The Night Fire: A Ballard and Bosch thriller (Harry Bosch 22) (32 page)

Griffin relayed the request by radio to Lieutenant Gonzalez in the lead SUV and soon they were moving toward Rialto under lights and sirens at ninety miles per hour.

She put the earbuds back in and listened to the propulsive words and beat of “Dig Down” by Muse.

We must find a way
We have entered the fray

Twelve minutes later, they were three blocks from Kidd’s home at a meeting point with a couple of Rialto patrol officers called in by courtesy and procedure. Gonzalez and the other SUV team were in position a block from the other side of the suspect’s house. They were waiting for the call from the OP on Kidd emerging before making a move. Ballard had pulled her buds out for good in the middle of “Dark Side” by Bishop Briggs. She was ready to go. She hooked an earpiece attached to her rover on her ear and tuned the radio to the simplex channel the team was using.

Three minutes later they got the call from the OP. Ballard didn’t know if he was in a vehicle, a tree, or the roof of a neighbor’s house, but he was reporting that a black male matching Elvin Kidd’s description was outside the house putting a toolbox into the back of the equipment trailer. He was getting ready to go.

The next radio call placed him at the truck’s door, opening it with a key. Ballard then heard Gonzalez’s voice ordering everyone in. The SUV she was in lurched forward, slamming her back against her seat. Tires squealed as it made the right turn and then the vehicle picked up speed as adrenaline coursed through her bloodstream. The other SUV was point. Through the windshield, Ballard saw it arrive on scene first and pull across the pickup truck’s exit path from the driveway. Only a second behind, the second SUV pulled up on the front lawn, blocking the only other potential angle of escape.

A lot of adrenalized shouting occurred as the Special Ops team emerged from the vehicles with weapons drawn and pointed them at the unsuspecting man in the pickup truck.

“Police! Show me your hands! Show me your hands!”

As previously planned and ordered by Gonzalez, Ballard stayed behind in the SUV, waiting for the call that Kidd had been secured and all was clear. But even turning sideways, she did not have a clear view of the pickup’s front cab through the open door of the SUV. She knew that this was the moment where anything could happen. Any sudden or furtive movement, any sound, even a radio squawk, might set off a barrage of gunfire. She decided not to wait for Gonzalez’s call—she had objected to staying behind from the start. She climbed out of the SUV on the safe side. She drew her weapon and moved around the back of the vehicle. She had a ballistic vest strapped on over her clothes.

She moved around the SUV until she had an angle on the front of the pickup. She saw Kidd inside, palms on top of the wheel, fingers up. It looked like he was surrendering.

The cacophony of voices gave way to the single voice of Gonzalez, who ordered Kidd to get out of the truck and walk backward toward the officers. It seemed like minutes, but it took only seconds. Kidd was grabbed by two officers, put on the ground, and cuffed. They then stood him up, leaned him forward over the hood of his truck, and searched him.

“What is this?” Kidd protested. “You come to my home and do this shit?”

Ballard heard her name over the radio earpiece, her cue that it was safe for her to move in and speak to Kidd. She holstered her weapon and walked to the pickup. She was surprised by the pitch of her own voice as the adrenaline held her vocal cords tight; at least to herself, she sounded like a little boy.

“Elvin Kidd, you are under arrest for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I have recited them to you?”

Kidd turned his head to look at her.

“Murder?” he said. “Who’d I murder?”

“Do you understand your rights, Mr. Kidd?” Ballard said. “I can’t talk to you until you answer.”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand my fucking rights. Who you all sayin’ I killed?”

“John Hilton. Remember him?”

“I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”

Ballard had anticipated such a deflection. She also anticipated that this might be her only moment to confront Kidd. He would most likely demand a lawyer and she would never get close to him again. She would also soon be yanked off the case because all of her off-the-reservation actions would come to light with his arrest. It was not the right place to do what she was about to do, but to her, it was now or never. She pulled her mini-recorder from her back pocket and hit the Play button. The recording of the wiretap between Kidd and Marcel Dupree was cued to a particular moment. Kidd heard his own voice come from the device:

A piece of work I had to handle back then. A white boy who owed too much money.

Ballard clicked off the recorder and studied Kidd’s reaction. She could see the wheels grinding, then coming to a halt at the phone call he had received from Dupree. She could tell he knew he had just experienced his last moments of freedom.

“We’re going to take you back to L.A. now,” Ballard said. “And you’ll get a chance to talk to me if—”

She was interrupted by a voice in her ear. The man in the observation post.

“Somebody’s coming out. Black female, white bathrobe. She’s got … I think … gun! Gun! Gun!”

Everyone reacted. Weapons were drawn and the Special Ops guys all turned toward the front of the house. Through the narrow space between the two black SUVs, Ballard saw the woman on the stone walk leading from the front door to the driveway. She wore an oversize robe—probably her husband’s—that had allowed her to conceal a handgun in the sleeve. It was up and out now, and she was yelling.

“You can’t take him!”

Her eyes then fell on Ballard, who stood there as an open target in the clearing between the two SUVs and the pickup. Ballard held the recorder in her hand instead of her gun.

Ballard saw the woman’s arm come up. It almost seemed to be in slow motion. But then the movement stopped, the angle of the gun still down. Then the side of her head exploded in blood and tissue before Ballard even heard the shot come from a distance. She knew it had come from the OP.

The woman’s knees bent forward and she collapsed on her back on the stone path her husband had likely installed himself at their house.

Officers rushed forward to secure the gun and check on the woman. Ballard instinctively took a step in that direction as well and then remembered Kidd. She turned back to him, but he was gone.

Ballard ran out to the street and saw Kidd running, hands still cuffed behind his back. She took off after him, yelling to the others.

“We’ve got a runner!”

Kidd was fast for a man his age wearing construction boots and running with his arms behind his back. But Ballard closed on him before the end of the block and was able to grab the chain between his cuffs and pull him to a stop.

Now she pulled her gun and held it at the side of her thigh.

“Did you kill her?” Kidd said breathlessly. “Did you motherfuckers kill her?”

Ballard was out of breath herself. She tried to gulp in air before responding. She felt sweat popping on her neck and scalp. One of the SUVs was barreling down the street toward them. She knew they would grab him now and these would possibly be her last moments with Kidd.

“If we killed her, it’s on you, Elvin,” she said. “It’s all on you.”

The killing of Cynthia Kidd had brought out the Critical Incident Vehicle, which was a thirty-two-foot RV repurposed as a mobile incident command and interview center. The CIV was parked two doors down from the Kidd home. The street was taped off at both ends of the block, with members of the media standing vigil at the closest point. The physical and forensic investigation continued at the house while all officers involved in the morning’s incident were debriefed by detectives from the Force Investigation Division in the second room of the CIV, the room dubbed “the Box” because of its perfectly square dimensions.

FID detectives interviewed the Special Ops officers one by one about the arrest gone sideways, and Ballard was listed as last to be questioned. Each officer had a union defense representative at their side, because they all knew that the outcome of the shooting investigation could determine their career paths. There was a somber silence hanging over everything. A highly trained SWAT team had killed the wife of a suspect under arrest. It was a colossal failure of tactics. Added to that, the dead woman was black and this would invariably draw massive public scrutiny and protest. It would invariably lead to rumors that the victim had been unarmed and simply gunned down. The true story—as bad as it was on its own—would be bent to the needs of those with agendas or axes to grind in the public forum. Everybody on scene knew this and it resulted in a blanket of dread descending over the proceedings on the residential street in Rialto.

It was almost three hours after the shooting before Ballard was finally interviewed. The session with an FID detective named Kathryn Meloni lasted twenty-six minutes and was largely focused on the tactics Ballard had used during the Kidd arrest and the tactics she had observed being used by the arrest team. Ballard’s defense rep, Teresa Hohman, happened to have been in Ballard’s academy class, where they competed closely in all the physical challenges for top female recruit but always had beers and cheers at the academy club after. It was that bond that had prompted Ballard to ask her to be her rep.

Up until the final minutes of the questioning, Ballard believed she had given no answer that could come back on her or the Special Ops team in terms of mistakes or poor tactics. Then Meloni hit her with a trap question.

“At what point did you hear Lieutenant Gonzalez or anyone else order someone to either watch or guard the front door?” she asked.

Ballard took several seconds to compose her answer. Hohman whispered in her ear that there was no good response, but that she had to answer.

“There was a lot of yelling,” Ballard finally said. “Screaming at Elvin Kidd in the truck. I was concentrating on him and my role in the arrest. So I didn’t hear that particular order when it was given.”

“Are you saying that there was an order and you just didn’t hear it?” Meloni asked. “Or was it that there was no order given?”

Ballard shook her head.

“See, I can’t answer that one way or the other,” she said. “I had a laser focus on what I was doing and needed to be doing. That’s how we’re trained. I followed my training.”

“Going back now to the planning meeting prior to the operation,” Meloni said. “Did you tell Lieutenant Gonzalez that the suspect was married?”

“I did.”

“Did you tell him or members of the team that the wife could be expected to be in the home?”

“I think we all knew, making the arrest so early in the morning, that we could expect her to be on scene. In the house.”

“Thank you, Detective. That’s it for now.”

She reached over to turn the recorder off but then stopped and turned back to Ballard.

“One more thing,” she said. “Do you believe that killing Mrs. Kidd may have saved the lives of officers today?”

This time Ballard didn’t pause.

“Absolutely, yes,” she said. “I mean, we were all wearing vests and those guys had ballistic helmets and so forth, so you can never be sure. But I was standing there in the open in front of the pickup and she could have shot me. Then for a moment she hesitated and got hit herself.”

“If she hesitated, do you think she was not intending to fire her weapon?” Meloni asked.

“No, it wasn’t that. She was going to shoot. I could feel it. But she hesitated because I was between her and her husband—until he took off running, that is. I think she thought that if she shot and missed me, she might hit him. So that’s when she hesitated. Then she got hit and maybe that saved my life.”

“Thank you, Detective Ballard.”

“Sure.”

“If you don’t mind staying in the room, your captain wants to come in and speak to you next.”

“My captain?”

“Captain Olivas. You were working this case for him, correct?”

“Oh, yes, correct. Sorry, I’m still a little shaken up.”

“Understandable. I’ll send him in.”

Ballard was surprised that Olivas was on scene. They were more than an hour away from the city and she hadn’t expected him to be involved in the FID investigation at all. Her mind raced and she began to feel dread at the realization that Olivas must have been informed about the case that had led to Elvin Kidd. He knew what she had done.

“He told me he wanted to speak to you alone,” Hohman said. “Is that okay?”

She and Teresa still met for beers from time to time, even though their paths in the department were quite different. Ballard had previously told Hohman of her history with Olivas.

“Or I can stay,” she said.

“No,” Ballard said. “I’m okay. You can send him in.”

The truth was Ballard didn’t want a witness to what might come out or happen next, even if that witness was her own friend and defense rep.

After Teresa left, Olivas entered the CIV, walked through the outer room and into the Box. He silently took a seat across the table from Ballard. He stared at her for a moment before speaking.

“I know how you did it,” he said.

“Did what?” Ballard said.

“Got my signature on the wiretap warrant.”

Ballard knew there was no use denying the truth. That wasn’t the right move here.

“And?”

“And I’m willing to play along.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got a year until I’m out. I don’t need another fight with you and, right now, this is another feather in my cap. We took down a murderer, cleared a thirty-year-old case.”

“We?”

“That’ll be how it plays. We both win. You keep your badge, I look good. What’s not to like about that?”

“I guess that woman who got her head blown off might find something not to like.”

“People do stupid things in high-stress situations. Gangbanger’s wife? There will be no blowback on this one. Internally, at least. There will be protests and Black Lives Matter and all of that. But internally she doesn’t matter in this equation. She’s collateral damage. What I’m saying, Ballard, is that I could take you down for this. Take your badge. But I’m not. I’m going to give you credit for this. And you give me credit right back.”