by Camy Tang
Tiffany nodded. She whispered, “I saw her, the night she left.”
“What happened?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. When I was heading back to bed, I spotted Joslyn just as she was closing her door. She looked scared to see me. I knew right away she was leaving. I tried to get her to stay, I told her she was safe here.”
“She didn’t believe you?”
“Joslyn said that he’d never stop looking for her until she was dead, because she’d embarrassed him. She said that she had seen him kill a man for no good reason, so he’d certainly kill her.”
Elisabeth started in surprise. “She witnessed a murder?”
“I told her to speak to Detective Carter, but she said she didn’t have proof outside of what she saw, and she wouldn’t live to testify against him. She was certain that the only way she’d ever be safe would be when he was in jail, and until then, she had to keep running from him. And then she left.” Tiffany’s lips were white. “Was he the man who came to the shelter today?”
“I don’t know.” She took Tiffany’s hand. “But don’t worry. You’re safe here.”
Tiffany nodded, but her shoulders still hunched, as if trying to protect her unborn child. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you about this.”
“I won’t.” Elisabeth gave her hand a final squeeze, then went to speak to some other staff workers.
She was distracted by the sound of children squealing. Liam had entered into a tickle war with four children at once, and they were having a grand time. Liam squirmed out of the way of little hands even as he wiggled his fingers at tummies, making the children shriek and leap aside.
The mothers laughed, and the joyful sounds seemed to erase the somber mood. The women came here out of such pain, and this lighthearted play seemed to Elisabeth to bring not just a respite but also a sense of hope for the future. And it was all because of Liam.
Finally, Elisabeth and Liam decided to leave. Two little boys clung to his legs and rode along for a few steps as he walked.
“Please, Mr. Liam, don’t go,” one of them said, looking up at him.
“You can stay in my bed,” the other one said.
Liam grinned and managed to untangle their little arms from his legs, ruffling their hair. “I’ll come back.”
As they left, Elisabeth said, “You’re really good with kids.”
“I like them.” The grin was still on his face. “I hope I have—” He stopped abruptly, and his smile faded.
Did he hope to have kids of his own? Why would that thought make him so sad?
You’re being nosy, Elisabeth told herself. Never mind that she was an investigator and she was always observing people. She didn’t want to wonder about Liam or his life. She wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to partner with him. She just wasn’t used to working with someone. She usually only depended on herself, and that was what she was comfortable with.
That thought suddenly made her feel very alone.
She shook it off and refocused on Liam. “If Joslyn is pregnant, that might be what had spurred her to run away. She’d want to protect her baby.”
Elisabeth also told Liam what Tiffany had said—keeping Tiffany’s name out of it, as she’d requested—about Joslyn witnessing her ex-boyfriend murdering someone.
“We need to look into that murder,” Liam said. “Joslyn said she had no evidence, but with our skills and training, we might find something she missed. And to start, we could look into the men who attacked us today.”
“Did you notice their clothes? They all wore purple and gray. Was it a uniform? Are they part of some organization?”
Liam hesitated, then said, “Gang colors.”
Elisabeth thought about it. “Maybe. There are a lot of Filipino gangs up and down the West Coast. But they’re mostly in the big cities.”
“They could be from one of the cities. That murder Joslyn witnessed might be important enough to make them drive to Sonoma.” Liam looked thoughtful. “I have a friend who used to be LAPD. He could chat with someone from the gang task force. But that’s just for Los Angeles.”
“I’ll call some of my contacts with the San Francisco FBI.”
“Maybe Detective Carter has contacts in Portland and Seattle.”
“We have to find a way to put Joslyn’s ex-boyfriend in jail, just like Joslyn said,” Elisabeth said. “Until then, none of us will be safe.”
THREE
“The Bagsic gang?” Elisabeth paused in the act of unlocking her apartment door. Next door, her neighbor’s dog barked frantically at them from behind the closed front door.
Liam nodded as he tucked his cell phone back in his pocket. “Nathan didn’t even have to ask his friends in the LAPD. He recognized the colors right away.”
“So he’s encountered the gang before?” Elisabeth let them inside, pausing to deactivate the security alarm. The dog’s barking leveled off as they went inside.
Liam’s first impression of her apartment was cream and sand, neutral colors, but rather than being soft or soothing, the decor felt almost sterile. Her furniture was all modular and new, although inexpensive, and everything was clean lines, simple design. Even the Christmas wreath on the front door had only simple gold balls decorating it. There were no other Christmas decorations. It struck Liam as being a sort of fortress rather than a home.
Elisabeth turned to look at him, and he realized she was waiting for an answer.
“Nathan used to be in the narcotics unit. He sometimes had to deal with the Bagsics, although they weren’t as active in his district. They deal in crystal meth.”
Elisabeth nodded and headed to the kitchen. “Want anything to drink? Water?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He’d jumped at her suggestion that they go to her apartment to do their research, partly because the internet connection at his place wasn’t always reliable, and partly because he was reluctant to bring her to the shabby duplex he rented on the outskirts of town. Focused on building his skip-tracing business, utilizing the computer skills he’d learned in the military, he hadn’t bothered with furnishings even in the eighteen months he’d been home. So he had one small card table to hold his computer and exactly three chairs. He had no curtains at the front window and he still didn’t even have a bed frame for his mattress. His sister-in-law Monica had just forced a garage-sale couch on him.
But from the day he’d moved in, he’d had pictures of his family and friends on the windowsill. He displayed his signed Buster Posey baseball and other mementos, like a slightly misshapen pottery bowl that his deceased sister had made for him when she was in high school. It held some Celtic coins and a claddagh ring that had belonged to his mother. He also displayed his vintage watch collection—nothing too expensive, but special to him because they had belonged to family members—and a few paperback books.
In contrast, Elisabeth’s apartment had no personal touches. No pictures on the narrow white mantel above the living room’s small fireplace, no mementos on the side table. There were the framed diplomas on the wall for her college degrees in psychology and criminal justice, and the multiple computer monitors set up on a table in a tiny dining room.
He realized that the apartment wasn’t a fortress—she was. What had happened to her that made her wall herself off?
She entered the dining room with glasses of water for them both and nodded toward the computer paraphernalia. “Pull up a chair.”
Liam had brought in his laptop with him in a case, so he found a clear space on the table and booted it up. Elisabeth gave him the password to her wireless internet network—or rather, one of her wireless internet networks. She had several, some with high-security protection. He also noticed that her desktop computer, which rested underneath the table, was hardwired into the cable internet and had a secondary security box attached.
He must have looked surprised, because she noticed his face and said, “I have to be careful because I have information on wo
men on the run from some really bad men. It’s truly a matter of life and death if one of the abusers manages to find his victim.”
Liam also suspected she had a high security clearance for the work she did for the FBI. The security measures were likely for that information, too.
“So here’s what we have,” he said as she fired up her computer. “Joslyn is somehow connected to the Filipino Bagsic gang from Los Angeles. My guess is her ex-boyfriend is a gang member.”
“It makes sense. They have the money to hire someone like Patricia and to pay a hacker to make sure a background check raised no flags. The gang is probably involved in whatever murder Joslyn witnessed. We need to figure out what murder it was.”
“If Joslyn witnessed it, the victim might be someone who was connected to her. But to find out who it was, we need Joslyn’s real name. I doubt it was the one Patricia gave to me.”
“We need her boyfriend’s name, too.”
The worked side by side for an hour. Liam was used to working in silence by himself, but he found, to his surprise, that it was helpful to have someone there to bounce ideas off, or to have them offer tidbits of info they discovered in their searches. However, they couldn’t find Joslyn’s real last name, nor her boyfriend.
Liam heaved a sigh. “The problem is that the Bagsic gang members use nicknames, not their real names, on social media.”
“Or just their first names. And they’re careful about not declaring their gang affiliation on the internet.” Elisabeth frowned at her computer screen. “I wish we had more on Joslyn herself.”
They were interrupted by the sound of Elisabeth’s neighbor’s dog barking frantically, followed by the doorbell.
Elisabeth tensed. “I’m probably just being paranoid. I get visitors often enough.” She looked through the peephole, and her shoulders immediately relaxed. “It’s Kalea, from the women’s shelter.”
She opened the door. “Come on in.”
“No, I just stopped by to give you this.” Kalea handed her a crayon drawing on a piece of paper. “Kayoi drew this for you and insisted I give it to you today.” Kalea rolled her eyes.
Elisabeth smiled. “Tell her thanks.”
“See you!” Kalea waved and left.
Elisabeth shut the door and returned to the dining room. Her eyes softened as she looked down at the drawing. “This is the third drawing this month that she’s done for me.”
“Could I see it?”
She handed it to Liam. It was a very colorful picture with people scattered around a green field, with a jungle gym drawn in the corner. There were several children, each portrayed a little differently, and four adults—one with an S on her shirt, one with a ponytail, one with curly brown hair and one with long dark hair.
As Elisabeth pointed toward the people on the page, her neighbor’s dog started barking frantically again.
“The ponytail is probably me,” Elisabeth said. “The long dark hair is her mother. The curly hair is either Kalea or Tiffany, and the S on her shirt...” Elisabeth’s brow wrinkled. “Wait a minute...”
The dog was still barking. It had only barked like this when Liam and Elisabeth, and then Kalea, had been outside her apartment door. But Kalea was gone.
Someone else was outside her apartment door.
Liam shot to his feet. “No one knocked, right?”
“It might just be one of the neighbors walking past.”
“No harm in checking.” He drew his gun from the concealed belt holster he’d put back on after leaving the shelter.
He checked the peephole but saw no one in front of her door. Liam stepped behind a curtain to the side of the front window and barely touched the blinds to peek outside.
Two Filipino men in purple and gray stood outside Elisabeth’s front door, angled to avoid appearing in her peephole. Neither of them was the leader from today’s attack, but Liam remembered seeing one of them coming out of one of the other cars—he had a pockmarked face, puffy cheeks and a slightly bulging belly over his dark gray jeans.
Liam’s pulse raced, and he turned to silently signal Elisabeth to remain quiet. She nodded from her position a few feet away, slowly pulling a gun out of her purse. Her slim body was taut, alert. Although they both had their weapons, he would do everything in his power to avoid using them. This was a residential area, with families and children. A stray bullet could seriously injure or even kill someone.
He looked out again. The two men were talking in low voices, so low that he only heard a barely audible rumble. He probably wouldn’t have understood them anyway if they were speaking in Tagalog. What were they intending to do? Break down the door? Pick the lock?
One of the men moved to the front window to try to peer inside, and Liam moved against the wall so he couldn’t be seen. Elisabeth also ducked out of sight.
When the man’s shadow moved away from the blinds, Liam peeked outside again. One man crouched near the front doorknob with lock-picking tools, working frantically, while the other stood guard. Liam guessed that the neighbor’s dog barking spurred them to get inside before drawing more attention to themselves.
Liam mouthed to Elisabeth, “Is there a back door?”
She nodded and gestured with her head toward the kitchen. She only paused to reach under the table to grab a laptop case before she led the way. Liam also stopped to grab his laptop. In the kitchen, he whispered, “What about your desktop computer?”
“It’s password protected and the data is backed up on a secure cloud server,” she said. “If they try to hack my hard drive, it’ll go into security lockdown mode and wipe itself clean.”
The back door led from the kitchen out into a minuscule patio, which in turn led to a paved path that wound past the apartment complex. Elisabeth checked outside to make sure the two men hadn’t sent someone to watch the back, but there was no one there.
“Where does this path lead?” Liam asked while holstering his gun and settling his laptop in its case.
“To the south exit of the complex, or the front of this row of apartments.”
“They’ll see us if we try to run for our cars.”
“If we wait a bit, they’ll be inside my apartment, and we can go for it.”
“Let’s take your car,” Liam said quickly. His beat-up pickup was not going to cut it if the two men gave chase. Elisabeth’s Chevy sedan was in much better shape.
But they waited a second too long. When they darted for the parking lot, they heard Elisabeth’s back door open and a man’s shout. Elisabeth already had her car key in her fingers by the time they reached the car. Liam waited next to the passenger door, his leg twitching as he watched the man run closer to them.
“My next car is going to have remote unlock,” she muttered as she yanked her door open. She dived into the car and reached over to unlock the passenger door, and Liam climbed in.
The two men bore down on the car that sputtered as the engine tried to turn over. “Come on!” Elisabeth cranked the key in the ignition.
At that moment, a car pulled into the parking lot, a souped-up SUV gleaming with chrome, with elaborate scrollwork detail all along the side. The two men barely glanced at the SUV, even when the driver of the car, a man, shouted to them.
But then the driver’s voice rose in anger and spat out a sentence in a language Liam didn’t understand.
Elisabeth froze, checking over her shoulder at the newcomers.
A passenger stuck his head out the window to yell at the two men, also. He sounded even angrier than the driver.
“Oh, no,” Elisabeth breathed. She grabbed at Liam’s shirt. “Get down!”
He folded in half, his eyes only inches from Elisabeth’s face.
Men’s voices rose even louder. It sounded like there were at least three men in the SUV, and the two Bagsic gang members who had been chasing them were yelling, too. Then the SUV’s engine roared, and the squealing of tires shrieked in Liam’s ears. There were two shouts of surprise.
Elisabeth and Liam ra
ised their heads up to peek out. The two Bagsics were cutting across the lawn between two apartment buildings and running toward the street. The SUV tried to chase them but couldn’t fit in the grassy alleyway, and so it raced out of the small parking lot.
Elisabeth didn’t wait. She started the engine and cleared the parking lot, headed in the opposite direction from the other men and the SUV.
“What happened?” Liam asked.
Elisabeth didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be thinking hard. When she stopped at a stoplight, she finally said, “This might be bad.”
“What do you mean? What did the men in the SUV say? They were Filipino, right?”
She nodded. “They said, ‘What are you doing here, Bagsic scum?’”
“The men knew they were Bagsic gang members?” Liam ran through the list of who would be familiar with the gang colors. Law enforcement. People who lived in the area the Bagsics ruled. Drug addicts who bought the Bagsics’ crystal meth. And... He grew cold. “Who were those men?”
Elisabeth chewed roughly on her lower lip, something Liam noticed she did when she was stressed.
“I couldn’t say for sure, but—the Bagsics yelled back something like, ‘You’ve got some nerve, Toomies.’ I think that’s what they said. And then they started insulting their parentage.”
“Toomies? Who are they?”
“I don’t know, but did you notice anything about the hands on the men in the SUV?”
“They both had wide tattoos around their wrists. The tattoos looked similar.”
“I think they were. I only got a glimpse of the design, but I think the tattoos were Baybayin.”
“What?”
“It’s a form of ancient Filipino script. It’s gotten popular for tattoos.”
“And both those men had the same design.” Liam blew out a deep breath. Rather than colors—or perhaps in addition to colors—they had tattoos. “Those men in the SUV were gang members. Some rivals to the Bagsics.”
The light turned green and Elisabeth drove on. She gave Liam a wary look. “But why are they in Sonoma?”