The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  Rosa came in a little past ten. She was stone-cold sober and pissed at men. This wasn’t unusual, especially around Latin men. She was angry that they hit on her, that they wanted to buy her drinks and that they asked her out. Rosa with her five or six Latina friends in a Latin bar could not believe those men—she actually called them that—had the nerve to think she would date them.

  “Are you in for the night?” Cameron asked, cutting off the rant.

  Rosa frowned as though she wasn’t close to done.

  “I need to go back to the station quickly,” Cameron said by way of an apology.

  “I should go with you. I’ve seen the men you work with.” She narrowed her eyes. “How come you never set me up?”

  “You have to stay with Nate.”

  Rosa walked toward her room. “Fine, but you owe me a date with the blond one.”

  Both Kessler and Daley were blondish, but Cameron was sure Rosa meant Daley. He was her type—cocky, full of himself. Rosa didn’t want a Latin man because she had decided they were all cocky and full of themselves. Then, she chose Daley. “Be back in an hour or so.”

  Rosa said something from the bedroom that Cameron couldn’t make out. She was confident it had something to do with Daley. Since she had been in Special Ops, Daley had been through at least two dozen girlfriends. He was good, she had to give him that. He could turn it on when he wanted to, but it never lasted long.

  Cameron made her way to the station in the dark and considered whether this was a good idea. No, she knew it wasn’t a good idea. But, she also knew that there was a good chance that something in Lavick’s office would offer a clue to what was going on. Lavick and Benjamin had been close. Why hadn’t she heard that from Lavick? She tried to remember how Sergeant Lavick had looked the day after Benjamin was shot. Then, the meeting last night. That had to have been official, but why was no one talking about it? They were working this ICE deal, but other than being told where to go and when, there wasn’t a peep about who the suspects were. They always got a big picture story. She needed to talk to the other guys, too. Maybe she would mention something to Ballestrini.

  There was a single car parked in the gravel lot next to the bus and two squad cars. She recognized Kessler’s truck, but she had seen him go out with Daley, so she was pretty sure he wasn’t here. She let herself in with her badge card and walked toward the locker room. The hall was lit only by the dim glow of the emergency exit signs at each end. Ahrens’ door was closed; the only light was a small blue spot where her computer was charging. Lavick’s office was similarly dark. Cameron tried the knob. Locked. She went into the locker room and opened her locker, then down at Lavick’s. What were the chances that Lavick had gotten a new lock? It had been a year. She held her breath as she went through the combination: sixteen, twenty-six, and thirty-six. She heard the click and exhaled. Same lock.

  She put the lock in her jacket pocket and pulled the door open. She saw a picture of his wife and daughters, and deodorant. She didn’t want the overhead light on, so she used the flashlight on her phone to search the locker. She remembered seeing him put his keys in the locker, but maybe he had stopped doing that. She stepped up on the bench and checked the upper shelf. Nothing but ten years of dust. Shit. No keys. She moved back from the locker and tried to figure out where the keys might be. He took them home. That would be the smart thing to do, but Lavick never had. His last stop was always his locker. He hung his team coat inside. She touched the coat hanging on the back of the locker door. A bulge in one pocket. She reached her hand in and pulled out his keys.

  Moving quickly, she went to his office door and tried the first key. Bingo. The knob turned. She was inside. The desktop was arranged in piles. She started at the top right and thumbed through the papers. Budgeting. She stacked the pages neatly and moved on. Departmental memos in the next. Then, training materials. In the middle was a stack of printed e-mails covered in handwritten notes. So much for a paperless department, one of last year’s top goals.

  She went back to the hallway and checked both directions. She should have found something by now. Sliding into his chair, she dug through the stacks on the far side of the desk. Nothing. She opened the bottom drawer, but it was full of random equipment—a pair of gloves, a flashlight that didn’t work when she tried it, an extra pair of clothes. Panicked, she opened the upper thin drawer. Through the clear plastic of his pencil tray, Cameron saw a manila folder. She slid it out, reading the tab: R. Benjamin.

  Taking a deep breath, she switched on Lavick’s desk lamp and scanned the police report on the shooting. Nothing surprising there. Behind it was Benjamin’s personnel file. No awards, no merits, but no warnings or reprimands either. Clean, if maybe a little boring. Probably seventy-five percent of the force had records like this. Behind the personnel file was a 1099-INT dated from the year before. Benjamin had earned four thousand dollars in interest. Behind the 1099 was a bank statement for a Bank of America checking account 149-424 in the name of Ray J. Benjamin. She saw his Social Security number and an address she didn’t recognize. She tried to commit both to memory as she scanned the page. Ending balance read $47,932.12.

  Forty-eight thousand didn’t seem like that much. Diego had put twice that in Nate’s name, but four thousand dollars in interest was a lot at today’s rates that usually approached zero. She flipped the page, which read like a grocery list of deposits and withdrawals. Nine thousand, eight thousand, four thousand, ninety-eight hundred, seven thousand, six, six, five, eight, four, nine and on and on. The next page was another account. Sixty-nine thousand and change, followed by a page with more additions and withdrawals. She glanced back at the other account’s page. None of the numbers matched up. These were different deposits and different withdrawals. In total, there were five accounts, totaling over two hundred thousand and who knew where all the withdrawals had gone.

  Did Jess know about any of this? Cameron would have liked to talk to her, but she had no idea who was involved, how deep it went. She turned back to the personnel file and searched for beneficiary information. She didn’t see any. His emergency contact was someone with a 410 area code. She thought about the times she’d met Benjamin, with his Maryland drawl and his perfectly straight, little mustache.

  The few times she had talked to him, Benjamin found a way to bring up Maryland. Some little place called Ocean Pride where they served the best crabs in all of Baltimore. He’d come to San Francisco in pursuit of a woman he then married and promptly divorced. Somehow, he ended up staying.

  She flipped to the final pages of the file. The list of possible suspects only had one name on it: Diego Ramirez. His most recent address was listed up top, followed by his dates of birth and death. The last known addresses were all familiar. She flipped the page to the list of known associates.

  “Shit.”

  The list included the entire list of Special Ops, herself included. The only difference between hers and the others was that her name was followed by another one: Nathaniel Cruz (Ramirez).

  They knew Nate was Diego’s baby. She felt a flash of panic. How would they know that?

  The hinge on the front door creaked. She shut the file and flipped off the light and crossed quickly to the door, shoving the keys in her pocket. She considered staying in the office, but it would be worse to be caught inside. She slid out the door and closed it behind her.

  “Cameron.”

  She jumped at the voice that seemed to come from on top of her shoulder.

  Brian Kessler was directly beside her. What had he seen?

  “What are you doing here, Cameron?” He drew the end of her name out like the country beside Nigeria. He’d clearly been drinking. For six hours if her math was right. Or, he was pretending.

  Her heart was pounding. Lavick’s door wasn’t locked yet. Plus, from where they stood, Kessler had a clear view of the two open lockers—hers and Lavick’s. “Forgot something.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and motioned to Lavick’s office
. “You forgot Lavick?”

  She stepped back. “No. I haven’t seen Lavick.”

  He frowned at her, then looked at Lavick’s door. “Huh.”

  She backed toward the locker room, but Kessler stepped forward and threw his arm around her shoulder. “You should have come out tonight. Was a party.”

  She tried to slide out from under his arm, but he held on.

  “Me, Daley, Lau, even Ballerina was there for a while. You missed out.”

  She stared at the lockers. She didn’t want him going into that room. He would notice Lavick’s locker open. How could he not?

  She stopped moving, frozen. Kessler stared straight ahead. She was sure he saw the lockers. He tilted his head sideways. “Would you go out with me sometime?”

  He put his hand on her side and hit the pocket full of keys and the lock. He laughed. “What you got in there? A chain?”

  She moved back and touched her lip, feeling the sweat there.

  He touched his face, too.

  “You have something on your face.”

  Kessler swiped at his face with both hands. “Chips probably. We had chips. And some pretzels. Is it a chip or a pretzel?”

  “It’s still there,” she told him. “Go check the bathroom.”

  He jutted his chin out to her. “Just wipe it off.”

  She gave him a little shove toward the bathroom. “Okay, Cameron. So pushy.”

  As soon as the door was open, she moved quickly down the hall and into Lavick’s office. She slid the file back under the plastic tray, straightened the pencil holder and carefully closed the desk. Fumbling with Lavick’s keys, she hunted for the right one to lock it. It took three tries. All the time, she was waiting for Kessler to reappear. Or Daley or Lavick. She turned the key and checked the knob. Locked. She jogged to the locker room and shoved the keys in the jacket pocket. She halted. Left or right? She couldn’t remember where they went. She dropped them in the right pocket and hoped it was where they’d been. She shut the locker, replaced the lock and took a long, deep breath. Then, she locked her own locker and put her hands in her pockets. Had she forgotten anything?

  She heard the sink running and moved quickly down the hallway. Footsteps. She was almost at the front door.

  “Cameron, where you going?”

  “I’ve got to go, Brian. I’ll call you an Uber. Probably be here in about ten minutes. Don’t drive, okay?”

  He reached his hand out toward her without moving. Cameron slid out the door and sprinted to her car. She locked the doors, started the car and pulled out in seconds and then, taking slow even breaths, she called Brian Kessler a cab.

  Chapter 20

  With Nate in his Baby Bjorn, Cameron entered the San Francisco Sports and Swim Club. She stopped in the entry hall where a muscled twenty-something guarded the desk like it was a military post.

  “Membership card?”

  “I’m here to see the pool facilities for my son,” she said, repeating Hailey’s instructions.

  “He seems a little young.”

  She glanced down at Nate. “My other son.”

  The guy laughed. “I was teasing.” He pushed a clipboard toward her. “Fill this out and follow the signs to the pool. Pool only, though. If you want to go anywhere else, you have to come back to the desk first. And please wear this at all times,” he added, handing her a sticker that read “Guest.”

  She pressed it over her heart and filled out the sheet, using a fake name, then made her way to the pool. The pool area was at least fifteen degrees warmer than the lobby. The bleach-like smell of chlorine and the splashing of kids in the water loosened the stiffness in her shoulders. She found Hailey Wyatt sitting up on the bleachers and peering down at a group of kids swimming in the deep end. Cameron watched the children, searching their small faces for one that looked like Hailey.

  Cameron approached and sat awkwardly on the edge of the bleacher, leaving room for Nate’s feet between her legs.

  “The one on the far right,” Hailey said.

  Cameron followed her gaze to a little girl with white blond hair and a pale face.

  “She looks like her father, only so much paler. When she came out, the first thing my husband did was to ask the doctor if she was albino.” She shook her head. “She had this spiky blond hair and she was so pale. You never see a pale newborn, but there she was.”

  Cameron nodded.

  Hailey leaned over and touched the thick hair on Nate’s head. “Ali looks more like your child than mine, and he looks more like me than you.”

  She didn’t speak. This was all leading back to Diego somehow. She couldn’t make small talk about it. She needed to know what he was really guilty of, what they were setting him up for. Who they were.

  Hailey sighed and sat back. “I talked to Jess last night after I heard your message.”

  “And?”

  “Someone was in Benjamin’s apartment,” Hailey said. “They were careful though. If Jess didn’t know the place so well, it would have been easy to miss.”

  “So, it’s not the Homicide folks.”

  Hailey glanced back at Ali in the pool. “Nothing about this is official.”

  “What did they take?”

  “Nothing that she can figure out, but Jess thinks they were on his computer.”

  “Why doesn’t Homicide have the computer? Don’t you guys usually collect that kind of thing for evidence?”

  “Sometimes. Usually the evidence techs can get what they need at the scene.”

  Cameron thought about how Jess had been at the Rookie Club dinner. “Is she doing okay? I mean, is she sure that it wasn’t the evidence techs who had been on the computer?”

  “She’s taking it hard, and the police can’t find any evidence that someone has been there,” Hailey said.

  “So, maybe she’s wrong.”

  “To be honest, I would be sure of it if it weren’t for your call.”

  Cameron sat up. “What do you mean?”

  Hailey seemed uncomfortable. “Kelly and Caltabiano.”

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “They don’t exist,” Hailey said.

  “What?”

  “Not in Homicide, not in the department. How well did you see the names?”

  “It was fast but I am pretty sure. I knew exactly where to look. James Caltabiano and Tony Kelly. My spelling could be wrong. Maybe Kelly was – ey.”

  “I tried everything,” Hailey continued. “Even spelling Kelly with a C. Linda James helped me because captains have access to the different districts. We checked rosters going back a decade. We got zilch.” She took a quick look at the pool. “They seem like cops?”

  Cameron was thinking the same thing. “They did until I saw that their suits were identical. That was weird.”

  “It happens sometimes,” Hailey said. “Usually means a lot of razzing at the station and one guy goes to change.”

  “That’s what I figured, so it seemed weird.”

  “You see the car?”

  “No. When they told me they thought Diego was at the house, I went looking for him.”

  “And?” Hailey put up her hand. “Never mind. Don’t tell me.”

  Nate made little waking noises. Cameron thought it was time to go. “I appreciate the help, Hailey.”

  “I should tell you that there was another shooting. About six months ago.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Another ICE guy named Axsater. He worked with Ray.”

  “Any lead on the shooter?”

  “Not until last week,” Hailey said. “They matched the bullet from Benjamin to Axsater.”

  “Shit.”

  “If you see Diego again, I’d ask him where he got that gun.”

  Cameron motioned around her. “Is that why we’re here?”

  Hailey sat up straight, pressing her palms against her thighs and stretching her neck. “I’ve been in Homicide eight years. This isn’t my first dead cop, but it’s the strangest. Hal and I do
n’t have access to the files—not even for a quick glance. In fact, none of the guys do. When I mentioned Diego Ramirez to Captain Marshall, he said he was told there were dental records that matched Ramirez.”

  “It’s amazing. How do they do that? Far as I could see, Ramirez still had his teeth in his mouth.” Cameron thought about the file she’d seen in Lavick’s office. “You didn’t tell anyone that Diego was Nate’s father.”

  “Not a soul.”

  “I figured,” Cameron said.

  “Why?”

  “Somehow, the department knows.”

  “You never told anyone?”

  “Just family.” Cameron thought about Ricky. She’d always thought of him that way.

  “Maybe Diego did.”

  “No,” Cameron said, touching Nate’s head. “Diego didn’t know.”

  Hailey shook her head slowly. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

  Cameron stood. “Don’t. I appreciate it, but I’ll handle it.”

  Hailey stared down at her daughter, then back at Cameron. “I believe you, I really do. Based on the other shooting and the ballistics, it’s hard to see how Ramirez is going to walk away from this, but I hope he does. For your sake.” She touched Nate’s head. “And his.”

  Cameron blinked hard. “That means a lot. Thank you.”

  They both went quiet. Maybe Hailey felt that same heavy impotence Cameron did. As cops, they were accustomed to having some control over right and wrong. In some cases, though, what you knew didn’t matter. What mattered was what you could prove.

  Cameron got up and left without another word. She understood why Hailey would step back. As a mom, Cameron, too, understood that traveling down certain paths wasn’t worth the risk.

  Chapter 21

  She left Ricky a third message as she entered the department. If he didn’t answer her soon, she was going over there to confront him in person. Around the corner, Ballestrini and Lavick were talking at the top of the station’s cement stairs. Their backs were to her. Although the hall was empty, the men kept their voices low.

  Lavick handed Ballestrini something. “Go check this one out, will you? They believe she’s a recent immigrant, and she fits the profile of the ones from the truck. Give the area a run-through. Body’s at the morgue. I don’t expect to get much. It’s a throwaway.” Lavick mumbled something about the address as Cameron stopped and cleared her throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”