Dead Drop: A Girl's Guide to Homicide

by D. A. Brown

  Ginny walked slowly toward them. “It’s raining.”

  “I’ll grab their raincoats.” Barrett rummaged in the front hall closet, pulling out two yellow slickers. “Here we go.”

  “I’d rather you stayed home.”

  Barrett put the coats on Grace and George.

  Ginny stood in front of the door.

  “Mom, quit being so weird. We’re just going to the park,” Barrett said.

  “Adventure,” George shouted.

  Barrett held his phone in his hand. Ginny reached out and grabbed it from him. She looked at the screen.

  “Why is that detective calling you?” She gripped the phone and shook it at him.

  “Because of Grace. This case.”

  “What has she told you?”

  “Jesus, mom. Nothing.” He pushed passed his mother and opened the door. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll keep Grace here.”

  “She wants to come with us.” Barrett took Grace’s hand.

  “Go without her.” Ginny picked up the little girl and shoved Barrett out the door and turned the lock.

  “Where’s Grace?” Sophia stepped from the car.

  “My mom wouldn’t let me take her with me. What’s going on?” Barrett looked back at George sitting in his car.

  “I can’t tell you right now.”

  “My mom was acting like a psycho.”

  “Stay here with George. I’ll call you.”

  Sophia got back in the car and called Pierson.

  “We have to stand down. Grace is in the house with the mom. She wouldn’t let Barrett take her.”

  “SWAT’s already set up on the house. I’ll call you back.”

  Sophia drove as fast as she could to the Halifax house, stopping at the road block traffic had set up. She parked the car, flashed her badge and jogged to the SWAT command vehicle sitting in the middle of the road.

  “Who let you in?” The SWAT lieutenant, a young guy with only a few years more than Sophia, blocked her. He was six four and an easy two hundred pounds of solid muscle.

  “I’m the lead on this case.”

  “You’re not the lead here.” He was dressed all in black, a large tactical vest covering his upper body.

  “Did Pierson call you?”

  “I’m a little busy.”

  “The little girl is still in the house.” Sophia looked over his shoulder. “I’m Benedetti, by the way.”

  “Bloom. Dave Bloom. I don’t want to be an asshole, but you really can’t be here.” He pulled out his phone. “I missed his call.”

  “The child is autistic,” Sophia said.

  “I guess this is about to become a hostage negotiation then.”

  “Let me talk to the mom.”

  “We have negotiators for that. Unless, you’re qualified to do that, too.” Bloom tilted his head to this radio mic. Sophia listened.

  “The mother says she’s going to kill herself and the kid if we don’t back off.” The transmission broke up but Sophia heard enough.

  “Copy,” Bloom said. He walked to the Bearcat, an armored vehicle used by SWAT in high risk entries.

  “I’ve been in the house, Lieutenant. I’ve talked to the mom and the little girl.”

  A helicopter hovered overhead.

  “Fuckin’ media.” Bloom spoke into his mic. “Someone call our media unit and tell them to get those assholes out of the sky over my scene. I can’t hear a goddamned thing.”

  Bloom turned and walked back to her. “You’re not going in, detective. We’ll wait her out.”

  Even from a half a block away, the sound was distinct. One gunshot, then another.

  The lieutenant gave the command for officers to make entry. Sophia listened to the radio as SWAT officers went from room to room looking for Ginny and Grace. Sophia closed her eyes and said the only prayer she remembered from Catholic school - the one to St. Anthony, asking him to find missing pets.

  “We’ve got ‘em. The girl is alive. Mother’s in custody. Looks like she fired the gun to get us in here. Don’t know what her plan was after that, but Stafford rushed her and took her down.”

  “Can I go get Grace? She knows me.” Sophia said.

  “Get over there. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

  Sophia jogged to the house. The all clear order had been given and the perimeter was coming down.

  In the doorway, an officer appeared holding Grace. The little girl smiled when she saw Sophia. Sophia walked up and reached for her.

  “She’s in shock, I think,” the officer said as he passed her to Sophia.

  “I’ve got you, Grace,” Sophia said as she took the girl in her arms and walked her back to the car.

  Before Sophia turned, Ginny appeared around a corner, her hands cuffed behind her. “Take good care of my girl, detective. I’ll be coming for her.”

  “Over my dead body,” Sophia said, pulling Grace closer.

  Ginny laughed. “There’s far more of us out there than you.”

  Pulling out her phone, she called Tommy. “It’s over.”

  “So she’s in custody?”

  Grace was in the backseat. Sophia stepped from the car.

  “Grace is with me. Ginny’s headed downtown.”

  “You did good.”

  “I need someone to bring a car seat up here. See if Jess is free. I have to go tell Barrett and George. Get Stewart to the office.”

  “Are you all right, Soph?”

  “Right as rain.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tommy put his feet up on the desk and took a sip of coffee.

  “So let me get this straight. Ginny Halifax was the ringmaster, Ed Sanderson was her right hand man and Loveschild managed the computer end of things. And they were recruiting kids from the church.”

  Sophia sifted through the dozen new files generated from the investigation. She’d be working this case until the new year.

  “And Marcus Burton was their muscle. He gave them a heads up if cops got too close.”

  “That’s about it.” Sophia threw a file onto Tommy’s desk. “Remind me again when you’re pulling the plug?”

  “Soon.”

  “So you’ll be completely useless to me in the meantime.”

  “Pretty much. But you’ve got Jess. She’s a workhorse.”

  “I resent that remark, Stinson.” Jess said. She stood up and walked over to Sophia and Stinson’s cubicles.

  “More than happy to help, Sophia,” Jess said.

  Tommy smiled and looked at Sophia.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jess laughed and walked over to the copy machine.

  “So…”

  “Stay out of it, Tommy.”

  “I’m just sensing a little chemistry between the two of you.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Back to our original discussion. So fill me in. Halifax figured things out and started taking the kid to a shrink? He had no idea his wife was some fucking kingpin of a child porn ring? That’s pretty hard to believe.”

  “People will see what they can bear sometimes, I guess.”

  “And the woman in the photo was Ginny.”

  “Why were she and Stewart meeting Burton?”

  “They weren’t. They parked there for a Mariners’ game. Ran into him. Burton was probably checking on the dead drop. Nothing related to the ring. Purely coincidental. David was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He thought he had the right bad guys but he only captured two of them in those photos.”

  “Poor bastard.” Tommy put his feet down and stood up. “Killed for nothin’.”

  “Really? I think he was killed for a reason, don’t you? Probably by some drunken loser with an ax to grind. What do you think, Tommy?”

  “Why would I know?”

  She was waiting for a sign.

  Tommy turned away from her and fiddled with his pen. “He worked in the computer field, right? Maybe one of this geeky friends tipped hi
m off. Maybe he was stalking you from across the street and happened upon it. Who knows? The guy’s dead.”

  “It still doesn’t feel right.”

  “Sophia, you’re talking about people who rape kids and take pictures of it. And speaking of a drunken loser…”

  “Jesus, Tommy.”

  “Hey, I’m just telling you like it is. He’s out of your life and he’s never going to be a threat to you again. That’s a win, as far as I’m concerned.” He put on his coat. “I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

  Theresa Blunt guided the Washington Audubon Society members closer to the shore of Spada Lake.

  “The lake is just exquisite today, isn’t it?”

  The six women and four men, looked out across the lake and at the mountains surrounding them. All of them had binoculars of varying sizes hanging around their necks. Birdwatching guides tucked in their coat pockets, they excitedly waited for further instruction.

  “Hey, is that an otter?” Henry Kadson stared intently into his binoculars.

  “Not likely, Henry.” Theresa pulled out her binoculars and looked out to the middle of the lake. Something bobbed in the water.

  “Looks like someone lost a coat.” Theresa looked again.

  The object moved closer, rising and falling with the gentle tide of the lake. A soft pink nightgown was wrapped around the torso. A sheet of plastic, dotted with starfish, followed the body in the water.

  “Oh dear,” Theresa said. “Someone call the police. That’s a body.”

  Bodhi jerked against Sophia, snorting a muffled bark. The tapping on the door was barely audible but the dog jumped from the bed and ran toward the front room barking frantically. Sophia looked at the clock. It was two AM.

  She grabbed her gun from the nightstand and pulled back the slide to make sure a round was chambered. Maybe Ginny wasn’t bluffing and she’d already outsourced the job to take Sophia out.

  The house was dark except for the faint illumination from the streetlight out front. Sophia pulled back the blind and saw the tall figure standing on the porch, the hood of a ski jacket pulled up over his head. The figure knocked louder as though he knew she was home and couldn’t hear him above the cacophony of barking.

  Sophia tapped the butt of her gun against the window. The figure whipped his head around and pulled back his hood. It was Stinson.

  “What the hell, Tommy? You couldn’t have called me?” She opened the door. Tommy stood motionless on the porch. His eyes were bloodshot and watery, a sure sign he’d been drinking. The strong smell of cologne, the same one she remembered from David’s crime scene rushed at her.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “An invitation.”

  She turned from the door and leaned against the arm of the couch. Tommy closed the door and bent down to greet Bodhi.

  “Hey girl,” he said, patting her on the back and scratching her behind the ears.

  He stood up. “I’m not going to insult you and ask you if you know why I’m here,” Tommy said, shedding his jacket onto a chair.

  “Go ahead and give it a try. I’d love to hear it.”

  Tommy sat across from her and rubbed his eyes.

  “Just how drunk are you?”

  “Not enough to not know what I’m doing.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  “I need to get some things in order.”

  “I’m not holding you back, Tommy.”

  “But you know. I could tell today. Actually, I could tell the other day.”

  “Did you wear the same cologne tonight to seal the deal?”

  “I was drinking that day too.”

  “When you killed David.”

  “Yes.”

  Sophia picked up the Glock and put it in her waistband. The last thing she wanted was for Tommy to use her gun to do something stupid.

  “So basically, you don’t have the balls to turn yourself in?”

  “I went to Montero’s apartment to try and talk to him. To get him to leave you alone.”

  “What made you think I needed you to do that?”

  “He called me a few weeks ago. Told me he’d been working a case on behalf of some woman.” Tommy smirked. “Like he was some fuckin’ super sleuth. It was a case I’d worked on back in the day. A rape that ended up a homicide. Perp beat the shit out of some poor college girl. Left her in a coma. She died three years later.”

  “I remember that case. The victim was Julia Proust. No wonder that name sounded familiar.”

  “And we knew who did it. Some piece of shit on the football team. But we didn’t have enough.”

  “Why does this matter?”

  “‘Cause David talked to an old friend of mine who was suffering a pang of conscious and he decided to share with him that I might have assisted in getting the perp to confess by less than legal means.”

  “Jesus, Tommy. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “That guy was guilty, Soph. He caved in that poor girl’s face. He raped her with a broken beer bottle. He was a fuckin’ animal.”

  Sophia stood up and paced.

  “David wanted access to you. When I went over to talk to him he brought up the Proust thing. He told me he was going to leak it and take me down. He said he thought I was in love with you.”

  Sophia looked over at Tommy. “Was he right?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me and everyone else associated with this case and the Proust case, Tommy. You betrayed your oath.”

  Tommy stood and reached behind his back. Sophia pulled her gun out and aimed it at him.

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m just pulling up my shirt.” He brought his hands around slowly and showed them to Sophia.

  “Get out.”

  “Please.”

  “Your retirement party in tomorrow night. You’re going to go and act like you’re having a great time. And then you’re going to head to the precinct and turn yourself in. If you care about me, you’ll do it. Don’t make me be the one, Tommy.”

  Stinson stood and picked up his coat. “I’m pretty sure the writing’s on the wall, Soph.”

  “You better hope so.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next night, the squad celebrated Tommy’s retirement, while he was still on the job. It was the only way he was guaranteed to show up. There was a huge party at Jules Maes Saloon in Georgetown, a place where he sewed many wild oats in his patrol days.

  The bar was dark, with tall ceilings and a bank of pin ball machines along one wall. It smelled like forty years of hops and cigarettes.

  He was late and Sophia was suddenly seized with panic that her ultimatum had led Tommy to do something rash.

  The door swung open and Stinson walked in, his jacket over his shoulder and his weapon on his hip. He was missing his badge.

  Jimmy toasted him first. “To the best detective I’ve ever worked with.”

  Stinson glanced at Sophia. “I’ve passed on all I know to Benedetti. She’ll do me proud.” He turned to her and held up his glass. “Although I just heard you’re heading to homicide. Congratulations.”

  Sophia forced a smile.

  “Hear, hear.” There was a round of applause.

  The room roared to life with music and the baritones of mostly male officers.

  Sophia finished her drink and went to the bar for a re-fill. Sitting on a barstool by himself, was the suit from her firearms review board.

  “Coincidence or business?” Sophia said.

  The man looked up, then stood and took out his phone. “Business.”

  Sophia looked out the front window. A caravan of black Suburbans screeched to a halt in front of the bar.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Excuse me.” The suit brushed past her and met two other similarly dressed agents as they walked into the bar. She followed them.

  The men pushed through the crowd until they got to Tommy. One of the men took the drink out of Tommy’s hand
.

  “Thomas Stinson, you’re under arrest for the murder of David Montero.”

  Several cops surrounded the federal agents.

  “Back up, fellas. Let ‘em do their job,” Tommy said. He looked at Sophia. “I’m sorry. He hurt you. I had to make it right.”

  The circle of friends and colleagues widened to let the men move Tommy to the waiting cars. Jess put her arm around Sophia and walked her out the front door.

  Tommy never looked back.

  A hand gently pressed her shoulder.

  “Wake up.”

  Jess sat next to her on the bed and handed her a cup of coffee. Sophia sat up and propped a couple pillows behind her.

  “Did you spend the night?”

  “Yes. On the couch.”

  “I don’t remember much about last night.” Sophia pressed her temples. “How much did I drink?”

  “I wasn’t tracking but let’s just say you must come from hardy stock.”

  “Just a lot of alcoholics.”

  Despite an aching hangover, Sophia weighed the option of telling Jess about her conversation with Tommy. Would she understand that Sophia had given Tommy the unprecedented courtesy of letting him turn himself in?

  “Look for what it’s worth, I made a call to a friend at the Bureau. They’ve been looking at Tommy for a while. The investigation was referred by the department to the public integrity squad at the FBI. They’ve been working this for months.”

  “But…”

  “His prints were all over David’s apartment, Sophia. His DNA was on David’s skin, for chrissakes. That’s why he wasn’t around that day when you and I went to Queen Anne to meet with David. And he didn’t come to the crime scene because a witness described him to the detectives.”

  “Why would he be so careless?”

  “He wanted to get caught?”

  Sophia sighed and closed her eyes.

  “He was in love with you, wasn’t he?”

  Sophia stiffened. “How…?”

  Jess laughed. “Some of the guys were even convinced you two…”

  “Never.”

  “I know.”