“Sit on the couch,” Ballard said.
Denning did as he was told. Ballard took the chair, and Bosch pulled the desk seat out and turned it so he would be facing Denning but also blocking his way to the door.
“I can give you six thousand — that’s all I have saved,” Denning said.
“And what would you want from us in return?” Ballard asked.
“I don’t know,” Denning said. “Why am I here? You said it would be a police matter if we didn’t talk. I don’t know what this is about but I don’t want to involve the police.”
Ballard waited to see if he would further incriminate himself. But he stopped talking.
“We don’t want money,” Ballard said. “We want information.”
“What information?”
“Do you know what happened at Hannah Stovall’s house two nights ago?”
“Yeah, I saw it online in Mexico. The two guys that broke in, she shot ’em.”
Ballard nodded as if confirming the fact. It was easy to understand how Denning had arrived at the wrong conclusion. In the news that came out after the Monday-night incident, the LAPD did not name the woman who had killed the Midnight Men, citing a policy of not identifying victims or intended victims of sexual assault. It was clear that had Ballard not prevailed in those moments in the hallway, she would have become the latest victim of the Midnight Men. The department had withheld her identity to avoid the entanglements and questions that would arise should her name and former affiliation be known.
Ballard was not interested in disabusing Denning of his belief. She wanted him thinking that any connection to him might have died with the Midnight Men.
“We know you gave them the layout of the house and the combination to plug into a garage opener,” Ballard said.
“You can’t prove that,” Denning said.
“We don’t have to,” Ballard said. “We aren’t the police. But we know that’s what happened and we’re willing to keep what we know to ourselves in exchange for the information we need.”
“What information?” Denning said. “And if you’re not the cops, why do you want this?”
“We want to know how you contacted the Midnight Men,” Ballard said. “Because there are others like you out there and we want to contact them.”
“Look, that’s not what they even called themselves,” Denning said. “The media did that. The whole thing blew up in the news last week and I wanted to stop them but it was too late. They went silent. But that’s one thing I can prove. I tried to stop it. And if there are others, I don’t know them. Can I go now?”
He stood up.
“No,” Bosch said. “Sit back down.”
Denning stayed standing and looked at Bosch, likely taking the measure of a man who was twice his age. Still, something about Bosch’s piercing stare chilled him and he sat down.
“You need to back up,” Ballard said. “Before you tried to stop them, how did you contact them?”
Denning shook his head as though he wished he could redo the past.
“They were just two guys on the Internet,” he said. “We started talking and one thing led to another. Hannah, she really fucked me over … and I … never mind. Fuck it.”
“These two guys, where on the Internet did you meet them?” Ballard asked.
“I don’t know. I was floating around … there’s a bunch of sites. Forums. You’re anonymous, you know? So you can say what you feel. Just put it out there, and some people respond and tell you things. Tell you about other places to go. Give you passwords. It just sort of happens. There’s a lot if you’re looking for it. You know, a place where everybody’s been there like you. Gotten fucked over by a woman. You sort of go down the rabbit hole.”
“This rabbit hole … are you talking about Dark Web stuff?”
“Yes, definitely. Everybody, everything anonymous. These guys, the so-called Midnight Men, they had a site and I got this password. And then … that was it.”
“How did you access the Dark Web?”
“Easy. Got a VPN first, then went through Tor.”
Ballard knew Bosch was probably at sea when it came to the Dark Web, but through cases and FBI bulletins, she had rudimentary knowledge of how virtual private networks and Dark Web browsers like Tor worked.
“So, how did you specifically find the Midnight Men?”
“They posted on a forum that said, you know, they were in the L.A. area and were, uh, were willing to … do things … to even the score, I guess you’d call it.”