“What perceived hint of scandal, Detective?” Hastings pressed.

“I talked to Sandy Kramer. And while it was pretty clear that there is no love lost between you two, Kramer is still loyal to Jake Pearlman.”

“Exactly right, no love lost. Why would you talk to that asshole?”

“This is a homicide investigation. It goes where it goes.”

“You talked to him about the girl with the button in her drawer?”

“The woman, yes. Laura Wilson.”

“The woman. Okay, what did Kramer say?”

“Well, when I asked him about Laura and showed him the photo, he said he remembered her.”

“That’s it?”

“No. He said he thought she might have volunteered and that I should ask Jake because he knew her, too.”

Hastings immediately pushed his cup to the side of the table like he was finished with it. And he shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “I would have seen it. I don’t know what he is now, but Kramer was a drunk back then. That was why he eventually had to go when Jake got serious about politics.”

“How can you know for sure?” Ballard asked. “You weren’t there then.”

“I was there, and I’m telling you, there was no Laura Wilson.”

“You told me that the 2005 election was before your time with Pearlman.”

“No, what I said, or at least what I meant, was that it was before my time as chief of staff. I was there back then. I was Jake’s driver. I had just gotten out of the VA and needed to restart my life, and he said he needed a driver. Believe me, if Laura Wilson was part of the campaign, I would have known, because first of all, it was a small operation, and second, she was Black.”

Ballard paused for a moment. She did not recall the exact words of the phone conversation earlier in the week when Hastings used the phrase before my time. But he had just corrected the record and it matched what Kramer had told her. This caused her to go temporarily off script.

“When I talked to the councilman about Laura, he said he didn’t know her,” Ballard said. “But somehow he knew she was Black before I even showed him her photo.”

“That’s because I told him,” Hastings said.

“Okay, and how did you know? I never got around to sending you the photo.”

“I know you didn’t. But I did what any good chief of staff would do. I don’t go into any meeting with my boss without being prepared. You didn’t send me a photo, and so I went online and googled ‘Laura Wilson murder Los Angeles.’ And what came up? A photo of her that ran in the Times. Poor kid finally got famous as a murder victim. There was a whole story on it.”