“Yeah, and she was his girlfriend. That was his defense: they had sex that night, he went home, and the killer came next. And now we know that’s what happened. It was Rawls, not Ochoa. The murder weapon was in the box. You have the autopsy report right there in front of you. Blunt force trauma, circular impacts to the skull, one inch in diameter. Those were hammer blows, Vickie. It’s obvious.”

“I know all of that, Renée. That’s not the point. We need linkage to Rawls. Were there any prints on the box? Anything that directly ties it or its contents to him?”

“No, I had it processed. No prints, no fibers, no DNA from Rawls. But remember, he was getting rid of the box. He would have made sure it was clean and not traceable to him. The only flaw in the plan was that we were onto him and Bosch was watching. He didn’t count on that until he saw Bosch and tried to flee.”

“There are just too many holes in it. I can’t take it across the street. Not yet. I need you to get more evidence.”

Blodget’s office was in the Hall of Justice, which was directly across Temple Street from the downtown criminal courthouse, where the elected D.A.’s office was located on the sixteenth floor.

“You said Bosch got into an argument with a resident there,” Blodget said. “Did you talk to this man? Did he see Rawls dump the box?”

“I doubt he had an angle on it,” Ballard said. “But no, we haven’t talked to him. I didn’t think it was necessary when the rest is so obvious.”

“And nothing in property or evidence storage from the case?”

“No. After Ochoa lost his last appeal, there was an evidence disposal order from the court. There is nothing but what you have right there. No crime scene to go back to, no witnesses to show photos of Rawls to. Just the box.”

Blodget nodded and wrote something down.

“Then there’s nothing I can do at the moment,” she said. “I’m sorry, Renée.”

“This is because of the recall, isn’t it?” Ballard said.

The district attorney was facing a recall election because his liberal policies of making it more difficult to send offenders to prison had resulted in a surge in crime stats across Los Angeles County. New directives from the sixteenth floor, which did not require bail for most crimes, prevented prosecutors from adding penalty enhancements for use of guns in the commission of crimes, and deferred prosecution for misdemeanors and even some violent felonies, had created a revolving-door justice system. The media routinely reported on suspects freshly released from jail without bail or without being charged and then committing exactly the same types of crimes—sometimes within hours.