The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,103

distract her. He made a swipe at the phone but she was ready and grabbed it off the table, his hand brushing over hers. She stood up, her chair falling back against the aluminum wall.

“You want to fight me for it?” she asked. “I’ve gotten strong since you did what you did to me. I will kick your fucking ass.”

Olivas remained seated. He held his hands up, palms out.

“Easy, Ballard,” he said. “Easy. This is crazy. I’m good with what we said. The deal.”

The door to the CIV opened and Teresa Hohman looked in, drawn by the clattering of the chair against the vehicle’s thin wall.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked.

“We’re fine,” Olivas said.

Hohman looked at Ballard. She wasn’t taking Olivas’s word for it. Ballard nodded, and only then did Hohman step back and close the door.

Ballard looked back at Olivas.

“So we have a deal?” she asked.

“I said yes,” he said.

Ballard turned off the recording app and put her phone in her pocket.

“Except now I want something else,” she said. “A couple of things, actually.”

“Jesus Christ,” Olivas said. “What?”

“If Elvin Kidd decides to talk, I do the interview.”

“Not a problem—but he’ll never give it up. That’ll get him killed inside. I already heard he told FID to pound fucking sand when they tried to question him about his own wife getting killed. No interview. He wants a lawyer.”

“I’m just saying: my case, my interview—if there is one.”

“Fine. What’s the other thing?”

“The arson case. Put me back on it.”

“I can’t just—”

“It was a midnight crime, you need a midnight detective. That’s what you say and what you do. You tell the others on the case that there’s a briefing tomorrow at eight to bring me up to date.”

“Okay, fine. But it’s still run out of RHD and my guys are lead.”

“Fine. Then I think we’re done here.”

“And I want the summary report on this on my desk before that meeting.”

“Not a problem.”

She turned toward the door. Olivas spoke to her as she was stepping out.

“You watch yourself, Ballard.”

She looked back in at him. It was an impotent threat. She smiled at him without humor.

“You do that too, Captain,” she said.

43

It took Ballard most of her shift after roll call that night to write up the final summary report on the Hilton case. It had to be complete but carefully worded on three fronts. One was to keep Harry Bosch in the clear, and the second was to include Olivas in a way that would be acceptable under lines of command and protocol. The third front was actually the most difficult. She had left her direct supervisor, Lieutenant McAdams, in the dark through the entire investigation. Her saying in the report that she had been operating under the direction of Captain Olivas covered a lot of things but did nothing to lessen the damage that her actions would do to her relationship with McAdams. She knew that she was going to have to sit down with him sooner rather than later and try to smooth things over. It would not be a pleasant conversation.

Her only break came when she got up from the computer to change her focus and relax her eyes. She took her cruiser and went over to the taco truck to pick up some food to go.

Digoberto was once again working alone. But at the moment at least he was busy with a line of nightingales—three young women and two men—fresh out of a club that had just closed at four a.m. Ballard waited her turn and listened to their insipid chatter about the scene they had just left. Ballard hoped there would be some fresh shrimp left by the time she ordered.

When one of the men noticed the badge peeking through her coat on her belt, their talk dropped to whispers, and then by group consent they offered Ballard the front of the line, since she was obviously working and they weren’t sure what to order. She took them up on the kind offer and got her shrimp tacos, answering routine questions from the group as she waited for Digoberto to put her order together.

“Are you on a case or something?” one of the women asked.

“Always,” Ballard said. “I work graveyard—what they call the late show because there’s always something going on in Hollywood.”

“Wow, like what is the case you’re on right now?”

“Uh, it’s about a young guy—about your age. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got shot in an alley where they