The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(42)

“Talk to me, Smitty. What about tactics?”

Smith held his hands up like he wanted to stop the discussion he had started.

“No, man, you brought it up,” Ballard insisted. “The guy’s in the back of the car, nobody’s hurt, no shots fired, what about my tactics?”

Smith wheeled around on her. Taylor stopped, too, but it was clear he was at sea as far as what his partner’s complaint was.

“Where’s your raid jacket?” Smith said. “And I can tell you’re not wearing a vest. Number one, you should’ve had them on, Ballard. Number two, we should have been right here and in on the bust, not driving up to save your ass.”

Ballard nodded as she took it all in.

“That’s all bullshit,” she threw back. “You’re going to beef me for a raid jacket and a vest?”

“Who said anything about beefing you?” Smith said. “I’m just saying, that’s all. You didn’t do this right.”

“We got the guy, that’s what matters.”

“Officer safety is what matters. I’m trying to teach this boot the street and you don’t set the example.”

“Were you setting the example last night when you decided not to tape off a crime scene on Santa Monica Boulevard?”

“What, with that dragon? Ballard, you’re the one slinging bullshit now.”

“All I’m saying is we just took down a felon with a firearm and nobody got hurt. I think the kid learned something, but if you want to fill his ears with bullshit, go ahead.”

Smith opened the back door of Ballard’s plain wrap and that ended the argument. They knew better than to continue it in front of the suspect. Ballard waved off Smith and turned back toward room 18.

Compton arrived fifteen minutes after Smith and Taylor left the motel with Nettles. By then Ballard had walked off her anger, pacing in front of the open door of the room. Though she had cooled down considerably, she knew that Smith’s complaint would stick with her for several days and would taint her feelings about what had been accomplished by the Nettles arrest.

Compton was a well-built man who usually wore tight shirts to accentuate his muscles and impress or intimidate the parolees he was charged with monitoring. But tonight he was wearing a loose-fitting and long-sleeved flannel shirt that understated his physical attributes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she said. “Why?”

“Your face is red. So where’s my guy?”

“We had a little excitement taking him down. My patrol team took him to be booked. I can hook you up with the watch commander if you want to no-bail him. I told them you would.”

“That’s fine. How do you want to do this?”

“There’s a lot of stuff in the room. I think we start there. The truck is empty except for the box he was loading when we took him down. It’s a flat-screen, and it’s broken.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“I called the watch commander and somebody’s going to bring over the surveillance van we’ve got at the station. Hopefully we can fit all of this stuff in.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

They worked through the rest of the night, taking an inventory of room 18 and loading the boxes and other property into the van. They had an easy rapport from working together previously. Along the way, they found a cache of credit cards with eight different names on them, including the card taken from Leslie Anne Lantana’s purse. They also found two other firearms, which had been stashed under the room’s mattress.

Once back at the station, Ballard was able to connect five of the other names from the credit cards to burglaries reported in Hollywood Division in the prior seven days. Meantime, Compton borrowed a desk and computer and started a trace of the three guns with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. None of the firearms had shown up on the burglary reports Ballard had found but Compton learned that the Glock—the weapon Nettles had in his belt line—had been reported stolen in Texas two years before. Details of the theft were not available on the computer. Compton then made a request for further information from the ATF but both he and Ballard knew that the return on that would be measured in days if not weeks.

By six a.m., all the merchandise recovered from the motel room had been placed in a storage trailer outside the back door of the station, the pickup truck had been impounded and towed, and an inventory and full report on the Nettles arrest had been placed on the desk of the burglary unit supervisor. Although he would not return to work until Monday morning, there was no hurry, because Nettles was going nowhere. Compton had formally placed a no-bail hold on him.

The three recovered pistols were the last items to be taken care of. All firearms were stored in gun boxes before being placed in lockers for firearms in the property unit office. Ballard left Compton in the detective bureau and took the weapons back. Her banging the door of the gun locker drew the attention of Lieutenant Munroe, who came down the hallway and stuck his head into the property room.

“Ballard, nice work tonight.”

“Thanks, L-T.”

“How many you think he’s good for?”

“I have eight different names on credit cards that connect to six cases so far. My guess is they’re all going to be victims.”