The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(68)

“I don’t deny it. But who told you that I’d been calling him?”

“I don’t get it. Why does this matter?”

“Think about it. Robison is missing, right?”

Carr didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be very carefully weighing what information to share with her.

“We’re looking for him, yeah,” he finally said.

“I assume that wherever he’s at, if he’s alive, he’s got his cell phone with him, right?” she asked quickly. “Or was it recovered at his home or elsewhere?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Then if he’s out there in hiding, he has his phone. If he’s dead, then whoever killed him has his phone. Either way, how is it known that I called him? Are you going to tell me they pulled his call records that quick? I’ve never turned a phone company warrant around in less than a day before, let alone on a Saturday when nobody’s working. On top of that, he’s a witness, not a suspect. There is no probable cause for a warrant to pull his records in the first place.”

Carr didn’t respond.

“I guess the alternative is that they have my records or a tap on my phone, but that doesn’t make sense unless you lied to me yesterday and I actually am a primary suspect. If that’s the case, you wouldn’t have let me tape our conversation. And you wouldn’t have talked to me period without Mirandizing me.”

“You’re not a suspect, Ballard. I told you that.”

“Okay, then it comes back to my question. How does anyone know I was calling Robison?”

Carr shook his head in frustration.

“Look, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it was a welfare warrant. He’s gone and they got a warrant to pull his records because they’re worried he might be in trouble or something.”

“I already thought about that, but it doesn’t work,” Ballard said. “If they wanted to find him to see if he was okay, they would have pinged his phone to find his location and check on him. There’s something else. Somebody knows I called him. Who told you?”

“Listen to me. All I know is that my lieutenant came out of the meeting and told me you had been calling Robison and I needed to find out why and shut you down. That’s it.”

“Who’s your lieutenant?”

“Blackwelder.”

“Okay, what meeting was Blackwelder in?”

“What?”

“You just said he came out of a meeting and gave you instructions about me. Don’t play dumb. What meeting?”

“He was in the meeting with Olivas and a couple other RHD guys. Major Crimes got called in after Chastain got hit, and it was the meeting where Olivas brought Blackwelder up to speed.”

“So Olivas is the source. Somehow he knew that I had been calling Robison.”

Carr looked around the busy hallway to make sure no one was overtly watching them. People were going by in all directions, but none seemed to be interested in the two detectives.

“Maybe,” he said. “He wasn’t the only guy in the room.”

“More than maybe,” Ballard said. “Think about it. How did Olivas know I was calling Robison if he doesn’t have his phone?”

Ballard waited but Carr said nothing.

“Something doesn’t add up,” she said.

“This is part of your cop theory, isn’t it?” Carr finally said. “You want to put this on a cop.”

“I want to put it on the person responsible. That’s it.”

“Well, then, what’s the next move here?”

“I don’t know. But I think you need to proceed with caution.”

“Listen, Ballard, I get it. Olivas fucked you over big time. But suggesting without a shred of evidence that he knows about this, or has information about—”

“That’s not what I am doing.”

“Seems like it to me.”

Frustrated, Ballard looked around the hallway while she decided what to do.

“I have to go,” she finally said.

“Where?” Carr asked. “You still need to steer clear of this, Ballard.”

“I have my own case to work. So don’t worry.”

She stood up and looked down at Carr.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You have zero evidence of anything. You have a theory. But even if you are right about it being a cop, trying to put it on the guy everyone knows is your antagonist in the department doesn’t sell, Ballard.”

“At least not yet,” Ballard said.

She started to walk off.

“Ballard, would you come back here?” Carr said.

She turned back and looked down at him again.

“Why?” she said. “You’re not going to do anything and I got a case that I need to work.”

“Just sit down a minute, will you?” Carr pleaded.

She reluctantly sat.

“You did this yesterday,” Carr said. “‘I have a case to work. Goodbye.’ What’s so important about this other case?”

“There’s a guy out there hurting people because he likes it,” Ballard said. “He’s big evil and I’m going to stop him.”

“Thomas Trent?”