The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(22)

“Not today, Aaron. I’ve gotta get up soon and go in.”

“Okay. Sorry I woke you up. By the way, you looked good out there today. Like you were walking on water. Good, long strokes.”

“Tired myself out, but thanks, Aaron. Good night.”

“Uh, yeah, good night.”

She heard him chuckle as he walked away in the sand.

“Good girl, Lola,” she said.

Ballard rolled onto her back and looked up at the roof of the tent. The sun was high and so bright she could see it through the nylon. She closed her eyes and tried to remember if she had been dreaming before Aaron woke her. She couldn’t remember anything but thought there was something there in the gray tendrils of her sleep. There had been a dream. She just couldn’t remember what it was. She tried to retrieve it, to slip back in, but she knew that a standard sleep cycle was about ninety minutes. To go back to sleep and get a full cycle would take longer than she had. Her alarm was going off in less than an hour and she wanted to stick to her plan of getting up and going in to work on finding out who had used brass knuckles to assault Ramona Ramone in the upside-down house—and then left her for dead in a Hollywood parking lot.

She got out of the tent, packed and folded it up, and then returned to the van. She restowed everything and placed the wet suit on its hanger. The board was harder to put back on the roof racks than it had been to take down. Ballard was five foot seven and had to open the side doors and stand on the sill while she secured the straps. The second strap cut across the One World logo on the underside of the board. It showed the black silhouette of a surfer riding the nose, his hands and arms up over his head and thrown back like he was flying down the steep face of a monster wave. It always reminded Ballard of her father and his last wave. The one that took him and left her running up and down the beach, unsure of what to do or where to go, and howling helplessly at the open sea.

She and Lola walked down the boardwalk to the Poke-Poke window, where Ballard ordered the Aloha bowl with added seaweed for herself and a teriyaki-beef-and-rice bowl for the dog. Lola drank from the dog bowl under the window as they waited and the man behind the counter handed Ballard a treat for Lola as well.

After lunch she took the dog back out on the sand and threw the ball a few more times. But Ballard’s mind wasn’t on it. The whole time she was thinking about work. She was officially off the Dancers case but couldn’t help thinking about Cynthia Haddel. Ballard had the name and digits of the distributor who, according to her parents, had put her into the club to deal drugs. If RHD wasn’t interested, then the buy-bust team at Hollywood Division would take the tip and do something with it. She made a mental note to drop by the unit when she got back to the station.

From the beach Ballard drove back to the critter sitter to drop off Lola. She apologized to the dog for the short day but promised to make it up to her. Lola bowed her head once, letting Ballard off the hook.

On the way into Hollywood, Ballard checked the Los Angeles Times feed on her phone every time she caught a red light. It had been barely twelve hours since the shooting at the Dancers, so the newspaper had scant reporting on it. Ballard was still ahead of the media curve with the limited information she had gathered on her shift. The Times did say, however, that there were no arrests or suspects in the mass killing as of the latest update from the LAPD. The story went out of its way to reassure readers that the police were not looking at this as a possible terrorist attack like those seen in other nightclubs domestically and around the world.

Ballard was disappointed that the newspaper had not by now gotten the names of the three men shot to death in the booth. That was the angle she was wondering about. Who were they? What went wrong in that booth?

After checking the Times feed, she also checked her e-mail and saw nothing on return from Lieutenant Olivas about the reports she had submitted. Apparently her paper had been accepted, if not gone unnoticed. Either way the time stamps on the e-mail she had sent would protect her from any complaint from Olivas about her failing to file her reports in a timely fashion.

Using the van’s Bluetooth connection, Ballard called Hollywood Presbyterian and asked for the duty nurse in the surgical intensive-care unit. A woman who called herself Nurse Randall answered and Ballard identified herself, right down to her serial number.

“An assault victim named Ramona Ramone was brought in last night. I was the responding detective. She underwent brain surgery and I am checking on her status.”

Ballard was put on hold, and when Randall came back, she said there was no patient in the hospital named Ramona Ramone and that Ballard must be mistaken.

“You’re right,” Ballard said. “Can you check a different name? Ramón Gutierrez. I forgot that’s the victim’s actual name.”

Randall put her on hold again but this time came back more quickly.

“Yes, he’s here, and he’s stable after surgery,” she said.

“Do you know if he’s conscious yet?” Ballard asked.

“That’s information you will need to get from the patient’s attending physician.”

“Is that physician available?”

“Not at this time. He’s on his rounds.”

“Nurse Randall, I am investigating this crime and trying to find out who attacked Mr. Gutierrez. If the victim is conscious, I need to drop what I’m doing and come talk to him. If he’s not, then I need to proceed with the investigation. There is a very dangerous individual out there responsible for this. Are you sure you can’t help me by answering that simple question? Has he regained consciousness?”