The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,53

understand. I have her plate number. I can get it with that.”

“Okay. Keep going?”

He pointed to the computer screen.

“Yes, keep going,” Ballard said. “We’re not even halfway through the night.”

A few minutes later in real time and an hour later on the video playback, Ballard saw something that caught her eye. A man in ragged clothes pushed a shopping cart full of bottles and cans up to Mako’s, parked it on the sidewalk, and then buzzed to be allowed entrance. He came in and dumped enough change and crumpled bills into the pass-through drawer to purchase a forty-ounce bottle of Old English malt liquor. He then left the store and returned to his cart, securing the full bottle among the bottles and cans he had collected, and started pushing his way out of the lot. He headed east on Santa Monica and Ballard thought she recognized him as one of the onlookers from Monday night after the fire.

It gave her a new idea.

She decided to go find the man who collected the bottles.

24

Ballard caught a call just before end of shift that pulled her away from finishing her report for the RHD meeting on Banks and pushed her into unpaid overtime. It was a he said/he said case on Citrus just south of Fountain. Patrol called her out to referee a violent domestic dispute between two men who shared a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment and had fought over who got to use the shower first before work. They had been drinking and drugging most of the night and the fight began when one of the men took the last clean towel and locked himself in the bathroom. The second man objected and kicked the door open, hitting the first in the face and breaking his nose. The fight then ranged through the small apartment and woke other residents in the building. By the time the police arrived after multiple 911 calls, both men were showing injuries from the altercation and neither was going to work.

The two patrol officers who responded wanted to pass the decision-making off to a detective so they would avoid any future blowback from the case. Ballard arrived and talked to the officers, then to both parties involved. She guessed that the fight wasn’t really about a clean towel or the shower but was symptomatic of problems in the men’s relationship, whatever that was. Nevertheless, she chose to bag them both, out of protection for them and herself. Domestic disputes were tricky. Calming anger, settling nerves, and then simply backing away might seem to be the most judicious path, but if an hour or a week or a year later the same relationship ends in a killing, the neighbors talk to the news cameras and say the police came out before and did nothing. Better safe now than sorry later. That was the rule and that was why the patrol officers wanted no part of the decision.

Ballard arrested both men and had them transported separately to Hollywood Division jail, where they would be held in adjoining cells. The paperwork involved in booking the two, plus Ballard’s need to prepare other documents, pushed her past seven a.m. and the end of shift.

After filing the necessary arrest reports, Ballard took her city car downtown and parked on First Street in front of the PAB. There was no parking there but she was late and her hope was that any traffic officer would recognize the vehicle as a detective ride and leave it unticketed. Besides, she didn’t expect to be inside long.

She hooked her backpack over one shoulder and carried a brown paper evidence bag with her. On the fifth floor she entered the Robbery-Homicide Division, realizing that it was the first time she had been back since she involuntarily transferred to Hollywood Division’s late show. She scanned the vast room, starting with the captain’s office in the back corner. She saw through the glass wall that it was empty. There was no other sign of him—or of Nuccio and Spellman—so she proceeded to the War Room. On the door she saw that the sliding sign was moved to IN USE and knew she had found her party. She knocked once and entered.

The War Room was a 12 x 30 repurposed storage room that held a boardroom-style table and had whiteboards and flat screens on its walls. It was used on task force cases, for meetings involving multiple investigators, or for sensitive cases that should not be discussed in the open