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“Why would anyone in the FBI want to tip him off, or even be able to so quickly? Thornton is a prick, but working with a human trafficker?” Kara had always thought of Thornton as a bad cop, not a dirty cop—and there was a difference. A bad cop is willing to bend rules and lie to get warrants and tweak evidence and sacrifice people in order to catch bad guys. He doesn’t care if someone was the girlfriend of a low-level thug, he would turn the screws and destroy her life if he could learn something. Thornton in particular enjoyed the power that went with his position. A dirty cop worked with the bad guys. Took bribes, looked the other way, became an accessory. But Kara couldn’t see him helping to facilitate a major crime.
“I can’t say. I have investigated every single cop who knew about the raid, and it’s not one of them.”
Kara paused. “Dyson told me someone who knew about Chen’s operation was transferred to North Valley. I’m thinking he took bribes to look the other way.”
Elena shifted on her feet, a sign of discomfort or guilt.
“Who?” Kara demanded.
“I’m not going to tell you, but I suspected him before the raid and he was not in the loop. I made sure of it.”
Kara mentally reviewed the teams that had been involved, and then it clicked: a cop who should have been there, but wasn’t. At the time Kara probably thought he called in sick or was on vacation, but now it made more sense that Elena had purposefully cut him out. “Tom Lee?”
Elena didn’t answer, but Kara knew she was right. Bastard. She would be paying him a visit before she left LA.
“So, if I get this right, someone in the FBI learned about the raid, tipped off Chen. Chen went to the facility before we could get there—maybe to shut it down, get papers, money, whatever he didn’t want us to have. Sunny alerted me that he knew, but that still doesn’t tell us who told Chen that she was my informant. There’s no other reason that he would have killed her. And very, very few people knew that she was my contact. You. Lex. Craig. Anyone any of you pulled into the loop. Now Chen is dead. Craig—who was investigating everyone surrounding his operation and about to go to the grand jury—is dead. That sounds like someone is cleaning house.”
“Go back to DC,” Elena said.
“You said you saved my job. My job is here.”
“You’re not safe here. You’ve made a lot of enemies, Kara—in the FBI, in LAPD. You know I’ve always liked you even when you drove me crazy. And it’s because I like you that I’m asking you to let me figure this out. Let me find the leak, let me find out who killed Dyson.”
“You’re a lieutenant. You haven’t worked in the field in years. You need me.”
“You’re not the only good cop under my command,” Elena snapped. “Don’t ever think you’re not expendable.”
“I know I am,” she said, bristling. “You asked if I trusted Costa—I do. I trust Matt and Michael with my life. I respect them. If the FBI has a traitor, Matt will find him. But this is bigger than a corrupt fed. Dyson was investigating multiple people in city government. He didn’t tell me a lot, but I know he has a whistleblower.”
Kara didn’t tell Elena that she knew who the whistleblower was, and it was clear by Elena’s expression that she knew. About Violet and more.
“You know exactly what he was doing. It got him killed, and you know it!”
“I can’t.” Elena walked around the room, motioned to Kara’s empty beer bottle. “You wouldn’t by chance have another one of those?”
Kara looked under the cart, saw there was a bucket of beers. She grabbed two, handed one to Elena. Elena opened it, took a long, deep drink. They stood in silence and stared at each other. Finally, Kara said, “You never called. I guess I felt like I was tossed to the lions and the one person I trusted to have my back didn’t even care.”
“I should have reached out, but I was pissed off. I was mad at you, mad at the situation, at Lex, at the feds, and then Colton...well, I just thought you shifting over to an out-of-town detail, out of the damn state, was the smartest thing. I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since.”
“I’m going to call in Matt. You need to tell him everything about that stupid portal, and he’ll find the traitor in the FBI. That, I promise you.”
14
Elena Gomez left the Sheraton not feeling any better about the situation that she was in. Lying to Kara—even lies of omission—had made her stomach twist painfully.
Damn Craig for bringing Kara back to testify! Maybe they needed her for the Chen hearing, but bringing her back put the most sensitive investigation in Elena’s career in jeopardy—and now her friend was dead.
What investigation? Without Craig, you have shit.
She drove to Hanks, a dive bar on Western, south of Third. It was far out of her jurisdiction, and didn’t cater to cops. When she’d grown up not far from here in Van Nuys, the neighborhood hadn’t been bad. Not great, but not bad. Now every storefront was a bar, dispensary or shuttered, every building covered with graffiti. She wasn’t in uniform, but gangs smelled cops, so she kept her eyes and ears open.
Inside, Lex was already at a table drinking whiskey. Usually, it was Lex and Craig waiting for her. Craig—who looked so out of place here it was almost laughable—liked the joint, said the bar felt more real than the upscale places his fellow lawyers preferred.
Elena was going to miss him. They’d bonded years ago over common beliefs in justice and the law, and had become friends. She was a few years younger than Craig and Lex, but they were of the same generation with the same sensibilities.
Simply, they respected each other.
Hanks was never busy at nine thirty on a Monday night, but there were a few people sitting in singles or pairs at the bar, and a group of four men played pool. The bartender—Cindy—was six feet tall, close to sixty, with tattoos covering every visible inch of skin except her face. If she’d made them as cops, she never said. She could hold her own, and no one gave her shit.
