Best Laid Plans

by Allison Brennan

  The nurse nodded curtly. “Two only. And if she gets agitated or upset, I’ll remove you. Understood?”

  “Yes.” Tia looked from Lucy to Barry. “I’m going in there,” she said. “Which of you is joining me?”

  “I’ll observe,” Barry said. He looked at Lucy. “This is why Juan wanted you on this case, right? Your work with victims.”

  “Thanks, Barry,” she said. She recognized his tone—he didn’t want to regret letting her take the lead on this interrogation.

  Lucy followed Tia into a private hospital room, past the SAPD officer manning the door.

  Elise was drawn and pale in the hospital bed, her limp blond hair against the white sheets making her look even more ghostly. She was reclined at an angle, and her right arm was in a full sling.

  It was hard to pin down her age, because her injuries made her look younger. If Lucy had to make a guess, she’d say fifteen. She was of average height, underweight, and her face still held a faint bruise from where James Everett had hit her. Allegedly hit her on Friday night. There were other scrapes and cuts, but those were fresh enough to be from the events last night.

  Elise glared at them. Though both Lucy and Tia were in plain clothes, Elise clearly had them pegged as law enforcement.

  Tia spoke. “I’m Detective Tia Mancini with the San Antonio Police Department. This is my colleague, FBI Special Agent Lucy Kincaid. We’d like to know what happened last night. Do you know who shot you?”

  Elise stared at them. “I’m not talking.”

  “Okay. That’s your right, but someone shot you in the back. It would help us find him if you cooperate.”

  “Go away.”

  “We’re not going away,” Tia said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “I didn’t do anything. I was the one who was shot.”

  “And we want to find the person who did this to you.”

  Elise snorted. “Right. Like you care.”

  “I care,” Tia said. She sat in the lone chair. Lucy sat at the end of the bed, on the corner. Tia said, “Let me explain my job. I specialize in special victims.”

  “Special? Like retards? I’m not stupid.”

  “Special, like women and children who have been abused.”

  “Just because I’m shot you think I’m abused?”

  “How old are you?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “It really doesn’t matter, because you’re underage and we have evidence that you’ve been soliciting.”

  “Meaning, I’m a hooker.” She laughed weakly. “Fine me. So what?”

  “I can help you. It’s what I do. Just tell me you want out, and I’ll make it happen. It won’t be easy, because you’ll have to change your lifestyle. But it’s possible. School. Graduation. A safe job.”

  “Look,” Elise said, “thanks, but no thanks. I’m happy with my life just the way it is. I’ll bet I make more money in a week than you do in a month.”

  “You might. But I’ll bet, even being a cop, my lifespan is longer than yours.”

  “You can’t arrest me for prostitution because you have no proof. And even if you did, I’d be out like this.” She snapped her fingers, then winced. She reached for her water. Her hand was shaking as she brought the straw to her lips. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She closed her eyes.

  Tia took the glass when Elise was done and put it on the nightstand. She nodded to Lucy.

  “We can’t leave you alone because you’re wanted for questioning in a murder investigation.”

  Elise’s eyes flew open. She stared at Lucy. Defiance and fear, all mixed together. Tia was right: this girl had been on her own for a long time. She trusted no one.

  “Bullshit,” Elise said. “You’re setting me up.”

  Lucy said, “We have a witness who places you at the White Knight Motel exiting a room where a dead man was found. How did that happen, Elise?”

  She shook her head. “No. No, no, no. I’m not talking. You have no proof of anything, I’m not saying a word.” She turned her head and closed her eyes as if that would make them go away.

  The machine next to her bed started beeping. The nurse came in and gave Tia and Lucy a dirty look. She checked Elise’s vitals and had her drink more water. Then she checked her bandages under the sling.

  “I warned you both about this. She needs rest.”

  “Five more minutes,” Tia said.

  “If you upset her again, you will leave.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tia said.

  When the nurse left, Tia said to Elise with a tone that was both firm and kind, “Elise, you have two options. You come clean now, and we’ll help you. Cooperation goes a long way with prosecutors. I give you my word, Elise. You tell the truth, and I’ll be by your side for the entire process.”

  She didn’t say anything at first, didn’t look at them. Then a little squeak came out. “They’ll kill me.”

  “We can protect you.”

  Tears leaked from her eyes. “No one can protect me.”

  “Who shot you?”

  She shook her head.

  Tia looked at Lucy. Lucy realized what Tia was doing—Tia was being the good cop, she wanted Lucy to be the big bad federal cop. Lucy didn’t like that role at all—she didn’t want to browbeat this poor girl. But she said in a stern, calm voice, “Elise, we have more than enough evidence to turn over to the prosecution for a first-degree murder charge. You will be tried as an adult. Even if you were granted leniency because of your age and mitigating factors, you wouldn’t see the outside of a jail cell for at least twenty years.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’ll get to me in jail.” She stared at Lucy. “The only way I’ll be safe is if you let me go. I can disappear and they’ll never find me.”

  “We can and will protect you if you tell us the truth,” Lucy said.

  “You can’t!”

  “Then I’ll have to charge you with first-degree, premeditated murder.”

  “No, no! It was an accident, he wasn’t—”

  She stopped talking. Her eyes darted back and forth between Tia and Lucy. She reached for her water again with shaking hands.

  “What was an accident?” Lucy asked.

  Elise put the water down and stared at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. With the back of her free hand she wiped them way. She bit her lip and was obviously weighing her fears—was she more terrified of the people she worked for or the police?

  “Okay—just this. It was an accident. It was supposed to be easy. Just—go in, seduce this old guy, take pictures. And if I couldn’t seduce him, well, shoot him up with a little happy juice. He wouldn’t remember anything, and I’d still get the pictures. I didn’t know he would die! I didn’t know, I just thought it was, you know, something that would make him sleepy and forgetful. I didn’t even know he was dead until yesterday, when—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, it was an accident.”

  “It’s still murder.”

  “It was an accident,” she whispered.

  “Did you take pictures?”

  She nodded.

  “You took pictures of Harper Worthington,” Lucy said specifically.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I gave everything to the person who hired me.”

  Everything? That sounded like more than just pornographic photos of Harper Worthington.

  “Were you hired to take pictures of anyone else? Anyone other than Mr. Worthington?” Lucy asked. Tia shot a confused glance at her, but Lucy focused on Elise’s reaction.

  “I—I—you don’t understand.”

  “You’d be surprised at what I understand,” Lucy said. “Who hired you?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “He’s the one who shot me. And he’s just a middleman, I don’t know who really wanted them.”

  “Who is he?” Lucy pushed again.

  “I don’t know!” />
  “We know you got this job through Mona Hill.”

  She frowned but didn’t say anything.

  “Mona told us that you are new in town and called her up looking for work.” Lucy turned to Tia. Tia nodded. “We have enough to get a warrant to search Mona’s apartment and bring her in for questioning.”

  “She doesn’t know anything. I just called Mona because I was bored, and I had to wait around until they told me this guy would be at the motel. They just wanted the porn shots. Probably to blackmail him, I don’t know, I don’t care! I did my part and got paid and that’s all, but—” She stopped talking.

  “But?”

  “I fucked up, okay? I grabbed his phone because I thought I could sell it, but then I lost it and they were so angry. That’s why they shot me, okay? That’s why I have to disappear.”

  “Who.”

  “I. Can’t. Tell. You! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone, please?”

  The machines started beeping again and the nurse walked in and told Tia and Lucy to get out. “If I see you here again tonight, I’ll have security remove you.”

  Tia said to the nurse, “Try it. If we need to talk to her, we will, and I’ll get a warrant to transfer her to a prison hospital.”

  Tia turned back to Elise. “Everything I said still holds. Think about it tonight, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  She and Lucy walked out.

  Barry approached them. “I listened from the nurses’ station,” he said. “Good job, I think you both got more out of her than anyone else could have.”

  Tia winked. “High praise coming from you, Crawford.”

  The nurse walked back. “Take the conversation elsewhere, please. Now.”

  “No one goes in that room except for your nurses and her doctor,” Tia said. “An officer will be on the door at all times. If she needs to be moved, the officer goes with her. If she goes for a scan or x-rays, the officer will be outside her door.”

  “Is she a prisoner or under protection?”

  “Both.”

  “If she’s a prisoner, you need to cuff her.”

  Tia glanced at Barry. “We haven’t placed her under arrest yet,” she said to the nurse.

  “Then I’ll consider the officer her protection. But if she’s dangerous—”

  “Call us if you have any concerns.” Tia handed the nurse her card. She excused herself to talk to the officer at the door.

  Barry and Lucy walked to the end of the corridor, to the side of the nurse’s station where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way as well as have some privacy. Barry said, “Do you think she took photos of James Everett as well?”

  That was exactly what Lucy had been thinking, though Elise hadn’t explicitly said it. “I can get her to talk,” Lucy said. She didn’t like browbeating the girl. Elise wasn’t cooperating, but she was scared and Lucy understood what these girls had to do to survive. Survival often made them hard and prickly, and often the only way to crack them was to be just as hard.

  “There’s no doubt,” Barry said. “But in the meantime, maybe we should take another run at Mona Hill.”

  “She’s not going to give us anything unless we have something on her—something to trade, like her freedom.”

  “The solicitation charges won’t stick, and she knows it,” Barry said.

  “Any way you can get a warrant to search her apartment?”

  “All we have is her sending a prostitute to a john—if that. She said, she said.”

  “Elise is underage.”

  “She’s over fourteen. There’s a different line.”

  Lucy hated that line. Girls fourteen and under were special victims. Over fourteen and while prostitution was still illegal, the penalties weren’t as extensive. There were fewer resources to get the older girls out of the life. One cop had told Lucy that by the time the girls were fourteen, they were lost causes.

  And sometimes they’re lost at a much earlier age.

  Lucy didn’t believe that. Most of the girls in prostitution as teenagers had been abused by their families or manipulated by much older boyfriends into a life in the sex trade. Some had made one bad decision and felt they couldn’t come back from that. They often felt they didn’t deserve to go back to their families, or that their families wouldn’t want them back after they knew what they’d done. And some families were like that. But many welcomed their daughters back with open hearts. She didn’t know where Elise fell on that spectrum, but it was clear from her street smarts and her attitude that she’d been on her own a long, long time. Was there even anyone for her to go home to?

  “What if,” Lucy said, “we work Mona to give us the name of the person who vouched for Elise? Give her a pass on everything if she gives that up.”

  “We have to find something on her first.”

  “Between us and Tia, we could pull together enough for a search warrant. Specifically to look for the photos Elise claims she took and the drug used to kill Worthington.”

  “Do you believe her? That she didn’t know that she’d killed him?”

  Lucy considered the conversation. “Yes and no. She’s a habitual liar, so everything she said we need to verify. There was a lot of truth there, but some misdirection. I believe she went in thinking she was going to take compromising pictures. But I think she knew he was dead when she left the room. But based on her reaction—I don’t think she knew the drugs would kill him. Someone gave her the syringe. Mona admitted that she sent her out on the Everett job, and while Elise didn’t explicitly say Mona sent her to Worthington, I think we can make the case that Mona was involved. With the right judge, we can get a warrant to search Mona’s place for drugs, syringes, photographs, and computers.”

  “Computers?”

  “If they were digital photos, she would have downloaded them. So we’ll need any camera or recording equipment, phones—maybe we’ll get lucky and find out who arranged the meeting with Worthington. Because I’ll bet money that he wasn’t expecting a prostitute.”

  “Slow down, Kincaid,” Barry said. “Elise didn’t say that Mona sent her to Worthington. She said she was here in San Antonio because of Worthington, but called Mona for more work. We might be able to tie Mona to James Everett, but we can’t tie her to Worthington.”

  “But it’s plausible. Not only that, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “We have no proof. No evidence. The problem with organizations like Mona Hill’s is that she knows a lot of secrets about a lot of people, many of those people with a lot to lose. We need to convince the AUSA that we have probable cause for a warrant and not just a fishing expedition. I don’t think we’re even close. I’ll take it to Juan, it’s his call.”

  Tia returned. “Okay, we’re set on the guard.” She glanced over at the nurse’s desk to where a young man stood waiting. “Mr. Rabb?” she said.

  He turned, obviously surprised to see the three of them conversing. “Detective. I just want to make sure that the girl I brought in last night was okay.”

  “She’s resting,” Tia said. “She’ll make a full recovery.”

  He approached them with a shy smile. “I guess I wouldn’t be able to see her?”

  “Not now,” Tia said. “I’ll give her your contact information if she wants to reach out to you.”

  “You don’t have to. She just reminded me of my little sister. I feel better knowing she’s okay.”

  “We’ll walk you out,” Tia said, leading the way. “Ignore the two grumpy feds.” She glanced back at Lucy and Barry with a grin. “They’re probably as hungry as I am.”

  Rabb thanked Tia and they parted ways in the lobby.

  Tia said, “He was a good Samaritan. Not everyone would stop for a gunshot victim, I’m sad to say. But I wasn’t lying—I’m starved. It’s nearly two. Let’s go to Mi Tierra. It’s not far, and it’s my favorite place. Good food and cheap. Too bad we’re on duty, because they make a wicked margarita.”

  * * *

  Brad Donnelly picked
up Ryan Quiroz at FBI headquarters that afternoon.

  “What’s the story?” Ryan asked as Brad pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Body found in Atascosa County. Two gunshot wounds in the leg, one in the back of the head. Blood type AB positive—the same as the shooter who got away at our crime scene.”

  “ID?”

  “No, but the M.E. said there were gang tats, and the estimated time-of-death fits.” Brad tossed Ryan a file. “Ballistics from the crime scene.”

  Ryan opened the file. “They confirmed the guns were from the stolen shipment based on the ammo?”

  “Yep. The shipment of guns that Vasco Trejo sold to Tobias. At least, that’s what we think was going on based on a partial conversation.”

  “Something you overheard when they captured you?”

  Brad hesitated, then nodded. Lucy had overheard the conversation, but he couldn’t say that. “Basically, Tobias was furious that Trejo had lost part of the gun shipment to Kane Rogan’s mercenaries. He wanted his money back.”

  “How many guns are still out there?”

  “A lot. Rogan was only able to retrieve two trucks but suspected that twice as many disappeared with Tobias or his people.”

  “And some of the guns that Trejo controlled—ostensibly to sell to Tobias—killed Tobias’s people.”

  “If Sanchez’s team joined Tobias.”

  Ryan said, “Why would Tobias sell guns to one of his rivals? And since Trejo is dead and Rogan thinks Tobias had the guns, why would he kill his own gang?”

  “Maybe he sold them to a rival group, who then turned on Tobias.”

  “But there’s been no retaliation. This case is giving me a headache.”

  “It’s too fucking quiet. It’s making me itchy.” Brad paused, then added, “ATF is taking over as primary. They say since it’s an international gun incident, it’s theirs.”

  “That really sucks. A million dollars in drugs and they walk in? None of the guns were found on scene.”

  “They’re wrong, and it’s going to get in the way. This isn’t about guns, this is about the cartels and their growing foothold in southern Texas. It’s a power play, pure and simple. I think they took it because the DOJ doesn’t trust us after Nicole. We’ve had bureaucrats up our ass for two months.”