The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(34)

“Like I said in roll call, I’m working the assault from last night,” she said. “McAdams gave it to me.”

“Yeah, I didn’t get the memo on that,” Munroe said.

“Did you get a memo telling you to keep me away from the Dancers?”

“No, I told you, just want to know where everybody on the shift is.”

“Yeah, well, now you know what I’m working on. I have to go by the hospital for a minute but I’m around if you need me.”

She turned and went down the last flight of steps and moved directly into the detective bureau. She wondered if Munroe was hiding something. She usually worked autonomously, without the patrol lieutenant keeping tabs on her. Had Olivas or someone else from downtown told him to keep her clear of the club and the investigation?

The exchange with Munroe unnerved her but she put the thoughts aside so she could focus on the case she had at hand. She got keys for the late show city-ride out of the drawer of the receptionist’s desk, then grabbed a fresh battery for her rover out of the charging station. She went back to her desk for her handbag and the radio and then headed out. Once she was in the car, she could immediately tell someone had used it during the day—someone who had ignored the rule prohibiting smoking in all city vehicles. She opened up all the windows as she pulled through the lot gate and turned north on Wilcox toward Sunset.

At Hollywood Presbyterian, she badged her way past a security guard and two nursing stations in order to get to the room where Ramona Ramone was lying comatose in a bed. Ballard had asked a nurse named Natasha to accompany her in case there came a time when she needed backup testimony at a trial.

The victim actually looked worse a night later. Her head had been partially shaved and the surgery to repair the skull fracture and limit the impact of brain swelling had left her face puffy and unrecognizable. She lay at the center of a nest of tubes, drips, and monitors.

“I need you to open her smock so I can photograph the bruises on her torso,” Ballard said.

“Wasn’t it done last night?” Natasha asked.

“It was. But the bruises will look different today.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to, Natasha. Just open the smock.”

Ballard knew that bruising occurred when blood vessels beneath the skin were damaged by impact and red blood cells leaked into the surrounding tissues. The bruise sometimes grew larger and darker in the twenty-four hours after an injury because blood continued to seep from the damaged vessels. Ballard was hoping that Ramona Ramone’s bruises would now be more defined and possibly even legible.

The nurse moved some tubing out of the way, then pulled down a thermal blanket that covered the patient. She unbuttoned the pale blue smock to expose the victim’s naked body. There was a catheter attached to the penis and the urine in the clear tube had a reddish hue from internal bleeding. The nurse pulled the blanket back up slightly and Ballard didn’t know if that was a show of modesty or revulsion.

Ballard noted that the right and left sides of the upper torso were fully covered in deep purple bruising. The delineated edges of the red impact marks she had seen the night before were now blurred as the blood continued to spread beneath the skin. If the damage were being seen for the first time now, it would be impossible to deduce that it had been inflicted with brass knuckles. Ballard leaned down over the bed from the left side to study the purple blossoms closely. Before long she identified two side-by-side rings of deep purple against a lighter shade of bruising. She believed it was the double O in the word GOOD.

“Natasha, will you look at this?”

Ballard straightened up and stepped to her left so the nurse could move in. She pointed to the pattern.

“What is that?” Ballard asked.

“You mean the bruising?” Natasha said.

“There’s a pattern there. Do you see it?”

“I see...well, maybe. You mean the circles?”

“Exactly. Let me photograph it.”

Ballard pulled out her phone and moved in close again when Natasha stepped back. As she took photos, she thought about the billboards she had seen all over the city that showed stunning, professional-grade shots taken on the new iPhone camera. Ballard guessed that these kinds of photos would never be put on billboards.

“Is that from the weapon?” Natasha asked. “Like maybe he had two big rings on his fingers when he punched this man.”

Ballard continued to shoot, with and then without the flash.

“Something like that,” she said.

She moved around to the other side of the bed and studied the bruising on the left side of Ramona Ramone’s torso. Here the purple blossoms were an even deeper color and Ballard could find no pattern indicative of the word EVIL. She did know that the deeper color meant deeper injury, and the imbalance between the two sides of the torso indicated that the attacker’s power hand was his right. She tried to recall if Thomas Trent had done anything during their interaction and test-drive earlier to reveal whether he was right-handed. It had been evident that the knuckles on his right hand were painfully bruised. She then remembered him writing down her phone number with his right hand.

Ballard took photos of the left side just so she could document the extent of the injuries.

“You can cover her up, Natasha,” she said. “I’m finished for now.”