The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(2)

“Everything’s all right, Cosmo,” Lantana assured him.

“What is he, boxer and what?” Ballard asked.

“Ridgeback,” Lantana said. “We think.”

Ballard wasn’t sure whether the “we” referred to Lantana and the dog or somebody else. Maybe Lantana and her veterinarian.

The old woman finished her survey of the house with a look through her jewelry drawer and reported that nothing other than the wallet seemed to be missing. It made Ballard think about Ralphs again, or that the burglar possibly thought he had less time than he actually had to go through the house.

Jenkins rejoined them and said there were no indications that the lock on the front or back door had been picked, jimmied, or in any other way tampered with.

“When you walked the dog, did you see anything unusual on the street?” Ballard asked the old woman. “Anybody out of place?”

“No, nothing unusual,” Lantana said.

“Is there any construction on the street? Workers hanging around?”

“No, not around here.”

Ballard asked Lantana to show her the e-mail notice she had received from the credit-card company. They went to a small nook in the kitchen, where Lantana had a laptop computer, a printer, and filing trays stacked with envelopes. It was obviously the home station, where she took care of paying bills and online ordering. Lantana sat down and pulled up the email alert on her computer screen. Ballard leaned over her shoulder to read it. She then asked Lantana to call the credit-card company again.

Lantana made the call on a wall phone with a long cord that stretched to the nook. Eventually the phone was handed to Ballard and she stepped into the hallway with Jenkins, pulling the cord to its full extension. She was talking to a fraud alert specialist with an English-Indian accent. Ballard identified herself as a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department and asked for the shipping address that had been entered for the credit-card purchase before it was rejected as possibly fraudulent. The fraud alert specialist said he could not provide that information without court approval.

“What do you mean?” Ballard asked. “You are the fraud alert specialist, right? This was fraud, and if you give me the address, I might be able to do something about it.”

“I am sorry,” the specialist said. “I cannot do this. Our legal office must tell me to do so and they have not.”

“Let me talk to the legal office.”

“They are closed now. It is lunchtime and they close.”

“Then let me talk to your supervisor.”

Ballard looked at Jenkins and shook her head in frustration.

“Look, it’s all going to the burglary table in the morning,” Jenkins said. “Why don’t you let them deal with it?”

“Because they won’t deal with it,” Ballard said. “It will get lost in the stack. They won’t follow up and that’s not fair to her.”

She nodded toward the kitchen, where the crime victim was sitting and looking forlorn.

“Nobody said anything about anything being fair,” Jenkins said. “It is what it is.”

After five minutes the supervisor came on the line. Ballard explained that they had a fluid situation and needed to move quickly to catch the person who stole Mrs. Lantana’s credit card. The supervisor explained that the attempted use of the credit card did not go through, so the fraud alert system had worked.

“There is no need for this ‘fluid situation,’ as you say,” he said.

“The system only works if we catch the guy,” Ballard said. “Don’t you see? Stopping the card from being used is only part of it. That protects your corporate client. It doesn’t protect Mrs. Lantana, who had someone inside her house.”

“I am sorry,” the supervisor said. “I cannot help you without documentation from the courts. It is our protocol.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Irfan.”

“Where are you, Irfan?”

“How do you mean?”

“Are you in Mumbai? Delhi? Where?”

“I am in Mumbai, yes.”

“And that’s why you don’t give a shit. Because this guy’s never going to come into your house and steal your wallet in Mumbai. Thanks very much.”

She stepped back into the kitchen and hung up the phone before the useless supervisor could respond. She turned back to her partner.

“Okay, we go back to the barn, write it up, give it to the burglary table,” she said. “Let’s go.”





2

Ballard and Jenkins didn’t make it back to the station to begin writing the report on the Lantana burglary. They were diverted to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center by the watch commander to check out an assault. Ballard parked in an ambulance slot by the ER entrance, left the grille lights on, and then she and Jenkins entered through the automatic doors. Ballard noted the time for the report she would write later. It was 12:41 a.m. according to the clock over the reception window in the ER waiting room.

There was a P-1 standing there, his skin as white as a vampire’s. Ballard gave him the nod and he came over to brief them. He was a slick sleeve and maybe even a boot and too new in the division for her to know his name.

“We found her in a lot on Santa Monica by Highland,” the officer stated. “Looked like she had been dumped there. Whoever did it probably thought she was dead. But she was alive and she sort of woke up and was semiconscious for a couple minutes. Somebody had worked her over really good. One of the paramedics said she might have a skull fracture. They have her in the back. My TO’s back there too.”