The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(43)

“Great,” Ballard said. “But I don’t mind working alone, L-T. I’ve got patrol backing me up whenever I need it.”

She turned away and looked for a desk to use. The one she had been using lately was currently occupied by its dayside owner. She picked a spot farthest away from the other detectives’ activity and sat down to work.

Ballard wasn’t sure how she felt about McAdams’s mention of his efforts to team her with a partner. Her last partner had retired four months earlier and had been on an extended bereavement leave before that. All told, Ballard had already been working alone for seven months. Though the job had always entailed two detectives splitting up seven nights, it had been different these last months truly working by herself. There had been moments of sheer terror, but for the most part she liked it better than having to be with a partner or constantly report every move she was making to him. She liked that the watch commander kept only a loose string on her. And her true supervisor, McAdams, never knew what she was up to for sure.

Ballard realized that the story she had spun for McAdams about the crispy critter had an element of truth to it. She had not received a report from the Fire Department arson team on the man who had died in his tent on Cole Avenue. This prevented her from completing her own report.

She found Nuccio’s card in the bottom of her backpack and then opened up her LAPD e-mail account on the desktop computer. She composed and sent Nuccio a message asking for the victim’s ID and official cause of death and any other pertinent details, including whether the homeless man’s next-of-kin had been located and informed of the death. She was not expecting to hear back from Nuccio until at least the next working day. She knew the arson guys were nine to fivers unless they were called out or were running with a case.

But her cell phone rang a minute after she sent the e-mail.

“Ballard, it’s Nuccio.”

“I just sent you an e-mail. I need—”

“I read it. That’s why I’m calling. You can stand down. RHD is taking it.”

“Wait, what?”

“We’re calling it a suspicious death after all and that’s the protocol. Robbery-Homicide Division handles it.”

“What’s suspicious about the death?”

“A few things. First of all, the dead guy has some juice, believe it or not. From a rich family down in San Diego. So that’s going to sharpen the focus on this.”

“What’s his name? Who is he?”

“His name is Edison Banks Jr. and his father had a shipyard or something down there and got rich on Navy contracts. He died last year and this kid in the tent inherited a bundle but probably didn’t know it. Five years ago, his father got tired of his shit, gave him ten grand in cash and kicked him out of the house. He was twenty. The family never heard from him again. I guess he used up the money and has been up here on the streets ever since. There’s a younger brother and now he gets all the dough.”

“And you’re saying that makes this suspicious?”

“No, I’m saying that makes us want to check all of the boxes on this. And in doing that, it got suspicious.”

“How?”

“Two things. One is the autopsy. The blood-alcohol screen was off the chart. Came back with a three-six BAC. That’s like triple the drunk driving limit.”

“More like quadruple. But he wasn’t driving, Nuccio.”

“I know that, but this kid is five-eight, a hundred forty pounds, according to the autopsy. That much booze and he wouldn’t be driving or anything else. He’d be down for the count.”

Ballard didn’t bother schooling Nuccio on how blood-alcohol content was not skewed by body size or weight.

“Doesn’t matter how drunk he was, he still could’ve kicked the heater over in his sleep,” she said.

“Maybe,” Nuccio said. “Except we examined the heater, too. It’s got a float valve that cuts off fuel supply to the flame if the device is more than forty-five degrees off level. It’s a safety feature. So kicking it over actually puts the flame out. It doesn’t start a fire.”

“And you tested it?”

“Several times. And it doesn’t leak. Only way to spill the fuel is to unscrew the cap and turn it on its side. But the cap was screwed on. So, it’s suspicious. This guy’s in the tent passed out, somebody for whatever reason crawls into the tent, unscrews the cap, and dumps out the heating oil, screws it back on and gets the hell out. Then lights a match, throws it in, and whoosh. Poor guy never knew what hit him. That’s the only way it would work and that adds up to suspicious. RHD is taking it by protocol.”

Ballard was silent as she considered what Nuccio had described. She saw it like a movie in her mind.

“Who has it at RHD?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Nuccio said. “I talked to Captain Olivas about it and there’s a big powwow tomorrow at eight. I’ll find out who he assigned it to then.”

Of course, it was Olivas. RHD teams took the big cases. Ballard had been on one of those teams once. Until defending herself against Olivas cost her the job.

“Okay, Nuccio, I’ll see you there tomorrow,” she said.

“What?” Nuccio said. “No. This was informational only. It’s not your case, Ballard. RHD has it, and besides, you don’t even know where the meeting is.”