“She attended UCLA on a scholarship and graduated with a BA in sociology and a master’s in psychology. She was hired as a victim advocate by Minnesota’s Department of Public Services and moved to St. Paul in 2008. That’s where she met and married Luke Reardon. In 2014 she was named executive director of the women’s shelter where she was working at the time of her death.”

  “Let’s get back to Frank Muñoz,” Ali interjected.

  “Very well,” Frigg agreed.

  The next article that flashed onto the screen, one from 2005, covered his guilty plea.

  FORMER PASADENA OFFICER GUILTY OF CORRUPTION

  Former Pasadena police officer Francisco Muñoz surprised everyone today by pleading guilty to multiple federal charges minutes before his trial in federal court was scheduled to get underway.

  Mr. Muñoz had been an eleven-year veteran of Pasadena PD when he was swept up as part of an FBI investigation into the notorious and now-defunct mob-owned strip club known as BJ’s. He was accused of multiple counts of police corruption, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, and pled guilty to all of them in the course of today’s court proceedings.

  Under current sentencing guidelines, he could spend the next twenty-five years in federal prison. Sentencing is set for two weeks from today.

  Unable to post bail, Mr. Muñoz has remained in custody from the time of his arrest until today’s court appearance. Any sentence given by the court will most likely be reduced by time served.

  “Okay,” Ali said, when she finished reading that one. “Frank Muñoz is off to prison while the three people who sent him there are free as birds. We still have no idea what he had against his former wife, but as far as the cops who put him away…”

  “He has motive out the kazoo,” Stu supplied.

  Ali nodded. “And ditto for the ex-girlfriend who probably helped them. So now we need to track down a cop who’ll see all this the same way we do.”

  “Good luck with that,” Stu said. “It sounds like a tall order.”

  CHAPTER 39

  BLYTHE, CALIFORNIA

  Saturday, January 4, 2020, 7:00 a.m. (PST)

  Detective Juanita Ochoa had arrived home from Riverside in time to tuck the kids in bed, but she was up and out of the house bright and early the next day, well before the Saturday morning cartoons came on. The Blythe Municipal Golf Course wasn’t a private country club, but Judge Emmett Carruthers treated it as though it were. Every cop in town knew that he and his pals had a standing tee time there at seven every Saturday morning.

  The guy in the pro shop knew the drill. When Juanita told him she was a cop looking for Judge Carruthers, he handed her the key to a golf cart. “They’re probably on the tee box at the par three, waiting for the guys ahead of them to clear the green,” he told her.

  At that early hour, it was downright freezing in the open golf cart, and Juanita wasn’t dressed for it. By the time she reached the par 3, she was chilled through. As soon as she pulled up, the judge, who was dressed for the weather, complete with a tartan wool hat, separated himself from his buddies and came over.

  “Hola, Detective Ochoa,” he said cheerily. “What have you got for me this fine morning?”

  Juanita handed over the warrant request she’d prepared the night before. He scanned through it briefly. “Have you got a pen?” he asked.

  Because she believed in being prepared, Juanita had the needed pen in her pocket. He signed off on the document, using the roof of the golf cart as a writing surface.

  “There you go,” Judge Carruthers told her with an encouraging smile as he returned both the signed warrant request and the pen to her waiting hands. “Happy hunting.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Minutes after arriving at the golf course, Juanita Ochoa was on the road, once again headed for Riverside. She’d heard about more than one case being solved by detectives obtaining a single telephone number. She only had one warrant now, but once she knew the next number Dante called on Monday morning, she’d put in a warrant request for that one, too.

  Juanita understood that this kind of coordinated crime didn’t happen in a vacuum, and with any kind of luck, following the lines of communication would eventually reveal all the players. Her only concern now was how long it would take for phone providers to respond to the tech team’s requests for information. While she waited on that, Detective Ochoa planned to go to work on the complex process of locating the foster home or homes where Dante’s children were currently being housed.

  She had started doing the next-of-kin notifications, but she had yet to finish them, and finish them she would. Not only did she owe that to Dante Cox’s kids, she also owed it to Detective Phil Reyes.

  CHAPTER 40

  SEDONA, ARIZONA

  Saturday, January 4, 2020, 8:00 a.m. (MST)

  Ali awakened a little past eight to the welcome scent of brewing coffee. With her body on no known time zone, she’d slept fitfully at best. Bella had already abandoned the bedroom and was eating breakfast by the time Ali staggered out of bed, pulled on her robe, and made her way to the kitchen.

  “What would you like?” Alonzo asked.

  “Just coffee for now,” she told him, “and maybe French toast a little later. I’ve got something I need to attend to first.”

  Armed with her coffee, she headed for the library, where a fire was already lit in the gas-burning fireplace. While tossing and turning overnight, going over everything she’d learned in her mind, something else had dawned on her. Maybe they had this whole thing wrong. Yes, Hal Holden, Jack Littleton, and Danielle Lomax had sent Frank Muñoz to prison, but he wasn’t the only one. Those same three people had also been instrumental in locking up Alysha’s killer, Zeke Woodward. Maybe someone besides Frank Muñoz was out for revenge.

  After settling in front of the fire, Ali summoned Frigg.

  “Good morning, Ms. Reynolds,” Frigg said when she answered. “I hope you slept well.”

  “I did,” Ali lied. “Thank you for asking.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “What can you tell me about Zeke Woodward, Alysha Morgan’s killer? I trust he’s still in prison.”

  Frigg’s voice returned a moment later. “Mr. Woodward was sent to prison for second-degree murder in 1997 and given a twenty-year-to-life sentence. He served his time in the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, California. On October 1, 2019, Mr. Woodward was granted compassionate release into the custody of his daughter, Monique Haynes, and her husband, Rodney, who live in Blaine, Washington. According to Mr. Woodward’s medical chart, he suffers from stage-four lung cancer and is currently receiving hospice care at his daughter’s residence.”

  The irony of his release date wasn’t lost on Ali. Frank Muñoz and Zeke Woodward had been released within a month of each other.

  “What can you tell me about Zeke’s daughter?”

  “Monique Haynes is employed as an RN at a hospital in Bellingham. Her husband works for the US Border Patrol.”

  “Can you provide me with Monique’s phone number, please?”

  “Of course,” Frigg replied. “Home or work?”

  “Both.”

  With the numbers in hand, Ali hesitated for a moment. It wasn’t that early in the morning, but if Monique had worked a night shift, a phone call now might awaken her. However, Ali’s reluctance about making the call was about more than just timing. She was still wrestling with what she should say when she finally squared her shoulders, keyed the Haynes’s home phone number into her phone, and pressed Send.

  A woman picked up after two rings. “Hello,” she said, her voice flat and sounding more than a little impatient.

  “Is this Monique Haynes?” Ali asked.

  “Yes, it is, but who’s this? If you’re calling because you want to buy my house, I’m hanging up now.”

  Ali had received her own share of spam calls offering bogus real estate deals, and she understood Monique’s truculent attitude.

  “Please don’t hang up,” Ali put in quickly. “My name is Ali Reynolds from Sedona, Arizona, and this has nothing to do with real estate. I’ve been asked to look into the possibility of wrongdoing at the Pasadena Police Department around the time your father was arrested and convicted. I know he’s been released and is staying with you, but I was wondering if it would be possible for me to have a word with him.”

  “Possible wrongdoing?” Monique repeated. “What kind of wrongdoing?”

  “I’ve reason to believe that another Pasadena PD officer, a dirty cop, was at BJ’s on the night the Alysha Morgan homicide occurred. Interestingly enough, that officer’s name never came up in the investigation nor did he testify for the prosecution. I believe someone may have been hiding something, and I’d like to speak with your father to find out if he has any insights into that.”

  There was no immediate reply. Knowing it could go either way, Ali kept quiet.

  “All right,” Monique said at last. “Mornings are usually better for him. By late afternoon he’s generally too tired to talk. Let me see if he’s willing to speak to you.”

  In the background, Ali heard the sounds of movement as the phone was carried from one room to another. Finally Monique spoke again, leaving the phone uncovered so Ali could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said. “There’s a lady on the phone named Ali something or other. She’s from Arizona, but she’d like to talk to you about possible wrongdoing on the part of Pasadena PD at the time you were arrested. It has something to do with a dirty cop. I told her I’d ask, but you don’t have to speak to her if you don’t want to. Do you want to talk to her?”

  There was no audible answer, but he must have agreed.

  “Okay,” Monique said into the phone, “I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “What kind of wrongdoing and what dirty cop?” Zeke asked. His voice was weak and hoarse. The effort of speaking even that many words resulted in a fit of coughing.

  “Someone who was at BJ’s the night you got arrested.”

  “Who’s that, Frank Muñoz?” Zeke asked at once.

  His words caught Ali by surprise. The fact that Zeke had immediately hit on Muñoz as the dirty cop in question was striking.

  “So you were already aware that Frank Muñoz was a dirty cop?” Ali asked. “How did you learn that?”

  “I knew he was a cop because Alysha told me,” Zeke replied. “Didn’t find out about the dirty part until later on along with everyone else.”

  “And how did Alysha know Muñoz was a police officer?”

  “Danielle told her,” Zeke answered. “Why wouldn’t she? Them two women was friends, and friends always talk about they’s boyfriends.”

  “Did Alysha tell you anything else about him?”

  “She said something about him beating the crap out of Danielle on occasion, but then again, who am I to talk?” Zeke gave a brief chuckle that morphed into another spasm of coughing,

  Ali took a deep breath before asking her next question. “Do the names Jack Littleton and Hal Holden mean anything to you?”

  “Sure,” Zeke said at once. “They’s the cops that arrested me and locked my ass up. I ain’t got no problem with them—they was just doin’ their jobs.” That statement was followed by more coughing. At that point Monique intervened on her father’s behalf.

  “He can’t talk any more right now,” she said, taking charge. “It’s wearing him out.”

  “Please tell your father that I said thank you,” Ali told her. “He’s been very helpful.”

  Because he had been—Zeke Woodward had just told Ali exactly what she needed to know. Danielle Lomax had indeed been the victim of domestic violence, but not at the hands of her husband. Her abuser had been none other than Frank Muñoz himself, and now Ali had someone who could attest to that fact, as long as Zeke Woodward didn’t die first.

  Uncertain of her next move, Ali opted for food before action and headed for the kitchen. By the time she had polished off Alonzo’s French toast, she had decided. Back in the library, she summoned Frigg once more.

  “Can you give me the name for the lead detective on the Danielle Lomax-Reardon homicide?”

  “That would be Lt. Amos Anderson. He’s now Captain Amos Anderson, the head of St. Paul PD’s Homicide Unit,” Frigg replied.

  “Phone number, please,” Ali requested, “and just the general number for the department. Today I need to go through proper channels and up the chain of command.”

  With that number in hand, she dialed. When an operator answered, she asked to be connected to the homicide unit.

  “My name is Ali Reynolds,” she told the next person who came on the line. “I’d like to speak to whoever was the lead detective on the Danielle Lomax-Reardon homicide investigation,” she said.

  “I believe that would be Captain Anderson, but he’s not in at this time. Can I help you?”

  “No, I need to speak to him directly. I have a possible lead in this case. Would you please ask him to give me a call?”

  The guy on the phone took the message, but Ali was left wondering if Anderson would call her back. She hoped so. The promise of a possible lead in a long-cold case could be pretty enticing, but there was no telling if or when he’d respond. After hanging up, Ali hurried into the bathroom to shower. She wanted to be in Phoenix so she could be on hand whenever the doctors got around to releasing B. All the same, she took her phone into the bathroom with her and left it on the floor close enough to the shower so she’d be able to answer if it rang. If Amos Anderson did reply right away, she didn’t want to miss the call.

  CHAPTER 41

  ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

  Saturday, January 4, 2020, 9:30 a.m. (CST)

  Amos Anderson was outside, hard at work, and using his spanking-new snowblower. He had cleared both his driveway and the walkway to his front porch, adding several inches of the light fluffy stuff to the existing six-foot-deep canyon carved into old frozen snow. Now he was working on the sidewalk in front of the house. However, with a frigid air mass due to come down out of Canada, Saturday night temperatures were predicted to plunge well below zero. He wanted the new snow cleared away and a layer of deicer laid down before that happened.

  He didn’t mind being out in the cold. Because he spent most of his days locked in a downtown office, he loved any opportunity to be outdoors. With both of their sons out of the house now, Bonnie, his wife, kept hinting that maybe they should sell the house and downsize to a condo. That way, she said, Amos wouldn’t have to worry about snow in the winter and yardwork in the summer, but the truth was, he loved working in the yard. It was something that helped manage the constant stress that came with working homicides. Some of his pals were big on ice fishing, but summer or winter, fishing had never been Amos’s thing. In the winter, sitting in shacks and drinking schnapps or beer just didn’t grab him. In the summer there were always mosquitos.

  Given a choice, he’d take mowing the lawn, raking leaves, or blowing snow over fishing every single time, and most especially in this instance when the snowblower in question happened to be the latest and greatest. His old workhorse one had finally bitten the dust after the first big snowstorm in December, and he’d gone out and splurged on a new one. That was the other good thing about having both boys grown up and out of the house. Now that he and Bonnie were no longer forking over money for tuition, room rent, or food for two college-aged boys, they had a lot more discretionary income at their disposal, and Amos had really wanted that snowblower.

  When his cell phone vibrated in his shirt pocket, he shut down the machine and removed his gloves in order to answer. Seeing the phone number, he sighed. If the office was calling him first thing on a Saturday morning, that probably meant they’d caught a case overnight.

  “Hey, Cap,” Sergeant Rod Toomey said, “how’s it going?”

  Toomey was the homicide squad’s desk sergeant.

  It was fine until now, Amos thought. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “An odd call just came in from a woman in Arizona, someone named Ali Reynolds,” Rod answered. “She asked to speak to you. She claims she may have a lead in the Danielle Lomax-Reardon homicide.”

  Amos heard the quick catch in his own breath. So did Rod Toomey.

  Every homicide cop has that one case that—solved or not—stays with him forever. For Amos, Danielle Lomax-Reardon’s murder was it. He had been the lead on the case, partnered with a newbie member of the homicide squad named Russell Thomas. It had been Russ’s first case, and it was a bad one.

  Amos recalled being summoned to the scene. They had arrived at the address and found Danielle’s bloody, bullet-shredded body lying among a scatter of pumpkins from a ruined Halloween display on the front porch of Dahlke House, a local women’s shelter.

  Upon seeing the bloodied body, Russ had lost his cookies, staggering off the porch and barfing into a nearby hedge. He’d been embarrassed as all hell about that, but Amos had told him not to worry—assuring him that first cases were often like that and that over time seeing dead bodies would become an everyday occurrence. It had been true for Amos once and eventually it was true for Russell Thomas as well.

  The two detectives had remained at the crime scene for the next hour and a half. When the ME did his thing, there had been no need to transport the victim to a hospital for lifesaving care because Danielle had been pronounced dead at the scene. For Amos, the worst part of the night came later—after they left the crime scene and went to the victim’s home to notify her family.

  Like the front porch of the shelter, the Reardons’ home, too, had been fully stocked with Halloween decorations both inside and out. A pair of glowing jack-o’-lanterns were stationed on either side of the door. A fake skeleton lounged on the porch rail, while more jack-o’-lanterns leered through every window.

  That night Luke Reardon had answered the door as a happily married man, something that changed the moment he saw their faces and badges. He had invited them into a house where the living room was strewn with an assortment of Halloween debris. Two Darth Vader costumes had been abandoned just inside the front door. The coffee table in front of the sofa was covered with candy and cookies dumped out of two plastic jack-o-lanterns.