by Blake Pierce
“Why do criminals do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Mark themselves out for us. Make it easy with their gang tattoos.”
“I don’t think that’s the point of the practice,” Shelley said, giving her a wry smile over her own shoulder. “It’s social conformity. Showing that you belong to a particular group. Sometimes, the boost of loyalty and companionship that someone gets from that sense of belonging overrides the need to protect themselves or the logic to avoid arrest.”
“I would never get a gang tattoo. Even if it was a requirement for joining the gang. In fact, especially so if that was the case. What a stupid rule to have.”
Shelley swiveled her chair slightly, giving Zoe an amused look now. “You wouldn’t join a gang anyway, would you? It would require a lot of small talk. I don’t think you would like that.”
“I would not get a tattoo under any circumstance, anyway,” Zoe replied, pointing out the other part of the problem with what she had said. “I do not understand why anyone would. What could possibly be so significant that it requires inking onto the body in a permanent fashion?”
“You really don’t like tattoos, do you?”
Zoe couldn’t tell if Shelley was laughing at her or not. “They are a mark of lower intelligence. Offenders are far more statistically likely to have tattoos than law-abiding citizens are. And after time passes, they inevitably look stupid. Why are you smiling like that?”
“Because there’s something about me that you don’t know.” Shelley pushed her chair a little way back from her desk and lifted her foot up onto the seat of her chair. Before Zoe had a chance to protest or ask her what she was doing, Shelley had lifted up the hem of her trousers to reveal the bare skin on her lower leg.
A miniature poppy was etched there, in brilliant red and black, almost realistic enough for Zoe to think she could reach out and pluck it.
“You have a tattoo?” Zoe said, even though it was stating the obvious. It was too much of a shock. She would never have imagined Shelley to be someone who would defile her body with ink.
“Still looks pretty good, I think,” Shelley said. She was smiling, and though Zoe thought it might be good-naturedly, she couldn’t completely tell. “I got it when I was in college. My grandmother’s name was Poppy. After she passed, I thought it might be a nice way to remember her.”
Zoe returned to her own chair and sank down into it. She felt like the wind had been blown out of her sails. “Do you have any others?”
“No,” Shelley laughed. “This one hurt like hell. I swore off them after that.”
“I did not know about… this part of you.”
“What part? The criminal, low intelligence part?”
Zoe swallowed. She may have struggled with human emotions and social norms a lot of the time, but she knew this: there was an apology owed.
“I did not mean that about you,” she said. “I did not know that…”
“You made an assumption,” Shelley said. “I know you don’t think I’m a bad person, so you must see already that your assumption wasn’t totally correct. It’s not just criminals and idiots who get tattoos.”
Zoe nodded, measuring her words carefully. “I concede that a mark of respect and remembrance toward a lost loved one may also be a valid reason to commit to such a thing.”
“That’s progress, at least,” Shelley said. She was still smiling, and Zoe got the feeling that it was still at her expense. But she had messed up and said something that might have been hurtful, so that seemed fair. “How’s your search going?”
Zoe took the unsubtle hint and returned to her monitor, where Clay Jackson’s police records had finally loaded. She gave a low whistle, shaking her head at the sheer length of the results that had come up. “He has a record, all right. Looks as though he was affiliated with a local gang as we suspected.”
Now it was Shelley’s turn to come over and lean over Zoe’s shoulder. They read the results together. They didn’t tell a pretty tale.
Clay Jackson had been a member of a gang in LA, a notorious street crew who were heavily involved in the trade of illegal drugs, amongst other things. The kind of drugs that Callie had been messing around with. It wasn’t hard to see where she might have gotten her supply.
Clay’s tattoos were just the start of it. He was a key member of the gang, suspected of leading attacks on rival turf and of being the mastermind behind several deals that went down to connect the gang with suppliers and buyers. He had multiple cautions, for drug possession and for possession of weapons, each of which was followed by an actual arrest and various punishments. He had spent some time in jail, in and out after a few months each time, never quite getting caught badly enough to go down for good.
Until the moment it had all ended—gunned down in an alleyway, his body left in a bloody heap to be discovered by the police after shots were reported by residents in the area. There was never any real evidence as to who did it, only circumstantial links and suspicions, which were easily visible in the pattern of interviews and arrests that followed the crime.
“Look at this,” Zoe pointed out, tapping on her screen. “The only charge they managed to make stick during the entire investigation was possession of an illegal firearm. The guy they thought was most likely to have done it, only they could not prove it. This was all they could get him for. He got five years.”
“Search him up,” Shelley said. “What’s his name? Cesar Diaz?”
“That is right,” Zoe replied, waiting for the page to load again. “His gang had close links with Mexican smugglers. It seems they would have been fighting over territory. Who got the right to sell in that area.”
“It all fits. If Clay was a big shot in his organization, getting new deals and closing new sales, then their rivals would have wanted him taken out in particular. Make a big statement about who owns what.”
Cesar Diaz’s information blinked up on the screen.
They both read the latest update, then paused and looked at one another.
This was big.
“Cesar Diaz was paroled a few months ago,” Shelley said, voicing it out loud.
“Cesar Diaz is out on the streets, and maybe looking for revenge. It explains Callie. Erase the things Clay cared about in order to make a noise about being back, show that he has not softened. That he is still in charge.”
“But what about John Dowling? That still doesn’t make sense to me.” Shelley frowned. “Is there any connection between John and Cesar?”
Zoe scanned his page, looking for anything that jumped out. Nothing seemed to. On a whim, she tapped the back page in the system, returning to Clay Jackson’s profile.
Underneath his name and image, along with his vital statistics, were a few links that led to larger sections. One of these was known affiliations, and Zoe clicked on this to carry on scanning down the text.
“Wait a second,” she said, noticing something that tugged at her memory. “Alicia Smith. It seems like a common name, but…”
She got up, picking up John Dowling’s file from where they had left it on the central table. She leafed through a few pages before she finally found what she was looking for.
“What is it?” Shelley asked, watching her anxiously, her fingers playing with the arrow pendant that hung around her neck.
“Alicia Smith. Interviewed a couple of days ago by uniformed officers as part of the investigation into John Dowling’s death.”
“What connection does she have?”
Zoe smiled, a little bit of victory. “Alicia Smith is John Dowling’s mother.”
“But what…” Shelley leaned forward, examining the screen again. “Wait. Alicia Smith is also Clay Jackson’s aunt, on his mother’s side.”
“John Dowling is Clay Jackson’s cousin. That is how he is connected to Callie Everard.”
And just like that, all of the pieces were falling into place.
Shelley jumped into action, typing onto Zoe’s screen and mov
ing the mouse impatiently while the page loaded again. “I’ve got Cesar Diaz’s parole details. We’d better go pay him a visit.”
CHAPTER TEN
Zoe watched from the side of the room, where she had gone ostensibly to examine the certificates hanging on the wall. From there she could see and listen, but did not have to take any part in the conversation itself until she was ready.
Craig Lopez didn’t look like your average parole officer, at least not the kind that you pictured in your head when you heard the term. He was built strong, six foot four and around two hundred pounds of muscle. Not only that, but most of those muscles that were visible around the polo shirt he was wearing were heavily tattooed. Ranging from scrawled doodles to elaborate pieces of art, he had clearly been collecting his ink for a very long time.
Then there was the ragged scar across the side of his neck, where a bullet had once torn its way through his flesh without killing him.
Evidently, he had been hired because of his unique perspective. Having been a member of several gangs in his youth, he could speak to those who were involved in them on their level. He knew what it was like for them.
“Cesar is in trouble again?” he asked, his whole demeanor heavy and disappointed. “He swore to me he was going clean. Getting out of the gang and into something better.”
“We don’t know for sure yet,” Shelley pointed out. “We need to question him.”
Craig opened the drawer of a filing cabinet and leafed through the contents before drawing out a piece of paper. “This is his parole address. You should proceed with caution. If he is mixed up in gang business again, he’ll likely have an entourage. He did time for the gang, so he’s gained some prestige. They’ll want to protect him. If you go in all guns blazing, they could react badly.
“Understood,” Shelley said. “If we go in alone, just the two of us? Show we just want to talk?”
Craig inclined his head. “Safer. But make sure someone knows where you are. Just in case.”
Shelley drew in an unsteady breath as she nodded. Zoe observed this, thinking that Shelley had probably never been in this kind of a situation before. With how well she handled herself, it was sometimes easy to forget that she wasn’t long out of Quantico. There were plenty of scenarios that would still be daunting to her, fresh and new.
When it came to gangs, Zoe couldn’t say she was altogether confident herself.
“You are a bit of a local expert on these gangs?” Zoe asked, directing her question toward Craig.
He looked up in surprise—it was the first time she had spoken during the whole exchange—and shrugged. “I guess you could say that. At least the closest thing on this side of the law. Why? Do you need some information?”
“It is about Clay Jackson, the man Cesar likely killed,” Zoe said.
“Oh, he killed him. Just did it smooth enough they couldn’t catch him,” Craig said. “I’ve heard next to a confession from him, though he’s too smart to come out and really say it.”
Zoe nodded, glad for the confirmation at least. “His aunt, Alicia Smith. She was questioned about the murder at the time.”
Craig narrowed his eyes and then flicked them toward the ceiling, thinking. “Not sure the name rings a bell.”
“Her son, John Dowling, is one of the murder victims that we are currently investigating.”
Craig took the hint. “You’re asking me about their relationship. Whether Cesar would murder this John Dowling as soon as he got out to make a point.”
“Precisely.”
Craig pursed his lips, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I just can’t see it. Clay Jackson was like a lot of these guys. The gang was his family. Real blood relations paled in comparison. As far as I remember, he wasn’t in contact with most of his relatives. His parents wanted nothing to do with a son that was in a gang.”
That was interesting. It was a hole in their theory, but then again, it wasn’t proof. Craig knew these men, but he wasn’t part of the gangs. Not anymore. There were things that they might be able to hide from his suspicion.
“Thanks,” Shelley said, reaching over to shake his hand. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”
***
The address listed on the scrap of paper that Craig had written out for them was a rundown, single-story building with beaten up old cars parked across what should have been the front yard. One of them was on cinderblocks instead of tires. Not exactly what you might expect from the home of a drug kingpin.
Maybe Craig was right, and Cesar really was out of the game. That didn’t mean he was done with his revenge, Zoe thought, chewing her lip as she examined the view.
There didn’t seem to be anyone around who looked out to cause them any harm. No one watching them from windows or porches, no cars moving slow through the neighborhood. No sign of anyone stirring inside the house.
“We should go in,” Zoe decided, opening the driver’s side door and getting out.
Shelley followed her after a beat. It wasn’t a long delay, but it was a delay. Zoe wondered if Shelley was getting cold feet about going down this gang route. Whatever they did, they were going to have to investigate it somehow. No matter what kind of delay they instigated, they were going to end up here at some stage.
Zoe tried to exude confidence that she herself did not really feel as she walked up to the front door and knocked hard, three sharp raps that could not fail to be heard throughout the small home.
There was no response.
She exchanged a glance with Shelley, now standing close behind her, and knocked again. Harder. Five times. Not so easy to ignore.
There was nothing. Not the creak of a floorboard or a flicker of movement behind the flimsy curtains. The living room window, visible from where they stood, gave onto an empty room.
“No one is here,” Zoe said after a moment, deciding that it did not feel like they were simply being ignored.
“What now, then?” Shelley asked, looking back at the car. “Do we sit and wait?”
Zoe followed her gaze and saw an elderly Hispanic man who had come out to sit on the steps of a property on the other side of the street. Seventy-three years old, she estimated. “Maybe. Maybe not,” she said, setting off at a casual walking speed toward him.
It was always awkward, moving toward someone like this. The old man was watching them and knew that they were approaching him. Knew that they were coming to talk to him, but he was still too far away to yell a greeting. Where did you look? At the ground? Into the distance, ignoring the presence of the man, as if you were planning to just go on right past him? At his face, to create eye contact that would be awkward for the long stretch of time it took you to reach speaking distance?
Zoe settled for a mixture of all three, which was somehow even more awful, and ended up calling out to him as soon as she was halfway across the road just to make it stop.
“Excuse me, sir?”
He didn’t get to his feet, eyeing them both with a heaping of mistrust, but he gave them his attention.
“We are looking for the man who lives at this address. Do you know where he might be at this time?” Zoe asked, keeping her words somewhat neutral. No need to give everything away at once.
The old man grunted. “You mean Cesar?”
That cat was out of the bag, then. “Yes, sir.” Zoe kept it respectful. She had noticed that the level of cooperation one found from elderly witnesses was often directly correlated to the amount of times you called them sir or ma’am.
“Out at the pit.”
“The pit?” Zoe repeated. There was nothing like interacting with local knowledge as an outsider to make you feel stupid.
The old man grunted again, giving her an impatient shrug of his shoulders. “The pit. Where all them boys go.”
“Do you mean the gang members, sir?” Shelley took over, her tone low and soft.
The Hispanic man rubbed fingers gnarled with arthritis across the top of his head, almost bald but for a few linger
ing strands, and nodded. “All them boys. No secret around here.”
“Could you give us directions, sir?” Shelley asked. “We’re not locals.”
The old man looked her up and down, then burst into a laugh that exposed three missing teeth. “No, you ain’t,” he said, then laughed again, long and hard.
Zoe tapped on Shelley’s arm. “Better off calling the local PD,” she said, gesturing with her head back toward the car before setting off in that direction. Behind them, across the twenty-four steps back to the car, the old man’s laughter still pealed out, following them like a bad smell.
Zoe sank into the driver’s seat and slammed her door, perhaps harder than necessary.
“What’s the plan?” Shelley asked breathlessly. There was pink in her cheeks. This whole encounter had been out of her depth.
“I am going to call the station,” Zoe said. “We get some backup, and the location. The locals will know what it means. And then we go in.”
She dialed the number on her phone, already weighing up the amount of force they were going to need to ask for—and whether it was going to be prudent to ask for bulletproof vests, too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zoe adjusted the straps on her vest one more time, feeling the reassuring grip of the Velcro against its counterpart and how tightly they held together.
The back of the police van was cramped. Shelley sat opposite her, and then eight men and women from the SWAT team, all of them outfitted in full assault gear. Zoe was unused to the feeling of the helmet on her head, the way the padded sides pushed at her cheeks. Still, it was better than going in as an exposed target.
They were idling on a dead-end road a short distance from their target, the hangout that the gang members called home. The Pit. It turned out to be a bar, or at least a front of one, the kind of place where outsiders were very much unwelcome. Going in was going to be a full-out raid situation. The local captain had made it clear to them that there was no other option with men like this. Go in unarmed, unprotected, and as a cop, you’d come out dead.