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“Can I see the property list?”
“Sure.”
Ballard easily found it in the murder book, unsnapped the rings, and handed the sheet over the privacy wall to Hatteras.
“What are you looking for?” Ballard asked.
Hatteras didn’t answer until she had scanned the list of property and evidence stored back in 2005.
“I just wanted to see what was there,” Hatteras said. “They kept her nightgown and the bedclothes.”
“Right,” Ballard said. “It would have been evidence presented in court if a case had ever been made.”
“Sometimes I can get a communication from this sort of evidence.”
“What do you mean by ‘a communication’?”
“I don’t know, like a feeling. A message.”
“Colleen, I don’t think we’re going to go down that path. I have to safeguard our investigations so that they can’t be successfully challenged in court. You understand? I think if we go the psychic route—and please don’t take this personally—we will run into credibility issues.”
“I know. I understand. It’s just a thought, something to consider if we hit a wall with the investigation.”
“Okay, I’ll keep it in mind. But you said sometimes you get a communication from evidence like this. When have you done that before?”
“Well, I haven’t officially done it before. But sometimes families have called me because they’ve heard about my gift. Itwas how I got into the whole genealogy field. From families wanting answers.”
Ballard just nodded. She wished Hatteras had mentioned this during the interview process.
“I’m going to get back on this now, Colleen,” she said.
“Sure,” Hatteras said. “Me, too.”
Hatteras dropped out of sight behind the wall and Ballard tried to put aside the growing realization that she had chosen wrong in bringing her onto the team. She went back to reviewing the crime scene photographs. Laura Wilson’s bedroom walk-in closet had a built-in bureau next to the shoe racks. The photographer had opened each of the six drawers and photographed the contents without disturbing them. The first four drawers from the bottom were crammed with folded clothing, underwear, and socks. The two smaller side-by-side drawers that occupied the top tier of the bureau were filled mostly with jewelry, hair bands, and other accoutrements. One of these drawers also seemed to be the junk drawer. There were receipts, matchbooks, postcards, loose change, earbuds, phone chargers, Halloween candy, and other things.
But one thing in this drawer caught Ballard’s eye in a big way. It was a round white pin-on button with orange letters that said “JAKE!” Attached to its bottom edge were two short lengths of red-white-and-blue-striped ribbon.
This gave Ballard pause and she moved quickly to the computer to open Google and run the name Jake Pearlman. While the councilman was not an internationally known politician, he did rate a Wikipedia page that listed his pathway to power in Los Angeles. The page documented his first bid for election to the city council in 2005. He had run for the Hollywood seat leftvacant when a councilman resigned following a federal indictment for campaign contribution violations. Jake Pearlman lost the election but remained active in politics, and more than a decade later, he won that same Hollywood seat on the council.
Ballard had not known about Pearlman’s early run for elected office but recognized the campaign button because the councilman had used its simple style in his more recent elections.
Ballard leaned back in her chair and thought about this. The 2005 election came on November 8, just three days after Laura Wilson was murdered. Somewhere in that campaign season she had picked up or been given a button that ended up in her junk drawer. What, if anything, did this mean? Was it coincidence that she ended up with a button supporting a candidate whose sister had been murdered eleven years earlier by the man who would also kill Wilson?
She had to consider that this was no coincidence and that the connection meant something to the case. She needed to pursue this and get more information.
And she had to talk to Harry Bosch.
14
BOSCH WAS NOT a golfer. It was a sport that required more money than he could afford while growing up, and as an adult, he had always been too busy with his job to engage in five-hour outings on a golf course. Added to that, it still took more money than he could spare, and he had issues with calling any endeavor that involved drinking and smoking a sport. All that aside, he knew enough about it to know that it was likely that the greenskeepers worked early, doing much of their job on the course before the golfers came with their electric carts, clubs, and cigars.
He got to the Sand Canyon Country Club shortly before eleven and quickly found the hidden compound where the machinery involved in grooming the course was kept and the greenskeepers had a long break table under the spreading branches of an old sand pine. Bosch was not dressed for golf, so the workers knew right away that he had not wandered into their presence looking for a lost ball. He picked out Boatman’s face from the many turned toward him and waved a hello.
“Jonathan, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” he said.
“Uh, talk to me about what?” Boatman said. “Who are you?”
“Harry Bosch. I talked to your mother yesterday and I thought she was going to tell you I was planning to come by today.”
