The Dark Hours (24 page)

Bosch had brought a thermos of coffee with him. When Ballard had picked him up, he came out with the thermos and two to-go cups. Ballard had told him they weren’t going to a stakeout, but he’d said, you never know.

Bosch had always been a sort of homicide guru to Ballard. Ever since the night she caught him going through files in the D-bureau — long after he’d retired. She wasn’t sure whether it was wisdom or experience, or if experience brought the wisdom, but she knew he was never just backup. He was her go-to guy and she trusted him.

They didn’t get to Jason Abbott’s house until after one. The house was dark, and there was no answer to repeated knocks on his door. They debated whether he knew what was closing in around him and had fled. But that didn’t fit with the known facts. He may have learned that Bonner was dead, but even that was a stretch, as the man who had killed himself in Ballard’s apartment had no ID on his person. Ballard knew it was Bonner because she recognized him. But his identity would not have been released by the coroner’s office until it had been confirmed through fingerprints and other means.

Ballard believed that, at best, Abbott would know only that
Bonner was missing in action. The hit man had not responded to the text or reported back to him in any other way. Abbott may have cruised Ballard’s neighborhood and seen the police activity, but again, it didn’t seem likely that he had enough information to cause him to flee. Ballard was the only one who had the whole picture, and she had shared it with no one but Bosch.

They decided to stay awhile and watch for Abbott’s return. And that was where the coffee in the thermos came in.

“How did you know we would end up out here — maybe all night?” Ballard asked.

“I didn’t,” Bosch said. “I just came prepared.”

“You’re like that guy in the Wambaugh books. The Original. No, the Oracle. They called him the Oracle ’cause he’s already seen everything twice.”

“I like the Original.”

“Harry Bosch, the Original. Nice.”

He reached to the back for the thermos.

“You ever see yourself stopping?” Ballard asked.

“I guess when I stop, it all stops, you know?” he said.

He put the two cups on the dashboard and got ready to pour.

“You want some?”

“Sure, but you can sleep if you want. These are my normal hours, so I’ll be fine.”

“The dark hours belong to you.”

“You got it.”

He handed her a cup of black coffee.

“It’s hot,” he warned.

“Thanks,” Ballard said, accepting it. “But really. I got good sleep until Bonner woke me up. One cup and I’ll be good to go all night. You can sleep.”

“We’ll see. I’ll keep you company for at least a while. What
about the car? Aren’t the narcs going to need it back in the morning?”

“If you’d asked me that a year ago, the answer would’ve been … well, I wouldn’t have gotten the car in the first place. But now, post George Floyd and knee-deep in Covid and defunding the department and everything else? Nobody’s doing shit. I didn’t even ask for this car. I just took it because it’s not going to be missed.”

“I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“A lot of people are mailing it in. Crime is up but arrests are down. And a lot of people are quitting. I gotta be honest, I’m even thinking of quitting, Harry. Think you could use a partner?”

She said it with a laugh, but in many ways she was serious.

“Anytime — as long as you don’t need a regular paycheck. You’re pretty short of a pension, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but at least I’d get back the money I’ve put in the fund so far. I guess I could also go back to sleeping on the beach.”

“You’d need to get another dog.”

Ballard smiled and then thought of Pinto, the dog she was supposed to meet soon. He wouldn’t make much of a guard dog, though.

“Still,” Bosch said. “It’s always easier to change an organization from within. Street protests won’t do it.”

“You think I’m command staff material?” Ballard asked. “You gotta be on the tenth floor if you’re going to change anything.”

“Not necessarily. I always thought if you fight the good fight, it gets noticed. And then maybe the next guy does the same thing. The right thing.”

“I don’t think it’s that kind of department anymore.”

She sipped her hot coffee and thought she recognized the blend right away. She held the cup up like a toast.

“Where do you get this stuff?” she asked.

“My daughter,” Bosch said. “She’s always trying different things, then passes them on to me. This stuck. I like it.”

“Me too. Maddie’s got great taste. You said she has a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, they moved in together. In your neighborhood, in fact. I haven’t been there yet. Haven’t been invited.”

“Whereabouts?”

“You go down Franklin and take the first left after the Shakespeare Bridge at St. George. Up there by the reservoir.”

“But you said you’ve never been there.”

“Well, you know, I had to check it out. I haven’t been inside — put it that way.”

“You’re such a dad. Who’s the guy? Are you worried?”

“No, he’s a good kid. Works in the industry as a set builder.”

“That’s a union gig, right?”

“Yep. IATSE, Local thirty-three. He does pretty well, and that’s all they have coming in with her in the academy. It was slow for him last year but now stuff is picking up. I gave them a little bit to get through.”

“You rented that place for them, didn’t you?”

“Well, I got ’em started, yeah.”

“You’re such a dad.”

“You said that. Feel more like a grandfather these days.”

“Come on. You’ve got a lot of cases still to work, Harry.”

“Especially if I take on a partner.”

Ballard smiled and they lapsed into an easy silence. But then she felt bad about castigating the department his daughter was in training to join.

“Sorry about what I said before about the department,” she said. “It’s just a cycle, and when Maddie gets out of the academy, she’ll be part of the new LAPD.”

“Hope so,” Bosch said.

They dropped back into silence and after a while she heard Bosch’s measured breathing. She looked over. He had just dropped his chin and gone to sleep. He still held his empty cup. That was a real skill.

She took out her phone and checked messages and texts. Garrett Single had emailed her the recording of their FaceTime call when he had checked to see whether Bonner was properly intubated during the field trach. Ballard cut the volume on her phone and started to watch it, but then stopped the playback when she realized she didn’t want to see Bonner.

Instead, she flipped over to her phone’s browser and went to the Wags and Walks website. She navigated to the page for Pinto, the dog she would soon meet. There were several photos of him taken at the shelter.

One short video showed the dog interacting with his foster caretakers. He seemed attentive and wanting to please but he also seemed wary and maybe scarred by past experience. Still, Ballard had a good feeling about Pinto. She couldn’t wait to meet him and take him home.

She closed the video when she heard a ping. At first she thought it was on Bosch’s phone. But then it sounded again and she realized it was coming from Bonner’s burner in the Ziploc, which was in her coat pocket. She pulled the bag out and managed to open the phone without taking it out of the plastic.

The text was just three letters: WTF?

Ballard looked at Bosch. He was still head down and asleep. She wanted to answer the text and attempt to draw the person texting Bonner to a meeting. She could use Bosch’s advice here — there were legal considerations to answering the text — but she didn’t want to wake him up.

Looking at the burner phone, she saw that the battery was running low and its charging port didn’t look like it would fit an iPhone charger. Soon the phone would become useless until charged.

On impulse she started typing a return text on the burner:

Complications. Meet at the lab.

She waited and within a minute the phone started to buzz with a call from the number she had sent the text to. She declined the call and sent a new text.

Can’t talk. On the move.

She got an immediate text return:

What complications?

She immediately typed a response.

Tell you at crown. Y or N?

More than a minute went by, then:

When?

Without delay, she typed:

Now. Leave gate open.

She waited for a response but none came. She had to assume the meeting was on. She turned the key on the Mustang and then
looked at Bosch. The thrum of the engine was bringing him up out of sleep. He opened his eyes.

“We’re on the move,” Ballard said. “I set up a meeting at Crown Labs.”

“With who?” Bosch said.

“I don’t know yet.”

The security gate at Crown Labs had been left open as instructed. There was a single car in the lot when Ballard and Bosch arrived. It was a Tesla Model S with a vanity plate that said 2th doc. Ballard parked close behind it so it could not leave.

“Let’s see if Hoyle was telling us the truth,” Ballard said.

She pulled the rover out of its charger and ran the plate through the com center. It came back as a corporate registration. The car was owned by a company called 2th-Doc LLC.

“That was one of the companies I traced ownership of the lab through,” Bosch said. “Jason Abbott is CEO.”

“There you go,” Ballard said.

They got out and approached the door with the cartoon tooth on it. Ballard could tell they were under a flight path to the Burbank Airport. There were no flights operating at this hour but the slight scent of jet fuel still hung in the air.

Ballard checked the roofline and noted the cameras at the front corners of the building and over the door. They would not be surprising anybody inside with their arrival.

The door was unlocked. Ballard opened it and went through first, Bosch close behind her. They stepped into a small empty reception area that appeared to be a place for
receiving deliveries of lab supplies, not people. It was totally silent.

Ballard looked at Bosch. He nodded toward a darkened hallway behind the reception counter. Ballard pulled the gun she had borrowed from Bosch out of her belt holster and held it down at her side as she moved around the counter.

The overhead lights of the hallway were off but Ballard saw no switch on the wall for turning them on. There were several open doors that led to darkened spaces and one lighted entranceway on the left near the end of the hallway. Ballard moved slowly past the first doorway. She reached in and ran her hand up the interior wall where she thought a light switch might be. She found it, and overhead lights came on, revealing the room to be a large lab with several workstations and assorted equipment and supplies for building dental implants and crowns.

She moved along the hallway, becoming increasingly aware of their precarious position and exposure there.

“LAPD,” she called out. “Jason Abbott, show yourself.”

There was a long silence followed by what sounded like a muffled scream from the end of the hallway. Ballard started moving swiftly toward the lighted door, raising the gun up in a two-handed grip.

“LAPD!”
she yelled.
“Coming in!”

She crouched low as she went through the door. She could hear Bosch’s steps right behind her.

They entered a large office that had a sitting area to the left and a desk to the right. In between was a man sitting in a chair. He was partially gagged with a piece of white cloth stuffed into his mouth and held in place by plastic zip ties wrapped around his head and across his mouth. Zip ties also secured his wrists to the arms of the chair and still more held his ankles to the legs.

Ballard swept her aim across the room to make sure there
was no one else present. She also checked through the open door to a small bathroom that was to the right behind the desk. She then holstered her weapon as she returned to the center of the room.

“Harry? You — ”

“Got it.”

Bosch moved in, unfolding a knife he had withdrawn from a pocket. He first worked on the gag, pulling the zip tie loop away from the man’s jaw to cut it. He then pulled loose the cloth from the man’s mouth and dropped it on the floor. Ballard noted that it was a washcloth, likely grabbed from the bathroom.

“Oh, thank god,” the man said. “I thought he would come back first.”

Bosch moved on to the bindings on the man’s wrists and ankles.

“Who are you?” Ballard asked. “What happened here?”

“I’m Jason Abbott,” the man said. “Dr. Jason Abbott. You saved me.”

He was wearing blue jeans and a light blue button-down shirt with the tails out. The zip ties had left marks on his cheeks. He had a ruddy complexion and blue eyes under a full head of dark, curly hair.

When his wrists were released, he immediately started rubbing them to get circulation going.

“What happened?” Ballard repeated. “Who did this to you?”

“A man,” Abbott said. “His name is Christopher Bonner. He’s an ex-cop. He tied me up.”

After crouching down to cut the ties on Abbott’s ankles, Bosch stood up and backed away. Abbott reached down and rubbed his ankles, exaggerating the action, and then unsteadily stood up and tried to take a few steps. He quickly reached his hands out and leaned down on the front of the desk.

“I can’t feel my feet,” he said. “I’ve been tied to that chair for hours.”

“Dr. Abbott, sit down over here on the couch,” Ballard said. “You need to tell us exactly what happened.”

Ballard held Abbott by the arm and helped him move unsteadily from the desk to the couch, where he sat down.

“Bonner came here and tied me up,” he said.

“When was this?” Ballard asked.

“About two. He came in, he had a gun, and I had to let him tie me up with those plastic things. I had no choice.”

“Two a.m. or p.m.?”

“Two p.m. Like twelve hours ago. What time is it anyway?”

“It’s after four.”

“Jesus. I’ve been in that chair fourteen hours.”

“Why did he tie you up?”

“Because he was going to kill me, I think. He said he had to go do something and I think he wanted me alive and with no alibi when he did it. Then he was going to come back and make it look like I did it. He’d kill me, make it look like a suicide or something and I’d get the blame.”

“He told you all of this?”

“I know it sounds fantastic, but it’s true. He didn’t tell me everything. But I’ve been sitting here for fourteen fucking hours and I put it together. I mean, why else would he tie me up and keep me here?”

Ballard knew that the more she kept Abbott talking, the more his story would become implausible and the flaws in it would show.

“What was it he had to go and do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “But I think he was going to kill somebody. That’s what he does.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me. He flat out told me. This guy, he’s had his hooks into me for years. He’s been blackmailing me, threatening me, making me do things. And not just me. All of us.”

“Who is ‘all of us,’ Dr. Abbott?”

“My partners. I have partners in the lab, and Bonner bullied his way in and took control. I mean, he was a cop. We were scared. We did what we were told.”

Ballard had to assume that Abbott did not know that Bonner was dead. But trying to throw the blame on him was probably the best ploy he could come up with when he saw Ballard and Bosch on the lab’s exterior cameras and deduced that it hadn’t been Bonner texting him about “complications.”

“So you think this was some sort of master plan on Bonner’s part?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abbott said. “Ask him. If you can find him.”

“Or was it a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing, you think?”

“I already said I don’t know.”

“Because I noticed those zip ties you were bound to the chair with came from the lab down the hall. I saw a few of them on the floor in there.”

“Yeah, then he must have just grabbed them on his way back here to me.”

“Who let him into the building?”

“I did. We were closed today — tacked the day on to the holiday weekend. I was here alone, catching up on work and he buzzed the gate. I had no idea what he was going to do. I let him in.”

Ballard stepped closer to the couch.

“Let me see your wrists,” she said.

“What?” Abbott exclaimed. “You’re arresting me? For what?”

“I want to see your wrists,” Ballard said calmly.

“Oh,” Abbott replied.

He held out his hands, exposing his wrists below the cuffs of
his shirt. Ballard saw no sign of injury or any mark that would have been left if Abbott had been bound for as long as he claimed. Ballard had had that experience herself once and knew what his wrists should look like.

“How come you haven’t asked me my name?” Ballard asked.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Abbott said. “I guess I just thought you would tell me at some point.”

“I’m Ballard. The one you sent Bonner to kill.”

For a moment everything paused and was silent as Abbott registered her words.

“Wait,” he then said. “What are you talking about? I didn’t send anybody anywhere.”

“Come on, Dr. Abbott, this whole thing here, the washcloth and the zip ties, you did that,” Ballard said. “Not a bad try for the time you had, but you’re not fooling any — ”

“Are you crazy? Bonner tied me up. If he tried to kill you, then he did that on his own. And he was going to frame me for it. We’re both victims here.”

Ballard could picture how Abbott did it. The gag first, leaving it loose enough for him to be able to clench his teeth. Ballard had noted how loose it was when Bosch moved in to cut it.

Binding the feet to the chair’s legs would come next. Then put a loose loop around one of the arms of the chair, then bind one wrist to the other side before putting his free hand through the loose loop and pulling it tight with his teeth. She glanced at Bosch to see if he was on the same wavelength and he gave her a slight nod. She looked back at Abbott.

“I could sit in that chair and tie myself up like you were in two minutes,” she said. “Your story is shit, Dr. Abbott.”

“You have this wrong. I am a victim here.”

“Where’s your phone?”

“My phone?”

“Yes, your cell phone. Where is it?”

Ballard could tell by his eyes and his reaction that Abbott realized he had missed something, that there was a flaw in his story. He had left something out of the plan.

“It’s over there on the desk,” he said.

Ballard glanced over and saw an iPhone on the desk.

“What about the burner?” she asked.

“What burner?” Abbott said. “There is no burner.”

Ballard looked at Bosch and nodded.

“Call it, Harry,” she said.

Bosch pulled out his cell and called the number that had sent the texts to Bonner’s burner.

“What’s he doing?” Abbott said. “Who’s he calling?”

There was a buzzing sound in the room.

“He’s calling you,” Ballard said.

She followed the sound to the desk. The buzzing kept coming in intervals. She started opening drawers, trying to track it. When she pulled the bottom desk drawer out, the buzzing became louder. There, next to a box of envelopes and a stack of Post-it pads, was a black cell phone matching the one Ballard had found on Bonner.

“You forgot about it, didn’t you?” she asked.

“That’s not mine,” Abbott said. “Bonner — he put it there!”

Ballard didn’t touch the phone because she assumed only Abbott’s prints would be found on it. And if there were no prints, then they would look for DNA. She closed the drawer. It would be a critical piece of evidence and she would alert Ross Bettany to it.

She came back around the desk and walked toward the couch.

“Stand up, Dr. Abbott,” she commanded.

“What for?” Abbott exclaimed. “What’s going on?”

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Javier Raffa,” Ballard said. “And that’s just a start.”