She decided to look through everything to see if anything else stood out to her as having been tampered with. The phone was now useless. It had long since used up its charge. She opened the tip apron next and saw what appeared to be the same contents as before, a fold of currency, more cigarettes, a lighter, and a small notebook. She took out the money and counted it. Not a dollar was missing, and there was no clue as to what Chastain had been up to.
Ballard pulled out her phone. She took off a glove, typed in Eric Higgs, and fired the name into her search engine. She got a variety of responses. There was an artist, a college football player, a chemistry professor at the University of California, Irvine, and several others. But none of the people with the name connected to Ballard on any level of significance.
She next typed VMD into the search engine and got numerous results, including references to Visual Molecular Dynamics, Veterinary Medicines Directorate, and Vector Meson Dominance. Far down the list, she saw the words Vacuum Metal Deposition, and the explanatory line beneath it grabbed her attention with one word.
The physical process of coating evidence with very thin metal film …
Ballard remembered reading something about this process. She clicked on the link to an article and started reading. VMD was a forensic technique in which applications of gold and zinc to evidence in a low-pressure environment revealed latent fingerprints on objects and materials usually deemed too porous to produce prints. The process had been successful in applications on plastics, patterned metals, and some woven fabrics.
The article was two years old and from a website called Forensic Times. It said the technique was complicated and required a sizable pressure chamber and other equipment, not to mention the expensive metals gold and zinc. Therefore, its study and application were primarily carried out on the university level and in private forensic labs. At the time of the article, it said neither the FBI nor any major metropolitan police department in the United States had a VMD chamber and that this was hindering law enforcement use of the technique in criminal cases.
The article listed a handful of private labs and universities where the application of VMD was either offered or being studied. Among these was UC Irvine, where Ballard had just determined that an Eric Higgs was a chemistry professor.
Ballard quickly repackaged all of Cynthia Haddel’s property back into the brown paper bag and resealed it with tape from a dispenser on the counter. She then carried the bag back to the detective bureau, where she went to work tracking down Professor Higgs.
Twenty minutes later, and thanks to the University Police Department, she placed a call to a lab assigned to the professor. Ballard judged the voice that answered as being too young to be a professor.
“I’m looking for Professor Higgs.”
“He’s gone.”
“For the day?”
“Yeah, for the day.”
“Who is this?”
“Well, who is this?”
“Detective Renée Ballard, Los Angeles Police Department. It’s very important that I reach Professor Higgs. Can you help me?”
“Well, I …”
“Who is this?”
“Uh, Steve Stilwell. I’m the grad assistant in the lab.”
“Is this the VMD lab?”
“Well, it’s not exactly a VMD lab, but we have the setup here, yeah.”
Ballard grew more excited with the confirmation.
“Do you have a cell phone for Professor Higgs or any way I could reach him?”
“I have his cell. I guess I could … I’m not sure it’s allowed.”
“Mr. Stilwell, I’m calling about a murder investigation. Do you understand? Either give me that number or call Professor Higgs yourself and ask permission to give it to me. I need you to do one or the other right now.”
“Okay, okay, let me get the number. I have to look it up on this phone so I won’t hear you if you say anything.”
“Just hurry, Mr. Stilwell.”
Ballard couldn’t contain herself while waiting. She got up and started pacing one of the aisles in the detective bureau while Stilwell got the number out of his phone. Finally, he started to call it out as he read it off his phone screen. Ballard raced back to her workstation and wrote the number down. She disconnected the call with Stilwell just as he brought the phone back to his mouth and said, “Got it?”
She dialed the number and a man answered after only one ring.
“Professor Higgs?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Ballard. I’m a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.”
There was a long moment before he responded.
“You worked with Ken Chastain, didn’t you?”
Ballard felt a bolt of pure energy go through her chest.
“Yes, I did.”
“I thought you might call. He told me that if anything happened to him, I could trust you.”
38
It was a brutal drive in heavy traffic down to Irvine in Orange County. Professor Higgs had agreed to come back to the school and meet Ballard at his lab. Along the way, she thought about the lead she was chasing. Ken Chastain had very clearly left it for her to find. He knew he was on dangerous ground and he had a backup plan that would kick in if something happened to him. Ballard was that plan. By redirecting the Haddel property back to her, Chastain guaranteed that she would get it after the weekend and would find the clue leading to Professor Higgs.
When she finally got to UC Irvine, she had to call Higgs twice on his cell to get directions to the Natural Sciences Building, where he was on the fourth floor.
The building seemed empty as Ballard entered, and she found Higgs alone in his lab. He was tall and gangly and younger than Ballard had expected. He greeted her warmly and seemed relieved of some weight or concern.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I’m so damn busy I don’t have time to read a newspaper or watch TV. I didn’t know what happened until yesterday, when I called the number he gave me and his wife told me. It’s an awful thing and I hope to god this had nothing to do with it.”
He gestured toward the back of the lab, where there was a steel pressure tank about the size of a washer-and-dryer stack.
“I’m here to try to find that out,” Ballard said. “You spoke to his wife?”
“Yes, she answered the phone,” Higgs said. “She told me what had happened and I was completely stunned.”
It meant that Chastain had given Higgs his home number, not his office line or his cell number. This was significant to Ballard because it was another indication—along with his actions at the crime scene and his handling of the Haddel evidence—that Chastain was trying to keep at least some of his moves on the Dancers case below the surface and untraceable through normal measures.
“Is there a place where we could sit down and talk?” Ballard asked.
“Sure, I’ve got an office,” Higgs said. “Follow me.”
Higgs led the way through a series of interconnecting labs within the general lab and into a small and cluttered office big enough for a desk and single visitor’s chair. They sat down and Ballard asked him to tell the story of his interaction with Chastain from the start.
“You mean, go back to the first case?” he asked.
“I guess so,” Ballard said. “What was the first case?”
“Well, the first time I ever spoke to Detective Chastain was when he called me up about two years ago. He said he had read about VMD in the Journal of Forensic Sciences or some other journal—I can’t remember which one—and he wanted to know if the process could raise fingerprints on a basketball.”
Higgs’s story was already ringing true for Ballard. She knew from her years as Chastain’s partner that he prided himself on staying up on advances and techniques in forensics, interrogation, and legal protocol. Some of the other detectives even nicknamed him “The Scholar” because of his extracurricular reading. It would not have been unusual for Chastain to pick up the phone and call a scientis
t directly when he had a question about evidence.
“Did he say what the case was?” Ballard asked.
“Yeah, it was a shooting on a playground,” Higgs said. “A kid got into an argument during a one-on-one game, and the other kid grabbed a gun out of his backpack at the side of the court and shot him. So Detective Chastain thought the shooter had to have left prints on the ball because he had been playing with it, you know? But the police lab said they couldn’t do it because the ball was rubber and had a dimpled and porous surface. He asked me to give it a try.”
“And what happened?”
“I like a challenge. I told him to bring it down here, and we tried but we couldn’t pull anything up that was usable. I mean, we got some ridges here and there but nothing that he could take back and put through the latent print archives.”
“So, then what?”
“Well, that was sort of it. Until he called me last week and asked if he could send me something he wanted to try to get a print off of.”
“What was it?”
“He called it a thumb button.”
“When exactly was this call?”
“Early Friday. I was in the car, heading here, and he called my cell. I can check my phone log if you want the exact time.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
Higgs pulled the phone out of his pocket and went into the call list. He scrolled through the listing of calls going back to early Friday morning.
“This is it,” he said. “Came in at seven-forty-one a.m. Friday.”
“Can I see the number?” Ballard asked.
Higgs held the phone out across the desk, and Ballard leaned forward to read the screen. The number was 213-972-2971, and Ballard knew it wasn’t Chastain’s cell. It was the general number at Hollywood Station. Chastain had used a landline in the property room to call Higgs at the same time he was going through the evidence bag containing Cynthia Haddel’s property.
“What exactly did he ask you when he called?” Ballard asked.
“He said he was dealing with emergency circumstances on a big case,” Higgs said. “And he wanted to know if I could VMD something as small as a dime and get a print off it.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Well, I first asked what material we were talking about, and he said it was a metal button that had an uneven surface because of an imprint. I told him all I could do was try. I told him that once, I actually got a print off a dime, right off of Roosevelt’s jaw. So he said he would send it down and that I should only talk to him about it.”
It was clear to Ballard that by 7:41 a.m. Friday morning, less than eight hours after the massacre at the Dancers, Chastain already knew or was at least suspicious that there was police involvement. He took measures to hide his suspicions and protect himself—using the station’s phone instead of his own to call Higgs and leaving behind the evidence bag containing his business card with Higgs’s name written on the back.
“So he mailed it to you or delivered it?” she asked.
“Mailed it. It came Saturday by certified mail,” Higgs said.
“Do you by any chance still have that packaging?”
Ballard was thinking in terms of being able to document the chain of custody of the evidence. It could become important if there was a trial. Higgs thought for a moment and then shook his head.
“No, it’s trashed. The cleaners come through here on Saturday night.”
“And where is the button?”
“Let me go get it. I’ll be right back.”
Higgs got up and left the office. Ballard waited. She heard a drawer in the lab open and close and then the professor came back. He handed her a small plastic evidence bag containing what looked like a small black cap that was threaded on the inside of its edges.
Ballard was sure it was the bag and object that she had glimpsed Chastain with at the crime scene early Friday morning. Chastain had obviously recognized what it was and knew its significance.
She turned the bag to study the object. It was actually slightly smaller than a dime, with a flat head and a word stamped across it.
Lawmaster
It was a word familiar to Ballard but she couldn’t immediately place it. She pulled her phone so she could plug the word into a search engine.
“It came with a note,” Higgs said. “In the package. It said, if something happens, trust Renée Ballard. So when you called—”
“Do you still have that note?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, I believe I do. Somewhere around here. I’ll have to find it but I know I didn’t toss it.”
“If you could, I’d like to see it.”
Ballard pressed the search button and got two hits on the word. Lawmaster was the name of a motorcycle used by Judge Dredd in a series of comic books and movies. It was also a company that made leather equipment belts and holsters geared toward the law enforcement community.
Ballard clicked on the link to the company’s website as she remembered the brand. Lawmaster specialized in leather holsters, particularly the kind of shoulder holsters favored by the gunslingers in the department—the testosterone-enhanced hard chargers who put form over function and were willing to take the discomfort of having leather straps crisscross their backs over the simple ease and comfort of a far less macho hip holster.
Most of these gunslingers were the young up-and-comers who never missed a chance to check their looks in a mirror or take their jackets off at a crime scene to impress onlookers as well as themselves. Still, there were also some old-school cowboys who preferred the gunslinger look. And Ballard knew Lieutenant Robert Olivas was among them.
The website showed a variety of shoulder holsters, and Ballard clicked on one that counterbalanced the gun under one arm with double ammo clips under the other. She enlarged the accompanying photo and studied the workmanship of the holster. She saw several adjustment points for giving the holster a custom fit and positioning the weapon at an angle offering easy access to its wearer. These adjustment points were held in place by shallow screws and threaded black caps with the Lawmaster logo stamped on them.
It was a cascade moment, when all the details of the investigation came together. Ballard now knew what Chastain knew and understood his moves in surreptitiously taking evidence from the crime scene and attempting to analyze and safeguard it from afar.
Ballard held up the plastic bag containing the Lawmaster cap.
“Professor Higgs, were you able to get a print off this?”
“Yes, I was. I got one good solid print.”
39
Ballard stayed in the Miyako again Wednesday night, taking sushi for dinner in her room once more before going to sleep. She had enough clothes in her bag for another day without replacement and in the morning made the quick drive over to the Piper Technical Center, which was home to the Latent Print Unit as well as the department’s aero squadron.
Every detective with more than a few years on the job has procured a tech in each of the forensic disciplines who can be counted on for an occasional favor or a jump in the waiting line when needed. Some of the disciplines are more important than others because they are more common to crimes. Fingerprints are found at just about every crime scene and therefore the Latent Print Unit was the most important place to have a connection in the entire forensic sandbox. Ballard’s go-to was a supervisor named Polly Stanfield.
Five years earlier, Ballard and Stanfield had worked a difficult case where fingerprints were the link between three separate sex-assault murders, but while the prints from each scene matched, Stanfield could find no match in the various databases that housed print records around the world. Only the relentless efforts of both women finally resulted in an arrest when Stanfield surreptitiously accessed a database of rental applications for a massive apartment complex in the Valley that was geographically central to the murders. Renters at the complex were required to give fingerprints with their applications, but nothing was ever done w
ith them. It was just a way of discouraging applicants who might lie about having criminal records. Once Stanfield’s work identified the suspect, Ballard and her then-partner, Chastain, had to find another way to come up with his name so as not to reveal Stanfield’s hack of the apartment complex’s rental applications. They resorted to the tried-and-true anonymous call from a burner cell revealing the suspect’s identity to a department crime-tip line. And no one ever knew the difference.
Ballard got Stanfield in the divorce. That is, when she and Chastain split as partners, most people in the department and ancillary agencies chose a side to stand with. Stanfield, who, in a long career in law enforcement, had encountered her share of overly aggressive men and sexual harassment, sided with Ballard.
Ballard knew Stanfield worked seven to four, and she was there at the door of the LPU with two lattes at 6:55 a.m. An earlier phone call between the two women had covered the basics of what needed to be done, so Stanfield was not surprised by Ballard’s appearance or by the high sugar content of her latte. It had been special-ordered.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Stanfield said by way of a greeting.
As a supervisor, Stanfield had a small cubbyhole office but it was still better than the open work pod most of the other print techs got. Stanfield was well versed in how to deal with what Ballard was bringing in. The VMD process resulted in a fingerprint being temporarily identifiable on a surface of the holster cap. It had then been photographed under oblique lighting conditions by Professor Higgs.
What Ballard had for Stanfield was a photograph of a thumbprint.
Stanfield began her work with a magnifying glass, looking closely at the photo to confirm there was a usable print.
“This thumb is really good,” she finally said. “Good, clear ridges. But it’s going to take a while. It’s a scan-and-trace job.”
That was more than a hint from Stanfield that she would prefer not to have Ballard looking over her shoulder the whole time. She needed to scan the photo into her computer, then go through a tedious process of using a program to trace the lines and swirls of the thumbprint so that a clean print could be run through the Automated Fingerprint Index System. There were more than seventy million prints in the AFIS data bank. Sending a print through did not bring instantaneous results. And often the results, when they came, were not singular. A search often kicked out several similar prints, and that required the print tech to make the final comparison under a microscope to determine if there was a match.