Matt had been minutes from downtown when he got word of the shooting. It took him nearly thirty minutes to navigate through multiple cops—LAPD, LA County Sheriff’s, US Marshals were all on scene. Government buildings went on lockdown immediately as law enforcement made their initial assessment.
Matt found the woman in charge—Lieutenant Elena Gomez—standing next to a tactical van. She was a short, stocky woman with a command presence calling out orders with calm, stern efficiency.
He approached and introduced himself. “I know you’re used to working with LA FBI, but I have an interest in this case.”
She looked at him a beat too long, then nodded, said, “I know the name. Quinn was assigned to you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Chen’s hearing was this afternoon.”
“Where’s Quinn now?”
“With DDA Dyson.”
“Since when?”
He immediately saw where she was going with this. “Since 11:45 this morning. One of my people has been with her all day.”
“Good. I don’t need the headache.” She glanced to where he assumed the two bodies lay behind privacy screens. “This isn’t her style.”
“Are you her commander?”
“I oversee Sergeant Popovich’s unit, among others. I recommended to the chief that he approve Quinn’s attachment to your unit.”
“I’m glad to meet you, then. She’s been an asset.”
“Quinn is a damn good cop, one of the best I’ve known, but also stubborn, reckless and will take ten years off your life because of the risks she takes. Never met a cop with more guts or empathy. Our loss is your gain.”
Her brief commentary was spot-on, Matt thought.
“Who’s running this investigation?” He nodded to the roped-off area. The street had been blocked at both ends by LAPD, and bystanders had been pushed to the opposite sidewalk or the east side of the park.
“Don’t know yet. I just talked to the chief of detectives, told him I needed his best to drop everything and take over. You’re not taking this.” It was a statement.
“No, ma’am. But I would like to be kept in the loop, and I am happy to assist—and by assist I mean it. I’m interested only because it directly impacts my team, of which Detective Quinn is an important part.”
“I’ll hold you to that. The LA office is full of pricks.”
“I’ve heard.”
Gomez laughed, a deep, barking chuckle that started and stopped quickly. “Bet you have. They deserved everything Quinn dished out, but damn, I wish she would have steered clear of them. She enjoyed needling that asshole Thornton whenever she could.”
“I need a threat assessment as soon as possible.” He handed her his business card. “My cell number is on the back. Call or text. Quinn is under our protection, but she’s not happy about it.”
“What cop would be? I’ll get you the assessment.” She in turn gave Costa her card. “Whatever you need, let me know.”
“I heard from one of your people that there are multiple witnesses.”
“All of whom say something different.”
That wasn’t uncommon.
“But we have plenty of security cameras in the area,” she said, “so we’ll be able to see exactly what happened. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She gave Matt a nod, then moved away to talk to three uniforms, instructing them efficiently. When they departed, she answered her phone.
Matt entered the courthouse. It was under restriction, but his badge and ID got him in. He took the elevator to DDA Dyson’s office.
“Finally!”
Kara had clearly been pacing. She rarely sat still.
Matt looked around. “Where’s Dyson?”
“He and his investigator went to talk to the judge,” Michael said. “He wants us to wait until he gets back.”
“Good.” Matt sat at the small conference table. “Elena Gomez is in charge of the scene,” he told Kara.
She sat across from Matt, an odd look on her face.
“She remembers you,” Matt said. “Doesn’t have any issues, seems to like you. Do you have a problem with her?”
“No.” Kara slowly smiled. “She should love me. She was my training officer.”
That surprised Matt. “A lieutenant?”
“She was a sergeant then. A total bitch half the time, and I thought she hated me. Lex said she could send me packing and to suck it up.”
“Clearly, you must have.”
“I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me from being a cop. We ended up riding together on and off for three years, between undercover gigs. I was her last trainee. We were effective together, and I learned more from Elena than anyone. Then she took over a squad, and a few years back was promoted to lieutenant.”
“Then why the skepticism? Did you have a falling-out?”
Kara shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“Command suits her.” That was all she said.
Before Matt could get more out of Kara, Craig Dyson walked in. He seemed preoccupied and irritated.
“What happened?” Kara asked.
“Defendant is dead, case closed.” He didn’t sound happy. And by the look on her face, Kara wasn’t happy about the turn of events, either. Dyson smiled wanly and extended his hand to Matt. “I’m sorry, you must be Matt Costa? I’m Craig Dyson.”
“Good to meet you. Have you heard anything more about the shooting?”
“No, you probably know more than I do. Chen had a lot of information about a lot of people. LAPD has their work cut out for them.”
“Then why not kill him before today?” Kara asked. “There are easier ways to take him out, without an audience and security cameras blanketing the area.”
“He has good security—”
Kara snorted. “One guy? Walking down the street? Rather careless if he thought he was in danger.”
Michael nodded. “One of the uniforms I spoke with said Chen had parked in the garage on the other side of the park. That’s nearly two blocks walking in the open. If he thought there was a threat, wouldn’t he have been dropped off at the courthouse entrance, or coordinated with his lawyer to park in the building?”
“Perhaps he didn’t realize there was a threat,” Craig suggested. “There were a lot of layers to his business model. The raid had repercussions across multiple avenues. I’m still working on untangling the threads, but we had him on murder and labor violations. That was the easy part.”
Matt glanced at Kara. She said, “Don’t look at me. I don’t have any answers. But it’s odd that a man like Chen didn’t see this coming.”
“Lieutenant Gomez promised to keep me in the loop,” Matt said. “But at least for the next day we need to be careful with you.” He turned to Craig. “Do you need Kara in court?”
Craig shook his head. “I’m prosecuting others involved with Chen, so at some point she’ll need to be available to testify, but it won’t be anytime soon.”
“I’ll be here,” she said. “Matt—it’s over. It’s finally over.”
His stomach twisted. He knew what she meant—the threat to her was over if Chen was dead—but he also took it another way. That their relationship was over. That she planned to come back to LA and reclaim her position in the Special Operations Unit and he wouldn’t see her again.
He’d told her in August that if she returned to Los Angeles, he would move here. He didn’t want to—but he could. He had a good relationship with the assistant director here, and while it would be uncomfortable once word got out that he was investigating one of their squads, he could make it work. He would do anything to be with Kara, even give up the Mobile Response Team.
But he loved what he was doing. He had built a great team. By the end of the year they would be fully staffed. Tony Greer said the Bureau might fund more teams based on Matt’s successful model.
The team wouldn’t be the same without Kara.
He wouldn’t be the same without Kara.
Craig’s cell phone rang. He answered, immediately frowned. “Where?” he said. Listened a minute. “Will...okay. I understand, but did she actually witness the shooting?”
Matt’s ears perked.
“Call me when you pick her up,” Craig said.
He hung up and looked at first Kara, then Matt and Michael.
“There may be a witness to the shooting, but I’m hearing this secondhand. It’s someone who was meeting me today—but I don’t know why she didn’t immediately go to the police.”
“Violet?” Kara said.
He looked surprised. “Yes. How—Oh. I told you about her.”
“I’ll go with you,” Kara said.
Dyson shook his head. “I don’t know where she is.”
“Who called you?” Matt asked.
“A mutual friend. This is a sensitive situation.”
He was gathering his briefcase together as he spoke. His phone rang again and he looked agitated, answered.
“Dyson.” A moment later he said, “Now?” He listened, then responded, “I’ll be there.” He ended the call and said, “The DA has called an emergency meeting. I have to go.”
Kara looked at Matt, tilted her head. He knew what she wanted. He didn’t want to give in—he still wasn’t confident that the threat against her was over. But she was safe in the courthouse.
“We’ll meet you in the lobby,” Matt said. “Don’t leave this building without us.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” she said with a flash of a smile.
Michael followed Matt out. Kara stayed put.
Craig gathered files into his briefcase. “I have to go, Kara.”
“Talk.” She blocked his path to the door.
“I can’t share details about my investigation. I plan on presenting my case to the grand jury this Wednesday. I have ethical and legal concerns. I need Violet’s statement—it’s key to my investigation, and she has valuable information.”
“And she didn’t tell you what information she had?”
“Not specifically, but I suspect it’s the link we’ve been looking for that connects certain staff in government to nonprofits who have been benefiting from government contracts. I wasn’t lying when I said this is going to impact dozens of high-ranking elected officials and staff.”
He opened the door and started for the elevator at the end of the hall. Kara followed, saying, “This started with Chen.”
“No. It started with the building he owns and a grant he received to use it for homeless Chinese immigrants.” He paused, assessing how much to tell her. “He was paid by the city to house his laborers—it’s insidious, but on the surface, not illegal. It was illegal for him to traffic the women and illegal for him to force them to work as indentured servants, but not to be paid to house them in his building. There’s much, much more to the housing scheme—it’s about grants and funding, who approved the grants, and who profited from them.”
“And this Violet girl knows.”
He looked pained, as if he’d already said too much. “I may need you—you are one of the few people who understands the structure of Chen’s operation, and more important, I trust you. This case has shaken my faith in the system, but you’ve always been honest and I’ve never doubted your integrity.”
Craig sounded genuinely upset. She didn’t know whether to thank him for his praise, or push with more questions.
She opted to push.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that Violet witnessed the shooting?” Kara asked.
Craig pressed the button on the elevator. “I know you got rid of the feds because you think I’ll talk to you alone, but I can’t. I’m sorry, Kara. This is such a sensitive situation right now, and I need to talk to Violet, possibly get her under protection.”
That comment surprised her. Craig thought the girl was in danger.
“I can talk to her, assess the threat level,” Kara suggested.
“First, we have to find her.”
“She’s missing?”
“No, she is hiding—my friend is picking her up. Something really spooked her.”
“Maybe seeing two men killed right in front of her?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Her instincts buzzed. There was something more worrisome about the phone conversation than he’d shared. “I’ll help any way I can.”
“I know you will,” Craig said. “I’ll talk to my contacts and make a push to bring you into our investigation. We need you, especially now that Chen is dead.”
Contacts? Not his boss? Not his investigator, Sharp? What was really going on here? Was Craig running an investigation outside the purview of the DA himself? Was Craig deep into something super serious—so serious that maybe Chen had been killed because of it?
Chen was going to talk...and that might make some people nervous.
If only Kara knew who these people were.
A man in a suit came from the opposite hall and as the doors to the elevator opened, he bumped into them hard enough to make her stumble.
“Excuse me!” Kara snapped, irritated.
The man kept walking without apology. Tall, slender build, thick facial hair, but that was all she could see as he turned away from them. He put something in his pocket and at the same time Craig slumped against her. He was clutching his side.
Blood dripped to the marble floor.
“Craig?” She looked down the hall. The man was heading for the east stairwell. She pulled her gun and shouted, “Stop! Police!” She couldn’t shoot, there could be people on the other side of the wall.
“Find her. Save her.”
“Save who? Violet? Save Violet?”
“Will. Call Will.” He coughed, wheezed. He grabbed her blazer with a trembling fist, pulled her down. “Will Lattimer.” His voice was barely a whisper, and she wasn’t certain she heard him correctly.
He was talking to a “Will” when he got that call. Was it Lattimer?
She knew a Will Lattimer.
His hand dropped as he lost consciousness. Two people came out of an office and Kara ordered one to call an ambulance, and one to take over for her and apply pressure to the wound. Without waiting to see if they complied, she pursued the suspect as the stairwell door closed behind him.
She called Matt as she ran.
“Dyson was stabbed. Caucasian male, dark suit, beard, east stairwell. I’m pursuing. Lock everything down!”
She pocketed her phone, picked up speed.
As soon as she entered the stairwell, she stopped, listened.
The man had gone up. He was taking the stairs two at a time. A smear of blood on the handrail... Craig’s blood.
She ran as fast as she dared. Saw another smear on the wall as the staircase turned.
She didn’t see him, but heard heavy footfalls as the attacker fled. Why up? There was no escape up.
She hesitated a half second before every turn in case the suspect planned an ambush. He was still moving.
They’d been on the tenth floor; the building was eighteen stories. There was nowhere to go from there. Places to hide, lots of courtrooms and offices, but there was no getting out. The building was on lockdown.
On the seventeenth floor when she stopped to listen, she heard an odd sound above—like a heavy metal door, not the typical fire door that protected the staircases. The roof?
She ran as fast as she could, past the eighteenth floor, and saw that the cage door leading to the roof was ajar. She didn’t think twice and pursued with increased caution. She walked slowly up the final staircase, her heart pounding with adrenaline, trying to remain as silent as possible.
The door at the top was closed. She pulled out her phone, texted Matt.
He’s on the roof.
Matt immediately responded.
Do not pursue! Backup coming.
Kara ached to go after him, but there was no place for him to go. She responded: I’m guarding the door, southeast stairwell.
She waited and watched for any sign that the suspect was coming back this way. A full minute later she heard several sets of footsteps on the stairs below her.
She identified herself and shouted down the stairwell, “Suspect on the roof.”
“Sheriff’s department,” one of the men responded.
The door in front of her started to open.
Kara stood her ground. She kept an eye on where his hands would be, looking for a weapon—gun, knife, anything that could disable her.
He was silhouetted against the bright sky that partially blinded her.
“Freeze—LAPD!”
He threw something into the stairwell and slammed the door shut.
Smoke began to fill the stairwell. A foul, sulfuric stench hit her nostrils as the smoke entered her lungs. The two deputies called for a status.
“Smoke bomb!” she said. “Suspect still on the roof. I need cover.”
No way was she running away and letting the bastard slip out and hide in the building.
“Backup is on the way,” the deputy said. “Jones, you okay?”
His partner was coughing. “He’s trapped up there,” Jones said, coughed and spat. “Does he have a weapon?”
“He stabbed Dyson. I don’t know if he has a gun.”
Kara didn’t like this situation. The guy on the other side of this door could be waiting to ambush them, take as many out as possible before he was killed, or he could have another plan, another idea. The ventilation system? Another way to get out?
Jones listened to his radio, then said, “All cameras are down, Newman.”
Matt and Michael ran up the stairs, followed by two more deputies who each carried shields. Jones said, “Helicopter is on the way, ETA four minutes.”
Matt identified himself but before he could say anything else, the power went out.
“Suspect took out the security cameras,” Newman said.
The fire alarm rang, a piercing whirl, whirl, whirl. Emergency lighting powered on.
Michael asked for one of the shields.
“I go first, you follow,” Michael said to Matt, taking over the tactical command. “Deputies, Quinn, behind us.”
Matt took the other shield and the two cops went to the rear.
Kara’s eyes watered and she held her breath as Michael passed by her and held his hand up. On three, he pushed open the door, the shield up to protect him from attack.
The roof was a smoke-field. They couldn’t see anything. Michael motioned for Kara and Jones to stay on the door—the suspect could attempt to escape past them. Though the air was marginally better outside and the smoke was dissipating faster than in the stairwell, Kara’s eyes burned. She and Jones stood sentry, alert for any movement. Almost immediately, the others disappeared in the smoke.
Jones said, “Fire suppression is on the side of this wall. I’m going to put out this smoke.”
“I got your back,” she said.
She could barely see him through the haze of smoke, but the fresh air was blowing it up and away.
Jones grunted as he worked to turn the spout for the emergency water. It gave way, and he grabbed the hose and sprayed down the area. The smoke bombs were extinguished almost immediately. There were five distinct “bombs” that provided ample cover for the suspect to hide.
Fully alert and finally breathing freely, Kara looked around for a threat, saw no one. She heard shouts of “clear,” then a distinct “Aw, shit” from Matt.
She itched to find out what was happening, but held her post. Matt returned and said, “He rappelled down the roof. Hook is still attached to the building. Can’t see anyone below.”
Newman approached. He was talking on his radio, reporting what had happened. Deputies and LAPD were being dispatched on the grounds to search for Craig’s attacker. “Description?” he asked Kara.
“Five foot eleven male, one-eighty, Caucasian or light-skinned Hispanic, dark curly hair, dark beard, glasses, wearing a suit—” She stopped talking. “Matt, what’s that?” She gestured to a pile of what at first appeared to be rags by a roof vent.
Newman repeated the description to his commander then put on gloves and inspected the pile. Held up a suit.
“That’s what he was wearing,” Kara said. “Is that a wig?”
“Wig, fake beard, glasses, the whole nine yards,” Newman said. “We might be able to get DNA or other evidence off it.” He called for a crime scene investigator. “He left the hook and rope as well, might be traceable.”
“Damn. Damn. How’s Dyson? Is he going to be okay?” she asked Matt.
He turned and looked at her. His expression said it all.
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, Kara. He was dead before the paramedics got to him.”