by Blake Pierce
“Just listen,” he insisted. “Then you’ll understand.”
He turned and walked quickly back into the cottage, never looking back. Jessie sat in the driveway, slightly stunned. After a few seconds, she turned the car back on and backed out, unsure what to do next. She had planned to go to the law firm but that suddenly seemed less pressing.
She considered going back to the station to play the interview there. But something about the intensity of Estrada’s warning made her reluctant.
Great. I haven’t even listened to the thing yet and it’s making me paranoid.
Unable to wait any longer, she pulled into the parking garage of a nearby shopping plaza and followed the turns down to the lowest level. She parked, got out, and removed her laptop from her trunk. The garage radiated a heavy silence, muffling her footsteps. She looked around but didn’t see a soul. On this level, there were only a couple of other vehicles, both unoccupied.
She got back in the car, locked the doors, turned on the laptop, and put in her headphones. She paused for a moment before inserting the thumb drive, wondering if it actually included a virus intended to delete her files.
Looking down at the hand holding the drive, she saw that it was trembling slightly. The anxiety of the moment threatened to overcome her. Estrada, despite his seeming openness, was still a source of suspicion. What if he was using her curiosity against her?
Shaking her head at how quickly she’d gone down the rabbit hole, she dismissed the theory and popped in the drive and clicked on the file.
Identified only by the name “Marla,” it started to play. A male voice began to speak in what sounded like an empty room. His voice echoed off the walls.
“The date is April 19th, 2017. The time is 11:41 a.m. This is Detective Brian Shore commencing interview with subject Marla, not her real name. Are you ready to proceed?”
“Yes, sir,” a female voice said meekly. She sounded about twelve.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Where do you live?” Shore asked.
“I’m originally from Reseda but for the last few months I’ve been staying in Pacific Palisades.”
“Can you describe your living situation?”
There was a brief silence, after which the detective added, “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
That seemed to give the girl the confidence to answer.
“It’s a huge house. There are nine of us there, although the number of girls changes a lot. We share bedrooms, usually three but sometimes four per room.”
“Are you there voluntarily?”
“We’re kept there,” she said. “They have security guards and a huge wall so that no one leaves without permission.”
“What happens at the house?”
“That’s where we’re kept for when we’re needed,” she told him.
“Needed for what?”
“To have sex with the men,” she said as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Jessie gasped softly, then glanced around the garage to make sure no one had heard her despite the closed doors and windows. The detective continued.
“You were kept at this house against your will and men would come there to have sex with you, also against your will?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I mean, I didn’t fight it after the first few times. But I didn’t want it.”
“Did you recognize any of the men who came to the house?” Shore asked.
“No. But sometimes I was blindfolded. I think when that happened, I was with someone famous.”
“Were you only made to have sex at this house?”
“No,” she said. Jessie could tell from the quaver in the girl’s voice that they were entering delicate territory.
“Where else?”
“I was taken on a private plane to a country where they spoke another language.”
“Did you recognize the language?”
“Uh-uh,” she said, sounding apologetic.
“That’s okay,” Detective Shore said. “Did you recognize anyone on the plane?”
There was no response.
“You can’t just nod,” Shore reminded her. “We need a verbal response.”
“Yes, I recognized someone.”
“Who was that?” he asked.
“The rich guy, Otis.”
“Are you referring to Jasper Otis?”
“Uh-huh,” she answered quietly.
“For the record, I am currently holding up a photograph of Jasper Otis. Is this the man from the plane?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What happened on the plane?”
“On the plane?” she repeated. “Nothing. It didn’t happen there. It was in the country.”
“What happened when you got to the country?”
There was another brief pause. Jessie thought Detective Shore was going to have to cajole her again, but then she answered.
“Are you asking about what he did to me or what he let the other men do to me?”
Before he could reply, Jessie heard what sounded like a door opening. A second, extremely agitated male voice spoke.
“What the hell, Shore? I thought you were told to hand this case over.”
“I just thought I’d get the ball rolling—” Shore started to say.
“This is an unauthorized interview with a minor, without parental consent. You could be suspended or worse. Shut off the tape.”
“But sir—”
“Shut it off now!”
The tape ended and so did the audio file.
Jessie sat in her driver’s seat for several seconds, stunned. Then she opened her door and started to retch. When she was done, she wiped her mouth and slammed the door shut. She needed to bring the drive to someone and there was only person she could trust.
CHAPTER TEN
She didn’t knock before she burst through the door to Decker’s office.
“Hunt!” he exclaimed, surprised and irritated. “You know I don’t like people just barging in.”
She closed the door and locked it, then glanced around the room, though she knew that was a waste of time.
“Do you have your office swept for bugs?” she asked. “Listening devices, I mean?”
His frown turned into a look of startled concern.
“Why?”
“Please, Captain,” she insisted. “Just answer the question.”
“Okay. Periodically, yes. Maybe twice a year.”
“Are you able to get it done now?”
“I have to place a request.” he said. “On a Sunday, it will take a few hours to get a team here. I have a portable scanner but it’s not as sensitive as what the tech folks use.”
“Are you able to come to my car? I need you to hear something.”
Decker nodded immediately and followed her out to the police garage. Only when they were inside with the doors locked did she pull out the laptop.
“What is this about, Hunt?” he pressed.
“I’m about to play you an audio file,” she told him. “But before I do, you need to know that I can’t reveal how I got it. My source was adamant and I want to respect the person’s wishes.”
Decker looked like he was going to protest, but then seemed to think better of it.
“Play it,” he said.
She did. Listening to it the second time around, she was able to pick up more clearly on the fear in Marla’s voice and something very similar in Detective Shore’s. She also noticed that he was moving the questioning along more quickly than in a standard interview, as if he knew he had limited time. It was clear now that it had taken place in an interrogation room. When it was over, Decker turned to her. His face was as white as a ghost. She’d never seen him so unsettled.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
“I have no idea. You’re the only person I’ve shared it with. I don’t know where my source got it, though I have some suspicions. It sounded to me like the supervisor who shut down
the interview was anxious to keep it quiet. Do you know Detective Shore? Maybe he can shed some light on this.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said in a way that made her heart sink. “He’s dead.”
The anxiety that had been simmering in her gut started to boil.
“What happened?”
“Brian Shore died about four years ago, before you joined the force. He was in the Vice unit in West L.A. division. He was supposed to meet some buddies from his station for a fishing weekend at a cabin one of them has up near Big Bear. But his brakes gave out on the drive up the mountain. They found his car in a ravine about three hundred feet below the road. He was thrown out at some point. The coroner said the car rolled over him. They had to have a closed casket.”
Jessie didn’t respond. Her mind was racing. Was it possible that it was just a coincidence? Was there a reasonable explanation? Next to her Decker was tapping on the keyboard of his phone.
“You’re not contacting anyone, are you?” she asked suddenly.
He looked at her as if she’d insulted his intelligence.
“I’m checking when exactly he died,” he said as he scrolled. “It looks like it was April 21st, 2017. When was the interview again?”
“April 19th,” Jessie said. “He died two days after this recording was made. He was killed over it, wasn’t he?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Decker said. “But it doesn’t look good.”
“And we have no idea who this girl Marla is,” Jessie continued. “She could be dead too for all we know. How can we find out without revealing what we know?”
“Hunt, listen to me,” he said, his voice cool. “The first thing we have to do is stay calm. Getting agitated doesn’t do us any good.”
“Excellent,” she said, unable to rein in her sarcasm. “Staying calm here. Definitely not letting myself get freaked out that a billionaire media mogul may also be a pedophile involved in sex trafficking who possibly had a cop killed to keep it quiet, independent of being a suspect in a current murder investigation.”
“Not the best effort I’ve ever seen on the calm front,” Decker replied. “Don’t jump the gun. Don’t make assumptions. This looks bad but we never actually heard Otis linked to a crime on that tape. It cut off before we got anything concrete. And we have no idea who this Marla is. It could all be a scam to blackmail Otis.”
Jessie looked at him incredulously.
“Do you really believe any of that?” she asked.
“No. But I have to be open to the possibility that there’s an innocent explanation for all this. Tunnel vision is our enemy, Hunt. See the whole field.”
She couldn’t contain her frustration.
“Okay, Coach. Then what’s the next play?”
He let her tone slide.
“I’m taking this to Parker,” he said.
Gaylene Parker ran Central Station’s Vice unit. Jessie had worked with her on several occasions on cases that involved sex crimes. She had always seemed like a competent straight shooter, but this wasn’t any old case.
“Are you sure—?” she began.
“I trust her implicitly,” he said before she finished the thought. “I’ve known her for a decade and she’s the best there is. I’ll go only to her to keep the circle tight, no other detectives from the unit.”
“That’s fine,” Jessie said. “But I can’t tell her where the audio came from either. Now I know why my source was so worried. They must have found out what happened to Shore.”
“I’ll be very discreet,” Decker assured her. “I won’t even say it came from you if you don’t want.”
Jessie thought he was being eminently reasonable, so she decided to try one more long shot.
“Maybe we just bring Otis in on the pretext of talking about the Estrada case, then mention this in passing to see how he reacts.”
He looked at her like he shouldn’t even have to dignify that.
“Come on, Hunt,” he said. “You know better than that. Bringing him in now would be the worst possible move. We have nothing on him for this. We don’t even have a victim. And unless you’re holding out on me, you don’t have anything on him yet in the Estrada murder either. We’re probably only going to get one shot at this guy before his phalanx of lawyers closes ranks. We need to have all our ducks in a row when we make our move. We have to be methodical—no mistakes.”
Jessie knew he was right. But she couldn’t stop the connections from forming in her mind, even if there was no proof to bear them out.
“What if the cases are connected, Captain? What if Millicent Estrada was killed because she knew about this? Maybe the broken neck and missing top are just designed to throw us off and make us think there’s a sex component.”
Decker closed her laptop for her and put the thumb drive in his pocket, a sign that he considered this conversation over.
“Maybe all that’s true, Hunt. But spinning theories doesn’t do us much good. You have to prove it. So go out there and do your job. Find Millicent Estrada’s killer. Let me worry about the recording. If they end up connecting, we’ll deal with that too. But right now, your job is to solve this murder. Got it?”
She nodded reluctantly.
“Where are you headed now?” he asked.
“To her law firm to see if any cases she handled suggest motive.”
“Good,” he said, getting out of the car. “Take Detective Bray with you. You need someone to help keep you grounded right now.”
“Yes, Captain.”
He started to close the door, then stopped himself.
“And Hunt, don’t mention any of this to her. Until we know more, this is strictly ‘need to know’ and she doesn’t.”
At least they agreed on that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Karen Bray was already waiting when Jessie got there.
The offices of Halsey, Burt, Tyler & Estrada were located in a massive tower in Century City, just a long red carpet’s walk away from the building that served as Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard. This skyscraper wasn’t as celebrated but it was equally impressive, forty stories high and housing at least a dozen of the most prominent firms in the city.
“You ready for this?” Jessie asked when she met Karen at the main entrance to the office on the thirty-seventh floor.
“It was this or noshing on chips and bean dip while watching three-hundred-pound men wearing pads slam into each other for a few hours. I think I made the right choice.”
“How did the soccer game go?” Jessie asked, not wanting to directly probe her new partner about the state of her marriage.
Karen smiled, obviously not fooled.
“I didn’t know you were such a fan, Jessie,” she said, before adding, “The Hornets—that’s Ryan’s team—won five to three. They celebrated with pizza and ice cream and then more pizza.”
“Your son’s name is Ryan?”
Karen nodded.
“I didn’t want to say anything, for obvious reasons.”
“I appreciate that, but it’s okay,” Jessie told her. “It’s not like I don’t think about my Ryan five hundred times a day anyway. You mentioning your son isn’t going to send me on a misery bender, at least not one worse than I’m already on.”
“Then you’re made of stronger stuff than me,” Karen said. “If anything like that happened to my husband, Cal, my already brittle hair would be completely gone.”
Jessie nodded, not saying anything about the conversation she overheard. Karen smiled again.
“Surprised to hear that? Don’t be. We have our moments, my hubby and I, but he’s a good guy and a good man. He just tends to forget that when his team is playing, so I remind him.”
“Not my business,” Jessie said.
“You’ll get there too one day,” Karen said.
Jessie couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t know about that. The last guy I married is the main reason that my life’s in the toilet right now.”
“Yeah, but yo
ur Ryan’s not like that, right? It’ll be different this time.”
Something about the comment threw Jessie. The idea that she might one day marry Ryan Hernandez wasn’t new to her. But ever since his injury, she’d put thoughts like that on the back burner. The fact that someone else seemed to think it ought not to be made her wonder why she wasn’t so sure.
“So Estrada just volunteered to let us come here?” Karen asked, snapping her out of her personal crises.
“No, I asked him. But I think he was anxious to do anything that would prove he was helping.”
She proceeded to fill the detective in on the particulars of the interview.
“Do you like him for this?” Karen asked when she finished.
“He has no real alibi and the ex should always be near the top of the suspect list, as I can attest to. But he was pretty straightforward with me and seemed to genuinely want this solved. If he’s lying, he’s very good at it. Plus, it’s clear that he still loved her. The question is whether that got twisted somehow.”
“Your people are doing facial recognition from the party, right?” Karen asked. “To see if he showed up?”
“Absolutely,” Jessie assured her. “I don’t trust his phone GPS. He could have left it at the house. That’s why I called our top researcher, Jamil Winslow, on the way here. He’s going to do a deep dive on Estrada’s tech tomorrow. Maybe the guy ordered food last night. Maybe he was posting online. Maybe a security camera caught him leaving the house. Anything he finds will be more than we have now.”
“You don’t want Ernie Purcell to honcho that stuff?” Karen asked jokingly.
“I think that the less we involve Purcell in this case,” Jessie replied, “the more likely we are to solve it. And I get the sense he’s happy to step aside so he can avoid getting squeezed from all sides.”
Before Karen could respond, the door opened.
“I’m sorry,” said a young man in a sweater vest and jeans. “I saw you on the security camera. Is one of you Jessie Hunt?”
Jessie raised her hand.
“I am. And this is Detective Bray.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “My name is Simon. Mr. Estrada let me know you’d be coming by and asked me to make Ms. Estrada’s client and case lists with synopses available for your review. I’ve set everything up in the large conference room.”
