The slide sign on the door was moved to OCCUPIED. Ballard took out her phone, turned on the light, and quietly opened the door and moved into the room. The switch for the overhead lights was taped into the off position so that nobody blasted sleepers. Ballard used her phone to check the bunks and saw that the two middle beds were taken by sleepers, one of whom was lightly snoring. She took off her shoes and put them in a cubbyhole, then grabbed two sleep packs and tossed them up onto one of the top bunks. She climbed the ladder and flipped the thin mattress over before crawling into the sleeping space. It took her five minutes to spread the sheets and get under a blanket. Clasping the two pillows around her head to ward off the sound of snoring, she tried to go to sleep.
As she tailed off into darkness, she thought about the two warnings to stand down that she had gotten during the day. She knew she had somehow triggered them with her actions the day before. She reviewed her steps, trying to remember every detail of every move she had made and still could not locate the land mine she had apparently stepped on.
Fighting sleep, she backed things up further into Friday night and then moved forward again, using her memory like a battering ram. This time she hit on something that had not stuck out before, because it had not gotten her anywhere. After reviewing Chastain’s chrono, she had tried to contact Matthew “Metro” Robison to see if he was the witness Chastain had been out wrangling on Friday night before he was killed. She never reached Robison but had left at least three messages on his phone.
Robison was missing and the task force was looking for him. When Carr came to question her on the beach, he knew that she had called him. What troubled Ballard now was that if Robison, wherever he was, had his cell phone with him—which he most likely did—how did Carr and the task force know she had been calling him through the night?
She remembered asking Carr that question but he hadn’t answered her. He had passed it off and said he had simply been given the information.
It was something that didn’t make sense. It gnawed at her until she finally slipped into sleep.
23
A loud round of raucous laughter from the roll-call room penetrated the Honeymoon Suite and woke Ballard. She felt disoriented and almost banged her head on the ceiling as she started to get up. She pulled her phone and checked the time. She was shocked to learn that she had slept until ten a.m., and knew she would have gone longer if not for the mid-watch roll call being conducted across the hall.
She balled up her sheets, blankets, and pillows and carefully climbed down from the top bunk. She noticed she was the only one left in the room. Dumping everything in a hamper, she put on her shoes and made her way down the hall to the women’s locker room.
Under the hot shower, she came to fully and tried to recall the events of the night before. She remembered that she had fallen asleep with a question: How did Rogers Carr know that she had been calling the missing Matthew Robison? Today was Monday, a day off, but she resolved to know the answer to that question before the day was through.
After dressing in fresh clothes from her locker, Ballard sat on a bench and composed a text to Carr.
Need to talk. Are you around?
She hesitated for a moment and then sent it. She knew that Carr might share it with others and discuss how to proceed. But she was banking on him not doing that. She knew a quick response to her text would indicate he had not shared it with anyone yet.
In person? Where? Not the PAB.
She thought about things and returned the text, setting up the meeting. Her choice for a location was the fourteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building because it would be a perfectly natural place for police detectives to be seen. If anybody at Major Crimes or the PAB asked Carr where he was going, he could just say the courthouse, and it would not raise a question. The location would also put Ballard in close proximity to the County–USC Medical Center, where she hoped to find Ramona Ramone conscious and alert later in the day.
Before leaving the station, she knocked on Lieutenant McAdams’s door in the detective bureau and updated him on the Ramona Ramone investigation. He was reserved about Trent’s collection of brass knuckles and use of the phrase upside-down house to describe his home. McAdams cautioned that the evidence was circumstantial and reminded her that the basis of Ballard’s excitement was an ex-wife’s claims.
“You’re going to need more than that,” McAdams said.
“I know,” said Ballard. “I’ll get it.”
After checking out the late-shift plain wrap, Ballard headed downtown on the 101 freeway. Battling the traffic going into downtown, finding parking, and then waiting for the elevator in the courthouse made her twenty minutes late for her meeting with Carr, but she found the detective from Major Crimes sitting on a bench outside a courtroom door, checking messages on his phone.
She slid onto the wooden bench next to him.
“Sorry I’m late. Everything went wrong. Traffic, parking, had to wait ten minutes for a fucking elevator.”
“You could’ve texted, but never mind that. What’s this about, Ballard?”
“Okay, yesterday I asked you a question, and you never answered it. We got distracted or you moved on, but I never got a full answer.”
“What question?”
“You asked me why I had called Matthew Robison and I asked you how you knew that I had.”
“I did answer that. I told you I was given the information that you were trying to reach him.”
“I don’t deny it. But who told you that I’d been calling him?”
“I don’t get it. Why does this matter?”
“Think about it. Robison is missing, right?”
Carr didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be very carefully weighing what information to share with her.
“We’re looking for him, yeah,” he finally said.
“I assume that wherever he’s at, if he’s alive, he’s got his cell phone with him, right?” she asked quickly. “Or was it recovered at his home or elsewhere?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then if he’s out there in hiding, he has his phone. If he’s dead, then whoever killed him has his phone. Either way, how is it known that I called him? Are you going to tell me they pulled his call records that quick? I’ve never turned a phone company warrant around in less than a day before, let alone on a Saturday when nobody’s working. On top of that, he’s a witness, not a suspect. There is no probable cause for a warrant to pull his records in the first place.”
Carr didn’t respond.
“I guess the alternative is that they have my records or a tap on my phone, but that doesn’t make sense unless you lied to me yesterday and I actually am a primary suspect. If that’s the case, you wouldn’t have let me tape our conversation. And you wouldn’t have talked to me period without Mirandizing me.”
“You’re not a suspect, Ballard. I told you that.”
“Okay, then it comes back to my question. How does anyone know I was calling Robison?”
Carr shook his head in frustration.
“Look, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it was a welfare warrant. He’s gone and they got a warrant to pull his records because they’re worried he might be in trouble or something.”
“I already thought about that, but it doesn’t work,” Ballard said. “If they wanted to find him to see if he was okay, they would have pinged his phone to find his location and check on him. There’s something else. Somebody knows I called him. Who told you?”
“Listen to me. All I know is that my lieutenant came out of the meeting and told me you had been calling Robison and I needed to find out why and shut you down. That’s it.”
“Who’s your lieutenant?”
“Blackwelder.”
“Okay, what meeting was Blackwelder in?”
“What?”
“You just said he came out of a meeting and gave you instructions about me. Don’t play dumb. What meeting?”
“He was in the meeting with
Olivas and a couple other RHD guys. Major Crimes got called in after Chastain got hit, and it was the meeting where Olivas brought Blackwelder up to speed.”
“So Olivas is the source. Somehow he knew that I had been calling Robison.”
Carr looked around the busy hallway to make sure no one was overtly watching them. People were going by in all directions, but none seemed to be interested in the two detectives.
“Maybe,” he said. “He wasn’t the only guy in the room.”
“More than maybe,” Ballard said. “Think about it. How did Olivas know I was calling Robison if he doesn’t have his phone?”
Ballard waited but Carr said nothing.
“Something doesn’t add up,” she said.
“This is part of your cop theory, isn’t it?” Carr finally said. “You want to put this on a cop.”
“I want to put it on the person responsible. That’s it.”
“Well, then, what’s the next move here?”
“I don’t know. But I think you need to proceed with caution.”
“Listen, Ballard, I get it. Olivas fucked you over big time. But suggesting without a shred of evidence that he knows about this, or has information about—”
“That’s not what I am doing.”
“Seems like it to me.”
Frustrated, Ballard looked around the hallway while she decided what to do.
“I have to go,” she finally said.
“Where?” Carr asked. “You still need to steer clear of this, Ballard.”
“I have my own case to work. So don’t worry.”
She stood up and looked down at Carr.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You have zero evidence of anything. You have a theory. But even if you are right about it being a cop, trying to put it on the guy everyone knows is your antagonist in the department doesn’t sell, Ballard.”
“At least not yet,” Ballard said.
She started to walk off.
“Ballard, would you come back here?” Carr said.
She turned back and looked down at him again.
“Why?” she said. “You’re not going to do anything and I got a case that I need to work.”
“Just sit down a minute, will you?” Carr pleaded.
She reluctantly sat.
“You did this yesterday,” Carr said. “‘I have a case to work. Good-bye.’ What’s so important about this other case?”
“There’s a guy out there hurting people because he likes it,” Ballard said. “He’s big evil and I’m going to stop him.”
“Thomas Trent?”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
But then she shook her head. She didn’t need the answer, though Carr gave it.
“You know that every access to NCIC is logged,” he said. “I saw that you ran down the three stiffs in the booth and this Thomas Trent. I was wondering who this guy was and what the connection was.”
“Now you know,” Ballard said. “No connection. You people … That case has nothing to do with Chastain or the Dancers or anything else.”
“Good to know.”
“Look, are you going to do anything with what I just gave you or not?”
“I will, Ballard, but think about what you’re suggesting. A police lieutenant kills five people in a bar, then takes out one of his own people? For what? Because he’s got—what? Gambling debts? It’s a big fucking stretch.”
“There’s no explanation for why people kill. You know that. And if you cross that line, what’s to stop you from going from one to six?”
She looked off and down the hallway. In that moment, she saw a man avert his eyes from her. He was across the hall and one courtroom down. He was wearing a suit but he looked more cop than lawyer.
Ballard looked casually back at Carr.
“There’s somebody watching us,” she said. “Black male, stocky, brown suit, across the hall and down one.”
“Relax,” Carr said. “That’s Quick, my partner.”
“You brought your partner?”
“You’re a wild card, Ballard. I wanted to make sure things were cool.”
“Was he there yesterday when we had our ‘dinner date’ too?”
“He was nearby, yeah.”
Ballard looked back over at Carr’s partner.
“He doesn’t look that quick to me,” she said.
Carr laughed.
“His name is Quinton Kennedy,” he said. “We call him Quick.”
Ballard nodded.
“So look,” Carr said. “I’m taking all of this under advisement, okay? I’m going to go back and talk to my lieutenant and finesse out the thing about Robison’s phone. I’ll find out how we knew you called him. If it’s there like you think, I’ll get back to you, and then we have to talk about the next step. Where we take it.”
“We take it to the D.A.,” Ballard said. “We take it to J-SID.”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We need a lot more than knowledge about your phone calls. There still could be a reasonable explanation.”
“You keep thinking that, Carr. And keep Quick on your six. You don’t want to end up like my former partner.”
Ballard stood up again. Without another word she walked off toward the elevator alcove. She threw a mock salute toward Quick and he squinted his eyes at her as though he didn’t know who she was. But it was too late for that.
24
Ballard got good and bad news when she arrived at the acute-care nursing station on the third floor at County-USC. The good news came when she was informed that Ramona Ramone was conscious and alert and that she had been upgraded to fair condition. The bad news was that she was still intubated, unable to talk, and through hand signals appeared not to know why she was hospitalized or what had happened to her.
Ballard was allowed to visit, and as she entered the room, Ramona opened her still-swollen eyes a sliver and they looked at each other for the first time. Something about seeing this victim awake and coming to understand her dire circumstances was gut-wrenching. There was utter fear in her eyes. Fear of the unknown.
“Ramona,” Ballard began. “I’m Renée. I’m a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department and I’m going to find the man who did this to you.”
Ballard put the file she was carrying down on the side table and stood at the side of the bed. Ramona’s eyes were nervous and moving rapidly. Her face was still heavily swollen on the right, giving it an asymmetrical shape. Ballard reached over and held her hand, putting her thumb into the palm.
“You’re safe now,” she said. “Nobody will hurt you anymore. What I want you to do now is squeeze my thumb if you understand what I’m telling you.”
Ballard waited and soon she felt the squeeze.
“Okay, good. That’s good, Ramona. Let’s do this: I will ask you yes and no questions, okay? If your answer is yes, then you squeeze my thumb one time. If your answer is no, then squeeze twice. Okay?”
She waited and got one squeeze.
“Good. The nurse told me that you’re having trouble remembering what happened to you. Is it a total blank?”
Two squeezes.
“So there is some that you remember?”
One squeeze.
“Okay, let me tell you what we know and then we will go from there. Today is Monday. Late Thursday night you were found in a parking lot on Santa Monica Boulevard near Highland Avenue. It was an anonymous call, and the officers who responded at first thought you were dead. That’s how bad you looked to them.”
Ramona closed her eyes and kept them shut. Ballard continued.
“You were momentarily conscious as the officers waited for a rescue ambulance. You said something about an upside-down house and then you lost consciousness. That was all we had to go on. Since then I have been to the RV where you lived, and the people there said you had been gone for five days. I think someone held you all that time, Ramona. And he hurt you very badly.”
Ballard saw a tear
form in the corner of one of Ramona’s eyes. She blinked it away and then looked at Ballard. It was time to start asking questions.
“Ramona, do you remember the upside-down house?”
Two squeezes.
“Okay. What about the man who hurt you? Do you remember him?”
Ballard waited but there was no reaction from Ramona.
“Does that mean it’s kind of fuzzy?”
One squeeze.
“Okay, that’s all right. That’s fine. Let’s start with some basics, then. Do you remember what race the man was?”
One squeeze.
Ballard had to be careful not to lead her. A defense attorney could tear her apart on the stand for any false move.
“Okay, I’m going to go through some choices and you keep squeezing once or twice depending on your answer. Okay?”
One squeeze.
“Was he Hispanic?”
Two squeezes.
“Okay, how about African-American?”
Two squeezes.
“Was he a white man?”
One long squeeze.
“Okay, he was a white man. Thank you. Let’s try to work on a description. Did he have any physical aspect that stood out?”
Two squeezes.
“Did he wear glasses?”
Two squeezes.
“Did he have a mustache or a beard?”
Two squeezes.
“Was he tall?”
One squeeze.
“Over six feet?”
Ramona shook her hand, adding a third signal to the conversation.
“Does that mean you’re not sure?”
One squeeze.
“Okay, got it. Good. You shake your hand like that whenever you’re not sure. I have some photos here that I would like to show you. It’s called a photo lineup, and I want to see if one of these men looks like the man who hurt you. Is it all right to show you?”
One squeeze.
“I’m going to show you six at once, and you take your time and look and then I’ll ask you if you recognize any of the photos. Okay?”
The Late Show Page 21