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  “I was going to call you,” Ballard said.

  “Really? What’s up?”

  “I wanted to ask you, how far back do the councilman’s campaign records go?”

  “If you mean our quarterly CDRs, we keep them from day one. What’s this about?”

  “What’s a CDR?”

  “Campaign donation report. We file them in accordance with the law. But again, what’s this about, Detective?”

  His voice had an urgency and higher pitch than usual. Ballard guessed that the most likely place that elected politicians ran afoul of the law was in the area of money. She quickly tried to allay the concern.

  “This has nothing to do with campaign contributions,” she said. “I was wondering about personnel, volunteers, that sort of thing. How far back do you keep records?”

  “Well, we keep some,” Hastings said. “I’d have to check. Is there something specific I would be looking for?”

  Ballard noted that his voice had returned to its regular, modulated tone.

  “Laura Wilson,” Ballard said. “She had a ‘JAKE!’ campaign button in a drawer and I was just wondering if she might have volunteered for him. She wouldn’t have had the money to make a campaign donation, I don’t think, but her parents were active in Chicago politics. I thought maybe she could have gotten involved when she came out here.”

  “I thought you told me that she was killed eleven years after Sarah,” Hastings said. “That would be, what, ’05? ’06? Jake didn’t get to the council till six years ago.”

  “Right, but he ran unsuccessfully in ’05 in a special election to fill the same seat he has now. Laura lived in the district where he was running, so I thought maybe…”

  “Well, that’s before my time. I’d have to see what records we have. What would it mean if that was the case and she was part of the campaign?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’re looking for connections between the victims, and if she worked for Jake, then that’s a pretty interesting connection. We’d have to see where it led.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Let me do this: I’ll see what we’ve got in our records and get back to you as soon as I can. Okay?”

  “That would be great. I’m not at the office right now, but when I get back, I could shoot you over a photo of her if that would help.”

  “It may, but I think the councilman will know. He never forgets a supporter’s face.”

  “Good. If you can run the name by him—”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ballard hung up and immediately called Darcy Troy at the DNA lab. She knew she might be stepping on Tom Laffont’s toes, since she had assigned him the medical angle to work, but she wanted to keep things in motion.

  “Darcy, it’s Renée. Have you heard from Tom Laffont today?”

  “Uh, no, was I supposed to?”

  “Not necessarily, but I thought he might have called. On the Wilson case, are you able to see if they still have the specimen swabs they got the DNA from?”

  “I can check. It should be there unless there was a destroy order from the District Attorney’s Office, and that is only supposed to happen when a case is closed.”

  “Good. Can you see what’s there? And then I need a favor.”

  “You want further analysis.”

  “I do. I want to know more about the blood. In ’05, they were just interested in finding DNA. I want to know why this guy had blood in the urine. The reports in the murder book are very general. Could be kidney disease, could be bladder. I’m thinking all these years later, we might be able to learn more with serology sciences, you know?”

  “I do, and I’ll see what we’ve got.”

  “How long?”

  “It’s not what I do, but I think I can honcho something. If there is still material. Sometimes they use up everything processing for DNA.”

  “Fingers crossed. Thanks, Darcy.”

  “You got it.”

  Ballard disconnected and reminded herself to tell Laffont that she had already put this in play. She packed everything she had on the table into her backpack, put cash down on her check, and left the restaurant.

  It took her twenty minutes to get back to the Ahmanson Center. As she was getting out of her car, she took a callback from Nelson Hastings.

  “You find out anything, Nelson?”

  “Nothing that I think will be helpful to the investigation. Our staffing records, CDRs, and donor lists are complete back to Jake Pearlman’s successful election to the council six years ago. Everything before that apparently was not kept, because he lost the election. I asked around the office and even inquired with the councilman to see if anyone remembered Laura Wilson and came up empty.”

  “It was a long shot. Did the councilman have a campaign manager back in ’05? Maybe he or she would remember if Wilson was a volunteer or something.”

  As Ballard asked the question, she saw Bosch’s green Cherokee pull into the center’s parking lot.

  “I’ll get you the name and contact info,” Hastings said. “But I think the councilman would remember if someone working on his campaign had been murdered. And to be quite honest, an African American volunteer or supporter would have been remembered as well.”

  Ballard nodded.

  “I think you’re probably right,” she said. “Thanks for your efforts. If you could shoot me an email with the name and number of the campaign manager from ’05, that would be great.”

  Ballard saw Bosch pop the hatch of his car and start to pull out boxes. She knew from the red tape on them that they were evidence boxes from property division. She started walking that way.

  “Detective Ballard, can I bring up a delicate matter with you?” Hastings said on the phone.

  “Uh, sure,” Ballard said. “What’s up?”

  “You seem to be going down this road of connecting this woman’s death to the councilman or the campaign, and I just want to caution you to move carefully. Any hint that the councilman could have been involved in this is ridiculous and I’m sure you agree, but if it leaks to the media, it could blow up. So be careful, Detective Ballard. What you have is a ten-cent campaign button of which hundreds, if not thousands, were likely printed.”

  Ballard stopped in the middle of a parking lane to respond. She saw that Bosch had noticed her approaching and was waiting at the back of the Cherokee.

  “Of course we are proceeding carefully and cautiously, Nelson. And my question about this does not reflect in any way on the councilman. You can tell him that.”

  “I will, Detective.”

  Hastings disconnected and Ballard continued toward Bosch. He read her face as she approached.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Ballard said. “Just more bullshit from the city councilman’s guard dog. I see you went by property.”

  “Yeah, and they gave me a box from the Wilson case. They said you ordered it and I could save a messenger run if I delivered it. Can you carry one box?”

  “Sure.”

  Ballard slung her backpack over her shoulder and leaned into the back of the Cherokee to get the box from the original Wilson investigation. It was 24 x 24 x 24 and not heavy. She lifted it and then put it down on the bumper and looked at Bosch.

  “Did you talk to the meth addict?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” Bosch said. “He’s clean now, but he all but admitted that he committed the burglary at his mother’s house. Now that I know it was him, it changes my thinking on McShane. He could have been in that house anytime between the murders and the burglary.”

  “Look, Harry, you can’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Wander off on your pet case when I specifically told you I need you on Wilson.”

  “Pet case? Four people—a whole family—murdered and buried in a hole out in the desert, and that’s a pet case.”

  “Look, it’s a big case; it’s an important case. But Wilson has got to take priority at t
he moment. I’m not stopping you from working Gallagher but I need you in the short run on Wilson. And I don’t want to be like some kind of a shrew ordering you around. Can’t you just do this for me?”

  “I’m here. I’m ready to work. What I did today will get Sheila Walsh thinking: What is Bosch doing? What is he up to? I’ll let that percolate while I work on Wilson and then I’ll come back around. I’m playing the long game with her. So, what do you want me to do?”

  “Let’s get this stuff in and then we can talk.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  Ballard then lifted her box and stepped back so that Bosch, balancing a stack of two boxes with one hand, could use the other to close the hatch.

  “Let’s drop these at the pod, but then you and I go somewhere to talk,” Ballard said. “I want your take on a couple things.”

  “Roger that.”

  “You gotta stop saying that. Everybody has to stop saying it.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “When influencers are saying it on TikTok, it’s jumped the shark.”

  “I don’t know what one word of that means.”

  “Which is a good thing. You okay with those?”

  It looked to her like Bosch was struggling with the weight of his two boxes.

  “I’m good,” he insisted.

  “You want to get coffee?” Ballard asked.

  “You read my mind.”

  “All right. There’s a break room on the second floor that nobody from the pod knows about yet. It’s for the academy trainers but they’re all at Elysian today for a graduation. We’ll go there.”

  “Roger that.”

  16

  After dropping off the property boxes at the pod, Ballard and Bosch went up to the break room on the second floor. Over black coffee Ballard updated Bosch on what was happening on the Wilson case. She showed him the photo of the junk drawer in the victim’s walk-in closet and asked for his take on it. Bosch saw through her reserve as she mentioned this. He knew that beneath her neutral delivery of the information, there was something exciting to her about this angle of investigation.

  “Well, I don’t believe in coincidences until there is no other explanation,” he said. “It needs to be checked out. Have you—”

  “I asked Pearlman’s chief of staff to look into it,” Ballard said. “He couldn’t find any records from his failed run for the council. Pearlman himself said he didn’t remember Laura, and none of his current staff go back that far. Hastings said he would let me know who Pearlman’s campaign manager was in ’05, and I’ll follow up on that. I got the idea that it was sort of a seat-of-the-pants operation, a way for Pearlman to get his name out there but he knew from the start that there wasn’t much of a chance he would win.”

  “What about Wilson? Anything else in her place that showed she was politically involved or motivated?”

  “In the apartment, no. But her father was listed in the murder book as a ward committee member in Chicago. So politics was in her upbringing. She could have taken an interest in it out here. Her apartment was in the district Pearlman was running in.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. He took a sip of his coffee and thought about how to proceed with this angle and if it was worth the expenditure of time when there were other angles to follow. But like Ballard, he found something about the campaign button intriguing. Eleven years after Pearlman’s sister is murdered, his campaign button is in the home of a woman killed by the same perpetrator.

  It could easily be a coincidence. Ballard said there were hundreds of such buttons distributed back then. But it didn’t feel like a coincidence, and Bosch understood Ballard’s hunch all too well.

  “When you talk to the campaign manager, maybe he’ll remember how many of those things were made,” he said. “And since Wilson’s father was in politics, you might want to ask him if his daughter mentioned getting involved out here.”

  “Her father’s dead,” Ballard said. “Covid. I talked to her mother but that was before this came up. I’ll call back and ask about politics. I’ll also ask who cleared out Laura’s apartment after her death. It’s pretty unlikely, but maybe somebody has all her stuff.”

  Bosch nodded. He hadn’t thought of that. Parents who lose children often hold on to any reminder of them.

  “Good idea,” he said. “Anything new on the blood angle and the DNA?”

  “Nothing yet,” Ballard said. “But on my way back from lunch, I got an email from Darcy Troy in the lab. She checked the cold storage at serology, and the swabs from the Wilson case—from the toilet—are still there, and there’s enough left for further testing. She hopes to get back tomorrow with more on what exactly was wrong with our doer.”

  “That’s good,” Bosch said.

  “It wasn’t something they pursued back in the day.”

  “They were probably just happy to get the DNA out of it.”

  “Well, their oversight could be to our benefit. Obviously, the technology has advanced since 2005, and we might be able to detect things they couldn’t.”

  “Let me know about that.”

  “Roger that, I will. Shit—now I said it!”

  Bosch smiled while Ballard got up and dumped her empty cup in the trash. They went down the stairs and back to the pod. As they approached, Bosch saw that the property box Ballard had left on her desk had been opened and Colleen Hatteras was standing over it, holding up what looked like a pink nightgown. There was no one else in the pod.

  “Colleen, what are you doing?” Ballard asked.

  “I just needed to see it,” Hatteras said. “To feel it.”

  “First of all, you shouldn’t have done that after what we talked about before. And second, and most important of all, you should have worn gloves.”

  “Gloves don’t work.”

  “What?”

  “I need to be able to feel her.”

  “Put it back in the box. Now.”

  Hatteras did as instructed.

  “Go back to your workstation,” Ballard ordered.

  Hatteras sullenly stepped back from Ballard’s station. She turned and went back to her own.

  Ballard threw a glance at Bosch. She looked as upset as he had ever seen her. He moved to his workstation, checked the red tape on the boxes from the Gallagher Family case, and saw that they had not been tampered with. He sat down but noticed that Ballard was still too agitated to sit down.

  “Colleen, I want you to go home,” she said.

  “What?” Hatteras said. “I’m right in the middle of the ancestry search on this.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to see you anymore today. You need to go and I need to think about this.”

  “Think about what?”

  “I told you this morning I didn’t want to go down that road, but you went there anyway. This is a team, but I’m in charge of the team, and you directly ignored my order.”

  “I didn’t think it was an order.”

  “It was. So, go. Now.”

  Ballard dropped out of Bosch’s sight as she sat down. He couldn’t see Hatteras but heard her open and sharply close a desk drawer and then roughly pull a zipper closed on what he assumed was a purse. She then popped up into view and headed toward the exit. Ballard said nothing as she passed the end of the pod.

  Hatteras was halfway to the aisle that led to the exit when she pirouetted and came back toward Ballard.

  “For what it’s worth, he’s close,” she said. “Her killer is very close.”

  “Yeah, you said that about McShane, too,” Ballard said. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “I didn’t say McShane was close. This is so typical.”

  “Just go home, Colleen. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Hatteras pirouetted again and headed to the exit. Once she was gone, Ballard sat up straight in her seat so she could look over the partition at Bosch.

  “What do I do about her?” she asked.

  Bosch shook his head.

/>   “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how valuable the heritage stuff she does is.”

  “Very valuable,” Ballard said.

  “Can you get anybody else? What about Lilia?”

  “Colleen knows it like the back of her hand. But this psychic shit is a problem. Did she open your boxes?”

  “No, they’re safe.”

  “This is heading toward a bad end. This whole being-in-charge thing is a pain. I just want to follow cases.”

  “I get it.”

  She slumped down out of sight but before long she stood up again.

  “I have to get out of here, Harry,” she said. “I’m going up to the Valley and I need a partner.”

  Bosch stood up, ready to go.

  17

  They took Ballard’s city ride and were all the way onto the 405 North before Bosch asked what they were doing.

  “I made a case list at lunch and there’s an interview I want to cross off,” Ballard said. “Due diligence as much as anything and now’s as good a time as any. I needed to get out of there.”

  “Cool,” Bosch said. “Who’s the interview?”

  “A guy named Adam Beecher. He and Laura Wilson were in the same theater group out in Burbank. Back then, the ODs leaned on the theater director, a guy named Harmon Harris, because they heard he and Wilson had an affair a year before her death. They thought maybe there was bad blood between them. Harris denied the affair and they dropped it when he offered up Beecher as an alibi.”

  She knew that Bosch would know that OD was cold case lingo for original detective.

  “Beecher confirmed he was with him the night of the crime,” he said.

  “Right,” Ballard said. “And I would’ve left it there but I happened to google these guys at lunch, and it turns out that a few years back, Harmon Harris got #MeToo’d out of the business. It was part of an L.A. Times series on the entertainment business. The sexual assault and harassment complaints about Harris came from both men and women. I guess he was a real Hollywood player, and that kind of scratches the I’m-innocent-because-I’m-gay angle.”

  “Right.”

  “The Times story also reported through anonymous sources that Harris would extort closeted gay actors who came through his classes and theater. He would threaten to derail their careers by spreading word around that they were gay.”