The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(58)

“What do you think?” Ballard asked.

Bosch thought a moment.

“I think we wait and see if Kidd makes a move,” he said.

“But now that he knows about the investigation he may go offline,” Ballard said. “He’ll go buy a burner. I would if I were him.”

“I could go out and watch him tonight.”

“I’m going with you.”

“That won’t work. It’s two hours out there easy with rush hour and you have your shift you said you can’t miss. You’d have to turn around almost as soon as we got there. I’ll go and you monitor the wire, just in case he’s stupid.”

The text-message tone sounded from Ballard’s laptop. “Speaking of which,” she said.

She pulled up the message. It was outgoing from Kidd’s phone.

Need to meet. Dulan’s at 1 tomoro. Important!!!!

They both stared at the screen, waiting for a reply.

“You think it’s the Marcel that Dorsey mentioned?” Ballard asked.

“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “Probably.”

A short reply came through.

I’ll be there.

Bosch got up from the table to loosen his knee again.

“I guess if we figure out who Dulan is, we could set up on him tomorrow,” he said.

“Dulan’s is a soul food kitchen,” Ballard said. “Good stuff. But there’s at least three of them that I know of in South L.A.”

Bosch nodded, impressed by her knowledge.

“Any of them in Rolling 60s turf?” he asked.

“There’s one on Crenshaw in the fifties,” Ballard said.

“That’s probably it. You eat there? Will we stand out if we’re in there?”

“You will. But I can pass for high yellow.”

It was true. Ballard was mixed race—part Polynesian for sure, though Bosch had never asked about her ancestry.

“So, you inside and me outside,” he said. “Not sure I like that.”

“They’re not going to make a move in a crowded restaurant,” Ballard said. “At one o’clock that place will be hopping.”

“Then how would you even get close to them to hear anything?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“You gotta dress down.”

“What? Why?”

“Because of what D-squared told him on the call—that you were a looker.”

“Not exactly what he said. But I take the point. I’ll go get a couple hours on the beach after work and I’ll come dressed down. Don’t worry.”

“Maybe we should call in the troops. Go to your lieutenant, tell him what you’ve been doing, get more bodies on this.”

“I go in with a homicide and it will be taken off me faster than a pickpocket takes a wallet on the Venice boardwalk.”

Bosch nodded. He knew she was right. He pointed to her laptop.

“At work tonight, can you trace that number he texted to, find out who it is?”

“I can try but it’s probably a burner.”

“I don’t know. Kidd’s been out of the game. He used his own cell to text—that was a mistake. Out of the game might mean he’s got no burner. And people still in the game have burners and change them all the time. But this is a number Kidd had—that he knew. It might be a legit phone.”

Ballard nodded.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll see if I can run it down.”

Bosch moved to the sliding door and opened it, then stepped out onto the deck. Ballard followed him.

“Amazing view,” she said.

“I like it best at night,” Bosch said. “The lights and everything. Even makes the freeway look pretty.”

Ballard laughed.

“You know, we still don’t know why John Jack had this murder book or why he sat on it for twenty years,” Bosch said.

Ballard came up to the deck railing next to him. “Does it matter? We have a bead on the doer. And we have opportunity and motive.”

“It matters to me,” Bosch said. “I want to know.”

“I think we’ll get there,” Ballard said. “We’ll figure it out.”

Bosch just nodded, but he was doubtful. They—Ballard mostly—had accomplished in a week what John Jack had not been able to do in two decades. Bosch was beginning to subscribe to Ballard’s theory that there was something sinister about it—that John Jack Thompson took the murder book because he didn’t want the case solved.

And that created a whole new mystery to think about. And a painful one at that.





BALLARD





30


Ballard started her shift at the Watch Three roll call. Nothing had been left in her inbox by day-watch detectives so she went upstairs to roll call to get a take on what was happening out on the street. Lieutenant Washington was holding forth at the podium, another sign that it was shaping up as a slow night. He usually had a sergeant handle roll call while he remained in the watch office monitoring what was happening outside.

Washington called out the teams and their assigned reporting districts.

“Meyer, Shuman: six-A-fifteen.”

“Doucette and Torborg: six-A-forty-five.”