The Night Fire Read online

  “You remember what it was he was drinking?”

  “Yeah, Tito’s.”

  “That’s tequila?”

  “No, vodka. The good stuff.”

  Ballard pointed to the short dog in the other man’s hand.

  “Where you guys buy your bottles?”

  The man pointed with the bottle down toward Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “Mostly over there at Mako’s.”

  Ballard knew the place, an all-night market that primarily sold booze, smokes, rolling papers, pipes, and condoms. Ballard had responded to numerous calls there over her years on the late show. It was a place that drew rip-off artists and assaults like a magnet. Consequently, there were cameras inside and outside the business.

  “You think that’s where Eddie got his fiver?” she asked.

  “Yup,” said The Kid.

  “Had to be,” said Short Dog. “Ain’t no other place round here open late.”

  “You heard about Eddie having trouble with anybody?” she asked.

  “Nah, ever’body like Eddie,” Short Dog said.

  “A gentle soul,” Raspy added.

  Ballard waited. Nobody volunteered anything about Eddie having trouble.

  “Okay, guys, thanks,” Ballard said. “Be safe.”

  “Yup,” said The Kid. “Don’t want to end up like Eddie.”

  “Hey, Miss Detective,” said Beret. “Why you asking all these questions? Nobody give a shit ’bout Eddie before.”

  “They do now. Good night, guys.”

  Ballard got back in her car and drove down to Santa Monica Boulevard. She turned right and went down three blocks to a rundown strip shopping plaza, where Mako’s Market was located. The market anchored one end of the plaza and a twenty-four-hour donut shop held down the other end. In between there were two empty businesses, a Subway franchise, and a storefront business that offered one-stop shopping for notary needs, photocopying, and losing weight or quitting cigarettes through hypnosis.

  The area patrol car was parked in front of the donut shop, confirming the cliché. Ballard got out of her car and waved her hand palm down, signaling smooth sailing. Behind the wheel of the patrol car, she could see Rollins, one of the officers who had responded to the fatal fire the other night. He flashed his lights in acknowledgment. Ballard assumed his partner was inside the donut shop.

  Mako’s was a fortress. The front door had an electronic lock that had to be opened from inside. Once buzzed in, she saw the business was built like a bank in a high-crime neighborhood. The front door led to an anteroom that was ten feet wide and six feet deep. There was nothing in this space except an ATM machine against the wall to the left. Front and center was a stainless-steel counter with a large pass-through drawer and a wall of bulletproof glass rising above it. A steel door with triple locks was to the right of the counter. A man sat on a stool on the other side of the glass. He nodded at Ballard in recognition.

  “How’s it going, Marko?” she said.

  The man leaned forward, pushed a button, and spoke into a microphone.

  “All is okay, Officer,” he said.

  Ballard had heard a story about Marko Linkov having ordered the sign out front many years ago and then accepting the misspelled sign that arrived at half price. She didn’t know if it was true.

  “You sell Tito’s vodka?” Ballard asked.

  “Yes, sure,” Marko said. “Got it in back.”

  He started to slip off his stool.

  “No, I don’t want any,” Ballard said. “I just want to know. You sell a bottle of it the other night? Monday night?”

  Marko thought about it for a moment and slowly nodded.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I think so.”

  “I need to look at your video,” Ballard said.

  Marko got off the stool.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “You come in.”

  He disappeared to his left and Ballard heard the locks on the steel door being opened. She had expected no pushback on her request, no questions about search warrants or other legalities. Marko depended on the police to keep an eye on his business and to respond to his many calls about belligerent or suspicious customers. He knew that if he expected that kind of service it was a two-way street.

  Ballard entered and Marko locked the door behind her. She noticed that in addition to the bolt locks he flipped down a metal burglar bar across the door. He wasn’t taking chances.

  He led her past the display shelves to a back room used for storage and as an office. A computer stood on a small crowded desk that was pushed against a wall. A back door led to the alley behind the plaza; it, too, was steel and equipped with two burglar bars.

  “Okay, so …,” Marko said.

  He didn’t finish. He just opened up a screen that was quartered into four camera views, two outside the front, showing the parking lot and the front door of the shop, a third in the alley showing the back door, and the fourth a camera over the ATM in the front room. Ballard saw the patrol car still positioned outside the donut shop. Marko pointed at it.

  “Those are good guys,” he said. “They hang around, watch out for me.”

  Ballard still thought the donuts might be the draw but didn’t say so.

  “Okay, Monday night,” she said.

  Ballard had no idea when Edison Banks Jr. received the bottle of Tito’s his fellow encampment inhabitants saw him with, or how long it would have taken him to consume it. So she asked Marko to start running the playback fast, beginning at dusk on Monday. Every time a customer entered the store he would slow the video to normal speed until Ballard determined that the customer was not purchasing what she was looking for.

  Twenty minutes into the playback they got a hit on Tito’s vodka but it wasn’t what Ballard expected: a Mercedes Benz coupe pulled into the lot and parked in front of Mako’s. A woman with long black hair, in stiletto heels and all-black leather pants and jacket, got out and entered the store. Inside, she bought a bottle of Tito’s after first withdrawing cash from the ATM. Mako’s was a cash-only business.

  “Is she a regular?” Ballard asked.

  “Her, no,” Marko said. “Never seen her. She don’t look like a working girl, you know? They different.”

  “Yeah, they don’t drive Mercedes.”

  Ballard watched as the woman returned to the car, got in, and drove out of the plaza’s lot, heading west on Santa Monica—the direction away from the city park where Edison Banks Jr. would burn to death about four hours later. Ballard committed the car’s license plate number to memory, which was easy because it was a California vanity plate—14U24ME.

  “What is that?” Marko said.

  “One for you, two for me,” Ballard said.

  “Oh. That’s good.”

  “Whose ATM is that?”

  “It’s mine,” Marko said. “I mean, it’s a company that has them but they pay me to have it there. I get a cut, you know? It makes me good money because people need the cash when they come in here.”

  “Right. Can you get records?”

  “What records?”

  “Of the withdrawals. Like if I wanted to know who she was.”

  “Mmm, I don’t know. You might have to have the legal paper for that. Not my company, you see.”

  “A search warrant. Okay.”

  “I mean, if it was up to me, I give you, you know? I always help police. But this guy might not be the same.”

  “I understand. I have her plate number. I can get it with that.”

  “Okay. Keep going?”

  He pointed to the computer screen.

  “Yes, keep going,” Ballard said. “We’re not even halfway through the night.”

  A few minutes later in real time and an hour later on the video playback, Ballard saw something that caught her eye. A man in ragged clothes pushed a shopping cart full of bottles and cans up to Mako’s, parked it on the sidewalk, and then buzzed to be allowed entrance. He came in and dumped enough change and crumpled bills into the pass-throug
h drawer to purchase a forty-ounce bottle of Old English malt liquor. He then left the store and returned to his cart, securing the full bottle among the bottles and cans he had collected, and started pushing his way out of the lot. He headed east on Santa Monica and Ballard thought she recognized him as one of the onlookers from Monday night after the fire.

  It gave her a new idea.

  She decided to go find the man who collected the bottles.

  24

  Ballard caught a call just before end of shift that pulled her away from finishing her report for the RHD meeting on Banks and pushed her into unpaid overtime. It was a he said/he said case on Citrus just south of Fountain. Patrol called her out to referee a violent domestic dispute between two men who shared a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment and had fought over who got to use the shower first before work. They had been drinking and drugging most of the night and the fight began when one of the men took the last clean towel and locked himself in the bathroom. The second man objected and kicked the door open, hitting the first in the face and breaking his nose. The fight then ranged through the small apartment and woke other residents in the building. By the time the police arrived after multiple 911 calls, both men were showing injuries from the altercation and neither was going to work.

  The two patrol officers who responded wanted to pass the decision-making off to a detective so they would avoid any future blowback from the case. Ballard arrived and talked to the officers, then to both parties involved. She guessed that the fight wasn’t really about a clean towel or the shower but was symptomatic of problems in the men’s relationship, whatever that was. Nevertheless, she chose to bag them both, out of protection for them and herself. Domestic disputes were tricky. Calming anger, settling nerves, and then simply backing away might seem to be the most judicious path, but if an hour or a week or a year later the same relationship ends in a killing, the neighbors talk to the news cameras and say the police came out before and did nothing. Better safe now than sorry later. That was the rule and that was why the patrol officers wanted no part of the decision.

  Ballard arrested both men and had them transported separately to Hollywood Division jail, where they would be held in adjoining cells. The paperwork involved in booking the two, plus Ballard’s need to prepare other documents, pushed her past seven a.m. and the end of shift.

  After filing the necessary arrest reports, Ballard took her city car downtown and parked on First Street in front of the PAB. There was no parking there but she was late and her hope was that any traffic officer would recognize the vehicle as a detective ride and leave it unticketed. Besides, she didn’t expect to be inside long.

  She hooked her backpack over one shoulder and carried a brown paper evidence bag with her. On the fifth floor she entered the Robbery-Homicide Division, realizing that it was the first time she had been back since she involuntarily transferred to Hollywood Division’s late show. She scanned the vast room, starting with the captain’s office in the back corner. She saw through the glass wall that it was empty. There was no other sign of him—or of Nuccio and Spellman—so she proceeded to the War Room. On the door she saw that the sliding sign was moved to IN USE and knew she had found her party. She knocked once and entered.

  The War Room was a 12 x 30 repurposed storage room that held a boardroom-style table and had whiteboards and flat screens on its walls. It was used on task force cases, for meetings involving multiple investigators, or for sensitive cases that should not be discussed in the open squad room.

  Captain Robert Olivas was sitting at the head of the long table. To his left were Nuccio and Spellman. To his right were two detectives Ballard recognized as Drucker and Ferlita, both longtime RHD bulls who specialized in burn cases. Drucker had been on the squad so long his nickname was “Scrapyard” because he had replaced two knees, a hip, and a shoulder over time.

  “Detective Ballard,” Olivas said, his tone even and not projecting any of the enmity she knew he still carried for her.

  “Captain,” Ballard said, just as evenly.

  “Investigator Nuccio told me you might be joining. But I think we have things in hand here and you’re not going to be needed on this.”

  “That’s good, because I’m parked out front in a red zone. But before I leave, I thought you might want to see and hear some of the evidence I’ve collected.”

  “Evidence, Detective? I was told you left the scene Monday night as soon as you could.”

  “Not quite like that, but I did leave once the Fire Department said they had things in hand and would contact RHD if anything changed.”

  She was telling Olivas what her stand would be should he try to raise issues with how she handled the original call. She also guessed that Nuccio and Spellman would not be a problem because they were smart enough not to get in the middle of a police department squabble.

  Olivas, a taciturn man with a wide girth, seemed to decide that this one wasn’t worth it. It was part of that smooth sailing Amy Dodd had mentioned: Olivas wanted no waves in his final year. Ballard knew this would play well with her real plan for the meeting.

  “What have you got?” Olivas asked. “We’re not even sure we have a homicide here.”

  “And that’s why you guys down here get the big bucks, right?” Ballard said. “You get to figure it out.”

  Olivas was finished with the introductory pleasantries.

  “Like I said, what have you got, Ballard?”

  Now his tone was slipping. Condescension and dislike were taking over. Ballard put the evidence bag on the table.

  “I’ve got this for starters,” she said. “An empty fifth of Tito’s vodka.”

  “And how does that fit into this?” Olivas asked.

  Ballard pointed to Nuccio.

  “Inspector Nuccio told me yesterday that the victim’s blood-alcohol content was measured at three-six at the coroner’s. That takes a lot of alcohol. I spoke to some of the homeless men who knew the victim and they said that on Monday night Banks was drinking a fifth of Tito’s that he wasn’t sharing. They said somebody—‘a guardian angel’—gave it to him. I recovered the bottle from another homeless man who camps on the same sidewalk and collects bottles and cans for recycling. Chain of custody is for shit but he felt pretty sure he picked up the bottle after Banks chugged the vodka. I figure you might want to take it to latent prints. If you get prints from Banks, it confirms the story. But you might also get the prints of the ‘guardian angel,’ and that’s somebody you want to talk to. That is, if somebody helped get him drunk so they could light him on fire.”

  Olivas digested that for a few moments before responding.

  “Did anybody see this ‘guardian angel’?” he asked. “Are we talking man, woman, what?”

  “Not the guys I talked to,” Ballard said. “But I went down the street to Mako’s and they have video of a woman in a Mercedes pulling up and buying a bottle of Tito’s about four hours before Banks got burned. That may just be a coincidence but I’ll leave that to you guys to figure out.”

  Olivas looked at his men.

  “It’s thin,” he said. “The whole thing is thin. You men take the bottle and anything else Ballard has. We need to pick up the heater and do our own testing on that. We’re going to withhold determination of death until we know what’s what. Ballard, you can go. You’re off duty now anyway, right?”

  “I am,” Ballard said. “And I’m out of here. You guys let me know if you need me to go back to the scene for anything tonight.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Olivas said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

  “I just need you to sign off on a summary report on the recovery of the bottle,” Ballard said. “So there’s a record of chain of custody and no confusion down the line should the bottle of Tito’s be significant.”

  “And to make sure you get the credit,” Olivas said.

  It was not a question and Ballard was pleased with how Olivas took it.

  “We all want proper credit for what w
e do, don’t we?” she said.

  “Whatever,” Olivas said. “You write it up and I’ll sign it.”

  Ballard unzipped her backpack and removed a file containing two copies of a two-page document. The front page was taken up by a detailed summary of the bottle’s origin and the second was the signing page bearing only Olivas’s name and rank below a signature line. She placed the documents on the table.

  “One for you and one for me,” she said.

  Olivas signed both documents. Ballard took one and left the other on the table. She put her copy back in its folder and returned it to her backpack.

  Ballard threw a mock salute at Olivas, then turned and left the room. On her way out of RHD, she tried to calm herself and control her emotions. It was difficult. Olivas would always be able to get to her. She knew that. He had taken something from her, as other men had in the past. But the others had paid in one way or another: come-uppance … revenge … justice—whatever the term. But not Olivas. Not so far. At best he had been left with a temporary blemish on his reputation that was gone soon enough. Ballard knew she could outwit and out-investigate him all she wanted, but he would still always have that unnameable thing he had taken from her.

  25

  After leaving RHD, Ballard went down the hall to the Special Assault Section again. This time Amy Dodd was not in her cubicle, but the station next to it still seemed to be unused. Ballard sat down and logged into the department’s computer. She blew out a deep breath and tried to relax now that she was away from her tormentor. She was actually finished for the day, but anxiety was seizing her because of Olivas and what seeing him brought up in her. She had just given up one case and wanted to get back to the other. To keep things moving forward.

  She opened her notebook next to the computer and found the page where she had written down the intel she had gathered on Elvin Kidd. She had both the cell number and the landline associated with his business. Connecting to Nexis/Lexis, she ran a search on the numbers and got the service providers, a requirement for a wiretap search warrant. Once she had that, she opened a template for a search warrant application requesting approval of audio surveillance on both phone numbers.