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“Of course. I want to keep building this tree.”
“Then we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Ballard finally disconnected. Hatteras had the ability to push her patience to its limit. Yet she was good at what she did—if she just maintained focus and did it. More than once, Ballard had thought about telling Hatteras it wasn’t going to work out and that she was off the team. But investigative genetic genealogy was where cold cases often went, and all the things that made Hatteras annoying—the woo-woo vibes, asking too many questions, crossing boundaries,sticking her nose into things—were what made her good at IGG work. So Ballard put up with her because the payoffs were worth it.
She also had a soft spot for Hatteras because she knew why her cold-case work meant so much to her. She’d packed the second of her two children off to college in September, and her husband of twenty-three years had promptly moved out and filed for divorce. As Colleen told it, this was not exactly a surprise move, as their marriage had stopped functioning years before and was mostly a front for their children. But the dramatic drop in activity at home resulted in her increased activity at the Ahmanson Center.
Purcell stayed on the 110, passing exits for the Glendale and Golden State Freeways, all the way to the Orange Grove exit in Pasadena. Laffont, who maintained lead car in the surveillance, reported the exit, and all the unit’s cars followed. Since it was rush hour, there were so many cars on the road that Ballard wasn’t worried that Purcell would realize he was being tailed. Their efforts were also camouflaged by the falling of night. If Purcell checked his mirrors, he’d see headlights behind him but no identifiable vehicles.
After exiting, Purcell took a couple of right turns and soon was on Arroyo Drive cruising north through an old and well-to-do neighborhood with homes on the right and the Arroyo Seco wash on the left. There was little traffic now, and Ballard instructed her team to slow down and spread out. A minute later Laffont reported over the radio that Purcell had pulled into a driveway at the corner of Hermosa. “I kept going,” he said.
Ballard thought of a plan and put it into the rover. “Tom, pull over. Double back on foot on the west side. Lilia, you go right on Hermosa and post up. Tom, I’ll get to you in a minute.”
As she was finishing her orders, she saw Lilia’s right turn signal a half block ahead. The Volvo made the turn onto Hermosa. Ballard continued on straight, and as she passed the house on the corner, she saw an open and lit-up garage at the end of the driveway. The blackMercedes was in the left bay next to an SUV, and Purcell was getting out with a briefcase in hand.
She kept driving until she saw Laffont’s car parked at the curb three houses down. She pulled in behind it in front of a Craftsman with no lights on and a real estate sign on the lawn that saidIN ESCROW.She got out and crossed the street to the Arroyo Seco side. There was a footpath through the trees that ran along the upper slope of the wash. She didn’t see Laffont until she was almost back to Hermosa, and she startled as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Are you trying to scare me?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, no,” Laffont said. “Just trying to be inconspicuous.”
They spoke in whispers even though they were more than a hundred feet away from the Purcell house.
“Did you see him?” Ballard asked.
“Not after he closed the garage. Lights were already on in the house. What do you think? He’s in for the night?”
“Possibly. I don’t know.” Ballard had her rover in her hand. She whispered into it. “Lilia, what’s your angle? You see any activity?”
She turned the volume knob down before there was a response. When Aghzafi’s voice came back, she held the rover up, and she and Laffont tilted their heads toward it to hear.
“We have an angle on some rear windows. Looks like the kitchen. Two people in there talking, a man and a woman.”
Ballard looked at Laffont. She was beginning to think the surveillance was a bust.
“Making dinner?” he said.
“Probably,” Ballard said. “Look, if they’re tucked in, we might be doing this again tomorrow, so I’m going to send you and Lilia home. I’ll keep Paul and stay a little bit longer.”
“I don’t mind staying. Why not send them both home? They’re already in the same car.”
“No—just in case, I want Paul here.”
What was unsaid but had been established in the team’s previous surreptitious DNA captures was that Masser, a former prosecutor who knew the rules of evidence, was the better witness for testifying about DNA collection. He could stand up to any challenge from a defense attorney about the procedures followed in gathering and preserving genetic evidence.
Ballard used the rover to instruct Lilia to drop Masser at Ballard’s car and head home after giving him her rover. Laffont left shortly after that, telling Ballard to call him back if the judge decided to go out.
Ballard and Masser stood in the shadows of the woods across the street from the Purcell house. Twice during their vigil, a neighborhood resident came by walking a dog and gave them suspicious glances. But no one challenged them on what they were doing there.
“We’re going to give it another half hour and then call it,” Ballard said. “It’s a Monday night. People don’t go out on Monday nights in Pasadena.”
Masser pointed across the street. “Don’t be so sure,” he said.
She followed his finger and saw that the garage door was rising and the light inside had come on. She saw two sets of legs, and when the door finished going up, Purcell was in full view, holding open the passenger door of the Mercedes for a woman in a purple pantsuit.
“Hot nights in Pasadena, I guess,” she said. “I’m going to get the wheels. You stay here to see which way they go.”
“You got it,” Masser said.
