18

18

THE YOU-STORE-IT WAS on Lincoln a block from the eastbound entrance to the 10 freeway in Santa Monica. The office was long closed for the night by the time Ballard and Bosch arrived, but the facility offered those who rented storage space twenty-four-hour access. All that was needed to enter through its glass doors was the fob that came with every rental unit. But there was a pickup truck parked near the entrance and a man was standing at its open tailgate unloading five-gallon buckets of paint onto a dolly. It gave Bosch an idea.

"What tools do you have?" he asked.

"You mean here in the car?" Ballard asked.

"Yes, what tools?"

"Uh, none, really."

"You don't have a jack?"

"Yes, there's a jack. I thought you meant like a toolbox."

"Get me the crowbar from the jack and I'll need that hat and hoodie."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to follow that painter in, so let's hurry."

They both got out and went to the back of the Defender. The spare tire and tire-changing tools were underneath the flooring of the rear compartment. Ballard had to take out her crime scene kit and the plastic tub containing surfing equipment to access it. In the meantime, Bosch put the disguise box on the ground and started looking through its contents.

"I don't know what your plan is but there are going to be cameras in there," Ballard said.

"I know," Bosch said. "That's why I need your hat and hoodie."

She lifted the flooring and grabbed a rolled leather satchel containing tire-changing tools.

"Let me see it," he said.

Ballard slid the tire iron out of the satchel and handed it to him. It was eighteen inches long with a bend near one end. That end had a socket that would fit the lug nuts of the car's wheels, and the other end tapered to a flat edge that could be used as a wedge for popping off wheel covers.

"Perfect," Bosch said. "Give me the hat and hoodie."

He put the tire iron into the disguise box and accepted the Dodgers hat from Ballard. He put it on and pulled the brim down low over his forehead. He glanced over at the pickup, and Ballard followed his eyes. The man was closing the tailgate. The dolly was fully loaded with buckets of paint ready to go into storage until the next job.

"Hurry, put the hoodie in the box," Bosch said.

Ballard pulled it off and threw it into the box.

"Okay, what were the numbers on the keys you saw?" Bosch asked.

"Twenty-two and twenty-three," Ballard said. "What are you—"

"Perfect. I gotta go."

He walked off, carrying the box with both hands.

"Wait, what do you want me to do?" Ballard said.

"Just stay there," Bosch said. "I'll call you when I'm ready."

"Ready for what?"

Bosch didn't answer. He picked up his pace and followed behind the man pushing the dolly toward the glass doors. Ballard watched as the man raised his hand and held a fob to an electronic reader at the side of the entrance.

The double doors split and slid open. The man started pushing the dolly again, and Bosch fell into step behind him.

"Hold the doors," he said. He raised the box up so it blocked the lower half of his face when the man turned to see who had spoken.

The man showed no alarm. He even took one hand off the dolly's push bar and signaled Bosch in.

Ballard smiled. It reminded her of her move to get into the lab earlier. "Fucking A," she said to herself.

The automatic doors closed and Bosch disappeared inside. Ballard saw the interior lights of the facility, most likely on motion-activated circuits, illuminate.

Ballard closed the back of the car and walked to the front, leaned against the fender, and waited. Several minutes went by. When she saw the automatic doors open again, it was the man from the pickup who came out. She watched him get in his truck and drive out of the storage facility's parking lot. That left only Bosch inside, and Ballard began to worry. She pulled her phone and called him but got no answer.

She called twice more with the same outcome and started to worry that the physical exertion of the day had caught up with Bosch. She knew she couldn't leave him there but she wasn't sure what to do. On the fourth call she even left a message: "Harry, what is going on? Call me back."

She was no longer leaning nonchalantly on the fender. She began pacing, head down, thinking about how to call in the emergency to the Santa Monica police. No matter how she played it out, bringing the cops in didn't end well for her or Bosch.

She had her back to the automatic doors when she finally heard Bosch calling her. She whipped around to see him standing in the open doorway, waving her in.

Ballard walked briskly toward the entrance but slowed as she got close.

"It's clear," he said. "You can come in."

She entered slowly. "What about—"

"The cameras are taken care of."

He pointed overhead as he stepped into a central hallway that fronted several tributary aisles of storage rooms. Ballard looked up and saw her Dodgers cap draped over a mounted camera at the top of the wall.

"This way," Bosch said.

She followed him until he turned left and headed down an aisle without hesitation. Ballard entered behind him and saw the hood of her hoodie draped over another camera.

"Twenty-two and twenty-three are down at the end," Bosch said.

As she followed, Ballard noted that each of the storage units they passed had a roll-down steel door that was locked with a padlock through a hasp bolted to the concrete floor. When she caught up to Bosch at the end of the aisle, he was standing by two side-by-side open doors. The tire iron was on the ground next to one of two broken hasps that had been pried out of their concrete moorings.

"Harry, what did you do?"

"We wanted to see what the guy had. Now we can."

"But whoever runs this place will probably call him tomorrow and then he'll know somebody's onto him."

"No, because they'll tell him his was one of several units that got hit."

He pointed to the other side of the aisle. Ballard saw that three other units' padlocks and corresponding hasps had been pried out of the concrete. She turned back to Bosch and noticed the sweat on his forehead and cheeks. It had taken some muscle to break the security of the storage rooms.

"We probably shouldn't waste time," he said.

"No," Ballard said. "We shouldn't."

"You take twenty-two and I'll take twenty-three. Be quick."

"Got it."

They both disappeared into their respective units. Unit 22 was the size of a modest walk-in closet or a prison cell. It was stacked on both sides with cardboard boxes, each helpfully marked with a list of its contents. Ballard moved down the stacks, looking for a box that could be of importance to the investigation and also be a test of the reliability of the listed contents.

She came across one at the top of a four-box stack that was marked Taxes 2012–2022 . She pulled the box down to the floor. It was heavy. When she took off the top, she saw that it was filled end to end with files with different years marked on the tabs. She took out the last file, marked 2022, opened it, and found a photocopy of an IRS tax return.

"I've got tax records here," Ballard called out.

"What's the name?" Bosch called back.

"Thomas Dehaven."

"I've got that name on a couple of things over here. He must be the badge buyer."

"Get this. I'm looking at an IRS return for last year. If this is our badge buyer, then the sovereign plate and all of that is bullshit. He's a poseur."

"What's the address?"

"Uh, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho."

"Take a photo and let's keep going. We can't stay here all night."

"Got it. Luck is fluid."

"That's right."

Ballard used her phone to take a photo of the tax return. She replaced the file and put the top back on the box. Standing up, she counted the boxes in the small room. There were sixteen along one side and another thirteen on the opposite wall. The majority were marked Books followed by a classification of fiction or nonfiction. She went through all of these first, opening them to find in each a row of books spine out. Thomas Dehaven favored contemporary mystery and horror. Ballard saw the names of several authors she recognized, including some she had even read: Child, Coben, Carson, Burke, Crumley, Grafton, Koryta, Goldberg, Wambaugh, and many others.

"Guy doesn't read Chandler," she said.

"What do you mean?" Bosch said.

"There's a book collection over here, mostly mystery and true crime. But no Chandler."

"His loss."

"What do you have over there?"

"A lot of junk. Clothes, ski equipment, fishing poles, and—"

His report was cut short by the sound of the automated doors at the front of the facility opening and closing. Someone had entered.

Ballard stepped out of unit 22 and into the aisle. Bosch was already there. They stood listening and heard muffled voices. More than one person was inside. Bosch held his hand out as if to stop Ballard from speaking even though she knew to be quiet.

There was a metallic bang and then the harsh sound of a metal door being rolled up. Whoever had come in had gone down one of the other aisles to a storage unit.

"Luck is fluid," Ballard whispered.

"How much more time do you need?" Bosch whispered.

"I have four boxes left."

"I have about the same. Let's get it done."

"Quietly."

They returned to their respective units. Ballard went quickly through the last four boxes in hers. They contained household items like pots and pans, cooking utensils, dishware, and knickknacks that might have come off shelves in a kitchen: Thanksgiving salt- and pepper shakers that looked like pilgrims, a coffee cup with the previous president's booking photo and the words Presidential Mug on it, and four ceramic coasters that said Keep Calm and Carry above the silhouette of a gun, a different gun on each.

Ballard heard the roll-down door from the other aisle shut with a bang. She stepped out of the storage unit and listened. She again heard muffled voices as whoever had entered earlier made their way back to the exit.

Bosch stood on the threshold of unit 23 listening as well. When he heard the automatic doors at the front open and then close, he nodded to Ballard and went back to work. Ballard followed him into 23. It was not as neatly kept as 22, though Ballard could not tell whether that was because of Bosch's search or because it had been that way when he found it.

"Anything in twenty-two?" he asked.

"Not since I found the tax records in the first box I opened," Ballard said. "What about here?"

"No, just that." He pointed to a stack of three cardboard boxes.

Sitting on top of it was a white jewelry box. Ballard stepped over and opened it. The inside of the lid was a mirror. Below it were felt-lined sections containing gold and silver bracelets and earrings. Ballard rarely wore jewelry and was not equipped to judge the value of what she was looking at.

"Why do you have this out?" she asked.

"Because we need to take something if we're going to convince him that this was a random burglary," Bosch said.

"Come on. It's one thing to break in here, but I don't want to take anything. That's a line I don't think I can cross."

"You don't have to. I will."

"Harry, we—"

"Look, these assholes—they're up to something. Something big. An hour ago you said so yourself. Something that's going to require four machine guns. So I'll cross whatever line I have to if it stops whatever it is from happening. And I won't second-guess myself for one minute."

Ballard understood and nodded.

"Okay," she said.

"So, I'm done in here," Bosch said. "No badge."

"No, no badge."

"I'm beginning to think I know where it is."

"Where?"

Bosch closed the jewelry box and put it under his arm, ready to go. He kicked the stack of boxes over.

"Clipped to his belt or on a chain around his neck," he said. "It might be part of their plan, but it's also his get-out-of-jail-free card."

"How so?" Ballard asked.

"If he gets pulled over or stopped anywhere, he shows the badge," Bosch said. "You know, says he's working, maybe claims to be undercover. He uses it to talk his way out of getting his ass cuffed up."

Ballard thought there had to be a bigger purpose for wanting the badge.

"Maybe," she said.

"I know a way to test it out," Bosch said.

"How?"

"Let's get out of here and I'll tell you."