The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,21

those who viewed the infraction, even if true, as unworthy of an investigation that threatened a man’s career. There were enemies in the building, even four years later, and she tried to maintain her job without stepping through its glass doors. But to drive all the way from downtown to Hollywood just to use the department’s database would be a significant waste of time. If she wanted to keep momentum, she had to enter the PAB and find a computer she could use for a half hour.

She made it through the lobby and onto the elevator unscathed. On the fifth floor she avoided the vast homicide squad room and entered the much smaller Special Assault Section, where she knew a detective who had backed her through all the controversy and scandal. Amy Dodd was at her desk and smiled when she saw Ballard enter.

“Balls! What are you doing down here?”

Amy used a private nickname derived from the stand Ballard had made during the past troubles in RHD.

“Hey, Doddy. How’s it hanging? I’m looking for a computer to run names on.”

“I hear there are plenty of open desks in homicide since they trimmed the fat over there.”

“Last thing I want to do is set up in there. Might get stabbed in the back again.”

Amy pointed to the workstation next to hers.

“That one’s empty.”

Ballard hesitated and Amy read her.

“Don’t worry, I won’t talk your ear off. Do your work. I have court calls to make anyway.”

Ballard sat down and went to work, putting her password into the department database and then opening her notebook to the list of names from the Hilton case. She quickly located a driver’s license for Maxwell Talis in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which was not a welcome piece of information. Yes, Talis was still alive, but Ballard was working this case on her own and with Bosch, not as an official LAPD investigation. An out-of-town trip was not in the equation. It meant she would have to reach Talis by phone. This was disappointing because face-to-face interviews were always preferable. Better tells and better reads came out of in-person sit-downs.

The news did not get any better as she moved down her list. She determined that both Sandra and Donald Hilton were dead. They had passed—Donald in 2007 and Sandra in 2016—without knowing who had killed their son or why, without any justice for his life and their loss. To Ballard it didn’t matter that John Hilton had been a drug addict and criminal. He had talent and with that he had to have had dreams. Dreams of a way out of the life he was trapped in. It made Ballard feel that if she didn’t find justice for him, no one ever would.

Next on the list was Margaret Thompson and Bosch was handling that. Vincent Pilkey was the next name and it was another dead end. Pilkey was one of the dealers whom Hunter and Talis never connected with to interview, and now she never would either: Pilkey was listed as deceased in 2008. He was only forty-one at the time and Ballard assumed he met an untimely death by violence or overdose, but she could not determine it from the records she was accessing.

Ballard’s luck changed with the next name down: Dennard Dorsey, the dealer Hunter and Talis did not talk to because he was also a snitch for Major Narcotics. Ballard ran his name on the computer and felt a jolt of adrenaline kick in as she learned that not only had the snitch somehow survived the last thirty years, but he was literally two blocks away from her at that very moment: Dorsey was being held in the county jail on a parole violation. She checked his criminal history and saw that the last decade was replete with drug and assault arrests, the accumulation eventually landing him in prison for a five-year term. It seemed pretty clear from the history that Dorsey’s usefulness as a snitch had long since ended and he was without the protection of his handlers at Major Narcotics.

“Hot damn!” she said.

Amy Dodd leaned back in her chair so she could see around the partition between their work spaces.

“Something good, I take it?” she asked.

“Better than good,” Ballard said. “I found a guy and I don’t even have to get in my car.”

“Where?”

“Men’s Central—and he’s not going anywhere.”

“Lucky you.”

Ballard went back to the computer, wondering if the dice would keep tumbling her way. She pulled up the hold for parole violation and