The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(95)

“Wait a minute, ‘Michaelson’? Who is that?”

“He’s the one who found out I was working on the Montgomery case. Cofounder of the firm, Michaelson & Mitchell.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, I sort of saw an e-mail where he told my suspect what I was up to.”

“I don’t mean about that. I mean about this.”

She pulled the documents she had been working on back up onto the table and started separating the individual stacks. She leafed through one of the stacks until she found what she was looking for and handed it to Bosch. It was a legal motion with a court date stamp on it. Bosch wasn’t sure what he was looking for until Ballard tapped the top of the page and he saw the law firm letterhead: Michaelson & Mitchell.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It’s my case,” Ballard said. “My crispy critter from the other night. The coroner identified him and it turned out he was worth a small fortune. But he was a homeless drunk and probably didn’t know it. That was a motion filed by Michaelson & Mitchell last year trying to kick him out of the family trust because he had been MIA for like five years. His brother wanted him out of the money and hired Michaelson & Mitchell to get it done.”

Bosch read the front page of the stapled document.

“This is San Diego,” he said. “Why would the brother hire an L.A. firm?”

“I don’t know,” Ballard said. “Maybe they have an office down there. But it’s Michaelson whose name is on the pleading. It’s all over the case file I got from Olivas.”

“Did the brother get what he wanted?”

“No, that’s the point: he didn’t win. And a year later the missing brother gets melted in his tent with a rigged kerosene heater.”

Ballard spent the next ten minutes walking Bosch through the murder of Edison Banks Jr. All the while, Bosch tried to wrap himself around the fact that the Michaelson & Mitchell law firm was involved in both of their cases. Bosch didn’t believe in coincidences but he knew they happened. And here two detectives working different cases had just found a link between them. If that wasn’t a coincidence, he didn’t know what was.

When Ballard finished her summary, Bosch keyed in on one aspect of the case she had mentioned.

“This woman who bought the bottle of vodka,” he said. “No ID on her or the car?”

“Not so far. The car’s plate was stolen and the ATM card she used was bogus—stolen from Vegas.”

“And no photo.”

“Nothing clear. I have the store’s video on my laptop if you want to see.”

“Yes.”

Ballard pulled her laptop out of her backpack and opened it on the table. She brought up the video, started playing it, and turned the screen so Bosch could see it. He watched the woman park her car and enter, use the ATM, buy the bottle of vodka, and then leave. He noticed a height scale on the frame of the store’s door. With the stilettos, the woman was almost five-ten on the scale.

Her height may have been discernible but her face was never clearly seen on the video. But Bosch watched her mannerisms and the way she walked when she went back to the Mercedes. He knew that she could have been wearing all manner of disguises, from a wig to hip padding, but the way someone walked was usually always the same. The woman had a short stride that may have been dictated by her stiletto heels and skintight leather pants, but there was something else.

Bosch moved the cursor to the Rewind arrow on the screen and backed up the video so he could watch her get out of the Mercedes and enter the store. Her moving toward the camera gave another angle on her gait.

“She’s slightly intoed,” Bosch said. “On the left.”

“What?” Ballard asked.

Bosch reversed the video again and turned the screen back to Ballard before hitting the Play button. He leaned over to see the screen and narrate.

“Watch her walk,” he said. “Her left leg is slightly intoed. You can tell by the front point of those shoes. It’s pointing inward.”

“Like pigeon-toed,” Ballard said.

“Doctors call it intoed. My daughter had it but she grew out of it. But not everybody does. This woman—it’s only on her left. You see it?”

“Yes, barely. So what’s it get us? Maybe she was faking it to fool observant investigators like you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Now Bosch went into his briefcase and pulled out his laptop. While it was booting up, the waiter brought him an iced tea. Ballard stayed with just water.

“Okay, look at this,” Bosch said.

He pulled up the surveillance video from Grand Park and started playing it. He turned the screen to Ballard.

“This is the morning Judge Montgomery got murdered,” he said. “This is him coming down the steps on his way to the courthouse. Check out the woman walking ahead of him. That’s Laurie Lee Wells.”

They watched silently for a few moments. The woman was dressed in a white blouse and tan slacks. She had blond hair, a thin build, and was wearing what looked like flats or sandals.

Bosch continued his narration.

“They both go behind the elevator building,” he said. “Her first, then him. She comes out but he doesn’t. He was stabbed three times. She keeps going to the courthouse.”