by Blake Pierce
“Maybe I can help change that,” Estrada said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like I said, I watched the news,” he said. “For days, that man hid the guy who murdered Milly. He knew what Gilliard did. He needs to pay, and not just as some accessory after the fact.”
Jessie, despite what he was saying, refused to allow herself to get too excited.
“What did you have in mind—would you like me to drop off Milly’s personal effects?” she asked, referencing the coded phrase she’d suggested he use if he wanted help.
There was a long silence in which Jessie knew the man was deciding whether he was really ready to pull the trigger on a choice that would change his life forever.
“I think we can dispense with the euphemisms, Ms. Hunt. Do you still have that friend in the FBI, the one who could help protect me?”
“Of course,” Jessie said.
“Could he protect someone else too?”
“Who would that be?” she asked, keeping her voice level.
“The source who gave me that audio file.”
“I think that could be arranged,” Jessie promised. “Shall I have your source picked up?”
“No need. She’s here with me now. We’re currently in a secure office at the firm. Ajax and three of his closest friends are with us.”
“That seems wise,” Jessie said, finally allowing herself to get keyed up. “Did you say ‘she’?”
“Yes,” Estrada replied. “I think it’s safe to tell you now. My source is Maura Shore, the widow of Detective Brian Shore. We met a few months ago at a charity function to help find housing for young girls who’d been snuck across the border to serve as sexual slaves. When she learned that I was an attorney, she entrusted me with the file. She had no idea my firm represented some of Otis’s business interests. I never told anyone about the file, not even Milly.”
“So Milly getting killed at Otis’s home was unrelated to this?” Jessie asked.
“I believe so,” Estrada said. “I don’t think he even knew about the file until I passed it along to you. He may have been surveilling you because you questioned him about Milly’s death. It was just an unhappy coincidence that we discussed the file while he was having you followed.”
“I apologize again for that,” Jessie said.
“You couldn’t have known,” he said. “It’s hard to fully comprehend the reach of a man like Otis until you’re in his crosshairs.”
“But you do and Mrs. Shore does too and you’re still willing to come forward?”
“It’s time for this to end, Ms. Hunt,” he said. “I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since I heard Marla’s voice. Between me and Maura Shore, that should be enough to tie Otis to these cases and to her husband’s murder.”
Jessie nodded, though no one could see her.
“Sit tight,” she said. “I’m going to reach out to the bureau now. Expect a call from Agent Jack Dolan soon. He’ll work out the logistics of bringing you in. And Mr. Estrada?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
By the time Captain Decker and Gaylene Parker walked in ten minutes later, everything had been arranged. Jessie decided not to fill them in just yet.
“How’s Detective Bray doing?” Decker asked as he took a seat at the conference table.
“They think she may have escaped nerve damage,” Jessie said. “The knife blade got a little muscle but mostly bone. She’ll be on desk duty for a while after she returns but she should be back in the field in a couple of months.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Decker said. “And you were cleared—no concussion?”
“Just a bump,” Jessie assured him. “It’s actually my hand that feels worse. It’s so bruised that I can’t even make a fist.”
“Please don’t,” Parker said, feigning alarm. “I don’t want to get knocked out by Sugar Ray Hunt.”
Before Jessie could crack back, Jamil walked in.
“Sorry for being late,” he said. “I just had to wrap something up.”
“Such a slacker,” Jessie joked.
“Don’t give him a hard time, Hunt,” Decker said. “He just verified who the mole is.”
“Wait,” Jessie interrupted. “Is it safe for us to be discussing this here?”
“We had the whole station swept this morning,” the captain replied. “They found multiple listening devices throughout the station, including in here. But we should be good now.”
“Okay, then don’t keep me in suspense,” Jessie said. “Who did all this?”
“Fred Timmons,” Decker announced.
Jessie searched her memory, but came up empty.
“I have no idea who that is,” she said.
“He’s a deputy desk sergeant,” Parker said. “He usually works nights and the weekend shift.”
“That’s how he was able to do all this surreptitiously,” Jamil added. “The station was usually at about one-quarter capacity when he was on duty and he had easy access to lockers, surveillance footage, logbooks, and schedules.”
“And he just did it for the money?” Jessie asked.
“According to his bank account, it looks like he’s been getting payments for the last two years,” Jamil said.
“He was originally paid to bury those cold cases we uncovered,” Parker said. “He couldn’t destroy them but he misfiled some and hid others. So when Otis’s people found out about the Marla audio file, they already had someone in place to steal it.”
“Is he willing to turn on Otis?” Jessie asked.
“I doubt he ever interacted with the guy,” Decker said. “But Trembley’s working on him in interrogation now. If he turns on his boss, maybe we can work our way up the line.”
“That seems to be the order of the day,” Parker said.
“How’s that?” Jessie asked.
Parker smiled broadly for the first time since the meeting started.
“It’s partly because of your sister. Everybody we caught at that house yesterday is climbing over each other to make a deal. That Rico fella tried to hold out for a while. He kept saying your sister made up the sexual assault claim against him. But when he found out that she was the kid sister of the legendary Jessie Hunt, he changed his tune. He knew we’d go to the mat on that. Truthfully, I think he would have kept his mouth shut if not for her.”
Something about that stirred an uncomfortable feeling in Jessie that she couldn’t quite place. The idea that Hannah had made the exact allegation against Rico that was most likely to get him to cave, an allegation that was based on her word alone, seemed awfully convenient. There was no way she was going to question her sister about her claim that a man had tried to rape her. But something about it just felt…wrong.
“People are coming clean left and right, it seems,” she said, aggressively moving on.
“Who else?” Decker asked.
Jessie told them about her call with Beto Estrada. It got Gaylene Parker especially excited.
“Having Detective Shore’s wife come forward could be extremely powerful,” she said, “especially since we may be able to corroborate the suspicion that he was killed. I’ve been having our vehicle expert review all the data on Shore’s car. It’s not definitive yet, but he thinks it’s possible that an explosive may have been used to sever Shore’s brake line when he was driving up the mountain.”
“That would be huge,” Jamil said.
“Yes,” Decker agreed solemnly. “He deserves justice, even if it was delayed for years. Parker is looking into who at West L.A. Division might have been involved.”
Parker nodded. The smile was gone.
“What’s wrong?” Jessie asked her.
Parker looked at Decker, who nodded for her to go ahead.
“I don’t want to ruin our celebratory mood, but it looks like not everyone is going to get justice,” she said.
“What are you saying?” Jessie asked.
“I was interviewing Elodie Peters and I mentione
d the name Marla. She recognized it. She gave us the girl’s real name, hoping it would get her some leniency.”
“Who is she?” Jessie asked, using the present tense though she feared that was too optimistic.
“Her real name is Marlene Janice Cooper. Elodie said that they were recruited around the same time. They went on several overseas trips together. On one of them, when they were both seventeen and losing their cachet because they were too old, Elodie said Marlene was pumped with heroin. It was done purposefully so that a client could have his way with her while she overdosed. He wanted to reach sexual gratification while she was in her death throes.”
Jessie closed her eyes, hoping to somehow push the image Parker was describing out of her head. It didn’t work. When she opened them again, she saw that both Decker and Jamil were looking away. But Gaylene Parker was staring at her, head up and eyes clear, full of righteous anger. This was why she was a Vice cop—to stop this kind of thing.
“What happened?” Jessie finally asked.
“She died with the john on top of her,” Parker said. “Afterward, they weighed her down and dumped her in the river. Elodie named the john too.”
“Who?” Jessie asked. “Was it Otis?”
“No. But he was there. It was Sultan Omar Abdul Salah.”
Jessie sat with that for a moment before responding.
“Can anything be done?” she asked.
“Elodie seems willing to testify against Otis,” Parker said. “She told me that she was terrified they’d do the same thing to her they did to Marlene, so she made herself invaluable, even after turning eighteen. She claims to have recruited more girls in the last two years than most of the other high school recruiters combined.”
“What about Salah?” Jessie asked.
Parker shook her head.
“We’ve already put in a request for his extradition to the State Department,” she said. “But they’re not optimistic. They say that as long as he doesn’t return to the U.S. or visit a country that has an extradition treaty with us, he’s probably untouchable.”
Jessie exhaled deeply, nodded, and stood up.
“If that’s all for now, I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off,” she said.
Decker walked her to the door.
“Once you’ve had some time to decompress, I’d like to discuss how we can get you back soon. Remember, I’m shorthanded.”
“Captain,” she said, trying to sound diplomatic despite feeling exhausted to her bones, “I have a seminar to teach on Friday. I’m supposed to start a new one next week. My boyfriend is learning to walk and talk again. My sister was just used as bait in a sex-trafficking sting. You might have picked the wrong moment to broach this.”
“There’s never a right moment, Hunt.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded. “But I’m not going to think about any of that right now. We’ll talk later. I have some people at home I need to hug.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Ryan made dinner that night.
Admittedly it was just grilled cheese sandwiches, but Nurse Patty said it was part of his physical therapy and he seemed quite proud of the accomplishment. Kat, deciding that both Jessie and Hannah needed a bit of a break, came over to assist.
When they finally sat down to eat, it felt almost like a holiday. In addition to Jessie, Ryan, Hannah, and Kat, Jessie asked Patty to stick around for dinner even though it was officially Nurse John’s shift. Jessie snuck her an extra fifty bucks for her trouble. They even had to bring in a couple of folding chairs from the garage to accommodate all six of them.
Everyone was in a good mood.
“I think we know who the real chef in this house is,” Ryan teased Hannah.
“Don’t get cocky,” Kat shot back at him on her behalf. “Until you can make something that’s not a middle school cafeteria staple, she’s still got the belt.”
“Is this some kind of fancy cheese?” Hannah asked, feigning wide-eyed innocence at Ryan’s culinary accomplishment.
“Yes,” he answered. “It called ‘melted.’”
The two nurses, sitting next to each other, compared notes quietly and Jessie swore she heard Patty utter the phrase “amazing improvement.”
She didn’t talk much herself, preferring to just bask in the glow of the closest thing she’d had to a real family experience in forever. She even pretended not to notice that nearly being sexually assaulted seemed to have had no discernible impact on Hannah, who was giddy after her role in bringing down a sex trafficking ring.
By the time Kat and Patty left, the rest of them, save for John, were wiped out. Hannah said goodnight and headed to her room. As John got Ryan ready for bed, Jessie did one last check on her sister.
“I don’t want to pressure you,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “but do you want to talk about what happened?”
Hannah shook her head.
“Not really,” she said. “Maybe down the line, but right now I just want to focus on the positive, you know?”
Sure,” Jessie said. “I totally get that. Still, I’m going to make an appointment for you with Dr. Lemmon for tomorrow after school. Be as forthcoming as you want or say nothing at all. Either way, I think you should at least have a chance to unload whatever’s on your mind.”
Hannah nodded noncommittally.
“See you in the morning,” she said, effectively ending the conversation.
Jessie sensed that something was off but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Part of her wondered if she’d just spent so much time worrying about her sister that it had made her paranoid. She was tempted to push a little more, but ultimately chose not to. There’d be time for that.
“Goodnight,” she said, ordering herself to get up and walk out without another potentially alienating word.
She left Hannah’s room and returned to Ryan’s, where John was just finishing up. The nurse stepped out, leaving them alone for the first time all night. They sat side by side on the edge of the hospital bed, not talking for a while, just holding hands.
“Have surprise for you,” Ryan finally said.
Jessie marveled at how much clearer he sounded in just the few days he’d been home.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Stand there,” he said, pointing to a small “X” taped on the ground about five feet away from the bed.
She got up and moved over to the spot.
“Face me,” he instructed.
She turned around.
“Watch this,” he said.
Then, with great effort, he grabbed the walker beside him and pushed himself up off the bed. Jessie, fighting the urge to rush over to him, kept her legs locked in place. He wavered slightly as he looked down at his feet, then looked up and winked at her.
Without a word, he took a small, shuffling step with his right foot, then another with the left. He clutched the walker so tight that his knuckles turned white. After about twenty tiny steps and nearly a minute, he was standing directly in front of her.
“Want to dance?” he croaked.
She laughed, allowing herself a rare, full-throated moment of pure joy.
“Yes,” she said. “I absolutely do.”
He moved the walker to the side and put his hands on her shoulders. For a moment she thought he might actually try to dip her.
“Next time,” he said, his eyes bright but his breath slightly labored. “Taking rest of the week…off. Too pooped.”
It was the first time they’d been standing together face to face in forever and she couldn’t let the opportunity slip by. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned in and kissed him. Then, very slowly and carefully, she guided him back to bed and tucked him in. He was asleep before she left the room.
Jessie returned to the guest room, which she was increasingly hopeful was only a temporary arrangement. She got ready for bed, climbed under the sheets, and turned out the lights. And then, within moments, she too was asleep.
And unlike so many recent nights, she didn’t have a single nightmare.
EPILOGUE
He waited until the young man had settled in for the evening before he started.
By the time he rang Jared Hartung’s doorbell, he’d already spent several hours in the man’s house, preparing for the events to come. But none of that planning diminished the excitement of this moment.
It had been years since he’d engaged in a true hunt. For the last two decades, he’d been reduced to the occasional use of the homeless to sate himself, but no longer. After seeing Jessie Hunt, the protégé of his long-time nemesis, Garland Moses, on the news, he’d been inspired. He was ready to resume his work.
“Yes?” Jared said when he opened the door, barefoot and wearing a UCLA T-shirt and sweatpants.
“I’m so sorry to trouble you, young man,” he replied, playing up his hunched back and raspy voice. “My car conked out on the street just over there and my cell phone seems to have died as well. I was hoping I might borrow your phone to call the auto club.”
Jared seemed torn between civic duty and the desire not to be bothered when he was trying to relax.
“Um—” he started.
“I promise not to be a nuisance. After I call for assistance, I’ll wait in the car. I don’t want to disrupt your evening.”
That reassurance seemed to persuade Jared.
“Sure,” Jared said. “The phone’s in the kitchen.”
He stepped inside, and Jared closed and locked the door.
The old man smiled. That was one less thing for him to take care of later. He followed Jared into the kitchen, delicately removing the syringe from his jacket pocket when the younger man looked the other way. In the other hand, he held his wallet at the ready.
“There you go,” Jared said, pointing at the phone.
“Thank you so much,” the old man said as his wallet dropped from his hand onto the floor between them. “Oh dear, I’ll get that.”
He started to bend over, moving as slowly as he could. Jared only let a moment go by before he caved.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it,” he said, bending over.
