Justice, Mercy and Other Myths (The New Pioneers Book 7)

by Deborah Nam-Krane

  Joanna and Lucy might not have reunited had it not been for him, but he never fooled himself into thinking that she owed him anything. He only hoped, when he wasn’t guarding his thoughts against memories of her, that her marital bliss would make her detest him a little bit less.

  “Just like old times,” Joanna said as Robert sat across from her in her office. She gestured at the bookshelves. “Not too much has changed since you were my TA.”

  Robert forced a smile. “Except, I'm sure, that you have more qualified assistants now.”

  She smiled but didn't answer. “You had some questions for me? I assume about Alex’s murder? I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m not sure how much help I can be.” She paused. “And as I’m sure you know, I wasn’t in Boston when he was killed.”

  “I did hear that,” Robert said slowly. “And then I confirmed it.”

  “So what else can I tell you?”

  “Do you still drink hot chocolate?” he asked.

  She laughed. “Yes. Is that a crime now? I thought if it was okay to drink coffee, eat chocolate, and even have red wine, I could get away with hot chocolate.”

  “The same brand you liked when I was here?” Robert continued.

  Joanna looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Why?”

  “And does Lucy like some kind of tea with rose petals that’s made by a French company?”

  She glared at him. “Betjeman and Barton, and how would you know that?”

  “Because we found a package of that tea and your brand of hot chocolate in Sheldon’s kitchen.”

  Joanna swallowed as if tasting something sour. “Of course you did.”

  “The box of tea was open, but the hot chocolate wasn’t. Which I think means that Lucy met with him but you didn’t. I guess you were on his call list for this week.”

  Joanna waved her hand. “He didn’t call Lucy. She went there on her own.”

  “And he had the tea ready to show that—”

  “He could,” Joanna finished. “But I promise you, he was alive when Lucy left.”

  “Do you know what they talked about?”

  “If I did, I believe spousal privilege means I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

  “Okay.” He put up his hands. “There's something else. He was stalking you.”

  She shrugged. “Of course he was.”

  Robert swallowed. “We found some photos—”

  Joanna cut him off. “You can stop there. Since you're not here to arrest me, I'll assume you didn't find anything in the pictures other than an intimate moment with my wife. And since I'm not a narcissistic voyeur, just destroy them when you’re done.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  She sighed. “For what? That I was so interesting to him? That was classic Alex.”

  “And what was that?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really, Bob? You did your homework on him.”

  “And there was nothing to find before he made his arrangement with Gerald Hendrickson. You were in school with him before he became whatever the hell he became.”

  “Yes, I was.” She shrugged after a moment. “He was a year behind me, but he was in a number of my classes. He was very bright, but not the kind who sat in front of the class or raised his hand all the time. He was always...watching. He didn’t want attention, but he always managed to make himself useful to exactly the right people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He sat next to me in an American History class, and one day I saw a Korean dictionary in his bag. I asked him if he was taking a class at another school—we barely offered a class in Chinese at the time, much less Korean—and he said he was just trying to learn the alphabet.”

  Robert shrugged. “So he was figuring out how to make himself useful to that South Korean classmate who ended up being so helpful later.”

  She sat up in her chair. “That’s just it: that was three months before that student started taking classes at the University.”

  Robert couldn’t help but smile appreciatively. “He was well-informed.”

  “Well-informed, as you know, is as much a matter of paying attention as it is making connections. Throw in that old advice about luck and certain people can make their own opportunities. And that is how Alex lived and thrived.”

  “Until he didn’t,” Robert said. “If he was so smart, how did he miss something so obvious?”

  Joanna leaned on her desk. “What do you think his weak spot was?”

  “He was used to success,” Robert answered immediately.

  “Was he?” Joanna asked. “Because hadn’t he had his share of failures in the last few years? Even humiliation?”

  “And what would you know about that?”

  Joanna pushed back from her desk and stood up. “Bob, if you have a question for Lucy, you’re going to have to ask her.”

  “Fair enough,” he said as he stood.

  “Always a pleasure, Detective.”

  “Thank you for your time.” He nodded and left as quickly as he could.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Robert hadn't expected to get much out of Sheldon's schedule. “Meet for drinks with other traffickers to gloat” wasn’t likely to appear. And for the most part, it was mundane. The person he met with most frequently was his attorney, Amos White, and they could have talked about anything.

  But there was one appointment that caught his attention: City Hall.

  Why would Sheldon go to City Hall? Hwang had made sure that Cervino’s people were gone. He didn't have any friends there...so he wouldn't have gone unless he was summoned.

  He called White’s office. If you were taking your attorney anywhere, it was going to be to see the protégé of your hated rival.

  To his surprise, White agreed to take his call. He listened patiently to his request, but sighed when Robert was done. “I'm afraid I still have to protect attorney-client privilege.”

  Why did they always say that when their client was dead? Robert fumed. But he wasn't going to give up so easily.

  He also wasn’t going to give up on City Hall. Maybe they weren’t going to talk about their meeting with Sheldon, but every time he thought about Amir Abassadi, he kept coming back to them.

  Hilary Sayles and Amir Abassadi had only been married for a short period of time before they were convinced that the FBI was trailing them because of his family’s connections to terrorism and organized crime. That was the reason Amir had left town, and why Hilary was planning to meet him.

  Robert had been in the room when Hwang was informed that this investigation had been hidden from his office. He would have expected a colder fury, but the way Hwang had lashed out at the Special Agent in Charge made Robert wonder how much anyone in Boston knew who their mayor was.

  Why the hell had the FBI kept them out of the loop? Like it or not, he was going to have to talk to City Hall.

  Even if it meant he was going to have to talk to Martin Shepard. The only consolation for Robert was that Martin was probably dreading being in the same room as much as he was. He couldn’t blame Jessie’s fiancé for hating him after the way he’d handled the investigation into Jessie’s mother’s murder, but of all of them, it was Martin who made Robert squirm the most. He’d rather be trapped in a small space with Emily for an hour than have to be in the same room as Martin for five minutes.

  Martin didn’t take his eyes off of Robert during his ten-minute visit. He blinked when Robert mentioned Mariela Bruges. “The mayor’s office will help get her and her daughter any services she needs. Please tell her husband that.” But Robert got to his question as quickly as he could.

  “Why would the FBI keep something like a human trafficking operation away from this office?”

  Martin looked bored. “They didn’t. They coordinated with this office on it for two years.”

  That didn’t make sense, unless... “Two years that Hwang wasn’t in office?” Martin didn’t say anything, so Robert went on. “Mind if I ask what
Hwang did to piss off the Special Agent in Charge that much?”

  “You mean you haven’t done a deep dive into Hwang yet?” Martin asked dryly. “The answer is nothing. As far as we can figure out, the decision to keep us in the dark was made before Hwang took the oath. We have also been assured—repeatedly—by the director himself that this was an exception and that we have been apprised of everything else going on within the Greater Boston Area.”

  Robert still didn’t have an answer to his question. “It makes the FBI’s job harder if they don’t work with us.” Martin raised his eyebrows. “This was Cervino on his way out?”

  “We can’t prove it,” Martin answered after a moment, “and I will deny it if this ever leaves this office, but yes.”

  “Did Hilary—or her family—ever make any donations to Cervino’s campaign?”

  “We looked. During his second term, her mother donated two hundred dollars. We also checked into their records to see if there was any connection to any businesses we suspect Cervino was partial to.”

  “You mean construction and development?”

  Martin ignored the question. “But we didn’t find anything. We looked through the log books and Cervino’s appointment schedule, and we compared both to when the FBI stopped giving us information on Hilary Sayles.”

  So that left one person. “What about Sheldon?”

  “You won’t be surprised when I tell you Cervino hadn’t held a meeting with Sheldon for several years.”

  Robert frowned. “So Cervino didn’t meet with him directly. What about his chief of staff, Merrick Levar?”

  “Levar is even less stupid. It was someone else from this office meeting with someone from Sheldon’s organization.”

  “Are you going to tell me who the go-between was?”

  Martin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He’s just a good soldier. More to the point, as I said, I don’t have any proof linking him directly to Cervino.”

  Robert wasn’t ready to leave yet. “Then one more question, if you don’t mind.”

  “Which is?”

  “If John Nelson had beat Hwang, would the instructions have been any different?”

  Martin looked at his watch. “Sorry, Teague, I’m afraid I’m out of time.”

  Robert showed himself out. Martin had just answered his question.

  —

  “David Hwang was Lucy Bartolome’s creature from the beginning.”

  Robert was in Baptiste’s office. Baptiste washed down his Xanax with black coffee, then leaned back in his chair. “Let’s say this is remotely interesting to me. As soon as you say ‘Lucy Bartolome,’ I get nervous.”

  “Captain, I swear to you, I don’t want to go anywhere near her.”

  “Let’s say, hypothetically, I believe you. So what?”

  “So I don’t think it’s an accident that Lucy Bartolome’s boy got shut out by Sheldon’s partner.”

  “Pass me my Tums,” Baptiste growled. Robert complied and watched Baptiste chew a tablet grudgingly. “Did you pay attention to that election? I don’t get to say this too often, but Hwang ran a clean race.”

  “And one of the ways we know it was clean was that he didn’t take a cent from Sheldon.”

  “You are suggesting that Alex Sheldon told Cervino to shut Hwang out of the investigation into Hilary Sayles. Very cloak and dagger—but why? If he was getting information from Cervino’s office about the investigation, he would have given it to her so she could cover her tracks. She hid a kidnapping victim in a warehouse and kidnapped her child. That’s stupid, even for a flake like her. Between you and me, I believe her that she thought she was only being watched because of her husband and that she thought they didn’t know about the trafficking, and I think that’s exactly what that putz you baited into punching you at the FBI was doing.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So what would Sheldon get out of keeping Sayles in the dark?”

  Robert remembered the look on Jessie’s face at the end of their interview. “An excuse to come back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was a bad room when the person Robert felt most comfortable with was Richard Hendrickson. However, compared to Mitch Graham’s constant, smirking glare and Jessie Bartolome’s conspicuous avoidance of his gaze, Richard’s straightforward antipathy made him feel like an old friend.

  “You’re both welcome to stay of course,” he said to Mitch and Richard when his interview with Jessie began, “but it really isn’t necessary. Jessie isn’t a suspect.”

  “I am not going to be in the same room with you unless an attorney and another witness are present,” Jessie said irritably. “It’s as much for your safety as mine. So can we get on with this?”

  Nothing would suit him more... “Do either of you have anything you want to tell me about why Sheldon stayed out of Boston for as long as he did?”

  “Would you believe we didn’t keep in touch after I gave him back his investment?” Richard answered quickly, but not before Robert caught a sharp look pass between him and Jessie.

  Robert took the two of them in for a second. “Let me be clear: no one thinks either of you knew what he was doing or profited from it yourselves. But I do think you know something else about Sheldon’s murder, and I would appreciate it if you told me.”

  “I’d like a moment with my clients,” Mitch said calmly.

  Robert stood up. “All yours, Counselor.”

  Baptiste found Robert watching the three behind the two-way mirror. “Oh crap,” Baptiste groaned. “Isn’t that the girl you screwed? And her cousin, the boyfriend of the other girl you screwed? While you were working the case of the first girl’s parents? What the hell are they doing here?”

  “Don’t worry, Graham’s here as their attorney.”

  Baptiste frowned, then gestured at the mirror. “If they know something about the murder, why wouldn’t they tell you?”

  “Sheldon terrorized them when they were children. From their point of view, why bother?”

  Mitch knocked on the mirror. “Want to come find out?” Robert asked Baptiste.

  “I have work to do,” Baptiste said as he walked away. “But I want an update today.”

  Robert sat across from Mitch. “What have we got, folks?”

  Richard looked at Jessie, who was looking at the ceiling. Mitch cleared his throat again. “My clients might have some information about Alex Sheldon’s finances.”

  “His finances?” Robert was genuinely confused. “If neither of you were in touch with him, how would you have access to that?”

  “My clients have come across some information that leads them to believe that Alex may have been...forced to come up with a replacement for his legitimate business holdings.”

  “I see,” Robert said slowly. “By who?”

  “We will not be revealing that information at this time,” Mitch said perfunctorily. “But we can assure you it was through legal means.”

  “I can guarantee that,” Richard said with certainty.

  “Then I suppose,” Robert said carefully, “it wouldn’t matter who it was. Can I ask how you came across this information?”

  Jessie finally took her eyes off the ceiling. “Martin’s research. Why don’t you ask him about it?”

  Of course. “I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Robert reviewed the information he’d gotten from Richard and Jessie with the forensic accountant the next day. Lucy Bartolome had made sure that Sheldon lost any board seat worth having and his most valuable holdings. Everything she’d done had been legal, but much of her activity had been ethically questionable. Robert wasn’t going to damn her for it, since that was more than he could say for Sheldon.

  Alex lost his leverage when Lucy’s secrets came out. Now Lucy was free to chip away at his holdings. The process was complete within two and a half years, but he would have felt in within one. So he needed an alternate source of income. How long had he been in the business of buying an
d selling people?

  His thoughts always returned to Hannah. Hannah with Sheldon at the MFA. Hannah turning the tables after Sheldon attempted to bribe her. When had Hannah figured out that the person she needed to find was in Alex Sheldon’s network?

  Hannah hadn’t wanted to hear Robert say anything about the case since the night he’d come back from his trip looking for Sheldon’s stolen items. If he said anything remotely about work, she’d change the subject, and they’d quickly end up in bed.

  He hadn’t complained, but maybe he should have.

  Obviously, he needed to talk to her outside of his apartment.

  Hannah was in painter’s pants and a white t-shirt when she met Robert at the underground diner again. She had just dropped Mariana off at Josh and Mariela’s place. He knew she’d been spending a lot of time there, but their “conversations” about her family were even shorter than those about his work. He hadn’t blamed her for that, but he hoped he’d get to see Mariana soon.

  Hannah’s knees were pulled up to her chest. She looked closer to kid than goddess.

  “What’s going on?” she asked after he’d placed their order.

  “I want you to tell me about Alex Sheldon.”

  She looked away. “He was a terrible person.”

  “That he was.” Why was she making this hard? “The night at the museum... Sheldon wanted you to know that he’d been in Amsterdam, and you wanted him to know that you’d been in Thailand. Were you in Thailand?”

  “Why do you—”

  “Answer the question.”