wrong.”
“They don’t even sound close.”
“Yes they do. You’re just pouting.”
Serrano Place was only one block long. They covered it quickly, Ballard checking the houses on the left and Compton the right.
“Wait a minute,” Compton said.
Ballard stopped. She looked out his window at a house with a French door with a yellow frame. The house had tongue- and-groove wood siding. No bricks.
She inched the car forward past the driveway and saw that there was a single-car garage detached from the house at the back of the property. A wooden fence, grayed by exposure to the elements, enclosed the backyard.
“The fence is weathered, not stained,” she said. “Think there’s a pool back there?”
“If I wasn’t pouting, I’d say yes,” Compton said.
She punched him in the shoulder and kept driving. Two houses down the street, she pulled to the curb.
“Take off your belt,” Ballard said.
“What?” Compton said.
“Take off your belt. It will look like a leash. I’m going to see if there’s a pool. If I had my van, I’d have a real leash, but your belt will have to do.”
Compton got it. He slipped off his belt and handed it to her.
“Be right back,” she said.
“Be careful,” he said. “Fire a shot if you need me.”
She got out and walked down the sidewalk back to the house with the yellow French door. She dangled the belt from one hand and called the name Lola out repeatedly. She walked up the driveway that ran next to the house.
“Lola! Here, girl.”
She smelled the pool before she saw it. The sharp odor of chlorine pervaded the rear of the house. She got to the weathered fence and had to stand on her toes to catch a glimpse of what was on the other side. She confirmed the pool and was making a turn to go back out to the street when her eyes caught on the row of windows that ran along the top of the garage door. She hesitated because she wasn’t tall enough to look through the glass. Then she saw the handle on the door, situated about a foot off the driveway surface.
Ballard stepped over. She put one foot on the handle and tested some of her weight against it. It felt sturdy enough. She put her full weight on the handle, and her fingers gripped the thin sill below the windows. She pushed herself up the garage door and looked in.
Parked in the garage was a yellow Camaro.
She dropped to her heels and turned to get back to her car. A man was standing in the driveway, looking at her.
“Oh, hey, have you seen a dog?” Ballard said quickly. “A brindle boxer mix?”
“You mean in my garage?” the man said.
“Sorry about that, but when she gets loose, she likes to hide. It’s a real pain in the butt.”
He was Latino and wearing workout pants, running shoes, and a hoodie, like he was heading out for a jog. She kept her arm in motion so the dangling belt would not be still enough for him to see that it wasn’t a leash. She headed past him toward the street, hoping to not forget the plate number she had read off the Camaro.
“Do you live around here?” the man asked.
“Over on Sierra Vista,” Ballard said. “Have a nice day.”
She kept moving down the driveway. When she got to the street, she called her dog’s name out a few more times but walked on. She got to the Taurus and jumped back in.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, I blew it,” she said.
She wanted to run the Camaro’s plate before she forgot the number, but she realized she didn’t have a rover, and of course the rental car had no police radio.
“What happened?” Compton asked.
She was watching her side mirror, expecting to see the man step out of the driveway to track her.
“A guy came out,” she said. “I think he made me.”
“How?” Compton asked.
“I don’t know. Something about his eyes. He made me.”
“Then let’s blow.”
There was no sign of the man in the mirror. She started the car. Just then, she saw the Camaro come out of the driveway and turn the opposite way down Serrano.
“There he goes,” she said. “Yellow Camaro.”
She waited until the Camaro turned right at the end of the block and was out of sight. She U-turned away from the curb and headed in the same direction. She pulled her phone and called the communications center on speed dial. She then recited the license plate and requested a computer run.
“I’ll hold,” she said.
At the corner, she turned right. There was no sign of the Camaro. She gunned the Taurus, and they headed north, block by block, checking right and left for the Camaro. They didn’t see it.
“You think you spooked him?” Compton asked.
“I don’t know,” Ballard said. “He saw me looking through the window of the garage at the car.”
“Shit.”
“Well, what would you have—”
The dispatcher came back with the information and Ballard repeated it so Compton could get it.
“Eugenio Santana Perez, seven fourteen ’seventy-five. No record. Thank you.”
She disconnected.
“The guy’s clean,” Compton said. “Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Yellow door, yellow Camaro—it’s him,” Ballard said. “He matches Nettles’s story. Maybe the guy just bought the gun off somebody, but it’s not the wrong tree.”
They made their way up to Santa Monica, and there was still no sign of the Camaro.
“Right or left?” Ballard said.
“Fuck it,” Compton said. “He blew right out of there after seeing you. Now I have to call Welborne and tell him we may have fucked this up.”
“Not yet.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Just chill. I’m not finished looking. Besides, there’s still the house. You can give ATF-E that.”
She saw an opening in the traffic and went straight, crossing Santa Monica and staying north. They continued to check streets until they got to Sunset. She then took a right toward the 101 freeway.
“I’ll take you b
ack downtown,” Ballard said, defeat in her voice.
“This is fucked up,” Compton said.
But as they approached the southbound freeway ramp, Ballard saw a glimpse of yellow two blocks ahead. A yellow car had turned into a lot and disappeared.
“Wait, did you see that?” she said. “It was yellow.”
“I didn’t see shit,” Compton said. “Where?”
Ballard drove past the freeway ramp and kept east on Sunset. When she got to the turn-in the yellow car had taken, she saw it was to a Home Depot with a massive parking lot. The entrance was clear and she remembered how it always used to be lined with men looking for day work. That had changed when Immigration and Customs Enforcement started routine immigration roundups.
Ballard pulled in and started cruising the lot. They came upon the yellow Camaro in a spot in the far corner. There were plenty of spaces closer to the entrance to Home Depot, so it appeared abandoned there. Ballard checked the plate. It was the car they were looking for.
“Shit,” she said.
“He’s gone,” Compton said. “Fuck, another guy who watched Heat too many times.”
“What?”
“The movie Heat. From the nineties? Inspired the North Hollywood bank shoot-out?”
“I was on a surfboard in Hawaii most of the nineties.”
“This guy played by De Niro was a robber. He had one rule: first sign of heat, you have to be able to leave everything behind. Just like that.”
Ballard kept cruising, looking at the faces of men on foot in the parking lot, hoping to see the man from the driveway.
She had no luck. Finally, she turned the car into the corner of the lot and came to a stop. Through the windshield they could see the Camaro fifty yards away.
“This is so fucked,” Compton said. “We should’ve just called Welborne. Instead, I listened to you about doing it ourselves.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ballard said. “You’re blaming me? You wanted this just as much as I did.”
“You’re the one who always has to win. To show the guys up.”
“Holy shit, I can’t believe you. If you’re so worried about the feds, why don’t you just Uber your ass out of here. I’ll call Welborne and give him what we’ve got and put it all on me. I mean, why not, right? Everybody else wants to blame me for everything. Just get the fuck out of the car.”
Compton looked at her.
“You’re serious?” he asked.
“Deadly,” Ballard said. “Get the fuck out.”
With his eyes still on her, Compton opened his door like he was threatening to leave if she didn’t stop him.
She didn’t.
Compton got out and looked back in at her. She said nothing and kept her gaze on the Camaro. He slammed the door. She refused to turn to watch him walk away.
“And another one bites the dust,” she said to herself.
36
Ballard didn’t get to Hollywood Division until almost five o’clock. She had spent most of the afternoon dealing with ATFE and FBI agents, explaining her moves that morning after the interview with Nettles. She left Compton out of it, telling the agents she had acted on her own after leaving Men’s Central. The upset of the feds was mollified to a small degree when she looked at a set of photos they had and identified the man she had seen in the driveway. They said Eugenio Santana Perez was an alias but refused to tell her what his real name was. It was clearly a we’ll-take-it-from-here situation with a heavy tone of you-fucked-this-up-and-now-we-have-to-unfuck-it to top it off.
The feds impounded the Camaro and were waiting on a warrant to enter the house on Serrano Place when Ballard was dismissed with a sarcastic thank-you from Agent Welborne. Back at the station, she pulled a gray interoffice envelope out of her mailbox and went to the lieutenant’s office to get her new desk assignment. McAdams was standing at his desk, taking his gun out of the drawer and clipping it to his belt, a sign that he was heading home. Things were winding down across the entire bureau.
“Ballard, you decided to show up,” he said.
“Sorry, I got tied up downtown, and while I was there, I went to check on my victim from the Trent case,” she said. “Is there a specific desk you want me to take?”
McAdams pointed out the window of his office to the desk on the other side of the glass. It was the worst desk in the house because it was right outside his office and the computer was positioned so that the lieutenant could see its screen at any time. It was known in the squad as the sitting-duck desk.
“I was going to put you there, but now it looks like I don’t even have to find somebody for the late show,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Ballard asked.
“Well, you must’ve talked a good game of it down there today, because, the L.A. Times be damned, I just got the word that FID is calling the Trent killing within policy. And not only that, you got your RTD too. Congratulations.”
Ballard felt a great weight lift off her shoulders.
“I hadn’t heard,” she said. “That seems quick.”
“Whoever your defense rep was, he’s going to be in high demand, I’ll tell you that,” McAdams said. “The picture the Times drew up this morning wasn’t pretty.”
“I didn’t use one.”
“Then that makes this one even more worth celebrating. But if there’s a K party, I don’t want to know about it.”
McAdams seemed to be giving a tacit nod of approval to a kill party. It had once been a secret tradition for officers to gather and drink after one of them had killed someone. It was a way of releasing the tension of a life-and-death encounter. Once the department formed the FID to seriously investigate all officer-involved killings, the parties were pushed back until after an FID recommendation was released. Either way, the K party was anachronistic, and if they occurred at all now, it was only under deep secrecy. The last thing Ballard was interested in doing was celebrating her killing of Thomas Trent.
“Don’t worry, no K party,” she said.
“Good,” McAdams said. “Anyway, I’m outta here. Since you’ve been at it all day, I’ll leave Jenkins solo tonight, and you go back on shift starting tomorrow. All good?”
“Yeah, all good. Thanks, L-T.”
Ballard looked around and saw an empty desk with a reasonably new computer monitor on it. It was far away from the lieutenant’s office and the sitting-duck desk. But when she got there, she noticed a mug of coffee and paperwork spread across the work space. She then did a pivot and spotted another desk nearby in the burglary row that looked empty and unused and had a decent monitor.
She sat down and the first thing she did was go online to see if the Times had anything on the FID investigation that corrected the morning’s story. There wasn’t anything yet. She pulled out one of the business cards she had gotten from Towson and started writing him an e-mail, detailing what she had heard from her lieutenant and reporting that there was no action on it so far from the Times. Her cell phone buzzed just as she hit the send button. It was Rogers Carr of Major Crimes.
“Hey, did you get my message?”
“I got it, thanks.”
“So how are you doing?”
“I’m doing all right. My L-T just told me I’m off the pine because FID is calling it within policy.”
“Of course it was within policy, are you kidding me? It was totally justified.”
“Well, you never know. This may come as a surprise to you but I’ve pissed some people off in the department.”
“You? I find that hard to believe.”
That was enough sarcastic banter for Ballard.
“So I heard you checked out my lead with the lawyer,” she said. “Towson.”
“Who told you that?” Carr asked.
“I have sources.”
“You were talking to the lawyer, weren’t you?”
“Maybe. So what’s the story?”
Carr didn’t say anything.
“Holy shit,” Ballard said. “You take
my lead and run with it and now you won’t even tell me what you got from it? I think we’re having our last conversation, Detective Carr.”
“It’s not that,” Carr said. “It’s just that I don’t think you’re going to like what I tell you.”
Then it was Ballard who was silent, but not for too long.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Well, yeah, your lead has panned out,” Carr said. “Towson said Fabian told him he could deliver a bent cop. Then we got the ballistics back today and that sort of pivoted things around here.”
“‘Pivoted’? Why is that?”
“They didn’t match. The weapon used to kill Ken Chastain was not the same one used in the booth at the Dancers. The theory at the moment is two different shooters.”
“They’re saying the cases aren’t connected?”
“No, they aren’t saying that. Just two weapons, two different shooters.”
Ballard knew she didn’t have the full picture. If the two cases weren’t linked by a weapon, then there was something else.
“So what am I missing?” she asked.
“Well, that wasn’t the full ballistics report,” Carr said.
“Carr, come on, stop dicking around.”
“They identified the weapons off the slugs and brass. The gun in the booth was a ninety-two F. And in the garage, it was a Ruger three-eighty.”
Ballard knew that bullet casings collected at the crime scenes and the slugs from the bodies revealed markings identifiable to specific models of firearms. Firing pins and gun-barrel rifling left proprietary indentations and striations.
She also knew the significance of the weapons identified. The 92F was a 9-millimeter Beretta, and it was on the list of firearms approved by the department for carry by detectives. The Ruger was a small popper that was easily concealed and used for close-in work. It, too, was on the department’s approved list for backup weapons.
It also was a hitter’s gun.
Ballard was silent while she considered this information. The one piece she reluctantly added to it was her knowledge that Chastain carried a Beretta 92F, or at least he had when they were partners. It drew a question she hated to ask.
“Chastain carried a ninety-two F. Did they run his gun against the slugs from the Dancers?”