Ballard's first stop was Property Division, where she checked out the sealed evidence box marked with the John Hilton murder case number.  She could tell right away that it was not a twenty-nine-year-old box and the sealing tape was not yellowed as would have been expected.  The box had obviously been repacked, which was not unusual.  The Property Division was a massive warehouse but still too small for all the evidence stored there.  Consolidation was an ongoing project and old, dusty evidence boxes were often opened and repacked in smaller boxes to save room.  Ballard had the evidence list from the murder book that she could use to make sure everything was intact - the victim's clothes, personal belongings, etc.  She was primarily looking for two things: the expended bullet retrieved from Hilton's body during autopsy and the casing retrieved from the floor of his car.

She checked the sign-out sheet on the box and saw that, other than the repackaging that had taken place six years earlier, the box had apparently not been opened since it was placed in Property by the original two detectives - Hunter and Talis - nearly three decades before.  This would generally not be unusual because no suspects had ever been developed, so there was no reason to analyze collected evidence in regard to a potential killer.  Hunter and Talis had collected the evidence and had a list of the box's contents in the murder book.  They knew firsthand what they had.  They had seen it and held it.
However, what Ballard did find curious was that John Jack Thompson, when he took possession of the murder book and apparently started working the case, had never gone to Property and pulled the box.  He had never checked out the physical evidence.

It was literally the first move Ballard had made.  Yes, she had the property list from the murder book, but she still wanted to see the evidence.  It was a visceral thing, like an extension of the crime scene photos.  It brought her close to the case, closer to the victim, and she could not see pulling and working a case without this necessary step.  Yet Thompson, the mentor to two generations of detectives, had apparently chosen not to.

Ballard put the question aside and started going through the contents of the box, checking them off against the list from the murder book and studying each piece of clothing and every item gathered from the Corolla.  She had seen something in the crime scene photos that she wanted to find: a small notebook that was in the console between the front seats of the car.  An entry on the property list said simply notebook, with no description of its contents or any detail about why Hilton kept a notebook by his side in his car.