Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(21)

Dvorek came up behind her.

“There’s your ladder,” Ballard said.

“You going up?” Dvorek asked.

“Not on your life. I’m calling an airship. They’ll light it up and if anybody’s up there, we’ll grab them coming down.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Put the sisters on the other corner just in case they have a ladder up there with them and decide to come down the other side. I’ll get the air unit offline.”

“Gotcha.”

Ballard didn’t want to radio for the airship, because a burglar could be monitoring LAPD frequencies. She had a working relationship with the tactical flight officer on the chopper that covered the city’s west side on most nights. They often responded to the same calls. Ballard on the ground, Heather Rourke, the spotter, in the air with her pilot partner Dan Sumner. Ballard shot a text to Rourke.

You guys up?



Two minutes went by before there was a response.

Yup. Just cleared a pursuit of an H/R suspect. What’s up RB?



Ballard knew that the Rourke-Sumner team would have high adrenaline after chasing down a car involved in a hit-and-run. She was glad they were free.

Need you to fly over Sirens strip bar 7171 Sunset. Light up the roof to see if we have suspects.

Roger that—ETA 3

Copy. Switch to Tac 5

Copy. Tac 5



In the event they had to speak by radio for expediency, the tactical channel was an unpublished frequency that wasn’t readily obtained on the internet.

Ballard still had Dyson’s light. She waved it to get the attention of the three officers at the other corner of the building. She put the light on her free hand and held up three fingers and twirled her hand in the air.

They waited. Ballard was pretty sure it was a fruitless exercise. If there had actually been someone up there, they most likely would have noticed the lights from the arrival of the patrol cars and made their escape when the officers entered the building. But checking out the roof with the airship should give some measure of satisfaction to Peralta. Ballard would then write up a recommendation to the detective commander to send out someone from the commercial burglary unit to check the roof in daylight for any signs of an attempted break-in.

Ballard heard the helicopter’s approach and tucked in close to the rear wall of the building, next to the trash enclosure. She raised the rover and switched it to the tactical 5 frequency.

She waited. The alley smelled like booze and cigarettes. She breathed through her mouth.

Soon the powerful beam of the chopper washed over everything, turning night into day. Ballard raised the rover.

“Anything, Air six?”

She held the radio to her ear, hoping to hear the response over the sound of the airship rotor. She partially heard it. The tenor of Heather Rourke’s voice told her more than the words she could make out. There was somebody on the roof.

“…suspects. Heading…corner…”

Ballard dropped the rover and pulled her weapon. She backed into the alley, raising her gun toward the roofline. The light from the chopper was blinding. Soon she saw movement and heard yelling, but she could not make out the words over the sound of the rotor. She saw someone sliding down the gutter’s downspout. Halfway down he lost his grip and fell to the ground. Soon another body was coming down the pipe, and then another.

Ballard tracked the movement with her gun. Soon all three of the suspects started running down the alley.

“Police! Freeze it right there!”

Two of the fleeing figures stopped in their tracks. The third kept going and after reaching the end, turned left into the neighborhood.

Ballard started approaching the two who had stopped and already raised their hands. As she ordered them to their knees, Dyson blew by her, running, and continued down the alley after the third suspect. Herrera followed her younger partner but at a much slower pace.

As Ballard approached, her gun at the ready, she saw—

The two suspects kneeling on the ground were just kids.

“What the fuck?” Dvorek said as he came up next to her.

Ballard holstered her weapon and put her hand on Dvorek’s arm to make him lower his. She walked around and shone the beam of Dyson’s light on their faces. They were no older than fourteen. Both were white, both looked scared. They were wearing T-shirts and blue jeans.

She realized she had dropped her rover to the ground near the trash enclosure.

“I can’t hear myself think,” she called to Dvorek. “Advise the airship on tac five that we have a code four here and they can stay with A twenty-five’s pursuit.”

Dvorek went to his rover to make the call and soon the chopper headed south in the direction the third boy had run. Ballard held the light on the young faces in front of her. One boy lowered one of his hands to try to block the blinding light.

“Keep your hands up,” Ballard ordered.

He complied.

Ballard looked at the two boys in front of her and had a good idea why they had been on the roof.

“You two almost just got yourselves killed, you know that?” she barked.

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry,” one of them said meekly.

“What were you doing up there?”

“We were just looking around. We didn’t—”