The Night Fire

by Michael Connelly

  At dawn she printed out three copies of her report: one for Lieutenant McAdams, which she put in his inbox along with a note asking for a private meeting; one for herself, which went into her backpack; and the third for Captain Olivas. She put it into a fresh file folder and carried it with her as she headed across the parking lot to her cruiser.

  Her phone buzzed almost as soon as she pulled out of the Hollywood Division parking lot to head downtown. It was Bosch.

  “So I have to read about the Kidd case in the L.A. Times?”

  “I’m so sorry. I’ve just been running crazy and then I wasn’t going to call you in the middle of the night. I just left the station and was about to try you.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “I was.”

  “So they killed his wife.”

  “Awful. I know. But it was her or us. Truly.”

  “They going to get dinged for that? Are you?”

  “I don’t know. They fucked up. Nobody was watching the door. Then she came out and it went sideways. I think I’m in the clear because I was just a ride-along, but those guys are probably all getting letters.”

  Bosch would know she meant a letter of reprimand in their personnel files.

  “At least you’re all right,” he said.

  “Harry, I think she was about to shoot me,” Ballard said. “Then she got hit.”

  “Well, then they had the right man in the OP.”

  “Still. We had locked eyes. When it happened, she was looking at me, I was looking at her. Then …”

  “You can’t dwell on it. She made a choice. It was the wrong one. Is Kidd talking?”

  “He lawyered up and isn’t talking. I think he thinks he can sue the city for his wife and get enough money for a big-time lawyer—maybe your boy, Haller.”

  “I doubt that. He doesn’t voluntarily take murder cases anymore.”

  “Got it.”

  “So, should I expect a call about my involvement in the Hilton case?”

  “I don’t think so. I just finished the report and left you out of it. I said the widow found the murder book after her husband’s death and contacted a friend to turn it in. Your name is nowhere in the report. You shouldn’t have any problem at all.”

  “Good to know.”

  Ballard drove down the ramp off Sunset onto the 101. The freeway was crowded and moving slow.

  “I’m taking it down to Olivas right now,” she said. “I have a meeting at PAB anyway.”

  “Meeting on what?” Bosch asked.

  “That arson-murder I worked the other night. I’m back on it. They need a midnight detective to help work it. And that’s me.”

  “Sounds like they’re finally getting smart down there.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “That’s Olivas, right? One of his cases.”

  “He’s the captain, yes, but I’ll be working with a couple detectives and the LAFD arson guys. So, what are you doing?”

  “Montgomery. I have something in play. We’ll see how it—hey, I almost forgot, that guy down in Orange I told you about that was creeping the houses where female students lived? They bagged him.”

  “Fantastic! How?”

  “He creeped a house Saturday night but didn’t know a boyfriend was staying over. He caught the guy, trimmed him up a little bit, then called the police.”

  “Good deal.”

  “Last night I called one of the OPD guys on it—the guy I gave the heads-up to about me watching over Maddie’s place. He said the guy had a camera with an infrared lens. He had photos of the girls sleeping in their beds.”

  “That’s fucked up. That guy should go away and the key should get lost. He’s on a path, you know what I mean?”

  “And that’s the issue. No matter how twisted this is, right now they have him for burglary of an occupied dwelling. That’s it until the DNA comes back on the other hot prowls. But meantime, their worry is he’ll bail out and disappear.”

  “Shit. Well, who is he? A student?”

  “Yeah, he goes to the school. They think he followed girls from the campus to their houses and then came back to creep the places and take his pictures.”

  “I hope they put a rush on the DNA.”

  “They did. And my guy’s going to let me know if he makes bail. The arraignment’s this morning and they have a D.A. who’s going to ask the judge to go high on the bail.”

  “Did your daughter ever know that you were going down there on Saturday nights and watching her house?”

  “Not exactly. It only would have worried her more.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  They ended the conversation after that. Ballard bailed from the freeway at Alvarado and took First Street the rest of the way into downtown. She was early for her meeting and early for most of the staff at the PAB. She had her pick of parking in the garage beneath the police headquarters.

  She ended up on the Robbery-Homicide Division floor twenty minutes before the meeting time set by Olivas. Rather than go into the squad room and have to endure small talk with people she knew were predisposed not to like her, she walked up and down the hallway outside, looking at the framed posters that charted the history of the division. When she had worked for RHD, she had never taken the time to do so. The division was started fifty years earlier after the investigation into the assassination of Robert Kennedy revealed the need for an elite team of investigators to handle the most complex, serious, and sensitive cases—politically or media-wise—that came up.

  She walked by posters displaying photos and narratives on cases ranging from the Manson murders to the Hillside Stranglers to the Night Stalker and the Grim Sleeper—cases that became known around the world and that helped cement the reputation of the LAPD. They also established the city as a place where anything could happen—anything bad.

  There was no doubt an esprit de corps that came with an assignment to the RHD, but Ballard, being a woman, never felt fully a part of it, and that had always bothered her. Now it was a plus, because she didn’t miss what she’d never had.

  She heard talking from the elevator alcove and looked down the hallway to see Nuccio and Spellman, the arson guys from the Fire Department, cross the hall and go through the main door to RHD. They, too, were early—unless Olivas had given them a different start time for the meeting.

  Ballard stepped through another door, which led into the opposite end of the squad room. She headed down the main aisle, passing more historical posters and some movie posters until she reached the Homicide Special unit and the War Room. She entered, hoping that Nuccio and Spellman were the first to arrive and that she could talk to them before Olivas and his men got there.

  But it didn’t work out that way. She knocked once and entered the War Room, only to find the same five men who had been there last time sitting in exactly the same positions. That included Olivas. They were in mid-discussion, which ceased the moment she opened the door. Since everybody was at least fifteen minutes early, Ballard took that as confirmation that Olivas had given the men an earlier start time, perhaps to discuss what to do about her inclusion in the case before she arrived. She assumed that would largely mean Olivas directing the other investigators to keep her at arm’s length. It would be something she needed to redirect.

  “Ballard,” Olivas said. “Have a seat.”

  He pointed to a seat at the end of the rectangular table. It would put her opposite him, with the two LAFD guys to her right and the two RHD guys, Drucker and Ferlita, to her left. On the table was a murder book with very few pages in it and a few other files, one of them thicker than the murder book.

  “We were just talking about you and how we’re going to work this,” Olivas said.

  “Really?” Ballard said. “Before I got here—nice. Any conclusions?” “Well, for starters, we know we have you out there in Hollywood working the late show, so trolling for witnesses is still important. I know you did a couple sweeps out there already, but people in that world come and g
o. It would be good to hit that strip again.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, we were just getting started.”

  “Well, could we start then with an update on where we are on the investigation? What happened with the bottle I gave you guys?”

  “Good idea. Scrapyard, why don’t you summarize where things are?”

  Drucker looked surprised that he had drawn the request from Olivas. He opened a file on the table in front of him and reviewed a few things in it, probably to gather his thoughts, before speaking.

  “Okay, on the bottle,” he said. “We took it into latents as suggested and they did get a twelve-point match to a thumbprint off the victim, Edison Banks. So we are good there. We went out last night to find the bottle collector you got it from, to reinterview him and see if there was anything else to glean from him now that we have confirmation on the bottle. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him and—”

  “What time were you out there?” Ballard asked.

  “About eight,” Drucker said. “We looked around for an hour, couldn’t find him.”

  “I don’t think he gets back to his squat till later,” Ballard said. “I’ll find him tonight.”

  “That would be great,” Drucker said.

  There was an awkwardness to the conversation, an acknowledgment that the men were doing what they should have done from the start—bringing in the expert on the dark hours of Hollywood.

  “Were there other prints on the bottle?” Ballard asked.

  Drucker flipped a page of the report in front of him.

  “Yes,” he said. “We got a palm print. We matched it to the liquor license belonging to Marko Linkov, who operates the Mako store where we believe the bottle was originally sold. We spoke to him and watched the video you told us about. So we are up to speed there.”

  “So it was the woman in the video?” Ballard said.

  “We traced her plate—‘one for you, two for me’—and it turns out that plate was stolen off a same-make and -model Mercedes earlier that day. Our working conclusion is that the woman bought the bottle and gave it to our victim. Whether that was part of the plan to kill him, we don’t know. We have so far not been able to identify her.”

  “What about the ATM? She got cash from there.”

  “She used a counterfeit card with a legit number and PIN belonging to a seventy-two-year-old man living in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

  “Did the ATM have a camera? Did you get a clear shot of her?”

  “You watched the store video,” Ferlita said. “She put her hand over the camera. She knew just where it was.”

  “No picture,” Drucker added.

  Ballard did not respond. She sat back in her chair and considered all the new information. The complexity of the mystery woman’s actions was very suspicious and raised more questions.

  “I don’t get it,” she finally said.

  “Get what?” Olivas asked.

  “I’m assuming this woman is the suspect,” she said. “Stolen plate, stolen ATM card. But for what reason? Why didn’t she buy the bottle somewhere else, where it would never be connected?”

  “Who knows?” Nuccio said.

  “It’s like she wanted to be seen but not identified,” Ballard said. “There’s a psychology there.”

  “Fuck her psychology,” Drucker said. “We just need to find her.”

  “I’m just saying, if we understand her, maybe it helps find her,” Ballard said.

  “Whatever,” Drucker said.

  Ballard let him have his moment before pressing on.

  “Okay, what else?” she said.

  “Isn’t that enough?” Ferlita said. “We’ve had the case two days and most of that was spent catching up to you.”

  “And you wouldn’t have what you have if not for me,” Ballard said. “What about the victim and the probate case? Is that a copy of the file?”

  She pointed to the thick file on the table next to Drucker.

  “It is,” he said. “We’ve gone through it a couple times and haven’t found anything that links up to this. One of those cases where you feel it in your gut but there’s no evidence of anything.”

  “Can I take that, then?” Ballard asked. “I’ll give it a read while I’m in the car tonight watching for the bottle man. Then I’ll be as up to date on this as everybody else.”

  Drucker turned to Olivas for approval.

  “Of course,” Olivas said. “We’ll make you a copy. Knock yourself out.”

  “Has anybody talked to the Banks family?” Ballard asked.

  “We’re going down to San Diego today to interview the brother,” Drucker said.

  “Want to come?” Ferlita asked, a baiting tone in his voice.

  “I’ll pass,” Ballard said. “I’m sure you two can handle it.”

  BOSCH

  44

  Bosch spent Wednesday morning gathering files for a follow-up meeting scheduled with Clayton Manley. The attorney had called the day before and reported that the firm’s litigation committee had agreed to take on Bosch’s case on a commission basis. Bosch pulled all the records that he had kept from the missing-cesium case from a box where he stored documents from the most important cases of his career—most solved, some not.

  He then picked up his phone, made a call, and left a message canceling a physical therapy session for his knee that had been scheduled for that morning. He knew his therapist would take the cancellation out on him when he arrived for the next session. He could already feel the pain from that.

  When his phone buzzed two minutes later he guessed it would be his therapist saying he would be charged for the session anyway, since he had canceled on the day of. But the call turned out to be Mickey Haller.

  “Your boy the clay man called like you said he would.”

  “Who?”

  “Clayton Manley. His e-mail is ‘clayman at Michaelson & Mitchell.’ He asked me to send the pension stuff ’cause he’s taking on your wrongful-death case. You told him you were actually dying?”

  “I may have, yes. So you’re cooperating? He left me a message wanting to meet today. This must be why.”

  “You told me to cooperate, I’m cooperating. You’re not going to let him file something, are you?”

  “It won’t get that far. I’m just trying to get inside that place.”

  “And you’re not telling me why?”

  Bosch got a call-waiting beep. He checked his screen and saw it was Ballard.

  “You don’t need to know yet,” he told Haller. “And I have a call coming in that I should take. I’ll check in about all of this later.”

  “All right, bro—”

  Bosch clicked over to the other call. It sounded like Ballard was in a car.

  “Renée.”

  “Harry, what do you have going today? I want to talk to you about something. Another case.”

  “I have an eleven o’clock meeting downtown. After that I have time. Are you headed to the beach now?”

  “Yes, but I’ll sleep a few hours and then we can meet after your thing. How about lunch?”

  “Musso’s just hit a hundred years old.”

  “Perfect. What time?”

  “Let’s make it one-thirty in case my thing runs long. You’ll get more sleep.”

  “See you there.”

  She disconnected and Bosch went back to work on his own case, putting together a carefully constructed file he would give Clayton Manley. He left the house at ten and headed toward his downtown appointment, knowing from his call with Manley the day before that he was in play at Michaelson & Mitchell.

  Bosch had noted four things during his earlier visit to Manley. One was that in a firm that had at least two floors of lawyers, Manley’s office, as remote as it seemed to be at the end of the hallway, was just doors away from the offices of the firm’s two founding partners. There had to be a reason for that, especially in light of the embarrassing run-in Manley had had with Judge Montgomery. That kind of public chastiseme
nt and humiliation would usually result in an order to clear out your desk and be gone by the end of the day. Instead, Manley maintained a position close to the firm’s top two seats of power.

  The second thing he had noticed was that Manley apparently did not have a personal secretary or a clerk—at least not one sitting outside his office. There was no law firm staff at all in that hallway. Harry assumed that the doors he had passed to the offices of Mitchell and Michaelson led to large suites, each with its own set of clerks and secretaries guarding the entrances to the throne rooms. There had to be a reason Manley had none of that, but Bosch was more interested in how that could affect his plans for the meeting at eleven.

  The last two things Bosch had noted during his first visit were that Manley’s office appeared to have neither a private bathroom nor a printer in plain view. His conclusion was that Manley most likely relied on a secretarial or law-clerk pool somewhere else in the offices, as well as a printer used by lesser members of the firm.

  Not until he was on the 101 heading south did he remember he was supposed to call Mickey Haller back. He put his cell phone on speaker when he made the call. His Jeep had been manufactured about two decades before there was anything known as Bluetooth.

  “Bosch, you dog.”

  “Sorry about cutting you off before.”

  “No problem and you didn’t have to call back. I said my piece.”

  “Well, I wanted to ask you something. Did Manley ask you why you recommended him to me?”

  “Matter of fact, he did.”

  “And?”

  “I can barely hear you, man. You need to get a car that’s quiet on the inside and has a digital sound system.”

  “I’ll think about it. What did you tell Manley about recommending him to me?”

  “I told him that what you wanted to do was really outside my wheelhouse. I also told him I thought he got a bad shake from Judge Montgomery that time. I said there is no call to embarrass a fellow lawyer, no matter what the cause. So I sent you over there because it looked like a case that could get him some positive attention. All that good?”