Chapter 10 #2
I stop myself. I'm building a theory, not a case.
The shell company received Lawrence's payments and sent money to the brokerage firm.
Ridgewater has unexplained income and the access and skill set to have obtained the footage.
The circumstantial line between those two facts is strong enough for me to see the shape of what's happening, but I haven't yet put Ridgewater's name on the shell company's registration or its bank account.
That connection is the gap, and the gap is what separates a theory from an arrest warrant.
This is bigger than three murders and a blackmail scheme. This is a distribution operation, and distribution operations attract federal attention.
I pick up my desk phone and call a number I haven't dialed since the Armand Deveraux case closed.
Adrian Locke answers on the third ring, his voice carrying the same measured cadence I remember from the press conferences and the evidence reviews and the long hours of coordination between NOPD and the Bureau's Cyber Crimes Division.
"Locke."
"It's Broussard. NOPD Homicide."
A beat of silence follows, the kind that tells me he's placing the name and recalibrating his afternoon. "Andy. It's been a while. What do you have?"
"Two threads that I think connect, and federal resources to close the gap.
First thread: a former security contractor at Dominion with the access and technical skill to have copied footage from the cameras Julien LaSalle planted.
He's got a partial facial recognition match placing him outside one of my victim's buildings before her death, and his financials don't track with his reported income.
Second thread: a shell company receiving blackmail payments from Dominion members, with outgoing transfers to a media licensing firm in Florida that's appeared in prior federal complaints for non-consensual distribution of intimate material.
Three homicide victims who were being blackmailed from the same archive. "
"You're telling me you've got the footage pipeline and the likely source, but you haven't connected them yet."
"That's what I'm telling you. The contractor's name is Jerry Ridgewater.
Former commercial security, hired by Dominion during their technical infrastructure expansion.
Margot Pascal fired him for unauthorized access to private room recordings.
She didn't press charges. If your databases can connect Ridgewater to the shell company or the brokerage firm, I've got a case that spans three homicides and a federal distribution operation. "
The silence that follows carries a different texture. Locke knows Dominion. He knows what those cameras recorded.
"The cameras Julien LaSalle planted were recording for weeks before Luc Pascal swept the rooms," I continue.
"Ridgewater had access to the monitoring systems during that period.
If he copied the footage before he was fired, the archive he carried out of Dominion would contain material on every member who scened in those rooms during that window. "
Locke's pen scratches across paper on his end. "Send me what you have. I'll run Ridgewater through our databases and see if the brokerage firm has active federal interest beyond those prior complaints. If they're distributing material from those cameras, this falls under our jurisdiction."
"That's why I'm calling."
"I'll have Rivera pull the Deveraux case files and cross-reference. If Ridgewater's archive connects to the footage Armand's operation used, the overlap gives us grounds to reopen the investigation on the distribution side." He pauses. "You're working this through the Landry case?"
"Landry is the authorized investigation. The pattern connects the rest."
Locke reads between the lines. He worked alongside me long enough during the Deveraux case to understand how NOPD politics function and how a homicide detective navigates around them. "I'll make some calls today. Give me a day to assess the federal angle and I'll get back to you."
I hang up and sit with what I just set in motion.
Bringing the Bureau in means losing some control of the investigation.
It means federal prosecutors and federal timelines and federal priorities that may not align with my need to put Ridgewater in handcuffs before the fourth name on the blackmail list becomes the fourth body in a parking garage.
In return, I get resources I can't access alone: federal subpoena power, the Bureau's digital forensics capabilities, and the jurisdictional reach to shut down the brokerage operation.
It also means federal agents handling evidence that may include footage of Renata. Bureau analysts will sit in a sterile room, cataloging the contents of Ridgewater's archive frame by frame, and she might be in those frames.
They might see the private version of her, unguarded and unperformed, captured by a camera she didn't know existed and played back by strangers who will never understand what they're seeing.
The thought pulls a knot across my shoulders that I can't roll out. I gave the case to the Bureau because it was the right call. The right call and the easy call haven't occupied the same space since the night Renata walked through a parking garage and watched a man die.
That evening, I drive home through the late-afternoon heat with the case file locked in the trunk and the financial records mapped in my notebook and the need to see her pressing against the back of my ribs with an urgency I stopped trying to categorize the first mornings I found her barefoot in my kitchen.
She's at the table when I walk in, her laptop open and her hair down, loose past her shoulders in the way that only happens in my house, the unguarded look that doesn't exist behind the bar or on the main floor.
The NOPD shirt she liberated from my second drawer has slipped far enough at the collar to show the slope of muscle between her neck and shoulder.
When she looks up and reads my face before I say a word, I can see the bartender skill engaging, the ability to know what a man needs before he orders it.
"You found something."
"I found where the money goes."
I give her the financial trail in broad strokes, keeping the specifics vague enough to protect the integrity of the evidence while giving her enough to understand the scope.
The shell company. The content brokerage.
The parallel revenue stream that means Ridgewater's archive is being sold, not just used for leverage.
Her face goes still in a way I've learned to read as the place where fear meets fury and neither one wins. She processes fast, the burglar brain that maps systems and finds vulnerabilities now running the implications against every person she's served a drink to at Dominion.
"He's selling it." Her voice is flat, stripped of the bravado she uses as padding. "The footage from those rooms is being sold to people who pay to watch it."
"That's what the financial trail indicates."
"Every member who scened in those rooms. Their faces, their bodies, the things they trusted Dominion to keep private." She closes her laptop with a controlled motion that costs her something. "Including mine."
"We don't know that yet."
"We know enough." Her eyes meet mine with the directness I've come to expect when the mask drops and the intelligence underneath runs unfiltered. "What happens next?"
"I called the FBI. Locke, from the Deveraux case. He's pulling files and assessing the federal angle. If the brokerage firm is distributing the footage across state lines, it's federal jurisdiction."
"And Margot?"
"I sent a text to Remy. He'll bring her up-to-speed."
"And Ridgewater?"
"He's the priority. The financial trail builds the case. Locke's team can add federal resources to what I'm working locally."
She gives me a nod, small and contained, and picks up her phone to check the time with the practiced calm of a woman who learned years ago that falling apart is a luxury she can't afford. She sets the phone down and straightens in her chair, already reaching for the next move.
"I have a shift tonight."
"No."
"Andy." My name in that tone carries a warning I've learned to respect and have no intention of obeying.
"Three members are dead. The club is operating under a threat that Margot is managing with Rapier Strategic support.
If the bartender who's been behind that bar for years suddenly stops showing up, it raises questions from people who are already nervous.
My absence draws more attention than my presence. "
"You just told me you might be on a target list, and your response is to go pour drinks at the place the target list came from."
"My response is to maintain the routine that keeps me useful to this investigation and visible to the community that trusts me.
" She crosses her arms, and the gesture pulls the borrowed shirt tight across her shoulders in a way I am not going to let myself notice right now.
"I'm safer at Dominion than I am anywhere else tonight.
The club has Rapier Strategic coverage. Margot's security protocols are tighter than they've been since the breach.
And the bar is a public space with witnesses and exits and a bartender who knows every face in the room. "
She's right, and her being right makes the possessive resistance in my chest worse, not better.
The cop in me understands the logic of maintaining operational normalcy during an active investigation.
The man who watched her scene on the main floor and has been sleeping one wall away from her for days wants to lock the front door and tell her she's not leaving this house until Ridgewater is in custody.
"If you go, I go with you."
"As what? My bodyguard?"
"As a member who happens to be spending his evening at the bar."
"You hate sitting at the bar when you could be working on this."