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OTHER THAN BALLARD, who was a full-time sworn officer, the members of the Open-Unsolved Unit were all volunteers.
Tom Laffont, retired FBI; Lilia Aghzafi, who had done twenty years with Vegas Metro; and Paul Masser, formerly a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office. Colleen Hatteras had never been a police officer. She had been a stay-at-home mom who got hooked on genetic genealogy and took online courses in its application to law enforcement.
The newest member of the unit was Anders Persson, who was even more of an outlier than Hatteras. His law enforcement experience was limited to volunteer work with the Swedish Police Authority in his hometown of Stockholm. But Persson, just twenty-eight years old, now ran an L.A.-based software company by night and assisted the OU team by day.
Persson was the go-to guy when it came to navigating the internet and finding people who had gone to extreme lengths to avoid being found.
Darcy Troy was the DNA tech who handled cases from the Open-Unsolved Unit.
“What’s the vic’s name?” “Shaquilla Washington,” Laffont said. “A south-end case. Didn’t get much attention in the day.”
John was John Lewin, the deputy DA assigned to prosecute cases from the Open-Unsolved Unit.
“Dig Down.”
We just got a hot shot on the Pillowcase Rapist.”
The Pillowcase Rapist had terrorized the city for five years beginning at the turn of the century. Dozens of women were assaulted in their homes. Each had been sleeping and woke up as a pillowcase was pulled over her head, blinding her to her attacker. After the rape, he choked each victim into unconsciousness, hog-tied her with plastic snap ties, and escaped.
“He’s the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court,” Hatteras said. “The Honorable Jonathan Purcell.”
The last Ballard heard about her mother, she was living somewhere in Maui, the Hawaiian island where Renée had been abandoned at age fourteen—until Tutu had found her and taken her to California.
Taking on the pain of others camouflages your own.
sometimes the mind grows tired and drops its defenses, and things come forward.”
Ballard did not put much stock in so-called coincidences—Harry Bosch had taught her that—
Been bingeing The Lincoln Lawyer, if you can believe it.”
She’s young. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.”
the number of sovereigns in the country had grown markedly since the twin ideological earthquakes of the COVID pandemic and the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
names of several authors she recognized, including some she had even read: Child, Coben, Carson, Burke, Crumley, Grafton, Koryta, Goldberg, Wambaugh, and many others.
“Well—you have to hear me out, because this is going to sound… weird, I guess. And don’t laugh, but I think I might have solved the Black Dahlia case.”
TERROR SUSPECT ROAMED COUNTRY FINDING RECRUITS
Get off your ass and knock on doors,’”
You’re like my dad when he was on a case. Driven. Nothing else mattered.”
My dad wasn’t always the easiest guy to live with but when he was engaged in something, he was fucking engaged.
But remember, Ballard, think before you act. There are consequences. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The laws of politics are the same as the laws of physics.”
