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14

JOANNA

“Are you sure this isn’t a setup?” I asked West as we walked to yet another coffee shop, this one in a marginally nicer area of town. Portia seemed to have a thing for holding clandestine meetings in coffee shops, and from what West had said, she didn’t like to use the same one twice.

He scanned the area. “We can’t be certain, but she’s given me good information before, and I trust her as much as I would any other proven informant.”

My lips twitched. “Which is to say, not with your life.”

He chuckled. “Certainly not with yours.”

I touched the gun inside my jacket. Setup or not, I’d come armed. To be fair, I very rarely went anywhere without a concealed weapon.

“What information has she given you in the past?” While he’d shared the broad brushstrokes of their investigation with me, I knew very few of the details.

West glanced at me. “Because of her, we’ve been able to conclusively connect two dirty cops to Ortez, and there are several more we suspect. We’re just waiting for them to slip up. ”

“Who?” I didn’t really expect him to tell me, but it would be nice to know that he trusted me.

He gave me a look. “You know I can’t say.”

My heart sank. I thought I’d resigned myself to the knowledge that West didn’t fully trust me, but it would seem I’d been holding onto a thread of hope after all.

It was ridiculous. He was just being professional and doing things by the book. Hell, he’d already bent the rules by sharing what he had. In his shoes, I wasn’t sure how much I’d be willing to blur the lines, so it wasn’t fair of me to expect any different from him.

That didn’t stop me from being disappointed.

I pushed the door to the coffee shop open and an electronic chime sounded. I scanned the interior, noting that Portia was once again in the farthest back corner. I wondered if she realized that choosing that position effectively trapped her. She probably felt safe, having her back to two walls, but if she needed to run, there was nowhere to go.

“I’ll order coffee,” West said. “You sit with her. She looks like she might try to bolt.”

“Thanks.” I made my way to her, taking in the rigid set of her muscles and the rapid tapping of her foot against the floor. She really was giving the impression she didn’t want to be here. As I drew nearer, I noticed her eyes were even more red than yesterday. Had she slept at all?

“Were you followed?” she asked, her eyes darting toward the entrance.

“Not that I know of.” I could usually pick out a tail, and I suspected West’s radar for that kind of thing was even better than mine. “Are you okay?”

Portia huffed. Her hair hung around her shoulders, lank and greasy, as if she hadn’t showered since she’d discovered her friend’s body. That couldn’t be good in her line of work.

“I’ll be better when the bitch who killed Sasha is behind bars,” she muttered.

I felt a pang of sympathy for her. I’d be a mess if anything happened to Hallie. It was no surprise she wasn’t doing well. “Hopefully, you can help us make that happen.”

West took the third chair and placed two cups of coffee on the table.

I reached into my bag and withdrew the sealed plastic evidence baggy that contained a photocopy of the most recent of Sasha Sloane’s diaries. Portia stretched out her hand toward it, but I motioned for her to stop.

“Be careful not to lose any of it,” I told her. “It wasn’t easy to get my hands on a copy without leaving a trail.”

Portia pulled a face, but nodded. She opened the baggy, withdrew the papers and started reading the one on top. “This is going to take forever.”

West and I exchanged a glance.

“That’s police work,” I said. “Hardly anything happens as quickly as they make it seem on TV.”

Portia leaned across the table and studied the words scrawled across the page. I’d flipped through the diary myself at the crime scene, and while we’d decided it was worth collecting as evidence in case it became useful later, I hadn’t observed anything that stirred my interest. All she wrote about was what she wore, who she saw, and what she ate.

“So”—Portia picked at the edge of her cuticle but didn’t take her eyes off the diary—“Sasha was crazy obsessive about recordkeeping, but she was also paranoid about people getting into her business. Although, with what happened to her, I guess she was right to be. But I’d forgotten until you mentioned it on the phone last night that she used a code.”

“She did?” I’d known it was a possibility, but anyone who read the utterly banal things Sasha had written would consider it unlikely. Perhaps that was the point.

“Yes.” Portia nodded vigorously. “Certain foods were code names for people. Makeup items were codes for other objects. Like, lipsticks refer to drugs, and the different colors are different types.”

“The places?” I asked.

She raised one shoulder and dropped it. “I’m not completely sure, but I think she did this thing where she’d name a place a block away from wherever she was actually talking about, or something like that. I can’t remember all the details off the top of my head, but if we look through this together, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

“Huh. That’s quite clever.”

She smirked. “I told you. Sasha was scary bright. The problem is, she wasn’t quite as smart as she thought she was. Obviously. Or else she’d have known someone was going to come after her.”

She looked despondent, so I opened my bag and grabbed a notebook and several pens. I couldn’t get her friend back, but I could provide a distraction.

“Come on, then. Let’s solve this puzzle.”

We pored over the diary page by page, and after a while, patterns began to emerge. We went back to the first few pages and started to interpret Sasha’s notes.

At first, it was relatively vague. References to drugs and people within Ortez’s organization, although they were always referred to by foods, so we had no way to connect them to their real names. Later, the notes became more detailed.

I’d like to think that even without Portia here to assist, I’d have known something was off about the later pages in the book. The code was simple, but she seemed to have given up on trying to use it in a way that looked innocuous to anyone who didn’t know what it meant.

“Look at this,” I murmured, tracing my fingertip over the plastic-covered page. “I think she’s outlining the method Ortez uses to get law enforcement personnel on his payroll.”

West turned the book toward himself. “Let’s see.” He scanned the text, his eyebrow climbing his forehead. “If I’m reading this right, there’s a cop who’s paid to recruit others. This here is a reference to the Red Door. I think he takes them there.”

Portia jabbed the page. “This is the brothel I work out of.”

“Huh.” I angled my head so I could read it too. “So, this cop took his colleagues to a strip club. If they passed whatever test he had for them, he took them to the brothel.”

“And then they’re told they can either use the brothel whenever they like and get payouts for brushing things under the carpet for Ortez, or they can lose their career—and potentially their marriage—if anyone sends in evidence that they’ve solicited sex from a prostitute,” West finished excitedly. “Portia, are there cameras in the brothel?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. We’re told they’re for security, but come on. Who cares about the safety of a few sex workers? You’re right. It’s probably a blackmail thing.”

I frowned. “We care about your safety.” I reached into my pocket, withdrew one of my business cards and passed it to her. “If you ever get into trouble, call me. I know you probably won’t, but just take it. Then you at least have the option.”

To my surprise, she accepted the card and tucked it inside her shirt. “Thanks.”

I returned my attention to the photocopied diary and flipped another page. If I focused on Portia, I’d make her uncomfortable. I was scanning the text when something leapt off the page at me.

I gasped. “Look! This is a name! An actual name, not a coded word.”

West’s eyes widened, and he leaned over to see what I was pointing out. “I know that guy.” He glanced around. “Now that we can make progress ourselves, perhaps we should take this back to the police station. We don’t want anyone to overhear us.”

“You’re right.” I slid the papers into my bag. “Portia, just so you know, this could be what leads us to Sasha’s killer.”

Portia pursed her lips. “I hope so.”

We left the coffee shop. West offered Portia a ride, but as I expected, she declined. She didn’t want to risk anyone seeing her with us.

West and I got into the car, and I drove us toward the police station.

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” I asked.

“Uh…” He sounded confused. “I thought we could finish looking through her diary together.”

“At the station?” I let incredulity enter my voice. “Wouldn’t it look odd for my bartender husband to be helping me work a case?”

He huffed. “Fuck. I guess so. But I want to know what you find.”

“If it relates to your operation, of course I’ll share.” If it didn’t, I wasn’t certain I would. So far, he knew more than me in almost every regard. It would be nice not to be the one in the dark for once.

I sensed him glance toward me, but he didn’t protest my wording.

“Take me to the apartment. I’ll make some calls,” he said.

“All right.” I stopped at a traffic light. “Tell me about Rodriguez.”

His was the name we’d found in the diary, but neither of us had wanted to speak it in public.

“He’s Ortez’s enforcer. Thanks to a bunch of corrupt officials, he doesn’t have a record, but he must have a body count well into the double digits.”

“So, he’s not a nice guy. First name?”

“Antonio,” West replied. “He’s in his late thirties. Maybe thirty-seven or thirty-eight. Reports directly to Ortez.”

“Hmm.” I pressed my lips together, my mind working quickly. “Do you think he could have been the one to kill Sasha? If anyone knew about her coded notes on the organization, she’d have been a liability.”

West hummed in thought. “I doubt it. From what I understand, Rodriguez prefers to strangle his victims. It’s less bloody, which means less mess to clean up. He’s a big guy. Strong. He could easily overpower almost anyone. Besides, if anyone knew about her notes, surely, they would have taken them when they left.”

“Or at least searched the apartment,” I mused. “It was tidy. Nothing out of place.”

We were back to square one. Plenty of people who may have reason to want Sasha Sloane dead, but no evidence tying any of them to the crime scene.

I pulled over outside our apartment building for West to get out. He leaned over, as if to kiss my cheek. I stiffened, and he immediately retreated.

“I’ll see you later,” I called, and pulled away as soon as he shut the door.

I parked in the underground parking area beneath the station and took the elevator to my floor. Instead of going to my desk, I shut myself in an interview room. I didn’t want to talk to Hanson. Not when I still wasn’t sure what—if any—role he played in all of this.

I withdrew my notebook and pored over the photocopied diary, recording everything that might be of interest. I paused at the end of each page to take a photograph of it. If I couldn’t trust my fellow officers, then the diary might not be safe in the evidence locker and I wanted as many copies of it as I could.

I’d worked out that “bacon” was a general phrase Sasha used to refer to members of the police. Every time she wrote “bacon” in combination with another food, I made a note of it, and then recorded any subsequent mentions of that same combination, certain that she was referring to individual members of the police.

I was nearly two-thirds of the way through when I found mention of the story Portia had recounted about a homicide detective who’d been with one of Ortez’s working girls. She labeled him “bacon and potatoes,” and described how he went to the strip club and was then invited to the brothel.

According to the prostitute Sasha had spoken to, “bacon and potatoes” had had doubts as soon as he’d arrived, but he’d been liquored up—possibly high—and had gone through with it anyway.

As soon as they were done, he’d started spouting regrets, but one of the brothel’s assigned guards had pulled him aside, had a quiet word with him, and he’d left as meek as a lamb.

There was no physical description of the man, and he was never mentioned by name. Could “bacon and potatoes” be Hanson? He doted on his wife, Deborah, so I could imagine him being upset by going behind her back with someone else.

That said, despite his occasional misogynistic tendencies, I had a hard time believing that he’d stray in the first place. He’d never had much patience for cheats.

I sighed. Dwelling on the possibility would get me nowhere. What I needed to do was go through police employment records and find all men who fit the description Portia had given within the city’s homicide departments. Then I could work through them methodically.

But how was I supposed to do that without alerting Hanson?

He was my partner. I couldn’t just run around doing my own thing all of the time. At some point, he was going to ask what I was hiding from him.

A knock came at the door.

I flinched, and my hand flew to my heart. I tucked both the photocopied diary and my notebook away in my bag, then drew in a slow, even breath, attempting to calm myself so that whoever was on the other side of the door wouldn’t notice. I grabbed the handle and turned it.

Hanson stood on the other side, wearing a bemused expression. “What are you doing in there?”