The Night Fire Page 6

  Thompson widow

  Vincent Pilkey, dealer

  Dennard Dorsey, dealer/snitch—protected

  Brendan Sloan, narcotics

  Elvin Kidd

  Nathan Brazil, roommate

  Bosch nodded as he looked at the names. Ballard took this to mean he was in agreement.

  “Hopefully some of them are still alive. Sloan is still in the department, right?”

  “Runs West Bureau. My boss, technically.”

  “Then all you have to do is get around his adjutant.”

  “That won’t be a problem. Are you going to eat the rest of that donut?”

  “No. It’s all yours.”

  Ballard grabbed the donut and took a bite. Bosch lifted his cane from the back of the other chair.

  “I gotta get back to the courthouse,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Ballard said, her mouth full. “Did you see this?”

  She put the rest of the donut back on the plate, then opened the binder, unsnapped the rings, and handed Bosch the document she had moved to the front of the murder book.

  “It’s redacted,” she said. “Who would black out lines in the statement from the parents?”

  “I saw that too,” Bosch said. “It’s weird.”

  “The whole book is confidential, why black anything out?”

  “I know. I don’t get it.”

  “And we don’t know who did it—whether it was Thompson or the original investigators. When you look at those two lines in context—the stepfather talking about adopting the boy—you have to wonder if they were protecting somebody. I’m going to try to run down Hilton’s birth certificate through Sacramento, but that will take forever because I don’t have his original name. That was probably redacted too.”

  “I could try to run it down at Norwalk. Next time I go to see Maddie on a weekday.”

  Norwalk was the site of Los Angeles County’s record archives. It was at the far south end of the county and with traffic could take an hour each way. Birth records were not accessible by computer to the public or law enforcement. Proper ID had to be shown to pull a birth certificate, especially one guarded by adoption rules.

  “That’ll only work if Hilton was born in the county. But worth a try, I guess.”

  “Well, one way or another we’ll figure it out. It’s a mystery for now.”

  “What’s at the courthouse?”

  “I want to see if I can get a subpoena. I want to get there before the judges all split.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you go. So, you’ll go see Margaret Thompson later and I’ll run down these names. The ones that are still alive.”

  Bosch stood up, holding the docs and his laptop under his arm. He didn’t have a briefcase. He hooked his cane back on the chair so he could reach into his pocket with his free hand.

  “So, did you sleep yet today or just go right into this?”

  “Yes, Dad, I slept.”

  “Don’t call me that. Only one person can call me that and she never does.”

  He pulled out some cash and left a twenty on the table, tipping as though there had been four people after all.

  “How is Maddie?” Ballard asked.

  “A little freaked out at the moment,” Bosch said.

  “Why, what happened?”

  “She’s got one semester to go down at Chapman and then she graduates. Three weeks ago some creep broke into the house she shares near the school with three other girls. It was a hot prowl. Two of the girls were there asleep.”

  “Maddie?”

  “No, she was up here with me because of my knee. Helping out, you know? But that doesn’t matter. They’re all freaked out. This guy, he wasn’t there to steal shit, you know, no money or anything taken. He left his semen on one of the girls’ laptops that was on the kitchen table. He was probably looking at photos of her on it when he did his thing. He’s obviously bent.”

  “Oh, shit. Did they get a profile off it?”

  “Yeah, a case-to-case hit. Same thing four months before. Hot prowl, girls from Chapman, and he left his DNA on a photo that was on the refrigerator. But no match to anybody in the database.”

  “So did Maddie and the girls move out?”

  “No, they’re all two months from graduation and don’t want to deal with moving. We put on extra locks, cameras inside and out. Alarm system. The local cops put the street on twice-by a shift. But they won’t move out.”

  “So that freaks you the fuck out.”

  “Exactly. Both hot prowls were on Saturday nights, so I’m thinking that’s this guy’s night out and maybe he’s going to come back. So I’ve been going down and sitting on the place the last two Saturday nights. Me and this knee. I sit in the back seat with my leg up across the seat. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw something but I’m there.”

  “Hey, if you want company, I’m there too.”

  “Thanks, that means a lot, but that’s my point. Don’t miss your sleep. I remember last year…”

  “What about last year? You mean the case we worked?”

  “Yeah. We both had sleep deprivation and it … affected things. Decisions.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, I don’t want to get into it. You can blame it on me. My decisions were affected, okay? Let’s just make sure we get sleep this time.”

  “You worry about you and I’ll worry about me.”

  “Got it. Sorry I even brought it up.”

  He picked up his cane off the chair and headed toward the door. He was moving slow. Ballard realized she would look like an ass if she walked quickly ahead of him and then out.

  “Hey, I’m going to hit the restroom,” she said. “Talk later?”

  “Sure,” Bosch said.

  “And I really mean that about your daughter. You need me, I’m there.”

  “I know you mean it. Thanks.”

  10

  Ballard walked to the Police Administration Building so she could use a computer to run down some of the names on her list. This would be a routine stop for most detectives from the outer geographic stations. There were even desks and computers reserved for “visiting” detectives. But Ballard had to tread lightly. She had previously worked in the Robbery-Homicide Division located in the PAB and had left for the midnight shift at Hollywood Station under a cloud of suspicion and scandal. A complaint to Internal Affairs about her supervisor sexually harassing her led to an investigation that turned the Homicide Special unit upside down until the complaint was deemed unfounded and Ballard was sent off to Hollywood. There were those still in the PAB who did not believe her story, and those who viewed the infraction, even if true, as unworthy of an investigation that threatened a man’s career. There were enemies in the building, even four years later, and she tried to maintain her job without stepping through its glass doors. But to drive all the way from downtown to Hollywood just to use the department’s database would be a significant waste of time. If she wanted to keep momentum, she had to enter the PAB and find a computer she could use for a half hour.

  She made it through the lobby and onto the elevator unscathed. On the fifth floor she avoided the vast homicide squad room and entered the much smaller Special Assault Section, where she knew a detective who had backed her through all the controversy and scandal. Amy Dodd was at her desk and smiled when she saw Ballard enter.

  “Balls! What are you doing down here?”

  Amy used a private nickname derived from the stand Ballard had made during the past troubles in RHD.

  “Hey, Doddy. How’s it hanging? I’m looking for a computer to run names on.”

  “I hear there are plenty of open desks in homicide since they trimmed the fat over there.”

  “Last thing I want to do is set up in there. Might get stabbed in the back again.”

  Amy pointed to the workstation next to hers.

  “That one’s empty.”

  Ballard hesitated and Amy read her.

  “Don’t wo
rry, I won’t talk your ear off. Do your work. I have court calls to make anyway.”

  Ballard sat down and went to work, putting her password into the department database and then opening her notebook to the list of names from the Hilton case. She quickly located a driver’s license for Maxwell Talis in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which was not a welcome piece of information. Yes, Talis was still alive, but Ballard was working this case on her own and with Bosch, not as an official LAPD investigation. An out-of-town trip was not in the equation. It meant she would have to reach Talis by phone. This was disappointing because face-to-face interviews were always preferable. Better tells and better reads came out of in-person sit-downs.

  The news did not get any better as she moved down her list. She determined that both Sandra and Donald Hilton were dead. They had passed—Donald in 2007 and Sandra in 2016—without knowing who had killed their son or why, without any justice for his life and their loss. To Ballard it didn’t matter that John Hilton had been a drug addict and criminal. He had talent and with that he had to have had dreams. Dreams of a way out of the life he was trapped in. It made Ballard feel that if she didn’t find justice for him, no one ever would.

  Next on the list was Margaret Thompson and Bosch was handling that. Vincent Pilkey was the next name and it was another dead end. Pilkey was one of the dealers whom Hunter and Talis never connected with to interview, and now she never would either: Pilkey was listed as deceased in 2008. He was only forty-one at the time and Ballard assumed he met an untimely death by violence or overdose, but she could not determine it from the records she was accessing.

  Ballard’s luck changed with the next name down: Dennard Dorsey, the dealer Hunter and Talis did not talk to because he was also a snitch for Major Narcotics. Ballard ran his name on the computer and felt a jolt of adrenaline kick in as she learned that not only had the snitch somehow survived the last thirty years, but he was literally two blocks away from her at that very moment: Dorsey was being held in the county jail on a parole violation. She checked his criminal history and saw that the last decade was replete with drug and assault arrests, the accumulation eventually landing him in prison for a five-year term. It seemed pretty clear from the history that Dorsey’s usefulness as a snitch had long since ended and he was without the protection of his handlers at Major Narcotics.

  “Hot damn!” she said.

  Amy Dodd leaned back in her chair so she could see around the partition between their work spaces.

  “Something good, I take it?” she asked.

  “Better than good,” Ballard said. “I found a guy and I don’t even have to get in my car.”

  “Where?”

  “Men’s Central—and he’s not going anywhere.”

  “Lucky you.”

  Ballard went back to the computer, wondering if the dice would keep tumbling her way. She pulled up the hold for parole violation and got a second jolt of adrenaline when she saw the name of the PO who had filed the violation and pickup order on Dorsey. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and called Rob Compton on speed dial.

  “You,” Compton answered. “What do you want?”

  It was clear from his brusqueness that Compton still hadn’t gotten past their last interaction. They’d had a casual off-duty relationship that blew up on-duty when Compton and Ballard disagreed on strategy regarding a case they were working. Compton bailed out of the car they were arguing in and then bailed out of the relationship they’d had.

  “I want you to meet me at Men’s Central,” Ballard said. “Dennard Dorsey, I want to talk to him and I might need you for leverage.”

  “Never heard of him,” Compton said.

  “Come on, Rob, your name’s on the VOP order.”

  “I’ll have to look him up.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Ballard heard typing and realized she had reached Compton at his desk.

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he said. “I seem to recall being left high and dry by you the last time I did you a favor.”

  “Oh, come on,” Ballard said. “I seem to recall you pussied out on me and I got mad. You got out of the car and walked away. But you can make up for it now with Dorsey.”

  “I have to make up for it? You’ve got balls, Ballard. That’s all I can say about it.”

  Ballard heard a peal of laughter from the other side of the partition. She knew Amy had heard Compton’s comment. She held the phone against her chest so Compton would not hear, then turned the volume down before bringing it back to her mouth.

  “You got him or not?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I got him,” Compton said. “No wonder I didn’t remember him. I never met him. He never reported. Got out of Wasco nine months ago, came back down here, and never showed up. I put in the VOP and he got picked up.”

  “Well, now’s a good time to meet him.”

  “I can’t, Renée. I got paper to do today.”

  “Paperwork? Come on, Robby. I’m working a murder and this guy may have been a key witness.”

  “Doesn’t look like the type who’s going to talk. He’s got a gang jacket. Rolling 60s going back to the eighties. He’s hard-core. Or was.”

  “Not really. Back in the day he was a snitch. A protected snitch. Look, I’m going over there. You can help me if you want. Maybe give him some incentive to talk.”

  “What incentive would that be?”

  “I figure you might give him a second chance.”

  “Nah, nah, nah, I’m not letting the guy out. He’ll just shit all over me again. I can’t do that, Ballard.”

  Compton going to her last name told her he was set on this.

  “Okay, I tried,” she said. “I’ll try something else. See ya around, Robby. Or actually, I probably won’t.”

  She disconnected and dropped her phone on the desk. Amy spoke teasingly from the other side of the partition.

  “Bitch.”

  “Hey, he deserved it. I’m working a murder here.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Roger the fuck that.”

  Ballard’s plan was to go over to Men’s Central, but first she finished the rundown on the names on her list. After Brendan Sloan, whose whereabouts she already knew, came Elvin Kidd, the Rolling 60s street boss at the time of the murder, and Nathan Brazil, John Hilton’s roommate. Both were still alive and Ballard got addresses for them from the DMV computer. Kidd lived out in Rialto in San Bernardino County and Brazil was in West Hollywood.

  Ballard was curious about Kidd. Now nearly sixty years old, he had moved far away from Rolling 60s Crips turf, and his interactions with the justice system seemed to have stopped almost twenty years before. There had been arrests and convictions and prison time, but then it appeared that Kidd either started to fly below the radar with his continuing illegal pursuits or found the straight-and-narrow life. The latter possibility would not have been all that unusual. There were not that many old gangsters on the street. Many never got out of their twenties alive, many were incarcerated with life sentences, and many simply grew out of gang life after realizing only the first two alternatives awaited them.

  In checking Kidd’s record she came across a possible connection to Hilton. Both had spent time at Corcoran State Prison, with what looked like a sixteen-month overlap in the late 1980s when they were both there. Hilton was finishing his sentence while Kidd was starting his. His term ended thirteen months after Hilton was released.

  The overlap meant they could have known each other, though one was white and one was black and groups in state prison tended to self-segregate.

  Ballard went onto the California Department of Corrections database and downloaded photos of Kidd taken each year at the prisons where he was incarcerated. She was immediately hit with a charge of recognition when the photos from Corcoran came up. Kidd had shaved his head since his previous prison stint. And now she recognized him.

  She quickly opened her backpack and pulled out John Hilton’s notebook. She flipped thro
ugh the pages until she came to the drawing of the black man with the shaved head. She compared the drawing to Elvin Kidd’s photos from Corcoran. They were a match. John Hilton had been murdered in a drug alley controlled by a man he had obviously known and even sketched while at Corcoran State Prison.

  After that, she reconfigured her list based on what she now knew about the names on it. She put them into two groups because of the angles from which she had to approach them.

  Dennard Dorsey

  Nathan Brazil

  Elvin Kidd

  Maxwell Talis

  Brendan Sloan

  Ballard was excited. She knew she was making progress. And she knew that the first three interviews, if she got the men to talk to her, would give context to the conversation she hoped to have with Talis, one of the original investigators on the case. She put Sloan in last position because, depending on whether Dorsey spoke with Ballard, he might not even be relevant to her investigation.

  Ballard logged out of the system and returned all the case materials to her backpack. She stood up and leaned on the partition to look at Amy Dodd. She had always worried about Amy, who had spent her entire career as a detective working sexual assault cases. Ballard knew it could wear you down, leave you feeling hollow.

  “I’m going to go,” Ballard said.

  “Good luck,” Amy said.

  “Yeah, you too. You all right?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Good. How are things around here?”

  “No controversies lately. Olivas seems to be lying low since he made captain. Plus I heard he’s only got a year left before he plans to cash in and retire. Probably wants things to go smoothly till he’s out. Maybe they’ll even send him out as a deputy chief.”

  Olivas was the lieutenant-now-captain who had been in charge of Ballard’s old unit, Homicide Special. He had been the one who drunkenly pushed her up against a wall at a unit holiday party and tried to stick his tongue down her throat. That one moment changed the trajectory of Ballard’s career and barely left a bruise on his. Now he was captain and in charge of all of the Robbery-Homicide Division squads. But she had made her peace with it. She had found new life on the late-show beat. The department brass thought they were exiling her to the dark hours, but what they didn’t know was that they were redeeming her. She had found her place.