Detective Joanne Rigas had been the senior officer on the Agnes Mills case. The body in the park was nearly decapitated. No physical evidence found. No footprints, no cigar wrappers, no eyewitnesses. Nothing. Agnes was a late middle-aged housewife with no known enemies, no bizarre personal life, no sexy little outfits she put on to entertain visitors when her husband was out of town. She was a plain, unremarkable, uninteresting victim of kidnapping and murder. It pissed Rigas off. A lot of things pissed her off. Crevins pissed her off for being too nice and too slow. Her car pissed her off for leaking oil. The list was long. Agnes had been snatched while walking the dog, something she did every day at the same time of morning. Six people had seen her with the crappy little wiener dog found wandering the neighborhood later that night. No one saw her get grabbed, no one heard the dog bark, and no one saw any suspicious persons or cars in the area. People were dumb shits. You could walk up to them and poke them in the eye and they wouldn’t have the sense to blink. Rigas was pissed when Agnes’ husband Bernard blew his brains out a week later. She had thought he was hiding something, probably a bad marriage or a little something on the side, but then it was too late to find out. She had gone out to the house to see the mess, but nothing changed. No new clues waiting for her, tying his suicide to the wife’s murder. He had never been a suspect, not in her mind anyway. Husbands don’t drag their wives into the neighborhood park and then nearly slice their heads off with what must have been a strong, flexible wire like you’d find in a piano. That kind of action took lots of strength, more than Mills had. And it took guts, being so close to your victim you could smell their fear and then the stench when they evacuated their bowels with their last breath. Mills wasn’t that guy.
It was a year ago, but Rigas was thinking about it now. The wire marks on Agnes’ neck looked an awful lot like the burn around the guy’s neck tonight, the yuppie who beat the crap out of the supposed burglar with a tennis trophy. Rigas smiled to herself – 12 years on the force, four as a beat cop, two in robbery, and six in homicide, and this was a new way for the bad guy to buy it. Her smile faded as she picked up the mug and drained the last of the Guinness and slammed it back down on the bar. Guy was lying to her, she could tell. He had seen the dead man before, but wasn’t saying so. Rigas eyed the cigarettes next to the bimbo sitting at her elbow, the kind that liked hanging out at cop bars, hoping to find a guy with a badge who would cuff ‘em while they banged ‘em. And they usually did. But the cigarettes taunted her. She’d quit six months ago and it seemed like an eternity. She could feel the thick, relaxing smoke pull deep into her lungs, calming her and clearing her head. But no – fuck it, nothing and nobody controlled her. That was her mantra, one she’d developed over the years. She pushed the thought away. She had quit and that was it. Rigas spun around on her stool and tossed a crumpled ten-dollar bill behind her for the drinks. She needed to go look at the Mills file, see if there was a connection. Pushing open the door, the bright light of a ten-o’clock Saturday morning in LA hit her hard and she flinched but didn’t stop. It was a reminder that she’d spent another Friday night working. It didn’t bother her, at least not when she didn’t think about it. As her head cleared and she looked around at the small park across the street, her eyes stopped on a mom and dad pushing a kid in a swing. One in back, pushing; the other in front, tickling the little girl’s feet every time the swing brought her forward. All three were laughing. Rigas stopped and watched for a minute. She’d never admit it to the other cops she worked with, who pretty much took her as one of the boys, or at least respected her enough to want her as a partner and someone to cover their backs. And sure, she wanted to be the first female captain in the Valley. But she also had the ache to be the mom across the street. Not that there were any candidates for the position of dad right now. She looked in the mirrored surface of the bar’s window. Rigas wore the gray light-wool pants she favored because they came up a little higher and highlighted a very slim waist. In her mind they offset the sturdy legs she always scoffed at as belonging to a sprinter. But she’d spent her childhood through high school as a gymnast and she liked the hard muscle on her small frame. Shoulder length brown hair, streaked with blonde that came from the sun and not a bottle, stayed out of her face so she didn’t have to keep brushing it back when interrogating some leering perp. But it also framed a face with high cheekbones and jaw muscles that showed when she chewed gum. Somebody had compared her to Sandra Bullock once when that stupid movie came out where the actress played a cop who had to enter a beauty pageant under cover. Rigas had scoffed but she’d also turned a couple shades of red. She’d seen the movie and she’d made the connection. It embarrassed her; it also reminded her the job was just part of who she was. She started to turn away from the reflection, feeling foolish, but stopped. As she got older, it was getting tougher to separate the image she worked hard to convey on the job – independent, competent, a good cop not just a good female cop – from the other parts. And it worried her, because she knew it would only get harder and she knew why it was this way. Growing up with three brothers, the first fifteen years were spent fending for herself and learning how to wrestle hard enough to get to play with them but not get hurt. The next fifteen years were the classic switchover; the brothers started seeing her as their responsibility to protect. Part of the whole macho image, not that she really minded. But as a teenager it made it kind of hard to date when a guy showed up at the house and her middle brother opened the door after pumping iron in the basement, veins on his arms popping and a growl in his throat. Forget about it if Dad decided to make the introductions. It did help filter out the riff-raff, though. It also helped her learn how to hold her own and not be bossed around by men her whole life. Thinking of her brothers, each with a family and one or more kids, Rigas felt a swelling in her chest.
All this standing in the glare of the morning sun in front of a bar. She laughed to herself and made the thickening in her throat dissipate. A patrol car on some random call cut across her view as she looked at the park again. It broke her concentration and she headed to her car on the street. Her next shift started in six hours and she needed a few hours sleep before figuring out why this guy Barnes lied to her.
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Helen left the third message in a row for Crawford. For the first time in three years, she wondered if something had gone wrong. All he had to do was kill the sister. She paced the enormous living room and walked back into her home office with a view of the mountains. Checking email for the first time since the previous evening, she saw the note from Josh and read it. So he had the design and was heading into town early. How early? Did Crawford run into him and kill him, too? That would completely screw up their plan and her boss would not be happy. But the second email from Josh explained everything. It was time-stamped 4:59 a.m. This had better be the plans, arriving by the five a.m. deadline she gave him the previous night. But there was no attachment to the email, no document with the precious blueprints that meant a couple mil in Helen’s bank account. Instead there was just a note:
We need to meet. Crawford is dead. I have what you want. Jerry’s Deli 11:00 a.m.
Ballsy son of a bitch, Helen thought. Crawford dead? She hadn’t seen anything on the news, so there couldn’t have been a shootout with a dozen cops surrounding the place, the only way she could imagine Crawford wouldn’t have made it. What the hell had happened? She didn’t doubt the content of Josh’s message – he seemed in control, but not stupid. He wouldn’t play some ridiculous game; she had read him correctly about his sister and he wouldn’t take any chances. So Crawford was dead and he wanted to keep the deal going. Protect his sister and his own ass at any cost, she figured. There must have been an accident, or maybe Crawford had stroked out. Who knows. She examined her feelings. Helen was used to Crawford, he was comfortable and predictable for a head case. But he was just a tool for her to use. Her thoughts turned back to Josh. The girl must be alive; he couldn’t be staying this calm if not. So Crawford not only got himself killed, he failed his mission. Prick. Now she had to figure out what needed doing and do it herself. But Josh couldn’t be in control. She called his cell phone from a clean one she had picked up the night before from a lonely guy in a bar with too many whiskey sours in his belly. The message she left on his voicemail gave a different time and place for meeting. A quiet place, and a much later hour.
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Back at the house, Josh took a breather. It gave him a chance to ask himself a question he had ignored up until now: What was Helen going to do with the Ventrica design? The obvious answer was sell it to a competitor. There were only a handful of companies that would know what to do with it, to deal with the manufacturing, marketing, and selling of a highly specialized medical device like the Ventrica. Any competitor who came out with it would clearly be guilty of having stolen it. A start-up company could make a big splash by launching with it, but the move would be suspect. Somehow it was worth a lot to someone, someone who knew how to make a lot of money from it. And Helen seemed practiced, comfortable with all this. Josh was sure he was only one in a line of people Helen and Crawford had squeezed and they weren’t afraid to kill. So the money must be huge. It still didn’t make sense.
The more immediate problem was how to find out if delivering Helen her prize would get Josh off the hook for killing Crawford. There was only one way to find out. He checked his email. Nothing from Helen. Josh started planning what he would say at Jerry’s Deli when he suddenly felt his phone vibrate. The cell reception in his neighborhood was miserable, so he never knew when someone was calling because it didn’t ring. But when someone left a message, the phone vibrated. Using the office phone, Josh picked up the message from Helen. She wanted to meet at Zuma beach just after sunset, at the northern end. Big, public beach near Malibu. Not too many people likely to be there, open space so she’d know if Josh brought anyone but enough solitude that she could have some new partner pretending to be a jogger on the deserted beach kill him. Perfect for her. Lousy for Josh. But she didn’t give him a list of options. Zuma it was. He started to think about what he would tell her.
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Helen sent an email to her employer that she wasn’t happy about having to send.
Ventrica delayed. Crawford dead. More information tonight.
This made her look incompetent, something she had spent a lifetime avoiding. But there was no choice. The only thing worse than telling her boss bad news was not telling him when there was bad news. At least, she thought it was a he. They communicated only through email. Three years earlier she had been approached by a proxy, an attorney who showed up at her door with a request to stop by the offices of a white-shoe law firm downtown. It wasn’t actually Helen’s house where the attorney had rung the bell; it was the 14,000 square foot Bel Air mansion of the Internet-rich guy Helen was about to marry and kill off in a hunting accident when he went to his brand new lodge in Park City to show off his new trophy wife to all his other pals who had cashed in on some foolish on-line idea during the boom-boom times of the late 90’s. Helen had been working him for about six months and he was convinced he couldn’t live without her. She had insisted on a prenup and he refused – true love couldn’t be governed by laws, etc. It took some convincing, but he finally got her to accept the marriage proposal and the distribution of money in the case of dissolution or death. Helen had earned pretty well over the previous half dozen years, doing the occasional well-paying odd job requiring tenacity and cold-bloodedness for her half-cousin who claimed he was in the mob but really just brutalized people into giving him money. But her calculations showed it would take her eleven years at this rate to reach critical capital – the amount of money that would allow her to live the rest of her life as comfortably as she deserved. Eleven years was too long. Cash-rich Syl Purdy would cut that time down to nine months inclusive of courting, marriage, death, and disposition of the estate. Plus Syl had cashed out his holdings and there was no risk Helen would put in the effort then get screwed when his stock plummeted. As a bonus, Syl was worth six times Helen’s minimum amount of critical capital. It was a great deal all the way around. But the attorney at the door mentioned a much bigger number and Helen did not hesitate to arrive for the appointment later that afternoon.
At the meeting, a different attorney – older, grayer, smarter – described the proposition. He had a very important client who wished to hire her. She would perform services and be paid through wire transfers. The attorney would not be involved after the initial transaction, which was a deposit of one million dollars into an account in the Cayman Islands. He handed her a white index card containing a series of numbers and the address of a web site.
“You may verify the amount. It will remain in this account until midnight tonight, then be transferred out unless you enter the code at the bottom of the card. Entering the code constitutes acceptance of the position. Failure to enter the code results in a rescinding of the offer.”
Helen fingered the card, flicking the edge with a sparkling white nail. She looked at the attorney across his desk. He did not blink.
“And what exactly are the terms of this offer? What is the work? And why me?”
The attorney said nothing for a moment, then sighed as though he were going to confide in her. Helen knew this was bullshit; this guy was in complete control of everything he said. Lacing his fingers together to form a little tent, he settled back in his chair.
“Miss Kent, I do not know the nature of the work. I do not know the details of the terms other than what I have told you. I do not know why you were selected, except to assume you have displayed the necessary skills. My client engages in many types of business with this firm, and probably with a number of other firms. My client is willing to advance you one million dollars against future work. My client requires only that you perform satisfactorily and discreetly. Beyond that, I have no answers.”
That was all he was going to say. She had plenty of questions, but she had the one answer that mattered – a one followed by six zeroes. She would take the money and see what the guy wanted. Either he was very, very desperate to get laid or had some extremely dirty work to be done and someone had turned him on to Helen. It didn’t matter to her. The price of finding out was nil and if it didn’t work out, she’d at least have an adventure. She smiled broadly and stood. The attorney eased out of his chair and shook her hand warmly. Not another word passed between them.
Helen verified the amount in the account using the large-screen monitor and wireless Internet connection back at Syl’s house while he played an unplugged electric guitar in preparation for his new band’s first gig the next night. Too much time and money on his hands. Helen entered the code to accept the money, then connected to her own private account in Luxembourg. Less than five minutes later she received an email notification confirming the transfer of one million US dollars into her account. Car keys still in her pocket, she walked out the door empty-handed, Syl calling to her as he tried to pick out a melody and flail his head around like a rocker.
“Hey, babe! You heading to the store? Grab me some Ben & Jerry’s, okay? Chunky Monkey, and some chocolate fudge or Hershey’s sauce. Okay, babe?”
Helen left the front door open and gave only a flicker of thought to the clothes and knickknacks she was leaving behind. Without turning around, she slipped into the late-model BMW 530i in the driveway and burned a little rubber as she headed to her house to sweet talk the owner into giving her another month to move out. She had given notice and now that Syl was out of the picture, she’d need a little time to find out what this new work was and find a new place to stay.
She found out the next morning when an email was waiting for her. It was a private address she kept that no one knew about – she thought. The subject of the email was: Instructions. She opened the message:
In the future, payment will be made after completion of the job. You will continue in my employ until I conclude our arrangement. You may ask questions about logistics but nothing else. At all times, you will remain as discreet as possible, but the ultimate requirement is to follow instructions as I provide them for each job.
If you ever cheat me, you will pay the price. If you ever attempt to discover my identity, you will pay the price. If you ever involve anyone in your activities without my consent, you will pay the price.
I will contact you shortly with validation of the seriousness of this arrangement. Provide me the name of someone you dislike.
Okay, Helen thought, this is bizarre. But for a million bucks, she could put up with bizarre, at least for a while. This guy was going to ask her to do some kind of illegal, dangerous, profitable stuff. As long as his money was good, she was fine with that. But the tough guy act seemed a little much. Having money and being greedy didn’t make you dangerous. And what kind of validation was he going to provide? And why the hell did he want the name of someone she didn’t like? Still, a million dollars was pretty convincing and she was intrigued. Helen’s reply to the anonymous email was simple:
Okay, as long as your money is good, I’m in. And I don’t like a cop in Boston named Patrick Cauliff.
Now seemed like a good time to go house hunting and to get in touch with her portfolio advisor about where to put the bulk of the million dollars to work.
Three days later, a FedEx package arrived at the door. No signature was required and by the time she opened the door, the delivery woman was already back in her truck after knocking and leaving the package on the Welcome matt. Helen felt the heft of the package. Ripping it open, she caught a slip of newsprint as it fluttered toward the ground. It was a headline from the Boston Globe: Officer Shot by Unknown Assailants. She skimmed the three-column article. A cop had been killed during a routine traffic stop. Two bullets in the head, one in the chest. The assailant or assailants had escaped and the car found deserted behind some fencing off the freeway that was under construction as part of the Big Dig. The car had been stolen from a home in Cambridge two hours earlier. Police were following up on leads and were confident the perpetrator would be found. Services for the hero, slain in the line of duty, were for the following afternoon. Donations in lieu of flowers were encouraged.
When Helen was in grad school for English lit, she had been out drinking with some friends one night looking for a little fun and trouble. They were driving home too fast, Helen at the wheel, and a cop pulled them over at two in the morning on a side street in Cambridge near the school. Usually the cops gave students a hard time just to put them in their place and that was it, but Helen mouthed off a little. The cop who asked her for her license made her get out and put her hands on the roof of the car, legs spread-eagle. Instead of patting her down, he had groped between her legs and squeezed her breasts. She didn’t really care about the violation, but it pissed her off he had made her feel helpless, out of control. She had remembered the cop’s name, Patrick Cauliff, in case she ever came across him or had the chance to look him up one day.
Helen upended the FedEx package and a shiny brass object slipped into her hand. The badge said Boston Police Department around the rim and the name across the center was Cauliff. One corner had been freshly bent. She knew it was by a bullet clipping the edge as it went past and into the wearer’s chest. Helen hefted the badge, a blank stare on her face. This was the validation. Her new boss was telling her something. A couple of things, really. He knew details of Helen’s life. And he could get to anyone – and would do anything.
Three years later and she still only communicated with her boss through email. But she had learned to trust him to be good to his word. After each job, the amount he promised appeared in her account. Once, early on when she had started to feel cocky about this gig, she had tried to negotiate a larger fee. Not because the job was any harder, but just to push the envelope. She didn’t hear back from him for three days. Very little scared Helen, but she spent those three days looking over her shoulder. Her email to him on the fourth day was a form of apology – she had completed the job in record time, using pain and intimidation with the client instead of the subtle mind games she usually started with. She emailed her boss to say this job didn’t require payment, she was glad to have the opportunity to work for him. The full amount appeared in her account within two hours. She never questioned him again.
Now Barnes was upsetting her plans. This wasn’t the first time there had been delays, but this was the first time Helen thought there might be real complications. She didn’t want her boss to think she couldn’t handle it. Two more years of this work and she would retire with ten times the amount she originally thought was her minimum critical capital. No way this one was going to jeopardize her plans. She would deal with Josh tonight and get the design. She didn’t care about Crawford, but she had a point to prove with her boss: she was in control. Josh Barnes and his sister would have to pay the price to ensure her future.