The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(53)

He was interrupted by the doorbell.





27


Ballard was at the door.

“I need your help,” she said.

Bosch stepped back and let her enter. He then followed her in, noticing that she had a backpack over her shoulder. As she walked past the dining room table, she looked down at the documents stacked in separate piles.

“Is that the Montgomery case?” she asked.

“Uh, yes,” Bosch said. “We got a copy of the murder book in discovery. I’m just looking at the other—”

“Great, so you’re working here on it.”

“Where else would I—”

“No, that’s good. I want you to help me from here.”

She seemed nervous, ramped up. Bosch wondered if she had slept since finishing her shift.

“What are we talking about here, Renée?” he asked.

“I need you to monitor a wiretap when I’m not able to,” she said. “I have the software on my laptop and I can leave it with you.”

Bosch paused to gather his thoughts before replying.

“This is in regard to the Hilton case?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Our case. You can work on Montgomery, but when a call or text comes in you’ll get an alert on my laptop and you just need to monitor it. It’ll be good that you have something else to do while monitoring.”

She gestured toward the stacks spread on the table.

“Renée,” he said. “Is this a legal tap?”

Ballard laughed.

“Of course,” she said. “I got the search warrant signed this morning. Then spent the next two hours getting it set up with the providers—a landline and a cell. Text messages included. Then I went to the tech unit and had the software put on my laptop.”

“You went to Billy Thornton with this?” Bosch asked.

“Yes, Department 107. What’s wrong, Harry?”

“He wouldn’t have signed off on this without an approval from the department. I thought this was a case we were working. Now command staff knows about it?”

“I had a captain sign off on it and he won’t be a problem for us.”

“Who?”

“Olivas.”

“What?”

“Harry, all you need to know is that it’s a legit wire. We’re good to go.”

“Does Billy still have the jazz photo on his wall?”

“Jesus Christ, you don’t believe me, do you? Ben Webster, okay? ‘The Brute and the Beauty.’ Happy?”

“‘Beautiful.’”

“What?”

“Webster—they called him ‘the Brute and the Beautiful.’”

“Whatever. Are you satisfied?”

“Yeah, okay, I’m satisfied.”

“I can’t believe you’d think I’d forge a search warrant.”

Bosch knew he had to change the subject.

“Well, when did Olivas make captain?”

“Just got the bars.”

Bosch knew that Olivas was Ballard’s nemesis in the department—and she his. He decided he didn’t want to know how she got him to sign off on the warrant. Asking her would risk another rift between them.

“So, it’s been a long time since I worked a wiretap,” he said instead. “We used to have to go out to the wiretap room in Commerce to listen. You’re saying I can monitor it from here?”

“Totally,” Ballard said. “It’s all on the laptop.”

Bosch nodded.

“So, who are we listening to?” he asked.

“Elvin Kidd,” Ballard said. “Starting tomorrow. I want to get you set up and comfortable on it, and then after my shift tomorrow morning I’m going to go out to Rialto and shake his tree. Hopefully, he’ll get on the phone and call or text to ask his old friends in South L.A. what’s going on. We get an admission and we’ll take him down.”

Bosch nodded again.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” Ballard said.

“Good. Let’s get something to eat and talk this through. When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t remember. But we had a deal, remember?”

“Right.”

Bosch drove. They went down the hill, crossed the freeway on Barham and over to the Smoke House by the Warner Brothers studio. Ballard reported that she had not eaten anything since a meal break on her last shift. She ordered a steak, a baked potato, and garlic toast to share. Bosch ordered a salad with grilled chicken. Ballard had brought her backpack into the restaurant and while they waited for their food she updated Bosch on her investigation, detailing her interview with Hilton’s former roommate, Nathan Brazil, which confirmed that Hilton was gay and in love with an unattainable man.

“It all leads to Kidd,” she said. “He owned that alley and he cleared everybody out, set up the meeting with Hilton, and then executed him.”

“And the motive?” Bosch asked.

“Pride. He couldn’t have this infatuated kid threatening his reputation. Did you look at the phone records in the murder book when you had it?”

“Yes, but just in a cursory way.”