Reading Online Novel

The Gods of Guilt(16)



“So how is everybody?” I asked, my back to them.

I received a chorus of good reports as I brought my coffee and a glazed doughnut to the table and sat down. It was hard to look at anything other than the gold brick.

“Who brought that?” I asked.

“It came in an armored truck,” Lorna reported. “From a place called the Gold Standard Depository. La Cosse made the delivery order from jail. I had to sign for it in triplicate. The delivery man was an armed guard.”

“So what’s a kilo of gold worth?”

“About fifty-four K,” Cisco said. “We just looked it up.”

I nodded. La Cosse had more than doubled down on me. I liked that.

“Lorna, you know where St. Vincent’s Court is downtown?”

She shook her head.

“It’s in the jewelry district. Right off Seventh by Broadway. There’s a bunch of gold wholesalers in there. You and Cisco take this down there and cash it in—that is, if it’s real gold. As soon as it’s money and it’s in the trust account, text me and let me know. I’ll give La Cosse a receipt.”

Lorna looked at Cisco and nodded. “We’ll go right after the meeting.”

“Okay, good. What else? Did you bring the Gloria Dayton file?”

“Files,” she corrected as she reached to the floor and brought up a nine-inch stack of case files.

She pushed them across the table toward me but I deftly redirected them to Jennifer.

“Bullocks, these are yours.”

Jennifer frowned but dutifully reached out to accept the files. She was wearing her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, her all-business look. I knew her frown belied the fact that she’d willingly accept any part of a murder case. I also knew I could count on her very best work.

“What am I looking for in all of this?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet. I just want another set of eyes on those files. I want you to familiarize yourself with the cases and Gloria Dayton. I want you to know everything there is to know about her. Cisco’s working on her profile in the years since those cases.”

“Okay.”

“At the same time, I want you on something else.”

She slid her notebook in front of her.

“Okay.”

“Somewhere in the most recent file there, you’ll find some notes from my former investigator, Raul Levin. They regard a drug dealer and his location in a hotel. His name is Hector Arrande Moya. He was Sinaloa cartel and the feds wanted him. I want you to pull everything you can on him. My memory is that he went away for life. Find out where he is and what’s going on with him.”

Jennifer nodded but then said she wasn’t following the logic of the assignment.

“Why are we chasing this drug dealer down?”

“Gloria gave him up to get a deal. The guy went down hard and we might be looking at alternate theories at some point.”

“Right. Straw man defense.”

“Just see what you can find.”

“Is Raul Levin still around? Maybe I’ll start with him, see what he remembers about Hector.”

“Good idea, but he’s not around. He’s dead.”

I saw Jennifer glance at Lorna and Lorna’s eyes warn her off the subject.

“It’s a long story and we’ll talk about it someday,” I said.

A somber moment passed.

“Okay, then I’ll just see what I can find out on my own,” Jennifer said.

I turned my attention to Cisco.

“Cisco, what have you got for us?”

“I’ve got a few things so far. First of all, you asked me to run down Gloria since the last time you had a case with her. I did that and went through all the usual channels, digital and human, and she pretty much dropped off the grid after that last case. You said she moved to Hawaii, but if she did, she never got a driver’s license or paid utilities or set up cable TV or purchased a property on any of the islands.”

“She said she was going to live with a friend,” I said. “Somebody who was going to take care of her.”

Cisco shrugged.

“That could be but most people leave at least a shadow of a trail. I couldn’t find anything. I think what’s more likely is that’s the point where she started reinventing herself. You know, new name, ID, all of that.”

“Giselle Dallinger.”

“Maybe, or that could have been later. People who do this usually don’t stick with one ID. It’s a cycle. Whenever they think somebody might be getting close or it’s time to change, they go through the process again.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t in Witness Protection. She just wanted a new start. This seems kind of extreme.”

Jennifer cut in on the back-and-forth then.