Avenged (6 page)

CARLY HAD BARELY PULLED AWAY
from the curb at Victor’s house when she got a call.

“1-Adam-2, copy a 925 auto, observed out on Seaside Point. CP was a passerby.”

Carly acknowledged the call and turned her vehicle toward the coast. A suspicious vehicle on Seaside Point was not all that unusual. Seaside Avenue ran along a jetty and ended at a turnaround on the point that jutted out between the mouth of the marina and the beach. There was a bathroom out there, spots for people to fish, and three boat slips for visiting boats. This time of night on the weekends it often became a parking spot for couples.

Marina patrol officers used to patrol the point and the
marina 24-7. But the most recent city budget had slashed the marina patrol in half. As a result, they policed the marina only until dusk and then the area became the responsibility of the police department. With the imminent opening of the new marina and increased commerce and crowds, the city council wanted a reinforced police presence in the marina.

The drive down to the point was pleasant, especially since there was no fog tonight. And she chose to ignore the protestors. While she passed the camp at Sandy Park, it sounded as if they were having a concert of drums. The sound followed her the entire drive.

Off to her left were the lights of the Hacienda, and to the right, the harbor lights. Far in the distance, buoy lights blinked at the mouth of the harbor. It was no surprise to Carly that couples liked to park out here. It was dark, beautiful, and quiet, and the sound of surf breaking on the rocks gave the illusion of being out in the middle of the ocean.

When she reached the turnaround, her headlights illuminated the taillights of a boxy Land Rover. Stopping behind the SUV, she put her car in park, turned on her spotlight, and pointed it to shine directly into the other vehicle. For a minute she waited to see if someone climbed out. The bright spot would definitely destroy any romantic interlude.

She couldn’t see any movement or reaction to the light, so she punched the license plate number into the computer to find out who owned the vehicle and whether or not it was stolen. DMV records told her the car belonged to Keith Sailor. There were no reports that it had been stolen. Carly
frowned as she pondered the name. If she remembered correctly, he owned a catering company that was catering the bridge dedication. Picking up the mike, she told dispatch she’d be out of the car to check on the vehicle.

Carly grabbed her flashlight and stood for a minute behind her open car door to survey the rest of the point. There were no other vehicles, no boats in the visitor slips, and she didn’t hear any voices. Sometimes people rode bikes along the jetty road, so there could be someone fishing, but she didn’t hear anything except the rhythmic drumming coming from Oceans First. She glanced behind her and noted that not even Duncan Potter was stalking her out here.

Clicking on her flashlight, she illuminated the parking area and what she could see of the bathrooms. Satisfied she was alone, she closed the car door and approached the Land Rover.

Habit had her unsnapping her gun as a precaution. With the beam of her flashlight adding to the bright light of the spot, Carly slowly moved toward the vehicle. The rear windows were tinted and the light simply reflected back at her.

The front driver’s window was cracked open about two inches. Carly shone her light directly in.

Between the bright spotlight reflecting in the rearview mirror and the powerful beam of the Streamlight flashlight, Carly saw the body slumped over from the driver’s seat across the center console and onto the passenger seat. She called out but knew the person couldn’t hear her.

Stepping close on her tiptoes, she also saw that there was
no rise and fall of the chest. The waxy cast to the skin and the dried blood told her the person was dead and had been for at least a few hours.

•••

“The ID here says that this is Keith Sailor,” Georgia, the coroner’s investigator, said as she looked through the victim’s wallet. “But the damage to his face from the gunshot means you’ll have to wait for a positive ID through prints.”

“That’s the caterer, right?” Carly asked with a yawn. She was standing a safe distance away from the SUV. She’d had to wait three hours for Georgia’s arrival and was groggy after sitting in her car with only the police radio for company during that time.

Unlike the triple shooting of a couple nights ago, it was obvious this one was self-inflicted. As to the second shooting this week, it never ceased to amaze Carly how things seemed to run in packs—shootings, stolen cars, domestic disputes, drunk drivers . . . It seemed like when they got one, several more of the same would follow.

“Yep, he owned Sailor’s Catering. You know, where everything is smooth sailing? They were in the news last month because he beat out the Hacienda for the contract to cater the bridge dedication.” Georgia was the only county coroner’s investigator that Carly knew who lived in Las Playas.

“That’s what I thought.” She’d read the newspaper article, not because she cared about the catering, but because the pedestrian bridge dedication ceremony seemed to be getting
bigger all the time and all the hoopla made her more nervous about the award presentation. And it reminded her how close the Burke trial was.

Georgia slid the wallet into a possessions envelope. “Strange that after the biggest coup of his catering career he’d commit suicide.”

“I ran the scenario by Sergeant Barrett and he called homicide. They declined to respond. Do I need to call them back?”

Georgia shrugged. “No, this is self-inflicted. Gun still in his hand—that happens sometimes—and the car was locked, keys in the ignition. Once we remove the body, we may find a note.” She rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist. “There might have been other stuff going on in his life. I don’t see anything here that would make me think this was staged or anything other than a suicide.”

Carly agreed. She’d had to use a slim jim to open the door, and she’d looked carefully for any indication that the man had had help ending his life. She found nothing. The absence of a note was not in and of itself suspicious. He might have left a note at his home.

She left Georgia and her assistant to remove the body from the vehicle. This single call would consume Carly’s entire shift by the time she filed all the needed paperwork. After Georgia left with the body, she would have to wait again for a tow truck to remove the SUV.

On her way back to the station, the radio began to get busy. Nick had sent her a text at five thirty saying he was
on his way to work and would not be able to meet her that morning. Now, it was seven thirty and she heard his voice asking for the watch commander.

In the station parking lot she used the computer to pull up his designator, Gang-Sam-1, and find out what was going on. He and Mickey were following a tip about more guns, and they wanted a search warrant deep in Ninja territory.

Carly said a prayer that they’d be careful and move closer to learning what was behind the shooting and to arresting a suspect.

CARLY SLEPT FITFULLY,
waking up several times, hoping to find Nick next to her. But he didn’t come home, and when she woke up to get ready for work, she was still in an empty house except for Maddie. After a lot of scratching and a hug, she fed the dog and wondered about Nick. Since he hadn’t been home all day, she guessed that meant he’d found some leads to follow.

She grabbed her police radio from the charger and took it into the kitchen to listen to what was going on in the city while she munched. There was a fresh loaf of bread on the counter and apples in the fruit bowl. Carly took an apple and then smiled when she opened the refrigerator. She didn’t know when he’d found the time, but Nick had obviously
been to the market. Deciding on a ham and cheese sandwich, she bit into the apple and began to pull out the necessary items and put them on the counter.

When her phone rang, she saw it was Andrea and punched the speakerphone.

“Hey, Andi, what’s up?” she asked, mouth full of apple.

“Glad you are. I talked to Alex earlier, and he told me something disturbing.”

“So you called to disturb me with it?” She set the apple down and started putting her sandwich together.

“Well, it concerns you, so I thought you should know. It seems the reporter who is covering for him doesn’t like you.”

Carly finished making the sandwich and sat at the table. “I don’t even know him.” She bit into the sandwich.

“It’s not a him; it’s a her. Does the name Ginny Masters ring a bell?”

Carly frowned and swallowed. “Sort of . . . Wait, isn’t that the woman Alex calls the ‘dragon lady’?”

“The same. Only he calls her worse things than that. Anyway, apparently you’ve offended her in some way. It’s all over her blog. She claims that you’re biased and you profile people unfairly. She’s asking for people to contact her if they’ve dealt with you and had their rights violated. She doesn’t think your testimony can be trusted in court.”

“What?” The sandwich stopped halfway to Carly’s mouth as her appetite fled and her stomach turned with an unpleasant feeling.

“She was laid off from the
Times
—that’s why she’s just a
fill-in at the
Messenger
—and she wants to get a bigger and better job by breaking a big story. Alex was afraid if he turned his back on her, he’d find a knife in it, so he’s been keeping track of her, following the blog. Anyway, you know how big stories about police corruption or misconduct are.”

Carly set the sandwich down and wiped her hands on a napkin. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know her. Why is she picking on me?”

“Alex thinks it’s because of all the awards he got for his stories about the mayor’s murder and your role in uncovering the corruption. Face it—you’re the star witness in what is going to probably be the biggest trial ever in Las Playas. Alex has been subpoenaed to testify as well, and he thinks she wants to blow the both of you out of the water, make him look incompetent and you dirty.”

“But why? She wants to weaken the case against one of the most corrupt men ever arrested in Las Playas?”

“She wants a national news organization to take notice of her investigative reporting and thinks this will do it. Look, check out the blog.” She gave Carly the URL. “I know she can say just about anything, and there’s nothing you can do unless you can prove damages, but maybe something is over the line and the department will make her stop.”

Andrea’s words brought to mind the warning Alex had given her a few months ago, when Masters first began to work for the
Messenger
.

“She’s got designs on my job, but she only wants to use it as a stepping stone,” he’d said. “She wants to break a
sensational story that will get her some national attention and give her a ticket to some national gig. She thinks she has an angle. Instead of America’s most wanted criminals, she wants a national show devoted to exposing America’s most corrupt cops. And she’s not above stirring the pot, setting things up. Watch your back.”

At the time Carly had been basking in a honeymoon glow, and she laughed. The idea sounded so absurd, she hadn’t really taken the warning seriously. She and Nick were perfect, so the world must be too. What a jarring fall back to earth.

“I’ll check it out; thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

Carly said good-bye and hung up, then took a deep breath before she went into the living room and pulled out her Mac. She remembered when Alex Trejo used to write horrible things about the police in general and her specifically. But they’d been through some scrapes together and had gotten to know one another, and now she considered him a good friend. What was the problem with this Masters woman?

Carly didn’t spend much time on the computer or Internet unless she was searching for something work-related. She heard people talk about blogs and social networking and knew Andrea and Alex both loved chatting online. She even read Alex’s blog from time to time. But recreation for both her and Nick was something active, something outside in the sun or the water. Being stuck in front of a screen was not where she liked to spend her free time. Alex often teased that she and Nick were stuck in the past and that the technical
age was whizzing by them, but Carly never felt like she was missing anything, so the computer only came out to serve a purpose.

When the Mac fired up, she punched in the URL Andrea had given her. As soon as the page loaded, she saw what the problem was and felt like she’d been kicked in the gut.

Ginny Masters was the blonde who’d been with Dean Barton.

•••

“But there must be something we can do to stop her! She’s trying to make people believe that I’m a rogue, out-of-control cop! It’s as if she wants to poison the jury pool or something.”

Sergeant Barrett seemed too quiet and read a little too slowly as he sipped his coffee.

Carly had read through the blog posts three times and gotten angrier each time. Masters brought up every major incident in Carly’s career and twisted them to make her look shady. In Carly’s first officer-involved shooting, her partner that night, Derek Potter, killed an unarmed man. Carly had been cleared of any wrongdoing. But months later she shot and killed Derek Potter after he tried to bash her head in with a bat. Masters made that sequence of incidents look as though Potter was going to spill the beans about something and Carly killed him to shut him up.

In Carly’s next big case, she arrested real estate mogul Conrad Sperry and Thomas Caswell, a prominent defense attorney. Again Masters twisted the incident, asking with a
snarky tone,
Just why would a cop want to get rid of an effective defense attorney?

By the time Carly reached the entries about her “cold-blooded persecution” of Dean Barton, a man trying to turn his unlucky life around, she had nearly thrown up. There was even an unflattering photo in the latest blog entry of Carly handcuffing Victor Macias, making her look like a big blue meanie. Carly knew it was one Duncan Potter had snapped. That was the last straw. Masters’s poison pen was one thing, but hooking up with Potter took this to a whole different level.

“I don’t know what we can do,” Barrett said finally. “It’s just a blog. Who knows how many people even read this stuff.”

“But it’s obvious she’s trying to make me look bad, stopping just short of saying I framed Drake and Tucker when I was the guilty one. Look at how she twists everything.”

“I see it, but we both know it’s nonsense. So will anyone else who knows you. She’ll just come off as a crank.”

“But can’t we stop her?” Carly hated to hear herself whine, but the stuff in the blog was much worse than anything Alex Trejo had ever written about her.

“I don’t know how. Maybe in the morning you can go to the DA and ask if he thinks there’s a legal step he can take. You’re his star witness.” He shrugged. “Why do you think she’s picking on you?”

Carly crossed her arms. “Remember the memo I filed? She was with Dean Barton at Half Baked. I think that may have something to do with it.”

“The parolee?” Barrett made a face. “What in the world would a good-looking woman like this see in that guy?”

Shaking her head, Carly picked up her kit and turned for the squad room, wanting to snipe that the woman was not that good-looking and probably wasn’t even a real blonde. What she said instead was, “I have no idea.”

Carly fumed during the squad meeting, barely hearing the watch report. She’d missed connecting with Nick; he’d been asked to confer with some ATF agents in Los Angeles, which could mean there was news about the guns. Even in her bad mood she had to admit that to get something back this soon was great news. She wasn’t going to call and interrupt a meeting like that. When the squad meeting ended, she picked up her kit and stood, only to find herself facing FBI agent Wiley.

“G-man, we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“Officer Edwards, while it’s good to see you again, I’m actually here about the guns you found. Can you chat with me for a minute?”

Carly looked at the clock and shrugged. “Sure.”

Today they sat in the break room.

“How’s Joe?”

“He’ll need surgery.”

“Ooh, sorry to hear that. I was hoping it wouldn’t be so serious.” Wiley made a sympathetic face. “So you’re solo tonight.”

“Yeah, so what about the guns?”

“Las Playas requested ATF help with the guns. I just wanted to know if there is anything else, maybe not in the report, that you can tell me about Trey Porter.”

“Not really. He’s a local thug. Just about everyone in patrol knows him. Usually he’s the passenger in a stolen car or he’s in possession of a car stereo that doesn’t belong to him. Why?”

“The weapons were military grade. How does a local thug get ahold of military-grade weapons?”

“Good question.” Her heart raced a bit as she realized Nick was front and center trying to answer that question.

“If there’s nothing more you can tell me, I’ll let you get to work. And again, you did a great job. Have you given any more thought to the task force offer?”

Carly leaned back and sighed. “I scanned the information, but I haven’t made up my mind.”

“You’re without a partner. Might that make the decision easier?”

“I’m just not sure what I want to do. Do you need an answer right now?”

Wiley shook his head. “I wanted to lobby. Car stops like the one that uncovered stolen guns show that you’re competent and aggressive. The task force can use you.” He stood. “Remember that this is a unique career opportunity—maybe once in a lifetime—and I’d love to see you on board.”

The unique career opportunity did occupy her thoughts, and she found herself thankful for the distraction. But Wiley’s visit also made the blog posts rankle her more. Would the feds want her if they saw all that horrible stuff on the reporter’s blog?

Every time she looked at the passenger seat, she missed
Joe. He would have been a good sounding board and might have even offered some good advice. Being without a partner made Carly doubly glad it was her Friday. This set of four ten-hour shifts in her workweek had been horrible, and she needed the weekend to regroup.

The night crawled by. She received a text from Nick about 2 a.m. He was home to sleep but on call in case anything went down. Knowing there was nothing worse than a whiny text, Carly told him she loved him, missed him, and wished him sweet dreams.

When her shift ended, after she’d changed, Carly picked up two flyers for detective details looking for new personnel to see what competed with the task force offer. She’d decided on vice and narcotics and then grabbed a flyer for violent crimes as well. The first two details would have erratic schedules; they wouldn’t be straight day shifts. Carly wanted to talk over all her options with Nick.

The task force is by far the most attractive job for a lot of reasons, but am I prepared to see less of Nick?
That thought almost made her want to toss the task force information in the trash. She wanted a job that would allow her to see more of him. But the thought of the excitement and challenge the task force promised would not let her throw it out. Instead, she considered her other choices. If she decided on detectives, she could talk to Joe. Maybe they could be assigned to the same detail.

As she climbed into her car, she sighed, glad the process of thinking about a new job had kept her mind off Ginny
Masters for at least two minutes. With a huff, Carly closed her eyes and prayed, a little ashamed it had taken her this long. Her knee-jerk response to the woman was to get in her face, to square off with angry accusations. But didn’t that make the blog posts ring true? Didn’t that make Carly a rogue, out-of-control cop?

She knew the Bible spoke of a soft answer turning away wrath. And she knew that the woman’s posts were untrue. What she didn’t know was how to calm down and let Masters’s vendetta roll off her back. She didn’t know how to find her soft answer. But Barrett was right—Carly and everyone who knew her would know the accusations were untrue.
So, God, can you help me here?

After a few minutes she felt better. Then her phone buzzed.

You coming home?

Carly texted back she was on her way and didn’t even wait for an answer before she started the car. She wanted a hug and she wanted Nick.