25

25

BALLARD WAS TWENTY-ONE minutes late to the all-hands meeting that she had called for the night before. Everybody else was already there.

"Sorry I'm late, everyone," she said as she put her bag down on her desk and stayed standing. "I had to go to the lab this morning, and everybody knows what a shitshow the traffic is from there to here. Thank you all for getting here. This could be a big day. We have two things in play. Most of you know about one of them, so let's start there. Paul, anything on the DNA from the judge yet? Is he Nick Purcell's biological father?"

Masser cleared his throat. "I talked to Darcy a few minutes ago and she's still waiting on Sacramento," he said.

There was a groan from Laffont.

"DOJ, man," he said. "Taking their sweet-ass time. ‘Delay of Justice' is what they should be called."

"Darcy said she would call up there if she didn't hear anything by ten," Masser said.

"Guys, it's only been three days," Ballard said. "If it carries over to Monday, we'll be fine."

"Monday's a holiday," Hatteras said.

"Then Tuesday," Ballard said. "So, until we hear from Darcy, we move on. We have another case I need you all on. But before we discuss it, I want to stress that what we talk about here does not leave this room. Not until we have this thing tied up in a bow. You don't even tell your wife or your husband what you're working on. Everybody get that?"

Ballard swept the room with her eyes, making sure she saw a nod of agreement from everyone on the squad.

"Maddie Bosch brought this case to us," she said. "So I'm going to let her brief you."

Maddie stood up and started at the beginning, with Mr. Waxman calling her into the storage unit that had belonged to Emmitt Thawyer. The others paid rapt attention to the story. There was no one in L.A. law enforcement who didn't know about the Black Dahlia. Even among the public, there were very few citizens who had not heard of the woman who had been cut in two and found in an empty lot in Leimert Park.

Maddie finished by summarizing their findings in the basement of the house on Kellam Avenue. She then handed the briefing back to Ballard.

"We also attempted to talk to Nancy Porter, the owner of the storage facility," Ballard said. "But no one was at her home when we checked last night. We'll follow up with her when we can."

She opened her bag on her desk and started removing the files taken from the Thawyer storage unit.

"Can we see these photos you found of the Black Dahlia?" Laffont asked.

"You can, but not at the moment," Ballard said. "I gave most of them to the digital analysis team this morning so they can confirm my visual identification of the victim as Elizabeth Short. I also gave a couple of pictures to the photo lab to see if they can determine the age of the Kodak paper they were printed on. Over the years there have been hoaxes related to the Black Dahlia—false confessions and people claiming their father, son, brother, stepbrother, even their mother was the killer. We don't go out with this until we nail down every aspect of it, and then Carol Plovc makes the final call."

Plovc was a deputy district attorney. Although John Lewin was the unit's assigned DA, he handled live cases—cases where there were suspects who could still be prosecuted, whether they were already incarcerated or not. Plovc handled dead cases. She had the final sign-off on closing and clearing cases in which the alleged culprit was beyond prosecution because he or she was deceased. It was LAPD policy not to close a case without the approval of the district attorney's office.

"As soon as I get the photos back, I will share," Ballard said. "But I warn you, they are graphic and horrible. They will stay with you."

"If real," Laffont said.

"If real," Ballard agreed. "So, meantime, I've got the files with the photos of the other women here. I want everyone to take a file—a victim—and work it. You start with a first name and a photo, because that's all we've got. Try to find out who she was, when she went missing, and if a body was ever found."

"You're talking about going back seventy-plus years?" Laffont said.

"That's right, and there won't be any records to go to unless they're right here in our homicide archives," Ballard said. "I checked with records this morn—"

"Um, there aren't any in our archives," Maddie interrupted.

"How do you know?" Ballard asked.

"I came in early and went through all the pre-1960 books," Maddie said. "I checked all female victims against our list of first names. There was only one match, a victim named Elyse, but she was Black and our photo is of a white victim. So, no, nothing in archives."

"Good initiative," Ballard said. "That supports the theory that these women came after Elizabeth Short. He changed his MO. Rather than leave the victims on display, he hid them."

"To avoid media and police attention," Masser said.

"They're probably buried in that basement," Laffont said. "Like Gacy did in Chicago."

"When we bring the crime scene techs into this, I'm sure they'll look at that," Ballard said. "But as I was about to say, our missing persons files don't go back this far. What's that leave us?"

"Newspaper archives," Hatteras said.

"Definitely," Ballard said. "That's a starting point. What else?"

"There are many sites online that track missing women," Persson said. "The question will be how far they go back."

"Right," Ballard said. "I remember seeing something in the Times about a privately funded site that tracked missing people in L.A. I forget the name."

"Lost Angels," Aghzafi said. "I used them on a case in Vegas. Unidentified DB we thought might be a guy from L.A. They were quite helpful but we never matched him up."

"Any idea how far back they went with missing persons?" Laffont asked.

"I don't remember," Aghzafi said. "It was funded by some tech billionaire who was looking for his mother who disappeared when he was a kid."

"That's the story I remember from the Times, " Ballard said. "That may be a useful site."

Hatteras stood and came around the raft to Ballard.

"Colleen?" Ballard asked.

"Can I pick one?" Hatteras responded.

Ballard gave Hatteras the stack of files. But rather than looking through them to make her choice, Hatteras hugged the stack to her chest. She closed her eyes and held still for a long moment.

"Colleen?" Ballard said. "You told me you wouldn't do this."

"I know, I know," Hatteras said. "But these women have waited so long for justice. I want to connect. It could help us."

"Look, we talked about this. Just pick a file and pass the stack. Now."

"Okay, this one. Willa." She separated the Willa file from the others and held it up as if to the heavens. "God bless this young woman," she said.

"It might be a little late for that," Laffont said.

Seemingly annoyed by Laffont's sarcasm, Hatteras walked past him and gave the remaining files to Masser.

"Just so you all know, I have edited the files," Ballard said. "Each contains two photos. One in life, one in death. For now, you don't need to see what happened in between. Another thing: The files don't leave the raft. As I said before, nothing is discussed outside this room. Everybody good with that?"

She got a round of nods. The files were handed around the raft, with one coming back to Ballard. She checked the tab and saw that she had the Cecily file—the woman who had been strangled against the basement post. Ballard checked the two photos in the file. The victim's eyes were open and staring down at the concrete floor between her legs. Ballard could see the hemorrhaging around the eyes. Cecily had died horribly, and Ballard knew that there was no one left alive to punish for it. Yet she felt a sense of duty to find out who Cecily was and make her story known.