26

26

IT WAS AFTER two p.m. when they got word about the judge's DNA from Darcy Troy. By then the Open-Unsolved team had come up with two identifications of the women in the Thawyer files. Willa Kenyon was reported missing in 1950; her case was one of the oldest in the Lost-Angels.net database. And Elyse Ford was identified through a keyword search on the Library of Congress newspaper database. While her 1949 disappearance had apparently gotten no ink from the newspapers in Los Angeles, it had in her hometown. A search of the database using the words Elyse, missing, and Los Angeles produced three stories that had run in the Wichita Eagle . It was a familiar story: Young woman from the Midwest went to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune, and now she's missing without leaving a clue. The L.A. police are not too interested in chasing another one of these, but her parents back in Kechi are worried sick. Still, even the Wichita paper dropped the story after four months and three articles.

Both the newspaper accounts and the Lost Angels site provided photos of the missing women that clearly matched two of the women in the photos in Thawyer's files. Ballard was convinced by her own comparison and believed that her team of volunteer investigators were close to having enough evidence to take to Carol Plovc at the DA's office and ask for clearance and closure in those two cases.

But she put those thoughts aside when she saw Darcy Troy's name on her cell phone.

"It's her," Ballard said.

She immediately drew an audience; Hatteras and Masser got up and came to her pod as she answered.

"Hey, Darcy, give me the good word."

"Well, I don't have good news. Purcell's father, the Pillowcase Rapist, is not the judge. I'm sorry."

Ballard was stunned. "I don't—how can that be?"

"I don't know what to tell you other than it's no match. The woman is wrong too. No match. She's not the mother. Obviously, it was an adoption."

"No. We pulled the birth certificate. It was filed too fast for an adoption."

"Then I don't know what to tell you, Renée. The science is the science."

"It couldn't be a screwup on the DOJ end, right?"

"Don't go there. Highly unlikely."

"Okay. I'm just…"

"Let me know what else I can do."

"Sure. I will."

Ballard disconnected and looked up. Now the whole team was gathered around her end of the raft.

"No match," she said. "Nick Purcell isn't related to the judge or his wife."

"Fuck!" Persson yelled.

Masser snapped his head back and spun away from the group as if shot.

"I knew it," Hatteras said.

"You knew it?" Laffont said. "Why didn't you say so?"

"I did—nobody listened," Hatteras insisted. "I said the genetic tree I was building didn't connect in any way to the judge."

"Yeah, whatever," Laffont said.

"It's the truth," Hatteras said. "But it doesn't matter. What matters is what do we do now?"

"All right, let's just calm down," Ballard said. "I know this isn't what we expected. But let's think."

Ballard knew that something had gone wrong as they built their case against the judge. That had started with the birth certificate indicating no adoption had taken place.

"Paul, can we take another look at the birth certificate?" she asked.

"Right here," Masser said.

He grabbed a printout of the birth record off his desk and handed it over the wall to Ballard. She confirmed what she already knew: The birth certificate was filed with the county two days after the birth. Then she noticed a detail she had not seen the first time.

"Nicholas Purcell was born at County-USC," Ballard said. "Maybe their birth records will tell a different story."

"Not without a court order," Masser said. "It's a dead end."

"But wait," Ballard said. "The judge wasn't a judge yet when the kid was born, but he must've been doing well, right? I mean, well enough to get appointed or elected judge."

"I would say so," Masser said. "Successful enough financially or reputation-wise or both to get a slot on the superior court."

"So, County-USC back then or even now is not one of your high-end hospitals. It's a public facility. It even provides indigent care. Is it the kind of hospital where the wife of up-and-coming lawyer, soon to be judge Jonathan Purcell would want to give birth to their child?"

"I should have seen this," Masser said. He looked mortified at not noticing the inconsistency earlier.

"So what do we do?" Hatteras asked.

"Well, for the moment, I want you all to go back to what you were doing," Ballard said. "Let's try to run down more of the names from the Thawyer files. When you're needed on Purcell, I'll let you know. Maddie, when's your roll call for tonight?"

"Five," Maddie said.

"Okay, well, you should cut out, then," Ballard said. "Get ready for your shift."

Maddie looked crestfallen, like she was being cut out of her own case, and Ballard read it in her expression.

"Don't worry," she said. "You're still lead on this. It's your case. We won't make a move on it without you."

"Let me know when you need me," Maddie said.

As people reluctantly returned to their spots on the raft, Ballard stood up from her desk.

"Paul, let's go get a coffee," she said.

Ballard turned and headed toward the exit before any of the others could react to being left out of whatever discussion Ballard was about to have. She didn't speak to Masser until they were in the cafeteria and sitting down at a table with to-go coffee cups in front of them. Before Ballard could begin, Masser spit out an apology.

"I am so sorry," he said. "If I had put together the incongruity of the hospital, we'd be two days into a new direction."

"Not necessarily," Ballard said. "And I didn't buy you coffee to set up an apology."

"Then why did we come up here? The others think you took me to the woodshed."

"I don't care what they think. We need to figure out our next move on this. I'm already taking heat for putting the judge under surveillance. Now that it's not him, this could really turn bad for the unit."

"Well, I think it's obvious. We have to go to the judge."

Ballard nodded. "I was thinking that too. But he could blow us out of the water, especially if we tell him we collected his DNA."

"His and his wife's. He may blow a gasket, but he might also see that we had no choice. We did what we had to do."

"Hopefully. But how are we going to get him to talk if he was involved in some sort of shady deal getting the kid?"

"You mean like a black-market baby?"

"Maybe. I still don't see how the birth was recorded so quickly. That means somebody at the hospital was somehow involved in making this work."

"There's something we don't know here. Even if we could get into adoption records, I have a feeling there wouldn't be any for Nicholas Purcell."

"So when do we go to the judge?"

"That's your call. That's why you get a salary and we don't."

"Right."

Ballard went silent as she mulled the question. Intruding into these thoughts was the reminder that Captain Gandle had directly ordered her to keep him in the loop. She knew she should inform him of the DOJ results and the plan to brace the judge. But by doing so she risked Gandle telling her to stand down until he got clarity from the tenth floor. That move could take days and maybe even weeks. Ballard was not interested in stalling the case while the command staff considered the political gain or fallout from asking the presiding judge of the superior court questions about the possibly illegal adoption of his son.

"What are you thinking?" Masser finally asked.

"I'm thinking if we left now, we could get to the CCB before the judge takes off for the weekend," Ballard said.

"So you want to do it today?"

"Why not?"

"Because if the judge gets mad and throws us in jail, we probably won't get out till Monday."

"More like Tuesday because of the holiday."

"Yes, Tuesday."

"Fuck it. Let's go."

"I'll drive. My keys are on my desk."

"Let's not tell the others what we're doing. I don't want Colleen calling every ten minutes."

"She'll do that whether she knows what we're doing or not."

"I'll meet you in the parking lot. Go get your keys."

As Ballard walked out of the building toward the row of parking spaces assigned to the unit, she pulled her phone to call Captain Gandle. Then she thought better of it. Calling him now before the hour's drive into downtown was too risky. He could shut down her plan before it even started.

Instead, she used the phone to google a phone number for the clerk of the superior court. By the time Masser showed up at his car with the keys, she had already called the courthouse and been transferred to Purcell's clerk, who confirmed that the judge was still working.

"Purcell's still in chambers," Ballard said.

"Good," Masser said. "I think."