The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(96)

“She’s intoed,” Ballard said. “I see it. On her left side.”

The condition was more clearly seen when the woman turned and started walking directly toward the courthouse and the camera.

“One blond-haired, one black-haired,” Ballard said. “You think it’s the same woman?”

“Same walk in both videos,” Bosch said. “Yeah, I do.”

“What do we have here?”

“Well, we have two different cases with the same law firm involved. A law firm with an attorney who had a grudge against Judge Montgomery. A law firm also representing the brother who had at least a legal grudge against Edison Banks. On top of that, this firm has represented a known organized-crime figure from Las Vegas—where, by the way, the woman in black’s ATM number was stolen from.”

“Who?”

“A guy named Dominick Butino, an enforcer known as ‘Batman,’ but not because he likes comic books and superheroes. And remember that Clayton Manley—the lawyer Montgomery threw out of his courtroom—is still at the firm. They have him hidden away under the watchful eyes of the founding partners. But when you have a lawyer who fucks up like that and brings shame to your firm, what do you usually do?”

“Cut ties.”

“Exactly. Get rid of him. But they don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows something. He knows something that could bring the house down.”

“So what you’re getting at here is that this law firm set up these hits. Manley was part of it and they don’t want him running around loose,” Ballard said.

“We have no evidence of that, but, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“A female hit man they probably connected with through their organized-crime clientele.”

“Woman.”

“What?”

“Hit woman.”

The waiter brought their sand dabs and Bosch and Ballard didn’t speak until he was gone.

“Didn’t the original detectives on Montgomery track that woman down?” Ballard asked. “Looks like she was wearing a juror badge.”

“They went to the jury pool and talked to her,” Bosch said. “She said she didn’t see anything.”

“And they just believed her?”

“She told them she was wearing earbuds and listening to music. She didn’t hear the judge get attacked behind her. They bought it, dropped her right there.”

“But also, wouldn’t she have had blood on her? You said the judge was stabbed three times and she’s wearing a white blouse.”

“You’d think so, but this was a pro hit. Montgomery was stabbed three times under the right arm. In a wound cluster the size of a half dollar. The blade cut the axillary artery—one of the three main bleeders in the body. It’s a perfect spot because the arterial spray is contained under the arm. The assassin walks away clean. The victim bleeds out.”

“How do you know so much about this?”

Bosch shrugged.

“I had training when I was in the army.”

“Do I want to hear why?”

“No, you don’t.”

“So then what do we do now about this hit woman?”

“We go find her.”





46


The first move they made was to find out whether Laurie Lee Wells was Laurie Lee Wells. Bosch had pulled the witness report on Wells out of the murder book files and shared it with Ballard. The report was written by Orlando Reyes, who had conducted the interview. It said he had routinely run Wells’s name through the NCIS database and had found no criminal record. This was expected; L.A. County did not allow people with criminal records to serve on juries. No follow-up was noted in the report.

Ballard and Bosch drove up to the Valley and the address on the report after finishing their sand dabs. With Bosch driving, Ballard looked up Laurie Lee Wells on IMDb and other entertainment databases and determined that there was a legitimate actress with the name who had had limited success in guest appearances on various television shows over the past years.

“You know there’s a TV show on HBO about a hit man who wants to become an actor?” Ballard said.

“I don’t have HBO,” Bosch said.

“I watch it at my grandmother’s. Anyway, Laurie Lee Wells was on it.”

“So?”

“So it’s weird. The show is about a hit man wanting to be an actor. It’s a dark comedy. And here we have an actress who might be a hit woman.”

“This isn’t dark comedy. And I doubt Laurie Lee Wells the actress is the Laurie Lee Wells we’re looking for. Once we confirm that, we need to figure out how and why her identity was taken and used by our suspect.”

“Roger that.”

Laurie Lee Wells the actress lived in a condominium on Dickens Street in Sherman Oaks. It was a security building, so they had to make first contact through an intercom at the gate—never the best way to do it. Ballard had the badge, so she handled the introduction. Wells was home and agreed to see the two investigators. But then she did not buzz the gate unlocked for nearly three minutes, and Bosch guessed she was cleaning up—hiding or flushing illegal substances.

Finally, the gate buzzed and they entered. They took an elevator to the fourth floor and found a woman waiting by an open door. She resembled the driver’s license photo they had pulled up earlier. But Bosch realized immediately she was not the woman they had studied on the videos. She was too short. This woman was barely five feet tall; even four-inch stilettos would not make her as tall as the woman who hit the five-ten mark on the door of Mako’s.