The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(46)

“Well, you know why. And I was hoping you’d have the questionnaire finished for me.”

“I’m not done.”

She made a move to shut the door and Ballard put her hand out to stop it.

“Is something wrong, Cindy? Did something happen?”

Ballard quickly reset her goals for the visit. She now just wanted to get inside.

“Well, for one, you called my ex-husband and I asked you not to do that,” Carpenter said. “Now I have to deal with him.”

“You didn’t tell me not to call him,” Ballard said. “You told me you didn’t want to talk about him, but you also gave the responding officer his name and number as your closest contact. And it — ”

“I told you I don’t know why I did that. I was confused and terrified. I couldn’t think of anybody else.”

“I understand all of that, Cindy. I do. But I have an investigation going and I need to follow it wherever it takes me. You put your ex’s name down on the incident report, then you don’t want to talk about him. That raised a flag for me. So, yes, I called him. I didn’t tell him that you were attacked. In fact, I worked my way around it. I take it he called you. What did he say?”

Carpenter shook her head like she was annoyed with how smoothly Ballard was handling this confrontation.

“Can I come in?” Ballard asked.

“Might as well,” Carpenter said.

She stepped back from the door. Ballard entered and tried to further diffuse the situation.

“Cindy, I hope you understand that my sole purpose right now is to find the men who attacked you and put them away forever. No matter what moves I make on the investigation, none are intended to cause you further harm or upset. That’s the last thing I want to do. So, why don’t we sit down and start with what happened after I talked to Reginald.”

“Fine.”

Carpenter took the spot on the couch where Ballard had last seen her the day before. Renée sat in a stuffed chair across a low-level coffee table.

“He called you?” Ballard prompted.

“Yes, he called me,” Carpenter said. “He asked what happened and I ended up telling him.”

“And was he sympathetic to you?”

“He acted like he was, but he always made it sound like he cared about me. That was the problem — it was always an act with him. But …”

“But what?”

“This is why I’m pissed off about you calling him. He now has this to hold over me.”

Ballard waited for her to say more but she didn’t.

“I don’t understand, Cindy. What is he holding over you?”

“I left him, okay? I was the one who wanted out.”

“Okay.”

“And he told me, he said I would regret it. And now, thanks to you, he knows what happened to me and, like I said, he pretended to be sympathetic, but I could tell he wasn’t. He was saying I told you so without saying it.”

Carpenter turned her face and looked out the window toward the street. Ballard was silent while she thought about the story of the Carpenter marriage. Finally, she landed on a question.

“Cindy, do you remember, when he asked you what happened, did you get any sense that he already knew?”

“Of course he did. You told him.”

“I didn’t tell him you were sexually assaulted. I said it was a break-in. Did he already know you were attacked?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try to remember, what exactly did he say?”

“He said, ‘I heard that some guys broke in and are you all right.’ Things like that.”

Ballard paused for a moment. She wanted to get the next question right.

“Cindy, think back to that call. Did he say ‘some guys’ broke in? He used the plural?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. I might have told him it was two guys, because I told him what happened. The point is, he now knows and I really wish he didn’t.”

Ballard knew that she had not mentioned that there were multiple suspects when she talked to Reginald on the phone. But now Cindy Carpenter couldn’t reliably remember who brought that fact into their conversation. It further advanced Ballard’s suspicions, because Cindy’s recounting of the conversation revealed more about their marriage. Her description of her ex-husband made him sound petty, selfish, and vengeful.

Again, though, she had to ask herself why she kept coming back to Reginald. He presumably had an alibi. And there was no known connection between Cindy or Reginald Carpenter and the other two victims of the Midnight Men.

“Did Reginald happen to say where he was on New Year’s?” she asked.

“He said he’d just gotten back from a golf trip in the desert when you called him,” Carpenter said. “He didn’t say exactly where that was and I didn’t ask. It was the last thing I cared about. Why are you asking that?”

“He just seemed preoccupied when I called him.”

“Please stop calling him.”

“I already have.”

Palm Springs qualified as the desert. As much as Ballard disliked Reginald Carpenter, it seemed unlikely that he was involved in the Midnight Men attacks. She decided to put the ex-husband aside and continue her hunt for a nexus between the three victims.