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Hatteras had added details on the four men as information came in. Birth dates, addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, marital and employment status—everything she and the other members of the team had gathered, here in one neat file. She had included the photo of Andrew Bennett standing in front of theSOLDsign. Ballard stared at Bennett’s eyes, and it suddenly became clear to her what Colleen Hatteras had done that might have gotten her killed.
Her cell phone buzzed and she saw it was Carol Plovc again. She had forgotten to return the call.
“Sorry, Carol, I was going to call you back.”
“I’m leaving early today and I just wanted to make sure you heard that O’Fallon declined again.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know, I know. I would have signed off on this but he won’t. He called the ear identification you got junk science.”
“He’s junk science. This is just political bullshit.”
“I’m not disagreeing.”
“So is there anything else we can do?”
“Outside of finding a signed confession from Thawyer in his files, probably not.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Please tell Officer Bosch I’m sorry. I think you guys have it nailed. But my hands are tied.”
“I understand.”
Plovc’s voice dropped down to a whisper: “You know there’s a recall effort starting, right?” she said.
“Yeah, I heard,” Ballard said.
“Well, if it works and we get a new DA, you bring this to me again.”
“But when will that be, in a year? Elyse Ford’s sister is in her eighties. She’s waited all her life to know who took her sister. And now thanks to the politics of this town, she may die waiting.”
“I’m sorry. I hope you or Officer Bosch can tell her that it might not be officially closed, but that you consider the case solved.”
Ballard was silent as she remembered that it was Hatteras who had been dealing directly with the Ford family. She looked at a photo pinned to the workstation’s privacy wall. It was Colleen and her two teenage daughters sitting at a table behind a birthday cake with lit candles. Ballard knew those girls had just gotten or were about to get news that would permanently alter their lives.
“All right, well, I’m in the middle of something here, Carol,” she said. “Thanks for fighting the good fight on this.”
“Anytime,” Plovc said. “I’m here when you need me.”
They disconnected. Ballard reached over and unpinned the photo of Colleen and her daughters. She got up and went to her workstation, pinned the snapshot to her own privacy wall, and stared at it for a long moment.
She knew she needed to call Maddie Bosch and tell her the bad news about the Thawyer case, but that could wait. She opened the email Hatteras had sent her with the details from Andrew Bennett’s DMV record. She typed his Laguna Hills address into her phone’s GPS and saw that the estimated drive time was ninety-three minutes.If she waited until rush hour, that number would balloon and possibly even double.
She wanted to get on the road but had to wait. She wondered if Goring and Dubose had been held up at the crime scene by Captain Gandle. Though she had put Persson on Hatteras’s phone records only an hour before, she called him.
“Anders, you got anything yet?”
“I just got the call records, yes.”
“Good, give me the last calls. Give me the time and length.”
“The last two were to her daughters. Do you want them?”
“How do you know they were calls to the daughters?”
“They are on her family plan.”
