by Brenda Novak
“You’ve been investigating Mr. Hart? Three years ... that’s from before he was even appointed.”
“We believe that Mr. Hart is associating with a known criminal who may have been using Hart for political favors. We have circumstantial evidence, but nothing that proves he’s been taking bribes. Because he doesn’t vote on legislation, we can’t pin much on him.”
“Oh my God,” Huang said.
Matt’s heart pounded.
“Is this about the contract? Except that was just last month.”
“Explain,” Matt said.
“The economic development committee that Mr. Hart chairs gave a contract to Star Consulting for a study. The committee put out bids, and Star came in lowest. Except, they didn’t. I found another bid had been submitted, but Mr. Hart said they’d pulled it. I didn’t think anything of it, but then a letter came in from the lower bid company demanding a freedom of information act request about the bidding process. I started putting it together, but Mr. Hart said he would take care if it. That was ... odd. When I asked about it a week later, he said that it had been a misunderstanding.”
Dean slid a piece of paper and pen to Huang. “Write it all down. The names of the people involved. Dates. Everything you can remember.”
“What does this mean? Am I in trouble?”
“No, Mr. Huang, you’re not in any trouble. But I would strongly suggest that you don’t discuss this meeting with anyone—not in Mr. Hart’s office, not among your family, friends, staff, no one. Write everything down, and we’ll get you back home. We don’t want Mr. Hart to get suspicious.”
Huang started writing.
Matt motioned to Dean and they both left the room. “Shouldn’t we put him in protective custody?” Matt asked. “If we’re right, Hart may have conspired to have him killed.”
Dean seemed surprised. “Do you actually believe Hart himself had something to do with the shooting? Over a sketchy contract?”
“Yes, but I don’t think this is about that consulting contract, not specifically. I think Huang knows more about it, or that contract will lead us to Rykov or other illegal activities. That would damage Hart far more than Rykov. How would Rykov know that Huang was going to be at that press conference? It’s not part of his typical duties. Hart brought Huang in specifically for the event.”
Dean considered, but wasn’t convinced. “Huang may know more, but it’s difficult to interview a witness who doesn’t know what he knows, if you catch my drift.”
“Show him the pictures of Rykov, the shooter, everyone involved. Maybe something will come to mind.” Matt glanced at his watch. “Archives should have delivered the case Alex flagged yesterday. I want to go through it personally. She commented that the address was familiar, and when I dug deeper I learned that Tommy Cordell had been the arresting officer and Anthony Monteith—a drug lawyer—handled the defense even though no drugs were involved. The defendant was convicted and killed in prison. The whole case feels weird, but I won’t know until I read the transcripts and look at the evidence.”
“Let me know if you find anything before I meet with Alex at noon. I hope to bring something to the AUSA this week. If Huang helps us, we can take down Travis Hart first and flip him on Rykov.”
“You want to offer him a deal.” Matt hated the idea.
“Travis Hart will lose his career and be dis-barred, but he’s not a killer. He’s a corrupt politician. Rykov is dangerous. He traffics in human lives. I can’t let him walk. If we get something solid on Hart and the AUSA is behind me, I’m taking what we have to him and offering him a deal. I don’t need you to agree, Matt.”
Matt didn’t have to like it, but Dean was right. There were levels of crime, and while no prosecutor liked offering a deal to any criminal, there were valid reasons to do so. Sergei Rykov was one very valid reason.
“Whatever you need from my office, you’ll have it,” Matt said.
***
Alex walked into the coffeehouse in Old Sacramento and, after grabbing a large coffee, found a table in the corner where she could watch the door. She was practically smiling. She’d slept better than she’d had in quite some time.
From her pocket she pulled the note Matt had left on her nightstand.
Alex ~
I had to leave early to go home and dress for work. I’ll see you at the meeting with Dean at noon.
I told you we were compatible. Very compatible. I want to see you tonight. My place, so I don’t have to run out at the crack of dawn.
XO ~ Matt
Compatible? She’d call them combustible. She wasn’t going to read too much into their relationship, not right now. She was simply going to enjoy it. Enjoy Matt. See what happened, where this thing between them led, and not force anything.
But she certainly liked the D.A. Very, very much.
Alex’s best friend Detective Selena Black slid into the chair next to her. “You’re smiling. Spill.”
Alex couldn’t help herself. She showed Selena the note. She felt like she was in high school again, giggling over a crush. Except this was more than a crush.
“Matt Elliott? As in the hottest D.A. in the country Matt Elliott?”
Alex grinned and snatched the note from Selena’s fingers. She slipped it back in her pocket and sipped her coffee. “But keep it between us. I’m not going to tell anyone for awhile.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to jinx it.” She realized she probably shouldn’t have told Selena, either. If she took this position with Hart, she had to keep any relationship with Matt secret. The thought sobered her up quickly. “And there’s some people who can’t know.”
“Spill.”
She bit her lip. “It’s complicated. And I’m serious, this conversation can not go anywhere.”
“Alex, this is me. Selena. Who had your back at the police academy? Who’s your closest friend? I won’t repeat a word, but obviously something is bothering you.”
Alex still didn’t quite know how to bring up the subject. She started by hedging a bit. “You might not even be able to help, because you’re working sex crimes.”
“Ask. Anything.”
“Have you ever had any suspicion that my ex Jim might not be squeaky clean?”
Selena didn’t speak for a long minute, but her expression betrayed her.
“And you never told me?” Alex said. “This is important. I need to know.”
“What’s going on?”
“Jim’s the lead detective on the Travis Hart shooting. And ... he said something to me last night that had me thinking he knows more about the shooting than he’s telling me.”
“Maybe he’s just being a jerk.”
“Maybe.”
Selena sipped her coffee. “Just because a cop isn’t squeaky clean doesn’t mean they’re like Tommy Cordell.”
There were lots of shades of gray. Some things were easier to overlook than others.
“That said,” Selena continued, “a few years ago—five, maybe six,—I had an aggravated assault case. The victim was found barely alive in an alley. She was a prostitute, run by one of the Russian gangs. I suspected she was beaten by one of her johns. In my experience, if her pimp did it they wouldn’t leave her on the street to be picked up by the authorities. I worked her hard—pushed her to give me something, anything, to find the bastard who had hurt her. She wouldn’t talk. I had a Russian interpreter with me, but the girl spoke English well enough. She simply said she was mugged. She wasn’t fucking mugged, Alex.”
“Where does Jim come into it?”
“The girl left the hospital against doctor’s wishes. Two days later, she was found dead in her apartment. Jim caught the case. Didn’t work it like I would have.”
“Did she die from her injuries?”
“The coroner’s report said she OD’d on narcotics. Suspected suicide, possibly accidental—self-medicating for her injuries. But when Jim found out I’d pulled the autopsy report, he confronted me. It was ... unusual. It
’s not that he said or did anything wrong, but his hostility was unwarranted. I let it go. There was no proof against anyone. I would have worked the pimp over—I couldn’t find any of his other girls who’d been beaten like that, which made me think it might not have been a regular john, it might have been a guy who picked her up and beat her because she was a prostitute. The hospital did a rape kit, which can be difficult to use in a prosecution because of her job. No semen, but anal tearing and evidence of spermicide. When I reviewed the original hospital report, it catalogued her injuries—bruising around her wrists, broken nose, one side of her face bruised, two cracked ribs. A clump of her hair had been torn out. But the bruising wasn’t consistent with being beaten. It was mostly on one side.”
“You think it was violent sex.”
“I would call it rape, even if her john paid her. But no jury would convict on that unless she testified, and even then—” She shrugged. “It sucks, but it is what it is. I saw one more similar case, a year or so ago, that ended in an unsolved homicide. Similar bruising, anal tearing, hair pulled out. Also a Russian prostitute. John caught the case, but the girl was dumped in the river and we couldn’t get any DNA or viable evidence. Can’t even say it was the same guy.”
“But you think so.”
“Yeah. I do. And I can’t help but think if Jim had just pursued that first case harder we might have found the guy and the other girl would still have been alive.”
“I wished you would have told me.”
“There was nothing to tell. It was a gut feeling that he was hiding something that didn’t make it in the report. He accepted my argument that I was curious because I’d picked up the assault case and wanted to find the person who beat her. He even gave me access to her apartment to see if there was any evidence there. There wasn’t. But ... I just felt like he was watching me closely. He asked questions, like what she’d said to me while in the hospital. Nothing overt. Just ... odd.”
“Tommy used Russian prostitutes.”
“You don’t think Tommy ...?”
“I don’t know.” If not Tommy, he could have known who. He’d been so wrapped up in that world, he must have known about the beatings and the murder.
“Do you want me to talk to John?” Detective John Black was Selena’s brother.
“I don’t want it getting back to Jim.”
“John doesn’t like him.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me when I first started dating Jim? I feel like an idiot.”
“Because John can be a judgmental prick. I love my brother, but he sees everything in black and white. He didn’t like Gabriel when I first started seeing him. Even now, though they get along, I always feel like John is looking for a reason to dislike him.”
“Because you’re his baby sister.”
“Jim is cute, he’s fun, you had a good time with him. You’re always so serious. I know—I have that problem, too. Being with Gabriel has given me a life outside of the job. You deserve a life outside of the job, too. Who was anyone to judge that? But I always thought you were too good for Jim. Maybe because of the situation with the hooker, but also because of his off-color jokes.”
“Jim’s not a racist.”
“No, not that—his way of looking at sex crimes. The jokes he’d make about some of the cases I was working. You know how some of the guys are.”
“Yeah.” Alex always thought the guys pushed the boundaries to piss off the female cops, or make them uncomfortable.
“And usually we ignore it. But with you—Jim was better when you were around. Even though you were too good for him, he’d mellowed out once you started dating. He liked you.”
“Or maybe,” Alex said, “he was pretending all along.”
“What does that mean?”
“You can’t tell anyone this, Selena. No one. Not even Gabriel.”
“I trust Gabriel, but I won’t tell him.”
Alex glanced around, but one reason she’d picked this coffee house was that it was the least likely place they’d run into another cop. Still, she kept her voice low as she told Selena what really happened last year. She went through how she started working undercover for the feds and about documenting Tommy’s illegal activities and trying to get something big on Rykov, the head of Russian organized crime. “Everything was working fine until I caught Tommy with that underage prostitute. I had been investigating him for months, not long after I transferred to Northern Command. And that’s around the time Jim and I started dating.”
“Wow,” Selena said. “None of that came out when Tommy shot you.”
“Because the FBI didn’t have enough on Rykov, and if Rykov knew that I had documented everything Tommy did, it put others at risk. I agreed to stay quiet so they could find another way into the organization.”
“Shit, Alex.” Selena paused. “You don’t think that Jim knew about the investigation?”
“No. I honestly don’t. But before we split up, things were tense—I was keeping secrets and he knew. Only, he accused me of having an affair. I wasn’t, but I left anyway.” She paused, everything from her relationship with Jim starting to look a whole lot different.
“He came to see me last night,” Alex continued. “It was late. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the visit. But it felt familiar. He came in angry, as if I’d done something, and then said he thought I was lying about recognizing the shooter. I was lying—I did recognize him, though I don’t know his name. I didn’t tell Jim because as far as I’m concerned, the FBI needs to clear that information. So I admitted that he looked familiar but I didn’t know why. He seemed satisfied with the answer and all was well. But it reminded me of several other conversations we’d had in the past. And when I gave an answer, he was satisfied and we’d go drinking or have sex or watch a game. I think he was pumping me for information. He wanted to know what I knew or thought of Tommy’s activities. Either he thought I was extremely stupid because I didn’t figure it out, or that I was also on the take, though he never directly asked me. Yet ... Tommy may have told him that I knew about the skimming on drug busts. I pretended to ignore it, but had to make sure Tommy knew I knew what he was doing so that he would trust me.” She squeezed her temples. “This is a mess.”
“You need to tell your FBI contact all this.”
“I did. Sort of. They’re on top of things. But it makes me question my own judgment. I dated Jim Perry for more than a year. I lived with him for months. And I didn’t pick up on any of this. I feel like an idiot.”
“You’re the farthest thing from.” Selena grabbed her hand. “Listen to me, Alex—a good liar can make anyone believe a lie. I’m going to talk to John. I won’t tell him anything about what you said, I won’t even mention your name. But John is the finest cop I know, hands down. If he suspects anything, he’ll tell me.”
“Can you ask him to look into one more thing?”
“Anything.”
“Ballistics from the gun used in the Hart shooting match ballistics from an unsolved murder of a Russian prostitute.”
“I sense a theme here.”
“We’re hearing the same tune.”
“And you want to know what?”
“Anything about that case. Details—where she was found, if she had other injuries, any suspects. I can’t help but think that I have a bunch of pieces to the puzzle, but I’m missing the one piece that puts it all together.”
“I’ll call him. But Alex—please be careful. These people are extremely dangerous. If they had one cop on the payroll, they could have more.”
“I know they do. I just need to prove it.”
***
The archived files were on his desk when he arrived back to his office at ten that morning. Matt scanned the summary sheet of what was included, and all appeared to be in order. Next, he went through the detailed indictment.
The defendant, Paulson, was a burglar who primarily targeted homes of the wealthy who were on vacation, which made the robbery on River Road unusual. At th
e time, the business was Wallace Construction, owned and operated by Clark Wallace.
Cordell was the arresting officer, as per the computer file Matt had read last night. He’d been called to the scene when a silent alarm went off. He caught Paulson outside the building with a lock-pick set and detained him. Forensics proved that the defendants prints were on the door as well as inside the building, including on the CEO’s computer.
The CEO, Wallace, claimed that nothing had been taken. Forensics determined that the burglar attempted to access the CEO’s computer, but it was password protected and he was locked out after five attempts.
Matt pulled the rap sheet of the defendant. He wasn’t a tech guy—he didn’t break into houses with security systems. He was old school, lock picks or going through an unlocked window. He took things he could carry—jewelry, cash, small electronics like cell phones. Things that could easily be sold on the black market. Why had he changed his M.O. to steal from a business with nothing that could easily be fenced?
Matt flipped through the case. The business was a small construction company who often bid on local government projects—generally retrofitting for safety compliance. Matt ran both the business name and the CEO’s name through the database. Wallace had a DUI that was ten years old, a fine and suspended license for a year, but that was it for his record.
What about that address had tickled Alex’s memory?
And why had a criminal defense lawyer who primarily defended drug cases taken this case? It definitely stood out to Matt, and it would have at the time—but Matt had been in the Senate, not the D.A.’s office. What was in it for the lawyer? There wouldn’t have been a lot of money – in fact, it was a pro bono case, Matt noted upon further examination. Why would a high profile criminal lawyer who specialized in drug charges take a pro bono burglary case?
And had the defendant known something that got him killed in prison? Had he taken something Wallace didn’t want to admit was missing? Had Paulson been hired to steal something specific, then killed to ensure his silence?
