Snap Judgment (Samantha Brinkman Book 3)

by Marcia Clark

  Shackley nodded as best he could given the sorry state of his head.

  I thanked Tomas and Louisa. Especially Louisa. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?” Now that I had a better chance to look at her, I could see the serious shoulders and biceps under her long-sleeve T-shirt.

  She wore a proud smile. “My dad taught me when I was a kid. Said he wanted me to be able to take care of myself.”

  A pang unexpectedly hit me in the gut. I would’ve loved to have a father who taught me things like that when I was a kid. I forced a smile. “Your dad’s a great guy.”

  Tomas nodded. “He’s my cousin, and he is one helluva guy.”

  Tomas and Louisa carried Shackley out to Tomas’s car. Alex said Tomas and Louisa would take Shackley home, and Alex would drive Shackley’s car back to his place. “Then we’ll all ‘help’ Shackley take down that disgusting website.”

  After they’d loaded Shackley into Tomas’s car, Alex walked me back to Beulah. I hit the remote to unlock the door and turned to him. “I can’t even imagine how many girls will have you to thank for putting this asshole out of business.”

  Alex stared at Shackley’s car. “I’m not done. I’m gonna get that dick who owns the website where Laurie’s photos were posted, too.”

  I smiled at him. “You’re on a mission.”

  He nodded, his expression serious. “I guess I am.”

  I got into my car. “Just make sure you don’t get caught.” I closed my door and rolled down the window. “But, of course, if you do . . .”

  Alex leaned down and finally smiled. “You’ll be there.”

  “Right.”

  He patted the roof, and as I drove off, I pushed the button on my phone to turn the ringer on. I didn’t think he’d run into any trouble tonight.

  But you never know.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It’d been a long day—and night—and I was bone-tired.

  I took a quick shower to get rid of the dried-up adrenaline sweat, put on my flannel PJ pants and T-shirt, and poured myself a shot of Patrón Silver. I’d more than earned it. I lay down on the couch and took a sip of my drink as I gave myself a moment to stare out at the clear night sky and decompress. Alex had shut down that hideous website—and its even uglier operator. But I’d just lost a straw man. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve thrown Devon Shackley at the cops to pull them off Graham’s trail. But to be honest, I’d never held out much hope for that angle anyway.

  I noticed the message light on my landline was blinking. Only one person ever called me on that phone. Dale. He didn’t leave a message, just told me to call him. Maybe he had more news on Tracy Gopeck. As I picked up the phone and pressed his number, I hoped he’d at least tell me we could get a later start. I really needed to sleep in.

  Dale squashed that hope. “I called you because I decided we should get on the road a little earlier, by six thirty a.m. We’re going to see Tracy Gopeck’s mother, and she lives in Riverside.”

  Damn. That’d be at least a two-hour ride. I promised to be ready when he came to pick me up. “But would you mind bringing coffee?”

  Dale sighed. “Fine.”

  “And bagels?”

  “Seriously? Why don’t you just eat breakfast?”

  Because the contents of my refrigerator consisted of lime wedges, lemon wedges, olives, and half a stick of butter. But if I told him that, he’d lecture me about healthy eating and go all “Dad” on me—which I cannot, and will never be able to, bear. “I can’t eat anything else that early.”

  He gave another sigh and agreed to bring the bagels, then ended the call.

  I looked at my phone. It was almost one a.m. I finished my drink, then put myself to bed, thinking I might get lucky; my brain might not have enough time or energy to crank up the nightmare.

  In fact, not only did I not wake up screaming, I overslept. Pressed for time but triumphant—every time I managed to sleep through the night I felt like I’d handed Sebastian another defeat—I raced into the shower. At six thirty on the dot, I ran down the stairs to find Dale already waiting.

  He was driving the usual unmarked car that screamed “cop”—or more accurately “detective.” I saw two Venti hot Starbucks coffees in the cup holders and a brown bag that smelled like onions and garlic on the passenger seat. I got in, put the bag on my lap, and pointed to the two coffees. “What are you gonna drink?”

  Dale stared at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I waved him off. “Never mind. We’ll need a pit stop anyway. I’ll refuel then.”

  He shook his head. “That’s an awful lot of caffeine.”

  See what I mean? I held up a hand. “Uh-uh. No. You do not get to do that.”

  Dale rolled his eyes as he pulled into the street. “I printed out the information I got on Tracy’s mom—Shelly Connor—and the family. It’s in the pocket of your door.”

  I sipped my coffee as I read the printout. Shelly was forty-five. She had three daughters and two sons of her own, ranging between the ages of twenty-one and twelve. Tracy, at nineteen, was the second eldest of the crew. Shelly’s eldest daughter, Tiffany—a name that guarantees there’ll be a stripper pole in her future—had moved out when she was seventeen and was living with her boyfriend. The younger kids—Tammy, Tony, and Tommy (why do parents do this to their children?)—ages sixteen, fourteen, and twelve respectively, all lived at home. Tammy had been busted in her freshman year for drinking on school grounds—a violation I could relate to, having been busted for stashing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my locker—and got detention for a week. Her bust immediately made me wonder whether she had the same reasons for drinking that I’d had—a pedophile in the house.

  Shelly was currently living with Benjamin Posner, who added three boys of his own—ages twenty-one, sixteen, and fourteen—to the clan. They all lived at home.

  Benjamin had been laid off from his job at the Acorn Furniture manufacturing plant six months earlier, and they were on welfare. Shelly had no criminal history, but Benjamin had a couple of busts for possession of powder cocaine. He’d pled guilty and been placed on probation in both cases. Benjamin had managed to successfully complete probation the first time but violated probation in his second case when he got busted for driving under the influence of alcohol—coincidentally, the day he got laid off. He’d done four days in jail and pled guilty for time served. His oldest son, Ronnie, had been suspended for fighting in school once during his sophomore year and twice in his junior year. He didn’t get in trouble in his senior year, because by then he’d dropped out. He worked off and on for a small house-painting company. The middle son, Chuck, had been to juvenile hall for stealing from a couple of liquor stores. But Luke, the youngest son, was clean—so far.

  Not exactly The Brady Bunch. I grabbed an onion bagel out of the bag and opened the small container of cream cheese. “How come there’s nothing on Tracy?” I spread the cream cheese on my bagel and took a bite.

  Dale glanced at me. “Because I couldn’t find anything on her. As in, nothing.”

  I swallowed the bite of bagel. I could think of only one reason for that. “She’s in protective custody.”

  Dale reached into the bag, pulled out an everything bagel, and handed it to me to do the honors. “That’s my first guess. My distant second is that she hooked up with someone like Alex, and he hacked into the system and deleted her records.”

  I spread cream cheese on the bagel and handed it back to Dale. Not that I doubted Alex could do anything he wanted, but even he had never mentioned being able to hack the police department’s databases. “Can someone even do that? I thought your databases were pretty secure.”

  Dale sighed and shook his head. “Nothing’s that secure anymore. Last year, some hackers broke into a police database in Massachusetts and encrypted the files so no one could access them. Not even the cops. The hackers demanded twenty thousand bucks to break the encryption. The department couldn’t find anyone else who could do it, so they had to
pay up.”

  This was excellent news for me. If those idiots could find a way to break into a police database, Alex could certainly hack in and do more useful things—like make criminal histories disappear. But we’d have to reserve that superpower for the very rare, deserving cases, because if Alex got caught . . . I didn’t even want to think about it. I turned my thoughts back to Tracy. “The fact that you came up with nothing must mean there’s really something to find.”

  Dale took a sip of coffee. “Maybe. But maybe not. If she’s in protective custody, they might have decided it was better to just do a complete blackout, even if there isn’t much there. Why take chances?”

  I took another bite of bagel and washed it down with the last of my coffee. “But if she is in protective custody, the cops must think Jorge Maldonado’s involved in something big.” I took Dale’s coffee out of the holder.

  Dale raised an eyebrow. “Can’t imagine what that might be.”

  “Right.” If the cops thought Jorge had dirt on Javier Cabazon, that would definitely qualify as “something big.” I took a sip of Dale’s coffee. “So the cops are using the murder rap to squeeze information out of Jorge?”

  Dale eyed the cup of coffee in my hand. “Seems likely.”

  I snorted. “Huh. Seems impossible. No one screws Cabazon over and lives to talk about it. Especially not a grateful nephew.”

  “I’m not saying their play will work. But I can see why they’d give it a try.”

  “We’re assuming Tracy didn’t just ghost on the cops and decide to hide out until the case blows over.” That wasn’t the greatest likelihood, but it wasn’t impossible, either. “If she is hiding out, they’ll need to let Jorge go at some point—unless they have some other evidence.”

  Dale reached out and took his coffee from me. “That’d be best for everyone, as long as Cabazon never finds Tracy. But we can’t count on getting that lucky. And if she is in protective custody, I don’t know how we persuade her to trust us.”

  True. Tracy was undoubtedly looking forward to getting her testimony over with and going into witness protection. They’d give her a new identity and monthly checks—for a while, and maybe for life. Why on earth would she cooperate with us? “We just have to hope we can get her to see that we’re telling the truth, that there’s no such thing as witness protection when it comes to Cabazon.”

  “Assuming we get her to believe us, then what? Do you have a plan? ’Cause I sure don’t.”

  Actually, I did have the broad outline of a plan in mind. But I needed more information before I could fill in the specifics. “I’m working on it.” I leaned back and looked out the window at the rusting train tracks, burned-out buildings, and ugly procession of strip malls. We rode in silence until Dale pulled off the freeway and navigated to a neighborhood that looked like it belonged in a third-world country.

  The shell of a car with no wheels or license plate sat on the front lawn of one house—if you could call a weed-infested patch littered with old beer cans and cheap liquor bottles a lawn. A dog whose ribs were showing slunk down the street in search of food. A young girl who looked no more than fourteen years old held a diapered baby on her hip and the hand of a toddler wearing a stained onesie who stumbled drunkenly next to her.

  The broken windows and eviction notices on the house farther down the street said the owners had abandoned it, but the needles that littered what used to be flower beds said others had taken their place. A heavy fog of despair hung over the whole neighborhood. Dale turned right at the corner and pulled up in front of a small house with an old-fashioned front porch. The steps that led up to the porch sagged, and the paint was peeling everywhere. Tattered blue-checkered curtains hung in the front windows. But the tiny postage stamp of a lawn had some patches of grass and even a couple of white rose bushes on either side of the walkway—no small feat given Southern California’s years of drought.

  I saw that there was an old black Ford pickup truck in the driveway, but I couldn’t tell whether anyone was home. “What’s our cover story?” To put it mildly, there was nothing official about this visit—no one could ever know who we really were.

  Dale pointed to the glove box. “I found some pamphlets for a counseling center for juvies at the station. I figured with all those kids, Shelly might like a little help—especially since she qualifies for six months free.”

  I gave a short chuckle. “We’re quite the bargain.” But it was a smart play. It gave us a believable reason to ask about Tracy. I looked at the little house and tried to imagine how so many people could live there. From what I could see, there were, at most, three bedrooms. Just thinking about the cramped quarters made it hard to breathe. I reminded myself that it was just a visit; I didn’t have to live there. I opened the glove box and took out the pamphlets.

  Dale scanned the house with that cop gaze, always in search of danger signals—and points of escape. “Ready?” I nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  We got out and headed up the walk.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Shelly answered Dale’s knock on the door. I knew it had to be her, because Tiffany, the only other adult female in the family, didn’t live there anymore. Otherwise, I’m not sure I would’ve tagged her as the mother. She was slender and vaguely pretty the way people with no outstanding features can be. Her light-brown wavy-frizzy hair flowed down to the middle of her back. The colorful peasant blouse, blue pull-on pants, and short sheepskin boots completed an overall bohemian impression. Dale introduced us as John Lefcourt and Elizabeth Murdock, the people from the Peace at Home counseling center.

  Shelly smiled and swept a stray hair out of her eyes. “Yes, come on in. I’m so happy to see you.”

  The sweetness of her welcome made me feel guilty—until I remembered that Dale and I were on a mission to save her daughter’s life. We moved into a cluttered living room where every piece of furniture looked like it’d been thrashed beyond repair years ago. The Poly-Fiber stuffing was seeping out of an aging blue sofa, the formerly beige carpet was now covered with stains and riddled with rips and holes, and the cable-spool coffee table had been the site of some serious mishaps—both food- and non-food-related. It was banged up as though someone had tried to kill it. Next to the sofa was a fake leather recliner with a broken footstool, and on the other side of the coffee table was a barrel chair, its original color no longer discernible after multiple repairs with a variety of different-colored patches.

  I perched on the edge of the barrel chair—which looked like the safest bet, insect-wise—and Dale braved a place on the sofa. The smells of old bacon grease and dirty socks permeated the air. As I suspected, the house had just three bedrooms, and I could see them all down the short hall that led out of the living room. The doors were closed, but rap music thumped behind at least two of them.

  Shelly sat down next to Dale and gestured toward the bedrooms. “As you can tell, it’s a full house. Lots of teenagers”—she paused, then smiled—“and lots of drama.”

  Dale gave her a sympathetic smile. “Almost ninety percent of our work is devoted to families with teenagers because . . . well, they generally do pose some of the most challenging problems. Our records show that your eldest, Tiffany, is living with her boyfriend, is that correct?”

  Shelly nodded, her expression bland. “They were so in love. It just seemed right to let them start their lives together.”

  Letting a seventeen-year-old girl move in with her boyfriend struck me as anything but “right.” But what did I know? I didn’t have kids. I asked, “Does she live nearby?”

  Shelly frowned. “In Redlands, down by San Bernardino. Is there some reason why you’d need to talk to her, too?”

  Yes, because I wanted another source of information on Tracy. This obviously was not the explanation that suited. “I only wondered because if she was close by, she might’ve been taking care of the other kids—in which case, we’d need to talk to her, get her input on them.”

  It sounded lame to me, but Sh
elly bought it. “I don’t see too much of Tiffany these days. She just had her second baby, so as you can imagine, she’s pretty busy.”

  Her second baby? Jeez.

  Dale took over. “Just for our records, can you give us Tiffany’s last name and address?”

  “They didn’t get married, so she still has her maiden name, Gopeck,” Shelly said. “They live at 1313 Calhoun Street.”

  “Do your other three children go by the name Gopeck also?” Dale asked.

  Shelly shook her head. “Their father’s name was Traffort.”

  Shelly’s current last name was Connor, so that meant there had been another husband after him. And now there was Benjamin Posner. I’m not one to judge, but our Shelly was one busy mama. I decided to get to the point. “Does Tracy still live here?”

  Shelly’s bland smile fell away. “No, Tracy hasn’t lived here for a long time.” A look of bewildered sadness spread across her features. “She was such a good girl, a smart girl. But she started running away, and . . . I just couldn’t seem to keep her home.”

  Her reaction—confused but not really concerned—struck me as bizarre. No kid repeatedly runs away just for shits and giggles. But Shelly seemed to be fine living in the mystery. “When was the first time she ran away?”

  Shelly stared off in the distance. “I believe it was right after Benjamin moved in. When she was twelve.”

  Warning bells went off in my head. I was about that same age when Celeste moved us in with Sebastian. I forced myself not to jump to conclusions. Not every preteen girl was victimized by a pedophile. “Did she have problems with Benjamin? Or his sons?”

  Shelly gave me an earnest look. “No, not at all. Everyone got along great.”

  I wasn’t buying it. “Are you sure? You didn’t see any kind of . . . tension? Or fights between them?”

  This time Shelly was adamant. “Absolutely not.”

  I gave up and moved on. “Do you know where she went when she ran away?”

  Shelly shook her head. “I never knew. She’d be gone for a few days, maybe a week—sometimes two weeks. Once in a while she’d come home on her own, but mostly the police would bring her back. I always asked her where she’d been, but she’d never say.”