Ballard wanted to get away from Ahmanson to think. She drove up to Abbott Kinney in Venice and ordered a harvest bowl at the Butcher’s Daughter. Since her breakup with Garrett Single, the paramedic, she had tended to eat vegetarian when on her own. Single had prided himself on his barbecue skills, and it had been a consistent part of the relationship. She had spent the last three months on a cleanse of him and all red meats. She now preferred watermelon radish to brisket and, like the butcher’s daughter, could not see herself going red again.
She was casually making a list as she ate. Then she got a call from one of the first entries on the list. Nelson Hastings.
“Just checking in,” he said, “seeing if there’s anything I can put in front of the councilman today.”
“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 the 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.”