“Yes, I see what you mean. Let me do this: I’ll see what we’ve got in our records and get back to you as soon as I can. Okay?”

“That would be great. I’m not at the office right now, but when I get back, I could shoot you over a photo of her if that would help.”

“It may, but I think the councilman will know. He never forgets a supporter’s face.”

“Good. If you can run the name by him—”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

“Thank you.”

Ballard hung up and immediately called Darcy Troy at the DNA lab. She knew she might be stepping on Tom Laffont’s toes, since she had assigned him the medical angle to work, but she wanted to keep things in motion.

“Darcy, it’s Renée. Have you heard from Tom Laffont today?”

“Uh, no, was I supposed to?”

“Not necessarily, but I thought he might have called. On the Wilson case, are you able to see if they still have the specimen swabs they got the DNA from?”

“I can check. It should be there unless there was a destroy order from the District Attorney’s Office, and that is only supposed to happen when a case is closed.”

“Good. Can you see what’s there? And then I need a favor.”

“You want further analysis.”

“I do. I want to know more about the blood. In ’05, they were just interested in finding DNA. I want to know why this guy had blood in the urine. The reports in the murder book are very general. Could be kidney disease, could be bladder. I’m thinking all these years later, we might be able to learn more with serology sciences, you know?”

“I do, and I’ll see what we’ve got.”

“How long?”

“It’s not what I do, but I think I can honcho something. If there is still material. Sometimes they use up everything processing for DNA.”

“Fingers crossed. Thanks, Darcy.”

“You got it.”

Ballard disconnected and reminded herself to tell Laffont that she had already put this in play. She packed everything she had on the table into her backpack, put cash down on her check, and left the restaurant.

It took her twenty minutes to get back to the Ahmanson Center. As she was getting out of her car, she took a callback from Nelson Hastings.

“You find out anything, Nelson?”

“Nothing that I think will be helpful to the investigation. Our staffing records, CDRs, and donor lists are complete back to Jake Pearlman’s successful election to the council six years ago. Everything before that apparently was not kept, because he lost the election. I asked around the office and even inquired with the councilman to see if anyone remembered Laura Wilson and came up empty.”