Face of Fear (A Zoe Prime Mystery—Book 3)

by Blake Pierce

  They had a map stretched out between them, a printed plan of the venue. It amounted to little more than black square outlines, approximations based on what had been observed on previous raids in combination with city blueprints.

  “There are three exits—here, here, and here.” The unit commander was pointing them out, one in all compass directions but south. “This one is the main entrance, where we will enter, off the road. The other two will both be used. From experience, the gang will split roughly half in each direction, trying to divide our forces as well.”

  “What is this structure here?” Zoe asked, pointing to a rectangle within the building itself.

  “That’s the bar area. Normally we will expect to see the highest concentration of bodies around there, with tables and chairs scattered around this area here. Back there, behind double doors, is the more private clubhouse. Senior members spend their time in there.”

  “That is where we will find Cesar,” Zoe said. It was a comment, rather than a question. They all knew that he was senior enough. That was one of the unwritten rules of a gang like this: once you did time for your fellow members without ratting, you were one of the inner circle.

  “Over here, we have the garage. It’s only a covered roof. The front and back are both open to give them a quick getaway. They’ll have a number of SUVs in there, probably motorbikes and smaller vehicles as well, depending on which members happen to be in the clubhouse at this time.”

  Zoe watched the map, seeing it populate before her eyes. Dots that represented people to her, the way they would mill around, how they would run. Angles and trajectories.

  “Cesar is most likely to flee that way, directly from the private room through to the garage and out in one of his vehicles,” the commander concluded. “We’ll park the van here, stop them from leaving out the front. That will only leave them the option of the back exit. Clark, Marino, and Neil, I want the three of you to go around the building to the garage when we enter through the front. Keep an eye out for Cesar and grab him if he leaves that way, before he can get to a vehicle.”

  Zoe’s mind was racing, but she could see it. She could see it clearly.

  “No,” she said. “He will not go that way.”

  All of the other faces in the van, including Shelley’s, turned to look at her in surprise.

  “No?” the commander repeated.

  Zoe pointed to the map, to the second door to the private clubhouse which opened into the area behind the bar. It was labelled “kitchen.” “He knows this place intimately. He will go through here, into the safety of the kitchen, while you guys storm through into the private room. That buys him extra seconds. He only needs to cross a very small space from this door, which leads from the bar into the kitchen, and the other exit. Very little exposure, and he knows that lower-level members will be running from that door already and causing chaos. It is his best chance of escape. Out of the side door and into the neighborhood, dispersing down smaller roads or into a familiar property.”

  The commander shook his head. “Look, you girls can do what you like. But we know these men. We have a tried and tested way of doing this, all right? Agents Rose and Prime, I’m putting you by the second exit. Again, get around the building and grab whoever comes out, stop him from getting away. Everyone else is with me. Wyatt and Panek, I want you two clearing the room, to left and right. I push on into the back room with Wu and Cosgrove. We aren’t expecting them to be heavily armed. Los Angeles Del Infierno aren’t major players in the local gun scene, but our sources indicate the gang members may have their own individual firearms. No heavy-duty or military-grade firepower. All the same, keep your eyes open and your vests on. All clear?”

  There were nods all around and murmurs of assent. Zoe silently seethed. His plan was too weak. He was putting all his stock in Cesar either still being in that private back room as they stormed through, or escaping through the back door into the garage.

  The commander might have had a plan, but it was not the one she knew was right. She looked up and caught Shelley’s eye, holding it for a second. Her partner hesitated, but then gave a nod.

  That was all the approval Zoe needed.

  She would make sure that they got their man.

  The van shuddered into motion with a rattle of the engine, moving them toward their destination. The atmosphere in the back of the van was palpably more tense immediately, everyone on edge, their adrenaline building. There was no more talk. All mouths were straight, flat lines, all shoulders held at stiff angles.

  “Coming up on target,” the commander said quietly, responding to information from his earpiece relayed by the driver.

  The tension ratcheted up another notch. Zoe looked down and saw knuckles white on handles of guns, in fists, on the edge of the bench seat. Up again, and the van swayed around a bend, all eyes on the doors now.

  “On my marks,” the commander said.

  The van sped up and then braked sharply, the motion rocking them all forward, and over it all the commander was shouting: “Go! Go! Go!”

  The two men nearest the doors pushed them open and were through, and everyone was moving, Zoe and Shelley last on the benches and furthest away, last to move. They piled forward, narrowly avoiding stepping on one another’s feet as they charged, out of the doors and onto the ground.

  The air was a shock of fresh oxygen after the cramped, warm interior of the van, and the light of the day hit them too. Zoe remembered just in time to snap the plastic visor of her helmet down over her face, before rushing toward the main entrance with the rest of them. Three had already peeled off to the side, heading for the exit they would be guarding, and the remainder headed inward while Zoe and Shelley swung around to the side.

  The unit commander himself threw open the main doors, throwing himself to the side so he would not become an immediate target. He and the other cops were yelling, distraction and confusion technique as much as instruction, as they charged into the bar at the same time as Zoe flung open the side door.

  “Armed police! Get on the ground! Hands in the air! Everyone freeze! Armed police!”

  The effect was not the one they most desired. No one stopped and dropped to the floor, or instinctively threw their hands in the air—except for one elderly, overweight man in the corner, who Zoe saw from the side of her vision, giving up immediately. The others took different reactions. They scattered for the doors, chairs and tables overturning behind them and glasses shattering on the floor.

  It was another motion that caught her eye next—a man behind the bar, reaching under it and drawing out a shotgun.

  “Gun!” she yelled out—then, a split-second later: “Shelley, down!”

  Shelley hit the floor, reacting with absolute trust to Zoe’s words. Shotgun pellets blasted though the space above their heads, the space where Shelley would have been if not for Zoe noting the speed and angle with which he maneuvered the gun and figuring out his chosen target.

  Shelley scrambled to her feet again as one of the cops tasked with clearing the bar—Wyatt, maybe, it was hard to say—leapt the bar and tackled the gun out of his hands. The unit commander was still shouting orders, and now he beckoned his other team members onward, past the steadily dwindling stream of people running and toward the closed double doors at the other end of the bar.

  Zoe didn’t need to look at Shelley to confirm their course of action. They had already decided in the van. She felt more than saw her partner head off at a right angle, along the front of the bar after the commander, as Zoe turned toward the kitchen exit.

  Zoe’s gun was holstered at her waist, where she fully intended to keep it, even if her fingers itched toward it as she ran. She knew what she had to do. She had studied images of Cesar taken on his release from prison, and she knew how he was built. He was a gunman, probably quicker on the draw and more accurate than her, and he was also running through a tightly packed space without much room for movement. She had one chance to take him down, and she was going to sti
ck to it.

  A man rushing for the door to the outside bumped heavily into Zoe’s right shoulder as their paths crossed, nearly knocking her off her feet. He swore and dodged around her, and she barely stayed out of the way of the other cop—Panek—going after him. The kitchen exit was a swing door with a round window, like a diner, and she had only a moment to see the vague shape of a man barreling toward her before she committed to charging through it.

  Zoe angled her body low, stretching her arms out ahead of her and to either side, as far apart as she could make them. He was coming right toward her, the man she recognized absolutely as Cesar, and he had no chance to stop his own momentum. He raised a gun in a confused kind of motion, unused to seeing a woman in riot gear charging with her head low, and before he had the chance to react any further Zoe connected with his midriff.

  Her helmet struck his solar plexus hard, sending shockwaves through her neck but also through his nerves and organs. The first thing she heard was him gasping for breath, even as they sailed through the air, Cesar knocked from his feet by the impact and Zoe’s momentum carrying her forward. She landed on top of him, awkward limbs and sprawls, then scrambled for the floor to get her feet underneath her and regain the advantage.

  There was a set of handcuffs already in her fist, ready to go. She took advantage of Cesar’s winded shock, and the gun that had fallen to the floor and spun away underneath a storage unit in the chaos, to roll him over with a force that was perhaps unnecessary.

  “Cesar Diaz, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,” she managed to gasp out, snapping the cuffs onto his wrists and attempting to regain control of her own breath. She rolled her neck slightly, testing it out. No major damage done, and he had gone down like a sack of potatoes. She would mark that one in the win column.

  She looked up to see Shelley crash through the kitchen doors at the other end of the space, with the commander hot on their heels, and managed to give them both a breathless grin.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Zoe leaned her chin on one hand, taking in Cesar Diaz. Even despite the handcuffs and the chain connecting him to the desk he was seated at, he looked defiant. The effect was somewhat undone by the sweat soaking through the armpits and neck of his shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to show off his tattoos, which, it seemed, were just everywhere in this case.

  It was one of those tricks the mind plays: once you notice something and draw particular attention to it for the first time, suddenly you see it everywhere. Of course Cesar Diaz had tattoos—he was a gang member who had just come out of jail. Zoe pulled her eyes back from his biceps and returned them to his face, and the ten-degree tilt of his chin that was supposed to indicate confidence.

  “You going to ask me some questions or what?” he asked, his eyes darting back between Zoe and Shelley, narrowed to slits of distrust. He was trying to appear cool, unruffled. “Because if you don’t, I would like to go back to my cell.”

  His cell was exactly where he would be going back to. The paperwork Shelley was leafing through at Zoe’s side, using her regular technique of ignoring the suspect until they felt the need to fill the silence, was the list of items found at the bar. Guns, drugs, all in large quantities. The kind of contraband that Cesar Diaz wasn’t supposed to be around. It seemed Los Angeles Del Infierno had been busy behind the LAPD’s backs, gathering quite a supply. He had violated the terms of his early release. He was going right back to jail, and probably for a good while.

  “We’re just trying to determine, Mr. Diaz, exactly how long you’ll be enjoying our hospitality,” Shelley said, pretending to still be engrossed in the papers. “You see, all these violations are bad enough. You’re definitely going back inside.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Diaz said, shifting his hands on the table. The handcuff chains clinked together with his movement. “Boring. I got a good lawyer. You ain’t seen me doing nothing.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Shelley shrugged. “Being in the proximity of these items, and of convicted felons, is enough to put you away. I guess you’re thinking your lawyer will get you a lighter sentence. The thing I’m figuring out is whether we can get you life.”

  “Life?” Diaz made a face, his features scrunching together. “Where do you get an idea like that? Hija de puta, think you can play me. I’m not telling you nothing about nobody. You ain’t got nothing on me that could be life.”

  “You don’t think murder is a strong enough charge?” Shelley lifted her eyes, meeting his properly for the first time. “The standard sentencing is life.”

  Diaz reacted with total confusion. “Murder?”

  Zoe took that as her cue, opening the folder she had been nursing and sliding over a photograph of Callie Everard. “Do you know this woman?” she asked.

  Diaz glanced down at the shot, then back up. His face bore a deep frown, running three creased lines across his forehead. “I know that bitch. Used to run around with Clay Jackson. I ain’t seen her in a long time.”

  “Except for when you cut her throat and set her body on fire in a public street, you mean?” Shelley asked.

  Zoe took her cue again, this time moving a picture of Callie’s burned body in front of Diaz. She was in situ, as she had been left by her killer, the smoke still rising from her charred corpse, making it difficult to see the details of the alley behind her.

  Diaz recoiled, his eyes widening in shock. “What the… que chingados…”

  “We also know about your first victim,” Shelley said. “You attacked him in the same way, didn’t you?”

  Zoe slid over two more photos: John Dowling, alive and dead.

  “Chinga su madre! Put this away, I don’t wanna look at it no more!” Diaz shoved the pictures hard across the desk, his chains rattling and yanking his arms back as the pictures spun across the space and landed in Zoe’s open hands.

  “Afraid to look at your own handiwork?” Shelley asked, shaking her head. Despite Diaz’s outburst, she remained calm, unflappable. “Don’t you like what you see?”

  “I never did that!” Diaz was shouting, his voice rising louder and louder as the interview went on. “Dios mio, I could never do that. Not to a woman. I don’t hurt women, got it?”

  “Not even… what was it? Bitches?” Shelley said, laying heavy emphasis on the word he had used himself.

  “No! And this guy, this ese, I don’t know him. I don’t know who that is. That’s just crazy. You’re crazy! I didn’t do any of this!”

  There was a moment of pause in the room, as Shelley and Zoe both observed their suspect. He was breathing heavily, his eyes darting toward the still-visible photos and away, as if he couldn’t stop himself look at them. He seemed to be in some distress. Nothing like the arrogant, cool customer he had been a few moments before.

  Zoe looked at Shelley. After a moment, her partner looked back. She nodded then, clearly understanding the message that Zoe was trying to send: it didn’t seem like this was their guy.

  “I want your whereabouts for these days and times,” Shelley said. “Yesterday, around midday. And then I’ll need an account for the whole of the twelfth, day and night.” They needed proof, after all. Just believing someone’s denial was not really enough. They had to follow through, find witnesses or surveillance footage that could back him up.

  Diaz had answers for everything. His voice had dropped in volume but was still louder than before, the edges of his words ragged with stress. Whatever he had done in the past, he wasn’t prepared to see something as gruesome as the crime scene photographs. That much was evident. “I was with my guys, both times. Yesterday…” He hesitated, stopping halfway through.

  “Yesterday, what?” Shelley asked.

  Diaz lowered his head, giving them a sideways look as he rolled his neck. “Yesterday, I plead the fifth. I wasn’t killing nobody. I just can’t say what I was doing.”

  “Could it possibly involve the large quantities of drugs discovered at your Pit?”

  Diaz didn’t say anything for a long minute
. “Sí.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. If you were involved in something illegal, we’ll hear about it from someone else.” Shelley let the words sink in before continuing. “We’ve arrested sixteen members of your gang, Diaz. Los Angeles Del Infierno are small-time. How many of them do you think we’ll need to talk to before we find someone desperate enough for immunity, or to avoid deportation, that they’ll spill it all to us?”

  Diaz chewed his lower lip, his fingers tracing vague shapes on the tabletop. He was agitated for sure.

  “It was a deal. I’m not saying any more until I get a deal of my own. I want immunity.”

  Shelley gathered her papers together and stood, ready to leave the room and check out what he had told them. It wouldn’t need much work to verify his claims. A deal from the local DA would allow them to move fast, make some supplementary arrests and convictions. Not bad for a day’s raid, even if he wasn’t their man.

  “I would like to ask you about your tattoos,” Zoe said, interrupting her process. She had not yet moved. Throughout the interview, she couldn’t help but be drawn again and again to the marks on Diaz’s arms, neck, and face. The symbols and words, things she didn’t fully understand.

  Diaz frowned deeper, clearly suspicious of the direction she was taking. “What about them?”

  “Tell me what they mean.”

  Diaz glanced down at his own arms, covered with ink. “All of them?” he asked.

  “The ones we can see,” Zoe said, making an impatient motion with her hands. The quicker he got on with it, the quicker they could leave.

  “Uh…” Diaz hesitated, even looking up at Shelley. That irritated Zoe. He didn’t need permission. And if he did, he would have needed it from her, since she was the senior agent.