Hard Evidence (3 page)

Julian had been cultivating Zoryo, one of Burien's lackeys, for a few months now, playing the part of a repeat customer with a taste for the forbidden. He had enough on Zoryo to put him behind bars for several lifetimes, though he knew Zoryo wouldn't live to serve his entire sentence. Inmates had a strange intolerance for men who raped kids.

Julian hadn't filled Dyson in on this little deep-cover job but was working under the radar, sharing bits and pieces with Chief Irving on a need-to-know basis. What he'd been doing wasn't strictly legal in that it wasn't a sanctioned police or FBI action. But he didn't care. He wasn't officially on the FBI payroll, and he wasn't officially a cop. Subsequently he wasn't following anyone's official rule book. He had his reasons.

He walked to the end of the corridor and turned left, barely noticing the moans coming out of one of the rooms on the right. When it came to sex, nothing shocked him anymore. Then again, he'd grown up on the lam with his father, thinking it was normal to get out of bed in the morning and find half-naked whores passed out next to his father on the couch. If Dyson hadn't pulled him out of that Mexican prison all those years ago, kicked his teenage ass, and given him a new start, Julian would probably be spending a lot of time in places like this one.

No, he'd still be in prison—or dead.

Ed Dyson had come to visit him behind bars and had offered him a deal: put your fluent Spanish and Mexican street smarts to use for us, or rot in your cell. Sentenced to thirty years for manslaughter at the age of seventeen for accidentally killing a man in a fistfight, Julian hadn't needed to think hard about his answer. The man he'd killed had had lots of friends on the inside, and every one of them had wanted a piece of Julian. He'd never have survived the year.

He owed Dyson his life.

He knocked on the door to room 69—Zoryo's idea of a joke—and waited. He felt the impact of Zoryo's heavy footfalls, saw a shadow pass over the peephole in the door. Locks tumbled, and the door opened to reveal Zoryo standing shirtless in a pair of khaki slacks. The tiger tattoo on his chest proclaimed his pedigree as a former Red Mafia enforcer, while his big, hairy belly spoke of his love for steak and booze. He stank of cigarettes, alcohol, and old sweat. In his hand was a 9mm Taurus.

"Eh, Dominic, my friend. Good to see you," he said in his heavy Russian accent, motioning for Julian to enter, a big smile on his unshaven face. "Come in."

Julian stepped into the room, taking it in all at once: the unmade bed littered with CDs and DVDs; the open suitcase; the roll of duct tape and box of ammo on the dresser; the drapes concealing a single window; the half-empty bottle of vodka on the nightstand; the bathroom with the toilet seat up; the television showing Zoryo's twisted idea of a home movie.

But that's what Julian had come to discuss. He was, after all, an eager customer.

He slipped into the repulsive persona of Dominic Conti and a Philly accent. "Hey, Zoryo. What you got playing? Is it up my alley?"

Zoryo shut and locked the door behind him. "You like girls, yes?"

Julian dropped the gym bag on the bed, let it fall open to reveal the cash—a stack of hundreds—and turned to face the television screen. He fought back his rage and revulsion, pretended to like what he saw. "Ooh, she's nice—young and firm."

On the screen, a naked Zoryo was committing rape. Together with a laundry list of other felonies, it would get him life. The son of a bitch was going to pay. Starting today: Julian would take him, and he would do all he legally could to break him. Then he would use the information Zoryo gave him to close in on Burien.

Julian forced himself to concentrate on that fact and not what he was watching. If he wanted to help the young woman on the screen and the millions like her, he could not make the mistake he'd made last time. He could not let himself feel.

"She was." Zoryo turned his gaze to the screen, a look of predatory lust on his face. Then he glanced over at the money. "You ready to buy?"

"Of course." Julian reached into the gym bag, picked up the stack of hundreds, dropped it on the bed, knowing it would whet Zoryo's other appetite. "What else you got?"

Zoryo took the bundle, flipped through the bills. "Where you get this kind of money? You come every week, pay with cash money."

Julian knew Zoryo had already been digging on Dominic and had found the information he'd planted. "I work a few deals on the side—a couple sites on the 'Net, a bit of Colombian agriculture."

"Websites? Drugs?" Zoryo dropped the bills back into the bag and did something completely unexpected.

He raised the Taurus and pressed the barrel to Julian's temple. He moved his face close to Julian's, his breath stinking of vodka and cigarettes, his blue eyes flat and liquid. "It's all bullshit, Dominic. You do shit work—small time. You are small fish. You think you can compete with me, swim in my ocean?"

Julian felt his pulse slow and his mind clear as it always did before violence. Itchy from lack of sleep, he would enjoy this. He met Zoryo's gaze, grinned.

In fewer moves than it took to brush his teeth, he had Zoryo facedown on the floor, arm wrenched behind his back, his broken nose bleeding onto the carpet, the 9 mm lying harmlessly nearby. Zoryo gasped and groaned, too winded for words—probably the result of Julian's knee driving into his solar plexus.

Julian pressed his .357 SIG Sauer against the base of Zoryo's skull. "I may be a small fish, old man, but I'm also a federal agent. You're under arrest for being a fucking sick pervert. You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—if you live long enough." Zoryo groaned.

Tessa splashed cold water on her face, the chill helping to stop her tears. She'd finished the article, knew it was some of her best writing ever. But when she'd gotten to the end, she'd lost it. Matt had seen. So had Kat. Sophie had offered her a box of tissues.

Where were firing squads when you needed one?

Mortified, Tessa had taken the only dignified course of action. She'd turned the article in to Syd and had hurried to the sanctuary of the women's room, where she'd finally given in to the tears she'd been fighting all day.

Behind her the door opened.

"I thought I'd find you here." It was Sophie.

"Lucky guess." Tessa reached for a paper towel, blotted her face, and opened her eyes to find herself surrounded. Sophie had brought reinforcements.

Lissy, the fashion editor, stood with her hand on the curve of her four-months-pregnant tummy looking worried and glamorous in Vera Wang maternity. Holly, who wrote for the entertainment section and was Tessa's most annoying friend, stared past Tessa to the mirror and adjusted her short, platinum-blond hair.

"You're the only woman I know who thinks she has to hide when she cries," Sophie said.

"And your solution is not to let me hide?" Tessa tossed the paper towel into the trash. "Bless your heart! How thoughtful."

Lissy reached out and gave Tessa's hand a reassuring squeeze, her green eyes filled with concern. "Sophie told us what happened. We just wanted to make sure you're all right."

"I'm fine."

Holly looked away from her own reflection, fixed Tessa with a glare. "Like hell you are! You've got mascara down to your chin, and your skin is all blotchy. Here."

Holly held out a little bag inside which Tessa found sample sized tubes of mascara, moisturizer, and concealer, together with samples of blush, eye shadow, and lipstick.

"I always carry one with me. You never know when you're going to start bawling or end up at some guy's apartment overnight. You can keep that one. There ought to be enough to cover up a couple of crying jags."

Tessa might have laughed off Holly's gesture as superficial—many of Holly's actions were—but more than anything she wanted to feel like herself again. "Thanks, Holly."

While her friends tried to persuade her that crying in public was no reason to feel embarrassed, Tessa washed her face and put on fresh makeup.

"You're human, Tessa." Lissy assured her. "Quit trying to be Superwoman. You make the rest of us look bad."

Tessa finished applying mascara and tried to explain. "I don't know why I feel the way I do about crying. I guess to me it's a sign of weakness."

As she spoke those last words, the bathroom door opened and Kat stepped inside. "We Navajo believe a woman's tears purify. We think of tears as a sign of strength, not weakness."

Tessa lowered the mascara wand. "Then I must be one heck of a strong woman."

"I just came to let you know your article made both Syd and the copy editor cry, so you're not alone." Kat looked straight into Tessa's eyes, something she rarely did. "Your words will make people feel the anguish of that girl's death. You'll make her real to them. You think you've done nothing for her, Tessa, but you have."

Then Kat turned and walked out of the bathroom, leaving Tessa and the others staring after her in silence.

Chapter 3

It was just after dawn when Julian left the Denver County Jail and headed back to his house. Sunlight stretched warm and golden through the city, beating back the night, spilling its glow against the ragged wall of snowcapped Rockies to the west. He'd promised himself some time in those mountains when this job was done—provided he was still alive, of course.

He sped south on Speer in his battered blue pickup. The window was down, cold morning air blasting him in the face. He wanted a shower. Zoryo's cloying stench covered his skin like a greasy film, and his mouth was slick with the putrid taste that came from talking to sick fucks like him.

Aware he had only days, perhaps a week, before Burien discovered that Zoryo had been arrested and moved to cover his ass, he'd spent the night in a secluded part of the jail hammering Zoryo with questions about his filmmaking habits, about Burien, about the girl's murder. He'd pushed Zoryo hard, denying him sleep, water, and food, watching him inch closer to breaking.

There was no way the bastard was getting out, and Zoryo knew it. No criminal defense attorney would touch his case, and the public defender was no match for the kind of evidence

Julian had collected. No one even knew Zoryo had been arrested—not yet. Julian had all the relevant warrants under seal and in his own safe. There were too many leaks for Julian to take chances. For the moment, Zoryo was alone in the world—and under Julian's control. The bastard's only hope lay in divulging what he knew about Burieri and spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement where the other inmates couldn't rip him apart.

Already Julian's interrogation had yielded a few decent leads, including a strip club on Colorado Boulevard called Pasha's. Zoryo had offered up the name in exchange for the luxury of time on a steel toilet. He'd led Julian to believe Pasha's might be some kind of drop-off site. Even if the club was only used to launder money, it was another piece of the puzzle and, hopefully, another nail in Burien's coffin. Of course, that's assuming Zoryo wasn't making stuff up or leading him into a trap.

"If you lie to me about what's out there," Julian had whispered, his face inches from Zoryo's, "there will be consequences in here."

Then he'd left Zoryo under suicide watch in solitary lock-down, more to keep him alive than to intimidate him.

Julian would check the club out later. First, he needed some sleep.

He turned into the neighborhood where Dyson had placed him—the kind of working-class neighborhood where people kept to themselves and checked to make sure their doors were locked at night. He pushed the remote to open the garage, turned into the driveway of the bungalow that pretended to be his home, and slipped quietly inside. By the time' the garage door closed behind him, he had already keyed in his password and was inside.

The house belonged to the FBI. With fireproofing, bulletproof windows, and a state-of-the-art surveillance system, it was intended to withstand snipers and drive-bys and to alert him to anyone who came snooping around. It wasn't a home; it was a lair.

Used to moving from place to place, Julian had furnished it with only the basics—his weapons, ammo, his computer system, his workout gear, a couch, a TV, his clothes, a few dishes, and a bed. He couldn't think of anywhere in his thirty-two years that he'd truly thought of as home. His life was a montage of dark streets, seedy hotels, prison cells, bare apartments, and nearly empty houses like this one.

And if he sometimes wanted more?

Well, that was just too damned bad. A man like him wasn't meant to live behind a white picket fence with a wife and kids.

He slipped out of his leather jacket, tossed it onto the couch. Then he removed his shoulder harness and Kevlar, slipped the Sauer from its holster and carried it with him to the bathroom. Placing it on the counter within easy reach, he stripped and turned the water on as hot as he could stand it. He was about to step under the spray when his encrypted cell phone rang.

Only three people had that number. He had no choice but to answer it.

He turned off the water, walked naked into the bedroom, picked up the phone. "Yeah."

"You have a problem." It was Margaux. She spat the words, the bitchy tone in her voice making it personal.

Julian wasn't going to be baited. "Go ahead."

"You see the front page of the
Denver Independent
this morning?"

"No. I'm just getting in."

"Well, how's this for a headline? 'Eyewitness to Murder.'"

Then Margaux read a first-person, exacting account of the shooting at the gas station. A description of the victim. The girl's plea for help—first in Spanish and then translated precisely into English. A description of the shooter's arm and the driver's car with its rims.

As Margaux read, Julian realized the details could only have come from one person—the pretty blonde. He'd read her account of the shooting in the police report and had removed her name in what was now a wasted effort to protect her. Then he'd asked Irving not to release the report to the media. He hadn't known Tessa Novak
was
the damned media.

Frustration and anger chased through him. Did she realize what she was doing? Was she that desperate to make headlines? Did she want to end up dead or worse?

Just another damned journalist out to build her career on other people's misery.

Margaux kept talking, her voice a syrupy poison in his ear.

"Here's the best part: "Then on the edge of the parking lot, I see him. Tall and surrounded by an air of menace, he's wearing a black leather jacket, just like the killer. His long hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and stubble covers his jaw. He watches me for a moment, half concealed by darkness, and I find it hard to breathe. Am I looking into the eyes of a coldblooded killer? I point him out to police, but he's already gone.'"

The words hit Julian like a fist, made his brain buzz. He was a federal agent, someone used to moving in the shadows, and he'd just been described on the front page of the fucking newspaper. "Jesus Christ! Damn it!"

" 'An air of menace'—wow! Compelling stuff, Julian, though I think she's giving you too much credit." Margaux laughed, a cold, glassy sound. "Burien's men will be reading this. So will he. Do you think they'll make you from the description?"

"I doubt I'm the only man with long dark hair and a black leather jacket in Denver." Still, it was a possibility he couldn't ignore. He would have to be prepared.

At least now he knew why the blonde had seemed to recognize him—she'd seen his leather jacket and assumed he was the killer. The woman had good instincts. He was
a
killer, just not
the
killer.

"You're getting sloppy, Julian. If you blow this case—"

Rage flared in his gut, but he kept his voice calm. He was not going to let her throw what had happened three years ago in his face every goddamned time they talked. "You stick to your Internet ops, and let me take care of the street."

"And the reporter?"

"I'll handle her." Chief Irving wouldn't be happy to see this either—the details of an ongoing investigation spilled to the public.

"If you don't, Burien surely will. And you know what he likes to do with women."

Tessa arrived at the paper after what was almost a restful night's sleep, latte in hand, to find the I-Team meeting postponed and Tom waiting for her in his office.

"Chief Irving is in there with him, and they've been shouting," Sophie warned her.

"Oh, good! I just love to start the day with a bit of yelling." Tessa dropped her briefcase by her desk and walked to Tom's office, fairly certain she knew what this was about. "You two wanted to see me?"

"Sit down, Novak." Tom gestured toward a chair, clearly angry. "Chief Irving was just explaining the limitations of the First Amendment."

Tessa looked over at Chief Irving and saw he was angry. He was a big, beefy man with a with a round belly and white bristles for hair. He looked out at her through pale blue eyes that told her he'd already had his fill of bullshit for the day— not surprising since he'd been conversing with Tom. He wore a tan trench coat over an awkward blue suit, his black shoes long since having lost their polish.

"First, Ms. Novak, let me say how sorry I am that you witnessed such a terrible and violent crime. These past two days can't have been easy for you." His eyes and the warmth in his voice told her he meant what he said. It was certainly more than she'd gotten from Tom.

Tessa swallowed the lump in her throat, looked at her feet. "Thank you, sir."

"We'd like to catch these guys and throw them behind bars for the rest of their lives, but the story on the front of today's paper is going to make it harder for us to do that."

That had her head snapping up. "How can that be? I would think making this information public might prompt people to call in leads."

'That's because you're thinking like a journalist and not a government pen pusher." Tom's interruption set Tessa's nerves on edge.

Chief Irving pretended not to hear him. "It might bring us a few leads. But what it's really going to do is tell whoever is behind this murder exactly what we know."

"How does that hurt anything? The killer already knows there are witnesses."

'There were certain details—what the girl said to you, for example, or the spinning rims—that only someone who was at the scene would know. Those details might have proved helpful to us when interrogating suspects. That's why we opted not to release the police report. But you've just shared it with the entire Denver metro area."

Tessa felt her temper kick in. "People have a right to know what's happening in their neighborhoods."

Chief Irving nodded, then frowned. "Sure, they do. But they've asked us to do a job for them, and sometimes doing that job means temporarily controlling the flow of information."

Tom gave a snort. "Spoken like a true bureaucrat."

Tessa held up her hand to shut Tom up. "I know you and your officers have a job to do, Chief Irving, and I don't mean to make that more difficult. But I have a job to do, as well, and this time it's not just about journalistic idealism."

Tom's frown deepened.

"It's about a teenage girl who was shot down right before my eyes. She was a living, breathing person, and someone murdered her when she wanted desperately to live. I have to do whatever I can to see that she gets justice, to make sure she isn't forgotten." Tessa felt a surge of hot emotion, felt tears prick behind her eyes. She willed them back.

Not in front of Tom!

Chief Irving nodded. "I understand that. I respect that. But it's not only the case I'm worried about, Ms. Novak—it's you. By announcing to the world that you're an eyewitness, you've made yourself a target. These guys aren't exactly shy about killing. I'd hate to see them come after you."

Tessa had thought long and hard about this last night when she should have been sleeping, "What do they stand to gain by killing me now? Everything I know is now part of the public record. If they kill me, they'll just draw more attention to what I wrote. Surely they're not that stupid."

"You're assuming they'd want to kill you to silence you. But what if they had an even more basic reason for coming after you?"

Chills skittered up her spine. "Like what?"

"Revenge. Pride." Chief Irving's lips curved in a grim smile. "Pleasure."

Tessa walked through the main entrance to the hospital, feeling uneasy, her conversation with Chief Irving still playing through her mind.

"If I were you, Ms. Novak, I'd take a long vacation," he'd said. "Failing that, I'd buy a gun and learn how to use it."

"I already own one—a twenty-two."

"Good. Pack it. I've already ordered extra patrols for your street."

Tessa told herself Chief Irving was just being cautious. There was no evidence to suggest her life was in danger. Kara had been getting death threats for a while before they came after her. Tessa hadn't even gotten so much as an impolite e-mail. She had nothing to worry about.

Then why are you carrying a handgun, girl?

Like Chief Irving, she was just being cautious.

Tom had all but gone apoplectic when Chief Irving promised to give her an exclusive when the killers were caught, provided she dropped the story now. He'd launched into the thousandth rendition of his "Watchdogs of Freedom" speech, bringing a look of bored resignation to Chief Irving's face. Obviously, Irving had heard this speech before, too.

"This is outrageous! No journalist at this paper has ever caved to pressure from the city, and I can assure you Novak won't be the first!"

Chief Irving hadn't been pleased. "We'll be as helpful as we can be, Ms. Novak, but we're playing this one close to the vest. And don't go on a charm offensive against my men with that sweet southern accent of yours because I've warned them all not to discuss this case with you. If you want information, you come to me."

Tessa had agreed to that much.

She stopped at the hospital's front desk and asked one of the volunteers for Bruce Simms's room number. She'd spent the morning working on a routine story about the recent keta-mine robberies and had planned to start researching Denver's gang history, as most drive-bys in Denver were gang related. But when she'd learned the gas-station attendant had been moved out of intensive care, she'd known she had to speak with him.