She now realized that that was the moment. Chastain was bagging something—it had looked like a black button to Ballard—while Olivas had his back turned and was looking at her. Chastain also had his back turned to Dr. J. so she would not have a view of what he was doing either.
Detectives didn’t bag evidence at crime scenes. The criminalists did. On top of that, it had been too early for anyone to be picking up and bagging evidence. The crime scene was fresh, bodies were still in place, and the 3-D crime scene camera had not even been set up. What was Chastain doing? Why was he breaking protocol and removing something from the crime scene before it was properly noted, recorded, and cataloged?
Ballard was exhausted but she picked up her pace, pushing herself harder with each dig of the paddle. Her shoulders, arms, and thighs were vibrating with the strain. She needed to get back. She needed to return to Chastain’s case files to figure out what she had missed.
As she cut into the shore, she forgot about the pain and her plans when she saw a man waiting next to her tent. He was in jeans and a black bomber jacket and wearing black aviators. She knew he was a cop before she could make out the badge on his belt.
Ballard came out of the water and quickly removed the board’s leash. She then wrapped the Velcro ankle strap around the ring on Lola’s collar. She knew Lola could easily break it if she lunged but Ballard was hoping that she would feel the tug of the strap and know she was under Ballard’s control.
“Be easy, girl,” Ballard said.
With the board under her left arm and her fingers in the grip hole, she walked slowly toward the man in the aviators. He looked familiar but she couldn’t place him. Maybe it was just the sunglasses. They were standard with most cops.
He spoke before Ballard had to.
“Renée Ballard? I’ve been trying to reach you. Rogers Carr, Major Crimes.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Well, I’m a detective. Some people, believe it or not, say a pretty good one.”
“Don’t joke with me. Tell me how you found me or you can go fuck off.”
Carr held his hands up in surrender.
“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to piss anybody off. I put out a broadcast on your van and a couple of bicycle cops saw it in the lot. I came, I asked around. I’m here.”
Ballard put her board down next to her tent. She heard a low rumbling, like distant thunder, coming from Lola’s chest. The dog had picked up her vibe.
“You put out a broadcast on my van?” she asked. “It’s not even registered in my name.”
“I know that,” Carr said. “But I met Julia Ballard today. I believe she is your grandmother? I ran her name for registered vehicles and came up with the van. I heard you like surfing and put two and two together.”
He gestured toward the ocean as if it confirmed his investigative logic.
“I was paddleboarding,” Ballard said. “It’s not surfing. What do you want?”
“I just want to talk,” Carr said. “Did you get my message on your cell?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I left you a message.”
“I’m off today. My phone’s off too.”
“I’m on the Chastain case and we are retracing his moves in the last forty-eight hours. You had some interaction with him and I need to ask you about it. That’s it. Nothing sinister, strictly routine. But I have to get it done.”
Ballard reached down and patted Lola on the shoulder, letting her know everything was all right.
“There’s a place down there on Dudley called the Candle,” she said. “It’s on the boardwalk. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”
“Why can’t we go now?” Carr asked.
“Because I need to get a shower and to wash the salt off my dog’s legs. Twenty minutes tops. You can trust me, Carr. I’ll be there.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not if this is as routine as you claim it is. Try the mahimahi tacos, they’re good.”
“Meet you there.”
“Get an outside table. I’m bringing the dog.”
20
Carr was dutifully sitting at a table along the outer railing of the restaurant’s side porch when Ballard showed up. She hooked the leash to the railing so Lola could be next to their table but on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. She then walked around to the porch entrance—crossing behind Carr’s back—and sat down across from the Major Crimes detective. She put her phone on the table. As she passed his back, she had turned on the recording app she used for documenting her own interviews.
Carr didn’t seem to suspect anything. Putting a phone on a table was a routine, though rude, habit with many people. He smiled as Ballard sat down. He looked over the railing at her dog lying on the sidewalk.
“Is that a pit bull?” he asked.
“Boxer mix,” she said. “First things first, Carr. Am I a suspect in any criminal investigation or internal investigation? If so, I want a defense rep.”
Carr shook his head.
“No, not at all,” he said. “If you were a suspect, we’d be having this conversation in the box at Pacific Division. It’s like I told you. I’m on the Chastain thing and I’m part of a team retracing his steps in the last forty-eight hours of his life.”
“So I guess that means you guys don’t have shit,” she said.
“That’s a fair assessment. No suspects in the Dancers shooting, so no suspects on Chastain.”
“And you’re sure they are connected?”
“Seem to be, but I don’t think we’re sure about anything. On top of that, it’s not my call. I’m a gofer on this. Yesterday morning I was booking a bunch of Eastern European bastards for human trafficking. I got yanked off that and put on this.”
Ballard realized where she recognized him from. He was on the video that had followed the report on the Dancers shooting on the newscast she had watched in the station on Friday. She was just about to ask a question about the case, when a waitress came over and asked if Ballard wanted something to drink. She ordered an iced tea. When offered a menu, she said she wasn’t eating and the waitress went away.
“You sure?” Carr asked. “I ordered the fish tacos.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ballard said.
“Well, I’ve been running all day and need the fuel. Besides, you told me to get them.”
“This isn’t a date, Carr. Get to your questions. What do you want?”
Carr raised his hands in surrender again and Ballard noted it as a habit.
“I want to know about that last interaction between you and Chastain,” he said. “But first I need background. You two were former partners, correct?”
“Correct,” Ballard said.
Carr waited for more but soon realized that Ballard was not going to give more than one-word answers—unless he found a way to change that.
“How long did you two work together?” he asked.
“Almost five years,” Ballard said.
“And that ended twenty-six months ago.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re the one who beefed Olivas, aren’t you?”
Once again the blue pipeline had betrayed Ballard. What had transpired between Olivas and Ballard was a personnel matter that was supposed to be confidential. But just as the blue suiters in Hollywood Division roll call knew the story, so, obviously, did the detectives in Major Crimes.
“What’s that have to do with this?” Ballard asked.
“Probably nothing,” Carr said. “But you’re a detective. You know it’s good to know all the facts. The word I got is that when Chastain came to see you at Hollywood Station early Friday morning, things got tense.”
“And that’s based on what? He filed a report?”
“It’s based on a conversation he had afterward with a third party.”
“Let me guess. Olivas.”
“I can’t discuss that. But never mind what Chastain said. How would you characterize the meeting at Hollywood Divis
ion?”
“I wouldn’t even characterize it as a meeting. He came to pick up a witness who had come in and I had interviewed. His name was Alexander Speights. He took a photo on his phone that captured the exact moment of the first shot at the Dancers. Kenny came to collect both.”
“Kenny?”
“Yeah, we were partners once, remember? I called him Kenny. We were very familiar with each other, but we didn’t fuck, if that was going to be your next question.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Well, good for you.”
“What was the confrontation about? His quote to a third party afterward was ‘She’s still pretty mad about things.’”
Ballard shook her head, annoyed. She could feel anger boiling up. She instinctively looked over the railing next to the table and down at her dog. Lola was lying on the concrete, tongue out, watching the procession of people going by on the boardwalk. The crowd was filtering out and off the beach post-sunset.
Lola had been through a lot before Ballard had rescued her. Abuse, starvation, fear—but she persevered and always maintained her calm—until there was a legitimate threat to herself or her owner.
Ballard composed herself.
“Am I okay discussing personnel matters since you believe they are somehow significant to your investigation?” she asked.
“I think yes,” Carr said.
“Okay, then the so-called confrontation occurred when Ken Chastain offered a half-assed apology for totally fucking me over in my harassment complaint two years before. Put that in your report.”
“He said he was sorry. For what?”
“For not doing the right thing. He didn’t back me and he knew he should have. So here we are two years later and I’m out of RHD and working the late show in Hollywood, and he apologizes. Let’s just say the apology wasn’t accepted.”
“So this was just an aside. Nothing to do with the witness or the Dancers investigation.”
“I told you that at the beginning.”
Ballard leaned back as the waitress brought her iced tea and Carr’s tacos. She then squeezed the lemon into her glass as he began to eat.
“You want one of these?” Carr offered.
“I told you, not hungry,” Ballard said.
His starting to eat gave her time to think. She realized that she had dropped her own agenda for the conversation. She had been put on the defensive, largely through her own anger, and had lost sight of what she needed to accomplish with this interview—that is, get more information than she gave up. She suspected that Carr had pushed things in this direction purposely, knocking her off stride at the top of the interview with questions even he knew weren’t germane. It made her vulnerable to the questions that were. She looked at Carr crunching down on a taco and knew she had to be extra cautious now.
“So,” Carr said, his mouth full of food. “Why’d you call Matthew Robison?”
There it was. Now Carr was getting down to business. Ballard realized that he was here to deliver a message.
“How do you know I called Matthew Robison?” she asked.
“We’ve got a task force of eight investigators and two supervisors on this,” Carr said. “I don’t know how every piece of intelligence or evidence is procured. All I know is that you called him last night—several times—and I want to know why. If you don’t want to answer, then maybe we will book that room over at Pacific Division and have a sit-down there.”
He dropped a half-eaten taco to his plate. Things had suddenly gotten very serious.
“I called Robison to check on him,” Ballard said. “I felt responsible. I gave Speights to Chastain, and Speights gave him Robison. Now Chastain is dead. I went to Kenny’s house. They wouldn’t let me get close but I picked up some intel, that the last thing they knew about Kenny was that he was out Friday night, trying to wrangle a witness. I know what ‘wrangle a witness’ means and I thought about Robison. I figured he was the guy Kenny—sorry, Chastain—was trying to wrangle. So I called and left messages and he hasn’t called me back. That’s it.”
She had chosen her words very carefully so as not to reveal her extracurricular activities, including hacking her dead former partner’s computer files. For all she knew, Carr was taping her while she was taping him. She needed to make sure she said nothing that would bring Internal Affairs down on her.
Carr used a napkin to wipe guacamole off the corner of his mouth and then looked at her.
“Are you homeless, Detective Ballard?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” she asked indignantly.
“You list that place two hours up the freeway as your home on personnel records. And it’s on your driver’s license too. But I don’t think you’re there that much. That lady up there didn’t seem to know when you were coming back.”
“That ‘lady’ doesn’t give up information to strangers, badge or no badge. Look, I work the late show. My day begins when your day ends. What’s it matter where I sleep or when I sleep? I do my job. The department requires me to have a permanent residence and I have one. And it’s not two hours up the coast when I drive it. Do you have any real questions?”
“Yes, I do.”
Carr picked up his plate and handed it to a busboy who was walking by their table.
“Okay,” he said. “For the record, let’s go over your activities Friday night.”
“You want my alibi now?” she asked.
“If you have one. But like I said at the top, you are not a suspect, Detective Ballard. We have the trajectory of the shot that killed Chastain. You would’ve had to be standing on a step stool to make the shot.”
“And do you have time of death yet?”
“Between eleven and one.”
“That’s easy. I was on shift. I went to roll call at eleven, then I went to work.”
“You leave the station?”
Ballard tried to remember her movements. So much had happened in the past seventy-two hours that it was hard to recall what happened when. But once she got a bead on things, it all fell into place.
“Yes, I left,” she said. “Right after roll call, I left and went to Hollywood Presbyterian to check on a victim from an attempted murder I’m working. I took photos, and a nurse over there named Natasha helped me. Sorry, I didn’t get her last name. I never thought I’d need it to confirm an alibi.”
“That’s okay,” Carr said. “When did you clear the hospital?”
“A little after midnight. I then went to look for my victim’s crib. I had an address on Heliotrope and it turned out to be a homeless camp. She lived in an RV there but somebody had taken it over and was squatting in it, so I called for backup so I could take a look around inside. Officers Herrera and Dyson got the call.”
“Okay. And after that?”
“I returned to the station by one-thirty. I remember driving by the Dancers and seeing the crime scene vans still out there. So when I got back, I went into the watch office to see what the lieutenant knew about it. I remember seeing the clock in there and it was one-thirty.”
Carr nodded.
“And you were tucked in for the rest of the night?” he asked.
“Hardly,” Ballard said. “I got a line from a credit-card security office in India on a motel room being used as a drop for stolen credit-card purchases. I went over there and busted a guy. This time it was Officers Taylor and Smith backing me up and then the suspect’s parole agent came in as well. His name is Compton, if you need it. Inventorying all the shit in the motel room and booking the suspect carried me through to dawn and end of shift.”
“Great, and all easily checked.”
“Yeah, for someone who isn’t even a suspect, I’m glad I wasn’t home sleeping all night. I’d be in big trouble.”
“Listen, Detective, I know you’re all pissed off but this had to be done. If we end up taking a guy down for Chastain, the first thing his lawyer will look at is whether we ran a full field investigation and checked out other possibles. You an
d Chastain had a falling-out. A good defense lawyer could make hay with that at trial, and all I’m doing here is getting us into a position to head that off. I’m not the bad guy. I’m helping to make sure that we get a guilty verdict on whoever did do this.”
His explanation seemed plausible on the surface but Ballard couldn’t buy in. She had to remember he was part of an investigation headed up by Lieutenant Olivas, a man who wouldn’t mind her being completely banished from the department.
“Oh, good to know,” she said.
“Thanks for the sarcasm,” Carr said. “And for what it’s worth, I think you got royally screwed on your beef with Olivas. I know it, everybody knows it, just like everybody knows he’s the kind of guy who would do what you said he did.”
He did the surrendering hands thing again.
“Now, would I say that if I was a bad guy?” he said. “Especially when I know you’re recording every word I say?”
He nodded toward her phone on the table.
Ballard picked up her phone, opened the screen, and closed the recording. She shoved the phone halfway into one of the back pockets of her jeans.
“Happy now?” she asked.
“I don’t care if you recorded me or not,” he said.
She looked at him a moment.
“What’s your story, Carr?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“No story,” he said. “I’m a cop. And funny, but I don’t like it when cops get murdered. I want to contribute but they put me off on you, and I know it’s bullshit, but it’s my part in this, so I am going to do my part.”
“They?”
“Olivas and my lieutenant.”
“Other than spinning their wheels with me, do they have anything at all to go on?”
“Near as I can tell, nothing. They don’t know who the fuck they’re looking for.”
Ballard nodded and thought about how much she could or should trust Carr. What he had said about her complaint against Olivas went a long way with her. But she knew he had either been shut out of some of the case information or was holding back. If it was the former, that would be par for the course. Task force investigations were often compartmentalized. If it was the latter, then she was talking to a man she couldn’t trust.