The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(58)

“You sure?” Carr asked. “I ordered the fish tacos.”

“I’m not hungry,” Ballard said.

“Well, I’ve been running all day and need the fuel. Besides, you told me to get them.”

“This isn’t a date, Carr. Get to your questions. What do you want?”

Carr raised his hands in surrender again and Ballard noted it as a habit.

“I want to know about that last interaction between you and Chastain,” he said. “But first I need background. You two were former partners, correct?”

“Correct,” Ballard said.

Carr waited for more but soon realized that Ballard was not going to give more than one-word answers—unless he found a way to change that.

“How long did you two work together?” he asked.

“Almost five years,” Ballard said.

“And that ended twenty-six months ago.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re the one who beefed Olivas, aren’t you?”

Once again the blue pipeline had betrayed Ballard. What had transpired between Olivas and Ballard was a personnel matter that was supposed to be confidential. But just as the blue suiters in Hollywood Division roll call knew the story, so, obviously, did the detectives in Major Crimes.

“What’s that have to do with this?” Ballard asked.

“Probably nothing,” Carr said. “But you’re a detective. You know it’s good to know all the facts. The word I got is that when Chastain came to see you at Hollywood Station early Friday morning, things got tense.”

“And that’s based on what? He filed a report?”

“It’s based on a conversation he had afterward with a third party.”

“Let me guess. Olivas.”

“I can’t discuss that. But never mind what Chastain said. How would you characterize the meeting at Hollywood Division?”

“I wouldn’t even characterize it as a meeting. He came to pick up a witness who had come in and I had interviewed. His name was Alexander Speights. He took a photo on his phone that captured the exact moment of the first shot at the Dancers. Kenny came to collect both.”

“Kenny?”

“Yeah, we were partners once, remember? I called him Kenny. We were very familiar with each other, but we didn’t fuck, if that was going to be your next question.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Well, good for you.”

“What was the confrontation about? His quote to a third party afterward was ‘She’s still pretty mad about things.’”

Ballard shook her head, annoyed. She could feel anger boiling up. She instinctively looked over the railing next to the table and down at her dog. Lola was lying on the concrete, tongue out, watching the procession of people going by on the boardwalk. The crowd was filtering out and off the beach post-sunset.

Lola had been through a lot before Ballard had rescued her. Abuse, starvation, fear—but she persevered and always maintained her calm—until there was a legitimate threat to herself or her owner.

Ballard composed herself.

“Am I okay discussing personnel matters since you believe they are somehow significant to your investigation?” she asked.

“I think yes,” Carr said.

“Okay, then the socalled confrontation occurred when Ken Chastain offered a half-assed apology for totally fucking me over in my harassment complaint two years before. Put that in your report.”

“He said he was sorry. For what?”

“For not doing the right thing. He didn’t back me and he knew he should have. So here we are two years later and I’m out of RHD and working the late show in Hollywood, and he apologizes. Let’s just say the apology wasn’t accepted.”

“So this was just an aside. Nothing to do with the witness or the Dancers investigation.”

“I told you that at the beginning.”

Ballard leaned back as the waitress brought her iced tea and Carr’s tacos. She then squeezed the lemon into her glass as he began to eat.

“You want one of these?” Carr offered.

“I told you, not hungry,” Ballard said.

His starting to eat gave her time to think. She realized that she had dropped her own agenda for the conversation. She had been put on the defensive, largely through her own anger, and had lost sight of what she needed to accomplish with this interview—that is, get more information than she gave up. She suspected that Carr had pushed things in this direction purposely, knocking her off stride at the top of the interview with questions even he knew weren’t germane. It made her vulnerable to the questions that were. She looked at Carr crunching down on a taco and knew she had to be extra cautious now.

“So,” Carr said, his mouth full of food. “Why’d you call Matthew Robison?”

There it was. Now Carr was getting down to business. Ballard realized that he was here to deliver a message.

“How do you know I called Matthew Robison?” she asked.

“We’ve got a task force of eight investigators and two supervisors on this,” Carr said. “I don’t know how every piece of intelligence or evidence is procured. All I know is that you called him last night—several times—and I want to know why. If you don’t want to answer, then maybe we will book that room over at Pacific Division and have a sit-down there.”