Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (88)

47


BALLARD HELD HER badge cupped in one hand while she knocked on the door with the other. It wasn’t long before a short woman with the same coloring and features as Jorge Ochoa answered the door.

“Mrs. Ochoa?” Ballard asked.

“Sí,” the woman said.

Ballard immediately wished she had gotten a Spanish-speaking officer to go with her. She could step away and call North Hollywood Division to see if one was available but instead pressed on. She held up her badge.

“La policía. Habla inglés?”

The woman frowned but then turned away from the door and yelled in rapid-fire Spanish back into the house. The only word Ballard identified was policía. The woman then turned back to Ballard and nodded as though she had just fixed the problem. After an awkward and silent minute, a young man appeared behind the woman at the door, his dark hair disheveled from sleep. He was almost a carbon copy of what Jorge Ochoa looked like in the mug shots she had reviewed when reading the murder book.

“What?” he said.

He was clearly annoyed with the early wake-up, even though it was almost noon. Ballard quickly assessed the VB tattoos on his arms and read him as a member of the Vineland Boyz street gang. She knew that a gangster’s day typically started in the p.m. hours. This was early.

“You’re Oscar, right?” Ballard said. “I want to talk to your mother about your brother.”

“My brother’s gone,” Oscar said. “And we don’t talk to cops. Adiós, puta.”

He started to close the door but Ballard reached her hand out and stopped it.

“You call somebody who wants to help your brother a whore?”

“Help him? Shit. You coulda helped him when he said he didn’t do it. But no, you people just threw away the key.”

“I want to show something to your mother. It might be what gets Jorge out of prison. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. But next time you visit your brother, you tell him I was here and you sent me away.”

Oscar didn’t move or speak. Then his mother spoke to him in a whisper. Ballard knew enough Spanish to know she had asked her son what the woman wanted. Mrs. Ochoa had heard Jorge’s name mentioned.

Oscar didn’t answer her. He turned back to Ballard and made room for her to enter.

“Show her,” he said.

Ballard stepped in. She had spent the night before reviewing the murder book she had pulled at North Hollywood station. Her first effort in the morning was to attempt to track down the family of Olga Reyes. But it appeared that her family had left Los Angeles after her murder, and Ballard had not yet been able to locate them. The closest she came was a neighbor who said she thought the family had gone to Texas.

That left the Jorge Ochoa side of the equation, and here she was at his mother’s cookie-cutter house in a post–World War II tract in Sunland.

Ballard was led to a small, modestly furnished living room, where she immediately saw signs that she was on the right track. Several framed paintings and sketches that had the look of prison art hung on the walls. All were on butcher paper and signed in pencil.

“Did Jorge want to be an artist?” she asked.

“He is an artist,” Oscar said. “Show her what you got and then go.”

Ballard was annoyed with herself for not thinking through her question.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell your mother I am going to show her a photo of a piece of jewelry and I want to know if she’s ever seen it before.”

While Oscar made the translation, Ballard swung her backpack off her shoulder and opened it on the floor. She removed a file folder containing an 8 x 10 color photo of the bracelet with the artist’s palette charm, which she had printed at home that morning. She gave the file to Oscar to give to his mother. She wanted him invested in this as well.

Oscar opened the file and looked at the photo with his mother. Ballard watched the woman for a reaction and saw the recognition in her eyes.

“She’s seen it before,” Ballard said quickly.

Oscar and his mother exchanged words and Oscar translated.

“She said it was my brother’s. He gave it to Olga because they were in love. Where did you find it?”

Ballard knew the question had come from him.

“I can’t tell you right now,” Ballard said. “But I think your brother is going to get out of prison with it.”

“How?”

“I think I can prove that somebody else killed Olga.”

Suddenly Oscar’s tough shell cracked and Ballard saw hope and fear in his eyes. He then turned away and translated for his mother.

“Dios mío,” she said. “Dios mío.”

She reached out and grabbed Ballard’s hand.

“Please,” she said.

Oscar’s hard shell slipped back into place.

“You better not be fucking with us,” he said.

“I’m not,” Ballard said. “Ask your mother if she knows where Jorge got the bracelet.”

The exchange in Spanish was quick.

“She doesn’t know,” Oscar said.

“What about the charm?” Ballard asked.

The next exchange didn’t need to be translated. The woman shook her head. Ballard looked at Oscar.

“What about you?” Ballard asked.