“How did he get you alone?” We’re getting into it now, through a heart-to-heart off-duty dinner at Renée Ballard’s Malibu home. That question comes from Zamira Parker, and you know who the pronoun refers to. Robert Olivas, who they both worked with in Robbery-Homicide, and who we now know assaulted both women. Episode 5 of Ballard, directed by Brandi Nicole and written by Tori Garrett, employs a brilliantly immersive flashback device to each side of their conversation – that the point-of-view is unreliable only makes it more powerful, since Renée and Zamira’s recollections of Olivas’ predatory nature turn out to be so similar. An after-work celebration at a public, off-site location. A sociable gathering of work friends and colleagues. Liquor flowing, with Olivas always ready to ply each woman with more. In each of their memories, he separates them from the group. In a hallway to the restroom, or outside by a vehicle. To each, a promise to help with getting home. “Safely.”

Renée says she fought him off. Ran straight out the door. “Into my partner, Chastain – and everything in RHD went downhill from there.” And Zamira, through tears, blames herself for letting Olivas drive her. “I heard in therapy that if you’re assaulted by a stranger, you don’t trust the world. But if you’re assaulted by someone you know, you don’t trust yourself.” Renée lets Zamira know: it wasn’t her that let a bastard like Olivas do anything.

From both women’s perspectives, this sequence, some of the most powerful moments yet in Ballard, offers us the rest of the hinted-at story. How the very sight of Olivas raises Ballard’s hackles – “a hatchet in your goddamn back” – and how Zamira chose to depart RHD and the force entirely, even as Olivas flaunts his continued status and standing. God, this man is the worst. But it’s the women he hurt who have been forced to be accountable. 

Learning the scope of Ballard and Parker’s experiences with Olivas make it even harder to see The Follower breezily shooting a game of pool with a joyful Martina Castro. “OK, Loverboy,” Anthony “Montana” Driscoll tells his bent beat cop accomplice in another phone call. “Take what you want. Just make sure I get what I need.” And we catch a shot of Martina showing her new boyfriend Ballard’s office after dark, with all their case information displayed on the whiteboards.

We also follow Driscoll to a nighttime meeting at the Sunbeam Motel. He’s got a banged-up minivan – probably appropriated from police impound – and a duffel bag packed with pistols and small arms, certainly fresh from an evidence locker somewhere. And upon delivery of this gear, when the cartel soldados he’s meeting with ask Montana if he needs a ride somewhere, he’s like “Nah.” Because an LAPD black-and-white is rolling up to scoop him. This guy’s connections are going to some very dark places. 

We really like how Ballard has built its parallel storylines in such a way that the facts and details of all of them merge, converge, and diverge, depending on the day/episode. The John Doe murder, now known under the man’s true name, Luis Ibarra, still existing as a vital cold case, even as that investigation has spawned Ballard’s push into the hush-hush police conspiracy. And the Pearlman murder, originally a singular concern, becoming the unlocking mechanism on serial killer secrets that for years were wasting away in the LAPD’s file room of forgotten tragedies.

With information from a DEA agent who once ran interdiction operations with Driscoll, back when he was still officially on the force, Ballard and Laffont are able to link the dirty cop directly to Ibarra, who it seems he murdered to maintain the man’s silence, since he was about to inform on Driscoll’s cartel buddies. But determining Ibarra’s killer is one thing; finding out what happened to the man’s son, last seen alive as an infant six years ago, is a separate and ongoing challenge.

You know who also volunteered for a challenge? Colleen Hatteras. Sure, she wants to make everyone in the world drink gobs of green tea and realize the benefit of new age crystals. But no facts floating out there in the internet soup are safe from her inquisitive mind. With Ted Rawls’ help, Colleen tracks leads on the blue van previously connected to the Pearlman crime scene and related victims’ killings. And after digging through both the internet and a few scrapyards, Colleen gets a hit that’s solid enough to call for an official search warrant. 

When she phones her boss with the news, Ballard puts the Land Cruiser into a hard U-turn. 

Ballard and her whole cold case team assemble outside a blank, anonymous storage facility. It’s full of identical units. Anything could be inside them. Which is why it was apparently so simple for the real killer of Sarah Pearlman, Laura Wilson, and the other victims to set up a ghastly museum of mementos to his acts of human destruction. As the door goes up on the storage unit Colleen located, it’s spartan inside. But soon the beam of Ballard’s flashlight picks up a shelving unit. Spaced uniformly upon it are cardboard boxes – like “little coffins,” Martina says – but inside each aren’t body parts or photographs but representative trinkets from the serial killer’s victims. A nametag. A necklace. A pair of heels. A little teddy bear that would be cute in any other context. “This is sick,” Parker whispers about what’s done in the dark. “It is,” Ballard agrees, her eyes flashing with anger. “And it stops here.” 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.