The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,3
be better than being out here.”
Mandy looked up at her mother when she answered.
“No. I want to stay here with my mother.”
“I’m not going to separate you. I will take you and your mother if you want.”
The girl looked up at her mother again for guidance.
“You put us in there and they will take her away,” the mother said. “I know they will.”
“No, I’ll stay here,” the girl said quickly.
“Okay,” Ballard said. “I won’t do anything, but I don’t think this is where you should be. It’s not safe out here for either of you.”
“The shelters aren’t safe either,” the mother said. “People steal all your stuff.”
Ballard pulled out a business card and handed it to her.
“Call me if you need anything,” she said. “I work the midnight shift. I’ll be around if you need me.”
The mother took the card and nodded. Ballard’s thoughts returned to the case. She turned and gestured toward the crime scene.
“Did you know him?” she asked.
“A little,” the mother said. “He minded his own business.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Uh, I think it was Ed. Eddie, he said.”
“Okay. Had he been here a long time?”
“A couple months. He said he had been over at Blessed Sacrament but it was getting too crowded for him.”
Ballard knew that Blessed Sacrament on Sunset allowed the homeless to camp on the front portico. She drove by it often and knew it to be heavily crowded at night with tents and makeshift shelters, all of which disappeared at daylight before church services began.
Hollywood was a different place in the dark hours, after the neon and glitter had dimmed. Ballard saw the change every night. It became a place of predators and prey and nothing in between, a place where the haves were comfortably and safely behind their locked doors and the have-nots freely roamed. Ballard always remembered the words of a late-show patrol poet. He called them human tumbleweeds moving with the winds of fate.
“Did he have any trouble with anybody here?” she asked.
“Not that I saw,” said the mother.
“Did you see him last night?”
“No, I don’t think so. He wasn’t around when we went to sleep.” Ballard looked at Amanda to see if she had a response but was interrupted by a voice from behind.
“Detective?”
Ballard turned around. It was one of Dvorek’s officers. His name was Rollins. He was new to the division or he wouldn’t have been so formal.
“What?”
“The guys from arson are here. They—”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
She turned back to the woman and her daughter.
“Thank you,” she said. “And remember, you can call me anytime.”
As Ballard headed back toward the body and the men from arson, she couldn’t help remembering again that line about tumbleweeds. Written on a field interview card by an officer Ballard later learned had seen too much of the depressing and dark hours of Hollywood and taken his own life.
4
The men from arson were named Nuccio and Spellman. Following LAFD protocol, they were wearing blue coveralls with the LAFD badge on the chest pocket and the word ARSON across the back. Nuccio was the senior investigator and he said he would be lead. Both men shook Ballard’s hand before Nuccio announced that they would take the investigation from there. Ballard explained that a cursory sweep of the homeless encampment had produced no witnesses, while a walk up and down Cole Avenue had found no cameras with an angle on the fatal fire. She also mentioned that the coroner’s office was rolling a unit to the scene and a criminalist from the LAPD lab was en route as well.
Nuccio seemed uninterested. He handed Ballard a business card with his e-mail address on it and asked that she forward the death report she would write up when she got back to Hollywood Station.
“That’s it?” Ballard asked. “That’s all you need?”
She knew that LAFD arson experts had law enforcement and detective training and were expected to conduct a thorough investigation of any fire involving a death. She also knew they were competitive with the LAPD in the way a little brother might be with his older sibling. The arson guys didn’t like being in the LAPD’s shadow.
“That’s it,” Nuccio said. “You send me your report and I’ll have your e-mail. I’ll let you know how it all shakes out.”
“You’ll have it by dawn,” Ballard said. “You want to keep the uniforms here while you work?”
“Sure. One or two of them would be nice. Just have them watch our backs.”