The first thing Barb did was research her adversary. From her phone, she ordered a full background check through a private detective agency advertising its services on the Internet. Anyone could do it. It wasn’t even that expensive—a few hundred dollars for the deluxe package.
She was pleasantly surprised to receive the results less than an hour later, back in her condo, in the bedroom she’d converted into an office. She printed out the attachment downloaded from the agency’s email and read through the first section, a full credit report outlining the man’s income, his debts, and his history of consistently paying off each credit card monthly. He was, by all appearances, a careful steward of his finances. She wondered for a moment if he might be taking in money on the side, but a quick check online revealed his income to be squarely in line with the standard salary for a police detective.
The next section of the report summarized the subject’s life story, pieced together from publicly available records. His childhood appeared to be perfectly normal up to the age of eleven—when the death of his mother led to a series of foster homes and eventually a group home for troubled teens.
“There it is,” she said to Marmalade. “That’s the root of everything.”
Barb formed a picture in her mind of a sensitive and agonized boy growing into an emotionally stunted man, terrified of abandonment and desperate to control any woman he chose as a mother substitute. Put a paramilitary organization behind him, and the result was the swaggering bully in her crosshairs.
While the report gave Barb insight into the psychology of Evers, it didn’t offer her anything she could use against him to undermine him or the hold he had on Danita. That is until she saw the final page.
It stood out from the rest, a single sentence scrawled on lined paper. But that sentence was dynamite.
Attempts to access—or even confirm—rumored Internal Affairs report were unsuccessful.
#
Before Barb closed her laptop for the night, she took a moment to send encouragement to Danita. She knew that abusers often monitored their victim’s communications, so she used a burner phone to message the girl’s coworker.
Tell Danita to keep the faith
kk, came the reply.
Now, all Barb needed to do was justify that faith.
#
The next morning, after her usual breakfast of bran flakes and yogurt, Barb stepped into her office and fired up her laptop. Her first goal was to get a copy of the internal affairs reports. If she were back north, she’d know who to reach out to. But her contacts down here were far slimmer. That didn’t mean she was tying. It would just involve a few additional steps.
She refreshed her coffee, settled back down, and made her first call.
“Hunter,” came a no-nonsense alto.
“Is this where I call to confess?” said Barb.
“That you, Barb?”
“None other.”
“Then hang up and call a priest. We haven’t got a big enough department to handle all the bodies you’ve got buried. Besides, I heard you left us for the City of Angels.”
“True.”
“So, what can a lowly Palo Alto detective do for you?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“You’re asking for someone to break the blue wall,” said Hunter after Barb had explained the situation.
“Understood. But a girl’s life is a mistake.”
“And you’re connected to her how?”
“She makes my morning lattes.”
“If this dude is as bad as you say, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Not in the least,” said Barb with a small laugh.
#
Not quite an hour later, Barb got a text from an unknown caller. All it contained was a map link and a single line of text:
11:15.
When she clicked the link, she found a satellite view of the Santa Monica Pier.
At 11:10, she strolled onto the real-life pier and followed the directions to a bench where is middle-aged Hispanic woman in sensible slacks and shoes with an open-collared white dress shirt under a matching jacket. Barb didn’t need to see the badge on her belt to know she was plainclothes LAPD.
“May I?” said Barb, gesturing to the bench.
“Let’s walk instead.” The other woman stood and held out her hand.
Barb extended her own, but the woman made a face and gestured to the phone in Barb’s other hand. Barb handed it over. The woman powered it down and handed it back.
“You never met me, “she said. “And we’re not having this conversation. Understand me?”
“Completely.”
The woman walks back up the pier, not speaking, Barb at her side. They came to a staircase leading down to the beach. Only after they reached the open sand did the other woman continue.
“Someone I trust very much vouches for you,” she said. “That only goes so far. The case you’re asking about is radioactive.”
“I’m not looking to make trouble. My only goal is to help one woman escape her abuser.”
“So he’s still at it.” The woman grimaced. “Of course he is. We had him cold, but instead of prosecuting, the department in its wisdom decided to bury the matter and let the bastard resign with his reputation intact.”
“Make him someone else’s problem.”
“Exactly.”
The two women walked in silence.
“There are some cases that stay with you,” said the Hispanic woman. “Like a man using the badge to coerce sexual favors from helpless women whose only crime was to be born on the wrong side of the border. Good Catholic women giving in to keep their families from being rounded up and deported. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he turned in the last one anyway. She’s the one I can’t forget.”
“It’s long past time someone held him accountable for his actions.”
“Amen. But it won’t be the LAPD. Unless—”
“Yes?”
“If there were to be some form of outside pressure. A public outcry that couldn’t be traced back to the department.”
Barb gave a tight little smile. “Let me see what I can do.”
#
Back in her condo, Barb considered what she’d learned. Even if she somehow got proof of Evers’s actions, there was no way he’d suffer for them—not in the current climate where ICE agents killed with impunity. It would seem to be a dead end. But something told Barb not to let it go. Part of it was intuition—a feeling that there had to be more to the story. Shutting down a prosecution was extreme. It carried risks of its own. Should the cover-up ever become public, the negative publicity would be far greater than if the original story had come out—unless there was more to the story.
The point was moot as long as no one in the department with information was willing to speak out. There was one person outside the department, however, who knew the entire story, who in fact knew every last detail.
The trick was getting him to talk.
She returned to the report on David Evers. Among other basic details of his life, it included his personal and professional emails. The former was “bigdave84@gmail.com.” That was all she needed to prepare her opening salvo. First, she created her own Gmail account in the name of “lapddude546.” Once she had it set up, she fired off a quick email.
Heads up. Some bitch just came sniffing around the department about you.
She didn’t have to wait long for his reply.
Who the hell is this?
Barb closed her laptop, gave Marmalade’s head a scratch, and thought about what she wanted for lunch.
#
“What the fuck?” Big Dave looked up from his phone.
“What’s the matter?” said his partner, Joey. They were in the locker room, changing into their civvies after a long and frustrating night. It was getting harder and harder to carry out their duty with people following them, honking horns, and otherwise interfering with them. The night action had been an attempt to sidestep this: a quick raid on a warehouse known to be a cartel staging area. But when they’d busted down the door, all they’d found was empty space. The entire night, and all the work that had led up to it, was a bust.
Joey was an old-timer with the department—meaning he’d been there when it was more or less a normal government agency, focussing its efforts on tracking down and removing the worst elements coming across the border—gang members, drug mules, and human traffickers. He felt sick whenever he let himself think about what the department had become. He harbored fantasies of quitting to join a state or local force, but that would mean letting the bastards win—and he just couldn’t do that. In addition, his wife was pregnant and now wasn’t the time to be changing health insurance, pension plans, or union membership.
Dave was part of the new crew, ex-LAPD, and not the worst partner Joey had ever worked with. He wasn’t one of the true believers wearing white supremacy like badge of honor. He was sharp, hard-working, and loyal to a fault. Joey had no doubt Dave would back him up in any circumstance, including perjuring himself. At the same time, there were hints of a darker side that the big man kept under wraps—at least around Joey.
And that’s all a partner could ask.
#
Dave sat in his 65 Shelby. The car was his pride and joy. He’d bought it off Craigslist in shameful condition and patiently restored it. Cherry red with a rebuilt Deluxe interior package, it usually gave him a thrill to feel the thrum of her 335 horses. But this morning there was no thrill. That damn email had thrown him off. He tried not to think about it on his drive home, but it nagged at him the entire way.
He pulled into the garage, and before he got out of the car, he checked his phone for another email. Nothing. He swore and got out, heading into the house. The garage emptied directly into the kitchen, where Danita had breakfast waiting for him. She was standing by the stove, looking meek. Good. His message had gotten through. He hated to think she might need a more forceful one, but if that’s what it took he was prepared to deliver it. What she hadn’t understood, what every female in his experience eventually failed to understand, was that he would not be disrespected. Not by some punk on the street and not by some bitch in his own house.
He sat down to his eggs, toast, and sausage. They were done exactly to his liking, and on another morning he might have thrown Danita a bone in the form of a compliment. But he was too distracted by the mysterious emails. He checked his phone yet again and found nothing. Impatient, he fired off an email of his own.
I don’t know who the hell you are or what you’re playing at, but you picked the wrong Fed to fuck with.
He felt moderately better. Getting up from the table, he swaggered into the den, where he sat in his oversized leather recliner and fired up his smart TV. He chose an old episode of CHiPs to stream, and before it had played very long, he was fast asleep.
#
Barb took a final bite of her Niçoise and called it good. She beckoned to her new server, and he brought over the check.
“Have you heard anything from Ronnie?” she asked.
“Not personally,” he said. “But Cassie gets regular updates. She says he’s made a real impression on the director, and they’re rewriting his part to add more scenes.”
“How wonderful!”
“I guess so. But who’d he fuck to get that kind of break?”
Barb smiled to herself, recalling one of her favorite quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.”
In the town car on her way home, she checked her email. There were three new ones from David Evers, each increasing in belligerence. It appeared her opening gambit was paying off. It was time to step things up. She decided to move from email to text and composed a brief message. To send it, she used an app that stripped out her real number from the caller ID and substituted whatever she chose instead. She double-checked the number she’d come across in her research and then hit send.
LAPD is planning to hang you out to dry. Trust no one.
She closed her phone and leaned back into the town car’s supple upholstery. Her driver, Sara, caught Barb’s eye in the rearview mirror and raised an eyebrow.
“Having a good day?” she said.
“Quite,” said Barb. “How about you? How’s your boy?”
“All good. The surgeon says he got it all, and the biopsy came back negative.”
“Wonderful.”
“Thank you again for everything. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s my pleasure.”
There hadn’t been any way to cover the child’s medical expenses anonymously, but Barb hadn’t let that stop her from helping. Thankfully, Sara’s gratitude, while genuine, had never escalated into cloying.
“Will you be needing any more rides today?” said Sara.
“Doubtful,” said Barb. “I’ll probably order in tonight.”
“If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Barb closed her eyes and quietly considered her next move.
#
Big Dave woke from a troubled dream. He stared around, disoriented. Only gradually did he become aware that he was safely at home in his big chair. He checked the time. It was a little after 12:30. He hadn’t slept nearly enough. What had woken him? If it was Danita running the vacuum again, he’d…
Before he could finish the thought, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. There was a text from a number he didn’t recognize. He stared at the message, reading it over two and then three times.
Dave felt his balls shrink up inside his belly. He’d thought he was safe. His old union rep said he’d dodged a bullet. The department was supposed to have buried everything so deep that it would never see the light of day. How the fuck could it be coming out now?
The utter terror he felt was unbearable. So his system did what it had learned to do many years before. Emotional alchemy transmuted fear into rage. Rage and an overwhelming need to act on it.
“Danita!” he yelled.
There was no answer. He yelled her name again. Still, there was nothing. He pushed himself up and out of the chair, letting his momentum carry him through the den and into the hallway. He looked around for Danita but didn’t find her. It must be her shift at the coffee house again. He shook his head. What the fuck was she doing working, anyway? He earned more than enough to take care of the both of them. It should be her job to take care of his needs. He resolved to handle the situation when she got home.