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“Then please do,” Hastings said. “We would love to have you, and I’m sure you would want to show your respect for the man who led the charge in reinstating the unit after many years.”
“I’ll check with my captain and let you know,” Ballard said.
Sensing that the meeting was over, Ballard stood up. Pearlman seemed to come out of a daze and stood up as well. It was then that Ballard saw tears on his face. While she had been parrying with Hastings and Ford, Pearlman had apparently been thinking about his lost sister and having to accept that it was someone from his life—a friend—who had killed her.
“Detective, thank you,” he said. “When I pushed for the reinstatement of the unit, it was because I didn’t want my sister’s case forgotten. To know that we have solved the case validates everything I said about the unit’s importance. That’s the message I will convey at my press conference. I can’t thank you enough, and I’ll be sure to say that as well. I hope you will join us.”
He put his hand out and Ballard shook it.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
As she walked the half block down Spring Street from City Hall to the PAB, Ballard reviewed the answers she had given during the intense meeting and believed she had acquitted herself well. She had no intention of asking permission to stand with Councilman Pearlman at a press conference—even if he was going to sing the praises of her and the unit. That wouldbe mixing politics and police work, and that was a recipe for eventual disaster. She would take a pass on that.
When she got to the PAB, she saw a handful of television crews setting up in front of a lectern with a large gold replica of the LAPD badge affixed to it. On the badge was the image of City Hall, the iconic building Ballard had just come from—Old Faithful, as it was called by the denizens of the Civic Center. When the chief took the lectern for the press conference, the twenty-seven-floor tower would be reflected behind him in the glass facade of the PAB. It would be a reminder that politics and police work could never really be separated.
Ballard badged her way into the building and took the elevator to the tenth floor, where a pre–press conference meeting was scheduled in the media relations office just down the hall from the OCP—the Office of the Chief of Police.
The department’s chief spokesperson was a civilian, a former reporter for Channel 5 News named Ramon Rivera. He welcomed Ballard into his office, and she was surprised to see the chief of police sitting there as well. They were going over the statement the chief would read at the press conference. A copy of the statement would be distributed to the reporters.
Ballard sat down and Rivera gave her a copy to read. The statement included the case details Ballard had given Rivera in an earlier phone call. It was a strict recitation of the facts of the case. That would be the easy part of the press conference. The difficult part would be anticipating what questions would be asked and deciding how to answer them.
A year earlier, the chief of police had urged Ballard to return to the department after she had resigned in frustration. It was his promise to give her the assignment of her choosing that hadresulted in her getting the job running the reconstituted Open-Unsolved Unit. He now asked her the questions he anticipated the gathered media would hurl at him when he was finished reading the statement.
“Why was Bosch following Rawls by himself?” he asked.
“Following him wasn’t the plan, actually,” Ballard said. “But he had no choice. Bosch saw Rawls’s car outside his place of business. He was keeping watch while I went to see a judge to get a search warrant signed. When Rawls took off before I got there, Bosch had no choice but to attempt a one-car follow. It’s unclear whether Rawls knew he had a tail from the start or spotted Bosch’s car while he was in transit.”
“And you recruited Bosch for the Open-Unsolved Unit?”
“I did. He’s the most experienced detective on the team.”
“Did you know about his issues when he was with the department?”
“Issues, sir?”
“He’d been involved in several previous shootings. He didn’t leave the department on good terms. Some might say he retired before the department retired him.”
“Some of that I knew, yes. But I wanted to put together the best team of volunteers I could find, and he was at the top of my list. We solved this case largely because of moves he made.”
“How would you feel if we had to remove him from the team?”
“I don’t understand. It was his work that led us to Rawls, and now you want to kick him to the curb?”
“I’m not saying that. At least not yet. But we will have a perception problem with the unit when it is revealed that one of your selections was a killer. I’m sure you will agree that it’s nota good look, Detective Ballard. And I’m wondering if we want to start over.”
“You mean clean house?”
“For lack of a better term.”
“First, I want to say that Rawls was not my selection. He was pushed on us by the councilman’s office. I didn’t want Rawls, but Councilman Pearlman’s chief of staff made me take him. I talked to Captain Gandle about it and we agreed to take him on to keep the support of the councilman. But I still don’t see why this should result in cleaning house. We have a good team. We have a former deputy D.A. who is our legal sounding board, an IGG expert, and other capable investigators, with Harry Bosch being the best of the bunch.”
“Well, let’s put that decision aside for now and go down and talk to the media. We’ll see how things go before making any decisions.”
Somehow Ballard felt that a decision had already been made. The chief stood up and Rivera did as well.
“Let me get the handouts from the printer,” he said.
After Rivera left the room, Ballard stood and faced the chief of police.
