truth.
And where did Victor Montgomery fit in? The only connection, again, was through Bowen and the Wishlist- through Emily.
Julia went through the files, wondering if there was another connection. Something she’d missed. After all, she had over a thousand pages all over her kitchen table, most of them copies.
The judge who gave Jason Ridge the DEJ was Vernon Small.
Judge Small was dead. Julia hadn’t attended his funeral, nor had she particularly liked him. He was too easy on the bad guys, too hard on the good guys.
And now he was dead.
Coincidence? She didn’t remember how he’d died. He was old, that she knew. She’d assumed it was natural causes.
Connor hightailed it to the downtown gym. Though early on a Sunday morning, there was already a sprinkling of kids lifting weights or playing B-ball on the blacktop.
“Hey, Kincaid, we need another man. Two on two?”
Looking around for Billy, he didn’t see him. He glanced at his watch, realized he was ten minutes early.
“For a few minutes.” Connor tossed his duffel bag under the bench.
Jesus was a tall, skinny, fast-on-his-feet Cuban American kid who played hard. Mitch and Travis were long and lean six-foot-five-inch brothers who’d been in a gang until Connor busted them for possession with intent to sell and a concealed weapons charge only months before he quit the force. They’d been twelve and thirteen. They’d managed to turn their life around for the most part, but had dropped out of high school. Both worked full-time in blue-collar jobs with little future. But they were clean and spent all their free time at the youth center helping Connor keep the younger kids out of gangs.
Every so often they saved one. Jesus was one such kid. He’d landed a scholarship to Berkeley.
They played hard for thirty minutes before Connor realized Billy hadn’t showed. He called time and slapped the kids on the back. “You doing okay?” he asked.
“We’re hanging,” Jesus said.
“Keep it clean, bro.” Connor wiped down and looked around for Billy.
Ten minutes later, when Connor was ready to just leave, Billy entered the basketball courts.
“Hey, you’re late.”
“I don’t want to get fucked.”
“I wouldn’t fuck you, buddy.”
“I remembered what you said. You know, the pay it forward crap.”
Connor had tried to instill in the kids he met through the youth center that they always needed to do the right thing, even when they didn’t get a direct benefit from it. Most kids, particularly those in the gang culture, couldn’t see beyond their own wants and needs.
“And?”
“Well, I remembered something that might be important.”
“I’m all ears.”
Billy, to his credit, didn’t hesitate. “Some fine young woman came up to me a while back.”
“Does this gorgeous babe have a name?”
“She didn’t tell me. She was a white chick, blond, hot. I thought she might have a thing for black guys, so I listened.” Billy grinned.
“Yeah, you’re all hung,” Connor joked. “Nearly as well as Cubans.”
“Shit, you wish.” Billy laughed. “So Blondie comes up to me, all sexy and hot, and says she wants to talk to me about justice.”
Connor’s instincts hummed. The e-mail subject line in Emily’s post on Wishlist had justice in it.
“When was this?” he asked Billy.
“A week or so before Judson was shot.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I’d listen. It was at the shop, after hours. She locked the door, got down on her knees, and gave me a blow job.”
“In your dreams.”
“I swear it, man.” Billy held up his hand. “Got right down on her knees. Then she tells me she has a job for me to do. A test.”
“What kind of test?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“And?”
“She said I had to trust her. That she knew all about what had happened at the school, how I lost my scholarship. That there were other people like me who couldn’t fight back.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I wasn’t interested. Water under the bridge or some such shit. It creeped me out that she knew all about Judson when she didn’t even go to that school, you know? I mean, it wasn’t like in the papers or nothing.”
“Yeah, sounds suspicious to me.”
Billy seemed relieved that Connor didn’t think he was a dope.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I didn’t really think about it until after you left, and I didn’t know if it was important. But…you don’t think it has anything to do with Judson’s murder, do you?”
“I don’t know, buddy.”
“I’d feel really bad if something I did or didn’t do got him killed, even if he was an asshole. I didn’t want him dead.”
Detective Will Hooper stared at Garrett Bowen’s body hanging from the elaborate chandelier in Bowen’s pricey mansion in the gated community of Rancho Santa Fe.
He almost couldn’t believe it. It seemed too easy, too convenient.
For the past three days he’d been poring over Wishlist e-mails and came up with the theory that Bowen had used mentally unbalanced kids in his care to play vigilante. Will Hooper didn’t think any teenager could plan and implement Victor Montgomery’s murder. And while Judson’s murder had the
And until now, he believed the puppeteer was Garrett Bowen.
Jim Gage called from upstairs. “There’s a note.”
“What does it say?”
Gage held up the clear plastic evidence bag and read the note inside. “‘I didn’t mean for it to go this far.’”
“That’s
“That’s it.”
Will didn’t like it. Something was off, but just what he couldn’t say. Had his call to Bowen the day before to set up a “friendly” meeting-letting it intentionally slip that he was interviewing Emily-set Bowen off? Will thought he had been playing the situation perfectly, but now?
What a mess.
He hesitated before calling Dillon Kincaid. He hated that Dillon was on the side of the defense on this case. A half dozen times Will had picked up the phone to ask his opinion about something, but then had to stop himself.
But he also knew Dillon had a heated conversation with Bowen the day before yesterday, and that he and the counselor had been at Bowen’s fund-raiser the night before. That made them witnesses, and dammit, he was going to depose them and find out
Will punched speed dial to reach Dillon’s cell. “Dr. Kincaid.”
“Dillon, it’s Will Hooper.”
