“Like I said. As soon as we get the other, I’ll call you for pickup.”
Bosch paused as he came to realize what was going on.
“I’m questioning him now,” Ballard said. “Trying to. If he doesn’t want to talk, we can do it your way.”
“I’m on my way.”
“That’s fine. We can do it that way, too.”
“I know you’re playing to him. Do you want me to call in the troops?”
“No, not yet. Everything’s good.”
“Well, I’m on my way. For real.”
Ballard disconnected and put the phone down on the desk. She picked up the intruder’s phone and found it passcode protected. But it had been set to allow previews of texts, and there was a partial message on the screen.
talked to the guy; safe room added after he
The message was cut off there.
“You got a message here, Bri,” she said.
“You need a warrant to look in my phone,” Brian said.
Ballard fake-laughed.
“You are correct … if I were the police. Anyway, the message is from your partner. It says he checked with the guy, and the safe room in the closet was added after. After what? After Hannah kicked him to the curb? Told him to get the fuck out of her life?”
“Who the fuck are you people?” Brian said.
The tenor of his voice had changed. It had lost the tone of confidence and superiority. Ballard looked down at him.
“You’re going to find out very soon,” Ballard said. “And it will go a lot easier on you if you answer my questions. Who told you about Hannah Stovall?”
“Look, just take me to the police, okay?” he said. “Turn me in.”
“I don’t think that’s — ”
There was a sudden crashing sound from the front of the house.
Ballard startled, then moved back into the hallway, raising her gun. Looking down the hall, she saw the front door of the house standing wide open, the jamb splintered where the lock had been. But there was no sign of anyone in her view. It was in that moment that she realized the man on the floor had given his partner a code. Copacetic— she had thought it an odd word when he said it, but it had not clicked in her brain that it was a code.
“Back here!” Brian yelled. “Back here!”
Ballard glanced behind her into the office and saw that the redhead was moving his wrists up and down, counter to each other, and trying to stretch the tape she had bound him with.
“Don’t fucking move!” she yelled.
He ignored her and kept churning his wrists like two pistons in an engine.
“Freeze!”
She raised her gun and pointed it at him. Face on the floor, he looked up at her and just smiled.
In her peripheral vision she saw movement to her left. She turned to see another man in blue coveralls and ski mask coming through the doorway from the kitchen into the hall. He closed on her without hesitation. She swung her aim to the left but he was on her too quickly, dropping his shoulder into her just as she fired the gun.
The report was muffled between their bodies as they crashed to the hallway floor. The masked man rolled off her, crossing his arms in front of his chest and groaning. Ballard saw a burn mark and entrance wound from the bullet she had fired into his chest.
“Stewart!”
The shout came from the office. Ballard felt the floor against her back shake as the red-haired man came running into the hallway. Ballard saw that he had grabbed the knife off the desk and held it in a hand still cuffed in duct tape. He saw his partner writhing on the floor and then turned his hateful stare at Ballard.
“You — ”
Ballard fired one shot from the floor. It hit him under the jaw, its trajectory going up into the brain. He dropped like a puppet, dead before he even hit the floor.
44
The interrogation room was crowded. There was a lot of coffee breath and at least one of the men in front of Ballard was a smoker. It was one of the few times in the last year that she was only too happy to wear a face mask. She sat at a small steel table with her back to the wall. Next to her was Linda Boswell, her attorney from the Police Protective League. The three men in front of her sat with their backs to the door. It was as if Ballard had to somehow get past them to get out. And sitting shoulder to shoulder they took up the space from one side wall to the other. There was no getting around them. She had to go straight through.
Two of the men were from the Force Investigation Division. Captain Sanderson, head of the unit, was sitting front and center, and to his left was David Dupree. Dupree was thin, and Ballard pegged him as the smoker. She expected that if he were not wearing a mask, she would see a mouthful of yellow teeth.