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“I’ve got another call I have to take,” she said. “Send me the link when you get a chance.”
“Will do,” Maddie said. “And Renée—thanks.”
Ballard didn’t respond before she switched over to the other call.
“Captain?”
“Ballard, have you seen theTimes?”
His voice was almost shrill.
“Uh, no, Captain, I’m in Hawaii and not really looking at any news.”
“Hawaii? What are you doing in Hawaii when all hell is breaking loose here?”
“I told you I was taking the week. I gave everyone on the unit the week as well. What hell is breaking loose?”
“Somebody leaked the Black Dahlia case to theTimes.It’s all over the front page, the website’s home page, everywhere. Now we’ve got TV people in the courtyard waiting for the chief to make a statement.”
“What does theTimessay?”
“It says we solved Black Dahlia but the DA won’t stamp the case closed. It actually says Maddie solved it, and that puts us in a big fucking bind. Did you fire her yet?”
“Uh, no. I was going to wait until I got back next week.”
“Thank Christ.”
Ballard could hear the relief in his voice.
“So you don’t want me to drop her now?”
“Hell no. Just keep her on. We’ll look like shit if we fire the officer who broke the case.”
You meanyouwill look like shit,Ballard thought.
“Fine with me,” Ballard said. “We need the second badge and she obviously does good work.”
“Now, Ballard, I’m going to ask you something,” Gandle said. “And don’t fucking lie because the tenth floor is going to ask me the same thing.”
“Okay, ask.”
“Did you give this story to them? It cites unnamed sources and you better not be one of them.”
“Is it written by Scott Anderson?”
“It sure is.”
“Well, he called me about it and all I said was ‘No comment.’ I even turned on my phone recorder because I knew somebody was feeding him stuff on the case and I didn’t want to be blamed. You want me to send the recording to you?”
“Yes, I do. It might be helpful when the chief comes to me and says, ‘What the fuck?’”
“The story—it makes us look bad?”
“No, it makes us look good and that can be bad. You understand? O’Fallon’s going to shit a brick and he’ll know it came from us.”
“Tell you what, Cap. If it makes us look good and him look bad, then my guess is that the leak’s in the DA’s office. It went up the chain over there and they all wanted to close the case, but O’Fallon rejected it. Half the people in that office are working on a recall.”
“I don’t know. You’re probably right.”
