6

6

AT FIVE P.M. Ballard was posted in her Defender in front of the PAB—the Police Administration Building—on First Street. She had a clear view up the slight incline of Spring Street at the exit gate from the garage beneath the Criminal Courts Building. Tom Laffont was in his personal car at the top of the incline at Spring and Temple. Paul Masser was positioned in one of the pink chairs in Grand Park next to the courthouse. This put him closest to the exit from the garage where the building's judges parked. His angle would allow him to see the license plates on the vehicles leaving the garage. They were looking for a Mercedes C 300 Coupe that belonged to Judge Jonathan Purcell. It was as black as a judge's robe, according to Anders Persson, who'd gotten the registration from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Lilia Aghzafi was posted in her car on Temple so she could swing around the corner and pick up Masser once Purcell's car was spotted and surveillance ensued.

Ballard picked up her rover and pressed the send button. "Everybody got their eyes open?"

She received a mic click from each of the others. Satisfied, she picked up her cell phone and called a number she had written in her notebook. She put the phone on speaker so she wouldn't have to take her eyes off the courthouse garage exit.

The call went immediately to voicemail.

"This message is for Seth Dawson," Ballard said. "This is Detective Renée Ballard with the Los Angeles Police Department. I'm following up on the car burglary that occurred on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga in November. I have some questions I'd like to ask you. I can be reached anytime at this number. I would appreciate a call back."

She disconnected and reviewed her words. Dawson would have a recording of her talking about an investigation that was not hers to conduct, which could be problematic should things blow up in her face. But the way she had worded the message gave her a plausible out, because she'd never said that she was conducting an investigation, only that she wanted to ask him questions.

The rover crackled with Masser's voice.

"Black Mercedes coming up the ramp."

Ballard grabbed the binoculars from the center console and trained them on the garage exit onto Spring. The black Mercedes soon appeared and held still as its driver waited to make the turn. It was a one-way street. The driver had to go right and come toward Ballard's position.

Ballard grew impatient waiting for Masser to report. Without taking her eyes from the binocs, she grabbed the rover.

"Do we have the plate?"

She waited and then turned her focus slightly left to pick up Masser. She saw him walking out of the park and talking into his sleeve, but she was not hearing him on the rover.

"Is anyone getting audio from Paul?" she barked into the rover. "He's talking but I can't hear him."

"No audio from Paul," Laffont said.

"Can't hear him," Aghzafi reported.

Ballard had to think quickly. The Mercedes had turned onto Spring and was coming to the traffic signal at First Street. The fact that Masser had walked out of Grand Park and was out on the sidewalk indicated that the black Mercedes was the one they were looking for. She keyed the mic. "Lilia, go get Paul and let us know about the plate. Copy?"

"Copy."

At First Street the Mercedes turned right and headed up to Broadway. Ballard pulled the Defender away from the curb and moved into the left lane. She had to make a U-turn, and the five o'clock traffic was thick with oncoming vehicles. She brought the rover back up to her mouth. "Tom, are you on the move?"

"No, waiting on orders."

"Damn it, go. I'm stuck. He went north on First toward Broadway. Go."

"On my way."

Ballard saw an opening in the traffic and dropped the rover into the center console so she could use two hands to yank the wheel into a U-turn. She headed toward the intersection at Spring, looking a block ahead for the Mercedes. She saw it moving on Broadway. Her guess was that it was going to the 101 freeway entrance. From there, the freeway quickly reached an interchange where Purcell could go in any direction and be lost to them.

Ballard had to hit the brakes when the car in front of her stopped early on a yellow. She slapped the steering wheel. "You asshole!"

But then she saw Laffont's white Ioniq make the turn and head toward Broadway. It was followed by Aghzafi's Volvo. She grabbed the rover again. "Lilia, did Paul confirm the plate?" She waited.

"Yes, confirmed."

Ballard nodded to herself.

"Okay. Tom, you have the target? I caught a light."

"Affirmative. Locked on."

The light turned green and Ballard waited for the car in front of her to get moving. Lilia's voice came up on the rover.

"And we are right behind. Have target in sight," she said.

"Okay, keep spacing," Ballard said. "I think we're heading to the freeway."

She jockeyed the Defender around the slow mover in front of her and made the turn onto Broadway. Laffont began a play-by-play on the rover.

"Okay, we're on the freeway roundabout. Turning north at the moment."

Ballard cursed as she caught the light at Temple. She figured that the Mercedes was on the freeway merging lanes and quickly approaching the 110 interchange.

"Tom, which way are we going?" she radioed.

"One-ten north," Laffont responded. "Looks like Pasadena."

Not so fast, Ballard thought. The 110 north fed to both the Glendale and Golden State Freeways. At this point Purcell—if it was Purcell they were following—could be going anywhere. She keyed her mic.

"Has anybody been able to see the driver? Have we confirmed the target?" She waited.

Lilia must have given her rover to Masser because Ballard heard him say, "It's him. I saw him when he had his window down to talk to the guard at the garage. Sorry about my handset."

They had photos of Purcell from his son's Facebook page and a profile Hatteras had found online. It had run in the Los Angeles Legal Journal when he was appointed presiding judge of the superior court. The profile gave some details about the judge but did not reveal where he lived. They had no photo or home address from his driver's license because the DMV had a security block on these. This was a common practice with law enforcement officers and the judiciary. Even the car registration that they were able to access had a post office box for an address.

Ballard finally got on the freeway and started working her way ahead. Eventually, she saw Aghzafi's Volvo. She was about to tell the others that she had caught up when her phone rang. It was Hatteras. "Colleen, what's up?"

"How are you guys doing?"

"We're in the middle of it. What do you need?"

"I just wanted you to know I started working on the DNA heritage pattern for Purcell."

"Okay, what does that mean?"

"It's a genetic family tree."

"Okay… anything good yet?"

"I'm just starting."

"Well, then, how about you let me know if you find something we can use as an investigative lead?"

"Of course. I will. Are you guys following the judge now? I can hear you're in the car."

"Yes, we are, and I really need to focus on this, Colleen. So if there isn't anything else, I'm going to let you go."

"Okay, good luck. Let me know how it goes."

"Are you coming in tomorrow?"

"Of course. I want to keep building this tree."

"Then we'll talk tomorrow."

Ballard finally disconnected. Hatteras had the ability to push her patience to its limit. Yet she was good at what she did—if she just maintained focus and did it. More than once, Ballard had thought about telling Hatteras it wasn't going to work out and that she was off the team. But investigative genetic genealogy was where cold cases often went, and all the things that made Hatteras annoying—the woo-woo vibes, asking too many questions, crossing boundaries, sticking her nose into things—were what made her good at IGG work. So Ballard put up with her because the payoffs were worth it.

She also had a soft spot for Hatteras because she knew why her cold-case work meant so much to her. She'd packed the second of her two children off to college in September, and her husband of twenty-three years had promptly moved out and filed for divorce. As Colleen told it, this was not exactly a surprise move, as their marriage had stopped functioning years before and was mostly a front for their children. But the dramatic drop in activity at home resulted in her increased activity at the Ahmanson Center.

Purcell stayed on the 110, passing exits for the Glendale and Golden State Freeways, all the way to the Orange Grove exit in Pasadena. Laffont, who maintained lead car in the surveillance, reported the exit, and all the unit's cars followed. Since it was rush hour, there were so many cars on the road that Ballard wasn't worried that Purcell would realize he was being tailed. Their efforts were also camouflaged by the falling of night. If Purcell checked his mirrors, he'd see headlights behind him but no identifiable vehicles.

After exiting, Purcell took a couple of right turns and soon was on Arroyo Drive cruising north through an old and well-to-do neighborhood with homes on the right and the Arroyo Seco wash on the left. There was little traffic now, and Ballard instructed her team to slow down and spread out. A minute later Laffont reported over the radio that Purcell had pulled into a driveway at the corner of Hermosa. "I kept going," he said.

Ballard thought of a plan and put it into the rover. "Tom, pull over. Double back on foot on the west side. Lilia, you go right on Hermosa and post up. Tom, I'll get to you in a minute."

As she was finishing her orders, she saw Lilia's right turn signal a half block ahead. The Volvo made the turn onto Hermosa. Ballard continued on straight, and as she passed the house on the corner, she saw an open and lit-up garage at the end of the driveway. The black Mercedes was in the left bay next to an SUV, and Purcell was getting out with a briefcase in hand.

She kept driving until she saw Laffont's car parked at the curb three houses down. She pulled in behind it in front of a Craftsman with no lights on and a real estate sign on the lawn that said IN ESCROW. She got out and crossed the street to the Arroyo Seco side. There was a footpath through the trees that ran along the upper slope of the wash. She didn't see Laffont until she was almost back to Hermosa, and she startled as he stepped out of the shadows.

"Are you trying to scare me?" Ballard asked.

"Uh, no," Laffont said. "Just trying to be inconspicuous."

They spoke in whispers even though they were more than a hundred feet away from the Purcell house.

"Did you see him?" Ballard asked.

"Not after he closed the garage. Lights were already on in the house. What do you think? He's in for the night?"

"Possibly. I don't know." Ballard had her rover in her hand. She whispered into it. "Lilia, what's your angle? You see any activity?"

She turned the volume knob down before there was a response. When Aghzafi's voice came back, she held the rover up, and she and Laffont tilted their heads toward it to hear.

"We have an angle on some rear windows. Looks like the kitchen. Two people in there talking, a man and a woman."

Ballard looked at Laffont. She was beginning to think the surveillance was a bust.

"Making dinner?" he said.

"Probably," Ballard said. "Look, if they're tucked in, we might be doing this again tomorrow, so I'm going to send you and Lilia home. I'll keep Paul and stay a little bit longer."

"I don't mind staying. Why not send them both home? They're already in the same car."

"No—just in case, I want Paul here."

What was unsaid but had been established in the team's previous surreptitious DNA captures was that Masser, a former prosecutor who knew the rules of evidence, was the better witness for testifying about DNA collection. He could stand up to any challenge from a defense attorney about the procedures followed in gathering and preserving genetic evidence.

Ballard used the rover to instruct Lilia to drop Masser at Ballard's car and head home after giving him her rover. Laffont left shortly after that, telling Ballard to call him back if the judge decided to go out.

Ballard and Masser stood in the shadows of the woods across the street from the Purcell house. Twice during their vigil, a neighborhood resident came by walking a dog and gave them suspicious glances. But no one challenged them on what they were doing there.

"We're going to give it another half hour and then call it," Ballard said. "It's a Monday night. People don't go out on Monday nights in Pasadena."

Masser pointed across the street. "Don't be so sure," he said.

She followed his finger and saw that the garage door was rising and the light inside had come on. She saw two sets of legs, and when the door finished going up, Purcell was in full view, holding open the passenger door of the Mercedes for a woman in a purple pantsuit.

"Hot nights in Pasadena, I guess," she said. "I'm going to get the wheels. You stay here to see which way they go."

"You got it," Masser said.