Ballard had been ten minutes late to her four o’clock appointment with Vickie Blodget, the prosecutor assigned to handle cases from the unit. Ballard had always had an easy and open relationship with Blodget, but she was off her game in giving the case overview, leaving out details and delivering them out of order. She had been in a fog since leaving the lab. The Olga Reyes case had been pushed out of her brain by Ballard’s need to find Harry Bosch.
“Let me make sure I understand the chain on this,” Blodget said. “Bosch saw Rawls put the box in the dumpster, but then you waited three days to go retrieve it? Why?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant, and I’m sorry if I’m confusing you,” Ballard said. “Bosch did not see him dump the box. It just came to him later that Rawls might have been in the process of dumping evidence when he saw Bosch and decided to make a run for it. So, in other words, he dumped the box, saw Bosch, then ran back to his car and took off.”
“But why did you wait three days to go back? See, that’s a problem. If he didn’t see Rawls dump the box, we’re going to have a difficult time linking it.”
“Well, who else could it be? The dumpster is literally sixty feet from the back door of a serial killer’s business. Bosch got banged up pretty good in what happened Sunday. He fucked up his knee and ribs in the crash, not to mention a bullet whizzing by his head and clipping his ear. It took him a couple days to put two and two together, and then we went dumpster diving.”
Blodget nodded as she wrote a short note on a legal pad.
“Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “Those three days. It could have been anybody who dumped the box. As you know, the shootout with Rawls hit the media in a very big way. Somebody could have seen the story and then gone down there to dump the box, hoping it would be found and linked to Rawls.”
The fog was burning away. Ballard stared at Blodget incredulously.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “What is going on here? This kid’s been in prison for thirteen years. I mean, he’s not even a kid anymore. He shouldn’t be there.”
“Are you a hundred percent sure about that?” Blodget asked.
“Yes, I am. Jorge Ochoa is innocent.”
“It was a DNA match.”
“Yeah, and she was his girlfriend. That was his defense: they had sex that night, he went home, and the killer came next. And now we know that’s what happened. It was Rawls, not Ochoa. The murder weapon was in the box. You have the autopsy report right there in front of you. Blunt force trauma, circular impacts to the skull, one inch in diameter. Those were hammer blows, Vickie. It’s obvious.”
“I know all of that, Renée. That’s not the point. We need linkage to Rawls. Were there any prints on the box? Anything that directly ties it or its contents to him?”
“No, I had it processed. No prints, no fibers, no DNA from Rawls. But remember, he was getting rid of the box. He would have made sure it was clean and not traceable to him. The only flaw in the plan was that we were onto him and Bosch was watching. He didn’t count on that until he saw Bosch and tried to flee.”
“There are just too many holes in it. I can’t take it across the street. Not yet. I need you to get more evidence.”
Blodget’s office was in the Hall of Justice, which was directly across Temple Street from the downtown criminal courthouse, where the elected D.A.’s office was located on the sixteenth floor.
“You said Bosch got into an argument with a resident there,” Blodget said. “Did you talk to this man? Did he see Rawls dump the box?”
“I doubt he had an angle on it,” Ballard said. “But no, we haven’t talked to him. I didn’t think it was necessary when the rest is so obvious.”
“And nothing in property or evidence storage from the case?”
“No. After Ochoa lost his last appeal, there was an evidence disposal order from the court. There is nothing but what you have right there. No crime scene to go back to, no witnesses to show photos of Rawls to. Just the box.”
Blodget nodded and wrote something down.
“Then there’s nothing I can do at the moment,” she said. “I’m sorry, Renée.”
“This is because of the recall, isn’t it?” Ballard said.
The district attorney was facing a recall election because his liberal policies of making it more difficult to send offenders to prison had resulted in a surge in crime stats across Los Angeles County. New directives from the sixteenth floor, which did not require bail for most crimes, prevented prosecutors from adding penalty enhancements for use of guns in the commission of crimes, and deferred prosecution for misdemeanors and even some violent felonies, had created a revolving-door justice system. The media routinely reported on suspects freshly released from jail without bail or without being charged and then committing exactly the same types of crimes—sometimes within hours.
Though the D.A. attempted to blame this on the Covid pandemic and the need to lessen crowding in jails during the crisis, he had lost the support of the law enforcement agencies in the county as well as a significant percentage of the populace. A well-funded recall campaign was underway. A story about the D.A.’s Office putting an innocent man in prison—even though it was long before the current D.A. was elected—was not going to help him keep his job.
“Look, I’m not going to deny the reality of what is happening across the street,” Blodget said. “But I know how this will go. I go over there with this case as it is, and they’ll kill it and Ochoa never gets free.”
“So you’re telling me to wait until after the recall,” Ballard said. “Make Jorge Ochoa wait up there in Corcoran for another six months for something he didn’t do, never mind all the years he’s already spent there.”
“What I’m telling you is that if I take it across the street right now and it gets rejected, then good luck taking it a second time, no matter who is in the corner office on sixteen.”
Ballard nodded and held her tongue. She knew Blodget was not her enemy. The situation was what it was. And she needed to keep Blodget on her side because there would be future cases with issues that would come in wobbling. She would need Blodget then.
Ballard also knew this was not the only place she could take the case. There was an alternate way to free Jorge Ochoa if she wanted to risk it.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for hearing me out. But I’ll be back with this one when the time and evidence is right.”
“I hope you do bring it to me, Renée,” Blodget said.
Ballard got up to leave.
As she left the Major Crimes Unit, her cheeks grew hot with humiliation as she thought about the meeting earlier that day at the house where Jorge Ochoa grew up. The distrust that Jorge’s brother had voiced about the police and the justice system had just been validated. Ballard had promised to stay in touch with Jorge’s mother and brother, but now she had no idea how she would ever be able to face them again.
Waiting for the elevator, Ballard checked her phone and saw she had no signal. This was not surprising. The Major Crimes Unit was located in the former jail at the top of the Hall of Justice. Though renovated into offices years earlier, the floors and walls were still concrete and reinforced with steel to prevent escape. The structure was notorious for knocking out cell service. It wasn’t until Ballard stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor that her texts and voice mail messages came through. There were several from Maddie Bosch.
Call me.
Need to talk ASAP.
Where are you?
There were also two voice mails but Ballard didn’t bother to listen to them, deciding to quickly call back instead as she headed down Spring Street to the PAB. Maddie picked up the call right away and spoke as if they were already in mid-conversation.
“This is weird. After I went back into the house to write my dad a note, I found this envelope in a drawer with my name on it. So I opened it, and it was this long letter to me about how good a person I am and how I’m strong and what a good cop I’ll be. Like stuff he wanted me to know after he’s gone, you know?”
Ballard knew exactly what the note was meant for but didn’t want to make Maddie any more upset than she was.
“Well, Maddie,” she said. “Maybe it was just something he—”
“And then I fucking missed a call from him,” Maddie interjected. “I was so stressed about this note I found and I couldn’t get you, so I went and I worked out at the station, and he called while I was in the shower afterward.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“Yes. He said he was in Key West and he was fine. But it was kind of weird.”
“What do you mean? How was it weird?”
“Well, not like him. He was saying he was fine and he was working a case and that he loved me very much. He just didn’t sound right. He said I was the best thing that ever happened in his life. And then with the note I found…I don’t know. I’m really worried.”
“Do you have the number he called from on your phone?”
“Yes, I called it back as soon as I heard the message. It’s a hotel in Key West, and I asked for Harry Bosch’s room and they put me through. But he didn’t answer. I’ve called three times and he doesn’t answer.”
“What’s the hotel?”
“It’s called the Pier House.”
“Okay, I’m on it, Maddie. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“And listen, there’s one more thing that adds to the weirdness of what’s going on with him.”
“What?”
“I was looking for paper to write a note on and I opened a drawer in his worktable. That’s where I found the note to me. But there were also some loose pills in there. And the unit I’m on now, we’ve backed up enough narco operations for me to know counterfeit fentanyl when I see it. I don’t know where he got it or why, but he has fucking fentanyl in that drawer.”
It was a confirmation of the information Ballard had gotten earlier at the lab.
“Okay, Maddie, try to stay calm,” Ballard said. “There’s gotta be an explanation for that. And he’ll tell us once we find him. So let’s just calm down until we get to that point.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Maddie said. “But please find him. And let me know what I can do to help. I mean it.”
“I understand. And I will.”
Ballard disconnected, then immediately did an internet search on her phone for the Key West Police Department. She called the main number, identified herself, and asked for the commanding officer on duty. She told a lieutenant named Burke that she needed an emergency welfare check on a guest at the Pier House. She gave him Bosch’s details and asked for a callback as soon as he was checked on.
Not knowing how long it would take the KWPD to react, Ballard next called the Pier House and talked to the man in charge of the hotel’s security. She explained the situation and asked him to go to Bosch’s room for a welfare check. He in turn explained that their policy did not allow them to force entry into a possibly occupied guest room without the police being present.
“Well, they’re on their way,” Ballard said.
She disconnected and felt useless waiting on word from people three thousand miles away. She opened a search window on her phone and tried to figure out how fast she could get to Key West. Fifteen minutes later, she had just reserved a rental car to go with the red-eye flight to Miami that she had booked when a call came in with a 786 area code.
“It’s Bob Burke, KWPD.”
“Did you check his room?”
“We did, but it was empty. Bosch is not there and there’s no indication of anything amiss. Two shirts on hangers in the closet, a toothbrush, a duffel bag. His wallet is in a drawer next to the bed. One of my guys asked around, and the bartender in the Chart Room said Bosch was in there earlier and had an expensive shot of bourbon. I don’t know if it helps, but the bartender said he was asking about an Irish guy named Davy Byrne. That ring any bells?”
Ballard hesitated. It sounded like Bosch might have located Finbar McShane, or at least the alias he was using.
“Uh, the name isn’t right,” she said. “But he was tracking a suspect in a cold case we’re working out here. The suspect’s Irish.”
“Well, maybe he found him,” Burke said. “But there’s no sign of foul play in his room. I’ll do some digging around here, check with our dayside people to see if they know anything about this.”
“Please do, and call me as soon as you know something. I’m flying out tonight and will be on the ground in Miami at dawn.”
“You got it. And, oh, I nearly forgot this. There was one other thing with the room. There was an envelope on the desk. It was sealed and addressed to someone named Renée. Does that mean—”
“Yes, that’s me. Why would he have a note there for me? I’m in L.A.”
“That I don’t know. Maybe he knew you’d be flying out.”
That suggestion gave Ballard pause. Was Bosch manipulating her from three thousand miles away?
“None of this is adding up,” she said. “Another thing is, why would he go out without his wallet? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It was in a drawer. Maybe he forgot it. Maybe he didn’t want to risk losing it.”
Neither possibility seemed plausible to Ballard. Her anxiety about Bosch was growing.
“Could you go back in and open the envelope addressed to me?” she asked.
“Uh, no, we’re not going to do that without being able to show cause,” Burke said. “Right now, we have no crime and no evidence of a crime. We can’t go beyond the welfare check we already conducted. I’m sure I don’t need to school you on the Fourth Amendment and unlawful search and seizure.”
“You don’t, Lieutenant. It’s just that—”
“I’ll get back to you if I learn anything from our dayside team. Okay, Detective?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Ballard disconnected and checked the time. Her red-eye was scheduled to take off in four hours. That left enough time for her to track down Sheila Walsh and find out what had sent Bosch to Key West.