by Camy Tang
FOUR
“All my efforts to keep my home address private, and the gang found my apartment within a few hours.” Elisabeth told herself to breathe deeply, but the frustration and anger made her breaths short and harsh.
Liam kept looking behind them to make sure they weren’t followed. “They probably followed Kalea from the shelter.”
She knew that, but hearing him say it made a chill pass over her. Would Kalea be all right?
Liam continued, “If she hadn’t come here on her way home, they might have followed her home and then attacked her to make her tell them where you live.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m just grateful to God that she stopped by your apartment.”
What did God have to do with it? Elisabeth almost asked out loud, but stopped herself. She was being overly emotional after what had happened. “We need to call Detective Carter. Maybe he can send a patrol car to watch over Kalea’s house.”
“We need to call him about the attack anyway.” He took out his cell phone.
While Liam explained to Detective Carter what had happened, Elisabeth concentrated on calming down so she could think clearly. Long-term planning didn’t come automatically to her, but she’d worked hard to learn to stop and think ahead. She took in one breath through her nose, then another.
The gang was clearly prepared to target Elisabeth in order to find Joslyn. In order to get the Bagsics off her back, she still needed to find out more about Joslyn, her ex-boyfriend and the murder she’d witnessed. She and Liam needed an internet connection and a safe place to do their work. But where? She didn’t want to put anyone in danger.
Liam got off the phone. “Detective Carter said he’ll send someone to Kalea’s house. He’s also sending someone to your apartment right away. I told him we’d meet the officer there.”
Elisabeth nodded and turned the car around.
The apartment doors were still unlocked, but otherwise it looked the same as when they’d left. Officer Joseph Fong arrived quickly. He was the same policeman who had arrived first at the women’s shelter this morning, and who had given chase to the escaping gang members.
“Hey, Liam, twice in one day,” the young policeman joked. “I’m going to think you’re my fans.”
“Or you’re ours,” Liam said with a smile.
Officer Fong cleared Elisabeth’s apartment for them, but it was empty, as they had expected. He took their statements.
“At least they didn’t do any damage to the place,” the officer said. “From what you said, it sounds like they left to chase after you two practically as soon as they broke in.”
“There were other guys who showed up,” Liam said, and told him about the souped-up SUV who chased after the gang members. Liam and Elisabeth both tried to draw the scrollwork they’d seen on the side of the SUV, but both their efforts were pretty bad.
“Were any of those the same guys from this morning?” Officer Fong asked.
Liam told him about the pockmarked man he’d recognized, and confirmed that both the men who had broken in were dressed in purple and gray.
“If I’d known this morning they were Bagsics, I’d have used a different tactic when trying to drive after them.” Officer Fong gave a huff of frustration. “Bagsics are known for their driving skills.”
“That’s right, you were in LAPD before you came to Sonoma,” Liam said.
The officer nodded. “When I heard your statement about what the men were wearing, I recognized the gang colors right away and told Detective Carter.”
“What else can you tell us about the Bagsics?”
“They’re not a huge gang, and they’re better organized than most,” Officer Fong said. “The leadership is smart, but the younger captains are more impulsive, and it causes friction. At least, that’s what the situation was when I was down in L.A.”
“They’re into meth dealing?” Liam asked.
“Big-time. The LAPD has been trying to crack down on the Bagsics’ ephedrine supply—the precursor for meth production—from the Philippines, but they haven’t been able to stop their shipments into the Port of Los Angeles. Because it’s the Bagsics, we should have a patrol car check up on you—”
“I’m not staying here,” Elisabeth said. “I’ll find somewhere to lie low.”
Officer Fong looked uncertain about her answer, but then his police radio crackled. “All right. I’ll get going. Let us know if you need anything.” With a wave, the policeman headed back to his squad car and drove off.
“I feel exposed,” Elisabeth said as she and Liam went back inside her apartment. “I don’t want to stay here now that the gang knows where I live. What if they show up with guns blazing and one of my neighbors gets injured by a stray bullet?”
Liam nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. My friend Nathan just bought a house on the outskirts of Sonoma. If we take the time to make sure we’re not followed, we can stay there for a little while and the gang won’t find us.”
Liam explained that Nathan was ex-LAPD and now worked as head of security for a high-end apartment complex. She would guess his home security would be good and that he would be prepared if the gang found them at his house. “Does he have any family living with him?”
“Not yet. He’s getting married in the spring, but his fiancée lives with her parents right now.” Liam got out his cell phone. “Why don’t you get what you need and I’ll call to ask him?”
Elisabeth unlocked her hard drive and put it in her wall safe. She then packed an overnight bag.
Liam got off the phone. “Nathan said it’s fine for us to stay with him. Ready to go?”
She gestured for him to go ahead while she set her alarm. Stepping outside, she found Liam on his back under her car. “Checking for tracking devices,” he said.
She had intended to do the same, but was glad to have another set of eyes. “Thanks.” She said it awkwardly, not because she wasn’t grateful, but because she wasn’t used to having someone else help her.
After her car was cleared, she drove around for an hour, with Liam checking behind them to make sure they weren’t followed. Remembering what Officer Fong had said about the Bagsics being known for their skilled driving, and the four-car tail that had followed Liam to the women’s shelter, it was hard to feel confident that they weren’t being tracked. But they couldn’t drive around forever—eventually they had to head to their destination.
It was almost dark when they finally turned into a narrow driveway that ended at a horse fence and a low-barred gate. A tall, lean man was already there to swing open the gate and close it behind her car.
Liam rolled down the passenger-side window. “Nathan, nice timing. How’d you know we were coming up the driveway?” The main highway and some lengths of the winding driveway wouldn’t be easily visible from the house where it sat between the rolling foothills.
Nathan grinned. “I put in a sensor that warned me when you turned into the driveway from the highway.”
“That’s handy. Nathan, this is Elisabeth Aday.”
Nathan nodded to her, then gestured to the house. “You can park alongside the garage.”
The ranch-style home was modest and looked extrasmall sitting in the middle of the generous yard all around it. There was a jungle gym and sandbox beneath a large oak tree in the corner.
“He doesn’t have kids, right?” She wouldn’t endanger Nathan’s family no matter what kind of security he might have.
“Not yet. His fiancée, Arissa, is guardian to her niece. They’re still living with Arissa’s parents.”
When she got out of the car after parking, the winter wind sliced through her sweater. Plucking her laptop case and overnight bag from the backseat where she’d tossed them, she rushed for the front door to the house.
Nathan was already there, holding the door open. “Come on in.”
Elisabeth hurried inside the wide foyer and out of the wind, Liam following her. An arched doorway to her right led into a living room.
“Have a seat.
” Nathan sat in a blue chair in front of a low coffee table holding a carafe and mugs. “Coffee?”
“Please.” Elisabeth dropped onto a green sofa opposite him and set her bags on the floor. Liam dropped into the seat next to her and let out a sigh.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” Nathan poured coffee for them all.
Liam went over what had happened.
“It’s safer for you to hide out here.” Nathan regarded them with serious green-gray eyes. “You can stay as long as you like.”
“We don’t want to put you in danger,” Elisabeth said.
“If the gang finds you, it’s better to have three people against them than just the two of you.”
“I needed to talk to you anyway.” Liam told him about the SUV of Filipino men who had interrupted the attack by the Bagsics.
Nathan frowned. “There are a couple Filipino gangs in L.A. with tattoos to identify them. You can ask Detective Carter to talk to some of his contacts in San Francisco and Portland, but unless you can draw the tattoo...”
Elisabeth shook her head. “I didn’t get a good enough look. I only recognized that the writing was Filipino script. The Bagsics called them Toomies.”
“Sounds like a nickname. It could be for a couple different gangs.”
“Joe Fong took our statements at Elisabeth’s apartment,” Liam said. “He told us a bit about the Bagsics. What do you know about them?”
“Not much. They didn’t venture into my station’s section of Los Angeles very often. I know the other gangs were jealous that their meth trade was doing so well. They dealt out of a few bars and clubs to wealthier customers.”
“That reminds me, I had an idea for how to find out more about Joslyn,” Elisabeth said.
“I’m guessing you two still have research to do,” Nathan said. “You can use the dining room table. You guys hungry?”
Liam grinned. “Always.”
Nathan gave them his wireless password and went to fix sandwiches for them as they set up their laptops. As Nathan set the platter of sandwiches in front of them, Liam said, “Thanks. For everything.”
Nathan gave a half smile. “Just returning the favor. I’ll leave you to it.”
Elisabeth stared at Nathan’s retreating back, then looked to Liam. “What did he mean by that?”
“Last year, he and his fiancée needed help, and I was able to give it.” He suddenly scowled. “Come to think of it, that involved a Filipino gang, too. I must be a magnet or something,” he muttered.
Elisabeth didn’t pry, although she was dying to. “Back at my apartment, Kayoi’s picture gave me an idea. The drawing of the girl with an S on her shirt was Joslyn—she probably drew Joslyn since we were all talking about her. I remember that T-shirt. It said Sayawan, which means ‘dance party’ in Tagalog.”
Liam’s eyebrows rose. “So it was either a fashion statement or...”
“Or maybe a promo item from a club. And Nathan mentioned the Bagsics deal meth out of clubs, right?” Elisabeth opened an internet browser window and began typing. “There’s a club in L.A. called Sayawan,” she crowed. “Earlier, when I was looking through social media pics, I wasn’t paying attention to where the photos were taken.”
Liam grinned at her. “There’s a good chance someone has a picture of Joslyn at the club, especially since she was wearing the T-shirt.”
They each took different social media sites and searched for pictures taken at Sayawan. Elisabeth found the picture they wanted almost right away.
It was a shot taken several months ago, with Joslyn smiling into the camera with a handful of friends posing around her. The faces in the photo had been tagged with people’s names.
“Joslyn Dimalanta,” she said.
“You found her?” Liam left his chair to come look over her shoulder, close enough that she caught a whiff of cedar, and pine, and a lower note of musk. It made her want to close her eyes and breathe it in. She shook off the strange feeling.
“Isn’t that that guy in the gray suit from the shelter this morning?” Liam pointed to a man not posing for the picture, but caught in profile in the background.
“It’s fuzzy. I can’t be sure.” She hovered her pointer over the man’s face, but he hadn’t been tagged.
“Well, at least we’ve got a place to start.” Liam smiled at her, and her vision swirled for a moment before righting itself.
She was relieved when Liam returned to his chair.
“Now that we’ve got Joslyn’s last name, I’ll continue to look through social media. You take public records?” she suggested.
“Sure.”
Elisabeth looked at who had posted the picture of Joslyn—Esther North. She was very big into photography—usually people, a few nature shots—and according to her photos, she was friends with Joslyn and had seen her several times in the past few months.
Joslyn’s own social media had been pretty sparse in the months before she came to Sonoma. She was tagged on some older photos online, but not a lot of recent ones. Which wasn’t surprising for a woman in an abusive relationship—many times, the abuser isolated the victim from her old friends. Or she stopped going out because of the bruises.
But Esther had a set of candid photos of Joslyn at a chain electronics store, Perkins Electronics, dressed in an employee’s uniform. The photos were artistic shots, as if Esther were practicing taking wedding candid photos. She was taking pictures not only of Joslyn but also of other customers and employees, yet—perhaps because Esther knew Joslyn—the missing woman featured in a larger percentage of the photos.
Esther had caught her at several angles, with several different people who looked like customers. She was smiling in a few of the photos, with a shy tilt to her head and lift of one shoulder.
One photo was a candid of Joslyn speaking to a tall, handsome Filipino man dressed in an expensive gray suit. He was slightly turned away from the camera, but from his partial profile, it seemed he was smiling. Joslyn was clearly smiling up at him.
In the second photo, the two were posing for Esther’s camera and the man had his arm around Joslyn a little tighter than a casual acquaintance would hold her.
Elisabeth sucked in a sharp breath. It was the same man in the gray suit from this morning.
Joslyn looked happy. The date was a few months ago, so the photo might have been taken early in their relationship, before Joslyn had discovered what a monster he was.
The two comments below the photo seemed to be from Esther’s friends. User BillMP46U seemed to be a photographer because he said, “Cute couple, Esther! Nice way to work around those terrible lights in the store, too!”
The next comment was posted by user Fairydust9437. “Nice photo, Joslyn! Is that Tomas? Wow, he’s a cutie.”
Elisabeth hovered her pointer over his face to see if he’d been tagged in the photo. He had, but only his first name popped up: Tomas.
“Liam, I think I found him.” She swiveled her laptop around so he could see. She couldn’t have him standing so close to her again, looking over her shoulder. It did strange things to her breathing.
“Tomas.” The name came out from Liam’s throat like gravel.
“His clothes are pretty stylish here, too. I think he’s higher up in the hierarchy of the gang, a captain or something.”
Liam frowned. “Well, I think I found the murder she was talking about.” He slid his laptop across the table to her so she could read the website he’d pulled up. “It was buried at the bottom of the fourth or fifth page of search results.”
It was a newspaper article from a few weeks ago about a man found brutally beaten and then stabbed to death in his apartment off Silas Avenue. The victim’s name was given as Felix Dimalanta, a longtime widower. Police were looking for his missing daughter, Joslyn, who was wanted for questioning.
Her stomach twisted sharply. The murder victim was Joslyn’s own father?
The article was brief, barely two paragraphs, and there were no pictures. The report me
ntioned that the police welcomed any information on the case and that they had talked to Joslyn’s coworkers at Perkins Electronics and also to her classmates at Twin Springs College, where she was working to get her computer software engineering degree.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “It never even occurred to me that she might be wanted by the police. All I saw were her bruises.”
“When did she arrive at the shelter? How was she, emotionally, when you first saw her?”
“She arrived only a few days after this homicide. There was this...deep grief and horror in her eyes. You could tell she’d recently suffered a terrible blow. I had assumed it was from her last beating, but now I think maybe it was still shock from her father’s death.” Elisabeth blew out a frustrated breath. “I should have known there was something deeper going on than Joslyn just needing to escape her ex.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. She was injured. Naturally you’d be focused on her safety, not worrying about any type of criminal activity she might have been involved in.”
“We really don’t yet know how she was involved in her father’s murder,” Elisabeth said. “He was beaten and then stabbed, so based on her height and frame, it’s unlikely Joslyn could have caused that much damage. But did Joslyn witness her father being murdered, as she claimed, or was she involved somehow?”
“To answer that question, we’d have to find out why Tomas killed him. From what I’ve found about Felix Dimalanta on social media, he didn’t have any ties to the Bagsics or any other gang. He didn’t have a social media profile, but he had friends who do and they tagged his name on photos.”
“Can I see the photos?”
Liam took his laptop back, and after a few clicks of his track pad, gave it to her to look.
Felix Dimalanta had a strong face, a protective set to his shoulders. Elisabeth could see him doing everything as a single parent to care for his daughter and raise her right.
There were photos of him at an inexpensively decorated birthday party, at a couple fast-food restaurants eating with friends, and a cute picture of him riding his bike somewhere and waving to the camera. No photos at upscale restaurants, dressed up for a party or going out to a show.