The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(108)
“Seventeen.”
Ballard and Jenkins moved down the first-floor hallway until they stood on either side of room 17. Ballard knocked.
“Matthew Robison,” Jenkins said. “LAPD, open the door.”
Nothing.
“Metro,” Ballard said. “My name is Detective Ballard. I worked with Detective Chastain, who brought you here. We’re here to tell you it’s over. You’re safe and you can go home to Alicia now.”
They waited. After thirty seconds, Ballard heard the lock flip. The door opened six inches and a young man looked out. Ballard was holding her badge up.
“It’s safe?” he asked.
“Are you Matthew?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, yes.”
“Detective Chastain brought you here?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s safe, Matthew. We’ll take you home now.”
“Where’s Detective Chastain?”
Ballard paused and looked at Robison for a long moment.
“He didn’t make it,” she finally said.
Robison looked down at the floor.
“You called him Friday and said you just saw the shooter on TV,” Ballard said. “Didn’t you?”
Robison nodded.
“Okay, well, we’re going to take you by the station first to look at some photos,” Ballard said. “After that, we’ll take you back to your apartment and Alicia. You’ll be safe now, and she’s worried about you.”
Robison finally looked up at her. Ballard knew he was trying to decide if he could trust her. He must have seen something in her eyes.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me a minute to get my stuff.”
44
Ballard got to the water late that morning because of the drive up the coast to collect her dog. By the time she had pitched her tent on Venice Beach and was walking toward the surf with her board under her arm, the morning layer had completely choked off the sun and visibility was low. She stepped in undaunted. It had been too long since she had been on the water.
She spread her feet to the edge of the board’s rails and bent her knees. She started digging deeply into the water and shocking her muscles with the workout.
Dig...dig...dig...glide....Dig...dig...dig...glide...
She headed straight out into the fog and soon she was lost in it. The heavy air insulated her from any sound from the land. She was alone.
She thought about Chastain and the moves he had made. He had acted nobly on the case. She thought maybe it was his redemption. For his father. For Ballard. It left her bereft and still haunted by their last encounter. She wished in some way they had settled things.
Soon her shoulders began to burn and the muscles of her back cramped. She eased up and stood tall. She used the paddle blade as a rudder and turned the board. She realized there was no horizon in sight, and the tide was in that short moment of stasis before it shifted. It was not going in or out, and she wasn’t sure which direction to point the board.
She kept her momentum with languid paddle strokes, all the while looking and listening for a sign of land. But there was no sound of waves crashing or of people’s voices. The fog was too dense.
She pulled the paddle from the water and twirled it upside down. She rapped the handle end hard on the board’s deck. The fiberglass produced a solid sound that Ballard knew would cut sharply through the fog.
Soon afterward she heard Lola start to bark and she had her direction. She paddled hard again and started to glide across the black water, heading toward the sound of her dog.
As she came through the mist and caught sight of the shore, she saw Lola at the waterline, panicked and frantically moving north and then south, unsure, her bark now a howl of fear at what she could not understand or control. She reminded Ballard of a fourteen-year-old girl who had done the same thing on a beach a long time ago.
Ballard paddled harder. She wanted to get off the board, drop to her knees in the sand, and hug Lola close.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank many people for their help with the creation of Renée Ballard and this novel. First, a great debt of thanks goes to LAPD detective Mitzi Roberts, who served in many ways as the inspiration for Renée. The author hopes that Renée has done Detective Roberts proud.
Also of immeasurable help were Detective Tim Marcia and his former colleagues Rick Jackson and David Lambkin.
Many thanks to Linda Connelly, Jane Davis, Terrill Lee Lankford, John Houghton, Dennis Wojciechowski, and Henrik Bastin for early and insightful reads of the work in progress.
Asya Muchnick deserves much credit and gratitude for editing an unwieldy story and coordinating responses from a cast of different editors, including Bill Massey, Harriet Bourton, and Emad Akhtar. Lastly, the author’s deep appreciation goes to Pamela Marshall for another great job of copy-editing.
Many thanks to all who helped.
COMING IN OCTOBER 2017
TWO KINDS OF TRUTH
THE BRAND NEW BOSCH NOVEL
BY
MICHAEL CONNELLY
ENJOY AN EARLY EXTRACT NOW.
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF TRUTH.
ONE SETS YOU FREE.
THE OTHER BURIES YOU IN DARKNESS . . .
1
Bosch was in cell 3 of the old San Fernando jail, looking through files from one of the Esme Tavares boxes, when a heads-up text came in from Bella Lourdes over in the detective bureau.