Dark Sacred Night (Harry Bosch Universe #31)(79)

He then listened for a long time before making a final response.

“Love you, too. I’ll see you soon.”

He disconnected the phone and handed it back to Ballard. He looked shaken by the call, or maybe the realization of how close he had come to losing everything.

Bosch turned to Lourdes and Sisto.

“I’ll come in tomorrow to look at the eMe book,” he said. “I just want to go home now.”

“You can’t go home,” Ballard said quickly. “It’s a crime scene. So is this. We need to run this by the book: call out Major Crimes, find out how they got to you. How they got to your house.”

“And you need stitches,” Lourdes said.

Ballard saw the realization break on Bosch’s face. He had a long day ahead of him.

“Fine, I’ll go to the ER. And you can call out the troops. But I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Bosch started unsteadily walking toward the dirt road leading down. His limp was more pronounced than when Ballard had seen it before.

She saw him look up at the airship passing overhead. He raised his arm and sent a thumbs-up as a thank-you.





37



By the time Ballard was released by the detectives from Major Crimes it was almost six and she had not slept in more than twenty-four hours. With her next shift starting in five hours it was not worth driving down to the beach or out to her grandmother’s house in Ventura in rush-hour traffic. Instead, she drove south to Hollywood Station. She left her city ride in the parking lot, got a change of clothes out of her van, and then took an Uber to the W Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. She knew from many previous stays there that they gave a deep law enforcement discount, had a dependable room service menu, and were liberal about checkout time. There was a cot at the station in a storage room known as the Honeymoon Suite, but she knew from experience she couldn’t sleep there. Too many intrusions. She wanted comfort, food, and solid sleep in the limited time she had.

She got a room with a northern view of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Capitol Records Building, and the Hollywood sign. But she closed the drapes, ordered a salad with grilled chicken, and took a shower. A half hour later she was eating on the bed, bundled in an oversize bathrobe, her wet hair slicked back and down her neck.

Her laptop was open on the bed and distracting her from what was now less than four hours of available sleep time. But she couldn’t help herself. She had downloaded the GRASP files from the thumb drive Professor Calder had given her that morning. She had told herself she would make only a quick survey of the data before going to sleep but the shower had helped push back her fatigue and she became transfixed.

What had drawn her attention initially was that there was a murder in the division just two nights before Daisy Clayton was abducted and murdered. This case was quickly cleared by arrest, according to the data.

Ballard was unable to enter the department’s database remotely but was able to access two brief Los Angeles Times reports on the case in the newspaper’s murder blog, which documented every murder that occurred in the city. According to the first story, the killing had occurred in a tattoo parlor on Sunset called ZooToo. A female tattoo artist named Audie Haslam was murdered by a customer. Haslam owned the shop and was working a solo shift when someone entered, pulled a knife and robbed her. Haslam was then walked into a back room used for storage and stabbed multiple times during a brutal struggle. She bled out on the floor.

Ballard’s excitement over a possible connection to the Clayton case was quickly doused when she read the second story, which described the arrest of the suspect, a motorcycle gang affiliate named Clancy Devoux, the following day after police matched a bloody fingerprint from the scene to him. Devoux had several vials of ink and an electric tattoo needle in his possession. Investigators found the victim’s fingerprints on the vials. They also found a fresh tattoo of a skull with a halo scabbing over on Devoux’s forearm. He had apparently come into the shop as a customer and the robbery-murder occurred after Haslam had given him a tattoo. It was not clear if the murder was an impulsive act brought on by something Haslam did or might have said or Devoux’s plan all along.

According to the follow-up report, Devoux was being held without bail in the Men’s Central Jail. That meant he was in custody on the night Daisy Clayton was taken. There was no way he was a suspect in the second murder. Deflated, Ballard still made a note to pull the murder book on the case. Her thinking was that there might be names in the book of people who were in Hollywood at the time and who might have information on the Clayton case. It was a long shot, she knew, but one that might need to be taken.

There were five rapes reported in the four-day span of the GRASP data and Ballard paid careful attention to these as well. She pulled up whatever information she could on her laptop and determined that two of the rapes were classified as assaults by strangers. The other three were considered rapes by acquaintances and not the work of a predator stalking women he didn’t know. One of the stranger cases occurred the day before the Clayton murder and one occurred the day after. It appeared from the digest summaries in the GRASP data that they were not the work of one man. There had been two sexual predators.

Ballard typed the case numbers from the murder and the two rapes into a file request form and emailed it to the archives unit. She asked for expedited delivery of the files but knew that the priority would be low because she was looking for cold files—a closed murder case and two rapes that were now beyond the seven-year statute of limitations.