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“Think so,” Ballard said. “Might be another case for you. Did you read that grant app?”
“Read it and sent it back to you. Good to go.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll send it out in a few.”
Ballard headed down the aisle that ran along the endcaps, looking for the 2005 row. She found it and turned the wheel to move the shelves and open the row. She ticked a fingernail along the spines of the murder books until she found case 05-0243 and slid it out. The Laura Wilson case was contained in one overstuffed binder, which Ballard knew she would immediately reinstall in two binders to make flipping through the documents easier. She double-checked that there was not a second binder misplaced nearby during the shelving and saw that none of the other binders on the shelf carried the same case number.
She stepped out of the row and cranked it closed again, thinking all the while about how Bosch called the archives the “library of lost souls.” If that was true, she had one of those lost souls in her hand.
Back at her workstation, Ballard emailed the grant app first, then opened the thick binder she had brought from the archives. Because the origin of the DNA in the case was so unusual, shewent straight to the forensics section to see how it came to be that DNA was extracted from urine.
A summary statement from the lead investigator told the story. The victim was murdered in her home, where she lived alone. The crime scene investigators noticed that the toilet seat in the bathroom off the bedroom was up, indicating that a man had used it. While checking the toilet seat and flush handle for fingerprints, a criminalist noticed urine droplets on the rim of the bowl. These drops were reddish brown in color, indicating the possibility of blood cells in the urine. The droplets were collected on swabs, and DNA extraction was conducted the same day because of the fear of possible DNA decay. A partial profile was established and then entered into the CODIS database, drawing no matches.
The summary went on to state that further analysis and medical consultation by investigators determined that the urine had come from someone who had kidney or bladder disease, causing hematuria, the medical term for blood in the urine.
Ballard was excited by what she had read and eager to see whether the investigators used the confirmation of kidney disease as an angle of investigation. Had they looked for a suspect among men being treated for kidney disease? She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out two empty binders. She removed all the documents and plastic sleeves from the original murder book, split the stack, and slipped each half onto the rings of a new binder. She then got up and went to the kitchen to get coffee before she settled in to read the case’s investigative chronology.
Laura Wilson was a young African American woman trying to make it as an actress and living alone in an apartment paidfor by her parents back in Chicago. She had moved out to L.A. two years before her death and was in the midst of a promise to herself and her supporters to make it and become self-supporting within five years or to turn around and go home. She was taking acting lessons and routinely auditioning for small parts in films and television shows. She had also joined an acting troupe that worked out of a twenty-seat theater in Burbank. Her apartment was on Tamarind Avenue near the Scientology Celebrity Center on Franklin. Wilson had joined the organization and was taking classes, also paid for by her parents, in hopes that she would make connections that would help her in the entertainment business.
She had been found murdered on Saturday morning, November 5, 2005, by a friend she was supposed to go with to a Scientology seminar. The friend found the door to her apartment ajar, entered, and found the victim dead in her bed. Cause of death was determined to be manual strangulation—a silk scarf was knotted around her neck. The body was mutilated postmortem.
“What is that?”
Ballard had been so immersed in her reading that she had not noticed that Rawls had come around the pod and was looking over her shoulder.
“The DNA we got on the Pearlman case was linked to this one from ’05,” she said.
“Wow, interesting,” Rawls said.
Ballard closed the binder and swiveled her chair so she could look up at him.
“What’s up, Lou?” she asked.
“I’m taking off,” Rawls said. “I gotta put out a fire at my storein Encino. Angry customer says we lost a package containing a priceless antiquity.”
“That’s gotta hurt. You coming back later this week?”
“Not sure. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”
Rawls walked off and Ballard immediately turned back to the binder, her mind already deeply embedded in the murder of Laura Wilson.
10
BOSCH RECOGNIZED SHEILA WALSH’S house from the last time he had knocked on the door years before. She answered quickly but clearly didn’t remember him. He was older and grayer and maybe his eyes weren’t as sharp as that last time, but after a long moment, she was able to place him, if not remember his name. She smiled.
“Detective,” she said. “This is a surprise.”
“Mrs. Walsh,” Bosch said. “I was hoping you’d remember me.”
“Don’t be silly, of course I do. And it’s Sheila. Has there been a break in the case?”
“Can I come in so we can talk?”
“Yes, yes. Come in, please.”
Walsh stepped back and let Bosch enter. She looked the same as Bosch remembered her. Now pushing sixty, she had more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but she was still an attractive woman who looked like she ate about one meal a week. Her thin body, narrow shoulders, and big hair had not changed at all, confirming Bosch’s suspicions back in the day that it was a wig.
