by Brian Thiem
Sinclair turned his attention back to the interview on the other laptop where Roberts was still questioning Danielle.
Roberts asked, “How long have you been doing this?”
“This is my first time,” Danielle said. “Really.”
Fifteen minutes later, she finally admitted she had worked for the escort agency for six months, normally about two nights a week. Sometimes she did up to three calls a night, but most of the time, only one. She made 60 percent of the agency fee, which came out to $240 per call.
Danielle laid out the rest of the financials to Roberts. “If the customer wants a second hour, it’s three hundred and I keep seventy percent. I also keep tips. Most clients tip fifty or so.”
“How’d you get started?” Roberts asked.
“A friend I knew from a club in San Francisco introduced me to a recruiter for the escort service. I can’t remember her name, but she interviewed me and got me set up.”
“Who else have you met at the agency?” Roberts asked.
“No one other than some other escorts when we did parties or a client wanted a threesome.”
“Twenty-three minutes,” Archard said, snapping Sinclair’s attention from the interview back to their room.
“I’m going in,” Cummings said. “Roberts will never get her to roll in time.”
“I should come with you.” Archard looked at Cummings and started to rise from her chair.
“We’ll stick with Braddock,” Cummings said. “You remain here on the computers.”
Archard bit her lip and turned her focus back to the monitor.
Sinclair felt useless. His job was already done. Cummings walked out of the command post with his laptop in his hand and a moment later appeared on the computer screen behind Danielle. After some whispering between Cummings and Roberts, Roberts got up from his chair and Cummings sat down.
“You apparently don’t know how serious this is,” Cummings said to Danielle. “With the video we have, you could be a porn star.”
Cummings slid his laptop in front of Danielle and played back the recorded video showing the back-and-forth conversation that Sinclair and Danielle had just prior to her undressing.
Sinclair heard the door open behind him as Roberts entered the command post.
“You did a great job in there, Matt,” Roberts said.
“Wasn’t much to it,” Sinclair said. “She wasted no time getting down to business.”
Roberts pulled a chair alongside Sinclair and Archard and watched Cummings interview Danielle on the computer monitor. She was crying and near hysterics as Cummings told her she was going to jail for prostitution and that he doubted her employer, a respected interior design firm, would keep her on the payroll. He said the newspapers might print her name, which would surely ruin her professionally.
“What will your family think?” Cummings said. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “Do you have a boyfriend? If so, you won’t after this gets out.”
She continued to cry. Sinclair saw Braddock’s hand appear on the screen with several tissues. Danielle wiped her nose and eyes, leaving black smudges on her face. “What happened to Carlos?” Danielle asked. “Is he under arrest, too?”
“You need to worry about yourself, young lady,” Cummings said.
“He’s a nice guy with a good job,” Danielle said. “Don’t ruin him, too.”
“Danielle, he’s one of us,” Braddock said. “He was just doing his job.”
“No. He can’t be a cop. He was too sweet.”
“Fourteen minutes,” Archard said.
“What’s with the countdown?” Sinclair asked.
“When she got to your room and confirmed your ID, she sent a text to the agency,” Roberts said. “She then has an hour to tell them she’s out and okay. If she doesn’t, the agency will try to contact her. If they can’t, they send someone—normally a huge, bouncer kind of guy—to investigate.”
“In other words, we have fourteen minutes to turn her,” Sinclair said.
“Thirteen,” Archard said.
“Any report from San Jose PD?” Roberts asked.
“They struck out,” Archard said. “Their escort was an old pro and walked out. They don’t know if she made their undercover or if something just didn’t feel right to her.”
“So it’s up to us,” Sinclair said. “Let me level with her.”
“Absolutely not,” Archard said. “Undercovers don’t interview suspects. And we can’t level with her. If she doesn’t flip, she’ll go back to the agency and spill everything.”
“Cummings isn’t going to get her to roll by acting like a hard-ass. Braddock and I can get her to cooperate.”
“We’ll do it our way,” Archard said. “This is our case.”
“The hell it is.” Sinclair scooped up Danielle’s purse and barged out the door. Roberts followed but didn’t try to stop him. He entered the other room and made his way through the bedroom to the table in the living room.
“What are you doing here?” Cummings said. “Get out!”
“I’m taking over,” Sinclair said.
“We have jurisdiction on this case.”
“It’s a local arrest,” Sinclair said. “Danielle’s our detainee. You don’t even have a federal crime you can arrest her on.”
Cummings’s face turned red in anger. “You’re making a huge mistake, Sinclair.”
Sinclair looked at his watch. “Nine minutes,” he said.
“Let him try,” Roberts said to Cummings. “We have nothing to lose.”
Cummings slammed his chair against the wall as he got up. He stormed around the table and stopped when his face was inches from Sinclair’s. “If you so much as hint to her about an IRS investigation, I’ll have your job,” he whispered.
Sinclair met his stare but said nothing. He took a deep breath, moved the chair back to the table, and sat down. He smiled at Danielle. “I’m sorry I had to deceive you. My real name is Matt Sinclair, and I’m a detective with Oakland PD.”
She sniffled and wiped her nose with a tissue. “I trusted you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You seem like a really nice girl. Someone I’d like to get to know if we met under different circumstances. I can only imagine how hard it is trying to live in the city on your salary—paying rent, paying off your school loans. I don’t blame you for what you do.”
“It was easy money. I could make more in one night than I made in a week at my regular job. No one gets hurt. I never did anything dangerous or degrading.”
“I understand,” Sinclair said. “Did you know Dawn Gustafson?”
“The girl killed in Oakland? I heard about it.”
“She worked for the same escort agency as you do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Sinclair pulled Cummings’s laptop in front of him, brought up Special Ladies Escorts website, and scrolled down until he came to Dawn’s photo. He turned it around to face Danielle. “She was known as Blondie here, but her real name was Dawn.”
“Oh my god!”
“I tried to get someone from your agency to talk to me about her, but no one would. I suspect it might’ve been one of her clients who killed her.”
“Oh my god,” Danielle said again.
“We know the owner is Helena Decker. The only way she’ll open up her client files is if I force her to. I’m sorry for putting you in the middle, but we need to catch this killer. Not only for Dawn, but also to protect other women like you.”
Danielle sat there mulling over her situation. A timer tone sounded from inside her handbag. Sinclair looked at his watch. The hour was up.
“But how can I help?”
“First you need to buy us some time to talk some more. What happens if you don’t check in?”
“I need to text within a minute that I’m out or that the client wants another hour.”
“Can you say I want another hour?”
“Cash or credit card?” she asked.
Sincla
ir removed his wallet and pulled out three hundred-dollar bills.
“One more,” she said.
He handed her another hundred, fished her phone out of her purse, and handed it to her. He leaned over her shoulder and watched as she texted: I’m fine. Carlos wants another hour. Just gave me 100 tip and 300 cash for 2nd hour.
A moment later, the reply came: OK. Check in again when you’re out.
Sinclair sat back in the chair, clasped his hands behind his neck, and stretched.
Danielle set her phone on the table. “If I help you, you won’t arrest me?”
“No,” Sinclair said. “All I’m after is the man who killed Dawn.”
“And you’re not going to let me keep this?” she said, fingering the money in front of her.
Sinclair laughed. “I’m afraid not.”
Over the next half hour, Danielle told them how the escort service worked while she ate the remainder of Sinclair’s pizza. She identified a photo of Helena Decker and said she was the woman who hired her. Since most clients paid by credit card, Helena would direct deposit her cut into her checking account every other week. If some paid cash, Helena would take her cut and let Danielle keep the rest. If Danielle got several cash-paying clients in a row, Helena would set up a meet, often for lunch, to collect the money. When they met in person, they’d talk about the work, and Helena would give her advice on how to keep her clients happy and how to keep herself safe.
“Does Helena mention specifically that she knows you’re having sex in exchange for the money?” Braddock asked.
Danielle looked at her, puzzled. “Of course she knows.”
“Yes, but does she say it, or do you say it and she acknowledges?” Braddock said.
Braddock was searching for the necessary legal elements for a pimping-and-pandering case against Helena, which required that Helena must receive money from someone knowing it came from an act of prostitution. Before the DA would charge a case, they needed to get the money transaction and acknowledgment on tape, which wasn’t easy, since some pimps—or a madam in this case—were so careful, never discussing sex with their workers.
“Sure,” Danielle said. “Helena is more of a mother figure, but she used to be a call girl herself, so she loves talking about what the men like and what I do with them.” She looked at Sinclair and pouted. “Sorry, I don’t mean to embarrass you.”
“He can handle it,” Braddock said. “What would it take for you to set up a meeting with Helena?”
“She’d meet if I had a real problem with a client.”
“That could make her suspicious,” Braddock said. “I mean if you were to tell her that Carlos got rough with you or something.”
“She’d want to meet if I collected a lot of cash.”
“What’s a lot?” Braddock asked.
“A few months back, a client paid for an overnight in cash. The next day, Helena said she wanted to meet for lunch. Guess she thought I’d spend the money.”
“How much did you have?”
“The way it works is it’s three hundred for extra hours, but we can agree to two thousand total for eight hours if we’re just sleeping with the client for most of that. So I had two grand, not including a tip he gave me.”
“Did you have to give all of it to Helena?”
“Yeah, but she just wanted to see it. Then she gave me my cut, twelve hundred.”
“If you tell her Carlos wants to do an overnight with you, will she want to meet tomorrow?”
“Maybe the next day.”
“Could you insist on tomorrow?” Braddock asked.
“It might sound weird.”
“Does a client ever ask a girl to go away for a weekend?” Sinclair asked.
“Other girls have done weekends.”
“Would that get Helena to meet with you sooner?” Sinclair asked.
“Bet it would. She’d probably want the client to pay something up front, and if he paid in cash, she probably wouldn’t want me walking around with it.”
Braddock stayed with Danielle while Sinclair, Roberts, and Cummings returned to the command post across the hall. Archard began downloading Danielle’s phone data into her computer.
She spoke to Cummings as if Roberts and Sinclair weren’t even present. “We can have Danielle send a text that says Carlos wants an overnight and already gave her two thousand in cash. In the morning, we can have her text that Carlos wants her to spend the weekend with him in Las Vegas.”
Cummings said, “That should get a response from them.”
“Are we going to let her go tonight?” Sinclair asked.
Archard ignored him and said, “As I suspected, the Find Your Phone app is installed on the girl’s phone. I’m sure the agency set it up so they can track her.”
“I wouldn’t have trusted her anyway,” said Cummings. “We’ll let the girl sleep in Sinclair’s suite tonight. With the other two agents outside, we’ll have four of us to take shifts watching her. Meanwhile, we’ll reserve a suite at a Las Vegas resort in Carlos’s name for the weekend and get everything else set up.”
“What do you want me and Braddock to do?” Sinclair asked.
“Go home,” Cummings said. “It’s good that the girl likes you, but with you around, it’ll be harder to control her.”
Sinclair was about to object, but he’d worked enough informants to know Cummings was right. “I want to be there when she meets Helena. And I get first crack at interviewing her.”
Before Cummings could object, Roberts said, “It’s only fair. Sinclair turned her, and besides, his murder case is the priority.”
“Okay,” said Cummings. “But we run the operation, and you take orders from us. Go home and get some sleep. We’ll meet here at eight in the morning.”
Chapter 16
An hour before sunrise, Sinclair jogged down Hampton Road in a light drizzle. It was only two blocks from his house but far enough to get his body warmed up and awake. He spotted a Mazda Miata at the entrance to Crocker Park. Next to the little red sports car, a woman dressed in turquoise leggings and a yellow windbreaker was stretching her hamstrings. He slowed to a walk. “Didn’t know if you’d come out in the rain.”
Alyssa smiled. “A little bit of rain won’t stop me from working out.”
Sinclair had called the ER yesterday after Braddock wouldn’t give him Alyssa’s number. The nurse who answered said it was against policy to give out coworkers’ phone numbers, but she’d contact Alyssa and pass on his number. Alyssa texted him last night, and after a few rounds of hi, how are you?, he invited her to meet him for a morning run at 6:15. When she replied, OK, where?, he was excited, yet apprehensive. He knew Alyssa was the real deal, and he didn’t want to screw it up with her as he had with so many other women in his past. “All stretched?” he asked.
“Let’s start off slow until I get warmed up.”
Sinclair trotted down the road with Alyssa at his side. “How far you want to go?”
“I should be back here by seven so I can get home and showered before work.”
“I have a nice five-mile loop I think you’ll like,” he said.
A few minutes later, they passed Piedmont High School, and he sped up to an eight-minute mile pace. “Cathy says you’re a marathoner?”
“I ran the San Francisco marathon the last three years, but I don’t consider myself a marathoner,” she said. “Every year, when it’s over, I wonder why I put my body through that kind of abuse and for the next ten months I only run four or five miles a few days a week. Then I get the bug and start training again for the next one.”
They turned onto Oakland Avenue, a main thoroughfare in the sleepy little town of Piedmont. The vehicle traffic picked up, so they moved off the street. He fell in behind her on the narrow sidewalk, enjoying the view of her skin-tight leggings and ponytail swinging back and forth in cadence with her stride.
“Cathy told me all about your marriage and the divorce,” she said over her shoulder. “I never figured you as th
e marrying type back then.”
“I was getting ready to turn thirty,” he said. “Jill was smart, well respected in the DA’s office, and had her life together. I guess I figured it was time for me to get married, and marrying her would help me grow up.”
They reached the top of Oakland Avenue and turned onto a quiet residential street where they could once again run in the roadway. She dropped back to his side. “Interesting how we both married looking for stability,” she said. “Your wife wasn’t able to change you, and my husband wanted me to change too much.”
She didn’t even seem winded. “I’ve learned a few things since I’ve been sober,” Sinclair said, trying to control his breathing so Alyssa couldn’t tell he was sucking wind. “People like me seldom change until the pain resulting from the old behavior gets too great to handle.”
“I know you’re talking about your drinking. I know other alcoholics and understand about hitting your bottom, but I think people change all the time when they see positive outcomes resulting through change.”
“You mean I don’t need to be hit across the head with a two-by-four?”
“You don’t fool me, Matt. Cathy talks about how much you’ve changed since you two have been partners. The core you—those things that make you special—are beginning to shine through that rough exterior of yours.”
“She’s been pretty tolerant of my rough exterior.”
“Good friends are,” she said.
They finished their run in silence. Every minute or so, she looked over at him and smiled, and Sinclair felt comfortable alongside her without feeling the need to say anything.
*
Sinclair parked his unmarked car two blocks away from Perry’s in the San Francisco Design Center. Cummings and Roberts had briefed him and Braddock at the Waterfront Hotel an hour and a half ago that Special Ladies Escorts agreed to Carlos paying four thousand dollars, half up front, plus a round-trip ticket for Danielle to join him in Las Vegas for the weekend. The Feds bought Danielle’s ticket on Carlos’s credit card, e-mailed the confirmation to Danielle through Carlos’s e-mail account, and Danielle forwarded it to the agency. Within a few minutes, Danielle received a text from Helena’s phone, asking her to meet at Perry’s with the cash.