Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (52)

He disconnected, knowing she probably wouldn’t call him back or take him up on his offer. He continued driving into the night.





27


BALLARD GOT INTO the car, lowered the window, and composed herself.

“Shit,” she said.

She pulled her phone and called Bosch. He answered right away and Ballard could hear traffic noise in the background.

“Harry, it’s me. Where are you?”

“In my rental, following Hastings to City Hall.”

“City Hall—are you sure? It’s Saturday.”

“I won’t be sure till he gets there, but it looks like he’s heading downtown. He left Rita Ford’s place about eight, went home, and then came out a little while later in casual Saturday clothes.”

“What does that mean?”

“Jacket, dress shirt, no tie.”

“No other stops?”

“Not so far. Anything from the lab?”

“I just left. And it’s not good.”

“No prints on the button?”

“No, there’s a print. But it belongs to Laura Wilson.”

“Okay. What about the wine bottle? Did you—”

“It’s a smudge. It’s useless.”

“What about DNA?”

“I dropped the bottle and the pin off at serology. Darcy’s off but I called her. She said she’d come in to swab them. But don’t get your hopes up. She said we got lucky with the windowsill palm print because the guy was probably nervous and sweating. I doubt Hastings broke much of a sweat picking out a bottle of wine.”

Bosch didn’t respond.

“Are you there, Harry?”

“Yeah, I’m just thinking. You don’t want to go through his trash until it’s out on the street. So maybe we should bring him in.”

“What, arrest him? We have nothing.”

“No, bring him back to Ahmanson. I don’t know, we make something up, tell him he needs to come in for an update.”

“And you’re sure he’ll come running all the way out to Westchester on his day off?”

“You tell him it has to be in person because of something sensitive we discovered about the councilman. We know his number one priority is protecting Pearlman. He’ll come. And then we put him in a chair with arms so we get his palms when he gets up. We give him a cup of coffee, put some snacks and a pack of gum on the table. We give him some kind of document to read, not keep. You know, we carry out the charade, then he leaves and we hopefully have a palm print and his DNA.”

Ballard considered the idea for a few moments.

“What do you think?” Bosch prompted.

“That could work, but if he’s the guy, he’ll know if we are feeding him a bullshit story,” Ballard said. “We need to come up with something important enough to draw him out, but then he’s also got to believe what we tell him.”

“You said Hastings and the tuxedo guy don’t talk, right?”

“Kramer. And yeah, not in years. Hastings pushed him out of the Pearlman universe and Kramer’s still bitter.”

“Okay, so that’s where we build the story. It’s something Kramer told you. An accusation or just some sort of story that will hurt Pearlman politically if it comes out. We phony up an affidavit from Kramer.”

Ballard nodded as Bosch talked, even though they were on their phones.

“And it will be unlikely that Hastings checks it out with Kramer, because they don’t talk,” Ballard said. “We could say Kramer kept records from that first campaign and there’s something there connecting Pearlman to Laura Wilson. It could be a note or a phone message or something. We’ll think it through before we meet.”

She started the car and headed back toward the 10 freeway.

“So you’ll set it up?” Bosch asked.

“I’ll try to get him out to Ahmanson today,” Ballard said. “It’ll be good that it’s Saturday. No one else around. I’ll tell him we need to keep it private.”

“But what if he wants you to come to him? What’s the fallback position?”

“I’ll just say no. Pearlman might be coming in on a Saturday, too. So it’s gotta be Ahmanson. If he balks at Ahmanson, I’ll suggest a coffee shop and I’ll be late so he’ll get a head start drinking his coffee and will toss the cup when we’re finished talking.”

“Good. He just pulled into the City Hall garage. You want me to stay with him, just in case he comes back out?”

“No, let’s meet at Ahmanson and work out the story. We can set up the meet.”

“I don’t think he ever saw me on his tail. But just in case, I don’t think I should be part of the meeting with Hastings. I’ll hang back.”

“Yes, play it safe.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there.”

Ballard disconnected. It took her forty minutes to cut through downtown and then out to Westchester. When she finally got to the pod, she found Colleen Hatteras at her station.

“Colleen, it’s Saturday. What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to work on this before the update Monday.”

“What update?”

“Remember, we were going to meet first thing to go over the IGG stuff on Pearlman-Wilson?”