Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (3 page)

Chapter 3

I
nside the detention facility known as County #8, the prisoners are walked down the dingy halls past the cells, two guards monitoring the single line of women in loose khaki uniforms. There is a listlessness, a defeatedness to their movements, a vacant quality to their eyes.

Cara moves with them in the center of the line and breathes slowly to calm her panic. She has not been confined since she was fourteen years old. It is worse than she remembered.

Every instinct in her wants to fight the vacuum of her surroundings, but she is too aware of how she stands out already. So she takes on the aura of the hopeless women around her, makes her body go slack and shuffling, lets her face assume a mask of blank uncaring.

She knows the rules. It has been sixteen years but it never leaves you.
Don’t look at the guards unless they tell you to look at them. When they walk you in the hall, stay in line and keep your eyes straight in front of you and don’t speak to anyone. Go where you’re told to go. Stand where you’re told to stand. Stop where you’re told to stop.

And never, ever be alone where a guard can find you.

The line moves through the doorway of the “common room” of the jail: an open space between two tiers of cells, smelling of ammonia and sweat. It is sparse: a few table-and-chair sets, a few rows of bright-blue chairs below a high-mounted TV, everything bolted down, and all supervised by a corrections officer behind a raised desk accessible only through a gate. The CO is a woman today, which makes Cara relax slightly. Seventy percent of the guards are men. Foxes guarding the henhouse. Like the one with the feral eyes and slathering jaws, the one who watches her with
Its
eyes. The one outside her cell last night.

He will not wait for long. She will have to be ready.

She breathes in and looks around the room, memorizing the details. There is a hierarchy to this place, to the chairs and tables, and she is new: low woman on the totem pole. So she waits until the alphas are seated and chooses one of the remaining chairs, farthest away from the drone of the television hanging in a frame in the corner, which is her own preference anyway.

She slumps in her chair as if half-asleep and looks without seeming to look. She remains still, as she has been since her arrival. Very watchful, very still. She is listening for signs. Even in this place, the night talks to her. She can hear it under the sounds of crying and screaming, under the chaos of nightmares of the women who share this cage.

There are two dozen of them in this “recreational” shift, and every one of them is profoundly damaged, each in her own way. She can see the deep scratches that
It
has left on them, the long histories of abuse, homelessness, prostitution, addiction. They are sick, broken, marked by a presence she knows only too well. Driven insane by years of looking into the depths of a beast that hides behind the masks of ordinary faces: fathers, brothers, uncles, husbands, random men on the street . . . and the mothers and grandmothers who turned a blind eye to the abuse.

She can feel their pain radiating from them like heat. And there is one flare hotter than the others.

Her gaze stops on a frail, hunched woman at one of the tables. This one does not look at the TV or at the other women. Her face is blank and she rocks back and forth, loosely hugging herself.

This is the one who screams in the night, Cara is certain. Few of the others have the same raw anguish. The scars are deep in this woman, both psychic and real; Cara can see the streaks of dried blood on the woman’s khakis. She cuts, this creature, slicing herself probably with her own ragged nails, to distract herself from some immense pain.

Looking at her, Cara feels herself slipping back to that long-ago room in the group home, the night that resulted in her sentence, at twelve years old, to a maximum-security facility where girls, much less girls of twelve, are rarely sent.

She had nearly killed the boy, it was true, but it was the group home counselor who was responsible for the Youth Authority sentence, the harshest penalty for a juvenile offender. The counselor had insisted. Payback for her fighting him, for his humiliation at being bested by the twelve-year-old girl he had intended to rape.

In her mind she is there again, that night in the tiny locked room, the metallic scratching on the door announcing
Its
presence, the four-legged, four-armed creature slipping stealthily in, in the form of the counselor and the fifteen-year-old bully he has brought with him, for company or for camouflage or maybe for both.

She has that few moments’ advantage because she knows
Its
sound,
Its
smell: the hoarse and grating breath, the stink of sweat and malevolence. She knows what has come for her because she has been in a room with
It
before. She is only twelve now, but she is bigger and stronger and deadlier than she was at five. And she has something else. This time she is angry. This thing, this excrescence, has stolen her family, has left her alone and scorned and shunned. This time she will fight, and fight to kill.

It
is caught unawares, and she is a spitfire, punching and scratching and kicking. It happens in moments: the boy’s nose broken, his eye bleeding, the man’s testicles crushed. And as the boy howls and the counselor lies moaning and clutching himself on the floor, she breathes through the fire in her chest and picks up the man’s foot in both hands and holds the leg straight and brings her foot as hard as she can down on his knee to snap the joint—

She is pulled from the past by the feeling of eyes on her in the present.

She scans the room to find the gaze.

An inmate seated under the television is watching her with a laser stare. A large woman—not physically large, though she has the doughiness of long confinement. But large in aura, in anger, in sheer domineering energy.

Cara has noticed her before, as someone to be respected and avoided at all cost. But she has drawn attention regardless.

The woman’s eyes are fixed on her from across the room and she can feel the other’s anger building. Senseless anger, nothing to do with her. But unmistakable, and dangerous.

The woman rises suddenly and walks the concrete floor toward her. A walk meant to be casual so as not to alert the guard behind the desk to trouble. But trouble is what it is.

The inmate sits heavily across from Cara. She is bulldog muscular under the layer of fat, her hair spiky in a butch cut. Cara knows the other women call her Kaz. She gives Cara a blistering glare, which no doubt has reduced any number of other prisoners to tears. Cara looks back at her without nodding, without posturing. Just looking.

“So, Blondie.” The woman’s drawl makes the word an insult. “What’s your story?”

She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, it is in the most neutral tone she can muster. “It’s all the same story, isn’t it?”

She can feel the anger sparking off the other woman. “You being smart with me?”

“No,” Cara says, and nothing more. Kaz waits. Cara waits with her.

“You in for murder, or izzat some story you think is gonna keep you safe from all the scary people in here?” She makes a “boo” gesture, a mock lunge.

Cara doesn’t flinch. “I didn’t do it,” she says evenly. Not just the standard answer to the question, but the only rational thing to say in a world where snitching is often the only ticket out of hell.

“Riiight,” Kaz says.

“I’m not looking for trouble.”

“It just somehow found
you
,”
the other woman sneers. She does not know how accurate she has just been.

“I’m not looking for trouble with you,” Cara answers.

The large woman gives her a cold smile. “That ain’t your call, Blondie.” She pushes back from the table and rises. “I’ll be seeing ya.” She turns to stroll back to the row of chairs from where she came. All the other women watch, without seeming to watch. And Cara knows this is not the end of the encounter, but only the start.

Chapter 4

R
oarke signed out a fleet car from the underground lot in the Civic Center and drove the mile through the downtown corridor of Hyde Street to 850 Bryant, the Hall of Justice, known to the lawyers and law enforcement professionals who frequented it as “the Hall of Whispers.” It was attached to San Francisco County Jail #8 where Cara was being held.

He felt his body tighten as he glimpsed the curve of concrete ahead, knowing she was just behind that wall.
But he drove past and made the turn at the corner and slowed beside the curb in front of the wide granite steps of the courthouse.

San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Clifton Mills slouched against a stone urn by the side of the tall wooden doors, chewing on a toothpick as he scrolled through his phone. He looked every bit as disreputable as any of the other shady characters loitering on the steps, and not just because of his hangdog, silent-comedian face. His pants were threadbare khakis, his shirt a garish vintage Hawaiian, and in deference to the season he’d wrapped a red velour reindeer scarf around his neck.

He looked up before Roarke could honk the car horn and ambled down the steps past a collection of San Francisco’s criminal flotsam
,
his large feet slapping the granite in open-toed Birkenstocks despite the winter fog. He pulled open the passenger-side door, and the car rocked as he dropped his comfortable bulk onto the seat.

“Always a treat to see your pretty face,” he greeted Roarke.

“Wish I could say the same about yours,” Roarke responded, and pulled out into holiday traffic.

Mills waved his phone at Roarke, his rubbery features as morose as a bulldog’s. “Another email from Stanton,” meaning the ADA who was prosecuting Cara’s case. “He wants to see Jade again before the hearing.”

Roarke tensed. “Is he coming today?”

“Hell, no. Not letting him near her. Pompous little prick.”

“No argument there,” Roarke agreed.

“You believe this clusterfuck?” Mills muttered, and lowered the window to spit out of it. “The DA assigns Stanton, for Christ’s cunting sake. They couldn’ta used Bryce? Delgado? Hell,
anyone
in a skirt?”

Roarke knew what Mills meant. Strategically it would have made worlds more sense to assign a woman ADA to Cara’s case, both to deal with Jade and in terms of the delicate gender dynamics of the situation. Cara was a female crime victim who killed male criminals. A female prosecutor would have an implicit right to condemn her in a way that a male prosecutor would not. But it was a huge case, and the San Francisco DA’s office was as political as any, and Stanton was the district attorney’s golden boy. He was also so abrasive that his assignment tipped the case very slightly in Cara’s favor.

Roarke turned his mind away from the thought. “So what’s the game plan here?” he asked Mills.

“This girl
is
our case. Lock, stock, and smoking barrel. I want the little bitch to like us,” Mills said.
Roarke rolled his eyes and waited for the real response. Mills shook his head. “We need to get her to tell us who she is. We need a
name
.”

Jade had refused to say where she was from, how old she was, or anything else about herself.
Like Cara, in her way,
Roarke had to reflect. While many parents these days had their children fingerprinted so they could be ID’d in case of emergency, Jade’s prints were not in the system. And running photos of her highly unusual tattoos through the Bureau’s Next Generation Identification system had resulted in zero matches: she’d never been arrested before.

He’d known all that but hadn’t considered the legal implications.

“Is that a crime?” he asked aloud. “Not to give a real name?”

“It is, actually. Supremes said so in 2004. Obviously we’re not going to arrest her for it, being that she’s our own fucking witness. But if she refuses to answer these questions in court? Judge’ll cite her for contempt. Not helpful for our side. And y’know Lindstrom has engaged Julia Molina.”

In fact, Roarke had not been able to stop thinking about it. Molina was a feminist lawyer who specialized in controversial cases. She was nowhere near as famous as Gloria Allred, though several attorneys of that caliber had also approached Cara, wanting to take on her case. Privately Roarke worried that Molina didn’t have the clout to do what Cara needed her to do. But that was another thought he wasn’t supposed to be having. He focused back on Mills’ gloomy summation.

“We can’t introduce any of Lindstrom’s past murders because she hasn’t been convicted for a damn thing. She has no motive for killing Ramirez or for being in that tunnel to begin with. Her story is that she
wasn’t
there. Which would be my story if I was there. So it’s her word against Jade’s.”

Roarke felt a fluttering of what he knew was traitorous hope. He looked out the window, impassive, as he made a turn past the Panhandle strip of Golden Gate Park, with its towering eucalyptus trees. Mills rattled on.

“Oh yeah, Molina is going to be all out to destroy Jade, credibility-wise. Key witness is a drug addict and a pathological liar. Molina can prove the kid is a user. She was drug-tested the night we brought her in to juvie.”

Roarke kept his voice even. “Are you thinking it could be dismissed in prelim?”

Mills looked grim. “My guess is it’s going to take Molina all of two seconds to establish reasonable doubt. The deceased had a violent criminal history. The area in which he met his demise was well trafficked by other violent criminals. The deceased had no money or drugs on him, for probably the first time in his miserable shitbag life, suggesting robbery as a motive. The area was poorly lit—make that not fucking lit at all: Jade claims she saw Lindstrom by the flame of a lighter. And let’s not forget that Jade admits to being there, her prints were on the lipstick case we found at the scene, and she had more motive to kill the asswipe than Lindstrom does.”

Roarke tightened his hands on the steering wheel, feeling lightheaded. For a moment, he could almost believe that Cara might go free. He felt it as a rush of blood in his head at Mills’ next words.

“Put it this way: if I had to bet today, I wouldn’t be betting on us. So work your wonder, Wonder Boy. We need a name.”

The Belvedere House was located in the heart of the Haight, San Francisco’s legendary hippie mecca. Roarke drove the fleet car past Victorians painted in rainbow colors, bottom floors largely taken up by cafés and grunge boutiques. The shop windows they passed were lavishly decorated for Christmas. Many of the displays showed more than a touch of a black humor: steampunk-dressed mannequins trimming a tree with grotesqueries, a skeleton in a Santa costume driving a team of skeletal reindeer. That was the Haight: flaunting convention, finding beauty in the outcast, the outré, the unacceptable.

Beside Roarke, Mills tunelessly hummed “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” as he looked out the passenger window at the street.

As usual, a clutch of ragged, homeless teenagers hung out, seated cross-legged, on the sidewalk below the stopped clock on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. There were similar groups congregated up and down the street. And as always,
Roarke cringed inside at the number of obvious minors. Throwaway kids, following some hopeful dream of a more colorful, more liberated, even slightly magical lifestyle . . . and finding instead drugs, despair, and the most vile abuse by sexual predators.

It was here that Cara had encountered Jade and apparently had taken enough interest in the girl to stalk and kill her pimp. She had also interrupted a john soliciting a prostitute even younger than Jade and had beaten the john nearly to death in an alley just a block away. It was what Cara did.

Roarke made the turn on Belvedere toward the shelter, an old Victorian painted a garish shade of purplish pink
.
It was a rare and vitally important haven, a nonprofit halfway house providing shelter and services for the Bay Area’s rapidly growing population of exploited teenagers. Trafficking was a vast and virulent problem, far exceeding the capacity of law enforcement to control. Nonprofit organizations like the Belvedere House were left scrambling to take up the slack.

Roarke realized that Mills had spoken and was now looking at him, perplexed.

“Sorry, what?” Roarke asked blankly.

“At least the media’s been distracted by the election. The Lindstrom story is out there, but they haven’t sunk their teeth into the particulars yet.”

They will, though.
Roarke could feel that storm coming.

He parked the fleet car illegally in front of the historic old Belvedere building and put his “Official FBI Business” placard on the dash. He found his palms were sweating as he and Mills mounted the steps of the shelter. He had not seen Rachel since they’d fallen into bed together one night two weeks ago, after a long, ambiguous interview with Jade in juvenile detention. Roarke had been moved by Rachel’s fierce protectiveness of the troubled girl.

The hookup had been a disastrous misjudgment on his part. Not that judgment had been any part of the equation.

Now, at the same time that his stomach was roiling, he could feel his groin muscles tightening, and he had to turn his mind toward business. He forced himself to look at Mills. One glance at the scruffy detective was enough to put a damper on any illicit thoughts.

The porch was gated and the lawmen were buzzed in after announcing themselves into a speaker on the wall. The rope of Nepalese bells on the doorknob jingled as the door closed behind them.

In the front hall, crystal light catchers strung in tall bay windows cast rainbows on the walls. A lounge to the left was filled with battered and overstuffed furniture, some mismatched tables and chairs, a massive old television. A set of stairs in the hall led up, and another set led down. Roarke could hear the chatter of young, feminine voices on the lower floor and the ever-present thump of street music. There was a sweet, clean scent to the air—a faint layering of perfumes and bath and hair products.

He glanced at the wall of photos hung in the hall: teenage girls captured in snapshots, printed-out candids from camera phones. Not just dozens but hundreds, rows of them, a photo gallery of lost girls that Rachel was doing her best to save every day.

Just as Cara was, in her own
merciless
way.

Roarke led the way down the hall toward Rachel’s office and pushed through the door into a round room with built-in bookcases and a worn love seat. Behind a battered antique desk, Rachel waited for them.

He didn’t know her well enough to know her age; he thought mid-thirties, about what he was. Her hair was a natural red-brown and curly, past her shoulders; her body was slim and curvy and toned. But it was her anger that had drawn him. She simmered with a crusading rage. The same rage that set Cara on fire.

He couldn’t help but glance at the inner door behind her, cracked open to a small side room with a single bed. The bed that they’d shared just weeks before.

He saw from Rachel’s face that she’d caught his glance toward the inner room. She didn’t spare him by looking away. Her eyes locked with his for an electrifying moment, crackling with sexual tension.

Then she shifted her glance to Mills, taking in his outfit. “Mills, you’re a fashion plate as always.”

“Born this way,” Mills answered, unflappable. “The kid still here?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “I
would
actually let you know if that changed.” She stood. “Let’s do this.”

“It’s the light of my life.” Jade greeted Mills sardonically as Rachel pushed open the door of the front lounge to let the men enter. The teenager slouched in one of the worn lounge chairs—a beautiful girl, with a wild blond mane and a blistering energy that rolled off her despite her posture of supreme uncaring. Roarke was surprised at how good she looked after just two weeks off the street. The meth sores had cleared up and her skin was back to the soft, glowing plumpness of her age.

Her gaze flickered over him as he stepped in behind Mills. “Whoa, you brought the Fed this time. You don’t watch out, you’re gonna make me feel important.”

“It’s your sunny disposition,” Mills deadpanned. “Draws us like flies. Mind if we sit down?”

She waved a languid hand. “Any position you like.”

Roarke flinched inside at the blatant sexuality of the reference, but he didn’t show it. Rachel crossed the room to sit at the far corner of the table. Mills lowered his bulk to sit on the edge of the battered couch opposite Jade.

“So how you feeling, Danger Girl?” the detective asked.

“I’d be better with a smoke,” she challenged him.

“Now, you know that shit’s bad for you.”

Jade widened her eyes disingenuously. “Right, and I’m a brand new me. Livin’ in the pink cloud.”

Roarke moved to the recessed window and leaned against the sill so he could study her. Rachel, the expert, put her age at sixteen. To Roarke’s eyes she sometimes looked more like twenty-five. Other times she looked twelve. And any thoughts he had about a sane universe dissolved in the face of what this girl had been subjected to in her short life.