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  “Come on, Smitty, that’s bullshit. We have to run a scene. Why don’t you guys clear here and go hold the lot until we can get a team there. You can sit in the car and do your paperwork or something.”

  Smith looked to Jenkins as the senior detective for approval.

  “She’s right,” Jenkins said. “We have to set up a crime scene.”

  “Roger that,” Smith said, his tone revealing he thought the assignment was a waste of time.

  Ballard went through the curtain into bay 4. The victim was on her back on a bed, a light green hospital smock over her damaged body. She was tubed in both arms and nose. Ballard had seen plenty of victims of violence over her fourteen years with the department, but this was one of the worst cases she had seen where the victim was still alive. The woman was small and looked to be no more than 120 pounds. Both of her eyes were swollen tightly shut, the orbit of the right eye clearly broken under the skin. The shape of her face was further distorted by swelling down the entire right side, where the skin was abraded. It was clear she had been beaten viciously and dragged across rough terrain—probably the parking lot—on her face. Ballard leaned in close over the bed to study the wound on the lower lip. She saw that it was a deep bite mark that had savagely split the lip. The torn tissue was being held together by two temporary stitches. It would need the attention of a plastic surgeon. If the victim survived.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ballard said.

  She pulled her phone off her belt and opened the camera app. She started taking photos, beginning with a full-face shot of the victim, then moving into close-ups of the individual facial wounds. Jenkins watched without comment. He knew how she worked.

  Ballard unbuttoned the top of the smock to examine the chest for injuries. Her eyes were drawn to the left side of the torso, where several deep bruises were delineated and straight and appeared to have come from an object rather than someone’s fists.

  “Look at this,” Ballard said. “Brass knuckles?”

  Jenkins leaned in.

  “Looks like it,” he said. “Maybe.”

  He pulled back, disgusted by what he saw. John Jenkins had twenty-five years in and Ballard knew he had been running on empty for a long time when it came to empathy. He was a good detective—when he wanted to be. But he was like a lot of guys who had been around for so long. He just wanted a place to be left alone to do his job. The police headquarters downtown was called the PAB, for Police Administration Building. Guys like Jenkins believed that PAB stood for Politics and Bureaucracy, or Politics and Bullshit, take your pick.

  The night-shift assignment was usually awarded to those who had run afoul of the politics and bureaucracy of the department. But Jenkins was a rare volunteer for the eleven-to-seven shift. His wife had cancer and he liked to work during her sleeping hours so he could be home every day when she was awake and needed him.

  Ballard took more photos. The victim’s breasts were also damaged and bruised, the nipple on the right side torn, like the lip, by gnashing teeth. The left breast was round and full, the right smaller and flat. Implants, one of which had burst inside the body. Ballard knew it took a hell of an impact to do that. She had seen it only once previously, and that victim was dead.

  She gently closed the smock over the victim and checked the hands for defensive wounds. The fingernails were broken and bloody. Deep purple marks and abrasions circled the wrists, indicating that the victim had been bound and held captive long enough to produce chafing wounds. Ballard guessed hours, not minutes. Maybe even days.

  She took more photos and it was then that she noticed the length of the victim’s fingers and the wide spread of the knuckles. Santa Monica and Highland—she should have understood. She reached down to the hemline of the gown and raised it. She confirmed that the victim was biologically a man.

  “Shit, I didn’t need to see that,” Jenkins said.

  “If Smitty knew this and didn’t tell us, then he’s a fucking asshole,” Ballard said. “It changes things.”

  She shoved the flare of anger aside and got back on track.

  “Before we left the barn, did you see if anybody was working in vice tonight?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah, they have something going on,” Jenkins said. “I don’t know what. I saw Pistol Pete in the break room, brewing a pot.”

  Ballard stepped back from the bed and swiped through the photos on her phone screen until she came to the shot of the victim’s face. She then forwarded the photo in a text to Pete Mendez in the Hollywood vice unit. She included the message:

  Recognize him? Ramona? Santa Monica stroll?

  Mendez was legendary in the Six, but not for all the right reasons. He had spent most of his career as a UC in vice and as a younger officer was often put out on the stroll posing as a male prostitute. During these decoy operations he was wired for sound because the recording was what made the case and usually caused the suspect to plead guilty to the subsequent charges. A wire recording from one of Mendez’s encounters was still played at retirement parties and unit get-togethers. Mendez had been standing on Santa Monica Boulevard when a would-be customer rolled up. Before agreeing to pay for services, the john asked Mendez a series of questions, including how large his penis was when erect, though he did not use such polite terms.

  “About six inches,” Mendez responded.

  The john was unimpressed and drove on without another word. A few moments later a vice sergeant left his cover location and drove up to Mendez on the street. Their exchange was also recorded.

  “Mendez, we’re out here to make busts,” the sergeant chided. “Next time a guy asks how long your dick is, exaggerate, for crying out loud.”

  “I did,” Mendez said—to his everlasting embarrassment.

  Ballard pulled the curtain back to see if Smith was still hanging around but he and Taylor were gone. She walked to the command station to address one of the nurses behind the counter. Jenkins followed.

  “Ballard, Jenkins, LAPD,” she said. “I need to speak to the doctor who handled the victim in bay four.”

  “He’s in two right now,” the nurse said. “As soon as he’s out.”

  “When does the patient go up for surgery?”

  “As soon as space opens.”

  “Did they do a rape kit? Anal swabs? We also need to get fingernail clippings. Who can help us with that?”

  “They were trying to save his life—that was the priority. You’ll have to talk to the doctor about the rest.”

  “That’s what I’m asking. I want to speak to—”

  Ballard felt her phone vibrate in her hand and turned away from the nurse. She saw a return text from Mendez. She read his answer out loud to Jenkins.

  “‘Ramona Ramone, dragon. Real name Ramón Gutierrez. Had him in here a couple weeks back. Priors longer than his pre-op dick.’ Nice way of putting it.”

  “Considering his own dimensions,” Jenkins said.

  Drag queens, cross-dressers, and transgenders were all generally referred to as dragons in vice. No distinctions were made. It wasn’t nice but it was accepted. Ballard had spent two years on a decoy team in the unit herself. She knew the turf and she knew the slang. It would never go away, no matter how many hours of sensitivity training cops were subjected to.

  She looked at Jenkins. Before she could speak, he did.

  “No,” he said.

  “No, what?” she said.

  “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say you want to keep this one.”

  “It’s a vampire case—has to be worked at night. We turn this over to the sex table, and it will be just like that burglary—it will end up in a stack. They’ll work it nine to five and nothing will get done.”

  “Still no. It’s not the job.”

  It was the main point of contention in their partnership. They worked the midnight shift, the late show, moving from case to case, called to any scene where a detective was needed to take initial reports or sign off on suicides. But they kept no cases.
They wrote up the initial reports and turned the cases over to the appropriate investigative units in the morning. Robbery, sexual assault, burglary, auto theft, and so on down the line. Sometimes Ballard wanted to work a case from beginning to end. But it wasn’t the job and Jenkins was never inclined to stray one inch from its definition. He was a nine-to-fiver in a midnight-shift job. He had a sick wife at home and he wanted to get home every morning by the time she woke up. He didn’t care about overtime—money- or workwise.

  “Come on, what else are we going to do?” Ballard implored.

  “We’re going to check out the crime scene and see if there really is a crime scene,” Jenkins said. “Then we go back to the barn and write up reports on this and the old lady’s burglary. If we’re lucky, there will be no more callouts and we’ll ride the paperwork till dawn. Let’s go.”

  He made a move to leave but Ballard didn’t follow. He spun and came back to her.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Whoever did this is big evil, Jenks,” she said. “You know that.”

  “Don’t go down that road again, because I’m not going with you. We’ve seen this a hundred times before. Some guy’s cruising along, doesn’t know the territory, sees a chick on the stroll and pulls over. He makes the deal, takes her into the parking lot, and gets buyer’s remorse when he finds a Dodger dog under the miniskirt. He beats the living shit out of the guy and drives on.”

  Ballard was shaking her head before he was finished with his summation of the case.

  “Not with those bite marks,” she said. “Not if he had brass knuckles. That shows a plan, shows something deep. She was tied up for a long time. This is big evil out there and I want to keep the case and do something for a change.”

  Technically he was the senior partner. He made the call on such things. Back at the station Ballard could appeal to command staff if she wanted to, but this was where the decision had to be made for partnership unity.

  “I’m going to swing by the crime scene and then go back to start writing,” Jenkins said. “The break-in goes to the burglary table, and this—this goes to CAPs. Maybe even homicide, because that kid isn’t looking too good in there. End of story.”

  Decision made, he again turned toward the doors. He had been so long in the job that he still called the individual crime units tables. Back in the ’90s that’s what they were—desks pushed together to create long tables. The burglary table, the crimes against persons table, and so on.

  Ballard was about to follow him out, when she remembered something. She went back to the nurse behind the counter.

  “Where are the victim’s clothes?” she asked.

  “We bagged them,” the nurse said. “Hold on.”

  Jenkins stayed by the door and looked back at her. Ballard held up a finger, telling him to wait. From a drawer at the station the nurse produced a clear plastic bag with whatever belongings were found with the victim. It wasn’t much. Some cheap jewelry and sequined clothing. There was a small mace dispenser on a key chain with two keys. No wallet, no cash, no phone. She handed the bag to Ballard.

  Ballard gave the nurse a business card and asked to have the doctor call her. She then joined her partner and they were walking through the automatic doors to the sally port when her phone buzzed. She checked the screen. It was the watch commander, Lieutenant Munroe.

  “L-T.”

  “Ballard, you and Jenkins still at Hollywood Pres?”

  She noted the urgent tone in his voice. Something was happening. She stopped walking and signaled Jenkins closer.

  “Just leaving. Why?”

  “Put it on speaker.”

  She did.

  “Okay, go ahead,” she said.

  “We’ve got four on the floor in a club on Sunset,” Munroe said. “Some guy in a booth started shooting the people he was with. An RA is heading your way with a fifth victim that at last report was circling the drain. Ballard, I want you to stay there and see what you can get. Jenkins, I’m sending Smitty and his boot back to grab you. RHD will no doubt be taking this over but they will need some time to mobilize. I’ve got patrol securing the scene, setting up a command post, and trying to hold witnesses, but most of them scattered when the bullets started flying.”

  “What’s the location?” Jenkins said.

  “The Dancers over by the Hollywood Athletic Club,” Munroe said. “You know it?”

  “Roger that,” Ballard said.

  “Good. Then, Jenkins, get over there. Ballard, you come as soon as you finish up with the fifth victim.”

  “L-T, we need to set up a crime scene on this assault case,” Ballard said. “We sent Smitty and—”

  “Not tonight,” Munroe said. “The Dancers is an all-hands investigation. Every forensic team available is going there.”

  “So we just let this crime scene go?” Ballard asked.

  “Turn it over to day shift, Ballard, and let them worry about it tomorrow,” Munroe said. “I need to go now. You have your assignments.”

  Munroe hung up without another word. Jenkins gave Ballard a told-you-so look about the crime scene. And as if on cue, the sound of an approaching siren flared in the night. Ballard knew the difference between the siren from a rescue ambulance and from a cop car. This was Smitty and Taylor coming back for Jenkins.

  “I’ll see you over there,” Jenkins said.

  “Right,” Ballard said.

  The siren died as the patrol SUV came down the chute to the sally port. Jenkins squeezed into the back and it took off, leaving Ballard standing there with the plastic bag in her hand.

  She could now hear the distant sound of a second siren heading her way. An ambulance bringing the fifth victim. Ballard looked back in through the glass doors and noted the time on the ER clock. It was 1:17 a.m. and her shift was barely two hours old.

  3

  The siren died as the ambulance came down the chute into the sally port. Ballard waited and watched. The double doors at the back of the ambulance opened and the paramedics brought out the fifth victim on the gurney. She was already hooked to a breathing bag.

  Ballard heard the team communicate to the waiting ER team that the victim had coded in the ambulance and that they had brought her back and stabilized her, only to have her flat-line once again as they were arriving. The ER team came out and took control of the gurney, then moved swiftly through the ER and directly into an elevator that would take them up to the OR. Ballard tagged along behind and was the last one on before the doors closed. She stood in the corner as the team of four medical workers in pale blue surgical garb attempted to keep the woman on the gurney alive.

  Ballard studied the victim as the elevator jolted and slowly started to rise. The woman wore cutoff jeans, high-top Converses, and a black tank that was soaked in blood. Ballard noticed the tops of four pens clipped to one of the jeans pockets. She guessed that this meant the victim was a waitress at the club where the shooting took place.

  She had been shot dead center in the chest. Her face was obscured by the breathing mask but Ballard put her at midtwenties. She checked the hands but saw no rings or bracelets. There was a small black-ink tattoo depicting a unicorn on the woman’s inside left wrist.

  “Who are you?”

  Ballard looked up from the patient but could not tell who had addressed her, because everyone was wearing masks. It had been a male voice but three of the four people in front of her were men.

  “Ballard, LAPD,” she said.

  She pulled the badge off her belt and held it up.

  “Put on a mask. We’re going into the OR.”

  The woman pulled a mask out of a dispenser on the wall of the elevator and handed it to her. Ballard immediately put it on.

  “And stay back and out of the way.”

  The door finally opened and Ballard quickly exited and stepped to the side. The gurney came rushing out and went directly into an operating room with a glass observation window. Ballard stayed out and watched through the glass. The medical
team made a valiant attempt to bring the young woman back from the dead and prepare her for surgery, but fifteen minutes into the effort they called it and pronounced her dead. It was 1:34 a.m. and Ballard wrote it down.

  After the medical personnel cleared the room and went on to other cases, Ballard was left alone with the dead woman. The body would soon be moved out of the operating room and taken to a holding room until a coroner’s van and team arrived to collect it, but that gave Ballard some time. She entered the room and studied the woman. Her shirt had been cut open and her chest was exposed.

  Ballard took out her phone and snapped a photo of the bullet wound on the sternum. She noted that there was no gunpowder stippling, and that told her that the shot came from a distance of more than four feet. It seemed to have been a skilled shot, the work of a marksman who had hit the ten ring while most likely on the move and in an adrenalized situation. It was something to consider should she ever come face-to-face with the killer, as unlikely as that seemed at the moment.

  Ballard noticed a length of string around the dead woman’s neck. It wasn’t a chain or any kind of jewelry. It was twine. If there was a pendant, she couldn’t see it because the string disappeared behind a tangle of blood-matted hair. Ballard checked the door and then looked back at the victim. She pulled the string free of the hair and saw that there was a small key tied to it. Seeing a scalpel on a tray of surgical instruments, she grabbed it and cut the string, then pulled it free. She took a latex glove from her coat pocket and placed the key and string inside it in lieu of an evidence bag.

  After pocketing the glove, Ballard studied the victim’s face. Her eyes were slightly open and there was still a rubber airway device in her mouth. That bothered Ballard. It distended the woman’s face and she thought it would have embarrassed her in life. Ballard wanted to remove it but knew it was against protocol. The coroner was supposed to receive the body as it was in death. She had already crossed the line by taking the key but the indignity of the rubber airway got to her. She was reaching for it when a voice interrupted from behind.