“Is that permanent reinstatement or temporary.”
“We’ll see, Ballard. It won’t be my call.”
“Thanks, L-T.”
She said it with cheery sarcasm. She disconnected and then called Bettany back.
“It’s a go,” she said. “Set it up for tonight and then call me.”
“Roger that,” Bettany said.
38
The reinterview of Dennis Hoyle took place at 8 p.m. at the Van Nuys Division detective bureau. Bettany, Kirkwood, and Donovan were on hand and prepped Ballard on key points that she needed to get on the record. Hoyle was accompanied by his attorney, Daniel Daly, who vetted the immunity deal his client signed. Hoyle was getting off easy, agreeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud in exchange for his testimony against Abbott and possibly others. He would take his chances in front of a judge as far as sentencing went. The deal was predicated on his honesty and his claim that he had never engaged in the planning of or had foreknowledge of the murders of people who had accepted loans from the consortium. It was the sweetheart of all sweetheart deals on paper, but Donovan and his superiors had made the call. The unspoken plan most likely included an effort to break the agreement by catching him in a lie. And barring that, the sentencing judge could always be informed of the extent of the crimes Hoyle had engaged in with his cohorts and max out the sentence for the conspiracy plea.
Ballard told Bettany and the others to stay outside the interrogation room and watch the interview on a screen. Since Hoyle claimed he would talk only to her, she didn’t want him to think she and Bettany were a team. She entered the small gray room and sat across from Hoyle and his attorney. She put her phone on her thigh, a concession to Donovan that would allow him to message her if he didn’t like what he saw on the screen.
“First off, I have to make the legal boundaries of this interview clear,” Ballard said. “You need to acknowledge that if you lie directly to me or lie in any way by omission, then the deal is off and you will be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit murder.”
Hoyle opened his mouth to answer but Daly reached his arm out like a father stopping a child from walking blindly into the street.
“He understands,” Daly said. “That’s in the deal.”
“I still want to hear it from him,” Ballard said.
“I understand,” Hoyle said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“I know it’s not in the deal but I also want something else,” Ballard said.
“What?” Daly said.
“I want him to give up any and all ownership rights in the property that was owned by Javier Raffa,” Ballard said.
“Forget it,” Daly said.
“Then you can forget this deal,” Ballard said. “I’m not going to let him walk away from this and then take that place away from the family of the man he and his asshole buddies had killed.”
Immediately her phone buzzed and Ballard looked down at the message from Donovan.
What the fuck are you doing?
She looked back up and directly at Hoyle, hoping her righteous glare would make him submit.
This time Hoyle put his arm out to stop his attorney.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll agree to that.”
“You don’t have to,” Daly said. “We already negotiated the deal, and that’s not — ”
“I said it’s okay,” Hoyle said. “I want to do it.”
Ballard nodded.
“The deputy district attorney will prepare an amendment to the deal,” she said.
She paused for a moment to see if Daly had more to say. He didn’t.
“Okay, let’s start,” Ballard said.
And so it went. Hoyle’s story did not change much from the first time he told it to Ballard. This time, though, she asked questions designed to elicit more about the origins of the factoring consortium and whether the plan from the start was to eventually murder those who borrowed its money. Ballard knew that eventually lawyers for Abbott and anybody else taken down in the investigation would study the transcript of the interview for any crack through which reasonable doubt might slip into the case.
The interview wrapped near midnight and then Hoyle was taken by Bettany and Kirkwood to be booked and released on the conspiracy charge. Meanwhile, Donovan filed formal charges against Abbott with a no-bail hold until his arraignment. Bail would assuredly be argued then.
Soon after concluding the interview and watching them take Hoyle away, Ballard got a text from Robinson-Reynolds. He didn’t waste words.