In Pursuit of Justice (18 page)

“You okay with that?”

“It’s not what I’m trained to do, and it wouldn’t be my choice of assignments. I’m assuming it will be temporary, and as soon as you sign off on my evaluation, I expect my captain to pull me off and put me back on regular duty.” Hopefully, he’d get the hint and do what everyone knew he was going to do anyhow, which was certify her fit for duty.
Christ, I’m the one who got shot. You’d think that would earn me some slack.

He eased back in his chair, nodding as if he agreed with what she was thinking. “I’m curious, Sergeant. Why didn’t you wait for backup that night with Blake? Wouldn’t that have been standard operating procedure?”

“As I told you before, I felt that the hostage was in imminent danger and that any delay would put her at risk.”

“Your partner stated in his report that she had not been harmed up to that point. What made you think the situation was so serious?”

“Detective Watts stated in his report that Dr. Rawlings had apparently not been
sexually assaulted
up to that point, but he confirmed that she was physically restrained and in immediate peril.”
Jesus, doesn’t he know that I would have read Watts’s report by now? I know what he said in it. Whitaker is clearly no detective.

“The reason I’m asking is that if someone were to look at this from the outside, your actions could be construed as taking the law into your own hands. You saved the hostage—true, but you also executed the perpetrator.”

Rebecca almost smiled. Now he was trying to provoke her into saying more than she intended to reveal. Another interrogation technique that he wasn’t employing very well.

“Dr. Whitaker, I did not execute the suspect. I used appropriate force to subdue a violent criminal who gave every indication that he was about to inflict severe bodily harm on a civilian and who gave verbal confirmation that he intended to kill her as well as me.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Detective Sergeant.”

“That would be nice.”

“Given the same situation, would you do the same thing again?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answered without hesitation. Her eyes met his, and whatever he saw in her steel gaze made him blink.

“Would you risk your life for
any
hostage, or only one you were personally involved with?” he asked softly.

She leaned forward, never taking her eyes from his, and her voice was flint. “Meaning what?”

“You knew the hostage personally, didn’t you?”

“I met her during the course of the investigation, yes.”

He gave no sign that she hadn’t precisely answered his question, but merely continued. “Did the fact that you…knew her…influence your reaction to the situation?”

“No.” She didn’t see any need to tell him that she’d been almost out of her mind with fear and anger only a short time before she’d finally found Blake and Catherine. No need because her mind had been crystal clear when she’d stepped into the room with them. She’d been in perfect control.

“So,” he said with soft finality. “What you’re saying is that you would risk your life…no,
forfeit
your life…for anyone in the same situation.”

“I’m a cop, Whitaker,” Rebecca remarked sharply, at last allowing her impatience to show. “In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what we do. I’m not a loose cannon; I’m not a danger to society. I’m not a risk to anyone.”

“Except yourself.”

Standing, she asked quietly, “Are we done here?”

“For today, yes. I’d like to see you one more time, which is my standard operating procedure.” As she turned to leave, he added, “You might consider, Sergeant, that you would be much more effective if you valued yourself as much as those you are sworn to protect.”

She didn’t answer but closed the door gently behind her.

*

When Rebecca stepped out into the hallway after leaving Whitaker’s office, she turned right and almost walked into Watts, who was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette under a big bright red
No Smoking
sign. She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you pull into the parking lot this morning.”

“And what? You didn’t have anything better to do for an hour than hang around out here?”

“Well,” he said unhurriedly, taking the last drag on his cigarette, dropping it onto the stained tile floor, and crushing it beneath his scuffed wingtips, “Now that you mention it, I do have something better to do, and I thought you might like something better to do, too.”

“What have you got?” She was curious despite her irritation at finding him outside the psychologist’s office.

It wasn’t exactly a secret what she was doing there, but she still didn’t like being reminded that her colleagues were aware of the fact that she was undergoing evaluation. Even though she was not under any kind of suspicion, the process still made her feel as if she was not on firm ground within her own province. As much as she intellectually accepted the need for police officers, with their steady diet of stress and physical danger, to have the support of psychologists who understood the pressures of the job, it was still something of a stigma to actually
see
one.

Before Watts could speak, she snapped, “Let’s get out of here.”

As the two of them walked toward the stairwell at the end of the hallway, Watts replied, “I’ve tracked down a guest of the state, conveniently staying at the correctional institution at Graterford, who might be willing to provide a bit of information for a little something from us in return. You know the drill—these cons will roll on their own mothers for extra privileges or a shot at an earlier parole hearing.”

“Who is he?” Rebecca asked, her pulse quickening at the thought of any kind of hard lead. It wasn’t in her nature to sit by and wait for other departments, or in this case federal agents, to point her in the right direction on a case. If Sloan and McBride turned up something with their Internet searches, all the better, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

“A guy by the name of Alonso Richards. He’s doing six to ten for possession with the intent to sell.”

“Huh,” Rebecca said disappointedly. “Drugs. What makes you think he can help us?”

“Because when they raided the house where he was holed up with his stash of crack cocaine, they also found some very interesting videotapes. Tapes with a whole bunch of teenage girls and a couple of…uh…mature men frolicking in the nude in a variety of combinations. And they weren’t commercial tapes—these were home movies.”

“Do you have the tapes?”

Watts shook his head disgustedly. “Nope. I checked with the evidence room last night. Mysteriously, the tapes have disappeared.”

“So we don’t know who was on them?”

“No such luck. There was no mention as to whether the men were ever ID’d or not.”

Rebecca stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and stared at Watts. “How did you find this? And how come we’re just hearing about it now?”

Watts shrugged, but his expression was wary. “Something doesn’t smell right, but I can’t figure out where the smell is coming from. Since we’re Vice, someone from Narco should have tipped us off about it when they turned up the tapes during the raid. But it was buried in the arrest report, and the only reason I found it at all is because I pulled the files on the busts you and Cruz made when you closed down that chicken coop last spring.”

They pushed through the exit door into the parking lot, where Watts promptly lit another cigarette. Rebecca regarded him impatiently.

“And?”

Hastily taking a drag, he continued. “I was looking to find some connection with the guys running that deal, hoping we’d find someone still working the streets. Didn’t find anything, so I cross-referenced the names of the guys you sent away for known associates. Then I ran the names of
those
guys looking for recent activity and out popped this Richards.”

Police vans, cruisers, and unmarked vehicles were interspersed with civilian cars in the broad lot. As the two of them wove between the haphazardly parked automobiles toward Rebecca’s Corvette, she remarked, “You must have spent a lot of time humping that computer. Nice job.”

He didn’t reply, but a smile flickered across his face and was just as quickly gone. “I think we need to hunt down the Narc dicks who made the bust and find out why we never heard about the pornography tie-in. I’ve called and left messages, but no callbacks. Anything to do with prostitution and kids should have automatically been kicked over to someone in our division, and I couldn’t find a record of it.”

As Rebecca opened the door and slid into the seat, she grumbled, “There seem to be a lot of things that we should have been informed of that we haven’t been. Come to think of it, Cruz and I were lucky to have made that initial arrest. We were tipped off to the place by a junkie we were bracing about something entirely unrelated, and he gave up the location hoping we’d leave him alone. Now I wonder if we hadn’t moved on it so quickly whether there would have been anyone there at all when we showed up.”

When Watts had settled in beside her, she swiveled in her seat and said to him, “How come you didn’t tell me about the rumors that Jeff Cruz was dirty?”

Watts merely regarded her with his bland, laid-back to the point of stupor expression. “Because it’s bullshit. And if I had any idea who started that talk, I’d wait for them some night after dark out here in the parking lot and kick the crap out of them. Cruz was a cop who died in the line of duty, and you don’t tarnish a cop’s badge unless you’ve got evidence carved in stone.”

Rebecca started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. There wasn’t any reason to comment. For once, she and Watts were in perfect agreement.

*

Three hours later, Rebecca dropped Watts off in front of the one-eight. “I need to stop around to Sloan’s office and put in an appearance,” she said. “You want to write this up and run those names through the computer?”

“Sure,” Watts said, considering it wise not to mention that
she
was supposed to be on desk duty and
he
was supposed to be the leg man. Whoever thought they could put Frye behind a desk didn’t know her very well, or knew her well enough to know that it would be a sit-down job in name only. “Hey, Sarge,” he added as if in afterthought, “if you’re going to poke around in other departments, you might not want to spread around why.”

Rebecca studied him thoughtfully. Not counting the period of her recovery, she and Watts had really only worked together a few weeks. She had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she reluctantly had to admit to herself that she did.

“What are you saying, Watts?”

“I’m not saying anything,” he intoned innocently. He looked as if he was about to scratch his balls, and then thought better of it, putting his hand in his pocket instead. “I just think it would pay to be careful until we know what happened to Hogan and Cruz.”

“You think we have a leak in the department?”

“Don’t you?” His expression didn’t change, but his eyes grew hard.

She looked away for a second, thinking of all the inconsistencies that had surfaced in just a few days. Homicide had apparently dropped the investigation of two dead detectives; files were missing from the crime scene lab concerning the deaths of the same two cops; arrest reports containing information that might have pointed toward a local child prostitution network had been buried; and, finally, she had been quietly assigned to an investigation that was being run from outside the department but which seemed to have connections to local organized crime figures. She was beginning to wonder exactly who Avery Clark was investigating.

“Yeah, Watts, I do. That or something worse. So you watch your back, too, okay?”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Sarge. I don’t intend to make waves.” Whistling, he turned and walked away.

She watched him for a minute, wondering how many people he had fooled with his blasé facade. Watts was a good cop, and that was one department secret she was happy to have uncovered. Just as she was about to pull away, her beeper went off, and she recognized the University Hospital’s number. She fished her cell phone from her pocket and punched in the number even as she headed across town toward University City.

“This is Frye,” she said when the call was picked up.

“It’s Catherine, Rebecca.”

Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat. “Hey. I’m just on my way over. Can I see you?”

“I’m in my office.”