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There was the key and the magnetic box on the driver’s seat. She saw that the glove compartment was open. She leaned in, reached under the driver’s seat, and swept her hand back and forth on the carpet.
Her phone, gun, wallet, and badge were gone. She swept her hand farther under the seat and pulled out her handcuffs and a seven-shot Ruger boot gun that the thief had apparently missed.
She stood up and looked around the parking lot. No one was there. Just the row of cars and campers belonging to the surfers still out on the water.
“Fuck me,” she said.
2
WITH HER WALLETcontaining her ID card stolen, Ballard could not pass through the turnstile at the entrance to the LAPD’s Ahmanson Center, so she drove into the overflow lot behind the massive training center and called Colleen Hatteras on her new phone. Hatteras answered with an urgent tone.
“Renée, where are you? Wasn’t the unit meeting at nine?”
“I’m in the back lot. I want you to let me in the fire exit, Colleen.”
“Are you sure? If the captain—”
“I’m sure. Just open the door and I’ll deal with the captain. Is everyone still there?”
“Uh, yes. I think Anders went to the cafeteria but he didn’t say anything about leaving.”
“Okay, tell Tom or Paul to get him while you open the door for me. I’ll be there in two.”
“Well, what happened? You didn’t call and didn’t answer our calls. We were starting to get worried.”
Ballard got out of the Defender and headed to the back door of the complex. She was already exasperated with Colleen and the day hadn’t even started.
“Calm down, Colleen,” she said. “Everything’s fine. I lost myphone and wallet at the beach. I had to go home to get a credit card and then hit the Apple Store to get a new phone. So please just open the door. I’m almost there and I’m hanging up now.”
She disconnected before Colleen could respond, which Ballard knew she would. She walked up to the fire exit, pulling her jacket closed so maybe it would not be obvious that she had no badge clipped to her belt.
Colleen opened the door and an ear-piercing alarm sounded. Ballard quickly stepped in and pulled the door closed, and the sound cut off.
“How did you lose your phone and wallet? Were they stolen?”
“It’s a long story, Colleen. Is everyone here?”
“Tom went to get Anders.”
“Good. We’ll start as soon as they’re back.”
The fire exit was located behind the murder-book archive. Leading Colleen, Ballard walked the length of the back row of shelves and into the bullpen of the Open-Unsolved Unit. The center of this area was dominated by the “raft”—eight interconnected desks with privacy partitions between them. The side walls of the bullpen were lined with file cabinets and mounted whiteboards on which current investigations were tracked.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ballard announced as she reached her desk at the end of the raft. “As soon as Tom and Anders are here, we’ll start.”
Ballard sat down and logged into her city computer terminal. She went through the department’s password portal and pulled up the database containing crime reports from the entire county. She searched for reports on thefts from vehicles at county beaches and soon was looking at several occurrences. From this she was able to cull a list of thefts that had occurred at popular surfing beaches. From Trestles up to Dockweiler, Ballard had been surfing the Southern California coastline since she was sixteen years old. She knew every break and could see a pattern of BFMV—burglary from motorvehicle—reports occurring at places where she knew the parking facilities weren’t visible from the ocean.
This told her three things. First, this was likely the same thief or group of thieves. Second, they were familiar with surfing and probably were surfers themselves. And third, because the thefts were spread out up and down the coast and across multiple police jurisdictions, the pattern had not been noticed by law enforcement. The thefts were seen as individual crimes.
Ballard started reading the summaries of the reports to see if any witnesses had seen anything helpful, if any suspects’ fingerprints had been found, or if there was any follow-up to the initial reporting of the crimes. None of the thefts were large enough to warrant much interest from law enforcement. Wallets, phones, cash, and spare surfboards were the things most often stolen. Taken separately, Ballard knew, these cases likely died with the initial report. As protocol dictated, they would go to an auto-crimes desk somewhere, but without a description of a suspect, a fingerprint, or even a partial license plate of a getaway car, the reports would go into the great swirling maw of minor crimes that did not merit much attention from the criminal justice apparatus. It was the story of the modern age. Reports were taken largely for insurance purposes. As far as law enforcement went, it was a waste of paper.
Colleen stuck her head over the half wall separating Ballard’s desk from her own. From her angle, she could not see Ballard’s screen. “So, what are you working on?” she asked.
Ballard logged out of her search. “Just checking email,” she said. “Is everybody ready?”
“Anders is here,” Colleen said.
Ballard stood up to address the team.
