best served cold Read online

  best served cold

  Rachel Sinclair

  Tobanna Publications

  Contents

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  For information about upcoming titles in the Harper Ross Legal Thriller series, sign up for my mailing list! You’ll be the first to know about new releases and you’ll be the first to know about any promotions!!!! http://eepurl.com/cTUHFP

  Johnson County Legal Thrillers (Kansas City, Missouri)

  Bad Faith - https://tinyurl.com/y3a6vtcm

  Justice Denied - https://tinyurl.com/y6l24d5u

  Hidden Defendant - https://tinyurl.com/y2od8qrd

  Injustice for All - https://tinyurl.com/y2znryaw

  LA Defense - https://tinyurl.com/y6o6j83f

  The Associate - https://tinyurl.com/y5kskl7c

  The Alibi - https://tinyurl.com/yy96k97t

  Reasonable Doubt - https://tinyurl.com/y6nw27kn

  The Accused - https://tinyurl.com/y2d9t3z7

  The Hate Crime - https://tinyurl.com/y5w4e24k

  Secrets and Lies - https://tinyurl.com/y6pwcjjw

  Until Proven Guilty - https://tinyurl.com/yxlllu7d

  Emerson Justice Legal Thrillers (Los Angeles)

  Dark Justice - https://tinyurl.com/y2ezwnny

  Southern California Legal Thrillers (San Diego)

  Presumption of Guilt - https://tinyurl.com/y2oowdwz

  Best Served Cold - https://tinyurl.com/yyzy5pr4

  Chapter 1

  Avery - Modern day

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Apparently, Regina had managed to track down at least some of the people who were responsible for putting me in prison all those years ago. Could it be true? After having spent seven years of my life on a hard cot, eating crappy food, and feeling in my heart all those years a sense of burning injustice, I was going to have my chance to maybe, just maybe, see that justice was done. I remembered that when I spent all those years in prison, all that I could think about, day after day, was getting back at the people who did this to me.

  Regina and I had made a date to go ahead and meet at a restaurant in Imperial Beach, which was where Regina’s condo was. SEA180 was an upscale beachfront restaurant, with an enormous deck, and fire pits all around. It was a cool evening, as September evenings sometimes were, especially close to the ocean. The temperature around the water tended to be about 10° cooler than the mainland as it was, and, around October or November, the weather cooled off considerably. Especially at night. I remembered watching the girls in the movie LaLa Land, when they were going to the producer’s party in little tiny dresses, in the middle of December, and thinking about how unrealistic that was. While it certainly did not get to be freezing as in other parts of the country during the wintertime, it certainly was not tiny dress weather.

  But Septembers tended to be a little bit warmer than it was tonight. Nevertheless, I found a seat on the deck. I made sure that we had a fire pit in front of us, and I closed my eyes and listened to the water coming in. I had to calm myself a little bit. What Regina was about to tell me was certainly going to change my life. And, once she did tell me, what was I going to say? How would I approach it? I knew that I wanted to take everybody down, one by one. I wanted to burn each one of them at the stake. But I was going to have to go through this methodically. I certainly could not just pell-mell, willy-nilly stab each person in the back.

  Regina met me at 8 o’clock. It was a little late for dinner, but she couldn’t meet until that time. I passed the time waiting for her by sipping on a dirty martini made with Grey Goose vodka, my go-to cocktail when I was feeling out of sorts. My stomach was doing flip-flops.

  She sat down across from me. “You want to get an appetizer?” she asked me. “I have to say that I’m really in the mood for some raw oysters, for some reason.”

  I motioned to the seat that was right across from mine. “Oysters are fine,” I said to her. “Now, tell me what you found out.”

  Her green eyes were dancing. “Well, here’s what I found. Do you know about the case of Jeffrey Epstein?” she asked.

  I nodded my head. And when she said that name, I immediately flashed back to that day in the pool with Becky. The memory was vague, and it was something that was buried somewhere in my psyche. But I remembered her talking to me about a middle-aged man who was interested in her. In fact, she told me that she had had sex with this middle-aged man. “Yes. I do know the name of Jeffrey Epstein.”

  “So you know what that bastard is accused of doing, right? You know about how he was leading a prostitution ring of sorts with very young girls? He was a sex trafficker. He got these young girls to service his wealthy and powerful friends.” Regina shook her head, a disgusted look on her face. “It’s disgusting. What that dude was doing, there should be the death penalty for that one. And you know how I feel about the death penalty.”

  I was surprised to hear Regina talking about the death penalty in that way. But I could see that she was serious. She generally was very much against the state putting people to death, because, after all, she had witnessed an execution. Her father was shot and killed by a guy who was high on PCP. She saw her father’s killer die by lethal injection. She told me that she was against the death penalty after that point in time.

  “I do know how you feel about the death penalty, and I have to say that I’m surprised to hear you say something like that. What made you change your mind?”

  She shook her head. “I’m just blowing off steam. I really wouldn’t want to see Jeffrey Epstein, or anybody else, be put to death. But what he was doing was absolutely disgusting. Do you know that Jeffrey Epstein is friends with both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump? And Prince Andrew. All of them are known dogs. So yeah, these guys were getting their freak on with young vulnerable girls.”

  I thought about what Regina was saying, and I wondered if Becky was involved in something like that. I definitely would not have been surprised if she was, after what she told me by the pool that one day. “Are you saying that Becky was involved in a ring like that?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Only it wasn’t exactly Jeffrey Epstein. It’s just that Jeffrey Epstein has been in the news for his nasty sex trafficking ring. But I’m hot on the trail of another ring just like it, right here in San Diego. There’s a house in Del Mar, high on a cliff, it belongs to a dude named Carl Williams.”

  My heart started to race. I remembered that Becky had talked to me about an older guy by the name of Carl. I also rem
embered that she talked about visiting him out here in San Diego. She told me that he had big parties out here, and she was hoping that she could meet men who would help her break into the movie industry through him.

  At the time, I thought that it was odd that her parents allowed her to visit him out here from her home in Kansas City. But her parents were extremely permissive. Too permissive. And she did fly out and visit him just about every weekend.

  What was she doing during those weekends?

  “Carl Williams. Who is he? What does he do?”

  “Near as I can tell, the guy don’t do shit. I mean, he does, but he makes his money off of other people. It’s not like he’s actually contributing to the country. He manages some hedge fund for a lot of other billionaires. He doesn’t create anything, he doesn’t employ anybody, all he does is manage a lot of investments. And, apparently, he makes quite a lot of money off of his sex trafficking ring as well. He gets a lot of money from his rich friends to kiddy diddle these young girls. And, when I say young girls, I mean young girls. We’re talking 14 years old, and the oldest girls apparently are 17. I have no idea why these rich fucks like to get with these young girls, but apparently they do.”

  I took a sip of my dirty martini, as I thought about what she was telling me. This Carl guy, he must have had Becky as part of his stable of girls. I wondered if Carl himself was the person who was responsible for Becky dying. If he was, what could I do? I mean, I was going to have to definitely get some kind of evidence against him, but that seemed impossible at this point. Becky was murdered 20 years ago. I knew that there was DNA evidence, and evidence that she was raped, but the DNA was never matched up with anybody. That was the problem with DNA evidence – it only works to incriminate somebody if their DNA was already on file somewhere. In this case, apparently the person who had raped Becky had not been arrested prior to raping her, so his DNA was not on file. If he had been arrested prior to raping her, we probably would’ve already had him nailed to the wall.

  “And what are you going to do? Also, how did you find out about this Carl Williams guy and what he was doing?”

  She smiled. “I still know my girls. The girls from the street. I’m still in touch with all of them, at least the ones who are still alive.”

  She looked sad when she said that last line. I knew that Regina had lost quite a few friends along the way. That was the perils of the street - you don’t always last very long. “And who told you about Carl and what he was doing?”

  “There’s this girl, name’s Jean. I don’t know if that’s her real name, but that’s the name that she goes by. Jean. She’s one of the ones who got out of the game, she’s one of the lucky ones. She’s working as a dental assistant. It’s kind of embarrassing for her, as some of her old johns come into see her dentist from time to time, and they both kind of pretend that they don’t know each other. Anyhow, I’ve been talking to the girls on the street. I’ve been taking your friend’s picture around to them, asking them if they know her. Listen, when you told me that it was a rich bastard who was possibly behind Becky’s murder, the first thing that I thought about was sex trafficking. I’ve known far too many rich guys who get into all kinds of kinky stuff, and far too many rich guys who get into young girls. So I knew that if I talked to all the girls that I know who are either in the business, or were in the business, I could figure it out. And, well, Jean knows Becky. Or she knew her.”

  I nodded my head. “How old is Jean?”

  Regina shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, but I would guess that she’s probably around our age. Around 35. It’s kinda hard to know how old she is, but that’s how old she looks. She’s had a hard life, so she’s a little bit beat up, but she’s had work done, so she’s not so bad off. Anyhow, I talked to her. She knew Becky. She told me that she knew Becky through the sex ring that she used to work. She told me about the parties that this Carl Williams would have, she told me about the girls they used, everything. I asked her if she would ever go to the police and tell them what she knew, but she told me that she would never do that.”

  “Why not?” I kinda knew the answer to that, but I wondered what it was that this Jean told Regina.

  “She said she was scared, but I think it was something more than that. I think that she told me that Carl and all of his friends had what they call immunity from prosecution. In other words, they all think they’re above the law, and maybe they are. Jean said that they own the prosecutor’s office, and that they own the cops as well. Apparently Carl has all of the prosecutor’s office and the cops on his payroll.

  Also, Jean told me that Carl has a long list of people who he can blackmail to make sure that he stays out of trouble. See, what he does, he hides video cameras all over his place. And every time a guy comes into the place and finds a girl, and bangs her, it’s all captured on video. And we’re talking thousands of guys over the years. All of these guys have relatives, relatives who I guess care about them. For whatever reason. And, some of the guys who partake in the festivities are prosecutors themselves. And cops. So because of this practice of his videotaping everybody, he’s got the goods on a lot of people in the prosecutor’s office and in the police force. So, in other words, if he can’t bribe them, he blackmails them. So, Jean told me it was pointless to try to go to the cops to ask to press charges against Carl and his friends, because she knew that nothing would ever come of it.

  I mean, think about it – this house in Del Mar has been the site of all these shenanigans for all these years, and nobody has ever heard about it. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that the cops have not busted in the door by now? It seems like this guy Carl is airtight. As Jean said, he’s immune from prosecution. And not in a good way.”

  The waiter came around and brought Regina and me some chilled oysters on a silver platter. I took one, swallowed it with some cocktail sauce, and then took a sip of my dirty martini. “Immune from prosecution. Immune from prosecution.” The term “immunity from prosecution” usually meant that the person literally had some kind of recognized immunity. Like, for instance, ambassadors from other countries had diplomatic immunity. That meant that they could commit a crime while they were on American soil, but if they committed the crime when they were in their role of a diplomat, then they were not to be prosecuted. But most people were not above the law.

  Most people were not. However, I knew the world that we lived in, and I knew that if you had enough money that you could get out of anything. Apparently, this Carl Williams also knew this.

  “Do you think that Carl was behind Becky’s murder?”

  Regina sat back in her chair, and took a bite of her olive. She, like me, enjoyed her dirty martinis. “I haven’t gotten that far. However, I think I’m on the right track. After all, that kid, that Brad Whitmore kid, he told you that the person who was responsible for her murder was somebody who was extremely wealthy. And, Carl fits the bill. He fits the bill, and he was involved with Becky. He’s also involved in a sex trafficking ring. So I’m thinking that he’s looking pretty good for Becky’s murder. Then again, I have no proof of anything. I don’t even have proof that he has a sex trafficking ring going on. I have to admit, I’m going to have to do a little bit of homework on this entire matter.”

  “What kind of homework?”

  “Undercover work. It’s something that I haven’t done before, but something I’d like to do. Listen, you have to remember one thing – I was a sex worker. I know the lines, I know the moves, and I know the johns. I know their psychology better than any shrink. I think that I could possibly go to this Carl guy and hit him up for a job. I don’t think that he would actually hire me to be one of the girls in his stable. Because, like I said before, they like very young girls in this ring. I’m obviously not a very young girl. But Jean told me that this Carl guy was always looking for an older girl who would be a bit of a mother figure for the younger ones. You see, Carl apparently has about 10 live-in girls. He might still. Mainly, the girls don’t li
ve there with him – some of the girls that he got from rich people would still be living with their parents, but they would come and visit Carl and his buddies while telling their parents that they’re going out for the night with their girlfriends or whatever.”

  “So, most of the girls were day players, so to speak. But he has girls who live there with him too?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes. We’re talking about the runaways. He finds girls off the streets, or, rather, he would recruit them off the streets. And that’s where I come in. Maybe. My plan is to go to this Carl person and try to find a job with him. He can hire me to maybe recruit the girls, or to be the house mother, or maybe even to do both. Jean told me that he has women doing both jobs a lot of the times. So, if I can convince Carl that I’m his girl, his house mother, then I’m in. Once I’m in, I know exactly how to do my investigation. I know how to talk to the girls, and I know how to cover my tracks. And not only that, I can figure out what the vulnerabilities are in his security system. If I could possibly get Christian to hack into this dude’s files, we’re golden.”

  I thought about what she was saying. It made a lot of sense. And I knew that she would do a good job. I also knew one other thing – Regina was drop-dead gorgeous. Olive skin, dark hair, light green eyes that were so bright that they could probably be seen in the dark. Her body was perfect – gorgeous breasts, slim waist, tight legs and butt. She wasn’t anybody who would flaunt her gorgeousness. She pretty much dressed down in jeans and T-shirts, her thick dark hair usually up in a ponytail, her face usually unadorned of makeup. But I knew that if she really put her mind to it that she could easily make herself beautiful enough that this Carl person would hire her in a flash. Especially if she told him about her background and about how she knew how to recruit people, how she knew how to find a vulnerable girl, and how she knew how to take care of young girls. Regina told me that this was something that she had some experience with, as her boyfriend/pimp, Michael, often had her do this for him. He had her go to bus stations and airports, but especially bus stations, to look for girls who looked like they were lost and frightened, and possibly were runaways. That was one of the things that she did that she felt shamed about – finding young women for Michael’s stable.