Dark Sacred Night

by Michael Connelly

  Ballard and Bosch stared at him for a long moment before Ballard continued the questioning.

  “When was this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pascal said. “Ten years ago. Thereabouts.”

  “What kind of vehicle did you use?” Bosch asked.

  “Vehicle? It was a van,” Pascal said. “It was an old VW like they had on that show Lost. People always made that connection. Two-tone. White on the top, blue on the bottom.”

  “And the women? Who talked them into getting in the van?” Ballard asked.

  “That was him mostly,” Pascal said. “He had a silver tongue. He used to say he could sell matches to the devil. But there was no shortage of women who would get in. Most of them were pros, anyway.”

  “Prostitutes,” Ballard said.

  “That’s right,” Pascal said.

  “Were some of them runaways?” Ballard asked.

  “I suppose so,” Pascal said. “We didn’t really ask a bunch of questions, you know? If they got in the van, they got paid, and they knew what they had to do.”

  “Underage girls?” Ballard tried.

  “Uh…no,” Pascal said. “That would be illegal.”

  “It’s all right,” Ballard said. “Ten years ago—the statute of limitations has passed. You can tell us.”

  Ballard’s statement about the statute of limitations wasn’t exactly true but it didn’t matter. Pascal wasn’t going there.

  “No, nobody underage,” he said. “I mean, we checked IDs but somebody here and there could’ve had a phony, you know what I’m saying? Not our fault if they were lying.”

  “How often did you do this?” Bosch asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pascal said. “A couple times a month. He’d call me up when he needed me. But he was going out with different guys on different nights. To have variety in the product, you know?”

  “You know any names of those other guys?” Bosch asked.

  “No, not really,” Pascal said. “Been a long time. But Wilson would.”

  “But you don’t know where he is?”

  “No, I don’t. Scout’s honor.”

  He pulled his right hand out of the hoodie’s front pocket and held it up as if to show his sincerity. Ballard noticed that he was getting happy feet—involuntarily shaking his foot as he got increasingly nervous about the interview. She was sure Bosch had picked up on it as well.

  “Did you ever see Gayley get mad or upset with any of the women in the van?” Ballard asked.

  “Not that I remember,” Pascal said. “So, all these questions. What’s this all about? I thought you wanted me to help with an investigation or something.”

  “You are helping,” Ballard said. “I can’t tell you how because of the case, but you are definitely helping. The thing is, we really need to locate Gayley. Are you sure you can’t help us with that? Give us a name. Somebody else who knows him.”

  “I got no names,” Pascal said. “And I really need to go.”

  He stood up again but Bosch took his hands off the back of his chair once more and moved a few steps toward the door to block Pascal’s angle to it. Pascal immediately read the situation and sat back down. He slapped his palms down on his thighs.

  “You can’t hold me like this,” he said. “You haven’t even given me my rights or anything.”

  “We’re not holding you, Mr. Pascal,” Ballard said. “We’re just talking here, and there’s no need for rights at this stage. You’re not a suspect. You are a citizen aiding the police.”

  Pascal reluctantly nodded.

  “I’m now going to show you some photos of individuals and I want to see if you recognize any of them,” Ballard said. “We want to know if any of these women were ever with Wilson Gayley.”

  From her briefcase Ballard pulled out a standard six-pack—a file with six windows cut into it and displaying six photos of different young women. One of the photos was a shot of Daisy Clayton that Ballard had gotten out of the online murder book. It was a posed shot taken at her school in Modesto when Daisy was in the seventh grade. She was smiling at the camera, makeup covering acne on her cheeks, but she looked older than her years and there was already a distant look in her eyes.

  Another photo was a mug shot of Tanya Vickers, the prostitute who had been with Pascal and Gayley on the night they had been rousted by the cops and their shake cards were written. While their interaction probably amounted to just that one night, including her photo was intended as a test of Pascal’s veracity.

  Ballard flipped the cover of the file back and handed it to Pascal.

  “Take your time,” Ballard said.

  “I don’t need to,” Pascal said. “I don’t know any of them.”

  He reached out to hand the file back but Ballard didn’t take it.

  “Look again, Mr. Pascal,” Ballard said. “It’s important. Did any of those women ever get into the van with you and Gayley?”

  Pascal withdrew the file and impatiently looked again.

  “You know how many women I’ve fucked in ten years?” he asked. “I can’t remember every—maybe her and maybe her.”

  “Which ones?” Ballard asked.

  Pascal turned the file and pointed to two of the photos. One was Vickers. The other was Daisy Clayton.

  Ballard took the file back and pointed to the photo of Daisy.

  “Let’s start with her,” Ballard said. “You recognize her from the van?”

  “I don’t know,” Pascal said. “Maybe. I can’t remember.”

  “Think, Mr. Pascal. Look again. How do you recognize her? From where?”

  “I told you. I don’t know. It was from back at that time, I guess.”

  “She got into the van with you and Gayley?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve fucked about a thousand women since then. How am I supposed to remember them all?”

  “It must be difficult. What about her?”

  She pointed to the photo of Vickers.

  “Same thing,” Pascal said. “I think I remember her from back then. She mighta been in the van.”

  “Where in Hollywood would Gayley stop the van to pick up women for his films?” Ballard asked.

  “All over the place. Wherever the whores were, you know?”

  “Santa Monica Boulevard?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Hollywood Boulevard?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about Western Avenue? Was that a place you stopped?”

  “Most likely—if that’s where the pros were working.”

  “Do you remember specifically stopping at Hollywood and Western to recruit women for the films?”

  “No. Been too long.”

  “Do you remember the name Daisy from back then?”

  “Uh…”

  He shook his head. Ballard knew she wasn’t getting anywhere. She went in a new direction.

  “What was in the van?” she asked.

  “You mean, like, inside the VW?” Pascal asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Stuff, you know? He always had a fucking carton of rubbers. He had to. And there was a mattress. All the seats were taken out and a mattress was on the floor. And he had extra sheets and all of that. Some costumes. Sometimes the girls would only work if they had on a disguise, you know?”

  “How’d he store it?”

  “He, uh, he had boxes and cartons and shit that he put it all in.”

  “What kind of cartons?”

  “You know, like plastic containers for putting shit in.”

  “How big?”

  “What?”

  “How big were the plastic containers?”

  “I don’t know. Like this.”

  He used his hands to shape a box in the air in front of him. He delineated a square that was maybe two feet by two feet. It would be difficult to fit a body into such a space.

  “I really gotta go now,” Pascal said. “I have a wax at five. I’ve got work tomorrow.”

  �
��Just a few more questions,” Ballard said. “You’ve been very helpful. Do you know what happened to the van you and Mr. Gayley used?”

  “No, but I doubt it’s around anymore. It was a real piece of shit back then. What else?”

  “The films you made in the van with Mr. Gayley, do you have copies?”

  Pascal laughed.

  “Fuck, no. I wouldn’t keep that shit. But it’s all gotta be out there somewhere on the internet, right? Everything’s on the net.”

  Ballard looked at Bosch to see if he had any questions. He gave a quick head shake.

  “Can I go now?” Pascal said.

  “Do you have a driver’s license?” Ballard asked.

  “No, I don’t drive anymore. I Uber.”

  “Where do you live, then?”

  “Why do you need that?”

  “In case we have follow-up questions.”

  “You can call my agent. He’ll find me.”

  “You’re not going to give me your home address?”

  “Not if I don’t have to. I don’t want it in some police file somewhere, you know?”

  “What about your cell-phone number?”

  “Same answer.”

  Ballard stared at him for a long moment. She knew there would be many ways to find Pascal later. She wasn’t worried about that. The moment was more about cooperation and what his refusal meant in terms of her suspicions about him. It was also the moment when she needed to make a decision. If she wanted to shift things and go at him hard with questions about Daisy Clayton and his possible involvement with her murder, then she would need to advise him of his rights to have an attorney present and to choose not to speak to the police. Considering the reluctance to talk that Pascal had already shown, such an advisement would most likely bring the interview to an abrupt end and put Pascal on notice that they considered him a suspect.

  She decided it was too soon for that. She hoped Bosch was on the same page with her.

  “Okay, Mr. Pascal, you can go now,” she finally said. “We’ll find you if we need to.”

  40

  Ballard and Bosch didn’t discuss the interview until after they thanked Beatrice Beaupre for her help and got back into the van.

  “So?” she asked.

  “I’d put him on the long-shot list,” Bosch said.

  “Really? Why?”

  “I think if he had anything to do with Daisy, he wouldn’t have said what he said.”

  “What do you mean? He didn’t say shit.”

  “He picked out her picture. Not a good move if he and Gayley killed her.”

  “Nobody said the guy’s a genius. He makes his living with his dick.”

  “Look, don’t get upset. I’m just giving you my reaction. I’m not saying he’s in the clear or we should drop it. I’m just saying I didn’t get the vibe, you know what I mean?”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just not ready to move on from these guys yet.”

  She started the van’s engine.

  “Where to?” she asked. “Back to San Fernando?”

  “You mind taking me to my house?” Bosch asked.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Supposedly they put a car on it. I’m just going to get some fresh clothes and my Jeep. Be good to get mobile again. You going that way?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Ballard backed out of the parking slot in front of the warehouse and drove off. She headed south on surface streets, wanting to avoid the freeways at this point in the day. As she drove, she thought about Bosch’s take on Pascal and the interview. She had to decide if her suspicions were based on solid underpinnings of circumstantial evidence or simply her hopes that a creep like Pascal would be guilty because society would be better off without him. After a while she had to admit to herself that she may have let her feelings about Pascal and what he did for a living skew her judgment of things. Her way of acknowledging this to Bosch was indirect.

  “So, there’s still some of the culled shake cards to go through and run down,” she said. “You going to be around tonight? We could split them up.”

  “Hey, I’m not telling you to drop Pascal,” Bosch said. “Let’s do a deep dive on Gayley. We locate him and see if what he says matches up with Pascal. We get them telling different stories and we might have something.”

  Ballard nodded.

  “We can do that,” she said.

  They drove in silence for a while, with Ballard thinking about next moves in trying to locate Gayley. She had only scratched the surface in her prior search.

  Bosch directed her to take a shortcut on Vineland up into the hills. It would lead them to Mulholland Drive and that would take them to his street.

  “So, have you figured out how they knew where you lived?” Ballard asked. “The men who grabbed you, I mean.”

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Bosch said. “But once Cortez was wired in through Luzon, he could have had people on my tail since early in the week. I drove home with them on me.”

  “Is Luzon the cop who set you up?”

  “He was the leak that got my witness killed. How much he knew about setting me up is not yet determined.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The hospital. He tried to kill himself. He’s still in a coma.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, the SIS setup on Cortez—how’d they get PC if Luzon’s in a coma and nobody else is talking?”

  “You don’t need probable cause to watch somebody. And if he flushes, they have a reason to pull him over. Child support. He’s got a judgment against him for three kids and a standing subpoena from a children’s court judge.”

  That darkened the picture for Ballard. If the SIS was operating without probable cause to arrest Cortez, then following and pulling him over would seemingly have only one purpose; to see if he made the wrong move.

  She dropped that part of the conversation. In a few minutes she turned off Mulholland onto Woodrow Wilson Drive. Then, as they came around the last bend before his house, Bosch leaned tensely forward and released his seat belt.

  “Damn it,” he said.

  “What?” Ballard asked.

  There was a patrol car parked in front of the house. There was also a Volkswagen Beetle. As she got closer, she could read the Chapman sticker on the back window.

  “Your daughter?” she asked.

  “I told her not to come up,” Bosch said.

  “So did I.”

  “I’ve got to send her back, get her out of here.”

  Ballard pulled her van to a stop next to the patrol car and showed her badge to the officer behind the wheel. She didn’t recognize him and saw that the car’s roof code was from North Hollywood Division. They lowered their windows at the same time.

  “I’ve got Harry Bosch here,” Ballard said. “He’s got to pick up some things inside.”

  “Roger that,” the officer said.

  “When did his daughter arrive?”

  “A couple hours ago. She drove up, showed me her ID. I let her go in.”

  “Roger that.”

  Bosch got out of the car and checked up and down the street for any vehicles or anything else that didn’t belong. He looked back in at Ballard before closing the door.

  “Are you going into the station from here?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Ballard said. “I’m heading downtown and taking the spotter from the airship yesterday to dinner. I called in a favor on that flyover.”

  “Hold on, then. Let me go in and get some money. I want to buy dinner.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Harry. We just go to the Denny’s by Piper Tech. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Really? What about something nicer? Let me send you over to the Nickel Diner. I know Monica there. I’ll call and she’ll take good care of you.”

  “Denny’s is good, Harry. Convenient. It’s right across from Piper.”

  Bosch nodded toward his house.

  “I’ve got to deal with my daught
er and then I have something else to do,” he said. “But I want to meet this guy sometime—the spotter. To say thanks.”

  “It’s not necessary and it’s not a guy. She was just doing her job.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Well, tell her thanks for me,” he said. “The sound of that chopper—it changed everything.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Ballard said. “You coming by the station later to help me look for Gayley?”

  “Yeah, I’ll get by later on. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Anytime, Harry.”

  She watched him cross in front of the van and go to the front door. He had to knock because his keys were one of the things left behind when he had been abducted. Soon the door was opened and Ballard caught a glimpse of a young woman as she grabbed Bosch into an embrace and closed the door.

  Ballard stared at the door for a few seconds and then drove off.

  Bosch

  41

  Bosch hugged his daughter as tightly as she hugged him. It made his cracked ribs sing with pain but he didn’t care.

  He heard the door close behind him and looked over her head pressed against his shoulder at the slider to the deck. It was still open a couple of feet, the way the intruders had left it. There was black fingerprint dust on the glass. He was reminded that the house had been processed as a crime scene.

  He brought his hands up to his daughter’s shoulders and pulled back from her so he could look into her eyes.

  “Maddie, you were told not to come up here,” he said. “It’s not safe yet.”

  “I had to come up,” she said. “I couldn’t just stay down there when I didn’t know if you were all right.”

  “I told you. I’m fine.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “No. I mean—I have two cracked ribs and when you hug…you really hug.”

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t know. But look at your face. You’re going to have a scar.”

  She reached toward his face but he caught her hand and held it.

  “I’m too old to worry about scars,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is you can’t stay here. I’m not even supposed to stay here. I was just coming for the Jeep and to get some of my own clothes.”

  “I thought those looked weird,” she said, nodding toward the ill-fitting suit he was wearing.