Blood, a Bullet, and a True Sinner

by Kelly Shade

The trip back to the office was quiet. Once they arrived Lorene and her brother ran upstairs to see Johnny. The little boy was just ten-months-old, but he smiled; it was apparent he missed his mom. Tears of happiness and shouts of joy filled the homicide office.

  Nick and Ian got all the details from the couple who adopted the kid and dropped the charges. The family was completely innocent; Dimitria just fooled them. They were sad but thankful. The family didn’t want to adopt illegally and definitely didn’t want to separate the mother and her child. It wasn’t their fault, but they apologized numerous times to Lorene.

  The director of the nursery was called in with the teachers who were working with Dimitria. They all explained Grigorovich had an excellent record with lots of experience and that was the reason they hired her.

  Ryan photoshopped her photo as if she had fillers on her forehead and cheeks and everyone recognized her. All of them happily agreed to testify against her in court.

  At last they cleared the air, and everyone was free to go home. Except that the homicide detectives. Jane, Connor, Ryan, Nick and Ian had work to do. They had to catch Dimitria Grigorovich.

  “She is on the run,” Jane said casually.

  During the time driving from Lorene’s diner to the station, Blake was staring at her phone. Now she was doing it again, and Ryan couldn’t help but ask.

  “What’s so important on that phone now? I mean we are about to arrest the person responsible for your adoption, and you can’t look away from the freaking screen!”

  “Because of this!” Jane turned the screen to Ryan. There was a map and a little reddot moving away from Santa Clarita.

  “Did you?” Ryan pointed at it with a smile.

  “Yep. I put a tracker in her pocket when I was threatening her,” sniggered Blake. “We may need to call the traffic police. Send them the license plate number and the coordinates.” She pointed at her screen again.

  “Yeah, we may do that!” Ryan smiled widely.

  He called, and the patrol on the spot responded immediately. The traffic policeman stopped Dimitria’s vehicle. He promised to bring her in an hour.

  All Jane and the team had to do was sit back and relax.

  “If we make her testify against Michael Morse we would be able to get a warrant,” Hunt said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, but we still have to go there alone, Conner!” Ryan was biting his knuckles.

  “If we get help from Tijuana police it would be better, Gray!” Hunt insisted.

  “Better for Morse,” Jane added. “He has connections. Everywhere. Probably he has a person here in the LAPD.”

  “And who would that be?” Hunt laughed.

  “Don’t know! What I know is Morse has run that business for years, and no one tried to stop him. There is a reason for that!” Blake cracked her neck. All those sleepless nights made her neck and back stiff.

  Hunt opened his mouth to argue but shut it without saying a word. Maybe he knew she was right. Michael Morse wasn’t a good man, but he was smart. And unfortunately, there were a lot of corrupt people everywhere--including in law enforcement--who would do anything for the right amount of money.

  Someone knocked on the office door. Two policemen walked in bringing Dimitria Grigorovich. The view was enjoyable for Jane. With a devious smile, Blake and Ryan took Dimitria to the interrogation room.

  “I thought we had an agreement. I told you everything I know about Michael Morse,” Dimitria said with an arrogant tone.

  “Maybe you remember Johnny? He is with his mother now, his birth mother!” nagged Jane.

  Dimitria’s face froze. She just realized what happened. Her forehead now was sweaty, her lips narrowed.

  “I want a lawyer!” was the only thing Grigorovich could say.

  “You will get your attorney.” Hunt sat on the desk with crossed arms on his chest. “But first I will offer you a deal. If you testify against Michael Morse, I’ll talk to the DA about a house arrest.”

  “No. I prefer jail. Morse will know that I tattled and believe me he is way more horrifying than you or prison!” Dimitria said in a low voice. “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer!”

  Hunt and Jane tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to speak, but Dimitria was a stubborn and temperamental woman. Blake wanted to put her in a trance, but Dimitria was trained, and Jane couldn’t get to her. Half an hour later the attorney came, and they had to give up. Hunt sent Ian and Nick to run the official questioning. He and Jane had a more important job to do.

  “What’s the plan now?” asked Ryan when they walked in the office.

  “Grigorovich won’t testify. She is more scared of Morse than jail,” Hunt said and collapsed in Nick’s chair. “The only way to take this bastard down is if we can get evidence from his house.”

  “Break in?” Ryan lifted his eyebrows in astonishment. “Connor, that’s a lovely surprise! Finally, you agree to work off the books! Congrats, man!”

  “It doesn’t mean I like it!” Hunt raised his voice “But if it would help catch Rose’s killer . . . I will do it gladly!”

  Jane was looking through the window. She had to come up with a plan good enough to get what they wanted, to arrest Morse and to keep everyone’s jobs. It wasn’t easy to work with people who weren’t experienced in this kind of stuff. Her colleagues were excellent detectives but poor thieves. Ryan’s voice took her out of her thoughts.

  “Jane. You are the boss on this one!”

  “Yeah . . . umm . . .” Blake hesitated. “Can you get the house plan?”

  “Sure!” Ryan said and took his laptop.

  “And please print it on a big sheet of paper, okay?” Blake added.

  Ryan nodded in agreement.

  Nick and Ian walked in with disappointed looks. They tried every trick in the book to convince Dimitria to testify but with no success. Even the lawyer agreed it was best for her to go to jail instead of talking. Ian was sure the attorney was sent by Morse.

  “It was like he was there to make sure she doesn’t talk!” he snarled and slammed the office door.

  “We charged her any way. That’s something I guess!” Nick tried to look on the bright side, but he was the only one.

  “She’ll be dead the moment they transfer her to prison. I give her a day or two tops!” Jane said calmly with a smile. It was like she wanted that to happen. And she really did.

  “We have to call the local police. Maybe they can help,” offered Hunt. He had a desperate desire to do it as legally as possible.

  “They’ll help all right. They’ll help Morse.” Jane was getting annoyed after every suggestion like this.

  “Okay, what if we get more people from here? Narcotics will be interested in catching big-time smugglers . . . Or the FBI? They surely will still investigate him!” Hunt continued with the tries.

  “Can’t you get it?” Blake yelled, and everyone jumped. “He is free to do whatever he likes because someone in the FBI and in narcotics is helping him!” Jane took a breath and lowered her voice “We can’t trust anyone. Rose knew that, and she investigated with Amber off the books. That’s what killed them! Do it for them, damn it; do it for your wife!” She looked straight into his eyes with fury.

  Hunt’s face became red and sweaty. Nobody talked to him like Blake just did. His ears were burning; his blue eyes were gleaming angrily staring at Jane. He opened and closed his mouth several times, and at last, he decided not to speak.

  “Calm down. We are doing this as a team,” Ian said.

  Jane and Hunt looked in different directions.

  “Jane. The house plan.” Ryan waved with a big roll of paper in his hand. He offered to sit at the big table they used for briefings.

  Blake glanced at it but didn’t move. Instead, she sat at her desk.

  “Can you try to hack into his security system?” Jane asked.

  “I told you I’m the best! Of course, I can!” smiled Ryan.

  “Now!” Blake said quietly and looked at him with boredom.
<
br />   Ryan’s enthusiasm went away. Jane’s grimace wiped away his smile. He took his computer.

  “I’ll go out to clear my head, and when I come back, we will discuss the plan, okay?” Blake felt she was too intense. She needed time to think without distractions.

  Jane took a look at the house plan for a minute, grabbed her bag and stormed out. Her spot at the park was empty as always. She stopped at the nearby shop to buy cigarettes and coffee and sat on the bench. Jane took a piece of paper and a pen from her bag. She stared at the empty sheet, spinning the pen in her fingers and narrowing her eyes.

  Jane was trying to envision Morse’s mansion. She had been there just once, but that wasn’t a problem. Blake had trained her brain since she was a child to remember surroundings in detail . As a con artist, that skill was extremely helpful. After a couple of minutes of staring at the paper, Blake started to draw. She made an exact copy of the mansion plan and stopped. Lit a cigarette. And again drew; this time little figures and dots. Stick men represented the guards’ places and the points symbolized the surveillance cameras. After that, she made a line which represented the closest route to Morse’s office. On another note, Jane started writing things she needed so she and the team could go into the house.

  That was it. The moment Blake had waited for twenty years. The documents and all the information she needed was in Morse’s safe. At least that was what Jane was thinking. She knew she would keep the files, just in case, and Michael Morse was her biological grandfather so there was a significant chance he would do it, too. The thought that she was connected to this monster, was making her uncomfortable. But this wasn’t the worst part for Blake. Unfortunately, she saw too many similarities between them. That was what scared her the most. Morse tried to hypnotize her. His eyes were the same as hers. The way he was talking and the body language. It was so similar to her own. He was a prominent psychopath. What if Jane inherited this too? He was a murderer, and Jane killed a man in cold blood the day before. “Am I like him?” she kept asking herself. All of these thoughts made her shake in disgust.

  “Did you clear your head?” Ryan’s voice came from her right side. He was sitting next to her, but Jane heard him as if he were at the end of a long tunnel. She was so lost imagining herself as an insane psycho, sitting next to Morse in his office, that she couldn’t hear what was happening in real life.

  “Jane!” This time Ryan raised his voice a little bit and patted her leg.

  That was enough for Blake to "wake up" from the nightmare in her head.

  “Yeah, what?” Jane wandered around. Her eyes rested on Ryan. “Did you crack his system?”

  “Yep. I can make the cameras loop for thirty-forty minutes,” Gray said triumphantly.

  “Awesome,” Blake said in a monotone.

  “What’s that?” Ryan took the sheet off her hands. “Damn, how did you do that? Is that the mansion and the security guards?”

  “And the cameras. I memorized it,” answered Jane casually.

  “I didn’t know you had that good memory.” Ryan was fascinated by the detailed plan she created.

  “You don’t know a lot about me, Gray!” smiled Jane.

  Ryan made a grimace but didn’t say anything to that statement. He was still a little mad at Jane.

  “When are we going to do that?” he changed the subject. “The break-in I mean.”

  “Tomorrow night,” Jane answered shortly.

  “Are you mad? Tomorrow? We don’t have enough time to prepare!” Ryan jumped in surprise.

  “We have time. Don’t worry,” Blake said calmly and wrote something else on the little note.

  “We aren’t trained for that, Blake. If you have forgotten, we aren’t big-time con artists like you!” Gray was afraid. He had never been in a similar situation, and he didn’t know how to cope.

  “It’s going to be okay, Gray. After all, you will be in the van the whole time. There is nothing to worry about.”

  “You don’t want me in there with you?” Ryan asked with disappointment.

  “I need you behind a laptop, making sure everything is fine.” Blake took a breath. “Do what you are best at and you will help us a lot.”

  “Jane, you realize this isn’t just for you, right? My mom was killed because of that bastard! You can’t make me stay on the side!” Ryan retorted.

  “What are you going to do, Ryan? Yeah, it’s about your mom too and Rose and me, I know that! You are good with computers, and we need someone as backup. Ian, Nick, Connor are trained. They know what to do in the field,” Jane explained.

  “And I don’t, is that what you think of me? A computer geek who can’t take care of himself?” Ryan interrupted in a high voice.

  “No, well, not exactly.” Blake spoke more softly than before. “I just feel responsible for you more than the others. I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

  “If you haven’t noticed I’m not a child! So don’t worry about me, Blake!” shouted Ryan. “Yeah, I may not be able to kill a man in cold blood like you but . . .”

  “You will be in the van, and that’s final.” Jane was sick and tired of keeping an even tone. “And if you do something stupid, our dead bodies will be on you. Got it?” She narrowed her eyes.

  Ryan was breathing heavily. His hands were clenched into fists, his knuckles white. He stood up, took a few steps away from the bench, and then turned around. He stared at Jane for some time and after he calmed a little bit, he spoke. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Blake. We can’t let him escape. Morse should pay for everything he has done!”

  Jane nodded. She knew the break-in was a one-time offer. They were relying on the element of surprise. Blake threw her cigarette butt in the bin. It was time to get back and inform the team about the plan. Ryan was walking with quick steps in front of her. He wanted to avoid her eyes. Frankly, if he could, he would avoid her. Jane walked calmly behind him, repeating the plan in her head.

  The team was waiting for them impatiently. Nick was biting his nails. Ian was tapping on the desk. Hunt’s leg was tapping so fast that his all body was shaking. When Jane and Ryan walked into the office, all three looked at them and started speaking in one voice.

  “Where have you been?”

  “We have been waiting for two hours.”

  ”You could pick up your phone!”

  Jane was stunned by the reactions. She cleared her throat loudly and said, “Calm down! The plan is ready.”

  Ryan walked by her to his desk, pushing her shoulder on the way. Nobody could believe that the gentlest and most polite person in LAPD could act like this. Especially to Jane.

  “What, the hell did you do, Blake?” Hunt laughed loudly, which annoyed Ryan even more.

  “You will know soon enough!” Jane said. “But we need to go somewhere safe.”

  “Safer than a police station?” Nick asked.

  “My house. We don’t know who may be on Morse’s side. Remember, he has people everywhere,” Jane said quietly.

  “How do you know we aren’t among them?” Ryan nagged.

  “Well, Morse killed your mother, and Hunt’s wife, so that excludes you two. Ian is too honest to be a double agent. Nick’s surprise was genuine when I told him what we discovered about Michael Morse,” Jane said with a smile and a sharp look.

  “So I was just surprised?” Nick giggled. “If I weren’t, I would be suspected of working with Morse?”

  “Pretty much.” Jane turned to him with a smile. But it was a charming smile, nothing like the ugly grimace when she looked at Ryan.

  “Awesome,” Lee said sarcastically.

  “Since we are sure there are no traitors on our team, can we go to my place now?” Jane was impatient. “Get the house plan, the laptop, Amber’s notes. Everything we need. And let’s go.”

  All of them headed to the parking lot. Ryan went to his car with the angriest face he could make and drove off alone. Nick and Ian made some ugly, but funny comments on that and went in Lee’s vehicle. H
unt was very attached to his red ‘72 Ford Falcon, so he preferred to be with it. Jane also didn’t like to leave her matte black Mustang Camaro, so she hopped in and headed to her house.

  “So guys, the plan is simple,” said Jane while the team was settling in the comfy garden chairs and table Jane had prepared for them. “We have to go in and out, take the black book and other evidence and call the FBI to arrest Morse.”

  “Yeah, that‘s simple!” said Ian with the most sarcastic tone he could manage. Everyone laughed except Ryan. He was still grumpy.

  “It will be easy if we go according to my plan,” Jane smiled. “Can you get these for me?” She handed the little note she wrote in the park to Hunt.

  He read the "shopping list" carefully. From time to time he lifted his eyebrows in surprise and then made grimaces. It took him some time to decide what to say.

  “Why, in the hell, do you need so many C4s with remote detonators?” Hunt said in a higher pitch than his normal voice “Guns with silencers? Contact lenses with a built-in camera? Benadryl? Haldol? Ativan? Transmitters with microphones? Night vision goggles? Two cars with fake license plates? Grappling hook rope?” Hunt said very loudly and rubbed his forehead. “Blake, are we supposed to play some kind of spy game?”

  “I thought you were a thief, not a trained spy!” Ryan nagged with apparent irony.

  “What are the meds for?” Nick wasn’t so impressed by the spy equipment.

  “The meds are for preparing a B-52,” said Jane ignoring the other comments. She decided to clarify when she saw all the puzzled faces looking at her “It’s a sedative. Like a powerful sleeping pill.”

  “Oooh,” sighed all of them.

  “Look, guys,” Blake put the house plan on the table and started marking the places of the guard and surveillance cameras, “We have two guards at the main entrance, two to the outside gate, one who is checking the perimeter every hour. The surveillance room on the first floor is with the IT guy who watches the cameras. Do you follow me?” Blake asked and after everyone nodded, she continued. “I believe he has two more in his bedroom, which is here.” She marked it. “So a total of eight.”

  “Damn, he really has some trust issues,” Nick laughed awkwardly.