“First of all, I told you, I’m not saying it’s — ”
“A woman, yeah, I know. Let’s just say I guessed. Are you going to help or hinder this investigation?”
“If you would stop cutting me off and just listen, you would learn that LP-three is no longer active — hasn’t been active in years — and is not going to be interested in talking to reminders of her dirty history.”
“Okay, then. I’ll call the captain at home.”
Ballard turned toward the door.
“Ballard, come on,” Davenport said. “Why do you always have to be such a bi — ”
Ballard turned back to him.
“What?” she said. “Such a bitch? If you call wanting to solve a homicide being a bitch, then fine, I’m a bitch. But there are still people in this department who want to get off their asses and knock on doors. I’m one of them.”
Davenport’s temples grew pink with either rage or embarrassment. As a Sergeant II he was one rank above her Detective II, but though he was in street clothes, he was not a detective, and that difference knocked down his rank advantage. Ballard could say what she wanted to say to him without consequence.
“Okay, look,” Davenport said. “It’s going to take me a while to reach her and talk her into it. I’ll do that and let you know.”
“I want to meet tonight,” Ballard said. “This is a homicide. And by the way, you just revealed again that she’s a woman.”
“It was pretty much out of the bag, wouldn’t you say, Ballard?”
“I have to run over to Hollywood Pres for a few minutes and then I expect to hear from you that we have a meet set up.”
“Fine, you do that.”
“I’ll call you when I’m clear.”
Ballard checked out a rover and drove her city car over to the hospital, where she badged her way to the front of the line at the ER. She was checked out and cleared by a doctor and then, back in the car, called Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds at home and gave him the news.
“That’s good, Ballard,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I told you I was,” Ballard said.
“Yeah, well, we had to make it official,” he said. “Those paramedics are a bunch of yahoos. If my mother was the one thrown down the stairs, I’d want a doctor looking at her, you know what I mean?”
Ballard didn’t know which part of that to object to or whether it was even worth it. But the part about her being thrown down the stairs could have later consequences in terms of how Robinson-Reynolds viewed her and her capabilities.
“I don’t know what you were told, L-T, but I wasn’t thrown down the stairs,” she said. “I was going up the stairs when the so-called victim came running at me. I grabbed him and we both went down.”
“Semantics, Ballard,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “So, you’re ready to go back to work?”
“I’ve been working. I never stopped.”
“Okay, okay, my bad. So, why don’t you just tell me what you’ve been doing, since you never stopped working. Where are we on the cases?”
Ballard took a moment to think.
“On the Raffa case — the homicide — I’m setting up a meeting with a gang snitch that I hope gives us a line on a money man with a motive to kill Raffa.”
“What’s the motive? He owed him money? That’s never a good motive. Why kill the guy who owes you money? Then he can’t pay you.”
“That’s not the motive. Raffa took money — twenty-five thousand — from this money man back in the day to buy his way out of Las Palmas. That got him a silent partner. With Raffa now dead, the silent partner gets the business, the insurance policy, if there is one, and, most important, the land the repair shop sits on. That’s where the money and the motive is.”
“Got it, Ballard. That’s good. Real good. But you know this is probably all going to West Bureau when they come up for air.”
“I know, Lieutenant, but do you want me to just babysit it or hand them a case to be made? I mean, this reflects on you, doesn’t it?”
Robinson-Reynolds was silent but it didn’t take him long to connect those dots.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t want you sitting on it. I want it worked until we have to hand it off. Did they do an autopsy?”
“Not yet,” Ballard said. “Right now I’m lead investigator, so they’ll call when they’re ready to go. Probably tomorrow sometime.”