Selena didn’t speak for a long minute, but her expression betrayed her.
“And you never told me?” Alex said. “This is important. I need to know.”
“What’s going on?”
“Jim’s the lead detective on the Travis Hart shooting. And ... he said something to me last night that had me thinking he knows more about the shooting than he’s telling me.”
“Maybe he’s just being a jerk.”
“Maybe.”
Selena sipped her coffee. “Just because a cop isn’t squeaky clean doesn’t mean they’re like Tommy Cordell.”
There were lots of shades of gray. Some things were easier to overlook than others.
“That said,” Selena continued, “a few years ago—five, maybe six,—I had an aggravated assault case. The victim was found barely alive in an alley. She was a prostitute, run by one of the Russian gangs. I suspected she was beaten by one of her johns. In my experience, if her pimp did it they wouldn’t leave her on the street to be picked up by the authorities. I worked her hard—pushed her to give me something, anything, to find the bastard who had hurt her. She wouldn’t talk. I had a Russian interpreter with me, but the girl spoke English well enough. She simply said she was mugged. She wasn’t fucking mugged, Alex.”
“Where does Jim come into it?”
“The girl left the hospital against doctor’s wishes. Two days later, she was found dead in her apartment. Jim caught the case. Didn’t work it like I would have.”
“Did she die from her injuries?”
“The coroner’s report said she OD’d on narcotics. Suspected suicide, possibly accidental—self-medicating for her injuries. But when Jim found out I’d pulled the autopsy report, he confronted me. It was ... unusual. It’s not that he said or did anything wrong, but his hostility was unwarranted. I let it go. There was no proof against anyone. I would have worked the pimp over—I couldn’t find any of his other girls who’d been beaten like that, which made me think it might not have been a regular john, it might have been a guy who picked her up and beat her because she was a prostitute. The hospital did a rape kit, which can be difficult to use in a prosecution because of her job. No semen, but anal tearing and evidence of spermicide. When I reviewed the original hospital report, it catalogued her injuries—bruising around her wrists, broken nose, one side of her face bruised, two cracked ribs. A clump of her hair had been torn out. But the bruising wasn’t consistent with being beaten. It was mostly on one side.”
“You think it was violent sex.”
“I would call it rape, even if her john paid her. But no jury would convict on that unless she testified, and even then—” She shrugged. “It sucks, but it is what it is. I saw one more similar case, a year or so ago, that ended in an unsolved homicide. Similar bruising, anal tearing, hair pulled out. Also a Russian prostitute. John caught the case, but the girl was dumped in the river and we couldn’t get any DNA or viable evidence. Can’t even say it was the same guy.”
“But you think so.”
“Yeah. I do. And I can’t help but think if Jim had just pursued that first case harder we might have found the guy and the other girl would still have been alive.”
“I wished you would have told me.”
“There was nothing to tell. It was a gut feeling that he was hiding something that didn’t make it in the report. He accepted my argument that I was curious because I’d picked up the assault case and wanted to find the person who beat her. He even gave me access to her apartment to see if there was any evidence there. There wasn’t. But ... I just felt like he was watching me closely. He asked questions, like what she’d said to me while in the hospital. Nothing overt. Just ... odd.”
“Tommy used Russian prostitutes.”
“You don’t think Tommy ...?”
“I don’t know.” If not Tommy, he could have known who. He’d been so wrapped up in that world, he must have known about the beatings and the murder.
“Do you want me to talk to John?” Detective John Black was Selena’s brother.
“I don’t want it getting back to Jim.”
“John doesn’t like him.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me when I first started dating Jim? I feel like an idiot.”
“Because John can be a judgmental prick. I love my brother, but he sees everything in black and white. He didn’t like Gabriel when I first started seeing him. Even now, though they get along, I always feel like John is looking for a reason to dislike him.”
“Because you’re his baby sister.”
“Jim is cute, he’s fun, you had a good time with him. You’re always so serious. I know—I have that problem, too. Being with Gabriel has given me a life outside of the job. You deserve a life outside of the job, too. Who was anyone to judge that? But I always thought you were too good for Jim. Maybe because of the situation with the hooker, but also because of his off-color jokes.”