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Rebecca nodded. That played with her sense that there was a hidden agenda beneath the stated objectives of the investigation. And there was nothing to do but do the job and keep her eyes open. “Did he give you anything specific to work with?”
“Actually, yes,” Sloan affirmed. “There are probably 100,000 sites that supply child sex images world wide. Many of them link to credit-card transaction and on-line billing sites that take Visa, MasterCard, and AmEx. When you trace them through their domain registry, they turn out to be in the Balkans or Bali or some other even more remote locale.”
“Untouchable,” Jason commented.
“Right,” Sloan agreed. “A more profitable place to search is the web-hosting companies. Most porn sites are explicit about their content when they register with a server—you know, clever names like underagenymphos.net and lolitaland.com. Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section has given us a prescreened list of potential US-based companies that specialize in porn sites. I’ll start there, looking for intersecting references to anything in the Northeast corridor as points of origin. If there is a big supplier, particularly a live feed line somewhere local, we’ll get a whiff of it eventually.”
“Sounds simple,” Watts commented dryly. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s an international network of Web resellers who buy and sell space on hosting frames. They can cloak the site content so it’s not so conspicuous to broad searches.”
“And that’s what we’re looking for, right?” Rebecca asked. “A central clearing house.”
Sloan nodded, an appreciative glint in her eye at Rebecca’s quick assessment. “Yes. That’s very high up on our list of desirable Intel. While I do the broad sweeps, Jason will try for individual contacts.”
Watts regarded the only other man in the room sympathetically, feeling an instant kinship with him based on that fact alone. “Jeez, you’re gonna pretend to be a perv?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” Jason replied flatly. “The rest of the time I’m going to pretend to be a girl.”
“We’re going to go at this from every angle we can,” Sloan affirmed, shooting Jason a bemused smile that no one else noticed.
Rebecca stood. “Is there someplace here where Mitchell can set up shop for us?” She didn’t add that she wanted a place where she could discuss the street side of things with Watts privately, but she didn’t imagine she needed to. Sloan was too sharp not to know that no one shares everything, ever.
“I’ll show you,” Jason offered. “There’s another meeting room you can have at the other end of the floor. It’s small, but the coffee machine works.”
“It’ll be fine,” Rebecca acknowledged. “Thanks.” She glanced at Sloan. “The first time you get a hint of anything that even vaguely connects to here, let me know.”
“No problem.”
When Jason left them in a conference room that made anything at the one-eight look like a slum, Rebecca said, “Mitchell, take ten. We’ll discuss your assignment when you get back.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll be back in ten. Bring you anything?”
“No thanks. How many open cases do you have?” Rebecca asked Watts when the uniform left. “Because officially, you aren’t even on this case.”
“Nothing pressing. A few follow-up interviews, two coming to trial, and those cold files I’ve been slugging through.” He hiked a hip up unto the corner of another sleek tabletop, the fabric of his shiny brown suit stretching over his ample middle. “I thought we…uh…you were just supposed to be the contact person when these eggheads find something. If they find something.”
“That’s what Henry said,” Rebecca agreed. “I think we’re all going fishing for Avery Clark, and I don’t like that too much. Let’s poke around and see if we can find out what he really wants us to catch.”
“You think it’s Zamora?” Watts asked flatly, watching her carefully. Nicholas Zamora was the head of the local organized crime syndicate, and he had been amazingly successful at avoiding prosecution. So successful that most cops believed he had friends in high places.
“I don’t think anything,” Rebecca replied steadily.
“Wouldn’t it be a bite in the ass if Zamora goes down for selling dirty pictures after all the times we’ve tried to nail him for drugs and racketeering. Justice is a funny thing sometimes.” His expression was one of happy expectation.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, and don’t talk this up at the squad,” she warned sharply. I don’t want another…partner…winding up dead.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” he replied. “Especially if chasing around for you keeps me from hunting down weenie waggers in the park. Can you get me some slack with the Cap?”
She considered her options, and they were slim. Officially this was a desk job for her. Talking to the feds, coordinating with the computer cops, and sitting on her ass until something happened. Which might be never. “I could probably justify some time for you on this by telling him I need you to run down the guys Jeff and I put away in that kiddie prostitution bust last spring. Find out if any of them are out of jail yet. Shake them down for some names. Go through the paperwork—you might even dig something up that would give us a lead.”
“Good enough for me,” Watts said. “I don’t suppose whatever we’re going to be doing is going into the rookie’s log book.”
She just looked at him.
“Right. I’m ready,” he said more seriously. “Just give me the word.”
“Go ahead and start on it,” she said as a discreet cough from the doorway to the conference room announced the uniform’s return. “I’ll call you later.”
“What’re you gonna be doing?” he asked as he ambled toward the door.
She didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected her to. It would be a long time—maybe never—before she confided in him. Some cops never accepted another partner after one was killed. Didn’t want to take the risk of losing another, or as in her case, most likely, they could only form that kind of attachment once in a lifetime. He put his hands in his pockets, walked to the elevator, and tried not to be bothered by her secrets.
“Come in, Mitchell,” Rebecca said as she slid open a drawer under the counter that held an automatic coffee machine and discovered prepackaged coffee packets of a better than average brand. She didn’t speak again until she had poured water into the coffee pot from the cooler in the corner of the room. Then she turned to face the officer who was standing just inside the room, shoulders back, hands straight down at her sides. It was a posture most young officers assumed when dealing with superiors, but on her it looked a lot more natural.
“What did you do before you were a cop?” Rebecca asked, walking to the windows and glancing at the view. Breathtaking. For an instant she thought of Catherine, and wondered what she was doing at that moment. She looked away from the pristine sky and glistening water.
“I was in the Army, ma’am.”
“Enlisted?”
“No, ma’am. Second Lieutenant.”
“West Point?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Serve long?”
A tightening of the muscles along her jaw which might have gone unnoticed, but Rebecca was looking for it. “No, ma’am. Just over a year.”
Rebecca studied her, noting the faint bruise on her left cheek that was more obvious in the sunlight coming through the windows than it had been previously.
“How long have you been on the force?”
“Eight months.”
Allowing for her time in the academy, she was probably in her mid-twenties, which was about how old she looked. Rebecca poured herself a cup of coffee. “Have some coffee, Mitchell.”
Mitchell glanced at her, surprised. “Thank you, ma—”
“And you can relax. Save the sirs and all for the brass. They like it. The rest of us are just cops, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So. Want to tell me what your situation is?” She could find out, and eventually she’d take a look at the kid’s file, but she wanted to hear it from her. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they explained their problems.
“I’ve been taken off street duty while the review board investigates a complaint against me,” Mitchell answered immediately.
Which probably means someone in the department is covering their ass instead of supporting one of our own. If Mitchell has done anything even remotely prosecutable, they’d have suspended her, not just reassigned her . “Justifiable?”
“I subdued a suspect with force. He’s complaining.”
Well, that explains the bruise. Very smart answer, too. She isn’t excusing herself, and she isn’t admitting guilt. If she survives this inquiry, she’s got a future in the department . Rebecca sipped her coffee. “Okay. This assignment will probably be deadly boring, but it’s what you’ve drawn. For the moment, you’ll be based here. If Sloan or McBride need you to do anything for them, go ahead. You can run backgrounds for them at the one-eight if there’s something they can’t find out for themselves.”
“I doubt they’ll need that,” Mitchell remarked. “They’re hackers.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too. But just the same, if they need something that could later be construed as chain of evidence, try to make it look official. Go through channels and keep some kind of log so we know what the hell we have to work with if we ever need to get a warrant.”
“Roger.”
“I’ll be in and out. Page me if something comes up.”
“Yes, ma’am” For the first time Mitchell looked uneasy. “I have to report for my psych eval three times a week until I’m cleared. I’ll advise you of—”
“Just go, Mitchell,” Rebecca said brusquely. I know all about it. With any luck we won’t run into each other in Whitaker’s waiting room.
Mitchell stiffened at the change in the detective’s tone. “Yes, ma’am. Understood.”
“Hopefully, we’ll all be off this duty in a week or so. Be here at seven-thirty tomorrow.” She tossed her cup in the trash and walked out, leaving Mitchell to stare after her. She had three hours to kill before her appointment with the psychologist. It was too early in the day to find the people she wanted to talk to, and she admitted to herself as she rode swiftly down on the silent elevator that the only person she really wanted to see at the moment had nothing to do with the investigation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CATHERINE RAWLINGS STEPPED away from the group of residents and looked at the readout on her pager, then walked to a wall phone and dialed the number.
“This is Doctor Rawlings.”
“Any chance you’re free for lunch?”
Smiling, she turned her back to the hallway and lowered her voice. “Where are you?”
“In the lobby.”
She was aware of her heart beating faster and a faint stirring within, and the fact that the mere sound of Rebecca’s voice could do that to her was astounding. And a little frightening, too. The newness of anyone affecting her quite so much would take some getting used to. “Damn. I can’t. I scheduled an extra patient session right before I have to go to the outpatient clinic. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I was just in the neighborhood,” Rebecca replied quickly. She glanced around the lobby and rolled her shoulders, trying to shake out some of the tension. The frustration she’d felt upon awakening that morning on Catherine’s couch just as dawn had begun to cast the room in a gray pall lingered still. She’d opened her eyes, struggled to remember where she was and how she’d gotten there, and finally realized that yet again she had fallen asleep, leaving Catherine hanging. By the time she’d stumbled, still stiff and groggy to the bedroom, Catherine’s alarm was going off and they’d barely had time to say good morning before rushing to shower, dress and head off to work. She missed her, and worse, she had the uneasy feeling she was letting down her end of…things. Again. Fuck.
“Dinner?” Catherine asked into the silence. She wanted to ask her if she was working, and what she was doing, and how she was feeling, but she resisted, not wanting to burden this spontaneous moment with her own uncertainty and unease.
“Sure. Page me when you’re finished tonight.”
“I have patients, and then an appointment. Is nine too late?”
“It’s fine.” The detective hesitated, then added, “About last night—I won’t make a habit of crashing before the appetizers—”
“No, really,” Catherine interjected, glancing at her watch. “It’s all right. Hell, I have to go—”
“Right. I’ll see you later then.”
“Yes.”
Five floors apart, they each stood still for a moment, holding a phone with only a dial tone, considering the things they had left unsaid.
CSI Chief Dee Flanagan didn’t look up at the sound of footsteps approaching across the tile floor of her lab. Carefully, she pipetted an aliquot of fluid containing an emulsion of the material scraped off the bottom of a murder suspect’s shoe into a centrifuge tube. If she were right, there’d be trace amounts of a very specific high-grade motor oil in the supernatant that would match the composition of the brand in the victim’s Ferrari. Because the murderer stepped in the oil puddle when he’d crossed the garage on his way to crushing in the back of the victim’s skull with a tire iron. Not a very inventive means of dispatching his neighbor—a fellow who was apparently spending the afternoons in bed with his wife—but then murder was so rarely clever. The gas chromatography analysis would confirm the match, placing the suspect at the scene. Not enough for an arrest in and of itself, but another link in the chain. Another piece in the puzzle fit neatly into place. Dropping the tube into the centrifuge cradle, still without turning toward the intruder, she said into the quiet room, “I don’t have anything for you yet, and I won’t for another two hours. If you keep bugging me, it’s going to be tomorrow. And don’t touch anything.”
“I haven’t been gone that long,” Rebecca remarked dryly, standing as she always did when in Flanagan’s lab—with her hands safely in her pockets. “I know the drill.”
Flanagan, the forty-year old forensic chief, small and wiry and a head shorter than Rebecca, known to be notoriously short-tempered, turned toward her visitor with undisguised delight. “I’ll be damned. Frye.” She held out her hand. “Maggie said she saw you at the gym. You back in the saddle?”
Rebecca took her hand, grinning. “Looks like.”
“Good. Maybe those monkeys in your division will get some cases solved for a change.”
“Thanks—I think.”
Flanagan gestured toward a small cubicle adjoing the sparkling, equipment-filled room. “Come on into the office—I know you didn’t drop by just to be sociable.”
Rebecca followed her. “I need to catch up on a few things. I figured you’d be the one to ask.”
Flanagan gave her a wary glance as she settled behind her surprisingly messy desk. In sharp contrast to the rest of her domain, which was obsessively organized, her private office was apparent chaos. However, she knew precisely where every piece of paper, dental model and crime scene mock-up resided, and woe to the unwary cleaning person who dared move anything a micrometer. “You’re going to start poking around in things again, aren’t you?”
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