The Night Fire

by Michael Connelly

  “And no photo.”

  “Nothing clear. I have the store’s video on my laptop if you want to see.”

  “Yes.”

  Ballard pulled her laptop out of her backpack and opened it on the table. She brought up the video, started playing it, and turned the screen so Bosch could see it. He watched the woman park her car and enter, use the ATM, buy the bottle of vodka, and then leave. He noticed a height scale on the frame of the store’s door. With the stilettos, the woman was almost five-ten on the scale.

  Her height may have been discernible but her face was never clearly seen on the video. But Bosch watched her mannerisms and the way she walked when she went back to the Mercedes. He knew that she could have been wearing all manner of disguises, from a wig to hip padding, but the way someone walked was usually always the same. The woman had a short stride that may have been dictated by her stiletto heels and skintight leather pants, but there was something else.

  Bosch moved the cursor to the Rewind arrow on the screen and backed up the video so he could watch her get out of the Mercedes and enter the store. Her moving toward the camera gave another angle on her gait.

  “She’s slightly intoed,” Bosch said. “On the left.”

  “What?” Ballard asked.

  Bosch reversed the video again and turned the screen back to Ballard before hitting the Play button. He leaned over to see the screen and narrate.

  “Watch her walk,” he said. “Her left leg is slightly intoed. You can tell by the front point of those shoes. It’s pointing inward.”

  “Like pigeon-toed,” Ballard said.

  “Doctors call it intoed. My daughter had it but she grew out of it. But not everybody does. This woman—it’s only on her left. You see it?”

  “Yes, barely. So what’s it get us? Maybe she was faking it to fool observant investigators like you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Now Bosch went into his briefcase and pulled out his laptop. While it was booting up, the waiter brought him an iced tea. Ballard stayed with just water.

  “Okay, look at this,” Bosch said.

  He pulled up the surveillance video from Grand Park and started playing it. He turned the screen to Ballard.

  “This is the morning Judge Montgomery got murdered,” he said. “This is him coming down the steps on his way to the courthouse. Check out the woman walking ahead of him. That’s Laurie Lee Wells.”

  They watched silently for a few moments. The woman was dressed in a white blouse and tan slacks. She had blond hair, a thin build, and was wearing what looked like flats or sandals.

  Bosch continued his narration.

  “They both go behind the elevator building,” he said. “Her first, then him. She comes out but he doesn’t. He was stabbed three times. She keeps going to the courthouse.”

  “She’s intoed,” Ballard said. “I see it. On her left side.”

  The condition was more clearly seen when the woman turned and started walking directly toward the courthouse and the camera.

  “One blond-haired, one black-haired,” Ballard said. “You think it’s the same woman?”

  “Same walk in both videos,” Bosch said. “Yeah, I do.”

  “What do we have here?”

  “Well, we have two different cases with the same law firm involved. A law firm with an attorney who had a grudge against Judge Montgomery. A law firm also representing the brother who had at least a legal grudge against Edison Banks. On top of that, this firm has represented a known organized-crime figure from Las Vegas—where, by the way, the woman in black’s ATM number was stolen from.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy named Dominick Butino, an enforcer known as ‘Batman,’ but not because he likes comic books and superheroes. And remember that Clayton Manley—the lawyer Montgomery threw out of his courtroom—is still at the firm. They have him hidden away under the watchful eyes of the founding partners. But when you have a lawyer who fucks up like that and brings shame to your firm, what do you usually do?”

  “Cut ties.”

  “Exactly. Get rid of him. But they don’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he knows something. He knows something that could bring the house down.”

  “So what you’re getting at here is that this law firm set up these hits. Manley was part of it and they don’t want him running around loose,” Ballard said.

  “We have no evidence of that, but, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “A female hit man they probably connected with through their organized-crime clientele.”

  “Woman.”

  “What?”

  “Hit woman.”

  The waiter brought their sand dabs and Bosch and Ballard didn’t speak until he was gone.

  “Didn’t the original detectives on Montgomery track that woman down?” Ballard asked. “Looks like she was wearing a juror badge.”

  “They went to the jury pool and talked to her,” Bosch said. “She said she didn’t see anything.”

  “And they just believed her?”

  “She told them she was wearing earbuds and listening to music. She didn’t hear the judge get attacked behind her. They bought it, dropped her right there.”

  “But also, wouldn’t she have had blood on her? You said the judge was stabbed three times and she’s wearing a white blouse.”

  “You’d think so, but this was a pro hit. Montgomery was stabbed three times under the right arm. In a wound cluster the size of a half dollar. The blade cut the axillary artery—one of the three main bleeders in the body. It’s a perfect spot because the arterial spray is contained under the arm. The assassin walks away clean. The victim bleeds out.”

  “How do you know so much about this?”

  Bosch shrugged.

  “I had training when I was in the army.”

  “Do I want to hear why?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “So then what do we do now about this hit woman?”

  “We go find her.”

  46

  The first move they made was to find out whether Laurie Lee Wells was Laurie Lee Wells. Bosch had pulled the witness report on Wells out of the murder book files and shared it with Ballard. The report was written by Orlando Reyes, who had conducted the interview. It said he had routinely run Wells’s name through the NCIS database and had found no criminal record. This was expected; L.A. County did not allow people with criminal records to serve on juries. No follow-up was noted in the report.

  Ballard and Bosch drove up to the Valley and the address on the report after finishing their sand dabs. With Bosch driving, Ballard looked up Laurie Lee Wells on IMDb and other entertainment databases and determined that there was a legitimate actress with the name who had had limited success in guest appearances on various television shows over the past years.

  “You know there’s a TV show on HBO about a hit man who wants to become an actor?” Ballard said.

  “I don’t have HBO,” Bosch said.

  “I watch it at my grandmother’s. Anyway, Laurie Lee Wells was on it.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s weird. The show is about a hit man wanting to be an actor. It’s a dark comedy. And here we have an actress who might be a hit woman.”

  “This isn’t dark comedy. And I doubt Laurie Lee Wells the actress is the Laurie Lee Wells we’re looking for. Once we confirm that, we need to figure out how and why her identity was taken and used by our suspect.”

  “Roger that.”

  Laurie Lee Wells the actress lived in a condominium on Dickens Street in Sherman Oaks. It was a security building, so they had to make first contact through an intercom at the gate—never the best way to do it. Ballard had the badge, so she handled the introduction. Wells was home and agreed to see the two investigators. But then she did not buzz the gate unlocked for nearly three minutes, and Bosch guessed she was cleaning up—hiding or flushing illegal substances.

  Finally, the gate buz
zed and they entered. They took an elevator to the fourth floor and found a woman waiting by an open door. She resembled the driver’s license photo they had pulled up earlier. But Bosch realized immediately she was not the woman they had studied on the videos. She was too short. This woman was barely five feet tall; even four-inch stilettos would not make her as tall as the woman who hit the five-ten mark on the door of Mako’s.

  “Laurie?” Ballard said.

  She wanted to keep the interview friendly, not adversarial, and going with first names was prudent.

  “That’s me,” Wells said.

  “Hi, I’m Renée and this is my partner, Harry,” Ballard said.

  Wells smiled but looked a long time at Bosch, not able to hide her surprise at his age and the fact that he wasn’t doing the talking.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I hate to say this because I’ve actually played this part in a TV show, but ‘What’s this about?’”

  “Well, we’re hoping you can help us,” Ballard said. “Can we sit down?”

  “Oh, sure. Sorry.”

  Wells pointed to the living room, which had a couch and two chairs clustered around a fireplace with fake logs in it.

  “Thank you,” Ballard said. “Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. You are Laurie Lee Wells, DOB February twenty-third, 1987, correct?”

  “That’s me,” Wells said.

  “Have you been on jury duty any time in the last five years?”

  Wells furrowed her brow. It was a question from left field.

  “I can’t—I don’t think so,” she said. “The last time was a long time ago.”

  “Definitely not last year?” Ballard asked.

  “No, definitely not for a long time. What does it—”

  “Were you interviewed last year by two LAPD detectives investigating a murder?”

  “What? What is this? Should I call a lawyer or something?”

  “You don’t need a lawyer. We think someone was impersonating you.”

  “Oh, well, yes—that’s been going on for almost two years now.”

  Ballard paused and sent a glance toward Bosch. Now they were the ones thrown a curveball.

  “What do you mean by that?” Ballard finally asked.

  “Someone stole my ID and has been impersonating me for two years,” Wells said. “They even filed my taxes last year and got my return, and it’s like nobody can do anything about it. They ran up so much debt I’ll never be able to buy a car or get a loan. I have to stay here because I already own it, but now my credit is shit and nobody will believe it’s not me. I tried to buy a car and they said no way, even though I had letters from the credit-card companies.”

  “That’s terrible,” Ballard said.

  “Do you know how your identity was stolen?” Bosch asked.

  “When I went to Vegas,” Wells said. “My wallet got stolen when I was at a show. Like pickpocketed or something.”

  “How do you know it happened there?” Bosch asked.

  Wells’s face turned red with embarrassment.

  “Because I was at one of those shows where men are the dancers,” she said. “I had to pay to go in—it was a bachelorette party—and then when I wanted to get my wallet out to give a tip to the dancers, it was gone. So it happened there.”

  “And you reported it to the LVPD?” Ballard asked.

  “I did, but nothing ever happened,” Wells said. “I never got anything back, and then somebody started applying for credit cards in my name and I’m fucked for the rest of my life. Excuse my language.”

  “Do you happen to have a copy of the crime report?” Ballard asked.

  “I’ve got a ton of copies because I have to send one to explain things every time I get ripped off,” Wells said. “Hold on.”

  She got up and went out of the room. Ballard and Bosch were left to stare at each other.

  “Vegas,” Ballard said.

  Bosch nodded.

  Wells soon came back and gave Ballard a copy of the two-page crime report she had filed in Las Vegas.

  “Thank you,” Ballard said. “We won’t take too much more of your time but can I ask, are you getting regular reports on the usage of your name by the identity thief?”

  “Not all the time, but the detective will call me every now and then and tell me what the thief is up to,” Wells said.

  “What detective is that?” Ballard asked.

  “Detective Kenworth with Vegas Metro Police,” Wells said. “He’s the only one I’ve ever dealt with.”

  “‘Ken … worth,’” Ballard said. “Is that two names or one?”

  “One. I don’t remember his first name. I think it’s on the report.”

  “Well, what did he tell you was going on? Was it just local purchases?”

  “No, she moved around. It was travel and hotels and restaurants. She kept applying for new cards because as soon as we got a fraud alert we’d shut it down. But then a month later she’d have another card.”

  “What an awful story,” Ballard said.

  “And all because of a bachelorette party too,” Wells said.

  “Do you remember the name of the place where this happened?” Bosch asked. “Was it at a casino?”

  “No, it wasn’t a casino,” Wells said. “It was called Devil’s Den and it was usually a strip bar for men. I mean, the dancers were women—but on Sunday nights it’s for women.”

  “Okay,” Ballard said.

  “Do you vote?” Bosch asked.

  It was another question out of the blue but Wells answered.

  “I know I should,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem to matter in California.”

  “So you’re not registered to vote,” Bosch said.

  “Not really,” Wells answered. “But why do you ask me that? What does it have to do with—”

  “We think the person who stole your ID may have impersonated you during jury duty,” Bosch said. “You have to be registered to vote to be included in the jury pool. She may have registered to vote as you and then gotten picked for jury duty.”

  “God, I wonder if she made me a Republican or a Democrat.”

  Back in the car Bosch and Ballard talked it out before making their next move.

  “We need to get the address off her voter registration,” Bosch said. “It will tell us where the jury notice would have gone.”

  “I can handle that,” Ballard said. “But what are we thinking here? This whole setup—this hit—relied on the killer getting a jury summons? That seems … I don’t know. Like a long shot, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, but maybe not as long as you think. My daughter got a jury summons less than two months after she registered to vote. It’s supposed to be random selection. But every time they pull out a new pool of jurors, they winnow out those who have recently served, or who haven’t responded to summons in the past and have been referred for action. So the new voter has a better chance than others to get the call.”

  Ballard nodded in a way that showed she was unconvinced.

  “We also don’t know how long this was planned or how it was planned,” Bosch continued. “Laurie gets her wallet stolen last year and maybe they applied for the full setup. A voter registration card could be useful in a scam as a second ID. The thief could have had this idea for a long time and then things fell into place.”

  “We have to find out whether there’s a connection between Devil’s Den and Batman Butino.”

  “And talk to the detective with Metro Vegas. See how much he tracked this.”

  “Maybe he got photos or video of the phony Laurie Lee Wells,” said Ballard. “What else?”

  “We need to talk to Orlando Reyes,” Bosch said. “He interviewed her.”

  “That’s what I don’t get. She killed the judge and then just reported for jury duty? Why? Why didn’t she get the hell out of there?”

  “To complete the job.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “To complete the cover. If she had walked in one doo
r of the courthouse and out the other, they would have known it was her. She stayed around so Reyes could find her, interview her, and move on.”

  “It’s like buying the Tito’s vodka. She could have done it anywhere, but she bought it two blocks from where Banks was murdered—and at a place she knew had cameras that we would eventually get to. I said this to Olivas and the others. There is a psychology there. She’s a show-off. I think she gets off on hiding in plain sight. I don’t know why but it’s there.”

  Bosch nodded. He believed Ballard was correct in her assessment.

  “It will be interesting to hear Reyes’s take on her,” he said.

  “I thought those guys weren’t talking to you,” Ballard said. “Maybe I should take Reyes.”

  “No. You do and the case gets grabbed by them and RHD. Let me do it. When I explain that this could end up being very embarrassing for him, I think he’ll agree to meet me off campus and talk.”

  “Perfect. You take him and I’ll work on the other stuff.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, my badge gives me better access on all of it. You take Reyes, I’ll take the rest.”

  Bosch started the Jeep so he could get her back to her own car in Hollywood.

  “And we also need to figure out how to approach Clayton Manley,” he said as he pulled away from the curb.

  “I thought you said he was onto you,” Ballard said. “You’re not thinking about going back in there posing as a client, are you?”

  “No, that’s burned. But if I can get Manley somewhere by himself, I might be able to lay it on the line for him and make him see that his options are dwindling.”

  “I’d like to be there for that.”

  “I want you there showing off your badge and gun. Then he’ll know his ass is hanging out there in the wind.”

  “The times you were with him in his office …”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t do anything I need to know about, right? Nothing that could cause blowback on the case?”

  Bosch thought about what he should tell her. About what he did and what could be proved that he did.

  “The only thing I did was read an e-mail that came up on his screen,” he finally said. “I told you this before. It was when he left the room to make copies. I heard a ding and looked at his e-mail and it was from his boss, Michaelson, calling him a fool for letting a fox into the henhouse. That sort of thing.”