The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(65)

“Okay,” he finally said. “You want me to divert and meet you at County?”

“No, I think I’ve got it covered,” Ballard said. “You get in and take roll call, see what’s going on. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back with the car.”

County-USC used to be a dire place but in recent years it had gotten a face-lift and a paint job and it was no longer as cheerless as it had once been. Its medical staff were no doubt as dedicated and skilled as the crew at any private hospital in the city but, like with most giant bureaucracies, everything always came down to budget. Ballard’s first stop was at the security office, where she showed her badge and attempted to persuade a nighttime supervisor named Roosevelt to put extra eyes on Ramona Ramone. Roosevelt, a tall, thin man nearing retirement age was more interested in whatever was on his computer screen than in what Ballard was selling.

“No can do,” he said bluntly. “I put someone on that room, I gotta take him off the ER door, and no way those nurses down there will let me do that. They’d skin me alive if I left them unprotected like that.”

“You’re telling me you got one guy in the ER and that’s it?” Ballard said.

“No, I got two. One inside, one out. But ninety-nine percent of our violence happens in the ER. So we have two-step protection: one guy on the walkins, another to handle those that come in the back of an ambulance. I can’t lose either one.”

“So meantime my victim is up there naked—no protection at all.”

“We have security in the elevator lobbies, and I float. If you want extra protection up on that room, then I would invite you to ask the LAPD to provide it.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then I’m sorry.”

“I got your name, Roosevelt. If anything happens, it’ll go in the report.”

“Make sure you spell it right. Just like the president.”

Ballard next went up to the acute-care ward, where Ramone was being treated. She was disappointed to learn that, while the patient had been conscious and semi-alert when transported from Hollywood Presbyterian, she had since been sedated and intubated after a setback in her condition. Choosing to find and interview Beaupre as the day’s priority had cost Ballard a chance to communicate with her victim. She nevertheless visited Ramone and took cell-phone photos as part of the continuing documentation of the depth of her injuries and treatment. She hoped someday to show them to a jury.

Afterward Ballard made a stop at the nursing desk on the ward and handed the duty nurse a stack of her business cards.

“Can you pass these around and keep one there by your phone?” she asked. “If anybody comes in to see the patient in three-oh-seven, I need to know. If you get any phone calls inquiring about her status, I need to know. Take a name and number and say you’ll get back to them. Then call me.”

“Is the patient in danger?”

“She was the subject of a vicious attack and left for dead. I checked with your security officer and got turned down on extra security. So all I’m saying is be vigilant.”

Ballard left then, hoping that putting the word in the duty nurse’s ear might get some results. Hospital security would find it harder to resist internal safety concerns than those from the LAPD.

Back at the station by midnight, Ballard was walking down the rear hallway toward the D bureau as Jenkins came down the stairs from the roll-call room. They walked into the bureau side by side.

“Anything going on?” Ballard asked.

“All quiet on the western front,” Jenkins said.

He held up his hand and she put the city-ride’s keys in his palm.

“Ramona look at a six-pack?” Jenkins asked.

“Nope,” Ballard said. “Missed my chance. I’m pissed at myself. I should’ve been there when she was awake.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Brain injury like that—chances are, she’s not going to remember a thing. And if she did, a defense attorney would go to town on the ID.”

“Maybe.”

“So you going to go up the coast now?”

“Not yet. I want to write up a summary on my witness from tonight.”

“Man, you act like this place still pays overtime or something.”

“I wish.”

“Well, get it done and get out of here.”

“I will. What about you?”

“Munroe says I have to write up a report about the witness bus from the other night. Somebody filed a notice of intent to sue, said they suffered pain and humiliation because they were locked up in a jail bus. I have to say they were never locked up.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“I wish.”

They went off to their respective corners of the room. Ballard got right to work on a witness statement drawn from the interview with Beatrice Beaupre, putting special emphasis on the revelation that Thomas Trent often referred to his home as the upside-down house. It would be ready to go into a charging package if Ramona Ramone ever IDed Trent.

Thirty minutes later, she completed the report. She was also finished for the night but then remembered she wanted to check the property report on the Dancers case. She went to her filing cabinet and looked through the thick ream of documents she had printed while going through Chastain’s files. She located the preliminary evidence report and took it back to her desk. The evidence list was seven pages long. It wasn’t the official evidence report from forensics but the ledger that an RHD detective would keep while at the crime scene. It served as a reference for the investigators on any evidence that had been collected while they awaited the official report. Ballard went through it twice but saw nothing listed that resembled the small black button she had seen Chastain scoop into an evidence bag. She became convinced that her former partner had taken evidence from the scene without documenting it. It was something small and something that sent him off the reservation, conducting his own investigation. An investigation that got him killed.