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“Hastings, why don’t you sit down and cool off,” Bosch said.
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, old man,” Hastings shot back.
“Look, we’re sorry if you got your feathers ruffled because we were just doing our jobs,” Bosch said. “Sure, we were looking at you, and for good reasons that we can tell you about if you’re interested in listening. So again, why don’t you sit down and help us catch a killer. Wouldn’t your best friend want that?”
Hastings held up his hand to stop all discussion. He briefly closed his eyes and went through some sort of internal calming exercise. He then opened his eyes and sat down on a chair with puffy orange cushions.
“What do you want?” he said.
Bosch looked at Ballard and nodded. She was lead.
“You had a kidney removed in 2008,” she said. “Why?”
Hastings shook his head like he couldn’t comprehend what the question had to do with the subject at hand.
“First of all, how do you know that?” he asked.
“We’re detectives, Mr. Hastings,” Ballard said. “We find things out. You lost a kidney. Why?”
“Okay, look, I didn’tlosea kidney,” Hastings said. “I gave it away.”
Ballard nodded.
“Sorry, poor choice of words,” she said. “Yougavesomeone a kidney. That was a very unselfish thing to do. It must have been someone very close to you. A family member?”
“I’m surprised you don’t already know,” Hastings said. “I gave it to Ted Rawls.”
In the movies, the detectives always look at each other to underscore for the viewer the significance of a witness’s revelation. Ballard and Bosch couldn’t help exchanging a look, and this underscored the significance for Hastings.
“What?” he said. “Are you saying Ted’s the one? No way.”
“We’re not saying that,” Ballard said. “I just didn’t know that Ted had that kind of a health situation. If I had, I would have questioned why the councilman wanted him on our team.”
“The guy wanted to be a cop his whole life,” Hastings said. “LAPD wouldn’t take him but Santa Monica did. Then he gets sick and is forced to quit his chosen profession. So yeah, I gave him a kidney. I had an extra one.”
“What sort of issue did he have with his kidneys?” Ballard asked.
“Cancer,” Hastings said. “Took both kidneys, his spleen. He almost died. But he fought his way back, started a small business, and built it up. He’s amazing. But he never gave up on the dream of being a detective. So when he saw the press conference on TV where Jake announced the reboot of the cold case team, he came to me and said, ‘Put me on.’ I talked to Jake and we agreed. Jake went to you with it.”
“And he conveniently left out his medical history,” Ballard said. “You must have known that the LAPD would not have accepted the liability of that.”
“Jake didn’t want to give you any reason to push back on him,” Hastings said. “So Ted got added to the team. And now you’re saying he had something to do with Sarah and the Wilson girl? That is ridiculous.”
“Again, we’re not saying that,” Ballard said.
“Then what are you saying?” Hastings said. “Why all these questions about Ted?”
Ballard paused for a moment and looked back at Bosch. He knew she was trying to decide whether to trust Hastings not to pass on what she told him to his friends Jake Pearlman and Ted Rawls. Bosch nodded, giving her the go-ahead from his view of things.
“I told you that DNA from the Laura Wilson case matched her killer to the Sarah Pearlman case,” Ballard said.
“Yes, you told me,” Hastings said. “And Wilson had a ‘JAKE!’ button. It’s thin, Detective Ballard.”
“The DNA sample from the Wilson case came from blood found in urine on the toilet seat in her apartment,” Ballard said. “The blood also told us something else. That the killer had kidney disease.”
As staunch a defender of Rawls as he was, even Hastings blinked at the revelation. He was quiet for a few moments and then spoke in a reserved voice.
“So when you found out I was missing a kidney …,” he said, his voice trailing off.
