Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(35)

McMullen saw the empty spots on the calendar at the same time Ballard did.

“That’s funny,” he said. “I almost never take a night off from my work. I don’t—Oh, I remember now. The van had to have been in the shop. It’s the only reason I would miss so many days in a row.”

Ballard looked at him.

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“Of course,” McMullen said.

“You think you have any record of that? Which shop it was, what was wrong with the van?”

“I can look. I think this was a transmission problem back then. I remember I took it to the place on Santa Monica by the cemetery. Santa Monica and El Centro. On the corner. It begins with a Z but I can’t remember the name.”

“Okay. You take a look at your records and let me know what you find. Can I keep this calendar? I’ll copy and return it.”

“I guess.”

Ballard could have photographed the photos and the calendar but she needed to take the originals in case they became evidence in the investigation.

“Good,” she said. “I need to go now. I have a call I need to respond to.”

She pulled out a business card and handed it to McMullen.

“If you find the receipt for the transmission overhaul or remember anything about Daisy, give me a call.”

“I will, I will.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Ballard walked out of the garage and down a walkway to the front gate. She trusted her instincts that John the Baptist was not the killer of Daisy Clayton, but she knew she still had a long way to go before he was in the clear.





16



A white box truck with CCB painted on its side was parked in front of the Hollywood Boulevard house where the woman whose face was eaten by her cat had been found. There was also a patrol car and two blue-suiters standing on the street with a man in a white jumpsuit. This time there was no space for Ballard, who was still driving her own van, so she drove by, gave a wave, and parked in front of a garage two doors down. Few houses on the edge side of the hills had driveways. The garages were right at the curb, and blocking one involved risking the potential ire of a homeowner, especially when the culprit was not obviously a police vehicle.

She walked back to the house in question and had to introduce herself to all three waiting men. She had little experience with day watch blue suiters. These two were named Felsen and Torborg. Both were young and cut with military precision and bearing. Ballard recognized the name Torborg and knew him by reputation. He was a hard charger nicknamed Torpedo, who had accumulated several one-day suspensions for overaggressive enforcement and behavior. Female cops referred to these as testosterone timeouts.

The man in the jumpsuit was named Roger Dillon. He worked for CCB, a biohazard cleaning service. He had reported the burglary. Though he had told his story to Felsen and Torborg, he was prompted to repeat it to the detective, who would actually compose the burglary report.

Dillon said the dead woman’s niece in New York hired his firm to clean and decontaminate the house after her aunt’s body was removed and the premises were cleared as a possible crime scene. She overnighted him her key but it didn’t arrive until the early afternoon, delaying his getting to the house to perform the job. He was under a deadline because the niece, whom Ballard had identified during the death investigation as Bobbi Clark, was due to arrive the following morning. She planned to stay in the house while she organized services and took stock of the property she would be inheriting as the dead woman’s only living relative.

“So, I get here and I don’t even need the key, because the door’s unlocked,” Dillon said.

“Unlocked and open?” Ballard asked. “Or unlocked and closed?”

“Unlocked and closed but so you could see that it wasn’t pulled all the way. I pushed on the door and it opened.”

Ballard checked his hands.

“No gloves on?” she asked. “Show me where you touched the door.”

Dillon moved up the short walkway to the front door. Ballard turned back to Felsen and Torborg.

“Hey, I don’t have my rover with me,” she said. “Can one of you call the watch office and tell them I’m code six here and to cancel the one-hour backup at Moonlight Mission? I forgot about it.”

“Got it,” Felsen said as he keyed his shoulder mic.

“Moonlight Mission?” Torborg said. “Talking to John the Baptist? I knew that freak would act out someday. What did he do?”

“Just talking to him about a cold case,” Ballard said. “It wasn’t much.”

She turned and followed Dillon to the door. Since Torborg obviously knew John McMullen, she wanted to talk to him about his interactions and impressions of the street preacher, but she had to deal with Dillon and the case at hand first.

Dillon was tall and his white coveralls seemed to be a size too small. The cuffs on the pants just ticked the top of his work boots and the overall picture to Ballard was of a boy who had outgrown his clothes. Dillon, of course, was no boy. Ballard pegged him in his midthirties. He had a handsome, clean-shaven face, a full mane of brown hair, and a wedding ring on his finger.

He was poised at the door, his finger running a clockwise circle around a spot shoulder-high on it. Ballard pulled a pair of gloves from her blazer pocket and started putting them on.