Dark Sacred Night - Ballard and Bosch #1;Renée Ballard #2

by Michael Connelly

  Murder was murder, and Ballard knew that every case deserved the full attention and effort of the police department. But Ballard was always struck by the murder of a woman. Most times the cases she reviewed and worked were exceedingly violent. Most times the killers were men. There was something deeply affecting about that. Something unfair that went beyond the general unfairness of death at the hands of another. She wondered how men would live if they knew that in every moment of their lives, their size and nature made them vulnerable to the opposite sex.

  She stacked the photos and slid them back into the pocket of section sixteen. She then went to section twelve, which was dedicated to the suspect. She wanted to see a photo of the man who had killed Audie Haslam.

  In his booking photo, Clancy Devoux stared at the camera with dead eyes and an expression that seemed devoid of human empathy. He was unshaven and unclean and one eyelid drooped farther than the other. A straight, thin-lipped mouth was set in a smirk of defiance rather than an expression of guilt or apology. He was a hardened psychopath who had probably hurt many before the killing of Audie Haslam brought his run to an end. Ballard guessed that most of those victims—whatever the crimes—were women.

  A printout of his prior record substantiated this. He had been charged numerous times going back to his juvenile days in Mississippi. The crimes ranged from drug possession to multiple aggravated assaults and an attempted murder. The list did not denote the gender of the victims but Ballard knew. Devoux was a woman hater. You didn’t stab a woman in the back room of a tattoo parlor as many times and with as much ferocity as he had without building toward it over years. Poor Audie Haslam was at the wrong place at the wrong time. She had probably set her own death in motion with the wrong word or a judgmental look that set Devoux off.

  A notation on the pocket of section twelve said that Devoux was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder in the tattoo parlor. He would never hurt a woman again.

  From there Ballard went to the section containing the statements of witnesses in the case. There was no witness to the actual murder, because the killer had waited until he was alone in the shop before robbing and murdering Haslam. But the investigators had run down and talked to other customers who had been in the shop that night.

  Ballard took out a notebook and started writing down the names of the witnesses and their contact information. These were all denizens of the Hollywood night circa 2009 and they might be useful to interview if they could be located now. She realized that one of these witnesses, a man named David Manning, sounded familiar. She put the murder book aside and looked over the shake cards she had spread out for Bosch’s perusal. She found Manning.

  According to the witness statement, Manning had been in the tattoo shop less than two hours before the murder. He was described as a fifty-eight-year-old ex-smuggler from Florida. He lived in an old RV he parked on different streets in Hollywood on different days of the week. He was a frequent visitor to ZooToo because he liked Audie Haslam and liked to add to the prodigious collection of tattoos that sleeved both his arms. From reading between the lines of the statement, which had been written before the investigation focused on Clancy Devoux, it appeared to Ballard that Manning was an early person of interest in the Haslam case. He had a record, albeit one without violence, and was one of the last people to see her alive. He was actually in police custody and being interviewed when the results of fingerprint analysis from the crime scene came in and put the investigation in a different direction.

  Much of the information on the shake card matched that on the witness statement. The shake card had made the final cut with Ballard because of Manning’s RV. It fell in with the van category that Ballard and Bosch were interested in. The card had been written seven weeks before the Clayton and Haslam murders when an officer had inspected the RV parked on Argyle just south of Santa Monica and told Manning it was illegal to park the recreational vehicle in a commercial parking zone. At the time, the LAPD was not shy about rousting the homeless and keeping them moving. But since then, a series of civil-rights lawsuits and a change in leadership in City Hall had led to a revision in that practice, and now bullying the homeless was practically a firing offense. Consequently, there was almost no enforcement of laws with them and someone like Manning would be allowed to park his RV just about anywhere he wanted to in Hollywood as long as it was not in front of a single-family home or a movie theater.

  The officer who had rousted Manning in 2009 had filled out a field interview card with information garnered from their short conversation and his Florida driver’s license. When Ballard had run Manning’s name and birth date through the database as she prepped the cards for Bosch, she had determined that he now had a California license but the address on it was unhelpful. Manning had followed a routine tactic of using a church address as his own in order to get a California license or identification card. Though the address was a dead end, the RV registered to Manning should not be too hard to spot if he was still living in the area.

  Ballard now picked up the Manning shake card and moved it over to the row of cards that she believed warranted a higher priority of attention. The fact that he knew, liked, and might have been obsessed with a woman who was murdered two days before Daisy Clayton was in her estimation worth checking out.

  Ballard wanted to talk to him. She opened her laptop and went to work on an information-only bulletin on Manning. The bulletin was an informal BOLO with instructions: If Manning or his RV is spotted, do not roust or arrest, just contact Ballard 24/7.

  She printed out the page, which included a description and plate number for the RV, and then walked it back down to the watch office to give to Lieutenant Munroe. When she got there, Munroe was standing with two other officers in the middle of the room and looking up at the flat-screen mounted high on the wall over the watch commander’s desk. Ballard could see the logo of channel 9, the local twenty-four-hour news channel, and a reporter she recognized doing a live stand-up with the flashing lights of several police vehicles behind her.

  Ballard walked up beside them.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Police shooting in the Valley,” Munroe said. “Two bangers down for the count.”

  “Is it SIS? The Bosch surveillance?”

  “They’re not saying anything about it on this. They don’t know shit yet.”

  Ballard pulled her phone and texted Heather Rourke, the airship spotter.

  You over this thing in the Valley?

  No, south end tonight. Heard about it. 2Ks. Is it the Bosch thing? SIS?

  Sounds like. Checking.

  She still had no working number for Bosch. She stared at the screen, watching the activity behind the reporter but not listening to what she was saying until she finished with her exact location.

  “Reporting live from the Hansen Dam Recreation Area.”

  Ballard knew that meant Foothill Division and, most likely, SanFers. It had to be the Bosch case, so she knew she would probably not be seeing him tonight.

  She went back to the break room, stacked the shake cards according to priority, and then carried them and the ZooToo murder book back to the detective bureau. She checked the clock and saw that her shift didn’t start for an hour. She considered for a moment driving up to the Valley and crashing the SIS shooting scene. She felt proprietary about the case, considering her part in the rescue of Harry Bosch.

  But she knew she would be kept on the fringe. The SIS was a closed society. Bosch would be lucky if they even let him under the yellow tape.

  She decided not to go and instead opened the murder book again to complete her review. She turned to section one, the chronological record. This was as close as she would get to riding along on the investigation. The chrono was a step-by-step accounting of the case detectives’ movements.

  She started at the beginning, from the moment they were called out from home and sent to the tattoo parlor. The case was carried by two detectives assigned to the Holly
wood homicide squad before it had been dissolved and cases from the division were folded into West Bureau homicide. Their names were Livingstone and Peppers. Ballard knew neither of them.

  The chrono, like the murder book, was shorter than what Ballard had seen in other murder books, including those she had prepared herself during her time in the Robbery-Homicide Division. But this was not a measure of the effort by Livingstone and Peppers. It was because the case so quickly came together. The detectives were moving forward and thoroughly when forensics handed them a suspect on a platter. A bloody fingerprint from the rear storage room of the shop was connected to Clancy Devoux. He was quickly located and picked up, a broken knife believed to have been the murder weapon was recovered in his possession, and the case was considered closed in less than twenty-four hours.

  All murder cases should go so easily, Ballard thought. But they usually don’t. A girl gets snatched off the street and murdered, and nine years go by without so much as a clue to her killer. A woman gets brutally slashed with a knife in the back room of her business, and the case is closed in a day. There was no rhyme or reason to murder investigation.

  After the arrest, the entries in the chronological record started tapering off as the case shifted from investigation to preparation for prosecution. But one entry in the log gave Ballard pause. It came in forty-eight hours after the murder and twenty-four hours after Clancy Devoux was arrested. It was an innocuous entry simply added for thoroughness. It said that two nights after the murder, at 7:45 p.m., Detective Peppers was notified by the watch sergeant at Hollywood Division that a crime scene cleaner named Roger Dillon had found additional evidence on the ZooToo case. This was described as a broken piece of knife blade that had been on the floor of the storage room but had been completely covered by the pool of blood that had flowed from the victim and then coagulated around her body. The two-inch blade had apparently gone completely unnoticed by the detectives and forensic techs.

  Peppers wrote in the log that he asked the watch sergeant to dispatch a patrol team to go to the tattoo parlor, take the blade from Dillon, and bag it as evidence. Peppers, who lived more than an hour from Los Angeles, said he would pick up the evidence in the morning.

  Ballard stared at the log entry for a long time. As far as the ZooToo case went, it was strictly housekeeping. She knew that if the blade matched the broken knife recovered during the Devoux arrest, then detectives had another piece of significant evidence against the suspect. She wasn’t bothered by the seeming gaffe made by the crime scene team. It was, in fact, not unusual for evidence to be missed or left behind at a complicated and bloody crime scene. Spilled blood can hide a lot.

  What gave Ballard pause was the cleaner. By coincidence, Ballard had met Roger Dillon earlier in the week, when he had discovered the burglary of the Warhol prints from the house on Hollywood Boulevard. She still had the business cards he had given her in her briefcase.

  The log entry documented that Dillon had called about the broken blade at 7:45 on the same night Daisy Clayton disappeared. It meant that Dillon had been working in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard just a few hours before. Ballard had seen his work van earlier in the week and had gotten only a quick glimpse inside it, but she had seen inside others like it at other crime scenes. She knew Dillon had chemicals and tools for cleaning. And he would have containers for the safe transport and disposal of biologically hazardous materials.

  All in a moment, Ballard knew. She had to look at Roger Dillon.

  45

  Ballard went to her locker to store the shake cards and the Haslam murder book. She then pulled out the fledgling murder book Bosch had started putting together on the Clayton case. She sat on a bench in the locker room and opened it up, immediately flipping to Bosch’s report on the plastic container manufactured by American Storage Products. He listed the sales supervisor he had talked to as Del Mittleberg. Ballard almost jumped up off the bench with joy when she saw that Bosch, thorough detective that he was, had listed both Mittleberg’s office and cell numbers.

  It was after ten. She called the cell and it was answered with a suspicious hello.

  “Mr. Mittleberg?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “This is the police, don’t hang up.”

  “The police?”

  “Mr. Mittleberg, my name is Renée Ballard. I’m a detective with the Los Angeles Police. You recently talked with a colleague of mine named Bosch about containers made by American Storage Products. Do you remember?”

  “That was a couple of months ago.”

  “Correct. We are still working that case.”

  “It’s ten-fifteen. What is so urgent that this couldn’t—”

  “Mr. Mittleberg, I’m sorry, but it is urgent. You told Detective Bosch that your company made some direct sales of the containers to commercial accounts.”

  “We do, yes.”

  “Are you at home, Mr. Mittleberg?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “Do you have a laptop or access to sales records involving those commercial accounts?”

  There was a pause while Mittleberg considered the question. Ballard held her breath. The case had been full of long shots. It was about time one of them paid off. If Dillon operated a business that ran close to the line—she remembered he had commented about competition—then he might be just the kind of man to seek a direct-sale discount from a manufacturer.

  “I have some access to records,” Mittleberg finally said.

  “I have the name of a company,” Ballard said. “Can you see if they have ever been a customer of ASP?”

  “Hold the line. I’m going to my home office.”

  Ballard waited while Mittleberg got to his computer. She heard a partially muffled discussion as he told someone that he was talking to the police and he would be up as soon as he was finished.

  “Okay,” he then said directly into the phone. “I’m at my computer. What’s the name of the company.”

  “It’s called Chemi-Cal Bio Services,” Ballard said. “Chemi-Cal is broken into two—”

  “No, nothing,” Mittleberg said.

  “You spelled it with a dash?”

  “Nothing beginning with C-H-E-M.”

  Ballard felt deflated. She needed something more in order to go all in on Dillon. Then she remembered the truck she had seen on the day they met on Hollywood Boulevard.

  “Okay, try just CCB Services, please,” she said urgently.

  She heard typing and then Mittleberg responded.

  “Yes,” he said. “A customer since 2008. They order soft plastics.”

  Ballard stood up, holding the phone tight against her ear.

  “What kind of soft plastics?” she asked.

  “Storage containers. Different sizes.”

  Ballard remembered Bosch giving her the ASP container he had bought. It was still in the trunk of her city ride.

  “Including the twenty-five-gallon container with the snap-on top?”

  There was a pause while Mittleberg checked the records.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “He ordered those.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mittleberg,” Ballard said. “One of us will follow up with you during business hours.”

  She disconnected and went back to her locker. She put the murder book back on the top shelf and opened her briefcase, retrieving one of the business cards Dillon had given her. His company had an address on Saticoy Street in Van Nuys.

  When Ballard entered the watch office, Munroe was still looking up at the TV screen.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “Not much,” Munroe said. “But they did say the dead guys were persons of interest in an abduction case. It’s gotta be the Bosch thing. You hear from him?”

  “Not yet. I’m heading out to do an interview on my hobby case. Might not be back for roll call.”

  Ballard stared at the screen for a moment. It was the same reporter on another stand-up.

  “If Bosch happens to show u
p here, can you give him this? He’ll know what it means.”

  She handed him the card with Dillon’s name and business address on it. He looked at it disinterestedly and then put it into one of his shirt pockets.

  “Will do,” Munroe said. “But stay in touch, Ballard, okay? Lemme know where you are.”

  “You got it, L-T.”

  “And if I need you on a call, the hobby case goes back on the shelf and you come running.”

  “Roger that.”

  Ballard doubled back to the detective bureau and grabbed a rover out of the charging station and the keys to the city ride. She left out the back door into the parking lot.

  Ballard took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the mountain and then down into the Valley. It was near midnight when she turned down Saticoy and into an industrial sector lined with warehouses and fleet lots near the Van Nuys Airport.

  Chemi-Cal Bio Services was in a warehouse park called the Saticoy Industry Center, where manufacturing and service businesses were lined side by side in duplicate duplex warehouses. Ballard drove down the center lane and by Dillon’s business and then out the other side of the industrial park. It looked like none of the businesses were open this late at night. She found parking on a side street and walked back.

  Dillon had only a small sign on his warehouse. It wasn’t the kind of business that drew customers who were either walking or driving by. His was the kind of service you found through internet searches or recommendations from professionals in the same arena—detectives, coroners, forensic specialists. The sign was on the door next to the side-by-side garage doors. The building was freestanding but literally no more than two feet away from the identical structures on either side of it.