Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (34)

There was a short honk from outside the house and Bosch lifted the needle off the record and killed the power to the stereo. He grabbed his keys and went out the front door. Ballard was in her city ride at the curb, the passenger door already open. It told Bosch that something had her in a hurry this morning. He got in quickly and pulled his seat belt on.

“Morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said. “Was that Procol Harum you were playing?”

She said it with surprise in her voice as she pulled away from the curb and headed down to Cahuenga.

“Close,” Bosch said. “It was a cover by King Curtis.”

“My father loved that song,” Ballard said. “He’d sit on the beach after surfing and play it on this toy flute he had.”

“First time I heard it was on a harmonica. A guy in Vietnam. It sounded like a funeral song to me. And that guy, he never made it home.”

That ended the conversation and Bosch became self-conscious about the buzzkill. Ballard rescued him by handing him a piece of paper he knew came from her notebook.

“What’s this?”

“My case list. Look it over and pick something to run with. Pick more than one.”

Bosch studied the list. There were several entries but some had already been crossed out as completed.

“ ‘Photo to NH’?” he asked.

“I was supposed to send Nelson Hastings a photo of Laura Wilson,” Ballard said. “But he already asked about her in the office before I got to it.”

“I’d still send it. Sometimes a face is more memorable than a name.”

“Yeah, but no one in the current office was around during that first election. I need to remind Hastings he has to get me the name of the campaign manager. I’ll see if he wants the photo then.”

“ ‘Juanita’—is that the victim’s mother?”

“Yes, in Chicago. We need to find out what happened to Laura’s belongings, see if the campaign button can be located.”

“Right, how about I talk to her, and I’m also going to get to Dale Dubose.”

“Great.”

“What else?”

“When we get in, I want to call Darcy Troy. She texted me on my way over. She has some preliminary info on our suspect’s health that she wants to share. I didn’t want to do it while driving and because I want you to hear it.”

“That’s why you’re in a hurry?”

“I didn’t say that, but, yeah, I want to find out what she’s got and I want you there. We can go into the interview room and call her. You can deal with Juanita afterward. Cool?”

“Cool.”

They had gotten to the 101 and were heading south, the spires of downtown in the mist ahead. They would end up taking three freeways to get to Westchester and the Ahmanson Center.

“So,” Bosch said. “You’ve had a night to sleep on it. What do you think about Beecher?”

“Well, I really don’t like being unable to confirm his story,” Ballard said. “But he wasn’t going to give up Mr. X and we had no leverage to make him.”

“What’s your gut say?”

“My gut says it’s a true story. And I have to tell you, I went down an internet rabbit hole last night, trying to check associations and crossing points between Harmon Harris and people in the business on the level that Beecher was talking about.”

“Are you going to tell me Brad Pitt is gay?”

“No, I’m going to tell you I wasted two hours that I could have used for sleep. I came up with nothing and nobody I could even hazard a guess at. What’s your gut say?”

“To quote Beecher, I think we’re barking up the wrong tree. We needed to do it, due diligence and all of that, but I don’t see Harmon Harris doing this and I think Beecher was believable.”

“Then we’re done with it. We move on.”

They got to the Ahmanson Center by eight o’clock and were the first members of the OU Unit to arrive at the pod. After a stop at the break room, they took their coffees into the interview room and closed the door so they could talk to Darcy Troy in private.

“Think Colleen’s going to come in today?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t care, as long as she keeps her hands off the property boxes.”

Ballard made the call on her cell and put it on speaker. Troy picked up right away.

“Hey, Renée,” she said.

“Darcy,” Ballard said. “Thanks for running with this. I’m here with Harry Bosch, who is one of the cold case investigators working with me.”

“Hi, Harry,” Troy said.

“Hello,” Bosch said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Troy said. “It was many years ago, when I first came on in the DNA lab.”

“Oh, okay,” Bosch said, slightly embarrassed. “Then good to meet you again.”

“So, you have an update for us?” Ballard asked.

“I do,” Troy said. “I would term this preliminary because there’s more we can do, but I knew you were moving quickly, so let me tell you what we’ve got right now. As you know, they really didn’t do much with this when the case first came in, what, seventeen years ago. But there was enough of the sample stored here to allow for further analysis.”