Borrowing Trouble

by Stacy Finz

  “This guy isn’t . . . it’s staged, right?” The man was swinging from a rope. His feet weren’t touching the ground.

  “His name is Lance Sweeney. He hanged himself two days after a grand jury indicted him on police corruption charges . . . stealing evidence and valuables from homicide victims.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He read the text again.

  Sloane McBride, you can’t hide. You’re next.

  “Who sent this and why is he threatening you?” He heard the oven timer go off. “Sit down. I’ll take the cake out and get you a drink of water.”

  By the time he returned, her face had gotten back some of its color. “Here. Drink this.” He handed her the glass and sat beside her. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I was the whistle-blower.” She said it so softly he could barely hear her.

  “On the corrupt guy?”

  She nodded. “Him and a ring of detectives in RHD.” When his face went blank, she said, “The Robbery-Homicide Division. It started with them stealing drugs from victims, which should’ve been evidence—a bag of weed, a half gram of crack, that sort of thing—and giving it to their snitches. We all had informants. In return for information we’d give them money, buy them a drink, and occasionally bail them out of trouble. We solved a lot of big crimes that way. A good many of these informants were junkies. So this ring of RHD detectives would pay them in stolen drugs. I was new to the division and had no idea what they were doing.”

  She stopped to take a drink. “Quite a few of our homicides involved large quantities of drugs, and these detectives grabbed everything they could before an evidence team got to it. Soon they were sending their snitches out to sell it. Some of these cops were making thousands of dollars on the side.”

  “Is that when you figured out what they were doing?” Brady asked.

  “No. It was happening right under my nose and I didn’t even know it. I looked up to these guys. They were everything I wanted to be—at least I thought they were. It wasn’t until they got more brazen.”

  Brady noticed she was shivering and put his arm around her. “You want a blanket or for me to turn up the heat?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and snuggled closer to him.

  “Finish telling me.”

  “They started upping their game, stealing money and pretty much anything of value they could get their hands on. Some of it they had their snitches fence, the rest of it they kept or gave as gifts to their wives and girlfriends. I started getting a bad feeling when we’d show up at a house where someone had been killed and I’d see a twenty-dollar bill on a coffee table, and at some point it would disappear. But the scenes were so hectic with investigators coming and going that I didn’t think too much about it.

  “Then one night we got called to a home in the Hollywood Hills. There’d been reports of a man peeping in windows. Someone had caught him the night before trying to break into a home, but he got away before the police arrived. Well, this woman wasn’t so lucky. He’d broken in, sexually assaulted her, and strangled her with a pair of pantyhose. Her husband had died the year before from a stroke. I remember that because she had pictures of them, their children, and their grandchildren everywhere. You could tell that this was where they’d raised their family—a place they’d loved.”

  She stopped and he pulled her closer. “You okay?”

  “Those sons-of-bitches went through her jewelry box. They filled their pockets with her pearls, her locket, her husband’s wedding ring. They would’ve taken hers if it hadn’t been on her finger.”

  “They did it right in front of you?”

  “No. Later I saw them divvying up their loot in the locker room back at the station. They didn’t know I’d seen them. At first I didn’t want to believe it. They were supposed to be the good guys.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went home, tossed and turned all night. I kept seeing the pictures of her family, thinking how some piece-of-shit pervert had violated this poor woman and then we came in and did it all over again. It made me sick.” She blew out a breath. “The next morning I called my dad. He told me to go to internal affairs.”

  “Did you go?”

  She nodded. “They opened an investigation immediately and started pulling detectives in for questioning. I never hid the fact that I was the one who went to IA. The entire division, plus the Police Protective League—my own union—did everything under the sun to discredit me. I was seeing a counselor to work through a shaken-baby case I’d investigated. Those are difficult for even the most jaded investigators and I just needed someone to talk to. It was supposed to be confidential. But somehow they got hold of the information and started spreading that I was in the midst of a mental breakdown. Then they pulled a new one out of the hat. Months earlier, I’d dated one of the targets of the investigation. He was going through a divorce, and in the end he wound up going back to his wife. No hurt feelings whatsoever. Yet, all of a sudden he and the rest of the division are making allegations that I’m a woman spurned. That after he dumped me, I went nuts and threatened to make him pay—hence the trumped-up charges. Like what kind of woman would do that?”

  If she only knew, Brady thought. “Wait a second. Wasn’t it an open-and-shut case . . . I mean once the family reported that the jewelry was missing, what defense could these guys possibly have? You saw them with the stuff.”

  “The family did report it missing. But it could’ve just as easily been stolen by her killer, who we still hadn’t caught.”

  “Ah, Jesus.” Brady scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Sorry, keep going.”

  “These were really respected guys, Brady, and soon cops from other divisions were avoiding me in the hallways. Someone put a dead rat in my locker, someone scrawled ‘liar’ in red paint on the door of my apartment, and no one would ride with me. The lieutenant, who was supposed to step in and have my back, just looked the other way.”

  Sloane leaned her head against the couch. “A few of the detectives’ snitches had begun to talk to the IA investigators, who got enough to get warrants to search a number of the RHD guys’ houses. They found some of the jewelry at Lance Sweeney’s. Soon after, the case was brought before a grand jury and heads began to roll. Instead of vindicating me, it made people in the division even angrier. And when Lance committed suicide they were out for blood. He’d been everyone’s best buddy in RHD—the guy you confided in, the one who took care of your dog when you went out of town, and who had your six in a crisis.”

  “But he was a thief and a liar.” It bothered Brady that these cops made the really good ones look bad.

  “I know,” Sloane said. “I don’t blame myself for his death. But everyone else did.”

  “What did they do?” Brady had a bad feeling he already knew.

  “I got called out on a domestic violence case. Usually RHD doesn’t handle those, but like I told you before, the suspect was a person of interest in a liquor store shooting. When we got there, I went to the front door and my partner took the back. The guy had barricaded himself in and afterward we learned that he was holding his ex and two kids hostage. As soon as I knocked, he put a bullet through the door, missing me by inches. I took cover and called for backup, not knowing if my partner had been shot at too. I waited and waited while the crazy guy in the house took a few more shots at me. It took them twenty freaking minutes to respond. In a situation like that it’s an eternity.”

  “Where was your partner?”

  “To this day I don’t know what the hell he was doing all that time. He claimed that he’d been under fire too and couldn’t get to me.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even think the shooter knew he was back there.”

  The thought of Sloane in danger, waiting for help while no one came, made him want to hit someone. “After that?”

  “I quit,” she said. “How could I do my job effectively under those circumstances? When I left, my dad and brothers came out to stay with me, worried that I wasn’t safe in my own
apartment. They begged me to come back to Chicago. But in the incestuous community of law enforcement, my name was already mud. I couldn’t get a job to save my life. Then a miracle happened. Jake, who is still pretty plugged in at LAPD and has friends in IA, had heard what was going on, and knew how vicious it could get when you broke the so-called code of silence. He hooked me up here.”

  “The whole thing pisses me off,” Brady said. “These guys were goddamn thugs—no better than the dirtbags they arrest.”

  “Please don’t think badly of police,” she told Brady, who’d balled his hands into fists. “Most of them are good people, but just like with everything else, there’s always a chance of a few rotten ones. There were a lot of cops at LAPD who were appalled by these detectives and what they had done. They just weren’t in a position to help me.”

  “So what’s with the text? You think it’s one of them?”

  “I know it is. Ultimately, four guys, including Sweeney, were indicted. Sweeney’s partner blames me for his suicide, and many in the division blame me for ruining the other three’s careers.”

  “But you quit and left town. So why now?”

  “They never stopped, Brady. My lieutenant even called Rhys and told him I was crazy—that he’d better watch his back. Even though it’s a tiny department, they’re furious that I have a job in law enforcement. They’re hoping to discredit me.”

  “That text you just got is more than someone trying to end your career. It’s a death threat. Have all the texts been like that?”

  She shook her head. “This is the first time they sent me a picture. Until now it’s always been vague, like, ‘we’re coming to get you.’ ”

  “There’s nothing vague about that. It’s a blatant threat to do you harm. Is Rhys tracing them?”

  She suddenly grew quiet.

  “Sloane?” He gently grasped her shoulders.

  “I didn’t tell him about the texts and phone messages.”

  He jerked his head. “What do you mean, you didn’t tell him? This is serious, Sloane.”

  “I won’t let them intimidate me.” She stuck her chin out.

  “I’m not telling you to be intimidated. I’m telling you to have these bastards arrested. Why the hell wouldn’t you tell Rhys?”

  “Because I came here with enough baggage,” she said. “I was lucky to get the job at all. The last thing a small department—any department, for that matter—wants is a headache. This”—she held up her phone—“makes me a headache.”

  “No.” He pointed to the phone. “That makes you a victim. Jeez, you’re a cop, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s right. And for that reason I’m handling it my way.”

  It was plain to Brady that these detectives were out for blood, and no matter how good a cop Sloane was, she was no match for them. He got up and paced the room. “Sloane, honey, you have to tell Rhys. Because if you don’t tell him, I will.”

  Sloane sat through Jake’s shower with a smile plastered on her face. The party was an unqualified success, but all she could think about was the text. And Brady’s threat.

  If you don’t tell him, I will.

  At first, his high-handedness had angered her. Then she’d come to realize that he was genuinely worried about her. Brady had always struck her as the kind of guy who didn’t let anything bother him. The type to let trouble roll off of him like a raindrop. But last night she’d seen another side of him—a protective, authoritative side, which was supposed to be her role. She was the cop, after all. Everything he’d said, though, had been right. She couldn’t disregard the last text as a nebulous scare tactic. She didn’t believe for one minute that the sender planned to kill her, but it had been a death threat just the same. And that was illegal.

  So sometime between the sun coming up and her first sip of coffee, she’d made up her mind to tell Rhys. Just not now. She’d wait until after his getaway with Maddy.

  “You made this?” Connie said, then shoveled a forkful of Jake’s cake into her mouth.

  Actually Brady had made it—with a little help from Duncan Hines—and she’d frosted and decorated it. “It’s a mix.”

  “It’s good,” Connie said. “Want to go to happy hour with me at the Ponderosa?”

  “Sure.” She wasn’t on call and Brady was doing wedding stuff, which meant she’d have to fend for herself for dinner. Although Wyatt’s chicken wings were still sitting in her stomach.

  “Three-dollar margaritas.” Connie punched her in the shoulder.

  “Hey.” Jake joined them, holding up the card and gift certificate they’d all gone in on. “Thanks for this and the whole party. And, Sloane, thanks for filling in for Rhys.”

  The chief had told everyone that starting Thursday she’d be running the show until he got back.

  “No problem.” Sloane took Jake aside when Connie went to grab her purse. “Wyatt isn’t angry, is he?”

  “He’s not like that. No one is, here.”

  She nodded, not really believing it, although Jake had always been a straight shooter. For a while she’d contemplated telling him about the threats, but with his wedding coming up . . . well, he had enough to deal with. “Okay. I just don’t want to step on any toes.”

  “How’s your case going?”

  “I’m still waiting to hear back on the person’s sex and age range. At least it’ll help me narrow down the field of missing persons.”

  He pulled Sloane in closer. “Hey, I know this is a little slow paced for you. Hell, at your age I would’ve died of boredom in a department like this, but it’s a good group. And there is plenty you can learn here—things that will make you a better cop no matter where you go in the future.”

  “I know. It’s all good, Jake. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough for hooking me up here.”

  Connie approached. “You ready to go?”

  “Three-dollar margaritas, here we come.”

  They threw on coats—Sloane had already changed into something more festive for Jake’s party—and went a few doors down to the Ponderosa. Mariah waved to them from behind the bar, motioning that they should take any table they wanted. The restaurant’s happy hours were popular, but the after-work crowd hadn’t yet shown up, so they had the pick of the place. They settled on a table for two tucked under the staircase. She’d heard the second floor was Tater’s apartment.

  “Want nachos?” Connie asked.

  “That sounds good.”

  “What about potato skins, fully loaded?”

  “Aren’t you still full from the shower?”

  “No,” Connie said. “That’s why you’re a skinny bitch.”

  Not if she kept eating Brady’s food. “Okay. Let’s get both.”

  “And a pitcher of margaritas.”

  A server came, took their orders, and returned with two margarita glasses.

  “So you’re the big boss while Rhys is away, huh?”

  “It’s just because Jake is busy with wedding stuff.”

  “It’ll be good to get Rhys out of the office for a few days. He’s been driving me up the wall. Don’t get me wrong, I love him like a brother, but he needs to get laid.”

  Sloane nearly choked on her water. “I don’t think we should talk about the chief’s sex life.”

  “I do. It’s not like I have one to talk about. How ’bout you?”

  “Nope. But I just moved here. What’s your excuse?” Sloane figured Connie, who was cute in a tomboy way, was in her early thirties and should have no problem meeting men.

  “Slim pickings.”

  “What are you talking about? I’ve never seen so many good-looking guys. It’s like they grow on trees here.” Sloane bent over the table. “What about Griffin? You can’t get hotter than him.”

  The server put down their appetizers, poured them two margaritas, and put the pitcher down in the center of the table.

  When she left, Connie said, “Everyone knows he’s in love with the chief’s sister.”

  �
�Everyone but me. Who’s the chief’s sister?”

  “Lina Shepard. She just moved back from San Francisco. She’s going to the University of Nevada now and is splitting her time between here and Reno. They used to be lovers.”

  “But they’re not anymore? If not, you should go for him.”

  “Not my type.”

  “All right, what’s your—” Before Sloane could get the rest of the sentence out, the server returned with a plate of fried calamari. “Uh, we didn’t order this.”

  “Compliments of the chef.” The waitress rolled her eyes and in a low voice said, “They’re from Tater. He made me say that.”

  Connie laughed, and at the top of her lungs yelled, “Thanks, Tater.”

  When the waitress walked away, Sloane asked, “What about Tater? Is he single?”

  “He’s single but I’m not into him. What about you? Got your eye on anyone?”

  “Not really,” Sloane said and played with the potato skin on her plate. “I’m still getting a lay of the land.”

  “What about your neighbor, Brady Benson?” She made a purring noise that made Sloane snort with laughter. Sloane tried to imitate it but couldn’t pull it off.

  “How do you do that?” she asked Connie, whose attention had turned to the door.

  “Here come the Addisons.”

  The couple grabbed a table on the other side of the dining room. “So that’s them, huh?”

  “Yep. Be prepared for them to come over to say hello. They think they’re friends with my parents. Secretly, my folks hate them. They’ll also want to suck up to you, since you’re the po-po and all.”

  Just as Connie had predicted, the minute they spied her they came trotting over. And they had on the matching bear hoodies Harlee had mentioned.

  “Hi, Connie,” the woman said, and then just stood at the edge of their table, gawking at them.

  “Hey, Sandy and Cal. This is my friend Sloane McBride. She’s our new officer—well, not so new anymore.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Sloane stuck out her hand. Neither of them shook it and Sandy eyed her margarita. “Connie and I just got off duty.”