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“How are you doing?” she asked when Marrs came into the office.
“Better than Gary. I stopped by the hospital on my way here. He’s still in surgery.” Marrs shook his head. “Can you believe it? The moron fell off a ladder.”
“What was he doing on the ladder?”
“Who knows. His wife wants him to pull the pin, retire. Maybe I should do the same thing. The world has changed.”
“It sure has,” Matt said. “Feels to me upside down and inside out. We still gotta solve this shooting, though. We need the miracle of catching. The. Real. Shooter. And. Having. Him. Confess.” He punctuated each word with a hard tap of his index finger on the file in front of him.
“Yep, the hunt is the only thing keeping me here,” Marrs said with a nod. “Can’t stand to see a guy like Jess be railroaded.”
“I don’t see any reference here to anyone who might have wanted Johnston dead. He must have had enemies,” Danni said. “There’s an article in the file that says he got some gang members arrested for tagging a while back. He was, after all, acommunity activist. Maybe someone in the community had it in for him.”
“No one will talk to us. I’ve never been more stonewalled on any case. Now, not even my snitches are talking. Diamond had a few who claimed out-of-state people are here stirring things up, but no one can give us anything concrete.”
“The LaRosa Tribune ran a story about out-of-towners. They said it’s a red herring—there were no out-of-towners involved in the riots,” Matt said.
Marrs snorted. “The fish wrap stopped printing the truth a while ago. Marris and the LaRosa Post is more reliable these days.”
Danni raised an eyebrow. “Even after the Post office was destroyed?”
“Old Marris is publishing completely online now, out of his house. Says all the rioting and outrage is manufactured by misinformation.”
“Yeah, and he believes Hoffman is purposefully manufacturing said misinformation.”
“Junior or Senior?” Marrs asked.
“Didn’t say.”
“Either-or, he’s right on,” Matt said. “The Tribune has always been anti-police, but it’s worse since Junior took over. The Post is never taken as seriously as the Tribune. Hoffman is solidly against the police. Tribune readers read negativity every day.”
“Whatever. I’ll check out his website,” she said. “I’ve also got a couple of snitches I can try,” Danni said, thinking about anyone and everyone she knew who lived around Barton Plaza who might have heard something. She hated thinking of Natasha as a snitch, but she would be worth talking to.
“Let me tell you both what happened to me the other night, after I got home from Hawaii.” She took a deep breath and told them about her adventure in the alley. She’d waited because she wanted to tell them both together, and she knew Matt would not spare her any teasing about the incident.
“Cameras? Are you serious?” Marrs asked.
“Yeah, I saw them. My guess is they cover the entire alley. How long have they been there, and who is maintaining them? Who is monitoring them?”
“Were they there the night of the shooting?” Matt asked. “I think you’re crazy, partner, for going there without letting someone know, but you might have uncovered something to blow this case wide-open.”
“I hope so. One more thing... I think one of the guys who chased me is the same guy Gabe arrested and got in trouble for. I heard a name that’s not very common, Jareb. The guy he arrested was Jareb Moore.”
“You talked to Fox?” Marrs asked.
“I did.”
He glanced at the sergeant’s office, then turned to talk to them in low tones. “We were told to stay away from him since he’s been removed from active investigations. Order came from city hall.”
“Just when I think things can’t get any weirder. If we can’t talk to Fox, let’s find out everything we can about Jareb Moore. He’s made himself a big target as far as I am concerned.”
“On it,” Matt said, opening his laptop.
It wasn’t long before they discovered a lot about Moore. Gabe had told Danni about his disorderly conduct arrests, but there was more. Originally from New York, Moore had a record of minor crimes there—petty theft, misdemeanor battery, car theft—but as he moved across the country, things got more serious. There were convictions for assault and domestic violence in Wisconsin, and he’d only been out of jail for six months, having served five years in prison in Washington for assaulting a police officer causing great bodily injury.
Danni took a good, long look at his file photo, finally putting a face to the voice she’d heard chasing her in the dark.
“What a peach,” Matt said, face crinkled in disgust. “The garbage has rolled down the coast to LaRosa, where the sewer meets the sea.”
