Exposed

by Laura Griffin

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Chico Gutierrez.”

  “Shit, can’t you get any decent clients? That guy’s bad news. And that neighborhood is a war zone.”

  “If by decent you mean wealthy, then no, I can’t. I’m a public defender. I defend members of the public who can’t afford legal counsel.”

  “Waste of a fancy law degree, you ask me.”

  “I didn’t.” She looked really ticked-off now, and he knew he needed to shut up. She obviously hadn’t invited him to breakfast so he could pick on her.

  “What’s Chico’s problem? He selling dope again?”

  “Actually, no, he’s cleaned up his act. But he’s got a court date coming up. His wife’s in rehab, and he wants custody of his kids.”

  Scott kept his opinion of that to himself, as she probably didn’t want to hear it.

  Their coffees arrived. Rae took a sip, then closed her eyes and gave a low moan.

  He had a white-hot flashback: Rae Loveland underneath him with that same blissed-out look on her face.

  She opened her eyes. “I forgot how good their coffee is here.”

  Scott shifted in his seat. “So what happened with Chico?”

  “Nothing. But someone showed up to talk to his brother, Luis.”

  He waited. He’d seen Rae in the courtroom enough times to know she had a point coming.

  “The man was white, blue eyes, crew cut. He spoke with a heavy accent that sounded Russian.”

  That caught his attention. The case Maddie was working on involved some extremely unsavory people from eastern Europe.

  “You sure it was Russian?” he asked.

  “Not at all. I don’t speak Russian—that’s just what it sounded like.”

  Two platters arrived. Scott doused his eggs with hot sauce and waited for her to continue.

  “They had some sort of business together, and they took it into the other room. But I overheard what they were saying, and it sounded like a gun sale.”

  That explained why she’d decided to come to him with this. “You witness the transaction?”

  “That’s a guess, based on snippets of conversation. But I did some poking around. Luis has some weapons charges on his record. He was busted last spring for unlawful possession of a firearm, and before you ask, no, I didn’t represent him. Someone else caught that case.”

  “Go back to the European guy. What’d he look like?”

  She drizzled syrup over her pancakes and seemed to think about it. “Five-nine, one-fifty, stocky build, scar on his left cheek. Crew cut, like I said, and blue eyes.”

  “Not bad.” Clearly, she picked up on details.

  “Anyway, I’m pretty sure the guy sold a gun to Chico’s brother. When they were wrapping up their meeting—this was in the other room—I heard him tell Luis something about how he should get that cobra off his hands because he’d recently used it to shoot a fed.”

  Scott frowned.

  “That’s what he said. A ‘cobra.’ I wrote it down as soon as I got in my car. I’m assuming it’s some kind of gun, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m just wondering why he’d tell his customer that when he was trying to make a deal.”

  “Who knows? Maybe he wanted to prove how tough he is. Or maybe he didn’t want to piss off a Mexican gangbanger by selling him a dirty gun without warning him to offload it. Luis Gutierrez has some scary friends.”

  “Ha. Friends? What about him? I still can’t believe you went to Sherwood Oaks alone. Next time, call me.”

  She ignored the offer and picked at her pancakes. “Listen, I know you worked on that shooting case. I know you ran the ballistics.” She glanced up at him. “Do you know what sort of gun was used?”

  Scott dug into his eggs.

  “Do you?”

  “How do you know so much about this case?”

  “Everyone knows about it. It’s the topic of conversation at every watercooler at every police station and sheriff’s office within a hundred miles of here, not to mention the courthouse. Some guy tried to gun down an FBI agent at a movie theater. And then what happened to Madeline Callahan?” Rae shook her head. “It’s very disturbing.”

  Scott watched her. She seemed genuinely unsettled by everything. “Why didn’t you take this to the police?”

  “I don’t know. You’re involved. You ran the ballistics. I figured you could check on this gun first, see if it’s even connected to anything before we bother the police with it. I mean, I hear it’s a task force, right? Some big team of agents from all over the place?”

  “That’s the word.”

  She continued eating her pancakes, and he watched her.

  “How’d you make the connection between the Russian and the cop shooting?”

  “Attempted cop shooting. The agent wasn’t injured.”

  “No, but Maddie was. And the two events are probably connected.”

  “It was a rumor I heard. That some Russian mafia guys were involved in that thing at the theater, and also what happened to your friend from the Delphi Center. That’s what the scuttlebutt is over at the police station.”

  “You really keep your ear to the ground.”

  “I have to.” She swigged some coffee. “It’s my business.” She glanced at her watch. “And speaking of, I need to get going.”

  “Where?” He shoveled eggs into his mouth. If she said she was meeting her boyfriend, he was going to take his sweet time.

  “Beeville.”

  “As in the prison?”

  “They have visiting hours from ten to noon. I’ve got a client meeting.”

  “Nice. You plan to wear that?”

  She looked down at herself. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Put a jacket on over it. You can see through that shirt.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Are you almost done?”

  He glanced down at his breakfast, which he’d managed to put a dent in despite the distraction of Rae sitting across from him and giving him a tip in the case that had occupied his mind all week.

  “Let’s go.” He stood up and pulled some bills from his wallet, but she was already paying the waitress.

  “I asked you,” she said.

  He reluctantly put his money away and followed her out to the parking lot.

  “I’m going to need an address for this Luis Gutierrez,” he said.

  She popped her car locks. “What are you going to do?”

  “Pay him a visit. See if he’s got a pistol to sell.”

  “Good luck with that. He’ll make you for a cop in about two seconds.”

  He slid into the seat. “I’m not a cop.”

  “You look like a cop.”

  He smiled slyly. “I’m a master of disguise. I can look like anyone.”

  “One of your SEAL tricks, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  Brian caught some disapproving stares as he walked into the office Saturday afternoon, and he shouldn’t have been surprised. He was looking a little rough. He hadn’t been home in almost three days. He was going on twenty-four hours in the same clothes, and he desperately needed a shave. He’d managed to grab a shower that morning, but he’d refrained from borrowing the dainty pink razor sitting on Maddie’s tub. He figured she wouldn’t want him using the razor she used on her legs to shave his two-day beard, although he wouldn’t have minded at all. In fact, the idea was pretty arousing.

  But Maddie would have thought it was crossing some sort of boundary. She was in friend mode, which wasn’t nearly as fun as sex-in-his-kitchen mode. But Brian was determined to make her see the light.

  He tossed his keys onto his desk and stared glumly at the mountain of paperwork in his in-box. Then he booted up his computer and checked his electronic in-box. Fifty-six messages later, he was only halfway through.

  He was so behind. This case was getting to him. And really, it wasn’t the case so much as Maddie. She had him by the throat. He liked her way more than he should after so short a time. He’d s
tarted to crave her company and get antsy when she wasn’t around. He couldn’t chalk it up to the bodyguard gig. That was part of it, but it was also her. He’d developed a fixation with her body, her skin, her mouth. He couldn’t look at any part of her without thinking of sex.

  But it wasn’t only the sex. He liked her attitude. He liked her backbone. He liked her age. There was something beautiful about a woman who had been in the trenches of life and was still up for a fight.

  But what he liked most—more than all the rest of it—was her eyes, because he could read them. She could say what she wanted, trying to convince him she was tough and brave and didn’t really need anyone, but her eyes told another story. Whenever she looked at him, he saw that hint of vulnerability that told him he had a chance.

  “Hey, I thought you were on PSD this afternoon.”

  Brian glanced up to see Sam standing beside his cubicle.

  “I traded with someone.”

  Sam lifted an eyebrow at this news. He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Brian shuffling the schedule of Maddie’s personal security detail so he could spend nights at her house. He was sure she’d noticed it, too, but she hadn’t said anything.

  Sam leaned against his cubicle. “So, what’s the update on that ballistics report?”

  “Which one?” They were waiting on so many reports now, it was hard to keep track.

  “The Highway 106 crime scene.”

  Brian scrolled through e-mails, looking for the one he’d opened on his phone last night.

  “It’s a three-oh-eight, like he thought.”

  “Who’s running this again?” Sam asked.

  “Firearms guy at Delphi. He said he got rifle marks on the slug, but I’m still waiting to hear if there’s a match in the database. Okay, here we go.” Brian read the message and muttered a curse. “No match on the slug.”

  “Then we’ve got a usable bullet but no gun. Which means another dead end.”

  “Unless we can get a suspect who happens to have a rifle we can match it to.”

  Sam shook his head. “I hate this case.”

  Brian leaned back in his chair. “What about Mladovic? How’s that warrant coming?”

  “We’re working on it. Hey, did you talk to LeBlanc? She tell you about that picture?”

  “What picture?”

  “You should have gotten an e-mail.”

  Brian skimmed his in-box until he found a message from Elizabeth. The subject line was JOLENE MURPHY. He skimmed the text of the message before opening the attachment. A color photograph came up on the screen.

  “Shit, where’d she get this?”

  “She convinced Jolene’s mom to let her take another look at her bedroom,” Sam said. “This was stuffed in a drawer.”

  The photo showed four girls in bikinis lined up on a beach, smiling for the camera. Brian’s shoulders tensed as he recognized the faces: Katya, Jolene, Heidi, Nicole. Four girls—two dead, two missing.

  “Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  Brian glanced up. “Where was this taken?”

  “South Padre Island, according to Jolene’s mom. It was August five years ago. A good-bye trip, she said, before everyone left for college.”

  Brian looked at the faces. “They went down there alone?”

  “With the Mladovics. They rented a condo on the beach.”

  “Fucking A. South Padre.” Brian picked up his phone and dialed a number he knew by heart.

  “Who you calling?” Sam asked.

  “Friend of mine with ICE. I think I know what they were doing down there.”

  Sam lifted his eyebrows.

  “I think they were heading across the border.”

  Ben eyed Maddie with amusement as he exited the Delphi Center’s lobby-level coffee shop.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” she said.

  “No problem.” He glanced over her shoulder. “What is this, take your dad to work day?”

  Maddie ignored the comment and focused instead on what he was eating. “Tell me that’s not the last blueberry muffin.”

  “Actually, it is, and I plan to eat all of it. I logged eighteen miles on my mountain bike this morning.” He looked over her shoulder again as he jabbed the button to summon the elevator. “Seriously, who’s the suit?”

  Maddie sighed. “A special agent with the San Antonio FBI office.” She cast a glance at the glass door, where the agent was supposed to meet her in exactly two hours.

  “A pet fed? Sweet.” Ben followed her onto the elevator. “Always wanted one of those, preferably a female.”

  The doors whisked shut, and his gaze dropped to her bandaged arm. “How’s the injury coming?”

  “Better.”

  “Does it hurt to handle a camera?”

  “Not really,” she said, “but I’m definitely learning to do things one-handed. So are you making progress on the picture?”

  “I was here until midnight working. Never thought I’d become such an expert in photo software.”

  The doors dinged open again, and they headed down the window-lined hallway toward the Cyber Crimes Unit. Ben used his palm print to gain access, and Maddie followed him into the empty lab, where rainbow-colored screen savers danced across the monitors.

  Maddie grabbed a rolling chair from the neighboring cubicle as Ben logged into his system.

  “I’m sorry this is taking so much of your time.”

  “I’m not.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. “This case is top of my list right now. Top of everybody’s. We’re determined to crack this thing, especially since the FBI isn’t up to the job.”

  Maddie bit back a comment. Investigators were so damn competitive with one another, and it got on her nerves. Why couldn’t people just acknowledge that they all worked hard and did the best they could? Maybe because it was a male-dominated field.

  “Okay, I was able to get a copy of that new photo software I told you about. The one my friend is working on?”

  She scooted closer as he opened a file.

  “Wow.” She studied the photograph as it came up on the screen. The image of the face reflected in the Buick’s side mirror was still dim and fuzzy, although it was much better than when she’d last seen it. Maddie still didn’t recognize the face.

  “It’s quite an improvement,” she said, trying not to let her disappointment come through in her voice. “With the baseball hat, though, I still don’t recognize him.”

  “Look again. You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Ben sighed, clearly disappointed. “I was afraid of that.” He closed out of the picture and started tapping more keys. “That’s why I called another buddy. This guy works for BSS.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Biometric Security Solutions. They’re one of the leading makers of biometric identification software. We use some of their stuff here at the lab. You know our palm-print access system? That’s them.”

  “They do facial recognition?”

  Ben clicked onto the company’s website. It showed a sleek silver logo and a digitized image of a human skull.

  “Facial recognition, palm prints, irises, you name it. They’re making a killing at it. They just got hired by one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to create a program that identifies people who count cards.”

  “Hmm. I never thought about uses like that.” Maddie studied the website, which included vaguely worded snippets about “discreet security solutions.” She figured the “discreet” part meant that the people the system was designed to recognize had no idea they were being analyzed.

  “They do more typical stuff, too,” Ben said. “My friend sold a big package to Interpol, for example. They’re going to use it to help beef up security at border checkpoints. Are you familiar with how it works?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s based on algorithms.”

  “You’ve lost me already. I hated math.”

  “Well, I’ll boil it down. Essentially, this company has come up wi
th some new algorithms that extract landmarks from images of faces captured in photographs and surveillance videos.”

  “Landmarks. Like facial features?” she asked.

  “Exactly. The program basically measures the distances between features, such as ears, pupils, nostrils, et cetera. Then it converts the information to a digital ‘map’ and stores it in a database. For example, Interpol has a database of mug shots. Investigators can then submit queries on images where they don’t have an ID and see if there’s a hit.”

  “Sounds like a useful tool.”

  “But it’s only as good as the algorithm,” he said. “They’ve been trying to implement this technology for years to help ID criminals at border crossings—or maybe people on the terrorist watch list, stuff like that—but they’ve had problems with both false IDs and no IDs popping up. My friend’s program is supposed to overcome those issues. I sent him the photograph, by the way.”

  “You did?”

  “He’s in Germany right now on the implementation team that’s supposed to get this thing up and running. Since you mentioned the Serbian mafia connection, I figured it was worth a shot.”

  Maddie waited for him to tell her the outcome, although she figured she already knew.

  “No match, unfortunately.”

  Maddie sighed. “So even though we know that this man—whoever he is—is a known associate of Mladovic, and although we know Mladovic frequently associates with criminals from eastern Europe, Interpol has no record of this guy’s mug shot in their system.”

  “Not just his mug shot,” Ben said. “The database includes mug shots, driver’s-license photos, immigration pictures. It’s got millions of records.”

  “But none of our guy.”

  “Not that we can find. Which indicates one of two problems. Either the authorities in Europe have no record of the guy—”

  “In which case, we can probably assume he isn’t Serbian,” Maddie said.

  “Or the problem is the photo itself. Because the photograph is of a reflection and because part of the face is obscured by a baseball cap—”

  “Not to mention the crappy lighting.”