“How come you haven’t asked me my name?” Ballard asked.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Abbott said. “I guess I just thought you would tell me at some point.”
“I’m Ballard. The one you sent Bonner to kill.”
For a moment everything paused and was silent as Abbott registered her words.
“Wait,” he then said. “What are you talking about? I didn’t send anybody anywhere.”
“Come on, Dr. Abbott, this whole thing here, the washcloth and the zip ties, you did that,” Ballard said. “Not a bad try for the time you had, but you’re not fooling any — ”
“Are you crazy? Bonner tied me up. If he tried to kill you, then he did that on his own. And he was going to frame me for it. We’re both victims here.”
Ballard could picture how Abbott did it. The gag first, leaving it loose enough for him to be able to clench his teeth. Ballard had noted how loose it was when Bosch moved in to cut it.
Binding the feet to the chair’s legs would come next. Then put a loose loop around one of the arms of the chair, then bind one wrist to the other side before putting his free hand through the loose loop and pulling it tight with his teeth. She glanced at Bosch to see if he was on the same wavelength and he gave her a slight nod. She looked back at Abbott.
“I could sit in that chair and tie myself up like you were in two minutes,” she said. “Your story is shit, Dr. Abbott.”
“You have this wrong. I am a victim here.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“My phone?”
“Yes, your cell phone. Where is it?”
Ballard could tell by his eyes and his reaction that Abbott realized he had missed something, that there was a flaw in his story. He had left something out of the plan.
“It’s over there on the desk,” he said.
Ballard glanced over and saw an iPhone on the desk.
“What about the burner?” she asked.
“What burner?” Abbott said. “There is no burner.”
Ballard looked at Bosch and nodded.
“Call it, Harry,” she said.
Bosch pulled out his cell and called the number that had sent the texts to Bonner’s burner.
“What’s he doing?” Abbott said. “Who’s he calling?”
There was a buzzing sound in the room.
“He’s calling you,” Ballard said.
She followed the sound to the desk. The buzzing kept coming in intervals. She started opening drawers, trying to track it. When she pulled the bottom desk drawer out, the buzzing became louder. There, next to a box of envelopes and a stack of Post-it pads, was a black cell phone matching the one Ballard had found on Bonner.
“You forgot about it, didn’t you?” she asked.
“That’s not mine,” Abbott said. “Bonner — he put it there!”
Ballard didn’t touch the phone because she assumed only Abbott’s prints would be found on it. And if there were no prints, then they would look for DNA. She closed the drawer. It would be a critical piece of evidence and she would alert Ross Bettany to it.
She came back around the desk and walked toward the couch.
“Stand up, Dr. Abbott,” she commanded.
“What for?” Abbott exclaimed. “What’s going on?”
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Javier Raffa,” Ballard said. “And that’s just a start.”
PART THREE
THE INSURRECTION
36
Ballard called for a car from the nearby North Hollywood Division to transport Abbott to the Van Nuys jail, where he was booked on suspicion of murder. After that, she dropped Bosch off at his house and drove to Hollywood Station, where she spent the next three hours working up the paperwork in support of the arrest and putting together the case package for both the District Attorney’s Office and Ross Bettany, who would presumably take it to a prosecutor in follow-up of the arrest.
By nine, she was printing it and laying the pages on the three rings of the murder book when Bettany showed up with his partner, Denise Kirkwood.
“This is your lucky day,” Ballard said.
“How so?” Bettany asked.
“I got you an insider willing to talk to save his own ass. And I booked your first suspect about four hours ago.”
“You did what?”
Ballard snapped together the rings in the binder, closed it, and held it up to him.
“It’s all here,” she said. “Read through and call me if you have any questions. I’ve been going all night, so I’m out of here. Good luck, but I don’t think you’ll need it. It’s all there.”