Gia Santella Crime Thriller Boxed Set: Books 1-3 (Gia Santella Crime Thrillers)

by Kristi Belcamino

  I took a deep breath and tugged on the glass door of the police substation.

  THE RECEPTIONIST AT the precinct said James would be out in a few minutes and I could take a seat. But it took him thirty. By the time he opened the door, I was half asleep. But as soon as I saw him, my heart beat double time. He had on his police uniform: tight blue pants and a blue shirt. Ever since I first met him, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t ditch the image of him in that uniform dancing to something throbbing and low, twirling his handcuffs, slowly, tantalizing, unbuttoning his clothes ...

  When we were together, he’d been more than willing to experiment in the bedroom. But to my everlasting chagrin, he’d always refused to play bad cop with me.

  “Gia?” His forehead scrunched. I guess I’d been staring.

  He really was a specimen. All that time in the gym sure paid off. I stood quickly, rubbing my palms on my pants. “Do you have a second?”

  “Sure. Come on back.” He seemed wary, guarded, and distant. Not like someone whose tongue had traced a path across every inch of my body.

  The door to the lobby slammed closed behind us, making me feel claustrophobic. He headed down a long hallway and didn’t wait to see if I was keeping up. Fine by me. It gave me a good view of his remarkably firm ass.

  He turned into a doorway so quickly I nearly stumbled. He flicked on the lights and waited by the door for me to come into the windowless room.

  “Have a seat.” His voice was clinical. Not a trace of warmth.

  When I pulled up a chair at the small table, he shut the door and pulled out a chair across from me.

  “Is this where you interrogate the crooks?” I said. I smiled, trying to lighten the tension.

  He waited a few seconds chewing his inner lip before he answered in a dull voice. “Yes.”

  I swallowed. Nobody acted like this unless they’d been hurt. It was obvious now.

  “I’m really sorry about the way things ended,” I said, wincing a little. “Sometimes I do stupid things like that. Act badly when I start to care about someone. I’d like to apologize. I’m really sorry. Not just that night, but that whole week.” I clamped my lips together. It was way more than I intended to spill when I opened my mouth and it was so raw and revealing I felt like I was going to vomit. But it felt right. I knew I needed to say it. Every word.

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Thank you.”

  We both sat there in silence. I felt like an asshole.

  Finally, he stood and headed toward the door. He turned to me. “Is that all?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you come here simply to apologize?”

  “I should’ve come solely to apologize, you’re right.” God, I was such a jerk. “And I should’ve come a lot sooner. But the truth is I came because I need your help. You’re the only cop I can trust.”

  He sat back down and folded his hands together. He wasn’t giving me an inch.

  I launched into it: Darling and Sasha and the protesters and the partial license plate number. He sat silent.

  “I’m hoping you might help. Discreetly,” I added at the end. “As I mentioned, my friend, she’s good people, James. Really, really good people. She takes care of those in need. She would do anything for anyone. But some of what she does to finance that isn’t all aboveboard. She would never be involved in anything illegal that would hurt someone else, like distributing drugs or prostitution or anything like that. But she’s got this business, involving, let’s just say paperwork and documents that really, actually helps people. She won’t just give stuff to anyone. If you’re a thug or a low life, forget about it. But if you are down and out and need help, like say, you’re an abused woman with a husband who is going to kill you ... she can help you disappear. She’s like Robin Hood. Like Mrs. Robin Hood.”

  I spilled it all in one big rush, my words falling over themselves.

  He was chewing on the inside of his lip and his eyes were narrowed. He still hadn’t said word one. I was waiting, holding my breath.

  Finally, he nodded.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Yes? You’ll help?”

  “Gia, you do realize I’m a beat cop. A street cop. I’m not a detective.”

  “Not yet,” I said, playing my card. He’d talked about working his way up to detective. “Maybe this can be your big break?”

  “More like it would get me kicked off the force.”

  I raised an eyebrow and frowned.

  “I can’t operate without my supervisors knowing about this,” he said. “I’m not the type of dude who goes rogue, Gia. You know that. Unlike you, I’m a rule follower.”

  I let the dig go. Besides it was the truth.

  “You can’t go to your supervisor with this.” I remembered how firm Darling was on this. “We just need a little help. Not much. Just a little search of the DMV database. Believe me if I could search that license plate on my own I would’ve left you out of this.”

  James bit his lip and looked off over my shoulder.

  “Please,” I was begging now. “It’s a young woman’s life possibly in danger.”

  “Possibly? Now I really think I should go to my sergeant.”

  “You can’t. Please.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. He was clearly frustrated. I waited and watched. Then he sighed.

  “Give me the partial plate number.”

  I slid a small scrap of paper over to him.

  He stood and opened the door. “You have forty-eight hours.”

  “What?”

  “If she’s not back by six p.m. on Sunday, I’m taking this to my sergeant.”

  “No, you can’t.” I stood.

  He handed the paper back to me. “Those are my terms.”

  I crossed my arms and refused to take it back. “Fine.” I glared at him and he left, the door closing behind him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE DRIVE ACROSS THE Bay Bridge was surprisingly painless. Most of the traffic was heading into the city while I was heading out. I called Darling on my way.

  “I’m heading to Sasha’s to ask some questions. You okay keeping Django for a while?”

  “He my dog now. He loves me more than you. I’m gonna keep him.”

  “Ha ha,” I said, but a part of me worried. He did love Darling. A lot.

  Then Darling grew serious.

  “You find my grandbaby, Gia.”

  Sasha’s apartment in Berkeley was tucked up in the hills near a cool old movie theater that was showing Wings of Desire. Sasha’s small bungalow was tucked off the street and down a small path crowded with bushes and trees.

  The door was painted blue. I knocked until a girl with long stringy hair wearing big flannel pants and a U.C. T-shirt opened the door. Her eyes were barely open behind thick glasses.

  “Are you Raya?”

  “You Sasha’s grandma’s friend?”

  “Yes.” I was relieved. Darling must have warned the girl I was coming.

  “Did you find Sasha?” Her voice cracked. It was then I noticed her eyes were red and puffy from crying.

  “Not yet.”

  She stood there dazed.

  “Can I come in?”

  The living room was the size of my closet and was crowded with a couch, TV, and one armchair. Books were piled on the coffee table and a tall palm stood in one corner. Everything was neat and tidy. I followed the girl down the hall into the kitchen where a small table with three chairs was also piled with books.

  She flopped into one of the chairs. A doorway off the kitchen showed a small hall with three doors.

  “Sasha’s room is the one on the right.”

  A small twin bed took up most of the room. The bed was made with a flowered duvet. Filmy lavender curtains covered the window. A “Purple Rain” poster was taped above the bed. Across from the bed was a small desk that looked like command central. It had bookshelves above it and filing cabinets on each side.

  On t
he desk was a picture of Sasha and her mother, Meredith, who died a few years ago of breast cancer. I stared at it. I’d only met Sasha once at the salon, but remembered she had the most mesmerizing eyes. It felt like she could see right through you.

  She had her grandmother’s regal nose and cheekbones and burnished bronze skin. But now that I saw her beside her mother in the photo, I knew where Sasha got her black flashing eyes.

  I picked up the picture. Her mother was already fighting cancer at the time the picture was taken, but her eyes sparkled with life from underneath the stylish fisherman’s cap she wore with long dangly earrings. Her full red lips pulled back into a brilliant smile. I’d never had the pleasure of meeting her. I met Darling shortly after when I first moved to San Francisco. Darling and I became fast friends, bonded in our grief. Mine over my mother and father. Hers over her daughter.

  I took a picture of the photo so I could show it to people around the Tenderloin.

  Sasha’s bookshelves revealed her passions and intelligence: Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s “All the President’s Men” sat between Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

  The desk had a big empty spot in the middle. A small U.C. coffee mug held pencils and pens. A tiny upright dresser no wider than me held her lingerie, underwear, socks, and pajamas. No diary or journal tucked into the folds of clothes.

  The small closet was jam-packed with clothes. A stack of shoeboxes was on the floor. I flipped each lid to see if they contained anything but shoes, but struck out.

  Then I tackled the bookshelves, idly flipping through books looking for scraps of paper to fall out. Nothing. Then, the filing cabinets.

  Sasha, a sophomore at school, was extremely organized. She had files labeled for stories she wanted to write for the campus newspaper, files labeled for her classes, her assignments, her resumes, newspapers she wanted to work for when she graduated, a file for bills to be paid, one for bills paid, and one for fashion. I was relieved to see at least one file that showed she did something else besides obsess about journalism.

  I spent the most time on the files for the newspaper.

  She had several thick files on hate groups. I flipped through them. Most were online newspaper articles she had printed out.

  Nothing personal.

  “Raya?” I hollered. She came and lifted her coffee mug to her mouth, which instantly steamed her glasses. I gestured toward the empty spot on the desk.

  “Did Sasha have a laptop?”

  She scrunched her face together. “Yes. It’s not there?”

  I shook my head.

  She bit her lip, thinking. “She didn’t take it to the city with her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I met her for coffee near the BART station in Oakland before the protest. She only had on her little cross body bag. Her laptop doesn’t fit in that. When she carries her laptop, she has a special bag with padding and stuff.”

  “Where’s her laptop bag?”

  Raya went to the side of the desk near the window. “It’s usually right here if she’s home.”

  “Any idea where it could be?”

  “The only place I could think of is the newspaper office. She might have stopped there on her way to the BART station. It’s on the way.”

  “One more question,” I said as I walked toward the door. “Did Sasha keep a journal or diary?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Before I walked out, I paused. “Any reason you didn’t go with her to the city?” I asked softly. The last thing I wanted to do was make this poor girl feel guilty.

  She shot me a look. “No way. No how. Sasha and me have been friends forever, but she sometimes gets all crazy about politics and stuff.”

  I was about to answer when she interrupted. “I should’ve told her not to go. I should’ve stopped her. She was so excited. She said she was going to have a major story. Do you think she’s okay? I’m so worried.” She tugged at her lip with her teeth. “Is she okay? Where could she be? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I’m sure she’s okay,” I said. It was pathetic how easily the lie came out of my mouth.

  WALKING UNDER THE GIANT arch onto the Berkeley campus filled me with regret and longing and guilt. Maybe someday I would go back to school. I knew my parents had always planned for me to go to U.C. Berkeley. I’d thought I would, too, but plans changed.

  For instance, I hadn’t planned on my parent’s getting murdered.

  Or later, my brother and my godfather’s murders.

  When my parents died, I enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute, but didn’t even last a semester. I was too interested in numbing my grief with drinking, drugs, and sex. Art school became somewhere for me to meet cute boys. I was asked to leave school after I posed nude when the model didn’t show up. It probably didn’t help that I slept with the professor, too.

  As I walked across campus, past college kids in sweatshirts noses into their phones, my own cell dinged with a text from Dante. Shit! I’d forgotten he and Bobby were coming over for dinner.

  “The board is trying to squash Swanson Place. I only now got wind of it.”

  I texted him back. “Can u help me? Do digging on the board – their bank accounts, etc. Ask Sal for help. They’re hiding smthing. I’m caught up in smhing else. Fill u in later.”

  The campus newspaper wasn’t the sort of dark and dank gritty spot I’d always imagined a newspaper office to be like. It was underground, sure. But it was brightly lit and modern.

  Bookshelves crammed with reference materials lined the walls. Tables scattered across the room held desktop computers or docking stations for laptops and tablets and smart phones. Students typed furiously on keypads or had excited conversations. I stood in the doorway trying to figure out who was in charge. Finally, I saw an older man in jeans, cowboy boots, and a tie. He had longish gray hair swept back from his forehead, a neat beard, and penetrating eyes behind large glasses.

  “Excuse me.” I approached him. “My name’s Gia Santella. I’m a friend of Sasha Fitzgerald’s family. Can we go someplace private to talk?”

  His smile had faded when I said Sasha’s name.

  “Sure. Just a second.” He turned to a student. “Josh, keep an eye out for Brody’s copy. He’s ten minutes late. I’ll be back in twenty.”

  He turned to me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Bruce Baumann. My office is across the hall.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WALLS OF HIS OFFICE were covered with framed certificates and yellowed front pages from newspapers across the country, including one from the New York Times on 9/11. It had a little plaque beside it saying the story had won a Pulitzer. I gestured to it, eyes wide.

  “Another life,” he said and smiled.

  He closed the door and took a seat in one of two worn leather office chairs in front of the desk.

  “What have you heard about Sasha?” he asked.

  “You know she’s missing?”

  “Hell yes, I know. She’s my star reporter. She didn’t file a story from the protest. I called her phone about fifty times. Finally, I went and knocked on the door of her house. Her roommate told me she never came home.”

  I watched as he spoke. I knew I could trust him.

  “Whatever happened to her,” I said, “I don’t think it’s good.”

  He pressed his lips together tightly, shook his head, and waited for me to continue.

  “Is this confidential?” I asked.

  He gave me a look. “Consider yourself a source.”

  I lifted an eyebrow.

  “It means I’ll go to jail before I reveal my sources.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said it so low I barely heard.

  I tilted my head. “Okay, then. Somebody saw her dragged away by men in masks. All in black, black masks.”

  “Antifa!” he said in a low voice and then whistled.

  “Who?�
�

  “Stands for Anti-Fascist Action. They are a militant anti-fascist group.”

  “Oh, yeah. I think I heard of them.” I got out a scrap of paper and started taking notes.

  “It doesn’t make any sense that they would take Sasha,” I said. “They oppose hate groups, right?”

  “It’s a little complicated,” he said, “but Antifa stands less for a group and more for a call to action. Anybody can say they are Antifa and get out there with their masks on and basically incite violence.”

  “Wait? Isn’t this the same group that came out to help with Hurricane Harvey relief?”

  “Same name. Different people. They’re all independent, loosely organized groups using the name and donning the masks. They’re known for their masks, and using sticks and clubs to attack others during protests.”

  I thought about George. They said he’d been clubbed.

  “That’s one reason Sasha was covering the protest,” he said. “Besides her meeting afterward, she was going to interview the members. They claim to protect those who are trying to stand up to the white supremacist groups. And frankly, that probably is true in the rest of the country, but there is a rogue subset here in the Bay Area that we believe is actually run by Kraig King. I told you that each Antifa group is independent? Well, we suspect this local group using the Antifa movement to perpetuate racism.”

  Kraig King was the national head of the country’s largest white supremacist group. He had a home in Berkeley so it made sense he’d be involved in local rallies. But him being behind a group that publicly opposed him? Crazy.

  “Like an inside job?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Baumann typed at his laptop and then turned it around to face me. It was an article the student paper had published about possible links between King and Antifa in Berkeley. A giant photo at the top showed a man in a suit standing on a hill overlooking the Oakland protest.