The Lost Witness (40 page)

She could hear the TV from Jones’s apartment leaking into the foyer. People laughing and buzzers going off from some game show. She hadn’t seen him in the window from the sidewalk
and she was glad. She hurried up the steps, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. As she switched on the table lamp in the foyer and leaned against the door, she thought about Barrera.

She already knew what the word betrayal meant. The way it cut and chewed through your being. The way it tore everything up and burned everything down. She knew what it meant. What it felt like.
The scars that it left behind. Still, she was having trouble catching her breath.

She switched on the lights in the living room and bedroom. Erasing the darkness didn’t seem to help. As she started to walk out, she sensed something and turned back. There was something
going on. Something out of place. She scanned the room and checked it against her memory. When her eyes zeroed in on the bedside table, she felt a chill flicker across her shoulder blades.

The snow globe was missing.

She glanced at the floor on the other side of the bed. Looked over at the chest of drawers. Tried to remember where it was the last time that she had been here. Snowflakes falling over Las
Vegas.

And that’s when she heard the noise. A floorboard creaking. Someone else was in the apartment.

Lena eased out of the bedroom, moving silently through the entry way. When she reached the French doors, she stopped and peered through the glass into the living room. It took a moment for the
image to register in her brain. She could feel the rush as she stared through the glass.

It was him—wearing the leather jacket and the Dodger cap.

The lost witness—tiptoeing his way out of the kitchen toward the window and fire escape with the snow globe in his hand.

The thief with the guilty conscience who sent her the package and then tapped out the victim’s bank account with the stolen ATM card. Eighteen or nineteen with brown hair and pale skin.
The thin and nervous type with dark circles under his eyes. The user loser who needed more cash for more stash and another hot load.

Lena had walked in on a robbery. The witness hadn’t overdosed and wasn’t stretched out on a gurney at the morgue. The piece of shit had waited them out and picked his night. He was
cleaning out the place.

She turned the corner and stepped into the living room. When the kid spotted her, he dropped the snow globe, and made a run for the window. It was already cracked open, but appeared stuck. Lena
raced across the room and grabbed him by his shoulders. Yanking him away, they tumbled back and hit the floor. The kid groaned and appeared panic-stricken. She could feel him trying to squirm out
from beneath her, thrashing his arms and legs.

But he was smaller than her. Lighter. Lena gave him a hard push, then rolled him over onto his back keeping him still with the weight of her body. She grabbed his hands and pinned them to the
floor over his head. Then she reached out and pulled off the Dodger cap.

A long moment passed. The two of them lying there eye to eye. Face to face.

Lena suddenly became aware of the body underneath her. The long list of things that didn’t add up. The width of his hips and the smell of his skin. His brown eyes—big and wild and
staring back at her with a certain reach.

Releasing her grip, she got to her feet. The witness didn’t move, looking up at her and panting. She could still hear Cava’s voice on the phone. Still feel the wheel inside her gut
turning. She had missed something and it was big.

She checked the face again. The body. The air in the room suddenly white-hot like a dirty bomb. She hadn’t found and captured the witness. Her eyes were locked on the victim.

“You’re Jennifer Bloom,” she said. “And I’m investigating your murder.”

T
he shock wave was still reverberating.
The fallout still playing with her core.

Lena closed her cell phone after calling Rhodes and gazed at Bloom with utter amazement. She was thinking about the autopsy. The woman she had seen on the stainless steel gurney that had been
cut up and dumped in the trash. The woman originally known as Jane Doe No. 99.

She was trying to picture her face.

The victim had been beaten. Disfigured. She remembered that her eyes had been spared, but not much else. That the sight of the decapitated head had been hard to look at. Yet, she seemed so
vulnerable, it had been difficult for Lena to turn away.

Identification had been made based on a theoretical reconstruction of her face, a physical description that fit like a glove, overwhelming circumstantial evidence, and more than one eyewitness
who saw her at the Cock-a-doodle-do on the night of the abduction and murder. Although the DMV confirmed that her driver’s license was legit, certification that the thumb print on the license
matched the print taken from the actual dead body was still pending. Lena remembered Rhodes telling her that it would take a week before they arrived and SID could begin their examination.

“You’ll be okay,” Lena said to her. “Take my hand.”

She pulled the young woman off the floor and helped her over to the couch. Bloom was clearly frightened, and Lena’s words didn’t seem to make any difference to her. As Lena thought
about the body count, Bloom had every reason to still fear for her life. Tremell had offered all his resources to help find the witness. Cava had been watching her apartment. And Chief Logan had
shut down the case and made it the number one priority on his
Loose End List.
Everyone of them had wanted to find the witness at all costs. Now Lena understood why.

“You went out to the Cock-a-doodle-do with a friend,” she said. “Your friend was murdered. Who was she?”

Bloom lowered her eyes. “Beth Gillman,” she whispered. “She was waiting for me in my car.”

Lena heard the sound of footsteps through the door. They were moving down the hallway. She checked Bloom’s face, caught the edge, and stepped into the foyer. When she heard the tap, she
peered through the peephole and unlocked the door. Rhodes hurried in and glanced at Bloom from a distance. Lena could see him making the connections. The shock as he got his first look and realized
that their victim wasn’t a ghost.

“Were you followed?” he whispered under his breath.

Lena shook her head. “I lost them. A Lincoln. Who’s out there?”

“Two guys in a black Audi. I couldn’t make out their faces. But it doesn’t look good. They’re waiting for something. Who was in the Lincoln?”

A memory surfaced before she could answer. Jack Dobbs and Phil Ragetti had chased her down the hill last Sunday night in the rain, then innocently walked into Denny’s restaurant. The two
former RHD detectives who got the boot for beating the life out of a murder suspect but somehow managed to escape jail time. She could remember the way they had looked at her when they got out of
the black Audi. The recognition on their faces. Seeing them hadn’t been an accident, she realized. They had wanted her to see them. Both detectives had left the department three years before
Lena was promoted to RHD. But Rhodes was there at the time and would’ve known them.

“Jack Dobbs and Phil Ragetti,” she whispered.

Something stirred in Rhodes’s eyes. “What about them?”

“Ragetti drives a black Audi,” she said. “They followed me Sunday night. How do we get her out of here?”

“Not through the front door.”

Lena gave him a look and they entered the living room. Bloom read their faces and seemed all jacked up.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“We’re not sure yet,” Lena said. “This is Detective Rhodes. Why don’t you tell us why you took your friend with you last Wednesday night.”

She wanted to keep Bloom talking. Take her mind off what might be going on outside. Bloom appeared to buy it.

“How much do you know about Dean Tremell and Anders Dahl Pharmaceuticals?” she asked.

Lena moved to the window. “Your brother told me why you came here. We know about your son, and both of us have read Ramira’s transcripts. Fontaine and Tremell lied to push the drug
onto the market when they knew that it wasn’t safe. We know you talked to Ramira and West.”

“I’ve been listening to the radio,” Bloom said. “Everybody’s dead now. Everybody except for me and West.”

“Why’d you take your friend with you?” Rhodes asked.

“Justin Tremell wanted to meet there and talk. If it had been his father I would’ve blown it off. But Justin was different. I didn’t exactly trust him, but I wanted to hear
what he had to say. I asked Beth to come with me and wait in the car. I didn’t think I’d be very long and I wasn’t. Justin was speaking for his father. They were making me an
offer. Another bribe to not say anything and go away. But there was something about the place where we met—all these prostitutes walking in and out the door. When I asked him why he wanted to
meet there, he wouldn’t answer me. I started to get paranoid, like maybe something was wrong. Like maybe I’d found out who these guys were but didn’t really know what they were.
And so I left. I ran out to the parking lot. And that’s when I saw a man standing over Beth with a gun in his hand. It was dark, but I could see her body on the ground beside my car. She
wasn’t moving and I didn’t know what to do. I found a place to hide and shot that video with my phone, but I was freaking out. All of a sudden I knew why Beth had been murdered. All of
a sudden I knew that the guy who did it thought she was me.”

Bloom covered her face with her hands, the memory still too vivid. Rhodes sat beside her on the couch.

“You had blond hair,” he said. “The same color eyes. Roughly the same height and weight.”

“She was waiting in my car. She’s dead because of me.”

Lena had been listening with her back turned—staring out the window past the fire escape and looking for an anomaly. And she had found one hidden in the billowing clouds. She could see a
man standing in the alley at the end of the building. The shape of his figure without any detail. She didn’t need a face or a name to go with the body to understand his purpose. The gun in
his right hand said it all.

She turned and shot Rhodes a quiet look. They were fucked. She tried to keep calm, keep Bloom talking while she thought about what to do.

“Okay,” Lena said. “So what did you do after they left? You grabbed your friend’s purse out of the Dumpster and then what? Drove your car over to her place and hid
out?”

Bloom met her eyes. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

Lena ignored the question and kept cool. “Tell us what you did.”

“Beth had a garage. I got your name out of the paper. Then I delivered that package to you with my driver’s license and the video clip. But I could see what they were doing. The
money they deposited in my bank account and the stories on TV. I never touched their money. I only took what was mine. I knew what they were trying to make it look like. I didn’t come forward
because I saw what they did to Beth and knew they’d do it again.”

She was speaking quickly. Her voice tight as piano wire.

“Makes sense,” Rhodes said. “As long as they thought you were dead, you thought that you had a chance.”

“Did you tell anyone?” Lena asked. “Anyone at all?”

She shook her head. “Not even my brother. Not Ramira, or West, or Fontaine. Beth’s murder was my fault. I couldn’t jeopardize anyone else. I couldn’t take the chance. And
I didn’t think I needed to. You guys were saying that Beth was me. As long as you were investigating my murder, there was a chance you’d find them before they found me.”

Lena traded looks with Rhodes. Bloom was a remarkable young woman. There was no reason to tell her that her friend had been beaten beyond recognition. No reason to mention that the man with the
gun in the alley had a new buddy and that they had moved closer and were eyeing the fire escape. She drew her weapon from her belt and rocked the slide back. It was a .45 Smith & Wesson. She
watched Rhodes check his Glock. Everything was copasetic. Everything tuned and amped up. There was no clean way to walk out of Bloom’s apartment. No easy exit. They’d have to cut their
way out.

“Why did you risk exposure by coming here tonight?” she asked Bloom.

“Why did you guys just pull out your fucking guns? You’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Lena noticed the snow globe on the floor and picked it up. As she handed it to the woman she realized that it wasn’t snow falling over Las Vegas. The flakes were actually miniature silver
dollars. And the streets outside the Bellagio Hotel and Caesar’s Palace were knee-deep in money.

“It was a risk,” Lena said. “Why did you take it?”

Bloom shook the globe and gazed at the silver dollars falling out of the sky. “I made a mistake,” she said. “Everything was okay at Beth’s place until a few days ago.
Then the phone started ringing at odd hours. I made a mistake and answered it one night. I was asleep and woke up and wasn’t thinking. They didn’t say anything, but they heard my voice.
I knew that I needed to get out of here. My husband gave me the snow globe before he left for the war. It was the only thing I brought with me.”

“You drove over in your car?” Rhodes said.

Bloom nodded at him.

“Where did you park?”

“Out front.”

Her words settled into the room. But only for a split second. Then someone tried to kick down the front door. They didn’t make it. The lock held, but Bloom screamed.

“Get down on the floor,” Lena said.

Bloom glanced at the window, panicking. “I need to get out of here. I don’t want to die.”

“Behind the couch,” Rhodes said. “Hurry.”

The door took another hard kick. When Lena checked the window, the two men were racing up the fire escape. Rhodes raised his Glock and fired a round through the front door chest high. They heard
someone fall down in the hall and shout, “I’m fucking hit.”

Rhodes quickly lowered his aim and took a second shot. Chaos followed as the round punched through the wood and that first voice never came back. Just the thunderclap of a 12-gauge shotgun
blowing a hole out of the cheap door. It was a repeater, the muzzle poking through the hole. Then five quick shells lashed out free and clear, tearing chunks of plaster out of the walls. The sound
was deafening.