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“I had a long talk with Lieutenant Gomez last night,” Kara said. “She didn’t confirm or deny that you were on Chen’s payroll, but you were. And then you were transferred here right before the raid. I thought about this half the night, and my guess is you’re still on somebody’s payroll and feeding Gomez information.”
“Why don’t you ask her? Didn’t she train you? Aren’t you two besties?”
The snide comment had no place in this conversation, so Kara ignored it.
“I’m asking you.”
He didn’t say anything. She leaned back, sipped her beer. “Craig Dyson is dead,” she said conversationally. “I was there. It was a professional hit, no doubt about it. Chen? Not quite as professional but the killer took out the security cameras before he shot Chen on the street and walked away. It was a bold attack downtown when it would have been a hundred times easier killing him in the parking garage or his house or in the middle of a fucking restaurant. That tells me the killer wanted the splash to send a message or to force the courthouse into lockdown or any number of things. There had to be a reason because it was stupid.”
“It’s not stupid if he gets away with it,” Tom commented.
True, she thought. “So when Elena confirmed, more or less, that you were feeding her information, I was trying to think why. Here’s my guess. You were caught taking bribes from Chen while I was undercover. You were moved to the north division only a week before the raid. Tell me why I should believe you’re not the one who leaked the raid to Chen. You must have suspected something.”
“I saw you on-site months before. If I wanted to fuck with your operation, I would have told Chen you were a cop when you were pretending to be a clothing buyer.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer right away. He sipped his beer, looked down at his napkin as if something super interesting was written there. Then he looked her in the eye. “I took money from Chen to ignore what he was doing. To make reports disappear, to stay on that beat. To look the other way, you’d probably say. But I’d never set up a cop. Chen would have killed you, and I couldn’t live with that. So I kept my mouth shut.”
There were so many problems with Tom’s attitude, but Kara didn’t comment. She forced herself not to think about the women trapped in servitude, or Sunny murdered in cold blood. She blocked out the pain and suffering and inhumanity of Chen’s actions, which Kara placed firmly on Tom’s shoulders.
“How did Elena find out?” she asked.
“Not exactly sure. She might have been fishing, just suspicious, but when she confronted me, I admitted it. I suspected the raid was going to be coming down sooner rather than later. She told me she was moving me to the north division and for me to keep my mouth shut. That I would be called upon to testify against Chen and anyone else they caught during or after this investigation. If Chen reached out and asked why I had been transferred, I was to say that North Valley was short-staffed and I had no say about it. If anyone else reached out to me, I was supposed to call Gomez. After the raid, she fully debriefed me—I told her everything I knew. I kept expecting the shit to hit the fan, but it never did.
“Then, a couple weeks ago, Gomez and Dyson came to my house. Sunday night, my wife was making dinner. I thought this was it, I was being arrested in front of my family. I felt sick and disgusted with myself. But they didn’t arrest me. They said that they were in the middle of a major undercover investigation stemming from Chen and wanted to know if I had seen any specific people with Chen at any time. They showed me a bunch of pictures.”
“And?”
“I pointed out several people I recognized. I only knew the name of one—an inspector for the city named Connie. I didn’t know her last name. She came by the warehouse several times over the years. But I also recognized a man—didn’t know his name—who had been to the apartment building where Chen’s workers lived. He came by several times. I had no idea why, never asked.”
Elena had withheld a lot more information than Kara had thought.
“Then what happened?”
“They told me to just keep doing what I was doing and I would be called in front of a grand jury to testify within the next few months. If I kept clean and told the complete truth to the grand jury, I could keep my pension. If I lied, I would be prosecuted.” He finished his beer. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, Quinn. I don’t really care if you do. I did what I did, and there are cops who do far worse than me. I was just riding out my time in a thankless job and making a little green on the side. I have fifteen years on the force. I won’t get my full pension—they’ll make me leave early, after the hearing—but at least I’ll have something for my wife and kids, and no black marks on my record so I can get another job. Until then? I’m doing what Gomez ordered—staying clean, keeping my head down and telling her everything I know.”
23
Kara drove straight to LAPD headquarters. She’d told Michael everything Tom had said, and he didn’t think she should confront Elena right now. She considered his advice, dismissed it. There were too many things kept from her about her investigation. Why shut her out? Had she fucked up and no one wanted to tell her?
Nothing made sense and it wouldn’t until she knew everything, and that started at the top.
“You can come with me,” she began.
“I’ll wait here. I’ll call Matt, let him know what’s going on.”
“Thanks.”
He reached out, touched her arm. “Take five minutes to calm down, okay? More flies with honey.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Still, she took several deep, cleansing breaths in the elevator and felt calmer when she reached Elena’s office.
It was the ten minutes she had to wait for Elena that had her anger building again.
One look at her and Elena swore under her breath. “Come in.” She picked up her phone and a moment later said, “I need you in my office.”
