The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(86)

FID detectives interviewed the Special Ops officers one by one about the arrest gone sideways, and Ballard was listed as last to be questioned. Each officer had a union defense representative at their side, because they all knew that the outcome of the shooting investigation could determine their career paths. There was a somber silence hanging over everything. A highly trained SWAT team had killed the wife of a suspect under arrest. It was a colossal failure of tactics. Added to that, the dead woman was black and this would invariably draw massive public scrutiny and protest. It would invariably lead to rumors that the victim had been unarmed and simply gunned down. The true story—as bad as it was on its own—would be bent to the needs of those with agendas or axes to grind in the public forum. Everybody on scene knew this and it resulted in a blanket of dread descending over the proceedings on the residential street in Rialto.

It was almost three hours after the shooting before Ballard was finally interviewed. The session with an FID detective named Kathryn Meloni lasted twenty-six minutes and was largely focused on the tactics Ballard had used during the Kidd arrest and the tactics she had observed being used by the arrest team. Ballard’s defense rep, Teresa Hohman, happened to have been in Ballard’s academy class, where they competed closely in all the physical challenges for top female recruit but always had beers and cheers at the academy club after. It was that bond that had prompted Ballard to ask her to be her rep.

Up until the final minutes of the questioning, Ballard believed she had given no answer that could come back on her or the Special Ops team in terms of mistakes or poor tactics. Then Meloni hit her with a trap question.

“At what point did you hear Lieutenant Gonzalez or anyone else order someone to either watch or guard the front door?” she asked.

Ballard took several seconds to compose her answer. Hohman whispered in her ear that there was no good response, but that she had to answer.

“There was a lot of yelling,” Ballard finally said. “Screaming at Elvin Kidd in the truck. I was concentrating on him and my role in the arrest. So I didn’t hear that particular order when it was given.”

“Are you saying that there was an order and you just didn’t hear it?” Meloni asked. “Or was it that there was no order given?”

Ballard shook her head.

“See, I can’t answer that one way or the other,” she said. “I had a laser focus on what I was doing and needed to be doing. That’s how we’re trained. I followed my training.”

“Going back now to the planning meeting prior to the operation,” Meloni said. “Did you tell Lieutenant Gonzalez that the suspect was married?”

“I did.”

“Did you tell him or members of the team that the wife could be expected to be in the home?”

“I think we all knew, making the arrest so early in the morning, that we could expect her to be on scene. In the house.”

“Thank you, Detective. That’s it for now.”

She reached over to turn the recorder off but then stopped and turned back to Ballard.

“One more thing,” she said. “Do you believe that killing Mrs. Kidd may have saved the lives of officers today?”

This time Ballard didn’t pause.

“Absolutely, yes,” she said. “I mean, we were all wearing vests and those guys had ballistic helmets and so forth, so you can never be sure. But I was standing there in the open in front of the pickup and she could have shot me. Then for a moment she hesitated and got hit herself.”

“If she hesitated, do you think she was not intending to fire her weapon?” Meloni asked.

“No, it wasn’t that. She was going to shoot. I could feel it. But she hesitated because I was between her and her husband—until he took off running, that is. I think she thought that if she shot and missed me, she might hit him. So that’s when she hesitated. Then she got hit and maybe that saved my life.”

“Thank you, Detective Ballard.”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t mind staying in the room, your captain wants to come in and speak to you next.”

“My captain?”

“Captain Olivas. You were working this case for him, correct?”

“Oh, yes, correct. Sorry, I’m still a little shaken up.”

“Understandable. I’ll send him in.”

Ballard was surprised that Olivas was on scene. They were more than an hour away from the city and she hadn’t expected him to be involved in the FID investigation at all. Her mind raced and she began to feel dread at the realization that Olivas must have been informed about the case that had led to Elvin Kidd. He knew what she had done.

“He told me he wanted to speak to you alone,” Hohman said. “Is that okay?”

She and Teresa still met for beers from time to time, even though their paths in the department were quite different. Ballard had previously told Hohman of her history with Olivas.

“Or I can stay,” she said.

“No,” Ballard said. “I’m okay. You can send him in.”

The truth was Ballard didn’t want a witness to what might come out or happen next, even if that witness was her own friend and defense rep.

After Teresa left, Olivas entered the CIV, walked through the outer room and into the Box. He silently took a seat across the table from Ballard. He stared at her for a moment before speaking.