by Leslie Wolfe
“Not in the least,” she replied, leaning against the backrest of her chair and folding her arms at her chest. “The procedure manual is critically important for the system’s ability to prosecute the cases effectively and to bring criminals to justice the right way. Las Vegas Metro Police aren’t the OK Corral, but Detective Holt doesn’t seem to care.”
“Ah, I see,” Glover reacted. “So, is it possible he used the wrong approach or bent the rules in the apprehension of certain perpetrators? I’m asking from the perspective of his daughter’s abduction, which is what I’m here to assist with.”
Steenstra sipped carefully from her steaming cup. “Yes, it’s possible. I’m surprised you narrowed it to only two cases.”
“Let’s talk about this one,” Glover said, pointing at the thickest of the two files. “In our experience, a long and successful undercover stint is likely to earn a cop a lot of enemies, people who feel betrayed—and were, for that matter—and will relentlessly seek to exact revenge.”
She sat calmly, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
“You see, Lieutenant, Holt is out there by himself, trying to track down the people who took his daughter. I’d like to be able to anticipate his next move, the people he might interrogate next, actions he might be willing to take, so we could be out there helping him, instead of waiting for a call that doesn’t seem likely to come.”
She pointed an index finger at the ceiling, then at Glover. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Special Agent. You think he’s out there by himself, and I’m telling you Baxter’s right out there with him, whether we know it or not.”
“Really? How can you be so sure?”
“They share an unusually strong bond, these two. They only met four weeks ago, but they’d do absolutely anything for each other.”
“Tell me about Baxter,” Glover asked.
“She’s a top-notch detective. She came to us from the United Kingdom, when she married an American Navy pilot and moved here. She’s been trained by New Scotland Yard, an expert in interrogation and deception techniques, and one of London’s youngest police inspectors, if I’m not mistaken.”
Glover whistled. He would’ve liked an asset with Baxter’s background on his team.
“But,” Steenstra continued, and by the tone of her voice, she was about to list Baxter’s less popular traits, “she’s been on my radar since she beat a suspect to a pulp and scored a disciplinary transfer to our precinct, a reduction in pay, and a suspension, followed by twelve months’ probation. That’s when she was teamed up with Holt. Two mavericks teamed up… I honestly don’t know what the deputy chief was thinking when he approved that.”
“You said there’s nothing these two wouldn’t do for each other. How do you know that, Lieutenant?” he asked, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
“This is one of those situations when it’s better to take the word of another cop at face value and leave it like that. Believe me, I know.”
“And that means what, exactly?” he insisted, wondering what Steenstra was hiding.
“That means she’s out there with him, searching for Meredith, doing whatever it is they see fit to do to find her. And bodies are piling up.”
“Bodies?”
“Only one death so far, a young girl who committed suicide from a Scala hotel penthouse that was coincidentally occupied by someone whose name doesn’t ring a bell but shares a striking physical resemblance with Detective Laura Baxter.”
“Ah,” he reacted.
“Yeah,” Steenstra said. “That girl happened to have a tracking microchip embedded under her skin, just like the two victims found in the Mojave Desert, a case assigned to Detective Baxter.”
“Then, she’s working the case, I’d think,” Glover replied, frowning a little. Those IAB people always saw conspiracies where there weren’t any. He also remembered what that kid, Fletcher, had said. The serial killer case that Baxter was working and Meredith’s abduction were connected.
“Yeah, right, working the case… In disguise, booking two-thousand-dollar hotel rooms with her own money?” Steenstra asked serenely.
He couldn’t think of anything to say. The lieutenant was probably right. But she didn’t seem like the type to exaggerate things. “You said, bodies are piling up. But, there’s only one?”
“One dead, two in critical condition at the hospital after having been interrogated by someone resembling Holt, and five more severely injured, including one suspect who was shot in the leg, probably for information.”
“Oh, I see,” Glover replied and turned his head to hide a chuckle from the lieutenant. It was probably what he would’ve done. “They all had priors, I presume?”
“Irrelevant,” Steenstra reacted, raising her voice. “We have procedures for a reason. We can’t uphold the law when we feel like it, and then break it when it’s about our own families.”
Wait ’til it’s your family staring at the wrong end of a gun, Glover thought, irritated by the lieutenant’s pompous self-righteousness, although he knew she was right.
“What about the missing cocaine that’s showing on Holt’s file?” Glover asked. “Is that in any way related to this case?” he tapped the cover of the Snowman file.
“Yes, but indirectly,” she replied. “Holt went undercover in Samuel Klug’s organization five years ago. The missing cocaine is from a recent bust, a couple of months or so. It so happens that the recent bust involved people in Klug’s territory.”
“Do you believe Holt took the cocaine?”
“I absolutely do, but I wasn’t able to prove it.”
“You think the abduction is about revenge?”
“For a kilo of coke? I doubt it,” Steenstra replied. “We seized the entire stash that day, but one kilo never made it to the evidence locker. The perps don’t know Holt stole it.”
“If he even stole it,” Glover replied. She was quick to pass judgment in the absence of evidence, that woman. If it wasn’t for the significant differences in physical features, she could’ve been Rosales’s sister.
“Like I said, Special Agent Glover,” she replied calmly, “I believe he took it, and it’s one of those cases when you should take another cop’s word for it.”
“So, you don’t think Samuel Klug is out to get revenge?”
“Not for that kilo of coke, no. Klug could be after Holt for the losses he incurred five years ago, for all his people we locked up, for the two who got killed in the shootout, for being forced into exile for a few years.”
Glover stared at the landline phone on the nearby counter, wired into complicated recording and tracking equipment.
“That means it’s possible a ransom call will never come,” he said.
“If I were a betting woman,” Steenstra said, “I’d say the call had already come, to Holt personally, and things are already in motion. He won’t share; the man’s a maverick, a cowboy.”
Glover interlaced his fingers behind his head and stretched. Exactly what he’d suspected from the first moment he’d seen Holt lying to his face. Exactly what he’d feared, seeing that young analyst, Fletcher, trembling about to shit his pants, but not betraying the detective’s secrets. Precisely what he’d figured out, listening to Baxter’s call to Dispatch, asking to be assigned the Mojave victim’s case, Alyssa Conway.
Apparently, there was still some shred of hope to find Meredith Holt and return her to her family, but he was cut off from the real investigation. The lack of trust Holt displayed toward him and the CARD team, despite their proven record of accomplishment, pissed him off to no end. But at the end of the day, Holt was the parent. A federal agent could only recommend things like the ransom being paid, or who could take part in an exchange, but the parents had the final say because it was their child.
Glover smiled, thinking of his family, of his little boy sleeping soundly at that early morning hour, the darkest before the light. It was Holt’s darkest hour; no one had seen or heard from the detective in a while, nor from his partner. Whatever the
y were out there doing, Glover could only hope they’d get to Meredith in time.
He turned toward Steenstra, pretending not to see the quizzical look on her face and trying not to feel offended by her contempt for the likes of Wyatt Earp. After all, he came from a long line of Arizona cowboys and marshals.
“Why don’t you walk me through both these cases in detail, Lieutenant?”
33
Inmate
Forty-seven hours missing
I hesitated a little before leaving the stakeout position behind Wholesale Plumbing Supplies and Tools. I had a plan, but in all fairness, it was half-baked and included a few Hail Mary passes. It also meant I had to lock eyes again with the man who’d killed my husband, and not for the reason I’d been dreaming of, like putting him in jail for the rest of his life with a murder conviction or wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing harder and harder until his last breath left an agonizing, thrashing body.
The wanker was in jail all right, doing a dime for drug trafficking. We couldn’t build a case for Andrew’s death; there wasn’t enough evidence. The murder weapon was gone, no witnesses stepped forward, and I had nothing pointing in his direction other than my husband’s dying testimony, “Eyes like Grandma.”
Andrew’s grandmother had heterochromia. Her left eye was green, while her right one was blue. When he whispered those words to me from the emergency room bed at the University Medical Center, I assumed he was talking about the man who shot him, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too frantic to ask him more questions; I just kept calling his name and begging him not to leave me.
I went back to work immediately after he was gone because work meant access to police systems and resources, and I had a killer to catch. I looked everywhere… pulled countless names out of databases, searched for known offenders with heterochromia, tried everything I could think of to find the man who’d pulled the trigger on an innocent bystander and destroyed my life.
Then I started roaming the streets at night, after my day shift was over, looking for that man everywhere. Somewhere, on some dark alley, there was an odd-eyed man dealing dope and carrying an unregistered weapon, and I was about to find him. The official investigation into Andrew’s death had concluded that my husband had stumbled upon a drug deal in progress and the dealer, spooked, fired his weapon and ran. So, I started looking at drug dealers everywhere and hating everything that had to do with that terrible vice.
More than a year later, uniformed officers collared a perp wanted for a separate issue and landed him in my interrogation room because of a correlation with a case I was working. I entered the room and looked at him, then froze. Staring at me with unspeakable contempt, the perp’s eyes, one green, one blue. Then he said things to me that confirmed he knew who I was. Indirectly, he confessed, or at least admitted knowledge of my husband’s murder, when he asked, “Your nights lonely these days, chota chica?” I looked into his mismatched eyes and saw my husband’s killer, laughing at me.
And I lost it.
I came down on him badly, pummeling him with both fists and not stopping until they dragged me off his fallen body that I’d kept kicking and pounding into a pulp. It took the doctors a while to render him able to leave the hospital and head straight to arraignment.
But I couldn’t prove he was my husband’s killer. After that incident, they didn’t let me near him to get a confession. Instead, they suspended me and gave me a rip and a disciplinary transfer. I was lucky I still had a job, even if it came with probation and mandatory counseling.
Just remembering all that made me sick to my stomach, a vile bitterness climbing up my throat and burning everything in its path.
And now I had to look into those odd eyes again and ask Pedro “El Maricon” Reyes for a favor.
That was my bloody plan.
I steeled myself as I approached the prison. It was early, not even seven in the morning, and there were no other visiting vehicles lined up at the main gate. When the sentry approached, I flashed my badge and he lifted the barrier.
I went through the routine of showing ID, leaving my service weapon with the main desk, then being escorted to an interrogation room, where I waited for a few tense minutes. Then I lost my patience and walked out of there, searching for the officer who was supposed to bring Reyes. I found him chatting with another CO, and that lack of urgency sent a wave of rage throughout my body.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “And where is bloody Reyes?”
“It’s still early, Detective,” the corrections officer replied unfazed, a tentative smile fluttering on his lips. “The shift is just—”
“I don’t care who you have to wake up, you hear me? Just get Reyes down here, right this minute!”
The smile wilted, and he rushed toward the holding cells. A minute later, Reyes was being hauled into the interrogation room, his hands and feet in chains.
I felt my heart beating quickly against my chest, and I breathed fast and shallow, raspy pants of air that didn’t fill my lungs with anything but an unreleased scream of pain, of longing. I willed all those whirling emotions away and forced myself to appear calm, composed, indifferent. Andrew was gone; nothing I did to that piece of shite, Reyes, could bring my husband back. Hopefully, Jack Holt was still alive, and so was his daughter. Maybe those two could still be saved.
I steeled myself and looked into the mismatched eyes of the man I could easily kill with my bare hands.
“Hello, Reyes,” I said calmly. “I see prison life agrees with you.”
He looked around panicked, but the corrections officer was already gone and the door behind him locked.
“What do you want, chota puta?” he hissed, shooting side glances left and right as if someone was going to emerge from the cinderblock walls and rescue him. “Came back for more blood?”
I studied his face for a moment. His nose was crooked, and so was his left brow ridge, the signs of the fierce beating that I’d delivered a few months ago.
“I’ll be attending your parole hearing soon,” I said. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”
He frowned and lowered his head to run his chained hands against his nose in a quick gesture. He was scared.
“If you help me, I’ll vouch for you and say how you’ve been completely reformed, as if you were the recipient of a successful brain transplant,” I spoke coldly, barely able to keep my apprehension under control.
“You must be crazy, bitch. I ain’t up for parole for another four years.”
“Not if I have the sentence commuted to simple possession,” I replied, looking at him calmly, not showing any sign of deceit.
I didn’t have the authority to offer that kind of deal, but he didn’t know it. I was counting on that.
“Think about it, you could be out of here in four, five months, tops.”
He wiped his nose again, this time against the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit. “What do you want? To beat me up again? That gets you off, bitch?”
I shrugged, feigning indifference, and allowed a twitch of contempt to curl my upper lip.
“If you’re not going to help me, I will bring the weight of the world against you in that hearing, and make sure you never see the light of day for as long as you draw breath,” I replied coldly, looking at him straight, without blinking. “You think you only have five more years to serve, but things happen in prisons, you know. An inmate gets shivved, two others swear it was you, and ta-da! You’re in for life. One more such slip-up and they’ll gladly give you the needle.”
That also wasn’t true, but I was on a roll, encouraged by his increasing pupil size and the slight tremble in his chin.
“Okay, okay, I get it. What do you want?” he asked, barely a whisper.
“That’s easy,” I said and handed him a burn phone. “Vouch for me, and I’ll vouch for you. Betray me, and I will definitely fry you.”
He took the phone, extending both his cuffed hands to grab it from my frozen fingers. “Who do I call?”
Out of the blue, he sent the phone flying across the room and lunged at me, screaming his rage. The phone hit the wall and came down on the floor in pieces, while I didn’t even flinch.
“Is this how it’s going to be, wiseass?” I asked calmly, feeling the urge to rip him to shreds, to close those odd eyes forever. All I could hear in my mind were Andrew’s dying words, and it seared me inside as if a red-hot blade was slicing through my heart.
He pounded both his clenched fists against the table. “No way you’re making me snitch, puta! If you think you’re going to get away with this, just wait ’til my homies pay you a late-night visit,” he added, his odd eyes glinting with rage and his lips curled, exposing his teeth. “I can get things to happen from inside. Just wait.”
“That’s all you have to say?” I asked, standing slowly, taking my time.
“I ain’t no rat,” he replied.
“I’m not asking you to be.”
“Then what?”
“You’d be doing your boss a favor. I’m going after his competitor, Snowman. All you have to do is tell whoever asks you that the Don sent me to look at Snowman’s affairs and tell Bones to say the same. He’ll get whatever territory Snowman loses.”
His face started to straighten up as the rage that had crunched it before was wearing off.
“That ain’t so bad,” he said, looking at the broken phone with regret. “Got another one?”
I pulled another burn phone from my pocket and handed it over. “On speaker.”
He started dialing a number, then stopped before hitting the call button. “What’s your name, again?”
“Olivia Gaines,” I replied. That used to be my stage name in London. How appropriate.
He called Bones, and they talked for a while in a mix of Spanish and English I was able to decipher without any problem. As expected, Bones saw the value in having his competitor destabilized and found himself entertained at the thought of making that happen.