The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(88)

“I’m just saying: my case, my interview—if there is one.”

“Fine. What’s the other thing?”

“The arson case. Put me back on it.”

“I can’t just—”

“It was a midnight crime, you need a midnight detective. That’s what you say and what you do. You tell the others on the case that there’s a briefing tomorrow at eight to bring me up to date.”

“Okay, fine. But it’s still run out of RHD and my guys are lead.”

“Fine. Then I think we’re done here.”

“And I want the summary report on this on my desk before that meeting.”

“Not a problem.”

She turned toward the door. Olivas spoke to her as she was stepping out.

“You watch yourself, Ballard.”

She looked back in at him. It was an impotent threat. She smiled at him without humor.

“You do that too, Captain,” she said.





43


It took Ballard most of her shift after roll call that night to write up the final summary report on the Hilton case. It had to be complete but carefully worded on three fronts. One was to keep Harry Bosch in the clear, and the second was to include Olivas in a way that would be acceptable under lines of command and protocol. The third front was actually the most difficult. She had left her direct supervisor, Lieutenant McAdams, in the dark through the entire investigation. Her saying in the report that she had been operating under the direction of Captain Olivas covered a lot of things but did nothing to lessen the damage that her actions would do to her relationship with McAdams. She knew that she was going to have to sit down with him sooner rather than later and try to smooth things over. It would not be a pleasant conversation.

Her only break came when she got up from the computer to change her focus and relax her eyes. She took her cruiser and went over to the taco truck to pick up some food to go.

Digoberto was once again working alone. But at the moment at least he was busy with a line of nightingales—three young women and two men—fresh out of a club that had just closed at four a.m. Ballard waited her turn and listened to their insipid chatter about the scene they had just left. Ballard hoped there would be some fresh shrimp left by the time she ordered.

When one of the men noticed the badge peeking through her coat on her belt, their talk dropped to whispers, and then by group consent they offered Ballard the front of the line, since she was obviously working and they weren’t sure what to order. She took them up on the kind offer and got her shrimp tacos, answering routine questions from the group as she waited for Digoberto to put her order together.

“Are you on a case or something?” one of the women asked.

“Always,” Ballard said. “I work graveyard—what they call the late show because there’s always something going on in Hollywood.”

“Wow, like what is the case you’re on right now?”

“Uh, it’s about a young guy—about your age. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got shot in an alley where they sell drugs.”

“Shot dead?”

“Yeah, dead.”

“That’s crazy!”

“A lot of crazy stuff happens around here. You all should be careful. Bad things happen to good people. So stick together, get home safe.”

“Yes, Officer.”

“It’s Detective, actually.”

She brought the food back to the station in a take-out box, passing a shirtless and fully tattooed man cuffed to the lockdown bench in the back hallway. At her borrowed work space she continued writing her report while eating, careful not to drop crumbs into the keyboard and draw a complaint from the desk’s daytime owner. The foil wrapping had kept everything warm and the shrimp ceviche tacos had not lost their flavor on the ride back.

At dawn she printed out three copies of her report: one for Lieutenant McAdams, which she put in his inbox along with a note asking for a private meeting; one for herself, which went into her backpack; and the third for Captain Olivas. She put it into a fresh file folder and carried it with her as she headed across the parking lot to her cruiser.

Her phone buzzed almost as soon as she pulled out of the Hollywood Division parking lot to head downtown. It was Bosch.

“So I have to read about the Kidd case in the L.A. Times?”

“I’m so sorry. I’ve just been running crazy and then I wasn’t going to call you in the middle of the night. I just left the station and was about to try you.”

“I’m sure of that.”

“I was.”

“So they killed his wife.”

“Awful. I know. But it was her or us. Truly.”

“They going to get dinged for that? Are you?”

“I don’t know. They fucked up. Nobody was watching the door. Then she came out and it went sideways. I think I’m in the clear because I was just a ride-along, but those guys are probably all getting letters.”

Bosch would know she meant a letter of reprimand in their personnel files.

“At least you’re all right,” he said.

“Harry, I think she was about to shoot me,” Ballard said. “Then she got hit.”

“Well, then they had the right man in the OP.”

“Still. We had locked eyes. When it happened, she was looking at me, I was looking at her. Then …”