Flashback

“dangerous”? Nick thought of how his son used to take his fielder’s mitt to bed with him, like a stuffed animal.

“They’re doing analysis on the two slugs taken out of Billy Coyne and the third one pried out of the tunnel wall behind him,” said K.T., her voice a monotone. “But CHP Assistant Chief Ambrose, who I spoke to tonight, said the one he’d seen that came out of the wall was nine millimeter.”

“CHP Assistant Chief Ambrose?” Nick repeated stupidly. “Dale Ambrose?”

“Yeah.” K.T. had lowered the Glock to the tabletop and covered it with a newspaper, but Nick knew that it was still aimed in his general direction. “You know him?”

“Yeah. No. I mean—the Old Man helped train Ambrose here in the Colorado State Patrol. I think they had sort of a mentor-sensei thing going. I know the Old Man thought that Ambrose was going to be a good trooper. Then, a few years before my father was killed, Ambrose moved out to California. Remember when I went out to L.A. about nine years ago to transport that child rapist-killer back? I spent some time with Ambrose then and he and I have called each other for some help on things. Last time I heard, he was an assistant chief in the CHP.”

“Maybe you should talk to him, then,” said K.T.

“Yeah.”

“Part of his job as assistant chief is to head up the CHP protection details for both the governor and the Advisor. It was Ambrose’s guys, along with Omura’s own Japanese security people, who exchanged fire with the kids.”

“But not with Val,” said Nick. “There’s no evidence yet that he was there.” His voice was hard-edged but hopeful.

K.T. shrugged. The APB on Val suggested that there was plenty of evidence to assume that Val had been in on the thing with his fellow flashgang members. With the state of DNA analysis these days, if Val had been in that tunnel and done so much as breathed, they’d have the evidence soon. Nick knew what K.T.’s shrug meant— The night is young.

Just the idea—fact—of Val being in an L.A. flashgang made Nick crazy. Denver’s flashgangs, committing crimes of violence just so they could relive them again under the flash, were made up of some of the sickest fucks Nick and K.T. had ever dealt with. And the L.A. flashgangs were said to be much worse than Denver’s.

Nick felt dizzy, almost as if he’d been tasered again.

“What else?” said Nick.

“You up to hearing the rest, partner?” asked K.T.

Nick blinked at the “partner.” Either Lieutenant Lincoln was being viciously sarcastic or she’d seen how hard the news about Val had hit him. Maybe it was a bit of both.

“Yeah. Tell me.”

K.T. slid a short stack of colored files toward him.

“You can read them without leaning or sliding closer,” she said softly. She’d covered her right hand and the Glock with some sort of open catalogue or brochure. “Use just your left hand to turn the pages. Don’t lift the whole file.”

“Jesus, K.T.,” Nick said disgustedly.

She didn’t respond.

Nick read, slowly turning pages with his left hand. When he was done he said nothing.

They were copied pages of a report stating that Dara Fox Bottom and Assistant District Attorney Harvey Cohen had shared motel and hotel rooms at least ten times in the five weeks previous to Keigo Nakamura’s murder six years ago. Along with the bald statements were copies of Harvey’s business credit-card statements and payment vouchers from the district attorney’s office.

“This is bullshit,” Nick said. He pushed the files back toward K.T.

“Keep them,” she said. “How do you know they’re bullshit?”

“This one voucher shows that Harvey and Dara shared a room at the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe,” he said, tapping the green folder. “I happen to know that they didn’t. They had adjoining rooms there.”

Now K.T. blinked. “Dara told you this?”

“No, but I’ve been using flash recently to see times when she tried to tell me that something was going on— not between her and Harvey, I don’t think, but some special project that had them running around after Keigo Nakamura. Even down to Santa Fe.”

“The invoices say that they shared a room.”

“The invoices are bullshit,” repeated Nick. “I know. I talked to someone at the Inn of the Anasazi yesterday. A maid who’s been there about forty years and who remembers Dara being there six years ago. She liked Dara.”

K.T. shook her head. “I don’t get it. What were you doing in Santa Fe and how long have you known that there was a suspicion of Harvey and Dara sharing rooms together?”

Nick answered only the second question. “About thirty-six hours ago, Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev told me that Dara had stayed at the Inn of the Anasazi with Harvey six years ago, one day after Keigo Nakamura had interviewed him, just four days before Keigo was whacked. I was in the city, so I dropped by the hotel and asked around. The dipshit at the desk wouldn’t give me any information, despite me flashing my fake shield, but I found two old spanic maids who remembered Dara being there. The one old gal even remembered their room numbers— Harvey’s and Dara’s. Adjoining, but not the same room. Not even the same suite.”

“Why would a hotel maid remember someone’s room number after six years?” asked K.T. “Someone she only met once?”

“I told you,” said Nick. “The maid, whose name was Maria Consuela Zanetta Herrera, liked Dara. They chatted and discovered, Ms. Herrera told me, that they both had boys named Val… although Maria’s son’s name was short for Valentin. And her son was twenty-nine while she remembered Dara saying that her boy was only ten.”

“Sorry I doubted you,” said K.T. She didn’t sound sorry, only tired. “But, Nick, why would all these other hotel vouchers also be faked?”

“You haven’t told me where this crap came from,” he reminded her. “It almost looks like the kind of report you see submitted to or from a grand jury.”

“It is part of a grand jury report,” said his ex-partner. “Submitted to a grand jury but gathered during an internal investigation by the office of the district attorney in March, five and a half years ago. While Mannie Ortega was still DA.”

“An internal investigation?” muttered Nick. He’d rarely been so confused. “Two months after Dara and Harvey were killed in the accident on I-Twenty-five? An interdepartmental investigation and grand jury looking into whether one of the assistant DAs was having an affair with my wife? That makes no fucking sense. None at all.”

K.T. shook her head, as if in agreement. “The joint investigation wasn’t looking into whether Harvey and Dara were screwing behind your back, Nick. It was looking into who killed Harvey and Dara.”

“Who killed them?” whispered Nick. He was glad he was sitting down. As it was, he had to grab the sides of the old wooden chair to hold himself steady.

“I told you it got worse,” whispered K.T. “Can you take this last part? I’m serious.”

“Show me,” growled Nick. “Now.” His tone told her how serious he was.

She slid the rest of the colored dossiers across the table toward him.

Nick scooted his chair closer and hunched over the table, flipping photocopied pages and reading. If K.T. wanted to shoot him, let her shoot him. Instead, she pulled the Glock out from under the concealing catalogue and holstered it. Four white-stubbled men wandered by, talking about books and heading for the flashcave cots in the darkened room at the base of the ramp.

Nick was looking at more than two hundred pages of grand jury paperwork. The secret grand jury had been seated by then district attorney Manuel Ortega in late February of the year Dara had died—seated less than a full month after her death—and the thrust of the investigation seemed to be that ADA Harvey Cohen and his assistant Dara Fox Bottom, while working on a DA department project that was still classified, had begun a clandestine love affair.

That DPD Detective First Grade Nick Bottom had learned about the affair and arranged to have his wife and