Page 29 of Knife in the Back (New Orleans #4)
The Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
Naomi had hoped that seeing Captain Holmes would be easier after spilling her guts to him the day before, but not so much. She was still wary of the captain, who’d arrived at Burke’s house in the Quarter in time for breakfast.
Everett sat at one end of the table. He’d been alone for a few minutes before everyone began to shuffle downstairs and take their places.
But it seemed Jace had taken her son under his wing, because he’d sat next to Everett and had drawn him into a debate with Elijah on their newest video game.
Everett seemed to be in good hands, so she turned in her seat when André Holmes wished her a good morning.
“Good morning, Captain,” she replied, her back going ramrod straight.
She would have done the same while a cop, but the rigidity of her spine—and the resulting pain from that rigidity—was one hundred percent due to prison. When a guard had said her name, she’d been on instant panicked alert.
Captain Holmes must have detected her flare of panic, because his expression saddened. “I’m not here to hurt you, Miss Cranston.”
“I know. Here.” She tapped her temple. “But it’s okay. I’m dealing.”
“Burke says you have questions for me.”
She glanced at Burke before checking to make sure the boys and Harper were occupied. “Maybe we could discuss this somewhere else?”
Burke nodded. “Little pitchers seem to be chatting among themselves, but their big ears are always listening.”
The little pout on Elijah’s face proved Burke to be correct. “Gee, thanks, Burke,” the boy said, rolling his eyes.
“I have a lot to learn before our baby arrives,” Holmes said. “Or so my wife tells me.”
“She’s right,” Antoine said, needling his brother. “Kids hear everything.”
“Like how to hack into—” Elijah started, but Jace covered his mouth with his hand.
“Not okay, dude,” Jace said, then grimaced. “Neither is licking my palm.”
Elijah cackled while Val shook her head fondly. “Go somewhere else, Burke, before these boys get too riled up. Lucien and I will take care of things here. Molly and Harrison are asleep. We’ll do guard duty while you go out and do the investigating for a change.”
Burke raised his brows. “For a change?”
“You spend too much time behind a desk,” Lucien said, Harper sitting beside him. He hadn’t let the child out of his sight. “Time to mix things up a little.”
Harper turned serious eyes on them. “Please find them, Uncle Burke. I want to go home.”
Burke’s face fell and Naomi could see the guilt that hovered over him like a dark rain cloud. “I know, honey. I’m gonna fix this.”
Naomi rose, giving Burke’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “Is your office safe? I mean, has Antoine checked it for bugs?”
Holmes’s eyes went wide. “Bugs? What have I missed?”
“So damn much,” Burke muttered. “You know about the attempts on the kids, but now we know more.”
“And I want to hear it,” André said.
“The study’s clean, Naomi,” Antoine said. “The whole house is. I checked and then double- and triple-checked. You don’t have to worry.”
She thanked him before following Burke and Captain Holmes up the stairs and into a study. Burke sat on a love seat, patting the cushion beside him while Holmes took a recliner that was in only slightly better condition than the BarcaLounger downstairs.
“What’s this about bugs?” Holmes asked.
Burke told him everything, from the bugged cars to the couple who’d stepped in to “save” Harper the night before but who’d been the ones to break into their cars and plant the bugs.
Holmes was rubbing his temples by the time Burke was finished. “You never do things the easy way, do you?”
“I think I did something the easy way,” Burke said. “I should have exposed Gaffney five years ago.”
“With what?” Holmes said. “With rumors like you had on Cresswell? A claim with no evidence like you had on Gaffney? If PIB couldn’t get Gaffney, you turning him in would only have ended poorly.”
“But it might have kept Naomi out of prison. Or at least made everyone look at Gaffney’s testimony more closely.”
“He’d threatened your godsons,” Naomi said. “I let myself go to prison because he threatened my son, Burke. If I’d stood up, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to kill my mother.”
“Whoa!” Holmes lifted both hands. “What?”
Naomi recounted her mother’s story with a sigh.
Holmes shook his head. “Why can’t we find anything on John Gaffney? We’ve tried several times, but there’s never any evidence.”
“There has to be some,” Naomi said. “Even if it’s not been identified yet. I think better questions are: Who is smoothing Gaffney’s way and why? More threats, or is it old-fashioned bribery?”
Holmes closed his eyes. “I know. I’ve asked those questions myself.” He gave himself a shake. “What is it you’d like to ask me, Miss Cranston?”
“Have you seen an uptick in human trafficking in the city? Like, during the Super Bowl?”
Holmes considered her for a long moment. “Why do you ask?”
Burke rolled his eyes. “Can you answer the question, André?”
“Oh, I will. I just want to know what prompts Miss Cranston to ask.”
She feared that he wouldn’t take her seriously, but a nod from Burke gave her confidence. “I was wondering what Gaffney’s game is. Whatever it is, it’s big enough and urgent enough for them to try to take our kids.”
“True,” Holmes allowed. “We don’t have any real leads on that black SUV, by the way. They changed their license plates. We found the stolen ones in a dumpster.”
“Did you get them changing the plates on any city cams?” Burke asked.
“Nope. It’s like they know the dead zones.”
“So they’re organized and they know the area,” Burke grumbled. “Terrific.”
Holmes turned back to Naomi. “Keep going.”
“They don’t want Burke and his team operating efficiently, so the best way to shut down their investigation immediately is to threaten the children.
I figure whatever they’re planning, it has to do with Mardi Gras.
Which made me wonder if they hadn’t also operated two weeks ago during the Super Bowl.
It would have been a difficult opportunity to pass up. ”
“That makes sense. But why ask me about sex trafficking in particular?”
“The man who grabbed Harper said ‘for me.’ That made me wonder what they’d planned to do with our kids once they’d taken them.
It’s Mardi Gras. We’ll have a million extra people in the city and some of those people will be here for more than the floats.
I met several women in prison who had started on their path by being forced to do sex work.
That led them to drugs and then other crimes, which landed them in prison.
It’s where my mind went when I thought of what Gaffney might have done with our kids if he’d gotten them. ”
“So?” Burke asked. “Is she right, André?”
“Yeah, she is. We took two young women into protective custody during Super Bowl weekend. One was fourteen and the other sixteen. The fourteen-year-old stabbed her client and got away. The sixteen-year-old was found bleeding out in a hotel room, left for dead by a john, but the doctors saved her. The fourteen-year-old knew the older girl, but only by sight. They were being held in the same place, but she couldn’t tell us where it was. ”
“They blindfolded them going to and from their johns,” Naomi said.
André nodded. “It’s common. The doctors had to put the sixteen-year-old into an induced coma so that she could heal.
She’s still intubated, but she’s coming around.
The fourteen-year-old was kidnapped from a Halloween party in Baton Rouge and forced into prostitution.
She sharpened a metal shower hook into a shiv and sliced the face of the next john. ”
“Did she hurt him?” Naomi asked, feeling ill.
“She did. The john ran from the motel room, screaming. The girl got lucky after that. Some college kids who were partying in the room next door gave her cab fare. They didn’t want to get involved with NOPD, but they gave her one of their burner phones and she used it to call 911.”
“Did the girl give a description of her pimp?” Naomi asked.
“Not a good one. She was very traumatized and was returned to the foster family in Baton Rouge who’d reported her missing after that party. But we were still looking for the pimp.”
Naomi heard his use of the past tense. “ Were? ”
“He’s dead?” Burke guessed.
Holmes nodded. “Found him last night. Bullet right between the eyes.”
Naomi considered the possibilities and chose the one that made the most sense. “He’s the guy with a broken arm, isn’t he? The one who tried to kidnap my son.”
Holmes stared at her, stunned. “How…?” He glared at Burke. “How the hell did you know?”
Good , Naomi thought. He can never hurt Everett again. There were others, of course, but at least one of the monsters was dead.
Burke shook his head. “I didn’t. She’s smart, André.”
Holmes slowly turned his gaze on Naomi. “How did you know, Miss Cranston?” he asked, his tone low and ominous.
Bristling at the accusation in his voice, she lifted her chin.
“Because you were looking for him, but you didn’t have a good description.
Yet you found him. Your brother did a mockup based on Harrison Banks’s description.
Either his body turned up randomly and you said, Hell yeah , or you recognized him from your brother’s sketch, knew where to look for him, and found him dead. And you said, Hell yeah . Am I right?”
Holmes’s mouth quirked up on one side. “Hell yeah, ma’am.”
“Which one?” she asked.
“Which do you think?” Holmes countered.
“The first one. Someone discovered a body and it turned out to be him.”
“Because you don’t think we could have ID’d and found him on our own?” Holmes asked, sounding defensive.
“ Did you ID and find him on your own?”
He frowned. “No. Anything else you want to add?”