Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Roarke felt a prickling of significance. He knew that Singh was onto something, but it took him a moment to realize the connection.

  “Janovy lives in Santa Barbara,” he said.

  “Just so. And it has occurred to me that Janovy could be the link to Bitch that you are being prodded to investigate. So I have been doing some research into Ms. Janovy. She is a Santa Barbara native who earned a BA at UCSB, then obtained her law degree at UC Berkeley. She is now a junior partner at the Goleta law firm Buchanan Thompson Kerr, specializing in insurance law. And Ms. Janovy’s particular focus is bringing suit against fraternities.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Epps said softly.

  Roarke knew the same thought had occurred to both of them.

  If the secret purpose of this mission to Santa Barbara was to investigate Bitch, then maybe the key to the upper levels of Bitch had been right under their noses all along.

  Janovy had agreed to an early appointment before work. The route to her house took them up into the hills, past Mission Santa Barbara, with its distinctive twin bell towers, red-tiled domes and crosses on the top. Roarke caught a glimpse of the skulls set into the garden wall, and images of Mother Doctor and Ivy skittered through his head. The Mission asistencia of Las Piedras, another stop on Roarke’s weird foray into the past, seemed a hundred years ago now.

  When he looked away, Epps was watching him. “What happened out there?” Epps asked, softly.

  The team knew something of what had transpired in the desert. The barest minimum.

  Roarke shook his head. It was a story that needed time, not just to tell, but to be able to tell. Epps nodded, and drove.

  Janovy’s house was a complete contrast to the Mission: upscale modern. “Thanks for seeing us,” Roarke said as the agents followed Janovy up a ramp to a sleek, wide-open living space.

  She had gone to considerable expense to make the house wheelchair accessible. There were ramps everywhere and an elevator up to the second floor. Of course the open floor plan was to give her as much room as possible to negotiate in the chair.

  “I don’t mind,” she said over her shoulder. “But I did go through all of this with your Agent Singh back in December.” Janovy wore fingerless athletic gloves and navigated her hand-powered wheelchair expertly, taut shoulder muscles straining under her NASTY WOMAN tank top. Her auburn hair was cropped close to her head, just a fuzz.

  She spun the chair around to face a sofa, gestured with a hand for them to sit. “As I told her, I don’t know who used my ID to get into a Bay Area prison. I haven’t used my driver’s license since my accident.”

  Roarke and Epps exchanged a glance. Janovy caught it.

  “Is there a problem with that?”

  Roarke was thinking, Why no car? Judging by her house and the way she manipulated that wheelchair, she was the poster child for mobility, and there were plenty of hand-controlled vehicles on the market. She obviously had the money for one.

  Roarke began, “None of my business, but—”

  She waited.

  “Haven’t you considered a hand-controlled automobile?”

  She stared at him, stone faced. “Easy to say when you’ve never had a seventeen-ton truck parked on your legs.”

  Roarke felt the sting of the smackdown, and rightly so. “Point taken. Sorry.”

  “PTSD,” she said shortly. “I’m working on it. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe to drive. Now what can I do for you?”

  After that inauspicious start, Roarke decided to ease his way into his questions. “This use of your driver’s license seems so—random. Had you even heard of Cara Lindstrom? Before Singh contacted you?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Some of us remember real news.”

  An evasion. Roarke pressed it. “Had people in your circle been talking about her? The arrest, the trial . . .”

  “In my circle,” she repeated without inflection. Roarke was pretty sure she knew he was alluding to Bitch. But all she said was, “There was talk at work. Anyone who grew up in California . . .”

  She didn’t have to finish the sentence; Roarke knew exactly what she was going to say. Anyone who grew up in California knew about the Reaper, the family massacres, and Cara, the “Miracle Girl” who was the only survivor of that slaughter.

  She shrugged. “Well. Of course I remember the Reaper. All that.” She suddenly smiled, a not very humorous smile. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Do you actually think I know where Lindstrom is?”

  It was an interesting take on why they were there.

  Epps smiled back. “Do you?”

  Janovy lifted her hands. “She’s gone underground, hasn’t she? I know I would. Leave the state, probably leave the country. But you’d know best about that . . .”

  Roarke had the slight sense of being probed. It could just be curiosity, but he was more inclined to believe there was a game going on.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, then took a moment, pretending to think. “You’ve heard of the cyber group Bitch?”

  He watched her face as she replied, “After yesterday, who hasn’t?”

  Roarke and Epps looked at each other.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Ms. Janovy, to our knowledge, Bitch hasn’t taken credit for the campus action.”

  “But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” she retorted. “It’s not my personal theory. Most of the media seems to think so.”

  “So do you or have you ever worked with them?”

  She frowned. “Worked with them? As an attorney?”

  “As anything.”

  “I’m sure I’ve ‘liked’ some posts on Facebook and Twitter.” She looked from one man to the other. “Are you thinking someone from Bitch stole my identity? That’s not good, is it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They’re a powerful cyber group that a lot of people are calling terrorists. I’m sitting in my house talking to two FBI agents who want to know if I have ties to that organization. In this brave new world, that doesn’t really add up to fun times. So you tell me—do I need a lawyer?”

  Both Roarke and Epps shifted uncomfortably, and Roarke knew what he was feeling was shame. It’s come to this, already—every inquiry we make is going to feel like a paramilitary threat.

  He was on the verge of apologizing and leaving her alone. But the woman was ticking all kinds of boxes: a wealthy lawyer, an intersectional feminist—she was definitely someone who could be part of Bitch, even conceivably running it. So he tried a different tack.

  “I didn’t mean to give that impression. I’m sorry the subject made you uncomfortable. Let’s put Bitch aside. What we’re really interested in is your expertise.”

  “Expertise in regard to?”

  “Fraternities.”

  Her gaze narrowed.

  Epps had obviously picked up on Roarke’s strategy. Now he expanded on the question. “In many of the instances of vandalism of the night before, fraternities were specifically targeted for threats. We’d like any insight you can give us about why that would be.”

  “In general, you mean.”

  “In general, of course.”

  She shrugged. “You asked for it.” She leaned forward in her chair. “If your goal is to dismantle the patriarchy, fraternities are a good place to start. That’s where all our best misogynists get trained. And of course, they’re bastions of white male privilege as well.” She looked straight at Epps as she said it. “Fraternities represent an almost cult-like white-cis-hetero-patriarchy—a closed chute that exists to isolate the sons of the privileged among their wealthy peers and keep them moving straight into the highest echelons of society. Fraternities are where the one percent systematically consolidate their wealth and learn how to keep the rest of society enslaved.

  “Sororities are a chute into the upper echelons of society, too. The difference is sorority girls aren’t being groomed as power brokers. The Greek system propagates and normalizes female inferiority. Sexual assault is
a routine part of Greek life. Bluntly, the Greek system is a hunting ground. We are breeding entitled racist misogynists in a petri dish of rape culture. These thugs go on to make laws and enforce laws that perpetuate rape culture and racism.”

  She looked Roarke in the eye, and then Epps. “It’s not accidental, lads. This is a finely honed system of oppression. It’s taken thousands of years to build it. And it’s not going away without all of us using our skill sets to bring it down.”

  Roarke took that in. “So your goal is to dismantle the patriarchy.”

  She smiled grimly. “You bet your ass my goal is to dismantle the patriarchy. But obviously,” she gestured to her legs, “I’m not going around scaling university clock towers to do that. I wanted to pick the biggest offender I could go after with my skill set. And that’s fraternities. I’m a fraternal plaintiff’s attorney.”

  “Which means—you sue the frats? The universities?”

  She grimaced. “That’s an uphill road. College administrators are incredibly reluctant to discipline Greek houses or to publicize the crimes of individual members. They’re much more likely to close ranks around them, block any outside investigation, because universities depend on rich Greek alumni. Also there are very powerful political lobbying groups aimed at protecting fraternities’ interests.” She paused. “So I go after the parents.”

  Nothing she had said so far had surprised Roarke. That last did.

  “I’ve recovered millions and millions of dollars from homeowners policies. That’s how many of the claims against boys who violate the strict policies are paid: from their parents’ homeowners insurance.”

  Roarke and Epps stared at her, unnerved. “You don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about penalizing the parents?” Roarke asked.

  Janovy turned cynical eyes on him. “Did you happen to read the letter the Stanford Rapist’s father wrote to the judge, pleading for leniency for his rapist son? Arguing that his precious boy shouldn’t be penalized for ‘twenty minutes of action’?”

  Her loathing was palpable in the room.

  “Yes, Agent Roarke. I go after the parents. It’s proved pointless to ask them to instill basic decency in their sons. They won’t lift a manicured finger to stop rapist attitudes, rape culture. So I go after them the only place it seems to hurt them. Their bank accounts. Enough high-profile lawsuits and they just might start getting the message.”

  Roarke had to admit it made sense. But he was after something more specific.

  “Have you had, or heard about, any complaints about the Kappa Alpha Tau house in particular?”

  She went still for only a fraction of a second, but Roarke caught it. Then she spoke. “Specifically K-Tau? Not that I know of. Why? Do you know of something?”

  Roarke felt a warning stab at her interest. “Just asking.”

  She regarded him, unsmiling.

  Roarke veered quickly to his last question. “Just one more question, if we may. I’m wondering about the timing of all this. This huge, coordinated action. Why now? It doesn’t seem to be a reaction to anything in particular.”

  She tilted her head. “You don’t see anything significant about the timing?”

  Roarke glanced at Epps. “What significance is that?”

  “We’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes talking about fraternities. The demonstrations targeted fraternities specifically, if not exclusively. So the Taylor Morton rape trial? It’s going to verdict any day now. Down in San Diego.”

  Taylor Morton? Roarke scrambled to identify the name. She gave him a cold smile. “Can’t quite place it? Maybe because there are so many of these cases out there. Here’s your brief. The accused is a star runner. White, upper-middle-class, frat boy. The judge is a white middle-aged man, Princeton law school graduate. Oh, and by the way—a Kappa Alpha Tau alum.”

  Roarke and Epps stared at each other. Coincidence? Or something more?

  “Put all that together—and do we realistically think Morton is going to get jail time?” Her voice shook. “Brock Turner. Austin Wilkerson. These guys are convicted rapists and we can’t get judges to sentence them. At a certain point, you have to start asking yourself how to actually solve the problem. Because a two percent conviction rate doesn’t even begin to count. How long until we have an equal number of female judges? How long before we make even the slightest dent in rape cases? Given the political nightmare we’re living in, what hope in hell do we have of that happening now?

  She paused for breath.

  “So yeah. I’d kind of expect something to happen around that verdict and sentencing.”

  Roarke turned that over in his head for a moment. “So all of this vandalism was what—anticipatory outrage? Or are you saying that someone has gone to great lengths to set up some dominoes to make them easy to knock over when the verdict comes in?”

  Janovy leaned forward. “You keep asking me what I think. What I think is that something’s going to blow. There’s just nothing left to lose anymore. The US government has declared open war on women. Officially, these fuckers are going to try to take away every right we’ve ever fought for. Women are angrier than you can possibly imagine. All we need is one last straw. It could happen any second. And then there’s going to be rioting in the streets. There’s going to be bloodshed.”

  She sat back. “And that trial? People are watching it. You know why? That misogynistic joke of a judge is on the predator-in-chief’s short list for the Supreme Court.”

  The agents sat in the car on the street outside Janovy’s house.

  Epps was the first to speak. “She had a lot to say.”

  “She did.” And all of it voluntary. That always alerted Roarke to an agenda. “But what if she’s right? That the coordinated vandalism is a setup for when the Morton verdict comes down? Building a pyre in anticipation of the match?”

  There was something about it that made sense, especially if the judge in the Morton trial was a contender for the open Supreme Court seat.

  Epps was speaking, and Roarke had to focus on his words. “If she is with Bitch, why let us in on all that? She’s flat out feeding this stuff to us.”

  He was right. And personally, Roarke thought Janovy was lying. About something, or about everything.

  He leaned forward, hooked his phone to the dashboard port, and called Singh.

  “We just got finished with Janovy. We need some information on a trial down in San Diego—”

  “The Taylor Morton trial,” Singh finished for him. “It is on a list I have compiled of potentially volatile situations.”

  Roarke shot a glance at Epps. Epps shrugged, but Roarke detected a ghost of a smile. No doubt—with Singh, Epps had won the lottery.

  “Janovy basically just called the trial—the verdict—a ticking time bomb.”

  There was a brief silence as Singh considered it. “She may well be right. The presiding judge is Charles Blackwell. He has a history of handing down light sentences for sexual assault. His name has been floated as a possibility for the Supreme Court vacancy, though not as a top contender.”

  Epps spoke up. “Janovy says the verdict may be coming down any minute.”

  There was a brief silence before she replied. ‘“Any minute’ would not be entirely correct. It is my understanding that the defense will conclude its presentation of its case in the next week or so. But in a criminal trial . . .”

  She didn’t have to finish the sentence. They all knew. Anything could happen, at any time.

  Roarke started, “So either Janovy knows something that we don’t . . .”

  “Or she’s trying to get us down there,” Epps said. “Or just away from here.”

  “Maybe.” Roarke frowned. “There is the Tau connection, though.”

  “So . . .”

  The truth was, ever since he and Epps had arrived in Santa Barbara, Roarke had been on edge. Whether that feeling meant they were close to some kind of action, or too far away from it, he couldn’t tell. But he had felt increasingly jumpy as
the morning rolled on.

  He weighed it, called it. “We split up. You stay here. Follow up with the county sheriffs and the Isla Vista Foot Patrol to see if there have been any reported rapes concerning the KAT house. Even rumors.”

  Epps looked surprised. “You’re going down to San Diego?” For the slightest second he looked skeptical, suspicious. And why wouldn’t he? Roarke had had no end of ulterior motives since this case began.

  Epps mentioned none of that. He only asked, “What do you really think you can do there?”

  Roarke had to pause. “Sit in at the trial. Be there in case something does go down. Yeah, it’s hedging our bets. But if Janovy does have some kind of inside track, then I’m there on the spot.”

  There was another reason, of course there was.

  But not one that Roarke was going to share.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  After the call with Roarke and Epps, Singh sits in her cubicle and looks around the empty office. It is early, still some time before business hours; she is the only one in.

  So she turns away from her Bureau computer and removes her personal laptop from a drawer. She boots up and logs in, to check up on a project of her own.

  Using an alias, on an encrypted connection, she enters the Darknet and logs on to a forum titled “Rape Cara Lindstrom.”

  It is the hateful brainchild of Riverside County Sheriff’s Detective Gilbert Ortiz.

  Singh has been following Ortiz online for some weeks now. At first her surveillance was on a legal warrant for Ortiz’s online activity, when he was a suspect for the rapes of more than a dozen teenage girls over the last sixteen years.

  Ortiz was not part of that rapist team. Roarke had closed the case. But Singh has continued to track Ortiz, unofficially. And illegally.

  Because of this forum.

  It is a place where men who choose to do so can share their most despicable fantasies.

  Singh has lived all her life with the knowledge that a random group of men can turn into a monstrous, ravening beast, with no thought, no morality, no consciousness. That any moment she herself could be seized, brutalized, left for dead or worse than dead.