by Radclyffe
Maybe Watts would pull another rabbit out of his hat, but she’d pretty much resigned herself to the fact that, for the moment, unless Sloan came up with something, or an informant gave her a lead, she had nothing to chase. But Jeff’s murder was still open, and she wanted to be able to tell Shelly Cruz that justice had been done when she went to see her. She’d been putting off visiting Jeff’s wife because she was embarrassed that the department—that she—had nothing substantial to offer the young widow in terms of consolation.
Taking a shot in the dark, she drove back to the station house and took the elevator to the second floor where the Homicide division was housed. She usually walked up, but she was beat. A couple of detectives she knew nodded hello, one of them remarking as she passed, “Good to see you back, Frye.”
She muttered her thanks but didn’t stop to talk. She found the person she was looking for in the break room, jacket off, feet propped on a wastepaper basket, multitasking with an open murder book propped next to her brown-bag lunch.
“Sorry to bother you,” Rebecca said to the woman in the dark blue suit as she closed the door to the small stuffy space. There was a window with a view of the river, but it was grimy and looked to be nailed shut. “Got a minute?”
Trish Marks glanced up from the case file she was reviewing, startled but too experienced to show it. “Frye. How are you doing?”
“I’m not bad. You?”
“Different day, same old shit. Crime might be down, but murder still has a way of happening.”
Rebecca nodded. “I know what you mean. Sex still sells, too.”
Trish closed the thick file and pushed it aside, draining her Coke can and tossing it into a nearby wastebasket. Leaning back in her chair, she fixed Frye with a steady look. “What’s on your mind?”
“Jeff Cruz and Jimmy Hogan.”
“Why aren’t I surprised,” Marks said to herself, and it wasn’t meant to be a question. She got up and stretched, then walked to the coffee machine and poured a cup. She glanced inquiringly at Rebecca, who shook her head no. When she had added two sugars and enough fake cream to give herself brain cancer, she walked back to the table and sat down again. “What have you heard?”
Rebecca wondered how much to reveal. Trish Marks had a rep as a solid cop, and whenever Rebecca had interacted with her in the past, everything had seemed to confirm that. On the other hand, Marks was one of the detectives responsible for solving Jeff’s murder, and she hadn’t done that. Rebecca had to question why she had dropped the ball.
For a moment, the two women simply assessed one another in the silence. At first glance, they didn’t seem all that similar, even though Marks was about Rebecca’s age. She was dark where Rebecca was light, short where Rebecca was tall, mildly curvaceous where Rebecca was lean, but the look in their eyes was a matched set—tough, competent, and wary.
Rebecca could almost see it when Marks reached a decision, and she just waited, giving the Homicide detective a chance to gather her thoughts. There were allegiances to be considered, and cops were loath to give out information on their cases, even to other cops.
“We didn’t get anything from the crime scene,” Marks said, carefully choosing her words, “which is about what you’d expect. Flanagan worked it hard, but there just wasn’t anything to find.”
“Contract hit, right?”
Trish nodded. “Despite how fucked up this case got, I still think that’s the truth. There was absolutely nothing at the scene to go on. And no rumors on the street to say differently—no talk of personal beefs, nothing to suggest it was a drug buy gone bad. Everything about it spelled hit.” She stopped, wondering without much hope if Frye would let it go at that.
“What about Jimmy Hogan’s files? What about his supervisors? Somebody somewhere knew what he was into. The last time I spoke with you and your partner, you hadn’t had a chance to go through Jimmy’s cases. Since that was over two months ago, I’ll ask again. What did you turn up there?”
Marks’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing.”
“Now, see, that’s where I start to get confused,” Rebecca said tonelessly, her eyes boring into the woman across from her. “What did his captain say? What about his contact man in Narco? He must have been reporting to someone.”
“Yeah, maybe he was.” Marks shrugged. “But I’ve got a feeling it wasn’t anybody in Narcotics.” She watched Frye stiffen in surprise, the first sign of any unguarded emotion the blond detective had shown since she’d walked into the room, and Marks hastened to add, “And that stays in this room.”
“Are you telling me you don’t think Hogan was undercover for Narcotics?” Unconsciously, Rebecca reached under the left side of her jacket and rubbed her chest, trying to work the tightness out of the scar. When she realized what she was doing, she placed her palms flat on her thighs. Never let on you’re tired; never let on you’re hurt; never let on you’re scared. Where’d she learn that—the Academy, or home? She concentrated on Trish Marks and forgot about the pain.
“What I’m saying is, no one in Narcotics is willing to cop to being Jimmy’s contact. No one admits to having received any significant intel from him in months. And the more I asked about it, the bigger the wall got. Finally, I couldn’t get anybody over there to talk to me at all.”
“You think they were shut down by someone higher up?”
“Probably, but I can’t get a line on who that somebody might be.”
Rebecca’s mind was racing furiously. There was a strange sort of logic to what Marks had told her. If Jimmy Hogan was undercover, he could be gathering information on anything—for anyone—not necessarily simply on drug traffic for Narco division. The problem was, if he wasn’t Narcotics, then who was he? Or more importantly, what was he? She was beginning to see how people thought Hogan might have turned bad, and that kind of suspicion naturally tainted anyone who was associated with him, including her partner.
“Has anyone specific told you to back off the case?” she asked Marks.
For the first time, Marks looked like she was contemplating an evasion. “Look, Frye, I don’t think that this homicide is solvable. You know as well as I do that finding a contract killer is almost impossible. Someone hires an out-of-towner who is only here for an afternoon, and there’s absolutely no way to trace him. He flies in; he rents a car along with a thousand other businessmen at the airport; he drives to a location that someone else has already set up; he identifies Hogan—probably from a faxed photo—and, unfortunately, Cruz is with him. He needs to take Hogan out and anybody with him that could identify him. Bang, bang, two dead cops. He turns around, he drives back to the airport, and he goes back to wherever he lives. End of story.”
“You know, Marks, when you’re talking to another cop, it’s pretty obvious when there’s something you don’t want to say. I can tell when you’re trying to blow me off.” Rebecca waited.
“Fuck.” Marks strafed her short thick dark hair in frustration. “All I know is one morning a few days after you got taken down during that Blake thing, the chief of detectives was in a closed-door meeting with your captain and my captain. An hour later, Horton and I got the word to back off the case. They gave us some bullshit about IAD following up on it.” She snorted derisively. “Like that was supposed to make us happy.”
It was Rebecca’s turn to look startled. “Captain Henry was in on this?”
“Yeah, he was there,” Marks admitted, nodding uncomfortably. “Look, I didn’t hear the conversation, Frye. Give me a break. But I got the distinct feeling that if I ever wanted to make detective-three, I’d better toe the line. The case wasn’t going anywhere, so that’s what I did. Sorry, Frye, but he wasn’t my partner. Maybe if he had been…”
Rebecca stood and extended her hand. “Thanks, Marks. I know you didn’t have to give me anything. And as far as I’m concerned, if anybody asks, you didn’t.”
*
Her first impulse had been to storm into Captain John Henry’s office and demand to know wha
t the fuck was going on. Fortunately, it was one floor up and an entire city block away, and by the time she was halfway there, she realized that if she was going to confront anyone about the situation, she needed to have a little bit more than just a hunch under her belt. What she needed to do was dig a little bit more into Jimmy Hogan’s background, and for that she was going to need to talk to some people at the Academy as well as the narcotics detectives he’d worked with. There were things she could get from a computer search, too, but she didn’t want to do that in the middle of the squad room in the middle of the afternoon.
She believed Marks’ story that someone high up in the chain of command had shut down the homicide investigation, and that could mean any number of things. It could mean there were things that the bureaucrats who really ran the police department did not want made public, like the fact that Jimmy Hogan was dirty. That was certainly one explanation. It could also mean that the people in charge who were supposed to know what was happening didn’t have a clue as to what was really happening, and the best way to protect your own ass was to limit the flow of information.
Taking that line, she could almost believe that IAD had taken over the investigation, which as far as she was concerned was equivalent to flushing it down the toilet. IAD had never solved anything that she was aware of, but they did answer directly to the chief and the commissioner, so they would be the logical choices to take over the investigation if the brass wanted the findings kept quiet. That would fit with what Flanagan said about IAD raiding her files.
And then there was the possibility that Jimmy Hogan was exactly what he appeared to be—an undercover narcotics detective who had done his job so well that someone in the Zamora organization had seen him as competition and simply had him eliminated. Jeff was there by mistake and just got caught in the crossfire. She probably would have believed that, if so many roadblocks hadn’t been thrown up around the case.
By the time she pulled up in front of Sloan’s building, her headache was raging and her temper was ready to snap. Maybe concentrating on this investigation was the best thing she could do for the moment. As she stepped from her car, she thought fleetingly of the few moments she had spent with Catherine earlier that afternoon. It occurred to her that the best thing she could really do would be to meet Catherine after work, take her somewhere for dinner, forget about prostitution and pornography and dead partners, and simply enjoy the company of a beautiful, intelligent woman who loved her.
Why was it, she wondered, that she wasn’t going to do just that?
*
Mitchell jumped to her feet when Rebecca unexpectedly walked into the room. A muscle twitched at the corner of Rebecca’s mouth, but she managed not to smile.
“Status report, Mitchell?” She could see that Mitchell had been working at a computer terminal next to those occupied by Sloan and McBride. It looked as if she was updating some kind of data sheet. Clearly, the young officer was a good choice for the post, even though Rebecca doubted that that had been the intention of the duty sergeant when he had assigned her to the task force. Women didn’t get accepted to West Point unless they were tough, sharp, and dedicated. Mitchell must have once been among the brightest of the bright, and now some idiot at the one-eight was trying to bury her. Nothing of Rebecca’s disgust at that thought showed in her face. “Bring me up to speed.”
“I’ve been logging in potential on-line suspects as Mr. McBride has initiated contact, ma’am. It’s too early to tell you the specifics such as location or level of activity, but I should be able to begin cross-referencing within a day or two and generate possible lines of follow-up from that.”
Rebecca glanced at Sloan, her eyebrow elevating slightly in question. That hadn’t been part of Mitchell’s job description. The kid had initiative as well as brains, apparently.
Sloan nodded, as if reading her thoughts. “Officer Mitchell has been making herself very useful. She’s freed me up to focus on large-scale Web-hosting sites that seem to have concentrated activities in this area. Anyone receiving live video feeds will need high-speed access, and they’re going to be paying hefty user fees. I’m trying to get in the back door by starting with the customer databases and looking for common-user time frames.”
“How about grabbing a cup of coffee, Sloan?” Rebecca chose not to comment on Sloan’s information until they were alone. You didn’t discuss strategy in front of the ranks.
“Sure,” Sloan replied. The two of them walked in silence to the conference room where they had first been briefed by Clark, helped themselves to coffee, and settled across from one another at the conference table.
“How close are you to narrowing this search down to real people and not just Internet aliases?” Rebecca asked.
“Closer than anyone would have expected a week ago. We caught a break—the FBI has been running a national sting operation over the last eighteen months called Operation Avalanche. They’ve already identified and collated a tremendous number of potential Internet sites that are marketing porn, and they’ve prescreened hundreds of e-mail accounts, specifically of users frequenting porn chat rooms aimed at those with a taste for kids. A lot of those accounts have already been traced and filed geographically.”
“Did Clark get you that information from the FBI?”
“Nope,” Sloan answered immediately.
“Are you going to tell him you have it?”
“Nope.”
Rebecca sipped her coffee, considering Sloan’s openness in answering questions, her seeming lack of concern about the repercussions of her hacking into federal law enforcement databases, and her obvious skill. The woman had all the earmarks of a rogue agent, but Rebecca didn’t think she was. Rogue agents were always wary, suspicious, and afraid of being caught. Sloan was just untouchable. And you only got that way if you’d already had everything done to hurt you that could be done.
“What about Mitchell? She’s just a rookie, and I don’t want her getting in the middle of anything.”
“Mitchell may be young, but she’s savvy. I’ll give her the info when we have some local leads to chase electronically. Everything she touches will be clean and accountable.” Sloan eased back in her chair, astutely watching the blond detective. “If you want, I can just give you the bottom line and leave out how we got there, too. You’ll be able to deny all knowledge then.”
“I don’t need your protection,” Rebecca replied, her tone oddly mild. “But I appreciate the thought. I prefer to have as much information as possible during an investigation. What I’m curious about is why you are so willing to share.”
“I’m willing to share with you, because when the time comes, I figure you’re going to be the one standing in front of the door, not Avery Clark. Maybe I’m wrong to trust you, but then, I don’t work for Agent Clark.”
“No, you don’t. Not anymore.”
Sloan’s eyes narrowed and her fingers tensed on the coffee cup. “I never worked for Clark.”
“But you did work for the Justice Department, didn’t you?” Rebecca knew she’d struck gold when the dark-haired woman across from her grew tight and still. A second later, she could see Sloan consciously relax each tense muscle in her formidably powerful shoulders. Incredible control. “Does Clark have something on you and McBride?”
“Not a thing,” Sloan said amiably. “Believe it or not, I took this job because I thought it was a job worth doing. And for the record, Sergeant, I don’t take any job unless I want to. Not even for the Department of Justice.”
“Fair enough,” Rebecca said with a nod. “It’s been my experience that people who are blackmailed into an assignment aren’t very trustworthy. And I like to know if I can trust the people I’m working with.”
“I could tell you I’m trustworthy,” Sloan said, unveiling her megawatt, devil-may-care grin, “but I don’t think that would impress you.”
“I don’t impress very easily, Sloan.” Despite herself, Rebecca grinned back. “But if you can come up with someone fo
r me to investigate, I’ll be appropriately impressed, I promise. What about McBride? Do you vouch for him, too?”
“Jason is his own man, and if you have any doubts, talk to him yourself.”
“But he’s your associate.”
“And my friend.”
Rebecca could easily imagine J. T. Sloan standing up to the Justice Department, and she had a feeling that the woman probably had. This computer expert had obviously been valuable to them once, or they wouldn’t have come back to her when they needed her services. Rebecca had a feeling that they had come back with apologies in one hand while waving the flag in the other. “I’m working on a few things from my end, but at this point I don’t have dick.”
Sloan looked surprised at the honest admission, then said good-naturedly, “I’ll never tell.”
“Thanks,” Rebecca said dryly, but she finally smiled. On impulse, she added, “Question. If someone pilfered files—stole them—from someone’s system, could you figure out who did it?”
“Probably.” Sloan’s deep violet eyes sparkled with interest. “Unless they were awfully good at concealing themselves, and most hackers aren’t that good.”
“Compared to you, you mean.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“What would you need to do to find them?”
“I’d need the hard drive and access to the network. After that, I’d like to bring the CPU here, but I could work on the system in place if I had to.” Sloan watched the detective’s face. Nothing showed. “I guess we’d be doing this at night in the dark, huh?”
“No comment.” Rebecca stood and rolled her shoulders. “It would be unofficial, and it would be for free. If you did it, I’d owe you.”
