19

19

BALLARD AND BOSCH were squeezed into one side of a booth at Mary and Robbs Café in Westwood. The other side was empty.

Bosch checked his watch. "You sure this guy's going to show?"

"He's never stood me up before. He's probably walking over."

"You mean, like, stood you up for a date? That sort of thing?"

"No, Harry. It's strictly a professional relationship."

"You trust him?"

"I wouldn't have called him if I didn't trust him. Gordon is a good guy. He's helped the unit on a lot of cases. The FBI obviously moves a lot faster on out-of-state warrants than we do because they've got agents everywhere. And it's a fact that people who think they've gotten away with murder tend not to hang around. They split, and having a go-to guy in the Bureau is gold. I know your relationship with the FBI was… fraught, but that was then and this is now."

"‘Fraught.' Yeah, I think that might be a bit of an understatement."

The waiter brought a mug of coffee for Ballard and black tea for Bosch.

"What's with the tea?" Ballard asked. "You were always a black-coffee guy."

"I don't know," Bosch said, shrugging. "People change."

She nodded and watched him over the rim of her cup as she sipped. He looked beat, and once again she felt guilty for enlisting him in whatever this was.

"You doing okay, Harry?"

"I'm fine."

"You look tired. Maybe we should—"

"I told you, I'm good. If I wasn't, I'd say so. So what's the plan here? We just hand this off to the guy and walk away from it?"

"We'll see how he wants to handle it. But he's got to promise me about the badge or it's a no-go and he gets nothing. You good with that?"

"I'm good with it. I just thought that if there's a way for you to get some credit for bagging this guy, that would help… you know, secure your position inside the department."

Ballard shook her head. "You'd think, right?" she said. "But probably the exact opposite would happen. They'd ding me for going out of my lane."

Ballard had a view of the front door but knew there was a back way into the restaurant that would be on a direct walking route from the FBI's field office three blocks over on Wilshire Boulevard.

She flipped open the file folder on the table and looked at the photo of Thomas Dehaven she had pulled from Idaho DMV records. She closed the file when she looked up and saw Gordon Olmstead approaching the booth. She wasn't sure which way he had come in.

Before he sat down, Olmstead held out his right hand to Renée.

"Happy New Year," he said.

She shook his hand.

"Happy New Year to you, Gordon," she said. "This is Harry Bosch, who I told you about. Harry, Agent Gordon Olmstead with the Bureau."

The two men shook hands and Olmstead sat down across from them. He was a seasoned agent, a few years away from retirement. He worked in the fugitives division after a long career of postings in almost all sections in the Los Angeles field office.

"I have to say, I'm very intrigued," Olmstead said. "We don't get many of the insurrectionists out this way."

That was how Ballard had baited him. She'd told him she could deliver a man wanted on a federal warrant for his activities during the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

Ballard now slid the folder across the table to him. It was bad timing. Just as Olmstead started to open it, the waiter came to the table to ask if he wanted coffee. Olmstead declined any drink and waited for the server to walk away before opening the file.

There were two printouts inside. The top was a photocopy of Thomas Dehaven's driver's license issued four years earlier in Idaho. He had been thirty-nine at the time and clean-shaven. But Bosch had confirmed the ID. Dehaven was the man who had met Bosch in the beach parking lot to talk about machine guns.

Olmstead studied it briefly and then went to the second sheet, which was a printout of the FBI's wanted poster for Dehaven. He was charged with murder, sedition, and assault on a law enforcement officer. The poster prominently featured the same photo from the Idaho driver's license plus two other shots of Dehaven inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. One photo showed him posing at the speaker's podium in the chamber of the House of Representatives. The other shot was a candid taken at the Capitol's entrance that showed Dehaven in a highlighted circle spraying a chemical under the helmet shield of a Capitol Police officer.

"You're telling me this guy is here in L.A.?" Olmstead said.

"Yes," Ballard said.

"And you can lead me to him?"

"Yes."

Olmstead studied the summary of crimes on the wanted poster.

"You guys want him bad," Bosch said. "He killed his ex-wife because she called the FBI after seeing him on TV at the Capitol."

"Somehow he found out," Ballard said. "Killed her and has been in the wind ever since."

"And how did you come across him?" Olmstead asked.

"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you," Ballard said.

"If I'm going to do anything with this, then I need to know," Olmstead said.

Ballard turned to Bosch to make sure he was still with her. He nodded without hesitation.

"I could and should give this to LAPD counterterrorism," she said. "So if I give it to you, I need two assurances."

"Let's hear them," Olmstead said.

"First, my name is nowhere near it," Ballard said. "You got this from a CI or a concerned citizen who saw the guy's picture in a post office or online or something."

"I can do that, but why?" Olmstead said.

"Because of condition number two," Ballard said. "Dehaven has my badge. You arrest him, you get it, and you give it back to me. It does not get mentioned in any report."

"Wait, what?" Olmstead said. "He's got your badge? How?"

"That's the story you wouldn't believe if I told you," Ballard said.

"Well, I think you'd better tell me anyway," Olmstead said.

"My badge was stolen Monday while I was surfing up near Dockweiler Beach," Ballard said. "There's a surfing break called Staircases. While I was on the water, a couple of assholes broke into my car. I tracked them down but not before they got rid of the badge. They sold it to a fence, who then sold it to Dehaven."

"You didn't report it?" Olmstead asked. "It can't be that big a deal, can it?"

"For me it would be," Ballard said. "Suffice it to say there are people in the department who would use it against me. It would be my ticket to a transfer and freeway therapy. The bottom line is I love my job, Gordon, and I'm good at it. I want to keep it."

"Okay, I get it," Olmstead said. "And I know firsthand that you're good at your job. Where does Dehaven have your badge?"

"On him, we think," Ballard said.

"Why do you think that?" Olmstead asked.

Ballard glanced at Bosch. She wasn't going to reveal any of the lines she had crossed, no matter how much she trusted Olmstead.

"We just do," she said. "It will be on him or nearby. That's all you need to know."

Olmstead looked from Ballard to Bosch and then back to Ballard.

"Okay, we won't go there," he said. "But let me see if I've got this clear. I'm supposed to take this guy down, get the badge, and turn it over to you. That would be evidence I'm handing over."

"Not evidence of anything he's charged with," Ballard said. "But there is something else. Dehaven wanted the badge because he's planning something. He has guns and he's looking to buy more—machine guns."

"What is he planning?" Olmstead asked.

"We're not sure," Bosch said. "But we're four days out from Presidents' Day and he and one of his pals have been casing the Malibu pier. In their words, on Monday they're going to ‘make that thing in Vegas look like child's play.'"

"You mean a mass shooting," Olmstead said.

Bosch and Ballard both nodded.

"Jesus Christ, you actually heard this said?" Olmstead asked.

They nodded again.

"And I'll be your confidential informant," Bosch said.

The skin around Olmstead's eyes tightened as the weight of everything they had told him landed.

"Okay, where is Thomas Dehaven right now?" Olmstead asked.

"You don't need to know that," Bosch said. "What you need to know is that he wants to buy machine guns from me. I set up the meet, and that's where you take him. Before Monday."

"Wait, no," Ballard said.

That had not been part of the plan she and Bosch discussed before she contacted Olmstead. The plan was to tell the agent about the caravan out on the coast highway.

"That's way too dangerous, Harry," she said. "We need to set up a controlled takedown where he—"

"You want your badge, right?" Bosch said. "He'll have it when he comes for the guns. He'll use it to rip me off. He'll pull it, say he's LAPD, and take the minis."

Ballard realized that Bosch might have solved the riddle of why Dehaven needed a badge. The moment he said it, she knew that it fit and that his plan was the best way to recover the badge and take down Dehaven.

"Harry, are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes, it's going to work," Bosch said.

"Okay, fine," Ballard said, looking hard at Olmstead. "But this has got to be somewhere out in the open, somewhere safe, where nothing goes wrong."

"We can do that," Olmstead said.

"Can you get us four SIG Sauer MPX mini machine guns with the firing pins removed?" Bosch asked.

Olmstead paused a moment on that question.

"Come on, you're the FBI," Bosch prompted.

"No promises," Olmstead said. "But we can try."