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“We don’t know,” Ballard said. “She could have bought multiple sets at the same time. But what’s clear is that they match. I think that bumps the ninety-two percent to a hundred.”
“It’s her,” Maddie said. “It’s obvious, if you ask me.”
Plovc looked at Maddie, and Ballard got ready for her to tell Maddie that her opinion carried no weight in the decision she would make. But instead, Plovc swung her attention back to Ballard.
“So this suitcase was found two weeks after the murder?” she asked. “How long was it there?”
“Yes, two weeks after,” Ballard said. “A lot of the records from then are gone. There is an evidence log that mentions the suitcase, but I couldn’t find anything that says when it went into the locker.”
“Think about it,” Maddie said. “She goes to the guy for photos. He probably told her to bring a variety of clothes for various shots. She was a Hollywood hopeful. He could have told her he’d give her a whole album of different looks. Then he kills her, puts all the clothes, including her underwear, back into the suitcase, and dumps it at the bus terminal.”
Plovc nodded. “Makes sense,” she said. “But we have no proof of that, do we?”
“Well, we know the suitcase was Short’s,” Ballard said. “And the underwear matches the photo. That is Elizabeth Short in the photos and Thawyer’s the guy.”
Plovc nodded, but not in agreement. It was more an acknowledgment of how sure Ballard and Maddie were.
“I think I’m going to have to take this across the street,” she said.
The main offices of the district attorney, including that of the top prosecutor, were located across Temple in the Criminal Courts Building. Plovc was probably passing the decision to her supervisors, maybe even to the elected district attorney.
“How long will that take?” Hatteras asked.
Plovc looked at her sharply.
“As long as it takes,” she said. “There is no hurry on this. It’s been seventy-seven years.”
“I was just thinking of the Ford family,” Hatteras said. “They want answers. Can we talk about that case?”
“Everybody wants answers,” Plovc said. “And no, we’re taking these as a whole. I will walk all of it across the street and get back to you as soon as a decision is made. Thank you all for coming in today. It’s really exciting stuff.”
Plovc started stacking the files at the side of her desk, a clear sign that the meeting was over.
WEDNESDAY, 10:22 A.M.
41
THE CLEOPATRA CASINOand Resort on the Las Vegas Strip was a place of withered beauty. Built in the 1980s, it was now dwarfed by the opulent glass towers that surrounded it. Like everything and almost everyone in Vegas, it was slated for a ground-up rebuild. Once owned and operated by mobsters out of Chicago, the casino had long since passed to a corporate conglomerate that invested in hotels and amusement parks. Because its end was near, the casino’s interiors were not as polished as they once were. It felt second tier to Ballard. The glass skylight that stretched over the gaming floor had once been a point of pride, but the glass was now dirty with the debris of settling smog and auto exhaust, and several panels that had been cracked by falling liquor bottles from the tower rooms, presumably, had been replaced with plywood. Its signature pulpit, a faux-gold-leaf structure with the face of Cleopatra extending up toward the glass and over the gaming tables, was propped against collapse by two industrial stanchions. The Cleo had clearly seen better times, and this was reflected in the clientele that gathered at its five-dollar blackjack tables and one-dollar-minimum roulette wheels.
It had been a four-hour drive from Los Angeles after a 6:00 a.m. departure from the Ahmanson Center. In the course of those miles,Ballard and Maddie Bosch had covered the basic topics of casual conversation between two female law enforcement officers, one with most of her service years behind her, the other at the start of her career.
Maddie had expressed a dissatisfaction with patrol work and was hoping that her time with the Open-Unsolved Unit would fast-track her ascent to the detective ranks.
“I mean, I’d work auto theft,” she had said. “Anything to get out of the uniform.”
“I was the same,” Ballard responded. “Couldn’t wait to move my badge to my belt.”
The conversation was interrupted when Ballard took a call from Captain Gandle, who said he had received her request for the Las Vegas trip and was approving it. Little did he know that they were already going by Zzyzx and were approaching the state line and Nevada. After Ballard disconnected, Maddie started laughing.
“We didn’t have permission before we left?”
“Well, I figured we’d get it. I laid it all out for him in the request. I just didn’t want to wait around. You’ll learn this: Part of being a good detective is knowing your boss and how he thinks.”
“Or how she thinks.”
“Right. Your dad can tell you a lot about all of this.”
“Uh, I don’t think my dad did too well in supervisor psychology.”
