The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(67)
The slide sign on the door was moved to occupied. Ballard took out her phone, turned on the light, and quietly opened the door and moved into the room. The switch for the overhead lights was taped into the off position so that nobody blasted sleepers. Ballard used her phone to check the bunks and saw that the two middle beds were taken by sleepers, one of whom was lightly snoring. She took off her shoes and put them in a cubbyhole, then grabbed two sleep packs and tossed them up onto one of the top bunks. She climbed the ladder and flipped the thin mattress over before crawling into the sleeping space. It took her five minutes to spread the sheets and get under a blanket. Clasping the two pillows around her head to ward off the sound of snoring, she tried to go to sleep.
As she tailed off into darkness, she thought about the two warnings to stand down that she had gotten during the day. She knew she had somehow triggered them with her actions the day before. She reviewed her steps, trying to remember every detail of every move she had made and still could not locate the land mine she had apparently stepped on.
Fighting sleep, she backed things up further into Friday night and then moved forward again, using her memory like a battering ram. This time she hit on something that had not stuck out before, because it had not gotten her anywhere. After reviewing Chastain’s chrono, she had tried to contact Matthew “Metro” Robison to see if he was the witness Chastain had been out wrangling on Friday night before he was killed. She never reached Robison but had left at least three messages on his phone.
Robison was missing and the task force was looking for him. When Carr came to question her on the beach, he knew that she had called him. What troubled Ballard now was that if Robison, wherever he was, had his cell phone with him— which he most likely did—how did Carr and the task force know she had been calling him through the night?
She remembered asking Carr that question but he hadn’t answered her. He had passed it off and said he had simply been given the information.
It was something that didn’t make sense. It gnawed at her until she finally slipped into sleep.
23
A loud round of raucous laughter from the roll-call room penetrated the Honeymoon Suite and woke Ballard. She felt disoriented and almost banged her head on the ceiling as she started to get up. She pulled her phone and checked the time. She was shocked to learn that she had slept until ten a.m., and knew she would have gone longer if not for the mid-watch roll call being conducted across the hall.
She balled up her sheets, blankets, and pillows and carefully climbed down from the top bunk. She noticed she was the only one left in the room. Dumping everything in a hamper, she put on her shoes and made her way down the hall to the women’s locker room.
Under the hot shower, she came to fully and tried to recall the events of the night before. She remembered that she had fallen asleep with a question: How did Rogers Carr know that she had been calling the missing Matthew Robison? Today was Monday, a day off, but she resolved to know the answer to that question before the day was through.
After dressing in fresh clothes from her locker, Ballard sat on a bench and composed a text to Carr.
Need to talk. Are you around?
She hesitated for a moment and then sent it. She knew that Carr might share it with others and discuss how to proceed. But she was banking on him not doing that. She knew a quick response to her text would indicate he had not shared it with anyone yet.
In person? Where? Not the PAB.
She thought about things and returned the text, setting up the meeting. Her choice for a location was the fourteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building because it would be a perfectly natural place for police detectives to be seen. If anybody at Major Crimes or the PAB asked Carr where he was going, he could just say the courthouse, and it would not raise a question. The location would also put Ballard in close proximity to the County–USC Medical Center, where she hoped to find Ramona Ramone conscious and alert later in the day.
Before leaving the station, she knocked on Lieutenant McAdams’s door in the detective bureau and updated him on the Ramona Ramone investigation. He was reserved about Trent’s collection of brass knuckles and use of the phrase upside-down house to describe his home. McAdams cautioned that the evidence was circumstantial and reminded her that the basis of Ballard’s excitement was an ex-wife’s claims.
“You’re going to need more than that,” McAdams said.
“I know,” said Ballard. “I’ll get it.”
After checking out the late-shift plain wrap, Ballard headed downtown on the 101 freeway. Battling the traffic going into downtown, finding parking, and then waiting for the elevator in the courthouse made her twenty minutes late for her meeting with Carr, but she found the detective from Major Crimes sitting on a bench outside a courtroom door, checking messages on his phone.
She slid onto the wooden bench next to him.
“Sorry I’m late. Everything went wrong. Traffic, parking, had to wait ten minutes for a fucking elevator.”
“You could’ve texted, but never mind that. What’s this about, Ballard?”
“Okay, yesterday I asked you a question, and you never answered it. We got distracted or you moved on, but I never got a full answer.”
“What question?”
“You asked me why I had called Matthew Robison and I asked you how you knew that I had.”
“I did answer that. I told you I was given the information that you were trying to reach him.”