Hard Evidence

by Pamela Clare

  "The senator." Julian sat, picked up his toast, took a bite.

  Her eyes narrowed. "I'm not going to ask how you know that."

  "And I'm not going to tell you."

  While they ate, Julian talked her through what would be happening that day. The cops would be running a check on the prints they'd lifted and ought to know before the end of the day if anything turned up. In the meantime, he was going to ask Irving to assign someone to watch her building around the clock.

  "Are you sure that's really necessary?" She sipped her orange juice. "I hate to pull some cop off the street. For all we know, last night was just some random thing."

  He could tell she was trying to be brave, and he had to admire her for the attempt. But he knew last night had scared the hell out of her. It had scared the hell out of him.

  "Could be." Then he told her what he'd kept to himself. There was no easy way of saying it, so he simply said it.

  "Mr. Simms, the other witness, is dead. His brother found him two days ago in their house in Omaha."

  The color drained from her face, and her gaze collided with his, her eyes wide.

  "The coroner ruled it a heart attack, but I'm not buying it."

  "Wh-why not?"

  "As a reporter, do you ever go on instinct, Tessa?"

  She nodded, and he could tell she understood.

  "I'd like you to meet me at six at the shooting range. We can take up where we left off."

  "I thought you said I had great aim."

  "There's a hell of a lot more to shooting a gun than aim."

  "Okay." Then she closed her eyes. "I wish I were tougher. I really am trying to be strong about all of this, but inside I feel so afraid."

  He reached across the table, took her hand, felt the current that always seemed to pass between them. "From where I'm sitting, honey, you're doing just fine."

  Her small fingers laced through his, and he saw her pulse leap against her throat. "In case you're wondering, I no longer despise you. I have almost completely forgiven you for arresting me and blowing my interview."

  He wanted to kiss her, to pull her into his lap, to lift that dress and put a really big run in her pantyhose. But this wasn't the time, and he wasn't the right man. "You're welcome."

  Five minutes later, they stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, where the front door Julian had shattered with his Sauer was boarded up and awaiting replacement. His hand on her back, he felt Tessa shiver.

  "He did this, didn't he?" she said as they opened what was left of the door and stepped into the fall sunshine.

  "No. I did."

  Tessa was not in the mood for Tom's crap. She had too much on her mind. Briefcase in hand, she tried to slip past his office unnoticed, but failed. "Novak!"

  Her colleagues looked up from their work, casting her sympathetic looks.

  She turned back and marched into his office. "You bellowed?"

  He glared at her from under bushy white brows. 'Take a seat, and shut the door."

  She refused to do either. "Why? They'll be able to hear you anyway."

  "I hope you aren't planning on taking this morning as paid time off. Our policy—"

  "I'm sorry if I failed to live up to your high standards this morning." She heard her voice quaver, but this time it was with anger, not tears. It was all she could do not to shout. "Last night a man who might be connected to the murder I witnessed last week broke into my home and groped me while I was asleep. Most employers would offer some sympathy or perhaps suggest some time off when one of their staff has been assaulted. But all you care about is what we can put in the paper. Are we reporters people in your eyes, Tom, or is the justice you talk about only for nonemployees?"

  His cheeks turned mottled, and she could tell he was pissed. "Our policy—"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Tom! Screw your policy!" Lily McMillan, Kara's petite and feisty mother, sat in a chair to the left of Tom's desk wearing a navy blue leotard, a batik broomstick skirt of orange and gold, and a rosary. Tessa had been so upset with Tom, she hadn't noticed her. "I'm so sorry, Tessa, sweetie. Kara told me about the shooting—and now this. Is there anything I can do? I know a medicine man who does cleansing ceremonies."

  Tessa almost smiled. "Thanks, Lily. I appreciate the offer."

  "I'm sorry you were attacked, Novak." A muscle jumped in Tom's jaw. "The paper will, of course, be happy to accommodate your every whim."

  "You've got to bear with him, dear," Lily said, as if speaking of a child. "He's learning."

  Tessa tried not to laugh. "Thank you, Tom."

  The Lily McMillan Fund, indeed.

  She turned to find the rest of the I-Team standing behind her and felt a rush of warmth. They'd been ready to back her up. They walked with her back to their desks, each of them snowing her in his or her own way that they cared.

  Kat gave her arm a squeeze. "A ceremony isn't a bad idea. Let me know if I can help."

  Matt offered to fetch her a latte. "Nine shots or ten?"

  Sophie walked with her to her desk, gave her a tight hug. "God, Tess, I was so worried! I'm so glad you weren't hurt! Do you want to talk about it?"

  But Tessa didn't think she could talk about it—not here, not now, not if she wanted to hold it together and get through the afternoon. "Thanks. I appreciate it, but I… I just can't."

  Sophie seemed to understand. She changed the subject, started back toward her own desk. "Your article has spawned a media feeding frenzy on gangs. All the stations picked up on it. Gangs are all they're talking about."

  "Copycats." Tessa sat at her desk, sorted through press releases and e-mails, then screened her messages.

  A long rambling message from someone who felt the Denver police had confiscated his ganja plants unfairly. A message from the director of the Denver Rescue Mission praising today's article. An irate message from a woman who lived near Curtis Park complaining that Tessa's article was going to make it impossible for her to sell her house.

  Her finger was still on the delete key when the next message began to play.

  "Hi, Tessa. It's your mama. You sound so professional in your message. I thought you might want to know your grandpa died. His liver finally gave. I left Rosebud after the funeral— saved all the money you sent and got a job waiting tables at a Denny's here in Aurora. It's a good job—nice people. Anyway, I don't want to bother you none. I know you're busy. I been keeping track all these years, reading your articles over the Internet at the library. I'm real proud of you. I wanted you to know that. I hope I can see you now and again. My number is…"

  But Tessa didn't hear. Numb with shock, she sat, frozen, until the message ended and the voice-mail program prompted her into action. She hit replay and had listened to the message three times before she managed to get the number down.

  Her grandpa was dead, and her mother had moved to Colorado.

  For her grandfather, Tessa felt nothing. He'd been a drunk, and an angry drunk. She'd spent her childhood doing all she could to avoid him, only feeling safe when he'd lain passed out next to an empty bottle. The world was a better place without him.

  But her mother…

  Tessa had cherished her when she was little. Then Tessa had grown up, and she'd learned to feel shame.

  Tessa's mama is her sister—and her mama. That's what my mama says.

  Tessa didn't have time for a family reunion. Her world was already in chaos. She'd witnessed a murder. She was in the middle of an investigation. Some crazy man had followed her into her home and groped her. And she might be well on her way to becoming infatuated with a man who was interested in her only for sex. The last thing she needed was her mother—or any part of Rosebud, Texas—back in her hard-won life.

  She saved the message, tucked the piece of paper with her mother's phone number into her desk drawer, and picked up her files. She had an interview in half an hour, and she needed to prepare.

  Alexi looked at the photograph of the young woman reclining in her bath. She was quite prett
y. Her long, curly blond hair trailed in the water, clung to her skin. Her breasts were full, her nipples ripe and rosy. She looked like she was sleeping—or newly dead.

  "So this is the reporter." Alexi lifted his gaze to the man he'd ordered to watch her. "Did you kill her, too?"

  The man—Alexi thought his name was Johnny—shook his head fiercely, sweat beading on his upper lip. "No! You told me to watch her, so that's what I'm doing. I'm doing exactly what you said."

  "This I am glad to hear. It saves me the trouble of shooting you as I did your friend." Alexi looked again at the photo. The girl would look better tied to his bed. "You must have gotten very close to take this picture, yes? Did she see you?"

  Johnny—if that was his name—shook his head and grinned, a smile that revealed crooked teeth. "I'm more careful than that. She was sound asleep."

  There was a gleam in the boy's eyes Alexi recognized. "You want her, I think."

  Johnny licked his lower lip. "I was thinking there might be other ways of getting her out of the way besides killing her."

  Alexi laughed, feeling a new respect for the man who not long ago had been on his knees in a pool of his own piss. "If I tell you to kill her, you can do whatever you want with her before you pull the trigger. But I do not yet know what to do."

  So far the girl hadn't proved to be a problem. She'd written the eyewitness account, true, but since then she'd been pursuing gangs. This was not a bad thing. The more the police and media focused on gangs, the easier it was for Alexi to conduct business unseen.

  Besides, Alexi had bigger problems. Zoryo was missing. The man who'd been his friend since they were boys selling drugs on the frigid streets of Gzel had vanished from the face of the earth. No one had seen him for a week.

  It was possible he'd been arrested, but Alexi would have heard something by now. He had moles in the police department arid a puppet to keep him informed of the goings-on at the FBI. He knew, for example, that the idiot he'd shot last week had been found and identified and that his fingerprints had been linked by the tireless Julian Darcangelo to the basement apartment and, thus, the shooting. He knew the old man's death had been ruled a heart attack as planned. He knew that one of his operations in Longmont had been shut down— small potatoes, as Americans liked to say, but unfortunate.

  But none of his sources had heard a thing about Zoryo. And that frightened Alexi all the more. Was it possible Zoryo had double-crossed him? If so, Alexi would take care of him, old friend or not.

  He tucked the photo into his pocket. "Go keep an eye on your princess, but do not become so infatuated with her that you find it hard to pull the trigger if that time comes. If you need pussy, you know where to find it."

  Chapter 12

  Julian leaned lazily against the wall of the interrogation room and let his prey sweat. The man stared down at photographs of himself approaching and leaving the basement apartment, his face pale, perspiration beading along his receding hairline.

  Harold Norfolk was a prominent obstetrician who delivered lots of babies, served as a deacon in his church, donated generously to charity—and had a taste for teenage girls. He had a lot to lose. And a lot to answer for.

  Norfolk sat back in his chair, his gaze not quite meeting Julian's, his lips drawn back in an arrogant grin. "You showed me these before. They prove nothing. I probably had a patient in the neighborhood, went to the wrong address."

  "Just paying a house call?" Julian allowed himself a slow, predatory smile. "You are a veritable saint, Dr. Norfolk. I didn't think doctors paid house calls these days. Did your visit by any chance include fucking any one of four underage girls held captive in the house?"

  The good doctor's nostrils flared, and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. An adrenaline surge. "I-I demand to speak with my attorney. I won't say another word—"

  Before Norfolk could finish, Julian lifted him out of his seat by his expensive silk necktie and leaned down until their noses almost touched.

  "If you think calling some high-priced lawyer is going to get you out of this, doc, you're sadly fucking mistaken." Julian let the loathing he felt drip from his voice like venom. "Some of the fingerprints taken from a case of birth control pills found in the apartment match those you so generously left on these photos last time you were here. That means your next house call could be to a cell in Supermax."

  Norfolk was shaking now, his voice high pitched, his eyes wide. "Th-this is harassment and assault! I asked for an attorney! You can't continue this interrogation! You can't touch me! I know my rights!"

  Julian tightened his grip, drew him closer still, lowered his voice, using every bit of menace he could summon to its fullest advantage. "I've got a murdered teenage girl and three others who are trapped in a living hell out there somewhere! Either you cooperate fully with this investigation, or you'll find out just how little I care about your rights!"

  He released Norfolk, stepped back from the table, watched fear work its icy claws into the bastard's chest. He knew he was pushing it, stretching the law to the breaking point. But this wasn't about getting a confession that would be admissible in court. It was about extracting information that might save lives—including Tessa's. If he didn't get the information before Norfolk spoke with his attorney, he would probably never get it.

  Norfolk buried his face in his hands. "My wife… my career… This will ruin my life!"

  "Pardon me if I don't give a shit. What about the lives of those girls?"

  "What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry?" He jerked his head up, and he seemed to vacillate between defensiveness and hysteria. "Okay, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have given in to lust and sought out the services of prostitutes, but I'm not the only man to fall into sin."

  "Save the repentance for Jesus, doc. It might fool him, but it doesn't work on me. They weren't prostitutes, and you knew it. They were teenage girls forced to work as prostitutes. Girls forced to have sex with dozens of men each day. Girls you put on the pill so they wouldn't inconveniently get pregnant. That's not just sin, doc, that's industrial-scale rape!" Julian articulated every syllable, lingered on the words.

  "How was I supposed to know how old they were? Some girls look like—"

  "I doubt a jury will believe a trained ob-gyn can't tell a sixteen-year-old girl forced to have sex from a willing adult woman." Julian leaned across the table, resting his weight on his palms. "Either you tell me everything I want to know and help me save the other girls' lives in exchange for leniency, or today starts your one-way trip to hell."

  Norfolk swallowed convulsively.

  Over the next hour, Julian hammered him with questions. What were the names of the men who'd controlled the operation? How had he learned about the crib? Where were Denver's other illicit cribs? When had he begun supplying syringes and birth control pills? Was he currently providing medical supplies to any similar operations?

  He'd just asked Norfolk how he communicated with the various pimps running these cribs when someone knocked on the door.

  Keeping one eye on Norfolk, Julian opened it, saw Irving. He stepped into the hallway and shut the door to the interrogation room behind him, leaving Norfolk to stew.

  Irving handed him a file folder. "Got word on the fingerprints taken from Ms. Novak's bathroom."

  Julian opened the folder and scanned quickly through the pages.

  "They're an exact match for one of two sets of prints that dominate the basement apartment. There's no doubt the attack on Ms. Novak is tied to the shooting and to Burien."

  "Goddamn?" A sick, slick feeling in the pit of his stomach, Julian looked down at the face of the man who'd stalked and assaulted Tessa. Shaggy brown hair. Wide face. Eyes far apart and proportionately small. Long nose. Thin lips.

  The punk's name was John Richard Wyatt, age twenty-two, and he had a list of priors that went on for three pages— vandalism, cruelty to animals, felony theft, burglary, assault, possession with intent to sell. Add to that kidnapping, human trafficking, false impriso
nment, and a host of sex crimes, and Wyatt was headed for eternity in prison.

  Julian recognized him. He'd seen him enter and leave the basement apartment a few times during his hours of surveillance. He hadn't known for certain whether he was a horny repeat John or one of Burien's thugs. Now there was no doubt.

  The bastard had already gotten close enough to Tessa to kill her. What had stopped him? Why had Wyatt grabbed -her breast when he could have taken everything—including her life?

  The question burned in Julian's mind, leaving him angry and on edge.

  "We'll get a warrant, put out an APB." Irving ran a hand . over his bristly hair.-

  "Don't." Julian handed the folder back, resisting the irrational urge to rip it into pieces. "We handle him the way we handled Zoryo. The moment Burien knows we've identified him, he'll pop John-Boy here and toss him out with the rest of the garbage."

  And that wouldn't do—not when Julian wanted a crack at him first.

  'Then we'd better bring him in fast. I want your plan within the hour." Irving glanced at his watch. "In the meantime, I've got to prep for a goddamned press conference. The city is in a gang hysteria. The damned TV stations took Ms. Novak's story and ran away with it. The mayor has called twice."

  "Have you notified her?" Julian knew the news would shake her up. The thought of fear returning to those big blue eyes made him want to hit something.

  "About the prints? No." Irving gave Julian a look through narrowed eyes. "I thought I'd leave that to you. In the meantime, I'm doing my best to hack through red tape and see if I can't offer her witness protection. The city bean counters know the feds are calling the shots on this investigation and think you boys should pay for it."

  Julian shook his head. If Burien had eyes inside the FBI, federal protection would be like no protection at all. "I don't trust—"

  "I know." Irving pointed toward the interrogation room door with a jerk of his head. "How's it going with Dr. Family Values?"

  "He's given me some solid leads—a couple places to check out, some names. He mentioned Pasha's, as well. We'll need a warrant for his home computer."