Kara hadn’t seen Elena since shortly after she took down Chen in February. Kara had been in the hospital with twenty-some stitches holding together the gaping slash in her back after Chen’s right-hand man threw a knife at her.
Kara had known Elena Gomez for almost her entire career on the police force. She was divorced, had two kids, a surprisingly good relationship with her ex, and was a workaholic. She was five-six, with a round face, dark no-nonsense eyes, stocky build, and had passed on her love of tequila to Kara.
Elena looked nervous when she walked into the hotel suite with Matt. Kara wondered why. Kara couldn’t remember a time when Elena ever looked unsure of herself. She’d told Kara more than once that command presence was the key to getting out of dicey situations, especially for female officers. If the perp sees a weakness, they’ll exploit it. Never let them see weakness.
“It’s good to see you,” Elena said to Kara, breaking the awkward silence. “You look great.”
Kara didn’t know how to respond so she mumbled, “Thanks.”
Matt introduced Michael, motioned for her to sit and asked, “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
Elena sat at the table across from Matt and Michael; Kara stood.
“Since you’re not officially involved,” Elena said, “I wanted to give you an unofficial report about today’s shooting.”
Matt offered water or coffee. She took neither.
“I don’t have much time,” Elena continued, “but you’d sent me a message about whether LAPD thought that Chen’s murder was connected in any way to Dyson’s. Right now, we’re being cautious in what we publicly say—our official statement is that both homicides are priorities and under investigation, blah, blah. Internally we’re running with the theory that the murders are connected. Based on the timeline Detective McPherson created, Dyson’s killer was already inside before the courthouse went on lockdown. So it appears to be a coordinated attack against Chen and the prosecuting attorney with two different killers.”
“Theories? Motives?” Matt asked.
“We have dozens, none that make sense. Chen had many enemies, so did Dyson, but who wanted both of them dead? We’re still in the early stages of our investigation.”
“What about forensics from the roof?” Matt asked.
“The lab has the grappling hook, clothing and trace evidence. It’s a priority case, so they’re working overtime. Hopefully we’ll get something, but I’m not holding my breath. The wig and beard have the highest probability of getting DNA, but that’ll take weeks. Several people saw a man in black scaling down the courthouse at the southeast corner, then on foot heading north on Spring. Once he went under the freeway, he disappeared. We haven’t caught him on surveillance cameras, but the glitch in the park next to the Justice Center may have had a broader range.”
“A glitch?” Kara asked sarcastically. “That’s what they’re going with?”
“Clearly, it was tampered with. Our techs are all over it, but I don’t have a report yet. Once we have more details about the how and the when, we’ll decide what we release to the public.”
“No weapon yet?” Matt said.
“No,” Elena said. “Likely took it with him.”
“What about security footage?” Matt asked. “McPherson said he would nail down when he entered. We might get lucky, get a good image.”
“McPherson and courthouse security have been reviewing security footage carefully, determining who entered but didn’t exit. Unfortunately, it’s a manual process and might take days, even narrowing the search to male adults under fifty and between five foot ten and six foot two.”
“What about Chen?” Kara said. “Matt said there was a person of interest.”
“Violet Halliday. An officer who knows her said she ran from the scene. She’s a twenty-nine-year-old IT operator, been with the city for nearly five years, no record. We’re treating her as a possible witness, but haven’t been able to locate her at work or home, which is suspicious.”
Kara considered telling Elena the little she knew about Violet but refrained, at least for now. Nothing she knew would help Elena find the woman.
“Chen was coming to the courthouse for a hearing that would decide whether he goes to trial or not. He’s now dead,” Kara said. “Craig told me he was going to offer Chen a deal if he ratted on who helped him keep his sweatshop in operation. Including a cop.”
Elena didn’t say anything.
“What do you know about the investigation?” Kara asked. “Were you working with Craig?”
She hesitated a fraction of a second. “I have worked with Craig on investigations before, but I don’t know specifically what his plans were with Chen.”
She was lying. Kara knew Elena well, and this woman—her mentor, her boss, her FTO—was lying.
“You know exactly what Craig’s plans were,” Kara said with cold calm.
Elena stared at her, her expression unreadable. Then she said to Matt, “Can I have a word with Kara alone?”
Matt looked to Kara. “You good?”
She nodded. Matt and Michael left for the adjoining room.
Kara didn’t say anything. She leaned against the back of the couch and stared at Elena. She could wait her out as long as it took. She should tell her what Craig said about Violet Halliday, but right now she was trusting very few people, and she wanted to talk to Will Lattimer before she decided what to do and whom to trust.
“I saved your job,” Elena said after several moments.
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Dammit, Kara! Do you know how many people were coming for me because I didn’t send you to IA after the clusterfuck that was the Chen investigation?”
“The Chen investigation was no clusterfuck until he was tipped off to the raid.” She stopped herself. This wasn’t the time to argue about what happened in February. “That’s the past,” Kara said with forced calm. “Craig was killed today. What is going on, Elena?”
“That’s Lieutenant to you.”
Kara glared at her. “Okay, Lieutenant, what do you know that got Craig Dyson killed?”
“I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation. You’re not on my team.”
“Bullshit!” Kara exploded. “I was standing with Craig when he was stabbed. I had his blood on my hands. We have no idea who the bastard is or why he killed Craig, but I’ll bet my pension it’s about this grand jury impaneling that he planned this week.”
Elena’s eyes widened in surprise, then she buried it.
“Fuck you, you know all about it!”
“You’re close to insubordination,” Elena said.
“You just said I wasn’t part of your team, so I can say whatever the hell I want.” Her anger was still rising. “I know it had something to do with an investigation that started after Chen’s arrest—an investigation I know nothing about because I was sent away. An investigation that involved a dirty cop. You know it. I know it.”
Elena couldn’t tell Kara she was wrong, because Kara wasn’t wrong.
“Who is it?” Kara demanded when Elena remained silent.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You suspect someone, I know you do.”
“Suspecting someone means shit.”
Kara pushed off from the couch and paced. She couldn’t help herself, frustrated at her inability to do anything to fix this mess. Who was going to get justice for Craig? For Sunny?
“Let me explain something to you, Kara,” Elena said, her voice edged with anger. “You have no idea the pressure LAPD has been under for the last few years. Don’t get your hackles raised,” she said when Kara almost interrupted. “I know uniforms have gotten the brunt of the public’s rage, but my office is getting it from the top, from the politicians, the press, the feds. Intense pressure from every side. From our own people, from the fucking bleeding-heart DA, from the media, from people we are trying to serve and protect. I have worked my ass off getting every bad cop off the streets, even when I risked my own job to do so. Even when I got hate from my own people. I’m not going to fuel the fire. I have to know 110 percent that a cop is dirty before I go through it again. I take down bad cops quietly. You know that.”
Kara did. She’d helped Elena. Sometimes forced retirement. Sometimes shifting to nonpublic positions like working the evidence locker or booking. Sometimes termination—though that was extremely difficult to do unless the violation was egregious.
“I have never doubted your ethics or your ability to get the job done,” Kara said. “But Sunny is dead because someone tipped Chen off. If not one of our own people, then who?”
“Do you trust Costa?”
That came out of left field.
“Yes.”
“Dyson decided we had enough to prosecute, which is why we pulled the plug on the undercover investigation.”
“I remember. We decided to do it quick, first thing in the morning.”
“Dyson held off getting the warrants until the last minute because he was afraid it would leak. But we had to put the SWAT team on call, and because we planned it for 7 a.m., before Chen’s workers were on-site, we planned to call in the day shift an hour early to debrief. A lot of things had to move into place in a short period of time. We also had a team on Chen’s house.
“After the fact, we discovered that the FBI had all our information through the interagency portal. Even though I had a lid on the operation and specifically ordered need-to-know, every single action is sent through as an informational memo to the FBI. It’s a fucking nightmare and well above my pay grade. The portal was implemented after the FBI investigated the department for civil rights abuses years ago, of which we were cleared—though their bureaucratic procedures never went away.”
“The FBI,” Kara said flatly.
“I have no evidence that Bryce Thornton knew about the raid,” Elena said quickly. “But someone there could have known. A fed, not a cop, may have alerted Chen.”
“Why would anyone in the FBI want to tip him off, or even be able to so quickly? Thornton is a prick, but working with a human trafficker?” Kara had always thought of Thornton as a bad cop, not a dirty cop—and there was a difference. A bad cop is willing to bend rules and lie to get warrants and tweak evidence and sacrifice people in order to catch bad guys. He doesn’t care if someone was the girlfriend of a low-level thug, he would turn the screws and destroy her life if he could learn something. Thornton in particular enjoyed the power that went with his position. A dirty cop worked with the bad guys. Took bribes, looked the other way, became an accessory. But Kara couldn’t see him helping to facilitate a major crime.
“I can’t say. I have investigated every single cop who knew about the raid, and it’s not one of them.”
Kara paused. “Dyson told me someone who knew about Chen’s operation was transferred to North Valley. I’m thinking he took bribes to look the other way.”
Elena shifted on her feet, a sign of discomfort or guilt.
“Who?” Kara demanded.
“I’m not going to tell you, but I suspected him before the raid and he was not in the loop. I made sure of it.”
Kara mentally reviewed the teams that had been involved, and then it clicked: a cop who should have been there, but wasn’t. At the time Kara probably thought he called in sick or was on vacation, but now it made more sense that Elena had purposefully cut him out. “Tom Lee?”
Elena didn’t answer, but Kara knew she was right. Bastard. She would be paying him a visit before she left LA.
“So, if I get this right, someone in the FBI learned about the raid, tipped off Chen. Chen went to the facility before we could get there—maybe to shut it down, get papers, money, whatever he didn’t want us to have. Sunny alerted me that he knew, but that still doesn’t tell us who told Chen that she was my informant. There’s no other reason that he would have killed her. And very, very few people knew that she was my contact. You. Lex. Craig. Anyone any of you pulled into the loop. Now Chen is dead. Craig—who was investigating everyone surrounding his operation and about to go to the grand jury—is dead. That sounds like someone is cleaning house.”
“Go back to DC,” Elena said.
“You said you saved my job. My job is here.”
“You’re not safe here. You’ve made a lot of enemies, Kara—in the FBI, in LAPD. You know I’ve always liked you even when you drove me crazy. And it’s because I like you that I’m asking you to let me figure this out. Let me find the leak, let me find out who killed Dyson.”
“You’re a lieutenant. You haven’t worked in the field in years. You need me.”
“You’re not the only good cop under my command,” Elena snapped. “Don’t ever think you’re not expendable.”
“I know I am,” she said, bristling. “You asked if I trusted Costa—I do. I trust Matt and Michael with my life. I respect them. If the FBI has a traitor, Matt will find him. But this is bigger than a corrupt fed. Dyson was investigating multiple people in city government. He didn’t tell me a lot, but I know he has a whistleblower.”
Kara didn’t tell Elena that she knew who the whistleblower was, and it was clear by Elena’s expression that she knew. About Violet and more.
“You know exactly what he was doing. It got him killed, and you know it!”
“I can’t.” Elena walked around the room, motioned to Kara’s empty beer bottle. “You wouldn’t by chance have another one of those?”
Kara looked under the cart, saw there was a bucket of beers. She grabbed two, handed one to Elena. Elena opened it, took a long, deep drink. They stood in silence and stared at each other. Finally, Kara said, “You never called. I guess I felt like I was tossed to the lions and the one person I trusted to have my back didn’t even care.”
“I should have reached out, but I was pissed off. I was mad at you, mad at the situation, at Lex, at the feds, and then Colton...well, I just thought you shifting over to an out-of-town detail, out of the damn state, was the smartest thing. I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.”
“I’m going to call in Matt. You need to tell him everything about that stupid portal, and he’ll find the traitor in the FBI. That, I promise you.”