by Karen Rose
Deacon sat next to Scarlett, putting him on the other side of Decker, directly across from Kate. He considered himself the bridge, Kate thought. But then he and Scarlett shared a grim look that made Kate wonder how much her former partner really knew.
For a long moment nobody said anything, as everyone sized everyone else up warily. Kate decided to try breaking the ice and hoped her levity didn’t blow up in her face.
‘If I’d known we were going to do this meeting,’ she said wryly, ‘I’d have ordered T-shirts. You know, “Team: Cop” and “Team: Ledger”.’ There were some rueful smiles and a few chuckles, giving her the confidence to continue. ‘Or maybe just one shirt – “Team: Let’s Get McCord’s Fucking Partner and Put Him Away Forever”.’
Marcus’s laugh was low and rumbly and . . . melodious. The man had a voice that could both soothe and charm, and that was exactly what he proceeded to do. ‘That’s a little long, Kate, but it’s a shirt I’d wear.’ He looked over at Diesel and his brother, and sobered. ‘I want it known that what they did, they did at my direction. I am solely responsible.’
‘Bullshit,’ Diesel snapped. ‘What we did, we did on our own.’
‘And we’d do it again,’ Stone added quietly. ‘But we’d do it better, because we obviously missed something fucking important.’
Deacon was right, Kate thought. Stone should not have come. He was clearly drained, just from sitting in his wheelchair. But some things had to be faced, and she had a great deal of respect for Stone O’Bannion being brave enough to face this head on.
‘Maybe we should start at the beginning,’ Kate said softly. ‘I figure you all at the Ledger were the ones to “anonymously” report McCord to the authorities. I also figure if you knew what was on his hard drive, you managed to sneak in somehow and peek.’
Marcus nodded. ‘That’s correct.’ He hesitated, then looked up at the ceiling. ‘There are some very bad people who manage to slip through the justice net. We see it every day. We report on it. It sickens us.’
‘So you fixed what you could,’ Decker said, his tone straightforward. Uncondemning.
Marcus’s mouth curved. ‘Yeah. It was that or go quietly insane.’
‘Not so quietly,’ Stone said dryly, his jaw taut. ‘We picked people who’d done terrible things. Not jaywalking or shoplifting. We picked people who’d hurt kids and who thought they’d gotten away with it, whether it be through slimy lawyers, incompetent cops or social workers, or simply the ability to frighten and cow their victims into silence.’
‘How did you pick your targets?’ Troy asked. ‘How did you pick McCord?’
‘Our tips came from various sources,’ Marcus said evasively. ‘And I’m not going to tell you exactly who those sources are, so please don’t ask me.’
‘We’ll get back to that,’ Zimmerman stated firmly, implacably.
Marcus smiled at him thinly. ‘No, sir, we won’t. If you want to know how we got McCord, you’ll have to let us tell our story the best way we know how. This meeting is about McCord only. I will tell you how we learned about him, but the other targets we’ve exposed over the years are not on the table. I can tell you that none of our sources on those other cases broke any laws. Some of them might have breached confidentiality a time or two. Lawyers’ assistants who were good people who saw bad things happening. A social worker here or there. A schoolteacher who’d reported an abused student, only to have the situation continue unchanged. Things they might be fired for telling us, but not things you could ever arrest them for. I hope that eases your concerns.’
Zimmerman looked at Deacon. ‘Well? Should it ease my concerns?’
‘I think you need to let him tell it his way,’ Deacon said without hesitation.
Zimmerman sighed. ‘Fine. Proceed, please, Mr O’Bannion.’
Marcus nodded. ‘Okay. McCord was made known to me personally. I’m a volunteer coach on one of the junior varsity football teams. The Ledger sponsors youth sports. It’s part of our community service. It also keeps us connected in the community itself. And it fosters an environment where kids are free to talk.’
Decker leaned forward. ‘Is that why you coach pee wee soccer, Diesel?’
The big man’s face flushed uncomfortably. ‘One of the reasons, yes. Most of these kids grow up in homes without any male role models. I did, too.’ He shrugged. ‘I want better for them, that’s all. No big deal.’
‘It’s a very big deal,’ Decker said kindly. ‘Because I was one of those kids too, and I would have benefitted from anyone who cared. I’m sorry, Marcus, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please continue.’
Moved, Kate wanted to reach for Decker’s hand at that moment, but she couldn’t. Not with all the eyes watching. Later, she thought, swallowing the lump in her throat as she wondered how in hell a man with his compassion had survived three years in the vile belly of the beast.
Marcus gave Decker a grateful look, because Diesel’s expression had lost a fraction of its misery. ‘I started hearing about McCord from some of the kids on the JV team, students in his class. I know these kids and they trust me. I won’t betray that trust by just giving you their names, but I will ask them to come forward and tell you what they know. None of them said that McCord did anything more than show them too much attention. I asked. None admitted that they were photographed or abused in any way.’
Zimmerman’s displeasure was clear. ‘Will they come forward?’
Marcus shrugged. ‘McCord’s dead. He can’t hurt them anymore. But you can never tell which way kids are gonna go. They might feel like a hero because they helped bring him down, in which case they’ll cooperate. But they might not want anyone to think they were abused – especially the boys. It’s a difficult age. It could make them a target for some of the predator kids if they admit they were touched by McCord in any way. It tends to diminish their status in the pack.’
‘If they agree to talk to us, we should have Meredith Fallon present,’ Kate said to Zimmerman. ‘They should have had counseling over this anyway.’
Zimmerman nodded. ‘Agreed. So McCord was their teacher, Marcus?’
‘Yes. He taught freshman science and tended to lean in a little too close for the kids’ comfort when he was checking over their lab experiments. That was the extent of their exposure to him. He didn’t sponsor any clubs or after-school programs.’
Kate’s gaze swung to meet Deacon’s. ‘Science teacher,’ she murmured.
Deacon’s mouth tilted up. ‘Go ahead, oh origami queen. It’s yours to tell.’
So Kate did, sharing what they’d learned at the morgue about the ricin. ‘We wondered if McCord’s partner was a fellow teacher. It makes even more sense if he’s a science teacher.’
Marcus frowned, thinking. ‘It’s possible. I don’t remember any of the other teachers’ names coming up from the kids, though. And I asked. It was McCord alone who was giving them the creeps.’
‘It’s still good information, Kate,’ Troy said. She’d called him from her car as she’d driven over from the morgue. As her partner, he’d deserved the update before everyone else and he’d been both appreciative and supportive. ‘Maybe he teaches at a different school. I compiled a list of the science teachers in the county after we talked. There aren’t that many, especially given that Alice called him “he” on Decker’s recording.’
Zimmerman frowned. ‘I would hope that if he is a teacher, any students he’d victimized would have come forward after McCord’s arrest, once they’d seen that abusers do get punished.’
Stone shook his head. ‘Too many victimized kids don’t talk. It’s not that they won’t, but they can’t. It’s like . . . there’s a wall inside and they can’t breach it. I wouldn’t depend on the partner’s victims coming forward. Too much stigma and too much to lose.’
Kate noticed the pain flickering in Marcus’s eyes as his
brother talked so factually, so dispassionately. As if he was reciting the words from a book. It made Kate wonder exactly how much Stone knew from experience, but that wasn’t her business.
‘So how did you get McCord?’ she asked Marcus.
‘I did,’ Diesel said flatly. ‘I’m decent with computers.’
Stone snorted. ‘And Rembrandt dabbled in paint. Diesel’s an artist. His medium is hacking.’
‘Jesus, Stone,’ Diesel grumbled. ‘It’s not like we’re talking to the FBI or anything.’
Stone rolled his eyes. ‘You would have tap-danced around it for days and I don’t have enough energy for that.’ He met Zimmerman’s gaze straight on. ‘Diesel hacked into McCord’s home Wi-Fi network. Took him a couple of days. The bastard had layers of network security.’
‘It was surprisingly well protected,’ Diesel admitted. ‘That’s when I knew we were on the right track. Normally it takes me a few hours at the most. Most people never even change their router’s default password. Then again, most people don’t have a hard drive full of kiddie porn either,’ he added bitterly. He swallowed hard, dropping his gaze to the tabletop. ‘Really vile shit,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ Adam said quietly.
Diesel lifted his devastated gaze to Adam’s. ‘I am so sorry you had to see that, man.’
Adam’s smile was sad. Haunted. ‘Me too.’
‘So, Diesel, you broke in,’ Kate said gently. ‘Then what?’
‘I backed right out,’ Diesel said with a shudder. ‘Actually, I threw up, then I backed out. I . . . wasn’t expecting what I found. Normally I make a copy of whatever I find on a person’s hard drive, but not that time. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I copied the document files, that’s all. No pictures. No videos. Then I backed out, called Stone, and we told Marcus, who called CPD and ICAC. Anonymously. The next thing I knew, they’d raided McCord’s house and taken his computer.’
‘They got a warrant based on your tip,’ Adam said, but he was frowning. ‘I had a printout of McCord’s file directory, and there were no document files. Just picture files.’
Diesel leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. ‘What? That’s not possible.’
‘We had the document files that Diesel copied in our possession,’ Scarlett said. ‘I turned them over to ICAC as part of the evidence on this case. I turned them over personally. I walked in with the hard drive in my hand and I got a receipt, so I know that they have them.’
‘Did you tell ICAC that they belonged to McCord?’ Adam asked.
‘Of course.’ But then Scarlett faltered. ‘I’m pretty sure I did. I must have.’
‘They gave me access to everything that had McCord’s name on it,’ Adam said. ‘There was nothing there other than the computer they took from his home nine months ago.’
‘Maybe they hadn’t catalogued it yet,’ Deacon offered. ‘Those guys are always behind because they’re not staffed for the job.’ He grimaced. ‘They could have every man and woman in CPD working ICAC and it wouldn’t be enough staff for the job.’
‘That’s the truth,’ Adam muttered. ‘Give me a second.’ He typed a text into his phone. ‘I just asked the detective at ICAC to check any evidence that’s waiting to be filed.’
Scarlett rubbed her eyes in a gesture of frustration. ‘I took it to them the day after everything went down last week. Stone was in the hospital and so was Agent Davenport, and we’d lost so many people . . . I took it over there and I walked it in. I didn’t want us to keep it any longer than we needed to. God, what if I didn’t log it in properly?’
But Diesel was shaking his head. ‘It shouldn’t matter, Scarlett. What you did or didn’t give them last week was evidence they already had. They’ve had it for nine months. The only thing on that drive I gave you last week was stuff that was on McCord’s home computer nine months ago.’
Scarlett nodded, visibly calming herself. ‘Thanks, Diesel. I couldn’t stand it knowing I’d let a monster roam for even another week.’
‘But that’s what I’m trying to say, Scarlett,’ Adam said. ‘There weren’t any document files on the drive that they took from McCord’s house.’ He lifted his computer bag from beneath his chair to the table and withdrew a thin stack of papers with rows and rows of text. ‘This is a printout of all the file names on McCord’s computer. No dot-docs. No videos.’
Deacon half stood, reaching across the table for the papers. ‘Let me see those.’ His white brows crunched as he set the papers down on the table and together he and Scarlett went through each page. He looked up after the last one. ‘This isn’t right. Or something isn’t right. I saw the contents of the drive. There were only document files.’
Zimmerman drew a breath. ‘You didn’t mention that you’d seen it too, Deacon.’
‘I never told Deacon where I’d gotten the drive,’ Scarlett inserted before Deacon could say anything. ‘He didn’t know.’
‘Like hell I didn’t.’ Deacon’s jaw cocked in irritation. ‘I’m not stupid, Scar. Diesel has mad computer skills. I put two and two together and got four.’ He turned to Zimmerman. ‘We thought there might be something on it to lead us to the traffickers’ compound. There wasn’t.’
‘Were you planning to tell me?’ Zimmerman asked.
‘No,’ Deacon said curtly. ‘McCord was dead. ICAC had his files. We brought down the bad guys. We thought we were done. Frankly I didn’t see the point.’
Zimmerman was clearly unhappy. ‘We’ll talk about that later. For now, let’s figure out how Diesel got a copy of something that apparently does not exist.’ He turned to Diesel. ‘How much time elapsed between the major points on the timeline? Be as specific as you can.’
Diesel ran his palm over his shaved head. ‘I broke through McCord’s network security at about ten at night. This was way back before Christmas, so I may not be exact.’
‘Do the best you can,’ Zimmerman said.
‘No pressure,’ he muttered. ‘Do you remember, Stone? I called you right after I found it.’
‘It was about a quarter till eleven, because Criminal Minds was on. I had to DVR the episode to see how it ended because I dropped everything and met you at the office. You showed me what you’d found and we called Marcus.’
‘It was eleven thirty when they called me. And I wasn’t watching TV. I just remember it because Diesel was panicking, and he doesn’t panic easily. Unless hospitals or doctors are involved, but that’s another issue.’
‘Thanks a lot, Marcus,’ Diesel muttered. ‘You wanna skywrite it next time?’
‘We kind of figured that out ourselves,’ Decker offered dryly, shaking his head when Diesel crossed his arms over his chest in a huff. ‘Marcus, when did you call ICAC, and from where?’
‘From a burner phone, sitting in my car, right outside their offices. With what Diesel had discovered, I didn’t want any chance that my call could be traced to me or to my residence or my office. It took me about fifteen minutes to get to ICAC, so eleven forty-five. They raided McCord’s house at six the next morning. They drove up just as he was walking outside for his newspaper.’ He shrugged. ‘I was there with my camera. That’s the picture we put on the front page of the Ledger – McCord being arrested in his bathrobe.’ He held up his hand when Zimmerman started to ask a question. ‘I got a tip on my personal cell phone. I don’t know who it was. I don’t know if they knew it was me that sent them the information. I’ve wondered if it wasn’t a quid pro quo. But I don’t know for sure and that’s the truth.’
‘Did you try to trace the number that called you?’ Decker asked.
‘Of course I did. It was a burner, just like mine.’
‘So there’s a leak in ICAC,’ Zimmerman said coldly.
Marcus shrugged. ‘Or maybe someone who’s just fed up with child abusers getting off with a slap on the wrist. McCord ended up tried in t
he court of public opinion. That photo I took of him in his bathrobe made every major newspaper in the country.’ His voice went cold as well, and sharp as a blade. ‘He was completely and utterly humiliated. His life as he knew it was ruined. Just like he’d ruined the lives of every child in every one of those pictures.’
Zimmerman held his stare. ‘And you consider that justice, Mr O’Bannion?’
‘No,’ Marcus said levelly. ‘But murder was against the law, last time I checked.’
Wincing, Kate prepared to jump in and steer the conversation to more neutral waters, because Zimmerman’s eyes had narrowed and he seemed to be re-evaluating his opinion of Marcus O’Bannion. But Decker beat her to it.
‘Well said,’ he cut in, not flinching when Zimmerman turned his cold expression on him. ‘If I learned anything in the three years I was under, it was that these criminals are driven by money, power, and ego. McCord lost all three, spectacularly. His death in jail wasn’t justice either. It was far too quick and far too painless, but it did save the cost of a public trial, and – more importantly – it saved his victims from having to testify against him. However,’ he barreled on before Zimmerman had a chance to respond, ‘I think the idea of a leak at ICAC is the one we should be focusing on, sir. Something happened in those six hours between Marcus’s anonymous call and the raid on McCord’s home, because somehow, files disappeared – and McCord himself wasn’t warned. If he’d been warned, he would have wiped his hard drive and the raiding police would have found nothing.’
He kept his voice pleasant through it all, non-threatening and very polite, letting a little more of his accent emerge. It made him sound folksy and sincere.
Zimmerman wasn’t buying it. ‘Don’t think you’ve distracted me, Agent Davenport.’
‘Of course not, sir,’ Decker said mildly. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘But your point is well taken,’ Zimmerman admitted. ‘Assuming McCord’s hard drive was manipulated.’