Chapter 8. Grey, the Detective #2
Grey didn’t often venture into the break room when the other detectives gathered to shoot the shit, but two days later, she found herself standing among her colleagues, listening to Detective Mogren tease Fasiano about a robbery case that involved the theft of thousands of dollars’ worth of sex toys from an adult shop on Sunset.
“And what happened once Fozzy heard the owner was giving out a hundred bucks’ worth of toys to anyone who could bring him a tip?” Mogren was in his element, gesticulating wildly. “Holloway, back me up.”
“It was the fastest I’ve ever seen him move,” Grey confirmed, to a chorus of howls.
Fasiano turned beet red. Grey had to admit, the other detectives were being kinder these days, as if her partnership with a veteran like Ellis had reminded them she was in fact a real cop.
But just as Fasiano started to defend himself, Captain Xie’s assistant burst into the room. “Holloway,” she barked. “Captain needs you. We got a 911 call from Scout Sage’s address.”
Everyone shut up fast. “Her address?” Grey asked dumbly.
“The pop singer?” Mogren scratched his head.
“Follow me. And hurry.” The captain’s assistant backed out of the room, and Grey had no choice but to follow. She heard the detectives explode into speculation as soon as she ran out.
“What’s going on?” This didn’t make sense—neither she nor Ellis had tipped off anyone to the fact that they were investigating Scout. “Why does the captain want me?”
“Scout’s head of security called, claiming a woman was stalking the perimeter, attempting to break in. When he confronted her, she waved a gun and said she was a cop.”
Grey stopped in her tracks. Her heart plummeted.
The assistant stopped, too, and threw her a pitying look. “About five-four, short brown hair, curses in Spanish. Sound like anyone you know?”
Shit.
“You’d better rush,” the assistant said. “The captain’s already there.”
Grey’s cruiser charged around a bend in the mountain and came to a screeching halt outside a vine-covered privacy gate.
Four police SUVs blocked the road, lights flashing blue and red, and a group of cops surrounded a tall, muscular man in a black suit and headset.
Captain Xie was among them, his medal-adorned uniform glinting in the sun, and two additional cops searched Ellis’s station wagon.
Next to Xie stood Ellis herself, in plain clothes, her hands wrested behind her back. They’d put her in cuffs.
“Jesus, Ellis,” Grey whispered. “What did you do?” She threw her car into park and leapt out. She’d never been so close to having a panic attack.
Captain Xie turned and spotted her. “Holloway! Get over here.”
“Grey!” Ellis’s eyes lit up. “Thank god. Tell them it’s okay.”
“This is Mr. Faust.” Captain Xie gestured to the brawny man in the black suit. “Head of Ms. Sage’s security team. He says he caught your partner on camera scaling the gate and making her way to one of the windows in the back of the home, where she attempted to gain access.”
Grey couldn’t help it—she turned to Ellis in horror. The minute she did, Ellis started pulling at her restraints, trying to wrench her arms from the officers who held her. “Tell them, Grey! Tell them Scout’s a murderer and we’re close to pinning her.”
“Ellis—” Grey’s voice was thick with disbelief. “Why would you do this?”
“We needed physical evidence,” Ellis insisted. “You said so yourself. If I could’ve gotten in her house, I would’ve found what we needed, I know it.” Ellis had that fervent look in her eyes. And … oh god—how had Grey ever looked at that expression and not seen it for what it was?
Obsession.
“Holloway, I need you to tell me what’s going on.” Captain Xie was a short, slender man with calm, dark eyes who rarely appeared ruffled. So when he did, it was frightening. “Did you sanction an investigation into Scout Sage?”
It wasn’t only the captain waiting for her answer. Scout’s head of security and the cops surrounding Ellis watched. The weight of their scrutiny was nearly suffocating. Grey longed to deny it, but she wasn’t a coward. She swallowed her panic and forced herself to answer. “Yes, sir. I did.”
Captain Xie threw up his hands. “Christ, Holloway. You’re supposed to be my ringer.”
“Sir, I thought there was solid evidence connecting some of Scout’s associates to Drake’s murder—”
“Enough,” the captain growled.
“We’re pressing charges,” said Faust, the security guard. “This is the third time we’ve caught this officer stalking Ms. Sage. You assured us she would be monitored.”
Grey’s chest hollowed. “Third time?”
Suddenly, it clicked: Why Ellis couldn’t access any of the case files connected to Scout, why she’d needed Grey to get them. Why she’d seemed so surprised and grateful when Grey believed her. Had Captain Xie paired her with Grey so Grey could babysit her?
“If you and your people ever swing for Scout again, you better pray you don’t miss.” Faust thrust an accusatory finger at the captain. “Otherwise, you’re going to have America’s highest-paid attorneys out for your blood.”
“You and Ms. Sage have our deepest apologies,” the captain assured him. “On behalf of the LAPD, I promise this will never happen again.”
“Scout’s guilty!” Ellis shouted. “Tell them, Grey.”
But before Grey could answer, the two officers searching Ellis’s car opened her trunk and staggered back. “Captain,” one of them yelled, while the other doubled over, clutching his mouth.
“Hold her,” Captain Xie insisted, before he marched to Ellis’s trunk, Grey hot on his heels.
He peered inside. “For god’s sake,” he whispered. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Ellis’s trunk was littered with images of Scout torn from magazines or printed from the internet.
That was what all those National Enquirers and New York Posts must’ve been for.
There was a disconcerting coil of rope, black gloves, and bleach shoved into a corner.
And worst of all—the smell that made Grey’s stomach turn—in the center of the trunk were four white bags full of putrid trash.
Q-tips, molding bread, sheets of torn-up, handwritten paper.
That day in Ellis’s car, when she’d smelled something decomposing: This was it.
Before Grey could stop him, Faust marched to the trunk, grabbed one of the bags, and upturned it, spilling the contents everywhere. He seized a crumpled looseleaf paper covered in scribbled lines, lyrics or a poem. “This is Scout’s handwriting. Your cop is stealing her trash.”
Grey spun to Ellis, unable to articulate the depth of her betrayal.
“We needed every advantage we could get,” Ellis protested. “There could be clues in there—”
Ellis’s ranting turned to white noise as the truth finally sank in, right there outside Scout’s jasmine-covered walls, with uniformed officers swarming and the LA sun beating down on her: There was no secret group of women getting revenge on the people who’d wronged them.
Grey had wanted there to be a deeper story, wanted possibilities like that to exist for her own complicated reasons, but ultimately she’d been suckered by a disturbed woman hiding behind a detective’s badge.
She’d gone from having the best track record in robbery-homicide to failing spectacularly in front of her captain. To inheriting the sins of her father.
The scent of the rancid trash in Ellis’s trunk finally hit her with overwhelming force, mixing with her disbelief. Grey bent over and retched into the grass.