Robert Ellis - The Lost Witness

“A book about what?”

Ramira smiled again. “You might steal my idea.”

“Yeah, Ramira. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. I really want to steal your idea.”

“Okay, so I’ll give you a hint. It’s about crime. White-collar crime. You know, the kind where nobody goes to jail because everybody’s rich enough to buy their way out.”

Lena followed the reporter’s gaze to her laptop. He was trying to get a look at the screen, but his angle was off. As he stepped to his left, she closed the file, shut down her computer, and started packing up.

“Sorry, but I’m not real sure I want to find my reports in one of your stories.”

“Hey, I wasn’t looking. Besides, if you had anything real, you’d give me a call. We’ve still got a deal, right?”

He gave her a look, and she shot it back at him. Ramira was thin and angular, about her height, and probably five years older. He was a handsome man with an intelligent face framed by dark hair and a pair of glasses that seemed to sharpen the light in his eyes. Although he may have been one of the best reporters Lena had ever known, that didn’t make him any less dangerous. The deal he was talking about had been struck after her last case. The doer had worn a badge, and the brass on the sixth floor wanted to keep it buried at the expense of an innocent man’s reputation. Lena needed an insurance policy and had given Ramira an exclusive “off-the-record” account of the investigation. Getting the story in print was the only way of ensuring that everyone involved lived up to the truth. When it was over-when the official record became straight and true-Ramira won an award, and Lena’s plight with Chief Logan was born.

“What deal is that?” she asked. “You already got your story”

“You know what I’m talking about, Lena. You need me just as much as I need you. Even the senator said it last night. He saw Logan reaming you out. That’s why he walked in on you and broke it up.”

Lena slipped her computer into her briefcase without responding. Ramira checked the room, then sat down at the table and lowered his voice.

“You want me to say it straight out, then I will. You’re in a rough business, Lena, and you need friends. Everybody knows that you’re on the outs with the chief and his band of self-righteous boy scouts. It’s all about your last case. You were right and he was wrong, and everything went down in public. I know that you didn’t mean to embarrass him, but you did. The bottom line is that no matter how much he’d like to, he can’t transfer you to the Valley and he can’t fire your ass to oblivion. His hands are tied, and he can’t get rid of you. But I’ll bet he’s thinking about it. I’d bet the city he spends a lot of time thinking about it. And that’s why you need friends.”

Lena relied on her ability to size people up quickly and accurately. As she stood up, she wondered if her read on Ramira had been off the mark.

“You need to chill,” she said. “Take some time off. What you’re implying is ludicrous.”

“Is it, Lena? Like I said, you’re in a rough business. Shit happens.”

Ramira met her eyes. He looked tired and a little nervous. She wished that he hadn’t followed her into the cafe.

As Lena crossed the lobby at Parker Center and started around the security line, one of the two cops behind the front desk called out her name. He lifted a package in the air, an eight-by-ten manila envelope.

“A messenger dropped it off five minutes ago,” he said. “You saved me a trip upstairs.”

“Thanks.”

She glanced at the return address but didn’t recognize the name. McBride. Navy Street. Venice Beach. None of it registered.

Stepping into the elevator, she hit the button to her floor, and took another look at the package. It was a padded mailer and she didn’t think the contents felt like a book or CD. When the doors finally closed, the elevator shook and groaned and vibrated all the way up to the third floor.

Parker Center, aka the Glass House, was due to be leveled sometime in the next five years. Lena tried not to think about it because there was nothing she could do to make it happen any faster. Still, every time she stepped into an elevator, the question of her own personal safety crossed her mind. Parker Center hadn’t survived the last earthquake, but city officials were saying that it did-pretending that it did. The replacement cost of the building was more important to city government than the safety of the people who worked here. At least that’s the way it appeared to Lena as she did the math. The Northridge earthquake had rumbled through Los Angeles almost fifteen years ago. The department would get a new building, but only after the people working here waited it out for a grand total of twenty years. For some, that was a life sentence. The length of their entire careers.

The doors opened and the thought vanished. Lena walked down the hall and around the corner, passing the lieutenant’s desk at the head of the bureau floor. The Robbery-Homicide Division was comprised of twenty-four desks pushed together in four groups of six. Today was Friday, less than two weeks before Christmas, and it looked like just about everyone had left for lunch. Stan Rhodes was the only holdout, waving at her as he spoke with someone on the phone. She didn’t see Lt. Barrera at his desk, or his computer, and guessed that he was working in Captain Dillworth’s office across from the interrogation rooms. Captain Dillworth was taking an off-season Alaskan cruise with his wife, hoping to see the glaciers and polar bears before the ice melted and all the animals drowned. Although the crime logs had been moved upstairs to the Cold Case Unit, the only conference table on the entire floor was in his office, so he never locked the door.

Lena slid behind her desk, grateful that the bureau was nearly empty. She glanced out the window, still thinking about her conversation with Ramira. What he implied seemed so over the top. The chief and his adjutant may have given her a rough time last night, but that’s all it was. That’s all it had ever been for the past eight months. A steady diet of rough time. Not once had she ever sensed that it was anything more than that. Not once had she ever thought that she couldn’t wait them out and survive with her career intact. She could still see Ramira measuring her after he finished. The fire in his nervous eyes.

She wondered why something so ridiculous was still on her mind. Why she found it troubling enough that it had followed her all the way to her desk.

She checked the time, then reached for her laptop. She still had fifteen minutes before her meeting. As the computer booted up, she found the tab on the back of the mailer and tore open the package. Holding the envelope to the window light, she gazed inside. And that’s when she felt her pulse quicken.

It was an ID. Someone’s driver’s license. And there was something else caught in the corner of the mailer. At first, she thought it might be a key ring. But as she spread open the bubble wrap, she realized that it was a small storage device about the size of a cigarette lighter. Someone had sent her a USB flash drive.

She reached down for her briefcase, fishing out a pair of gloves. Pushing her laptop aside, she dumped the license and flash drive onto her desk. Then she flipped the ID over and zeroed in on the photograph. She noted the long blond hair. The soft brown eyes and high cheekbones.

Jane Doe No. 99 was no longer Jane Doe No. 99.

Her name was Jennifer McBride. And Art Madina had been right. If a reconstructed view of the victim’s face had been necessary, it would have revealed a beautiful young woman.

Lena checked the return address on the mailer against the driver’s license. Whoever sent the package used the victim’s address. Jennifer McBride lived in an apartment on Navy Street, and had celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday less than two weeks before her death.