“Um, just home.”
“Where’s that?”
Vitello handed her a driver’s license. She put the light on it and read it as the man gave the matching address. He was Mitchell Carr, thirty-four years old and living on Commonwealth in Los Feliz. Ballard realized he could be her neighbor. She handed the license back to Vitello.
“You run him?” she asked.
“He’s clean except for motor vehicle violations,” Vitello said.
“I only had two beers,” Carr added helpfully.
Ballard looked at him. She noticed something clipped to his belt and put the light on it. It was a retractable tape measure. The adrenaline buzz started to ebb. This didn’t feel right.
“Where are you from?” she asked. “Originally.”
“New South Wales,” Carr said. “A long time ago.”
Vitello leaned toward her confidentially.
“Australia,” he whispered.
Ballard raised her hand and gestured him back without touching him.
“What do you do for a living, sir?” she asked.
“Interior design work,” Carr said.
“You’re a designer?”
“Well, no, I work for an interior designer.”
“Doing what?”
“Delivering and installing furniture, hanging pictures, taking measurements, that sort of thing.”
Ballard looked at Smallwood, who had joined them between the cars. She handed him back his flashlight and turned back to Carr.
“What’s with the box cutter and the tape in your car?” she asked.
“I was taping out furniture dimensions in a house,” Carr said. “So the owner could see where everything was going to go. How it would fit.”
“This was up on Mulholland?”
“Actually, it was on a street up there called Outpost. Right by Mulholland.”
“Do you carry a hand vacuum on your job?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like a battery-operated vacuum — a Dustbuster type of thing.”
“Oh. No, not really. I supervise furniture installations and those guys usually do the cleanup after.”
“Do you mind if we look in your trunk, Mr. Carr?”
“Go ahead. What do you think I did?”
Ballard ignored the question and nodded to Smallwood. He went to the open driver’s door, took a few seconds to locate the trunk release, and finally popped it open. Ballard stepped over to look, Vitello following.
“Stay with him,” Ballard instructed.
“Right,” Vitello said.
Ballard checked the trunk. There were more open boxes containing equipment for Carr’s stated profession — rolls of tape, more box cutters, small cans of paint and industrial cleaners. No hand vacuum, coveralls, ski masks, or premade eye masks.
“Thank you, Mr. Carr,” she said.
Ballard turned to Smallwood and Vitello.
“And thank you two for wasting my time.”
She pushed past them and started back toward her car, bringing the rover up to her mouth and radioing the com center that she was clearing the scene. Smallwood followed her.
“Mallard,” he said. “Are you sure?”
Returning to her car, Ballard said nothing. As she opened the door, she stared back at Smallwood, who was still waiting for a response.
“Did you check the height on his DL?” she asked.
“Uh, no,” Smallwood said.
“Five eleven. We’re looking for guys about five six, five eight max.”
She got in the car, checked her side mirror, and then pulled out, leaving Smallwood standing there.
Since she was already out and about, she decided to follow through with her plan to drive up into the Dell to check things out in the dark hours. She slowly cruised down the street, passing Cindy Carpenter’s house. The living room lights were on behind drawn curtains. Ballard also saw down the side of the house a light in what would be the guest bedroom. She thought Cindy had probably moved to that room to sleep, leaving behind the room where she had been attacked. She wondered if Cindy would sleep with the lights on from now on.
Deciding to walk up and down the street, she drove down to the cul-de-sac and pulled to the curb. The chill of the night might reinvigorate her and she would see all the shadows and dark places.
The first thing she noted as she walked was that, while the street seemed quiet, the background sound from the nearby 101 freeway was noticeable. Earlier she had been on Harry Bosch’s back deck that overlooked the same freeway from the other side, but the traffic noise had not been as intrusive as it was up here. She also imagined that the neighborhood would hear the faint sounds of the Hollywood Bowl, which was positioned directly across the freeway. That was probably a good sound to hear, and would have been missed for almost a year now with the pandemic closure.