AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Renée, I just got your message. I’m in the car and I’m coming out.”
“Uh, okay.”
“West Bureau is handling it for now, but I want to be there. This is going to be a shitshow. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Have you talked to the detectives yet?”
“Just briefly when they arrived. They’re in the house. They told me to wait in my car.”
“Good. That’s good. I informed the chief’s adjutant. I haven’t heard back. But this is going to be a shitshow. I guarantee that.”
“Yes, you said that.”
“Any idea what she was doing?”
Ballard hesitated for a moment. The question raised the dark thoughts again.
“Well, yeah,” Ballard said. “She was working for me.”
“I know that, Ballard,” Gandle said. “But what exactly was she working on?”
“She was on the Pillowcase Rapist case. We all were. I told you. We’re looking at four different persons of interest. But none of them knew it except maybe the guy in Vegas, and he wouldn’t have done this. Not after we were just there.”
“Could it have been something else? Something that had nothing to do with your unit or its cases?”
“Anything is possible at the moment, I guess. But I don’t know what else it could be.”
“You told me when you wanted her for the unit that she was already working cases on the internet.”
“She was, yes.”
“Well, maybe it was one of those.”
Ballard could see the company line on this forming: Hatteras was killed because of some misstep she had made before she volunteered for the LAPD. That would put the department in the clear.
“I doubt it,” Ballard said. “She tripped a wire somewhere while she was working for me.”
“We don’t know that,” Gandle said. “Not for sure.”
Ballard saw Goring come through the open door of the house and stride toward the Defender.
“Uh, Captain, I think I have to go,” Ballard said. “Detective Goring is heading toward me. I think she’ll want to question me now.”
“Okay, I’ll let you go,” Gandle said. “I’m still an hour out. The traffic sucks.”
“I’ll tell the detectives you’re coming.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected and watched Goring cross in front of the car and open the passenger door. The automatic step deployed and she climbed in.
“Renée, how are you doing?”
“Uh, not good. A woman I’ve worked with closely for the past two years is in there dead. Murdered.”
“Yeah, not good. I’m going to tape this conversation, okay?”
