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She was in luck. Bosch was home and welcomed her in.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he closed the front door. “You could’ve just called instead of driving all the way up here.”
“No, I didn’t want to call,” Ballard said. “And you’ll understand when you hear why.”
They spent the next half hour working out a story. Then Boschdisappeared into his bedroom to get something from a drawer that he believed would seal the deal with Captain Gandle. Ballard was waiting for him at the door when he put it in her hand.
“Thank you, Harry,” she said. “I can’t believe all of this happened just because I didn’t want to report a stolen badge.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Bosch said. “Remember, those guys didn’t need your badge to do what they were going to do. The badge was just part of a possible escape plan. But it never got to that point, and people are alive today because you didn’t want to report a stolen badge.”
“I guess so. I’ll take that.”
“Nobody else will ever know, but I will.”
“And I hope it stays that way.”
“Let me know how it goes with your captain.”
“No, I won’t be able to.”
“Right. But if I get pulled in to verify, I’ll get the word to you somehow.”
“Okay. Be safe.”
“You too.”
Forty minutes later, Ballard was sitting in front of Captain Gandle in his office at the PAB. He had never sent her the video taken by the roller-hockey player. He claimed he forgot, but Ballard knew that it was probably intentional. He had not wanted her to see it in advance and have time to make up a plausible explanation.
He played it for her now, turning his computer screen so they could watch together. Though the video was taken from a distance, it was clearly Ballard waiting at the police tape when the camera tracked Bosch walking from the center of the crime scene. Then came a short conversation, the hug, and the hand dropping into the pocket of her coat. Ballard was grateful for two things. First, that it was not clear what, if anything, Bosch had put in her pocket. And second, that the hockey player hadn’t started taking video on his phone while she andAgent Olmstead were talking at the crime scene tape. With nothing to connect her to the agent in charge of the op, Ballard saw daylight.
“That is you, right?” Gandle said. “You were there.”
“Yep, that’s me,” Ballard said. “I was there.”
“Jesus Christ, and you didn’t come forward with this?”
“I was off duty. I was there because Harry Bosch asked me to be there.”
“Why? Why would he do that?”
“You said you knew Harry back in the day. So you know he has a thing about the feds. He didn’t trust them when he was a cop, and he trusts them even less now. He wanted some sort of backup. Somebody who wasn’t an FBI agent who could be a witness if things went sideways and they tried to put the blame on him.”
“So you were just an observer. Not part of it.”
“You see that on the video. I’m outside the tape. If I were part of what went down, don’t you think I’d be inside the tape?”
Gandle didn’t say anything as he contemplated that. His next question revealed to Ballard that he was finding her story plausible.
“What did he put in your pocket?” he asked.
Ballard reached into her pocket and took out the medal and chain Bosch had given her at his front door. She held it out to him across the desk and he took it. One side of the medal depicted Saint Michael, the patron saint of police officers. The other side was customized. It showed an LAPD badge with a6underneath it. Many officers in the department had side gigs. They sold insurance or real estate or gave self-defense lessons. An officer at Hollywood Division—LAPD’s Sixth Division—sold the medals, and Bosch had one from his days in Hollywood Homicide.
“I got that when I worked the late show at Hollywood,” she said. “I gave it to him to keep with him because I guess I wasn’t so trusting that the FBI was going to watch out for him if shit went down.”
Gandle dangled the chain, and the medal swung in front of his eyes.
“Saint Michael,” he said. “You never struck me as religious, Ballard.”
