Ballard held her badge cupped in one hand while she knocked on the door with the other. It wasn’t long before a short woman with the same coloring and features as Jorge Ochoa answered the door.
“Mrs. Ochoa?” Ballard asked.
“Sí,” the woman said.
Ballard immediately wished she had gotten a Spanish-speaking officer to go with her. She could step away and call North Hollywood Division to see if one was available but instead pressed on. She held up her badge.
“La policía. Habla inglés?”
The woman frowned but then turned away from the door and yelled in rapid-fire Spanish back into the house. The only word Ballard identified was policía. The woman then turned back to Ballard and nodded as though she had just fixed the problem. After an awkward and silent minute, a young man appeared behind the woman at the door, his dark hair disheveled from sleep. He was almost a carbon copy of what Jorge Ochoa looked like in the mug shots she had reviewed when reading the murder book.
“What?” he said.
He was clearly annoyed with the early wake-up, even though it was almost noon. Ballard quickly assessed the VB tattoos on his arms and read him as a member of the Vineland Boyz street gang. She knew that a gangster’s day typically started in the p.m. hours. This was early.
“You’re Oscar, right?” Ballard said. “I want to talk to your mother about your brother.”
“My brother’s gone,” Oscar said. “And we don’t talk to cops. Adiós, puta.”
He started to close the door but Ballard reached her hand out and stopped it.
“You call somebody who wants to help your brother a whore?”
“Help him? Shit. You coulda helped him when he said he didn’t do it. But no, you people just threw away the key.”
“I want to show something to your mother. It might be what gets Jorge out of prison. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. But next time you visit your brother, you tell him I was here and you sent me away.”
Oscar didn’t move or speak. Then his mother spoke to him in a whisper. Ballard knew enough Spanish to know she had asked her son what the woman wanted. Mrs. Ochoa had heard Jorge’s name mentioned.
Oscar didn’t answer her. He turned back to Ballard and made room for her to enter.
“Show her,” he said.
Ballard stepped in. She had spent the night before reviewing the murder book she had pulled at North Hollywood station. Her first effort in the morning was to attempt to track down the family of Olga Reyes. But it appeared that her family had left Los Angeles after her murder, and Ballard had not yet been able to locate them. The closest she came was a neighbor who said she thought the family had gone to Texas.
That left the Jorge Ochoa side of the equation, and here she was at his mother’s cookie-cutter house in a post–World War II tract in Sunland.
Ballard was led to a small, modestly furnished living room, where she immediately saw signs that she was on the right track. Several framed paintings and sketches that had the look of prison art hung on the walls. All were on butcher paper and signed in pencil.
“Did Jorge want to be an artist?” she asked.
“He is an artist,” Oscar said. “Show her what you got and then go.”
Ballard was annoyed with herself for not thinking through her question.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell your mother I am going to show her a photo of a piece of jewelry and I want to know if she’s ever seen it before.”
While Oscar made the translation, Ballard swung her backpack off her shoulder and opened it on the floor. She removed a file folder containing an 8 x 10 color photo of the bracelet with the artist’s palette charm, which she had printed at home that morning. She gave the file to Oscar to give to his mother. She wanted him invested in this as well.
Oscar opened the file and looked at the photo with his mother. Ballard watched the woman for a reaction and saw the recognition in her eyes.
“She’s seen it before,” Ballard said quickly.
Oscar and his mother exchanged words and Oscar translated.
“She said it was my brother’s. He gave it to Olga because they were in love. Where did you find it?”
Ballard knew the question had come from him.
“I can’t tell you right now,” Ballard said. “But I think your brother is going to get out of prison with it.”
“How?”
“I think I can prove that somebody else killed Olga.”
Suddenly Oscar’s tough shell cracked and Ballard saw hope and fear in his eyes. He then turned away and translated for his mother.
“Dios mío,” she said. “Dios mío.”
She reached out and grabbed Ballard’s hand.
“Please,” she said.
Oscar’s hard shell slipped back into place.
“You better not be fucking with us,” he said.
“I’m not,” Ballard said. “Ask your mother if she knows where Jorge got the bracelet.”
The exchange in Spanish was quick.
“She doesn’t know,” Oscar said.
“What about the charm?” Ballard asked.
The next exchange didn’t need to be translated. The woman shook her head. Ballard looked at Oscar.
“What about you?” Ballard asked.
“What do you mean?” Oscar asked.
“Was your brother in Vineland Boyz?”
“No, but you people at the trial sure tried to make it look that way.”
“What I’m getting at is, where do Vineland Boyz get their chains?”
Oscar didn’t answer, his hesitation rooted in the gang rule about talking about the gang to the police. It could get him killed.
“Do you know what provenance means?” Ballard asked. “Besides having your mother identify the bracelet as your brother’s, I may need to establish where Jorge got it. Then I would have two confirmations when I go to the District Attorney’s Office.”
“He was not a gangster,” Oscar said. “He was an artist.”
Ballard knew from the review of the case file that the prosecution presented photos of street art attributed to Jorge Ochoa and used it to suggest gang affiliation. It was an underhanded way of tilting a jury’s view of him.
“I’ll leave you my card,” Ballard said. “If you think of anything, maybe a local store where Jorge might have gotten the bracelet, call me.”
“I don’t talk to the policía,” Oscar said.
“Even if it might help your brother prove he didn’t kill Olga?”
Oscar was silent on that question. Ballard looked at his mother.
“Gracias, señora,” she said. “Estaré en contacto.”
As soon as she was back in her car, Ballard pulled her phone and called Harry Bosch. Adrenaline had started coursing through her veins the moment Jorge Ochoa’s mother recognized the bracelet. Ballard needed to tell someone about the twist the case was now taking and Bosch was her first choice.
But the call once again went directly to message.
“Harry, it’s me again. Where the hell are you? Things are happening fast and I need you on Rawls. I’ve connected another case to him, and get this, somebody’s in prison for a murder Rawls committed. I’m sure of it. I need you to call me back as soon as you get this.”
She disconnected and sighed in frustration. But soon her annoyance with Bosch turned to concern. He was old and not in the best health. Besides inflicting the obvious injuries, the crash on Sunday had seemed to take something out of him.
Ballard opened up her contacts list on her phone and called Bosch’s daughter. He had previously mentioned that Maddie was working a mid-watch shift, so she figured she should be neither asleep nor at work.
Maddie Bosch answered promptly.
“Maddie, it’s Renée Ballard.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Uh, have you talked to your dad lately? We’re supposed to be working on something and I can’t seem to reach him.”
“Well, I saw him Tuesday when we had lunch and then I dropped him off to pick up a rental car. But I haven’t talked to him since then. What’s—”
“I’m sure everything is fine, but I really need to talk to him. Do you mind doing something for me? He once told me that you let him track your phone and you track his. Is it still that way?”
“Yes. So you want me to see where he’s at?”
“That would help, if you don’t mind. I really need him on a case I’m working.”
“Hold on.”
Ballard waited while Maddie used her phone to check her father’s location by tracking his cell phone.
“Um…okay, I have him at the OPG lot at West Bureau. No, wait, that’s old. His phone must be off or the battery’s dead. That’s from Sunday night, and it’s the last location I have.”
Ballard put two and two together. The official police garage would have been where they took Bosch’s car after the Rawls incident Sunday.
“It’s in his car,” she said. “He was talking to me when his car got hit by Rawls, and the phone went flying. His phone must still be in the car and the battery probably died Sunday night.”
“So then where is he?” Maddie asked, starting to sound worried.
The middle ground between concern and panic had entered Ballard’s thinking.
“I don’t know,” Ballard said. “Does he still have a landline at the house?”
“He does,” Maddie said. “Let me call it, and either he or I will call you right back.”
They disconnected and Ballard sat in the car and waited, knowing that her next move would be dictated by who called her back.
When the call came in a minute later, it was from Maddie.
“He didn’t answer. I left a message but now I’m worried.”
“When do you go in today?”
“I’m actually off.”
“Do you have a key to Harry’s house? I think we should check it out.”
“I have a key. When?”
“I’m up in the Valley. I could get there in about thirty minutes tops.”
“Okay, it will take me the same. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay. If you get there first, maybe you should wait for me before going in.”
“We’ll see.”
“Well, I’m on my way.”
They disconnected and Ballard started the car. Her tires squealed on the asphalt as she pulled out. She wanted to get to Bosch’s house before his daughter did.