The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(90)

“Ballard,” Olivas said. “Have a seat.”

He pointed to a seat at the end of the rectangular table. It would put her opposite him, with the two LAFD guys to her right and the two RHD guys, Drucker and Ferlita, to her left. On the table was a murder book with very few pages in it and a few other files, one of them thicker than the murder book.

“We were just talking about you and how we’re going to work this,” Olivas said.

“Really?” Ballard said. “Before I got here—nice. Any conclusions?”

“Well, for starters, we know we have you out there in Hollywood working the late show, so trolling for witnesses is still important. I know you did a couple sweeps out there already, but people in that world come and go. It would be good to hit that strip again.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, we were just getting started.”

“Well, could we start then with an update on where we are on the investigation? What happened with the bottle I gave you guys?”

“Good idea. Scrapyard, why don’t you summarize where things are?”

Drucker looked surprised that he had drawn the request from Olivas. He opened a file on the table in front of him and reviewed a few things in it, probably to gather his thoughts, before speaking.

“Okay, on the bottle,” he said. “We took it into latents as suggested and they did get a twelve-point match to a thumbprint off the victim, Edison Banks. So we are good there. We went out last night to find the bottle collector you got it from, to reinterview him and see if there was anything else to glean from him now that we have confirmation on the bottle. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him and—”

“What time were you out there?” Ballard asked.

“About eight,” Drucker said. “We looked around for an hour, couldn’t find him.”

“I don’t think he gets back to his squat till later,” Ballard said. “I’ll find him tonight.”

“That would be great,” Drucker said.

There was an awkwardness to the conversation, an acknowledgment that the men were doing what they should have done from the start—bringing in the expert on the dark hours of Hollywood.

“Were there other prints on the bottle?” Ballard asked.

Drucker flipped a page of the report in front of him.

“Yes,” he said. “We got a palm print. We matched it to the liquor license belonging to Marko Linkov, who operates the Mako store where we believe the bottle was originally sold. We spoke to him and watched the video you told us about. So we are up to speed there.”

“So it was the woman in the video?” Ballard said.

“We traced her plate—‘one for you, two for me’—and it turns out that plate was stolen off a same-make and -model Mercedes earlier that day. Our working conclusion is that the woman bought the bottle and gave it to our victim. Whether that was part of the plan to kill him, we don’t know. We have so far not been able to identify her.”

“What about the ATM? She got cash from there.”

“She used a counterfeit card with a legit number and PIN belonging to a seventy-two-year-old man living in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

“Did the ATM have a camera? Did you get a clear shot of her?”

“You watched the store video,” Ferlita said. “She put her hand over the camera. She knew just where it was.”

“No picture,” Drucker added.

Ballard did not respond. She sat back in her chair and considered all the new information. The complexity of the mystery woman’s actions was very suspicious and raised more questions.

“I don’t get it,” she finally said.

“Get what?” Olivas asked.

“I’m assuming this woman is the suspect,” she said. “Stolen plate, stolen ATM card. But for what reason? Why didn’t she buy the bottle somewhere else, where it would never be connected?”

“Who knows?” Nuccio said.

“It’s like she wanted to be seen but not identified,” Ballard said. “There’s a psychology there.”

“Fuck her psychology,” Drucker said. “We just need to find her.”

“I’m just saying, if we understand her, maybe it helps find her,” Ballard said.

“Whatever,” Drucker said.

Ballard let him have his moment before pressing on.

“Okay, what else?” she said.

“Isn’t that enough?” Ferlita said. “We’ve had the case two days and most of that was spent catching up to you.”

“And you wouldn’t have what you have if not for me,” Ballard said. “What about the victim and the probate case? Is that a copy of the file?”

She pointed to the thick file on the table next to Drucker.

“It is,” he said. “We’ve gone through it a couple times and haven’t found anything that links up to this. One of those cases where you feel it in your gut but there’s no evidence of anything.”

“Can I take that, then?” Ballard asked. “I’ll give it a read while I’m in the car tonight watching for the bottle man. Then I’ll be as up to date on this as everybody else.”

Drucker turned to Olivas for approval.

“Of course,” Olivas said. “We’ll make you a copy. Knock yourself out.”