The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(49)

Thanks to the inordinately long wait for an elevator in the fifty-year-old courthouse, Ballard did not get to Department 107 until ten minutes before ten a.m., and she saw that court was about to convene. A man in blue county jail scrubs was at the defense table with his suited attorney sitting next to him. A prosecutor Ballard recognized but could not remember by name was at the other table. They appeared ready to go and the only party missing was the judge on the bench. Ballard pulled back her jacket so the badge on her belt could be seen by the courtroom deputy and went through the gate. She moved around the attorney tables and went to the clerk’s station to the right of the judge’s bench. A man with a fraying shirt collar looked up at her. The nameplate on his desk said ADAM TRAINOR.

“Hi,” Ballard whispered, feigning breathlessness so Trainor would think she had run up the nine flights of steps and take pity. “Is there any chance I can get in to see the judge about a wiretap warrant before he starts court?”

“Oh, boy, we’re just waiting on the last juror to get here before starting,” Trainor said. “You might have to come back at the lunch break.”

“Can you please just ask him? The warrant’s only seven pages and most of it’s boilerplate stuff he’s read a million times. It won’t take him long.”

“Let me see. What’s your name and department?”

“Renée Ballard, LAPD. I’m working a cold case homicide. And there is a time element on this.”

Trainor picked up his phone, punched a button, and swiveled on his chair so his back was to Ballard and she would have difficulty hearing the phone call. It didn’t matter because it was over in twenty seconds and Ballard expected the answer was no as Trainor swiveled toward her.

But she was wrong.

“You can go back,” Trainor said. “He’s in his chambers. He’s got about ten minutes. The missing juror just called from the garage.”

“Not with those elevators,” Ballard said.

Trainor opened a half door in the cubicle that allowed Ballard access to the rear door of the courtroom. She walked through a file room and then into a hallway. She had been in judicial chambers on other cases before and knew that this hallway led to a line of offices assigned to the criminal-court judges. She didn’t know whether to go right or left until she heard a voice say, “Back here.”

It was to the left. She found an open door and saw Judge Billy Thornton standing next to a desk, pulling on his black robe for court.

“Come in,” he said.

Ballard entered. His chambers were just like the others she had been in. A desk area and a sitting area surrounded on three sides by shelves containing legal volumes in leather bindings. She assumed it was all for show, since everything was on databases now.

“A cold case, huh?” Thornton said. “How old?”

Ballard spoke as she opened her backpack and pulled out the file.

“Nineteen-ninety,” she said. “We have a suspect and want to stimulate a wire, get him talking about the case.”

She handed the file to Thornton, who took it behind his desk and sat down. He read through the pages without taking them out of the folder.

“My clerk said there is a time element?” he said.

Ballard wasn’t expecting that.

“Uh, well, he’s a gang member and we’ve talked to some others in the gang about the case,” she said, improvising all the way. “It could get back to him before we have a chance to go in and stir things up, get him talking on the phone.”

Thornton continued reading. Ballard noticed a black-and-white photo of a jazz musician framed on the wall next to the coatrack, where a judge’s spare robe hung. Thornton spoke as he appeared to be reading the third page of the document.

“I take wiretap requests very seriously,” he said. “It’s the ultimate intrusion, listening to somebody’s private conversations.”

Ballard wasn’t sure if she was supposed to respond. She thought maybe Thornton was speaking rhetorically. She answered anyway in a nervous voice.

“We do, too,” she said. “We think this is our best chance of clearing the case—that if prompted, he’ll check in with his gang associates and admissions of culpability might be made.”

She was quoting the document Thornton was reading. He nodded while keeping his eyes down.

“And you want text messaging on the cell phone,” he said.

“Yes, sir, we do,” Ballard said.

When he got to the sixth page she saw him shake his head once and she began to think he was going to reject the application.

“You say this guy was high up in the gang,” Thornton said. “Even back at the time of the killing he was high up. You think he did the actual killing?”

“Uh, we do, yes,” Ballard said. “He was in a position to order it done, but because of the possible embarrassment of the situation, we think he did it himself.”

She hoped the judge wouldn’t ask who “we” constituted, since she was working the case alone at this point. Bosch was out of the department, so he didn’t count.

He got to the last page of text, where Ballard knew she was grabbing at straws in support of probable cause.

“This sketchbook mentioned here,” the judge said. “Do you have that with you?”

“Yes, sir,” Ballard said.