Judas Kiss

by J. T. Ellison

  “Your Italian is perfect. Is that where you learned, watching some Italian psycho?”

  He grimaced. “My Italian, and other languages. It was part of why they wanted me.”

  “Other languages? What, like German and French?”

  He was getting visibly uncomfortable.

  “More than those three?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Jeez, Baldwin, how many languages do you speak?”

  “Thirteen.”

  She caught her jaw before it hit her chest. She thought back a few moments. Honesty. Omissions weren’t lies, were they? Creative lies, white lies that were meant to protect, those didn’t count, right? She shoved that thought away. He was telling her now. Lord knows she’d held a few things back about her past.

  “Garrett’s heart?”

  “Fine.” He looked like he expected her to fly off the handle. She didn’t like that he’d been forced to lie to her, but that’s how she saw it. He wouldn’t have done it voluntarily.

  She grinned. “Okay. Prove it.”

  “Prove it?”

  “Tell me you love me. In…Polish.”

  Now he was smiling with her. “It’s not one of my best, but okay. Kocham ciebie, Taylor. With all my heart.” He kissed her, leaving her breathless. When they stopped, her fingers were entwined in his hair and her ponytail had come down. Shit, the top button of her jeans was even undone. Making out in public, just so classy.

  Setting herself to rights, she said, “I see we’re going to have a lot of fun with this little talent of yours.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “About the OA? I’m not thrilled, but I know you. If you think it’s the right thing to do, I’ll stand by you. Just don’t be dragging any more of these wackos home with you, okay? I have enough to deal with.”

  The thought sobered them up. “You realize that the Pretender is following your moves now. He’s calling himself an admirer, but he’s more of a danger to you now than ever.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. There’s nothing I can do about it at the moment. Fitz will work the case. We just have to see if there’s any evidence that can help us put a face to his little pseudonym.”

  “We haven’t heard the last of him.” He turned the car on, put it in gear.

  “No, we haven’t. But we’ve got bad guys aplenty to deal with this afternoon. Let’s go solve the Wolff case.”

  They were quiet, following West End into Broadway, passing a rollicking crowd of tourists at Tootsie’s. When they got back to the CJC, she saw Baldwin scoping the parking lot before pulling in. The threat from Aiden may have been past, but the realization that he dealt with more people of the same ilk made her uneasy, regardless of the assurances she gave him.

  Thirty-Five

  Marcus and Lincoln had evidently heard the news, because they were both wide-eyed when she walked back into the homicide office. Captain Price was sitting with them, a bushy red eyebrow raised in expectation.

  She covered the basics as quickly and as vaguely as she could. Baldwin came in and sat down, handed her a Diet Coke and let her tell the story.

  “The Pretender seems to be back in Nashville. I don’t know what this means, but he’s just killed someone from the FBI’s wanted list. The man’s name was Aiden. Baldwin worked a case that involved him, and Aiden was seeking retribution. He was responsible for the killings at my house. But he’s dead now, and we’ve got bigger issues.”

  She showed them the Polaroid she’d borrowed from Fitz. Lincoln passed it to Marcus, and they both got stern looks on their faces.

  “So the Pretender thinks he’s your personal bodyguard now?” Lincoln asked. “What the hell?”

  “Aiden was looking to hurt me. He went after Taylor, and the Pretender seems to have a sense of chivalry,” Baldwin said.

  Price listened, then got up. “That’s it. There’s entirely too much bullshit flying around. I’m having a private security detail put on you, Taylor.”

  “I’ve already done that,” Baldwin said. “I’ve had them on Taylor since yesterday. We’ll just keep up with the watchers, let them know what we know about the Pretender. They’re a good team, I trust them.”

  So he wasn’t calling off the dogs while they were at the Parthenon, he was adding more.

  “And how long are we planning to keep this up?” Taylor was shaking her head. “No. I don’t want them.”

  “You’re going to have to live with it, sugar.” Baldwin’s stance told her arguing was fruitless.

  “I agree. We can’t afford anything happening to you, LT. Lincoln and I will start looking for more clues with the Pretender case. We’ll find the bastard. In the meantime, we need to keep you off his radar,” Marcus said.

  “I can take care of myself,” she grumbled, but when faced with four glowering men, all intent on keeping her out of harm’s way, she decided discretion was the better part of valor and acquiesced. For the time being.

  “Can we at least get back to work?”

  Price patted her on the head and she narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve got a meeting. Fill her in. You should be proud of your boys. And be careful, wildcat.”

  “Yes, Dad,” she said.

  “I’m going to join the captain for a moment. Be right back.” Baldwin left the room with Price, their conversation quickly moving out of earshot.

  Taylor rolled her eyes, then turned to Marcus and Lincoln. “Good grief. This has been a day. Let me have it. What’s the news on the Wolff case?”

  Lincoln waved his hand to Marcus. “You go,” he said.

  “Okay. To start with, we checked on the underage actresses. They’ve both split town, ostensibly for California. They had auditions today at Vivid Video, and we’ve got a call in to their ‘agent’ to get them to call us immediately when they get finished.”

  “You mean when they come up for air?” Taylor said, making all of them laugh.

  “Yeah. Then. So in the meantime, we’ve been looking at Todd Wolff’s files. We’ve confirmed he wasn’t in Savannah when he said he was. He used his gas card to fill up the day before the murder, Sunday, in Crossville. So Wolff was definitely in the state of Tennessee at least one day after the murder.”

  “Doesn’t prove he did it.”

  “No, but it does verify that he’s lied about several things. They’re arraigning him this afternoon, so we should get an opportunity to question him again late this evening. Julia Page and Miles Rose have already been informed that we want to have a chat.”

  “If he was in Crossville Sunday, where was he Saturday?”

  “That’s the question. We don’t know. He wasn’t in Savannah. His receptionist caved pretty quick when she realized we knew he was lying. She said he hadn’t been to the job site in over a week. The maestro here—” he gestured to Lincoln “—has been working his mojo on their computers. Corinne Wolff was a very bad girl.”

  “Really?”

  Lincoln handed her a sheaf of papers. “She was definitely getting some nookie on the side. Here’s her little love notes, courtesy of her private e-mail. They are all from a separate address, a different provider, and password protected. The whole nine yards. We assume she didn’t share it with Todd, they have another couple of addresses that are obviously for his work, her friends, and another that’s solely smut related. This one was tucked away in a hidden folder.”

  She knew it. Taylor glanced through the first few sheets. The usual online lovey-dovey stuff, typical of any relationship. “I don’t see a name. You’re sure this wasn’t between her and Todd?”

  “Positive. I traced the IP address. It’s registered to a completely different person. The same person, by the way, that owns the IP address for Selectnet.com.” His smile was nonchalant, but his eyes burned with the knowledge that he’d done something remarkable.

  Taylor nearly fell out of her chair. “What? What do you mean? The California company that’s putting up the sex videos? My sex videos? Corinne’s involved in that?”

 
“They both are, though in completely different ways. Todd Wolff seems to be the purveyor of both fine art and the lowbrow stuff. He’s working for the Selectnet company, providing them with high-quality film. That’s his big sideline money-maker, the porno flicks he’s making in his basement. But we’ve gone through his finances with a fine-toothed comb, and we found some interesting purchases. Specifically, he bought forty of the cameras we found in the vents of your cabin.”

  It took Taylor a moment to wrap her head around that little tidbit. “Todd Wolff was responsible for putting the cameras in my house? How in the world is that possible?”

  “Not just your cabin. Here’s our theory. We’ve tracked down more of the uploaded videos to the Selectnet site. A huge number come from Nashville. Todd’s the head of Wolff Construction. It’s as easy as pie—when he builds a house, he places the cameras. The owners have no idea they’re there, and he gets to parlay all that unedited film into home movies on the Web site.”

  Taylor gave a long, low whistle. “Do you realize how many houses he’s built? There could be cameras in all of them.”

  “Well, forty of them that we suspect, at least.”

  “But he didn’t build my cabin. How did that happen? How would Wolff have gotten into my house?”

  “Here’s the genius part. Before he started Wolff Construction as a home builder, he was a renovator. He did contract jobs for insurance money. Say, for example, a person has a leak in their shower, has to file a claim on their home-owner’s insurance to get it fixed. The insurance company contracts with certain construction firms to do the work. We checked, and Wolff Construction was one of those companies. It’s how he made enough money, on the books at least, to graduate to the home building company. And the camera purchase is recent, only last year. He could have bought many, many more and we just haven’t found the records yet.”

  Taylor let the thought gel. When had she had work done on the cabin? She didn’t remember…oh, yes, she did. She’d done a minor kitchen remodel a year after she moved in. But that wasn’t an insurance claim, and she didn’t remember working with Wolff Construction. She racked her brain trying to remember the name of the company she’d used, but it wouldn’t come. She told Lincoln that.

  “I already thought of that,” he said. “Even before he started the work with the insurance companies, he worked for his dad. His dad owned several firms, one of which was—”

  “Remedy. Remedy Remodelers. Son of a bitch.”

  “Exactamundo.”

  “Wow. Lincoln, this is fantastic work!”

  “Aww, it wasn’t just me. Marcus did some of it.”

  “Gracious of you,” Marcus said.

  “Think nothing of it,” Lincoln jibed back.

  Taylor tuned out their banter. The tendrils of Wolff’s multiple illegalities would have serious ramifications. They needed to talk to the press, to get the word out. Which also meant rolling up the Selectnet shop. Even though the site had been pulled from the Internet, they still needed to bring in the ringleaders. For that, she needed Baldwin’s help.

  “We need to have a press conference, among other things. I’m going to call Baldwin. How much information do you have that we can use to indict Selectnet.com? Because we have to take them down.”

  “That’s what Price is doing. He’s talking to Dan Franklin and they’re designing a media campaign. He’s left it to us to wrap the case. So, here’s the rest of the story.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Much more. Marcus, you go. I’m getting parched.”

  “Okay. We backtraced the IP address for the Selectnet company. The California holdings are a front. The money trail leads right back here to Nashville. Does the name Henry Anderson ring a bell?”

  Taylor felt the name go through her like a lightning bolt. The image of the man connected to the name came, vivid and sharp. A name from the past.

  “Are you joking?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “Do you know the story behind Henry Anderson?” she asked.

  “We’ve been familiarizing ourselves with it. He was one of your busts, that much we know. You got him into prison on child molestation charges. He charged you with brutality.”

  “Ha. I kicked him in the balls when he tried to run during an arrest. He deserved it. Child molestation was the only charge we managed to get to stick. And it wasn’t even a felony count, it wasn’t the same kind of terminology we’d use today. I think he was ultimately charged with child endangerment, actually. We couldn’t do much better than that. A shame too, Henry’s quite the sleazeball. He was making movies back then. He served a few years, and got out.” She paused, snapped her fingers. “The movies. That’s it, isn’t it? Henry is Todd Wolff’s benefactor.”

  Lincoln nodded. “That’s what we think. He is definitely the owner of Selectnet, and his reach looks to be deeper than that. We’re still running through all the information, but there’s definitely enough to tie him directly to underage porn. Among about a thousand other violations of the law.”

  Taylor went to her little window, looked out across 2nd Avenue. There was dust in the air, probably from the construction site down the road, and the motes danced in the sun. Pretty. Unlike her thoughts right now. Abandoning the dust ballet, she turned back to them.

  “I didn’t know he was still in the state. Henry fucking Anderson. He’s a mean son of a bitch. I had a difficult time with him, he came after me with both barrels, tried to have my testimony discredited, filed the charges against me. They got dismissed. I caught him red-handed with his dick in a kid’s face, and he tried to make me look bad.” She broke off again. All the little pieces fell into place.

  “Tony Gorman. You said he was a member of Selectnet. He got word to Henry that I’d gotten a sniff of their enterprise. I’ll bet a million dollars that’s where the complaint came from, the one that Delores Norris listened to when she suspended me. I got a little cheeky with Gorman in our interview. Gorman wouldn’t have had the guts to do it himself, but if he were encouraged…Henry is a master manipulator. Unbelievable.”

  Lincoln and Marcus were equally excited. “After we talk to Wolff this evening, hit him with all this information, that we know his role, surely we can shake his ass loose on the murder of his wife. He’s facing so many different counts and so many years in jail that it shouldn’t matter to him. Copping a plea to murder should be the least of his worries.”

  “Well, we can hope. Let’s fill Page in, tell her what’s happening. Then we need to go get Henry Anderson. I’m assuming you’ve already found him, Lincoln?”

  “Yep.” He flashed her a gap-toothed grin. “He’s right there on the sexual offenders’ database, all registered up like a good little boy.”

  Thirty-Six

  Taylor was getting her ducks in a row.

  She spent a few minutes writing up the case notes while she waited for the requisite warrants to be arranged before they took their case-breaking field trip. The evidence implicating Todd Wolff was becoming increasingly cut-and-dried. They just needed one or two more pieces of the puzzle to lock him up for life, and it seemed her team, working closely with Baldwin’s FBI cohorts, was accomplishing that very nicely. The added satisfaction of bringing Henry Anderson to his knees should be quite the capper on her day.

  Taylor had talked to Julia Page and they’d decided to seek separate indictments against Todd for the pornography, the cyber Peeping Tom cameras, and the murder of Corinne Wolff. No sense throwing everything into one basket, have a technicality render an acquittal and not be able to retry due to the convoluted double-jeopardy statutes.

  Dan Franklin was ready to go to the media with the story as soon as Baldwin’s people gave the okay sign that they’d raided the California Selectnet offices and taken possession of their physical records.

  Taylor and Marcus were ready to pick up Henry Anderson. Lincoln was set up in a private office, working with one of Baldwin’s forensic accountants, trying to unravel more of the Wolf
fs’ financial trail. Considering the accountant was petite and blond, Lincoln didn’t seem terribly put out.

  Fitz was at the ME’s office. A quick autopsy was being performed on Aiden, courtesy of one of Baldwin’s calls to Quantico. Garrett Woods had sent down a staff forensic pathologist to help Sam with the evidentiary trail.

  All these law enforcement folks, acting as one big happy family. They were lucky to have a good working relationship between all the jurisdictions involved. Taylor had to admit, it was nice to work with Baldwin again. His calm, cool demeanor always helped an investigation along, especially in the critical moments before they blew it wide open.

  And at the moment, the man in question had his feet propped on the edge of her desk, watching her finagle a warrant for Henry Anderson. His green cat eyes were practically dancing with merriment watching her go through the elaborate machinations with the judge she’d pulled. It was the newly elected female judge, Sophia Bottelli, the former prosecutor who was adamant about i dotting and t crossing.

  Promise of a signature finally secured, Taylor hung up the phone and looked at Baldwin’s grinning visage.

  “You look like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern. Could you smile any bigger?”

  He swung his feet off her desk. “This whole week has been unreal. You’ve been raked over the coals, humiliated, yelled at by your fiancé, yet here you are, unscathed, ready to swoop in and take down the bad guy. I love it when you do that.”

  “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “Think we’ve got it all covered?”

  “I’d still like to know why Michelle Harris went on the national news and tried to discredit me. All I’ve tried to do is help her and her family.”

  “Grief makes people do strange things.”

  “Well, that’s true. When I first met her, I don’t know, there was something off about her. I’m probably just imagining things, it was a horrible moment for that whole family. Her mom was crying in the chaplain’s arms, sobbing her heart out, the dad was in shock, the other sister was blank as a slate. Michelle was the only one who had any semblance of composure about her. When she came into the room, there was this moment where she looked almost feral. She covered it up quickly, I’ve never seen it again, but for that instant…this is going to sound stupid.”