The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(79)

He took the sandwich and a bottle of water to the communal seating area and found a table. As he ate, he sent a text to his daughter, knowing that it had a better chance of being answered than a phone call. His riffing about her and the lawsuit with Manley had reminded him that he wanted to see her. Spending Saturday nights secretly watching her house was not enough. He needed to see her and hear her voice.

Mads, need to go down to Norwalk to pull a record for a case.

That’s halfway to you. Want to get coffee or dinner?

Ballard had called Bosch on Sunday from Ventura, where she was visiting the grandmother who had raised her during most of her teenage years. The update on the Hilton case was that Ballard had gone to see a prosecutor who was ready to file on Elvin Kidd. There was a list of things Selma Robinson wanted covered on the case to shore it up on all sides. Among those was Hilton’s birth certificate. Robinson wanted no surprises and no missing pieces of the puzzle when she took the case to court.

Bosch didn’t expect that his text to his daughter would be answered quickly. She was almost never prompt in her replies. Even though she was inseparable from her phone and therefore got his messages in a timely fashion—even if she was in class—she always seemed to deliberate at length over his communications before responding.

But this time he was wrong. She hit him back before he was finished with his sandwich.

That might work. But I have a class 7–9. Early dinner okay?

Bosch sent back a message saying any time was a good time and that he would head south after lunch, take care of his business in Norwalk, then get to a coffee shop near Chapman University and be ready to meet whenever she was ready.

In answer, he got a thumbs-up.

He dumped his trash in a can and took the bottle of water with him back to his car.





39


Bosch descended the steps of the county records building in Norwalk with his head down and his thoughts so far away that he walked by the horde of document doctors without even noticing them waving application forms at him or offering translation help. He continued into the parking lot and toward his Jeep.

He pulled his phone to call Ballard, but it buzzed in his hand with a call from her before he got the chance.

“Guess what?” she said by way of a greeting.

“What?” Bosch replied.

“The D.A.’s Office just charged Elvin Kidd with counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. We fucking did it, Harry!”

“More like you did it. Did you pick him up yet?”

“No, probably tomorrow. It’s sealed for now. You want to be in on it?”

“I don’t think I should be part of that. Could make things complicated, me not having a badge. But you’re not going out there alone, right?”

“No, Harry, I’m not that reckless. I’m going to see if SWAT can spare a few guys. I’ll also have to call in Rialto PD because it’s their turf.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“So, where are you?”

“On my way down to see my daughter. I’ll be back up tonight.”

“Any chance you can go by Norwalk? I still haven’t gotten anything from Sacramento and it’s on Selma’s follow-up list. We need Hilton’s birth certificate.”

Bosch pulled the documents out of his inside coat pocket. He unfolded them on the center console.

“I just walked out. Had to show my San Fernando star to get access. I traced Hilton through his mother. Her maiden name was Charles but she was never married before she married his stepfather.”

“Donald Hilton.”

“Right.”

“So, she was an unwed mother.”

“Right. So I looked through births under her name and found a birth that matched the DOB on John Hilton’s driver’s license. It was him. And the father was listed as John Jack Thompson.”

Ballard had a delayed reaction.

“Holy shit,” she finally said.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Holy shit.”

“Oh my god, this means he sat on his own child’s murder case! He stole the book so no one else could work it, then didn’t work it himself. How could he do that?”

They were both silent for a long moment. Bosch returned to the thoughts that had preoccupied him as he left the records building: the gut punch of knowing his mentor had acted so unethically and had put pride ahead of finding justice for his own child.

“This explains Hunter and Talis,” Ballard said. “They found out and then took a dive on the case to save Thompson from being embarrassed by public knowledge in the department that his son was—take your pick—a drug addict, an ex-con, and a gay man in love with a black gangbanger.”

Bosch didn’t respond. Ballard had nailed it. The only thing she had left out was the possibility that Thompson’s actions may have been an effort to protect his wife from that knowledge too. Bosch also thought about what Thompson had told him that time about not bringing a child into the world. It made him wonder if he had known about Hilton before his death or learned of his son only when Hunter and Talis brought the news.

“I’m going to call Talis back,” Ballard said. “I’m going to tell him I know why he and his partner took a dive. See what he has to say then.”

“I know what he’ll say,” Bosch responded. “He’ll say it was a different time and the victim was a no-count. They weren’t going to ruin John Jack’s marriage or reputation by hanging all this on the clothesline for the world to see.”