Hard Evidence (16 page)

"It all feels surreal—like I'm living someone else's life," she said, trying to put into words how she'd felt all day.

"Well, let's see." Kara counted on her fingers. "In the past nine days, you've witnessed a murder, had the man you thought was the killer pull you into a closet and kiss you, been arrested, been groped by one of the real killers, had a cop shot outside your home, found a naked photo of yourself the killer stuck to your apartment door. I can see how a person might find that unsettling. The bottom line is you've been through hell, and you need sleep."

"That's easier said than done." Tessa wanted to tell Kara about Julian, to make sense of her own feelings by sharing them, to ask Kara's advice. But she knew talking about her emotions would force her to
feel
them, and she was doing such a good job of not feeling now. It was better to say nothing and to stay numb than to open herself to the hurt she knew was there.

"Reece and I want you to stay with us until this blows over."

Tessa shook her head. "As much as I'd love to take you up on it, how do you think I'd feel if something happened to Reece or you or one of the kids? I can't, Kara. But thanks. It means a lot to me that you care enough to take that chance."

Kara whipped out her cell phone. "Hi, hon. Yeah, she's being stubborn."

Then Kara handed the phone to Tessa.

Reece's deep voice sounded in her ear. "You're going to stay at our place tonight if I have to carry you, got it?"

"Okay." For the first time all day, Tessa felt herself near tears. "But if you guys end up dead, don't hold it against me."

* * *

"A lot of homeless teens end up as victims of trafficking." Colleen Kenley, the director of a nonprofit that aided street teens, sat in the conference room with Tessa, having been kind enough to drive down to Denver from her office in Boulder. With shoulder-length blond hair and a model's face, she didn't look old enough to head an international organization.

Tessa looked up from her notes. 'Trafficked? You mean sold?"

Ms. Kenley nodded. "Or transported against their will. Forced or coerced to have what we call survival sex—sex for food, shelter, protection. We've worked with teens whose experiences have run the gamut from trading sex for food or drugs to being forced into full-time prostitution."

"How terrible!" Tessa didn't realize she'd quit taking notes until the pencil fell from her hand. She leaned down, picked it up. "Don't the Johns realize these kids are underage?"

Ms. Kenley's face was grave. "I think that's the point."

Tessa's stomach turned.

Then Ms. Kenley told how she'd worked with a fourteen-year-old from Utah whose parents had thrown her out of the house after she'd told them she was a lesbian. The girl had been picked up during her first week on the street and brought to a trailer somewhere in town, where she and another teen had been forced to work as prostitutes, enduring sex with as many as thirty men a night.

"They gave her heroin and beat her, rewarding her with occasional trips to a local convenience store where they let her buy candy. She could have asked for help or tried to escape, but she was too afraid to try, sure they would kill her."

Ms. Kenley was still speaking but Tessa scarcely heard her.

There were four of them, girls about the same age. They'd come in, buy gum, candy, maybe shampoo or lip gloss, then they'd go again. Never smiled. Never said a word.

She remembered what Mr. Simms had told her, and her heart seemed to skip a beat. "I-I'm sorry, Ms. Kenley, I hate to interrupt. Can we go back? I have a couple of questions."

By the time the interview was over, Tessa was certain the girl she'd seen murdered was like the girl Ms. Kenley had described—a teenager forced into prostitution. She'd been murdered for trying to flee. Tessa had no proof—not yet—but all the pieces fit.

This had nothing to do with gangs at all.

It was a case of sex trafficking.

Chills shivered down her spine.

Then, out of nowhere, Julian's words came back to her.

/
know things about kidnapping and sexual assault that are beyond your worst nightmares
.

She punched Chief Irving's direct line into her keypad. She groaned when she got his voice mail again. "Chief Irving, this is Tessa Novak calling to let you know I am hereby filing a request for Maria Conchita Ruiz's autopsy report under the Colorado Open Records Act. Expect a written version of the request via facsimile within ten minutes. Further, I wish to request an interview with you regarding Ms. Ruiz's murder and the crimes of human trafficking and forced prostitution."

The words came out in a rush, and when she hung up the phone she felt the same surge of adrenaline she always felt when she closed in on a big story.

She stood and hurried toward Tom's office, hoping she could get at least ten inches for this story—front page, above the fold. If they didn't have room, they would have to make room.

"
No me he olvidado de ti, Maria
," she whispered.

I haven't forgotten you.

@

"I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, Ms. Novak."

Julian leaned against the door, listened to Tessa's voice over the speaker as she interviewed Chief Irving, anger warring with admiration. He had to hand it to her. She'd put the pieces together damned fast, making the leap from gangs to trafficking far quicker than he had imagined she would.

"Can vou at least confirm that vou're oursuine a possible sex-trafficking angle on this homicide?" She sounded exhausted but also confident. She had good instincts and clearly knew she was onto something.

"That would be commenting, and I just told you I can't do that."

"Was there evidence on the body of sexual assault, sexual abuse, or drug abuse?"

"I believe I'll let the medical examiner's notes speak to those points. You should have the autopsy report by now."

There was a moment of silence, and Julian could almost feel her frustration.

"Can we go off the record?" she asked.

"I trust you, Ms. Novak. Off the record, then."

"I have read the autopsy report, and it indicates to me that this is a case of sex trafficking. Maria Ruiz was fleeing her captors when they shot her down. They kept her in that basement apartment with other three girls, forced her to have sex with dozens of men, and shot her up with heroin. John Wyatt was one of her captors. The man who pulled the trigger and was later killed was another. The person you and Mr. Darcan-gelo are hunting for—the man who wants me dead—is the man who pulled their strings."

Irving hit mute. "I told you she was good. How the hell did she put that together?"

"Ask her."

Irving hit the button again. "What makes you leap to this conclusion, Ms. Novak?"

"I just interviewed a woman who runs a program for street teens. Some of the trafficking scenarios she describes are almost identical to observations that the medical examiner, Mr. Simms, and neighbors made about Maria. Unhappy candy-buying sprees. Always under supervision. Lots of cars pulling up to the house. Her age. The way she was dressed. Evidence of multiple sex partners. Needle tracks. Bruises. There's not a piece that doesn't fit, sir."

Julian stepped forward and leaned down toward the mic. "You win the prize, Tessa. I'm impressed. But what do you propose to do with this information—write a front-page article that will send these bastards deeper underground and make it tougher for us to catch them?"

"Why, it's Batman!" she said, obviously still hurt and angry with him. "I knew you had to be lurking there somewhere. I want to see these bastards behind bars as much as you do, and you know it! I want to expose them, make it impossible for them to hide! I want to wake the public up so that we can stop this terrible crime!"

He could hear the emotion in her voice, knew she meant every word. But although he admired her brains and her courage, his experience told him the real world didn't work that way. "Have you ever caught a criminal with ink?"

"I haven't personally, but I know people who have. Used in the right way, it's every bit as deadly as one of your big, fat bullets."

"Why don't you ask Officer Taylor about that?"

She seemed to hesitate. "So to summarize your quotes, 'No comment.' Is that correct, Chief Irving?"

And Julian knew she was ignoring him. He started to speak.

Chief Irving held up a hand to silence him. "I wish you'd hold this story, Ms. Novak."

"I can't do that. You know that. I have a job to do."

"I understand."

"Thank you, sir."

The line went dead.

Irving hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair. "That young lady is too damned smart for her own good. We need to end this bureaucratic bickering and finalize these papers for witness protection before she gets herself killed."

Julian said nothing, the coffee in his stomach turning to lead.

Chapter 16

"Slow it down, and watch here." Julian aimed the red laser pointer at the upper-right corner of the television screen, hoping to get through this briefing as quickly as possible. He hated meetings—lots of talk, no action. "The minivan stops. Five girls climb out and use the gas-station restroom. The two cars you see entering from the left—recognize them from the bottom of the screen? They just pulled out of Pasha's. Now they roll into the gas station. Two of the girls get into one car, and three get into the other. Watch the driver of the minivan. As they drive away, he heads into Pasha's."

Irving was the first to speak. "So you're thinking they're using the strip club as some kind of distribution center?"

"You nailed it. There's plenty of traffic. The gas station lends a sort of anonymity—lots of people getting in and out of cars, lots of women using the restrooms. And using the gas-station parking lot makes the strip club less suspect. In the hours of tape I've viewed so far, this scenario plays itself out three times—different cars, but the same minivan."

Julian rewound the tape, then let the men take another look. He'd spent the evening and much of the night sifting through endless hours of videotape on fast-forward. He'd seen John Wyatt enter the club once, the showy rims stripped off his shiny black Cadillac, but he'd almost missed the minivan. Barely in the picture, it was one of thousands of vehicles that had pulled up into the neighboring gas-station parking lot. Only after he'd noticed the driver walking over to Pasha's had it caught his attention. He'd gone through the tapes again, keeping an eye on the gas station this time, and discovered a pattern. Then he'd caught a few hours' sleep, trying not to think of Tessa.

He'd been relieved to hear she'd gone home with the senator. Irving had said the guy was smart and knew how to use a gun and that his house was equipped with an alarm system. Well, that was something. Julian felt an irrational need to keep watch on her himself, but he knew where that would lead. Once they were done arguing over her hurt feelings, they'd fuck each other's brains out—and she'd be hurt all over again. Besides, if he wanted to keep her safe, he needed to find Burien.

"You think it's enough to get a no-knock warrant?" Pe-tersen asked, his gaze still on the screen. "For all we know, it's some girls' school car pool headed by a guy who loves tits."

The men laughed.

"I'll get the warrant, but not yet. Burien isn't at Pasha's, and he's the one we want. Once he's down, his whole house of cards will be easy to topple. If we take out a few of his key locations, he'll just move someplace else like he did three years ago."

"So what do you propose?" Irving rubbed coffee cake crumbs off his shirt where they'd caught on his protruding belly.

"Keep up surveillance. Work the club. Try to find out who the major players are inside and hopefully follow them to Burien."

"What about the warehouse?" Irving turned to Sergeant Gary King, who'd been out at the warehouse most of the night.

"We've got the place under tight surveillance. We did a quick search this morning, scanned it with a blue light, found large bloodstains. We'll have building plans and a detailed map ready by the end of shift today. The place is up for sale and has been for most of a year. There's some kind of EPA

trouble, so the owner, who lives in Japan, hasn't been able to sell it."

"Burien's probably using it without the owner's knowledge, doing his dirty work on someone else's turf," Julian explained. "He knows by now that we have Wyatt. I doubt he'll be back. I want someone to look into all industrial properties for sale in the greater Denver area and tag those with vacant buildings."

"God, this bastard is slippery!" Sergeant Wu shook his head. "Are we sure he exists?"

"Oh, yeah, he exists." Julian met the middle-aged cop's gaze. "And we're closer to bringing him down than we have been for three long years."

"Remember, this murdering son of a bitch supposedly has cops on his payroll." Chief Irving met each man's gaze. "The information from this briefing is not to be shared with anyone— no hints, no gossip, don't even tell yourself what you know. Wu, you head up the real-estate angle. Let's get to work. And don't forget to sign Taylor's get-well card. They're moving him out of ICU today."

Julian popped the videotape out of the VCR. He'd made copies, which he'd already placed in his vault at home. This would go into the safe in the evidence room.

He heard the door shut, looked up to find himself alone with Irving, who held up a copy of the
Denver Independent
. "You read this?"

Julian shook his head. "Did she burn us?"

"No." Irving handed him the paper. "Everything you told her off the record is still off the record. But this article sure as hell will catch Burien's attention."

Tessa awoke to find herself looking into two pairs of curious brown eyes—one belonging to a boy, the other a dog.

"Mama says I'm supposed to be quiet so I don't wake you up," Connor whispered. "Did I wake you up?"

"No, sugar," Tessa whispered back. "My eyes popped open all on their own."

Connor smiled, hurried from the room and shouted. "She's awake, Mama!"

Tessa heard Kara's voice coming from upstairs. "Connor, 1 told you to leave Auntie Tessa alone! Come finish your breakfast. You're going to be late for school!"

Connor looked back at Tessa, gave a guilty shrug.

Tessa smiled at him, blew him a kiss, watched his cheeks flush pink.

He gave her a shy smile and ran out of the room, Jakey following behind him.

Tessa sat up, reached for her watch, and saw that it was seven-thirty. She barely remembered getting into bed last night. Her sleep had been interrupted by nightmares, and she felt almost as tired as she had when she'd fallen into bed.

Adrenaline poisoning.

She crawled out of bed, shuffled into the guest bathroom, the weight of the past couple weeks heavy on her as she stepped into a hot shower. She shampooed her hair, reality working its way through her mind like a splinter.

She'd finished her trafficking article late last night, forcing production to hold two full pages of Section A. Tom had packaged it on the front page with her recollections of being stalked and attacked—a one-two punch she hoped would hit the killer in the guts. She'd taken extra pains not to let anything slip that wasn't on the record, while taking full advantage of everything that was, the autopsy report most of all.

It had been one of the most horrific autopsy reports she'd ever read, the story of Maria's suffering revealed in flesh and blood. Bruises all over her body. Rope burns on her wrists. Heroin in her bloodstream. Semen from
seven
different men inside her. A broken rib that had partly healed. Signs of chronic pelvic infection. Nine mortal bullet wounds.

And yet it had been the intimate details of the report that had gotten to Tessa—the mole on Maria's right thigh, the tearstains on her face, the cavities in her teeth. Maria had been an ordinary girl with her own hopes and dreams. But her life had been stolen.

Tessa had felt so drained by he time she'd reached Reece and Kara's that she'd barely been able to make conversation. She'd gratefully eaten the dinner they'd saved for her— something delicious and Italian that Reece had made—then wished them a good night and collapsed into bed.

Slowly waking up, she rinsed the shampoo from her hair, worked conditioner through to the ends, then reached for her razor and lathered her legs, giving the conditioner time to sink in.

Chief Irving would be taking her into witness protection after work today. Had she remembered to pack extra razor cartridges? Either way, she supposed it wouldn't matter. She'd be stuck indoors with no one but cops for company for the next few weeks. Who cared if she had razor stubble? It wasn't as if Julian—or anyone—would be coming to visit her.

You win the prize, Tessa. I'm impressed.

He'd been so angry with her yesterday, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He didn't seem to understand that she had a job to do, whether she wanted to do it or not. He acted as if her pursuit of Maria's killers was vain and frivolous, nothing more than an attempt to get her byline on the front page. Clearly, he didn't understand the power of the press and considered it nothing more than a nuisance.

She felt a spike of irritation, welcomed it. Anger was so much easier to deal with than the other feelings he dredged up inside her. Despite the way he'd hurt and humiliated her with the "babysitter" comment, she couldn't forget how it had felt to have almost-sex with him. All that man, all that heat, focused on her. She'd had the most stunning climax of her life— and that had just been foreplay. What would it have been like to have that enormous erection of his moving inside her?

A tight fluttering in her belly was contradicted by the nagging voice in her head. .
You 'dfeel used, and you know it
.

Yes, she knew it. Or at least her mind knew it. Her body had other ideas, her nipples puckered, her skin unusually sensitive, a wetness between her thighs that had nothing to do with her shower.

Mind over matter, Tess.

Julian probably hadn't thought twice about what had happened between them. He was focusing on his job, and that's exactly what she needed to do. She rinsed the shaving cream from her legs and forced her mind back onto the investigation.

She hoped to do a follow-up to her trafficking article today. Ms. Kenley had given her a number of sources and directed her to a mountain of documents, including an FBI report that indicated Denver was a crossroads for human traffickers, particularly those smuggling people in from Mexico. Tessa wanted to read through the report and see what other sources might be able to tell her. There had to be a way to get at this story— reviewing arrest records of prostitutes, talking with Mexican authorities at the consulate, interviewing prostitutes on the street.

What she really wanted to do was talk with Syko again, but she wouldn't be able to do that accompanied by cops. She doubted Syko and his homies would accept an invitation to come visit her in the newsroom, nor did she know how to contact them apart from asking for them on the street. She doubted she'd find them listed under Crips in the yellow pages. The only way she was going to be able to talk with them was to head into the projects of Aurora. It was about as stupid an idea as she'd ever had, given her current situation. But if she could find a way out of the building and take a cab, she could elude not only the cops, but also the killers, who wouldn't be expecting her to head off on her own. And if she covered her hair…

By the time she'd finished her shower, put on her makeup, and gotten dressed, she had it all worked out. She packed her things together and rolled her suitcase to the door, then followed the sound of Kara's voice to the kitchen. Kara was washing applesauce off Caitlyn's face, despite Caitlyn's squeals and squirms of protest.

"I think she likes having a messy face." Tessa couldn't help but smile.

"She's a mess machine." Kara released her daughter, who toddled off toward a pile of blocks on the floor. "I had delusions about getting her potty trained before the next one came along, but that's not going to happen."

It took Tessa a moment to realize what Kara was telling her. "You're… you're pregnant? Oh, my God, Kara, that's wonderful! Congratulations! Does Reece know?"

"Thanks. Yes, he knows. I'm eleven weeks along and have been throwing up every day for a month. He's been coming home from the capitol at lunchtime so I can take naps."

"I told you he was a keeper." Tessa felt a surge of happiness for her friend, tried to ignore the way the brightness of the moment revealed the shadows in her own life. Would she ever know what it was like to be pregnant, to be pampered by her baby's father, to share the joy of watching her children grow?

When Kara reached for the coffeepot, Tessa stopped her. "Sit down, for goodness sakes! I'll make my own breakfast."

While Tessa nuked a bowl of instant oatmeal, they talked about the kids, about Reece's bills for the next legislative session, about the trials of working for Tom, Caitlyn babbling happily to herself and playing on the floor. It was Kara who finally brought it up.

"I read your articles," she said. "It makes me absolutely sick—what they did to that poor girl, what they do to all of those kids, what they're trying to do to you. God, Tessa, I had to keep telling myself that you were safe, that you were downstairs asleep and safe. I thought Reece was going to explode when he read the paper."

"I have to do something about it, Kara. An hour hasn't passed since the murder when I haven't heard her voice. I have to help her however I can."

Tessa shared her ideas about how to pursue the investigation, listened to Kara's suggestions, all the while wishing she could tell her about Julian. But too soon it was time to go.

"Listen to Chief Irving. Do what he says," Kara said.

Tessa gave a snort. "Like you did?"

Kara frowned. "Exactly
not
like I did."

"Thanks for everything."

Tessa arrived at the office to find news crews from CNN and Fox parked in the parking lot. She prayed they'd come to do an expos6 about Tom's temper—"Editors and Their Egos"—and tried to slip unseen into the parking lot. This proved to be impossible while accompanied by two black-and-white police cars.