The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(21)

11


The Men’s Central jail was on Bauchet Street, a twenty-minute walk from the PAB. But Ballard changed her mind and decided to drive it so she could hit the road after speaking to Dennard Dorsey and move on to the next interview.

She waited in an interview room for twenty minutes before a sheriff’s deputy named Valens brought Dorsey in and sat him at a table across from her. Dorsey had a casualness about himself that indicated he was comfortable in his surroundings. He was far from a wide-eyed first-timer in Men’s Central. He was African-American, with skin so dark that the complete collar of tattoos on his neck was unreadable and looked to Ballard like a set of old bruises. He had a full head of graying hair that was cornrowed and matched a goatee that was so long, it too was braided. His wrists were cuffed behind his back and he had to lean forward slightly in the chair.

According to the records Ballard had pulled up on the computer, Dorsey had turned fifty in jail just a few days earlier, making him just twenty-one at the time of John Hilton’s murder. But the man in front of her looked much older, easily into his sixties. The aging seemed so extreme that at first Ballard thought there had been a mistake and Valens had brought the wrong man into the room.

“You’re Dennard Dorsey?” she asked.

“That’s me,” he said. “What you want?”

“How old are you? Tell me your birth date.”

“March ten, ’sixty-nine. I’m fifty, so what the fuck is this about?”

The date matched and Ballard was finally convinced. She pressed on.

“It’s about John Hilton.”

“Who the fuck is that?”

“You remember. The guy got shot in the alley off Melrose where you used to sell drugs.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You talked to your handler at the LAPD about it. Brendan Sloan, remember?”

“Fuck Brendan Sloan, that motherfucker never did jack shit for me.”

“He kept homicide away from you when they wanted to talk to you about John Hilton.”

“Fuck homicide. I never killed nobody.”

Dorsey turned around to see if he could get a guard’s attention through the glass door behind him. He was going to get up and go.

“Stay in your seat, Dennard,” Ballard said. “You’re not going anywhere. Not till we have a conversation.”

“Now why would I have a conversation with you?” Dorsey asked. “I talk to anybody I talk to my lawyer, that’s it.”

“Because right now, I’m talking to you as a possible witness. You bring a lawyer into it, then I’ll be talking to a suspect.”

“I tol’ you, I never killed nobody ever.”

“Then I’ll give you two reasons to talk to me. One, I know your parole officer—the one you never showed up to meet after you got out of Wasco. We’ve worked cases together. You help me here and I’ll go talk to him. Maybe he lifts the VOP and you’re back on the street.”

“What’s the other reason?” Dorsey asked.

Ballard was wearing a brown suit with chalk pinstripes. She reached into an inside pocket of her jacket for a folded document, a prop she had pulled out of the murder book in prep for the interview. She unfolded it and put it down on the table in front of Dorsey. He leaned further forward and down to read it.

“I can’t read this,” he finally said. “They don’t give me glasses in here. What is it?”

“It’s a witness report from the John Hilton murder case from 1990,” Ballard said. “The lead investigator says there that he can’t talk to you because you’re a high-value snitch for the narco unit.”

“That’s bullshit. I ain’t no snitch.”

“Maybe not now, but you were then. Says it right there, Dennard, and you don’t want that piece of paper getting into the wrong hands, you know what I mean? Deputy Valens told me they got you in the Rolling 60s module. How do you think the shot callers in there will react if they see a piece of paper like that floating around?”

“You just messing with me. You can’t do that.”

“You don’t think so? You want to find out? I need you to tell me about that murder from twenty-nine years ago. Tell me what you know and what you remember and then that piece of paper disappears and you don’t have to worry about it ever again.”

“Okay, look, I remember I talked to Sloan about it back then. I tol’ him I wudn’t there that day.”

“And that’s what he told the detectives on the case. But that wasn’t the whole story, Dennard. You know something. A killing like that doesn’t go down without dealers on that street knowing something or hearing something before or after. Tell me what you know.”

“I can’t hardly remember that far back. I done a lotta drugs myself, you know.”

“If you ‘hardly’ remember, that means you remember something. Tell me what you remember.”

“Look, all I know is we was told to get away from that location. Like we thought we had a tip that a bust was coming down or something. So I wudn’t there, man, like I tol’ Sloan back then and tell you now. I didn’t see nothin’, I don’t know nothin’, ’cause I wudn’t there. Period. Now rip up that paper like you said.”