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“Did you arrest him?” he asked immediately.
“No, and we’re not there yet,” Ballard said. “We are proceeding carefully.”
“Then, what do you need from me?” Hastings asked.
“I’m reviewing interview transcripts from the original investigation. There is no interview with you or Ted Rawls. I don’t understand that. You were Jake’s friends and I assume you both knew Sarah. Do you remember this? Why didn’t they interview you?”
“I was out of town with my parents when the murder happened,” Hastings said. “They talked to my parents and confirmed it, so they never talked to me. And Ted wasn’t around then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he was around, but he wasn’t as tight as Jake, Kramer, and I were. He was sort of the new guy. It was our senior year and we were all about to graduate. We had gotten our college acceptance letters and the three of us got into UCLA. Then that summer, we heard Ted got in, too, so we kind of started including him in stuff. We took him under our wing because we’d be going to college together. Only that didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I changed my mind, joined the army, and never went to UCLA. And neither did Ted. Something happened and he ended up going to Santa Monica Community College, and then he joined the cops out there.”
“Could it have been a lie about getting into UCLA? He only said he got in so he could get close to you guys?”
“I don’t know, maybe. You mean like he glommed on to us so he’d hear stuff about Sarah and the investigation? That’s sick.”
“It’s possible. But at the time of the murder, he wasn’t close enough to Jake that the detectives would want to talk to him?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Did he know Sarah?”
“He could have. She went to an all-girls school, so she’d come to our dances and events to meet boys. Jake would bring her. So Ted could have known her, or at least known who she was, from that.”
Ballard noticed that Masser was now standing next to her. She saw that he had red-lined her probable cause statement. She held a finger up, indicating she was almost finished with her call.
“I have one more question,” Ballard said. “In ’05, Rawls was a cop in Santa Monica. He wasn’t part of the Pearlman campaign, was he?”
There was another silence before Hastings answered.
“You’re thinking about the campaign button,” Hastings said. “The answer is yes. He was a volunteer. Kramer recruited him. He’d work his shift for Santa Monica and then come meet us at Greenblatt’s, where we would gather all the volunteers before going out to canvass. He did that several times. Knocked on doors.”
“So he could conceivably have knocked on Laura Wilson’s door and given her the button,” Ballard said.
It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” Hastings said.
“Thanks for your time,” Ballard said. “I’ll be in touch.”
She disconnected and held out her hand to Masser for the document.
“You don’t have it, Renée,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at the printout. He had drawn a red box around the statement of facts in support of the search.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
“It’s weak,” Masser said. “The DNA collected in the Wilson case indicated kidney disease. Rawls got a kidney from Hastings because he had kidney disease, but there is no linkage between Rawls and Wilson. Her having a campaign button from Pearlman is nothing. It could be happenstance. There were probably thousands of those buttons. And I’m afraid that’s how Canterbury or any other judge will look at this. You’re asking for a swab of his DNA, to search his home, his car, even his desk here. You want the moon, Renée. And I’m sorry, but if I was still a D.D.A., I wouldn’t let you go with this to a judge.”
“Well, that’s what you’re here for.”
“Let’s just look at the DNA. Have you thought about surreptitious collection?”
