Justice Served (33 page)

“Leave her alone,” Sandy said sharply on her way to the small refrigerator tucked under the counter. She pulled out a Black & Tan when she noticed Mitchell’s look of surprise. “What? This is dinnertime for me.”

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Watts asked.

“Maybe I’d like to be doing something else right now too,” Sandy grumped and put the beer back, exchanging it for a soda.

Watts looked from Sandy to Mitchell, who blushed furiously, and slowly grinned. “Well ain’t you the lucky one.”

Mitchell shoved her hands into her jeans. “Yeah.”

Watts clapped Mitchell on a shoulder. “You break this case, kid, and that gold shield of yours is really gonna shine.”

Before Mitchell could protest that she didn’t expect to break the case, Rebecca walked in with Sloan and Jason. Immediately, everyone sobered up and hurriedly took their usual places at the conference table.

“Okay, Mitchell,” Rebecca said. “Let’s hear it.”

“I think Jason and Sandy should go through the porn downloads and chart the dates when the girls that Sandy knows were doing the shoots.”

Rebecca frowned. “That’s on the agenda. We’ll be doing that over the next couple of days. We’ve got months’ worth of videos to screen.”

Mitchell shook her head. “No. I think we can narrow it down to a couple of days.”

Everyone’s attention was riveted on her, and Mitchell felt a trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. If she was wrong, she’d look like an idiot. Worse, she’d disappoint Rebecca Frye, which was the last thing she ever wanted to do. After Sandy, there was no one whose opinion of her mattered more. She kept her hands on her thighs under the table so that nobody could see them shaking. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Sandy’s smile. And more important than her smile was the encouragement and faith in her eyes.

“I think we should look at the videos that were shot right around the time those ships came in—the ones that Jimmy Hogan was checking out with Port Authority.”

There was a moment of silence, and then everyone began to speak at once.

Sunday – Midmorning

“Wait a minute—”

“Why do you think—”

“Who would’ve—”

“How do—”

“All right—keep it down.” Rebecca’s voice rang out. As the din subsided, she motioned to Mitchell. “Go ahead. Lay it out for us, Detective.”

Mitchell cleared her throat. “Okay, I need to start at the beginning—at least I think it’s the beginning.”

“Take your time, kid,” Watts said in a surprisingly quiet tone. “We ain’t in a hurry. My buns are just getting warm anyhow.”

“I think it all starts with Clark,” Mitchell said.

Sloan snarled an oath.

“What I mean,” Mitchell clarified, “is I think it starts with Justice and Jimmy Hogan. The feds were interested enough in something going on in this city to put a federal agent undercover.” She looked toward Rebecca, who gave her a barely perceptible nod. “I don’t think that an Internet pornography ring or garden-variety prostitution is really big enough to register on Justice’s radar. Sure, they’ve got people working on those kinds of investigations, but usually they leave them to the locals. And they sure don’t spare undercover agents. So I’m thinking something bigger than the usual Mob activity.”

“The feds have run some pretty big pornography stings,” Sloan pointed out. “I hate to say it, but Clark’s being here
could
have just been part of a broader interstate operation, especially considering the Internet angle. Just like he said.”

“True,” Rebecca interjected, “but it doesn’t really explain why Jimmy Hogan was undercover. Clark was up-front with us—well, as up-front as the feds ever are—about his interest in the pornography operation. He wouldn’t have needed someone undercover if he were going to investigate it through channels.” Rebecca turned her attention back to Mitchell. “Keep talking—give us your theory.”

“With Jimmy undercover as an
undercover
narco detective, Jimmy—and by extension Clark—had access to any files that came through the police department. He could keep an eye out for the kind of activity he was
really
interested in. At the same time, he was assigned to do exactly what he came here to do, which was infiltrate the underworld organization. He was working all the angles and probably passing everything right back to Clark.”

The others at the table nodded and made sounds of agreement.

“Where does Jeff fit in?” Rebecca asked solemnly.

“I think while Jimmy was investigating his real interest, occasionally he’d come across illegal activity that he didn’t have time to do anything about, so he’d tip off you and Cruz.” Mitchell shrugged. “He
was
a cop, after all.”

“Like the kiddie prostitution circuit he clued us into last year,” Rebecca said. “Okay. So far, so good. And
then
, he got close to what he was really after, and someone found out.” Her face went hard, her voice cold. “And took out him and Jeff, who probably just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Mitchell nodded. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what I think happened.”

Watts shifted in his seat. “Okay. Time to end the suspense, kid. What the hell was Hogan interested in?”

“Smuggling.”

Watts looked blank.

“That’s usually a U.S. Customs gig,” Jason observed neutrally. “Not Justice.”

“I know,” Mitchell said emphatically, “and that’s why I didn’t think of it at first. Why
none
of us thought of it.”

“You think Hogan got wind of something they were bringing in on those ships—the ones he had Carla looking into, right?” Watts leaned forward, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, his eyes narrowed and intent. “That’s why he was trying to track the cargo.”

“Yeah, I think he was trying to get a line on who picked up the cargo
and
where it was going.”

“I’ve been over those cargo manifests, kid,” Watts said, shaking his head. “I didn’t see any similarities between the stuff those ships were bringing in. Usually, if you’re smuggling something, you use the same carrier vehicle each time. Bags of cocaine stuffed inside coffee barrels, diamonds packed inside fake objects of art, heroin sewn into the lining of clothes from Asia. There was nothing like that. I looked.”

Mitchell shook her head. “All the ships originated from ports in the same region of the world, right?”

“Yeah, but that could just be a coincidence.”

“I don’t think so. They came from the same region because they were carrying the same smuggled cargo.”

“
What?
” Watts asked impatiently.

“
The girls.
The ships were bringing in the girls.”

There were a few seconds of silence, and then Watts muttered, “Shit.”

“What’s the common denominator between the sex videos, the clubs, the prostitution…all of it,” Rebecca said. “The girls. None of it works without them.”

“And,” Sloan mused, “if those girls are your business, think how good it would be to have an inside person at the DA’s office. Someone who would hear about any local investigation that started getting close. Beecher.”

“Not to mention,” Jason said, “using him to hack into law enforcement’s entire computer network. All bases covered.” He turned in his seat and looked at Sloan. “What do you want to bet that the Port Authority computer system is compromised too. This organization is sophisticated, and they’re going to want to monitor everything they can. If they can find an assistant district attorney to squeeze, they can find somebody at the port.”

Sloan nodded, her eyes shining. “We’ll need to get at that system.”

“The problem with that,” Rebecca said, “is if we go for warrants now, we’ll have to bring Clark into it.”

“No fucking way,” Watts snapped. “The last time we did that, he stole the case out from under us.”

“Then let’s find some other way to break this open,” Rebecca said, her voice like flint. She looked at Mitchell. “How did Jimmy trip to those ships? Watts couldn’t find a connection between them. Different captains, different crews, different cargos.”

“The timing,” Mitchell said.

“No way,” Watts objected. “I looked at that with Captain Reiser. Different days of the week, different weeks of the month. There wasn’t a pattern.”

“But they
were
at about the same intervals, right?” Mitchell knew that everything hung on this, and sweat broke out between her shoulder blades and trickled down her back. She didn’t have a damn bit of proof. Only a feeling.
I must be crazy.
She took a breath. “Every two to three months.”

“Yeah,” Watts said warily, as if he expected a trap. Still, he eyed her with lively curiosity. “So?”

“Those are the same intervals when the regular girls weren’t available to do the sex videos. That’s when Trudy and her friends filled in.
Trudy
knew those dates. The
exact
dates.”

“And if we got those dates from her,” Rebecca said pensively, “we’d eventually match them to those ships. That could have worried someone enough to eliminate Trudy, especially with her right in the middle of that bust last week on the film set.”

It ate at Rebecca to know that the sting operation she’d set up had inadvertently led to a young woman’s death. No matter that she couldn’t have foreseen the risk to Trudy, who just happened to know more than anyone realized at the time. Hindsight didn’t change the fact that Trudy was dead. Rebecca swallowed back the bitter bile of self-recrimination and forced herself to focus. “We need to nail down those dates.”

“All we have to do is check the videos right around the times those ship arrived and see if we find Trudy or any of her friends in them,” Jason said, looking at Sandy. “You’d recognize most of Trudy’s crowd, right?”

Sandy nodded. “I’d for sure be able to tell the working girls from the pole dancers.”

Sloan looked up from the tablet where she had been jotting notes and turned to Mitchell. “According to your theory, the girls who were smuggled into the country on those ships were the regular girls—the ones who usually performed in the sex videos, right?”

“Yes. And probably danced in the clubs, were hired out to sex parties, and eventually ended up being sold off as sex slaves.” Mitchell’s tone dripped with revulsion. “A sweet little pipeline in human flesh direct to the marketplace. Bastards.”

“What’s your explanation for why the girls weren’t available around the time the ships came in to do the sex videos? Why was it then that Trudy and her friends had to fill in?”

Rebecca spoke before Mitchell could answer. “Because they were being rotated. New girls were arriving, the old ones had to be moved. Probably sent out to other cities. I bet there’s a network all across the country merchandising in these girls. And the new girls would need to be broken in before they could be trusted to perform in the films.”

“It hangs together,” Watts said with an approving glance at Mitchell. “Nice.”

“We’ve got to fill in all the blanks,” Rebecca said. She stood abruptly and paced. “Jason, how far back do you have the video downloads?”

“I’ve got a couple of computers from guys who stored everything. At least a year, maybe more.”

“Sandy,” Rebecca said, spinning in her direction. “You work with Jason and map out the timelines. I want all the dates where it looks like local girls were filling in.”

“Okay,” Sandy said, with no hint of her previous distaste at the task.

“Watts, you’ll need to get with Captain Reiser as soon as Sandy and Jason narrow down those dates. Try to isolate those ships. The network supplying these girls has to be relatively close-knit, so I’m betting you’ll find that all of them originated in one or two ports. We’ll need to nail them down.” She frowned, looked around the table. “What else?”

“Presumably the girls are coming into port in containers,” Sloan said. “Someone has to know which ships, which containers, and where they go on the docks. Otherwise it would be impossible to free the girls and secret them out of the port.”

“Unless the container got loaded directly onto a truck and went out that way,” Watts offered.

“Maybe,” Sloan said. “But if they’re staying local—and we are hypothesizing that they are, at least for a while—all they need is a couple of vans to move them from the port to their stash houses. That’s a lot less complicated than arranging for a semi.”

Watts nodded in agreement. “They’ve got to have an inside man at the port, maybe even a couple. Don’t they track all those containers by computer or something?”

Sloan’s grin spread. “They do indeed. Give me some dates, and I’ll tell you which container they arrived in.”

“This is all very pretty,” Rebecca reminded the group. “But we don’t have any proof.” She looked at Mitchell. “We need the girls. In operations like these, the girls are supervised twenty-four hours a day. They don’t go outside the house. They don’t talk to anyone. They don’t move from one location to another without guards. We need to know where they’re being kept.”

“I might have a way of finding out.”

The room became very still.

“There’s a girl…a woman…at Ziggie’s. Her name is Irina.” Mitchell was aware of Sandy going very still beside her. “I think she’s some kind of keeper. I think she watches out for them, supervises them maybe.”