Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (11 page)

Chapter 16

H
e didn’t go to the jail. Epps had made at least that much of an impression.

He got as far as the Civic Center garage, then called Mills and briefed him on the talk with the girls at the Belvedere House, which boiled down to a personal motive for Jade to kill DeShawn, but not a single clue to her whereabouts.

And then he drove home. The fog was so thick he had to hunch over the steering wheel, squinting out at the vague shapes illuminated by the hazy line of his headlights. His fight with Epps was still ringing in his mind.

Rage had dissipated, replaced by guilt. Guilt about lying to Epps, guilt about using Rachel. Above all he was taunted by the same questions he’d been struggling with since he’d learned of Jade’s disappearance.

Were there signs? Should I have known?

Known what? That she was holding on to the razor that Cara killed Ramirez with? That she would kill
DeShawn and plant the razor, knowing it would create reasonable doubt about Cara’s guilt?

How could I have known? How could anyone?

Back in Noe Valley, he did the inevitable circling for parking and scored a space just a block and a half away from his apartment. By San Francisco standards, practically in his own front yard.

As he got out of the car and headed for his building, his head was still full of the scene from the alley and the rest of the day. The pimp sprawled in his own blood. The look in Shauna’s eyes when she asked Roarke if Jade had killed him. Now that he was thinking about it, so eerily reminiscent of Jade asking about Cara’s killings . . .

He was pulled from his thoughts by his own instincts, like an early warning system: an urgent flash of certainty that something needed his attention. He scanned the sidewalk, the pools of darkness beneath the trees. A cold breeze moved the shadows . . . but there was no one.

He relaxed, but not completely, and moved up the concrete steps to the gated stoop of his building, still on alert. As he pushed the key into the gate’s lock, he heard a step, and he spun, his hand reaching for his weapon.

A figure stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him. A slim, slight shadow in dark pants and a hoodie.
A kid?
he had time to wonder.
Jade? Erin?

He stared down into the dark. What he could see of the face was young and androgynously feminine: short dark hair, dark eyes, a sharp nose.

“Take your hands out of your pockets,” he ordered.

She complied, slowly withdrawing hands from her hoodie. She held her empty fingers up ironically. “Feeling a little jumpy, Agent Roarke?”

The voice was slightly hoarse. An accent in the vicinity of New York.

“Who are you?” Roarke demanded.

The girl/woman smiled slightly and responded in that gravelly voice. “You can call me Bitch.”

Instantly he knew. The blogger.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she continued.

“It’s way past office hours,” he told her. “And this isn’t my office.”

“I don’t think you really care about that,” she answered, and privately he had to admit she had a point.

“Did Molina send you?” he demanded.

“Molina?” she asked with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I thought I could buy you a drink and we could talk about DeShawn Butler.”

Now everything in him was on alert. “What do you know about Butler?”

The young woman’s voice went flat and hard like slate. “I know he was a predatory fuck, like Danny Ramirez. I know he sold teenage girls on the street because it’s a safer gig for him than selling drugs. How much lower can a person be, Agent Roarke?”

Roarke moved down a few steps but kept his distance and watched her hands. “I don’t disagree, but where are you getting your information?”

“The streets are talking. Lots of interested parties. Everyone wants to know about Cara.”

Roarke felt himself tensing in spite of himself. “What about Lindstrom?”

“She’s not the one who should be locked up, here. And I think you know it.”

He said the only thing he could. “We have laws in this country.”

“The laws aren’t working.”

He knew he had no counter to that.
But if there wasn’t the law, what was there?

“So that’s the plan?” he asked sharply. “You’re going to make her into a heroine?”

Her eyes drifted someplace far away. “There are lots of plans. Lots of them. And we don’t have to
make
her into anything. She is what she is.”

Roarke knew that for a fact. But before he could answer, the blogger added, with a slight, distant smile. “Maybe it’s time.”

For the second time that day, he felt spectral fingers on the back of his neck. “Time for what?”

“Time for a reckoning.”

He looked down on her, and she up at him.

“So. DeShawn Butler,” she said. “Any thoughts on that little bit of karma?” She waited expectantly.

He was about to speak, then realized that in the middle of a media blackout he’d ordered himself, he was talking to a journalist, and one whose reach he didn’t even want to contemplate.

“No comment,” he said. He turned back up the steps and unlocked the gate of his apartment, leaving the blogger outside in the dark.

Chapter 17

S
he wakes with
It
crouched outside the cell, watching her.

She sits up in the dim gray cube, her heart pounding in her chest, every instinct on alert. The barred door swings open, and Driscoll’s long shadow slides into the cell.

It
slowly smiles at her, and she sees jagged teeth. “They want you in Health Services,” he tells her in a voice leering with anticipation.

In the other bunk, Kaz lies on her side. Her eyes are wide open. She does not move, does not make a sound. Her gaze meets Cara’s, one sickened, terrified look, then she shuts her eyes and stays still. It is the only thing she can do.

Cara stands up from the cot. Every muscle in her body is tensed to fight.
It’s time. Even possibly the final stand.

She will need to kill . . . or kill herself. She has rehearsed it in her mind a hundred times, a thousand.

Not in the cell, though. He will not do anything in the cell.

She turns to be cuffed and waits passively, controlling her breath, while she holds her elbows subtly splayed. She learned to slip through cuffs when she was twelve. She has practiced ever since, folding her body as she drops into a crouch, stepping back over her wrists . . . then standing in one fluid motion, bringing her cuffed arms up to use as a battering ram or slipping chained wrists over a neck. She can do it in seconds.

The guard’s fingers close tightly around her arm, digging into the muscle. She feels the scaly grasp, smells the stinking breath of the Beast. She does not flinch. He pulls her out of the cell and shoves the door shut. The automatic lock clangs into place.

They walk down the dark, foul corridor, past the cells where some inmates lie sleeping and others lie still like Kaz, frozen in fear, willing themselves silent.

She breathes slowly, in rhythm with her steps. Balancing herself on her legs, feeling the strength in her thighs and hips, stilling her racing heart, focusing rage in her hands and fingers. And rehearsing the moves in her head.
Drop to a crouch, step through with right foot then left, unfold to standing.
Every muscle connected to another, connected to her bones, powered by will. And her nails carefully bitten to razor sharpness.

It
will not have her.

The guard is behind her, pressing up against her now. “I know who you are,”
It
croaks, the familiar rasping voice.

“I know what you are,” she replies, too low for anyone but
It
to hear. She grounds her feet on the floor, her thighs over her knees, ready to drop.

There is a rattle down at the end of the corridor, and a second guard steps from the shadows at the end of the hall.

Two of them.

But Driscoll’s grip has loosened.

Cara draws her breath deep inside her and drops.

DAY FOUR

Chapter 18

T
here is pounding. Some violent struggle. Cracking, splintering . . .

Roarke pulled himself out of a dazed sleep. Not to some epic battle going on around him. Someone was pounding on his front door.

He grabbed for a robe and stepped out into the long darkness of the hall.

As he approached the door he glanced at the side table, at the drawer where he kept his service weapon . . .

Then he heard a familiar voice. “Roarke, goddamn it. Open up.”

Mills.

Roarke shot the bolt and pulled open the door. The detective stood in the dim hall outside, in a state of dishevelment and grim dismay.

“Your damn phone is off. Your guys got the DNA results back. It’s Ramirez’s blood on the razor that killed Butler.” Before Roarke could even process the information, Mills continued, “Molina’s going in to see the judge this morning.”

The adrenaline jolt shook Roarke fully awake. “To move the prelim up? To ask for a dismissal?”

“All of the above, what the shit do I know? We need to get over there
now
.”

Roarke backed up, then turned toward his bedroom. “Five minutes.”

It was a zoo. The courthouse steps were entirely packed. Not just the steps; the sidewalks and the streets were jammed with people. Swarming reporters and news vans bristling with satellite dishes, illegally parked anywhere they could find a space. Protesters crowding the street, strategically placed at the intersection of Bryant and Seventh
,
so anyone driving by would get a full view of the commotion.

Patrol officers attempted to direct traffic at the clogged intersections, while mostly female demonstrators marched the sidewalks with hand-lettered signs: “Justice for Cara.” “Free Cara Lindstrom.” “Cara is my heroine.” “War on rape culture NOW.”

There were images on those signs, too, skeletal depictions of Santa Muerte, and a few actual masked skeleton figures. One was dressed in a long white gown, wearing a skull mask and flowered hat, carrying a globe in one hand and a scythe in the other.

Mills blinked at that one. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and Roarke knew the detective was experiencing the same sick, surreal feeling he was.

Ahead in the crowd, Roarke caught sight of a tall hulk of a man, a dark, familiar face. Epps. The agent spotted him at the same time and shouldered his way through the crowd toward him and Mills.
The three of them huddled, a tight knot in the surge of onlookers.

“What the holy fuck is going on here?” Epps looked around in disbelief.

Roarke recalled the blogger’s words of the night before.
“Time for a reckoning.”
The blogger, the people she worked with, Molina, maybe all of them, working in concert to make this case headline news.

He spoke it aloud. “Molina leaked it to Bitch that they were going in to see the judge. She must have.”

Whether that would pressure the judge into dismissing the case was anyone’s call. It could just as easily go the other way. Roarke was floored by the risk Molina was taking: an enormous, all-or-nothing roll of the dice.

“How did this happen so fast?” Epps demanded, shouting over the crowd.

Mills looked disgusted and resigned all at once. “Stanton disclosed the DNA results on the razor to Molina. She musta called the judge last night. I’m betting she’s asking for a dismissal.”

“Can that even happen?” Epps was in a fury. But they all knew the answer to that. A judge could do pretty much anything, and San Francisco judges leaned heavily on the side of protecting the rights of the accused.

“Lots of pressure from the media, too. This was the front page of the
Chronicle
today.” Mills handed over a rolled-up newspaper that looked like he’d been using it for batting practice. Epps unfurled it to reveal the headline:

“‘Miracle Girl’ held without bail, without evidence.”

Mills summed it up. “Valiant survivor of unspeakable crime now unjustly accused, held without bail, exculpatory evidence, blah-dee-blah blah. There’s a Twitterstorm, too, Facebook memes. All over the Internet. Looks like Molina called every reporter in the book.”

With all kinds of help from Bitch
, Roarke thought. He could see the young blogger on the sidewalk in front of his house, gazing up at him through the dark.

“Maybe it’s time.”

“What does Stanton have to go in with?” he asked Mills.

“Without Jade? Fuck all. Our girl may be taking a walk.”

Roarke’s adrenaline surged. He tried to keep his voice neutral. “Is Lindstrom in there now?”

Epps was not fooled by his carefully bland tone. He shot Roarke a bitter look.

“I’m not clear on that,” Mills answered. “Something weird is going on.” Roarke felt an inexplicable shiver of worry.

The men shouldered their way up the steps, parting the masses before them. Even in a jacked-up crowd like this one, a phalanx of three law enforcement heavies was nothing anyone was willing to tangle with.

Inside the too-warm lobby of the Hall, the crowd was almost as thick: packed bodies massing in the marble halls, wrapped in winter coats. Roarke could see courtroom security guards communicating across the corridors with walkie-talkies. Expecting trouble.

Inside he was fixated on Mills’ last remark.
“Something weird is going on.”

If Cara wasn’t at the courthouse, what did that mean? Had something happened? What was Molina trying to do?

He looked over the sea of faces. And then he saw her. That explosion of hair, the mosaic eyes.

Jade.

It can’t be.
Roarke was dazed.
Would she really risk coming here?

She hovered just inside the heavy front doors, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. A hundred people between them. He stared through the throng, and, as if feeling him, she looked across the sea of faces, caught his eye . . . and she knew him. For one crackling moment she held his gaze, that intelligence blazing through the crowd. He was breathless with the life force of her.

Then in a flash she was slipping backward, pushing out through the front door.

Roarke felt someone grab his arm from behind. He spun and saw Epps staring into his face. “What?”

“I just saw her,” he muttered. “Jade.”

He pulled away from Epps and muscled through the milling people after her, shoved his way through one of the front doors.

Outside, the courthouse steps were even more packed than before. Protesters chanted on the sidewalk below, a swell of overlapping voices
.
“Free Cara! Free Cara! Free Cara!”

Roarke stood at the top of the steps, bracing himself against the ebb and flow of the crowd, and scanned the faces for the girl, focusing on anyone moving downward.

At first it seemed hopeless . . . but she was easy to spot: that wild hair. She was halfway down the steps, moving like water through the masses toward the street.

He lunged after her, maneuvering around bodies dressed in thick overcoats.
What had possessed her to come? Could she be thinking of testifying after all? Or she just couldn’t stay away?

He reached the protesters packing the sidewalk and scanned the crowd at street level, looking for Jade’s hair. The chanting surrounded him. “Free Cara! Free Cara! Free Cara!”

There was no sign of Jade on the sidewalk. He turned slowly, in desperation . . . and lasered in on a young woman getting into a taxi at the curb.

Not Jade,
he thought, staring at her. Short hair—wait, no, she was wearing a hat. And as she stooped to get into the car, he spotted the tattoo on the back of her neck, spiraling up into the curls at the nape. She’d scooped her hair up into a cap, taken off her jacket.

Roarke pushed forward against the crowd of protesters in front of him. He was jostled by startled and then angry onlookers, but he shoved back and burst through the last living wall of people . . . just as the taxi pulled away.

He started toward it, focused on the license plate. 4CND 542.

He was already reaching for his phone as he scanned the traffic for another cab. But San Francisco was not like New York, with its yellow cabs available every few seconds in a continuous stream. Here taxis were plentiful mainly around the bigger hotels and shopping strips like Market Street, and certain tourist havens, which the Hall of Justice decidedly was not.

He ran out in the middle of the street, at the same time auto-dialing Singh. He shouted into the phone, “I need the dispatch of the Yellow Cab company. Vehicle with plate 4CND 542. I just saw Jade get in. Track that cab.”

“I am on it, Chief,” his agent’s voice came back.

Cars were honking around him, but there was not a taxi in sight. The sidewalks were mobbed, so Roarke kept to the street as he jogged back around the corner to Bryant Street, the front of the Hall, where there was always a line of black-and-white patrol cars at the curb.

He ran along the line of parked vehicles, suit coat flapping, until he spotted a uniform behind the wheel of a patrol car. He halted beside the car and slapped his open credentials wallet against the passenger window.

The startled officer lowered the window. Roarke shouted at him, “Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roarke. I’m in pursuit of a material witness to the hearing going on inside. Need assistance.”

“Uh, yes sir.”

Roarke pulled open the door and dropped into the seat just as his phone buzzed. Singh spoke into his ear
.
“Cab is headed to the bottom of Market. Number One Embarcadero.”

Roarke’s mind was racing.
The Ferry Building. So many stores. BART access. Ferry access. Christmas shoppers.

“Ferry Building,” he told the young officer beside him.

The uniform hit the lights and siren, but the street was so clogged there was no place for cars ahead of them to pull off.

Roarke sat in the stalled traffic in agonized frustration.

His phone buzzed again and he grabbed for it. Mills. “Where the fuck are you?” the detective demanded through the phone.

“I saw Jade.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I don’t think so,” Roarke answered, though he was beginning to wonder, himself.

“Why the . . .” Mills drifted off, clearly brooding on exactly what Roarke had been wondering since he saw her.
Why?
was the question.
What is she doing?

The traffic ahead of them opened up, and the young uniform zoomed the patrol car forward.

“I’m in pursuit,” Roarke told Mills. “Cab’s dropping her at One Embarcadero. I’d appreciate some backup.”

“I’ll get cars on the way.”

“She’s in a motorcycle cap with her hair tucked up. Leather jacket, jeans. Alternating jacket on and off. White jersey underneath.”

“Gotcha.”

Market Street
was decorated for Christmas: lights strung over the street; giant, glittery tinsel wreaths; extravagant window displays in the high-end retail stores. Roarke leaned forward in his seat, staring down the sidewalk through businesspeople rushing in and out of office buildings and tourists headed for the Ferry Building. Even on a good day nowhere near the holidays, the area was infamous for traffic jams. Two blocks from the bottom of the strip, Roarke was reaching for his door handle, unable to wait.

“I’ll take it from here.”

“Sir, can I assist?” the young uniform asked tensely.

Roarke took a millisecond to consider.
Tell the kid what Jade looks like? Have two pairs of eyes on the crowds?

No time. And this was his. If anyone was going to spot her, it would be him.

“Thanks. I’ve got it,” Roarke said, catapulting out of the cruiser.

But once on the street, he scanned the blocks ahead of him in despair. The bottom of Market Street hosted a street fair most days, tented stands where artists and artisans sold crafts, produce, jewelry, knockoff purses. At Christmas the fair was three times its normal size, swelled by seasonal craftspeople, street magicians and acrobats, carolers strolling, dressed in Dickensian finery, a steel pan band playing a Jamaican version of “Jingle Bells.”

To top it off, the sky was starting to mist. Umbrellas popped up like mushrooms, making it even harder to see through the crowd.

Roarke turned on the pavement in the cold rain, taking in the aisles of stalls, scanning the shoppers. He figured there were two ways Jade could have gone: to the Embarcadero BART station, which could take her to any one of four sides of the bay . . . or to the Ferry Building, with its artisanal shops and restaurants and the ferryboats that took commuters and tourists across to Oakland, Sausalito, and Vallejo.

Or she got out of the cab blocks ago and just took off anywhere in the city
, he told himself.
Anywhere. Anywhere. What was I thinking, that I could find her?

Except that he knew. He heard her voice in his head.

“Do you believe in destiny, Agent Roarke?”

Despite the odds, he found himself striding through the roughly parallel rows of tents in the fair, dodging singers and jugglers, winding past vendors minding their tables of embroidered bags, Christmas ornaments, fuzzy sweaters and ponchos, San Francisco memorabilia. And he felt a glimmer of hope.