The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(96)

“Whoever your defense rep was, he’s going to be in high demand, I’ll tell you that,” McAdams said. “The picture the Times drew up this morning wasn’t pretty.”

“I didn’t use one.”

“Then that makes this one even more worth celebrating. But if there’s a K party, I don’t want to know about it.”

McAdams seemed to be giving a tacit nod of approval to a kill party. It had once been a secret tradition for officers to gather and drink after one of them had killed someone. It was a way of releasing the tension of a life-and-death encounter. Once the department formed the FID to seriously investigate all officer-involved killings, the parties were pushed back until after an FID recommendation was released. Either way, the K party was anachronistic, and if they occurred at all now, it was only under deep secrecy. The last thing Ballard was interested in doing was celebrating her killing of Thomas Trent.

“Don’t worry, no K party,” she said.

“Good,” McAdams said. “Anyway, I’m outta here. Since you’ve been at it all day, I’ll leave Jenkins solo tonight, and you go back on shift starting tomorrow. All good?”

“Yeah, all good. Thanks, L-T.”

Ballard looked around and saw an empty desk with a reasonably new computer monitor on it. It was far away from the lieutenant’s office and the sitting-duck desk. But when she got there, she noticed a mug of coffee and paperwork spread across the work space. She then did a pivot and spotted another desk nearby in the burglary row that looked empty and unused and had a decent monitor.

She sat down and the first thing she did was go online to see if the Times had anything on the FID investigation that corrected the morning’s story. There wasn’t anything yet. She pulled out one of the business cards she had gotten from Towson and started writing him an e-mail, detailing what she had heard from her lieutenant and reporting that there was no action on it so far from the Times. Her cell phone buzzed just as she hit the send button. It was Rogers Carr of Major Crimes.

“Hey, did you get my message?”

“I got it, thanks.”

“So how are you doing?”

“I’m doing all right. My L-T just told me I’m off the pine because FID is calling it within policy.”

“Of course it was within policy, are you kidding me? It was totally justified.”

“Well, you never know. This may come as a surprise to you but I’ve pissed some people off in the department.”

“You? I find that hard to believe.”

That was enough sarcastic banter for Ballard.

“So I heard you checked out my lead with the lawyer,” she said. “Towson.”

“Who told you that?” Carr asked.

“I have sources.”

“You were talking to the lawyer, weren’t you?”

“Maybe. So what’s the story?”

Carr didn’t say anything.

“Holy shit,” Ballard said. “You take my lead and run with it and now you won’t even tell me what you got from it? I think we’re having our last conversation, Detective Carr.”

“It’s not that,” Carr said. “It’s just that I don’t think you’re going to like what I tell you.”

Then it was Ballard who was silent, but not for too long.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Well, yeah, your lead has panned out,” Carr said. “Towson said Fabian told him he could deliver a bent cop. Then we got the ballistics back today and that sort of pivoted things around here.”

“‘Pivoted’? Why is that?”

“They didn’t match. The weapon used to kill Ken Chastain was not the same one used in the booth at the Dancers. The theory at the moment is two different shooters.”

“They’re saying the cases aren’t connected?”

“No, they aren’t saying that. Just two weapons, two different shooters.”

Ballard knew she didn’t have the full picture. If the two cases weren’t linked by a weapon, then there was something else.

“So what am I missing?” she asked.

“Well, that wasn’t the full ballistics report,” Carr said.

“Carr, come on, stop dicking around.”

“They identified the weapons off the slugs and brass. The gun in the booth was a ninety-two F. And in the garage, it was a Ruger three-eighty.”

Ballard knew that bullet casings collected at the crime scenes and the slugs from the bodies revealed markings identifiable to specific models of firearms. Firing pins and gunbarrel rifling left proprietary indentations and striations.

She also knew the significance of the weapons identified. The 92F was a 9-millimeter Beretta, and it was on the list of firearms approved by the department for carry by detectives. The Ruger was a small popper that was easily concealed and used for close-in work. It, too, was on the department’s approved list for backup weapons.

It also was a hitter’s gun.

Ballard was silent while she considered this information. The one piece she reluctantly added to it was her knowledge that Chastain carried a Beretta 92F, or at least he had when they were partners. It drew a question she hated to ask.

“Chastain carried a ninety-two F. Did they run his gun against the slugs from the Dancers?”