AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, but have you made contact with any of them?”
“Well, one is dead. Colleen found that out. He was killed in a car accident a couple years ago. But the coroner’s office took blood at the time and still had it because of a court case that came out of the incident. I picked up a sample and the lab now has it for DNA analysis. We think the third guy has been living in Hawaii since before the rapes stopped here. And the fourth—”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, I talked to him yesterday,” Ballard said. “I deked him on a phone call and he told me he moved to Hawaii in 2003. The last Pillowcase rape and murder was in late 2005.”
“‘Deked’? What’s that mean?”
“Decoyed. The twenty-fifth reunion of their class at St. Vincent’s is coming up. I told the guy in Hawaii that I was a reporter for the paper in Pasadena doing a where-are-they-now story on the class. He bought it and I did the interview. He was very detailed about his history since St. Vincent’s. Went to chef school up in wine country and moved to Hawaii right after for a job.”
“And you believed him?”
“Well, we haven’t independently confirmed anything yet, but yeah, my feeling is that he was telling the truth. I hit him up out of the blue, and for him to provide the details he did… I’m thinking he couldn’t have made it up on the spot.”
“And the fourth guy?”
“We haven’t approached him yet. He sells houses down in Laguna Beach. The last thing I told Colleen to do was see if he had any open houses this weekend. I thought we’d go down and take a look at him, maybe get a chance to collect some DNA.”
“When you say ‘we,’ are you talking about you and Officer Bosch again?”
“Uh, no, I actually did throw that out to Colleen. Wait, no. I mean, I did make her the offer when I left a phone message today, but I don’t think she ever got it.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I saw the body. I saw the lividity. I think she was dead long before I left that message.”
Goring nodded and then looked at the notes she had written. Through the windshield, Ballard saw the two investigators from the coroner’s office squeeze through the front door, carrying the body bag containing Colleen Hatteras. Ballard looked down at the steering wheel.
“I’m going to need the names of these four persons of interest,” Goring said. “And any reports you’ve written up.”
“Sure,” Ballard said. “I don’t have a lot. Today was supposed to be my paperwork day. I did write up a summary of the Vegas trip I can give you.”
“I’ll take it. Let me ask you a question. When you deked the guy in Hawaii, was Hatteras there?”
Ballard hesitated before answering.
“Uh, she was there for part of it,” she said. “But she left while I was in the middle of it.”
Goring wrote a note. Ballard watched the morgue men put the body bag in the back of their van.
“Okay,” Goring said. “Just a couple more things. What made you come here today to check on her?”
“I thought it was unusual that she hadn’t come to the unit this morning,” Ballard said. “Her husband left her back in September, and with her kids in college, she didn’t have much to do. She was at the squad at least three days a week, more often four or five days a week. So I emailed and left phone messages, and when she didn’t respond, I started thinking something might be wrong. Nothing like this but that maybe she was upset with me or something. I ate lunch by the airport—at the Melody—and just thought I would drop by. I wasn’t expecting anything, but then I pulled in and saw the garage was up and the door to the house was open.”
“That set off the Spidey senses.”
“You could say so, yeah.”
“Did you see anything in the house that could help us?”
“Not really. It looked like her computer was taken. It shouldn’t have had anything from work on it. People in the unit use department computers. It’s a rule.”
“The killer might not have known that.”
“True.”
“There’s a dust pattern on the desk that indicates there was also a backup hard drive taken.”
