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“I saved your job,” Elena said after several moments.
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Dammit, Kara! Do you know how many people were coming for me because I didn’t send you to IA after the clusterfuck that was the Chen investigation?”
“The Chen investigation was no clusterfuck until he was tipped off to the raid.” She stopped herself. This wasn’t the time to argue about what happened in February. “That’s the past,” Kara said with forced calm. “Craig was killed today. What is going on, Elena?”
“That’s Lieutenant to you.”
Kara glared at her. “Okay, Lieutenant, what do you know that got Craig Dyson killed?”
“I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation. You’re not on my team.”
“Bullshit!” Kara exploded. “I was standing with Craig when he was stabbed. I had his blood on my hands. We have no idea who the bastard is or why he killed Craig, but I’ll bet my pension it’s about this grand jury impaneling that he planned this week.”
Elena’s eyes widened in surprise, then she buried it.
“Fuck you, you know all about it!”
“You’re close to insubordination,” Elena said.
“You just said I wasn’t part of your team, so I can say whatever the hell I want.” Her anger was still rising. “I know it had something to do with an investigation that started after Chen’s arrest—an investigation I know nothing about because I was sent away. An investigation that involved a dirty cop. You know it. I know it.”
Elena couldn’t tell Kara she was wrong, because Kara wasn’t wrong.
“Who is it?” Kara demanded when Elena remained silent.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You suspect someone, I know you do.”
“Suspecting someone means shit.”
Kara pushed off from the couch and paced. She couldn’t help herself, frustrated at her inability to do anything to fix this mess. Who was going to get justice for Craig? For Sunny?
“Let me explain something to you, Kara,” Elena said, her voice edged with anger. “You have no idea the pressure LAPD has been under for the last few years. Don’t get your hackles raised,” she said when Kara almost interrupted. “I know uniforms have gotten the brunt of the public’s rage, but my office is getting it from the top, from the politicians, the press, the feds. Intense pressure from every side. From our own people, from the fucking bleeding-heart DA, from the media, from people we are trying to serve and protect. I have worked my ass off getting every bad cop off the streets, even when I risked my own job to do so. Even when I got hate from my own people. I’m not going to fuel the fire. I have to know 110 percent that a cop is dirty before I go through it again. I take down bad cops quietly. You know that.”
Kara did. She’d helped Elena. Sometimes forced retirement. Sometimes shifting to nonpublic positions like working the evidence locker or booking. Sometimes termination—though that was extremely difficult to do unless the violation was egregious.
“I have never doubted your ethics or your ability to get the job done,” Kara said. “But Sunny is dead because someone tipped Chen off. If not one of our own people, then who?”
“Do you trust Costa?”
That came out of left field.
“Yes.”
“Dyson decided we had enough to prosecute, which is why we pulled the plug on the undercover investigation.”
“I remember. We decided to do it quick, first thing in the morning.”
“Dyson held off getting the warrants until the last minute because he was afraid it would leak. But we had to put the SWAT team on call, and because we planned it for 7 a.m., before Chen’s workers were on-site, we planned to call in the day shift an hour early to debrief. A lot of things had to move into place in a short period of time. We also had a team on Chen’s house.
“After the fact, we discovered that the FBI had all our information through the interagency portal. Even though I had a lid on the operation and specifically ordered need-to-know, every single action is sent through as an informational memo to the FBI. It’s a fucking nightmare and well above my pay grade. The portal was implemented after the FBI investigated the department for civil rights abuses years ago, of which we were cleared—though their bureaucratic procedures never went away.”
“The FBI,” Kara said flatly.
“I have no evidence that Bryce Thornton knew about the raid,” Elena said quickly. “But someone there could have known. A fed, not a cop, may have alerted Chen.”
