Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(47)

Monahan’s face revealed that he was realizing the can of worms he was opening up.

“Sorry, my bad,” he said. “I think you are probably perfectly capable of deciding how best to handle this.”

Ten minutes later, Ballard returned to the home theater where Chloe Lambert was waiting. She dropped the clothes she had collected from the bedroom on the floor in front of her.

“You can get dressed,” Ballard said.

“What’s happening?” Lambert asked.

“Nothing’s happening. You’re going home. You’re lucky you’re not going to jail.”

“Jail? What for?”

“Filing a false report. You weren’t raped, Chloe.”

“What the fuck? That guy’s a predator.”

“Maybe, but so are you. He has the whole thing on video. I watched it. So you can stop the act. Get dressed and I’ll have you driven down the hill.”

Ballard turned to leave but then hesitated and looked back.

“You know, it’s women like you that…”

She didn’t finish. She believed it would be lost on Chloe Lambert.





21



Ballard was depressed. She left the Monahan estate not knowing which of the two people she had interviewed was the more loathsome example of the human form. And yet neither would face consequences for their actions of the night. She decided to focus her enmity on Chloe as a betrayer of the cause. For every noble movement or advancement in the human endeavor across time, there were always betrayers who set everything a step back.

She tried to shake it off as she came through the back door of the station and headed down the hallway to the detective bureau. She had a half box of FI cards she wanted to finish before the end of her shift. She checked her watch. It was 4:15 a.m. Her plan was to write up a report on the callout to Electra Drive. She would pull no punches, naming all parties in the investigation and describing their actions, even though the investigation had come to nothing so far. She would file it in the detective commander’s inbox and it would be someone else’s decision from there. It might go down to the task force and it might even make it to the D.A.’s Office for consideration. Along the way, it might also get leaked to the media. No matter how it went, she was passing the buck on it, and that did not sit well with her. She could have arrested them both on the spot for different crimes, but such a move would have resulted in her actions being studied and questioned by a command staff that didn’t like her or want her. Some fault would likely be found and she would be further buried by the department and pulled away from the one thing she needed most: her job on the late show.

She turned into the detective bureau and headed to the back corner where she had set up for work earlier. She was nearly there when she saw the familiar head of gray curly hair over one of the half walls of the workstation. Bosch.

When she got to him, she saw that he was looking through the last four-inch stack of cards from the storage box she had brought in.

“So, they just let you waltz in here anytime you like,” she said by way of a greeting.

“To be honest, I sort of let myself in tonight,” Bosch said. “They never took my nine-nine-nine key when I quit.”

Ballard nodded.

“Well, I have to write a report. I won’t be able to look at shake cards till I file.”

“I’m on the last stack here. I’ll go out back and get another box.”

“I’d better go with you. Let’s do it now before I settle in and start writing. I can tell you the latest on John the Baptist on the way.”

They headed back through the station and out the back door to the parking lot. Ballard updated Bosch on her return to the Moonlight Mission and interview with McMullen. She said that her gut instinct was still that McMullen wasn’t their guy. She told him about the head count he kept on his calendars and the photo of Daisy she had found.

“So, you actually placed him with the victim,” Bosch said. “He knew her.”

“He baptized her several months before the murder,” Ballard said. “But come on, she was a night dweller and he roams Hollywood at night, looking for souls to save. I would be surprised if they didn’t cross paths. I still don’t think there’s anything there and I might have an alibi for McMullen’s van.”

She told him about the van being in the shop on the night of the abduction and murder.

“McMullin looked it up and left me a message about the place,” she said. “As soon as they open this morning, I’m going to see if I can confirm that the van was there when Daisy got taken. If I do, then I think we move on from John the Baptist.”

Bosch said nothing, indicating he was not ready to scratch the missionary man off the list of potential suspects.

“So, what’s happening with your search warrant case?” Ballard asked.

“We got part of the way there,” Bosch said. “We found the bullets we were looking for but they were no good for comparison. And then my source ended up dead out in Alhambra.”

“Oh shit! And it’s connected?”

“Looks that way. Done in by his own gang. LAPD SWAT arrested the shooter last night in Sylmar. He wasn’t talking when I left but he’s known to be tight with our suspect on the cold case. Sometimes when you blow the dust off an old investigation, bad things happen.”