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“I’ve never heard of him and I think I would have with a name like that. He’s not LAPD, right?”
“No, he’s retired Santa Monica, but that was fifteen years ago, so he doesn’t bring a lot to the table. A lot of hand-holding required, and the thing of it is, he’s a direct pipeline to Pearlman and Hastings.”
“Hastings?”
“Nelson Hastings, Pearlman’s chief of staff. The three of them are like best buds or something. Rawls quit Santa Monica PD after ten years to go into business. So to him this is just a side gig.”
“What’s the business? Is he a PI?”
“No, it’s a business business. He owns a bunch of those mail-drop places. Like UPS, FedEx, box-and-packaging stores.Apparently he’s got them all over the city and does pretty well. He drives a fancy car and has a house in Santa Monica in the college streets. And my guess is he’s one of Pearlman’s main campaign supporters.”
Bosch nodded. He got the picture. A quid pro quo. Ballard leaned back and sat down after realizing that their whispering had been noticed by Laffont and Aghzafi. She could still see Bosch’s eyes over the partition. She continued in a regular tone.
“You’ll meet Paul and Colleen tomorrow,” she said. “They’re solid. Masser is a retired deputy D.A. who worked in Major Crimes, so he’s helpful on the search warrants and legal questions and strategies. It’s good to have him in-house instead of needing to call the D.A.’s Office every time we have a question.”
“I think I remember him,” Bosch said. “And Hatteras?”
“No law enforcement experience. She’s our in-house genealogist and what they call a ‘citizen sleuth.’”
“An amateur. For real?”
“For real. She’s a great internet researcher, and that’s where it’s at with the genetic stuff. IGG—you know what that is, don’t you?”
“Uh …”
“Investigative genetic genealogy. You upload your suspect’s DNA to GEDmatch, which accesses a number of databases, and you sit back and wait for a hit. You must know about this. It was trending big time in cold case investigations until the privacy police arrived, and now it’s a limited resource but still worth pursuing.”
“How they caught the Golden State Killer, right?”
“Exactly. You put in the DNA, and if you’re lucky, you get connections to relatives. A fourth cousin here, a brother nobodyknew about there. Then it becomes social engineering. Making contact online, building a family tree with the hope that one branch leads to your guy.”
“And you have a private citizen doing this.”
“She’s an expert, Harry. Just give her a chance. I like her and I think she’s going to work out for us.”
She could see full skepticism in Bosch’s eyes as he looked away from her.
“What?”
“Is this all going to end up in a podcast? Or are we going to make cases?”
Ballard shook her head. She knew he would act this way.
“You’ll see, Harry,” Ballard said. “You don’t have to work with her but I’m betting you will want to eventually. That’s how sure I am. Okay?”
“Okay,” Bosch said. “I’m not trying to cause trouble. I’m just happy to be here. You’re the boss and I never question the boss.”
“Yeah, right. That’ll be the day.”
Bosch looked around the room and the pod.
“So, I’m the last guy in,” he said.
“But the first I wanted,” Ballard said. “I just needed to have everything in place before I visited you.”
“And you had to make sure I was cleared.”
“Well, that, too.”
