Sullivan's Justice (40 page)

“According to the FBI, one of the men involved is a former assassin for the Gambino crime family. Pros like that would never let a drugged-out kid do their dirty work. That is, unless they planned on taking him out as soon as the job was done.”

Mary Stevens walked up as Bobby Kirsh was about to escort them down a long corridor. The inmates were raising such a ruckus, they had trouble hearing one another. “Am I seeing things, Bobby?” Carolyn asked, squinting as she stared into one of the cells. “Are there three men in there? I thought the max was two.”

“Well,” Kirsh said, shooting Hank an annoyed look, “we had to put them somewhere. Detective Sawyer made us evacuate the third floor just so you could have another tea party with your buddy Raphael. Hope you don’t end up in a hospital bed next to Preston. It’s nuts to mess with this guy again.”

“I won’t disagree with you on that one, Bobby,” Carolyn said, cutting her eyes to Hank.

“My men should have him restrained by now,” the jailer continued. “Call me when you’re ready for us to bring him up. Good luck, Carolyn. You’re going to need it.”

Hank stepped into the elevator, pressing the button for the third floor. “Okay,” he said, “we built a dummy room that looks exactly like the one where you first interviewed him. This way, the SWAT team can monitor you without Moreno’s knowledge. You need to do everything possible to keep him focused on you. Guy spots the guns and the show will be over.”

“If he makes a move to hurt me,” Carolyn said, her voice shaking, “you’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”

“Precisely,” Hank said, holding the door open as Carolyn and Mary stepped out. “We’d prefer to keep him alive, though. Without his cooperation, we may never find out who committed these murders.”

“I’m going to have to play rough with him,” Carolyn said, her face stern. “I don’t want him shot until I give a signal. I’ll shout your name, got it? That’s the way it’s going to go down or I’m not going in.”

“It’s your neck,” Hank told her. “Just say my name and the SWAT team will take dead aim.”

Carolyn turned to Mary. “Do you have some paper and a pen?”

“Sure,” she said, reaching into a compartment in her computer case and handing them over.

“Hank,” Carolyn continued, “I need you to write something for me.”

“I’d be happy to help,” Mary offered. “Hank’s handwriting is almost illegible.”

“Thanks, but no,” Carolyn told her. “A woman’s handwriting is different than a man’s. Listen, Hank, I’m going to tell you what to write.”

Hank did what she asked, then disappeared. A member of the SWAT team stashed Carolyn in a chair as they went about checking their communications devices, ammunition, and anything else they might need if the situation blew apart. She wadded the note up Hank had written, then straightened it out. Finally she folded it and tucked it inside the waistband of her skirt.

Hank returned and led her to the prefabricated room. Unlike the rows of rowdy inmates she’d seen earlier, the floor was eerily silent. She looked up and saw at least six officers stretched out on their stomachs on a metal platform that had been installed directly above. Their assault rifles protruded through the openings in the metal; then the ends of the barrels disappeared inside the plasterboard ceiling.

Hank pointed out how the ceiling had been designed so it looked as if the holes were part of the material. They needed additional openings so the officers could maintain visual contact.

Other men stood in strategic places around the perimeter. Carolyn wondered how easy the guns were to spot from inside the room. “How can I keep Moreno from seeing the holes in the ceiling?”

“People don’t look up that often,” Hank told her. “You only spotted our guys because you knew they were going to be here. My suggestion for you is to keep the conversation flowing. Don’t talk too loud and he’ll have to concentrate to hear what you’re saying. Even people who aren’t deaf resort to reading lips. They may not know it, but they do. It’s instinctive. If your daughter is talking to you and you can’t hear her, do you look at the ceiling or do you look at her face?”

“Her face.”

“Do what I say and you won’t have a problem.”

Mary gestured for him and the detectives walked away. Carolyn’s stomach began gurgling with acid. She knew exactly what she had to do. No matter how the events of the past week had short-circuited her nervous system, she needed to be on top of her game. This was the big leagues and she was playing for more than her own life. At stake were the innocent lives of possible new victims.

Her mother’s revelation about her father’s death, Neil’s suicide attempt, and the disgusting video of Paul seemed like nothing next to sitting in a box with Moreno. Distracting herself from the tension, her thoughts drifted to Melody. By suppressing the truth about her mother’s and brother’s deaths, she’d learned to reshape reality to suit her needs. Ironically, the sexual abuse inflicted on her by her uncle may have caused her more harm than the loss of her family.

Children who were sexually abused on an ongoing basis learned to barter with their bodies. Given a choice between a beating and being molested, it wasn’t hard to figure out which decision a child would make. People found it hard to believe, but some of the children even found it pleasurable, even though they were being exploited. Pedophiles with regular access to their victims might not reach the level of penetration for months, even years. They courted the child slowly with hugs, kisses, teasing, and fondling. Being held and stroked wasn’t so awful, especially when the child was rewarded with special privileges or gifts. Over time, the victim learned to control the abuser by holding back sexual favors or threatening to expose him. In return, the rewards got larger. Carolyn knew of a case of incest, where the victim had a wallet full of credit cards and a new Thunderbird convertible, her youthful body already perfected by a plastic surgeon. From the age of ten, her father had made her bend over the toilet every morning before school so he could sodomize her. The abuse had stopped at the age of thirteen when the girl had threatened to report him to the police. After that, she was in control, extorting anything she wanted from him. The situation came to light after the father began embezzling from his company to pay his daughter’s credit card bills.

Female victims became provocative and manipulative women, using their bodies to get what they wanted. Some turned into pathological liars, prostitutes, criminals, even killers. Death row had its share of sexual abuse victims, both male and female. When a sixteen-year-old girl who’d been sexually abused since the age of six walked into a courtroom, the jury expected to see a shy, modest, and severely traumatized teenager, her head hung low in shame.

What they saw was a Melody Asher, a precocious manipulator who had learned to use sex as a bargaining chip.

Now that she thought about it, Carolyn doubted if Melody had made the video so she could distribute it to Paul’s future lovers. She probably had set up the monitoring equipment to blackmail Paul if he decided to stop seeing her. Carolyn was surprised Paul was still allowed to teach at Caltech. Of course, for all she knew, Melody might have followed through on her threats, and this could be the real reason why he had left Pasadena and relocated to Ventura.

Good God, she thought, the tape!

Hank was speaking to Mary Stevens. Carolyn rushed over and seized him by the arm. “Melody e-mailed me a video. As soon as I talk to Moreno, I’ll go home and get it. The lab can tell if the same digital camera was used in the video you received today of the Goodwin murder.”

“Melody sent you a video!” he yelled. “Shit, woman, why didn’t you tell me? What video? When did this happen?”

“Christmas Day,” Carolyn told him. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it had any bearing on the murders.” They could have two trains running on the same track. Sabatino might be the killer, but Melody could have hired him. Knowing the next question was inevitable, she looked around to make certain no one was listening, then told Hank and Mary what was on the tape.

“This is wild,” Mary said, wrapping her arms around her chest. “If the videos were made with the same camera, then Melody had to be the one who set up the Siemens router inside Neil’s house. That means she watched the murder and then sat on the evidence, even when she knew Neil might be charged with Laurel’s murder.”

“How tall was the man in the motorcycle outfit?” Carolyn asked. “Also, was he slender, medium, heavy?”

“Around six feet,” Mary answered. “Hard to tell his weight because of the leather suit. He looked about the size of your brother. You know, tall and thin.”

“Sabatino isn’t six feet tall.”

“The helmet added height,” Hank told her. “The lab hasn’t had time to analyze the video. We just got it today. Where are you going with this, Carolyn? You’re all over the place when you should be concentrating on Moreno.”

“Melody is almost six feet and she’s thinner than Sabatino or Neil.” Carolyn stopped and cleared her throat. “She has a motive, remember? If she installed the surveillance equipment, she saw Neil with Laurel. She must have known they were seeing each other all along.”

“See if you can find me some Tums or something,” Hank said to a young deputy, his hand pressed over his chest. “Christ, if we don’t put this case together soon, I’m going to have a heart attack.”

“We can’t do anything until we find out whether or not the tapes match,” Mary said. “Give me the key to your house, Carolyn. You could be tied up here for hours.”

“My kids should be home,” Carolyn said, scratching her arm and seeing a patch of reddish blisters. Melody was with Neil. Should she tell Hank and Mary or wait to see what the lab found out? As Hank had told her, she needed to remain focused on Moreno. “I don’t want my children anywhere near the video of Paul and Melody, understand? I was going to delete it, but I never got around to it.” She told Mary where her laptop was located and gave her the code to access her files. “There’s a blank DVD in the top drawer. The file is too large to fit on a disk. You’ll have to burn it on a DVD. I’ll call the kids and let them know you’re coming.”

In addition to hives, when Carolyn got nervous, she had a tendency to lose her voice. She’d been swallowing down water from a plastic Evian bottle, praying it didn’t happen. They were expecting too much from her. The way things had gone down last time, there was a good chance Moreno might refuse to talk to her. The others weren’t risking their lives. The cops dressed in riot gear, with their high-powered assault weapons, had nothing to fear. It was hard to be a sitting duck and a miracle worker at the same time.

“Ten minutes and it’s a go,” Bobby Kirsh said. “Check in with Sergeant Griffin over there. We want you to wear a wire.”

All she needed was something taped to her chest, Carolyn thought, scratching her shoulder. She stepped up to a desk on the left side of the interview room. A stone-faced sergeant confiscated her briefcase. “I need something in there,” she told him, pulling out a manila envelope. Once the sergeant had looked inside, he handed it back to her.

“No pencils, pens, tape recorders, or any kind of sharp objects?”

“Nothing,” she said, thinking if the officer smiled, his face would crack. He handed her a roll of tape and the kit containing the electronic monitoring device, reminding her to remove the underwires in her bra while she was in the ladies’ room to prevent the suspect from using them as a weapon.

After Carolyn used the bathroom, she changed her clothes and made some adjustments to her appearance. Deciding not to go for the seductive look this time, she had tied her hair back in a ponytail and had washed off her makeup. She was wearing a white cotton shirt, the fabric thick enough to conceal the bulletproof vest, and a knee-length blue skirt, her version of a Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform. Her goal today was to remind Moreno of his sister, Maria.

“What makes you think Moreno won’t know this is a setup?” she asked Hank when she came out. “A freestanding structure with men in SWAT gear positioned on the roof is a dead giveaway, don’t you think?”

Hank stared at her, then broke out laughing. “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a kid. What are you trying to do? Get Moreno to ask you to the prom?”

Carolyn sneered. “While you guys have been chasing your tail, I’ve been doing my homework. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

“We blindfolded him,” the detective told her, unwrapping a toothpick and shoving it into his mouth. “Bobby told Moreno it was for security reasons. Since he’s an escape risk, taking his eyesight away makes anything along those lines more difficult. The main reason is so we can trick him into believing it’s just the two of you again. He’ll be more inclined to talk that way. Of course, once you’re in the room, we’ll remove the blindfold.”

Hank became somber again. She saw his hands trembling as he placed the small container of toothpicks back in his pocket. What they were about to do was riding his nerves for a number of reasons. The most maddening part was that there was nothing he could do but wait. “You ready, hotshot?” he asked. “If there was ever a time to strut your stuff, this is it.”

Carolyn thrust her shoulders back. Mary hugged her, whispering in her ear, “Don’t take any chances.”

The temperature couldn’t be over sixty degrees, she thought, rubbing her hands together to warm them. The air-conditioning was probably set to work with the combined body heat of the prisoners. Either that, or they wanted to make certain everyone stayed alert. She reached out and turned the door handle, stepping inside the room.

Moreno was sitting in a plastic chair. There was no table, as it would prevent the SWAT team from seeing his hands and feet. The jail had added a metal neck restraint and attached it to a thick belt around his waist. The chains on the other restraints were linked to the one on his neck and also secured through a metal fastener on his belt. If the prisoner tried to kick out with his legs, his neck would be snapped backward. If he attempted to raise his arms, the same thing would happen. Carolyn relaxed, fairly confident that he couldn’t hurt her. If he made a move, she would signal the SWAT team to start shooting.