“Baldwin, who is he?”

He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “That is a very long story.” He looked at Price. “This guy is on our wanted lists. He’s international, which is why you aren’t familiar with him. We don’t know why he’s in the States.” Price nodded, and Baldwin turned back to Taylor. “We have something else going on that you need to deal with first.”

“Just tell me what’s happening.”

Both men grew silent. Taylor waited for a moment, doomsday thoughts spinning through her head. When neither spoke, she threw up her hands in frustration.

“For God’s sake, I can handle it. Did my dad break out of prison, or my mother die?”

Judas Kiss

259

“No,” he answered.

“Then the world isn’t at an end. Just tell me already. You know I hate this kind of shit. Stop protecting me.”

Baldwin looked at Price, then back at Taylor. “The media has your videotapes.”

Taylor didn’t move, but her heart fluttered. She’d spoken too soon. The apocalypse was upon her. “No,”

she said.

Price cleared his throat. “Yes. It gets worse. There is a tape circulating of the night David Martin died. It shows you shooting him.”

“I know I shot him. I was there, remember? He was chasing me through the cabin, trying to kill me. I had to shoot him. It was him or me.” Her voice sounded weak, and she sat straighter in the chair. “It was him or me,” she repeated more firmly. “Everyone knows that already.”

Baldwin nodded. “We know. But the videotape that’s been released doesn’t exactly show that.”

“What are you talking about? If it’s off the cameras that took the shots of us having sex—sorry, Captain—

then it will show exactly what happened. I’ve seen the sex tapes. The angle would have been perfect.”

“The angle was perfect. But it doesn’t look like selfdefense. He was begging you not to shoot him, and you take a step closer and plug him.” She started to interrupt but Price raised his hand. “I know you didn’t kill him like that. Your version of what happened stood up in court, and I know you wouldn’t lie. But someone has made it look like that’s exactly what happened, and it’s been fed to the media. We have a bit of a problem, as you can imagine.”

“What’s the problem? I’ll go on television and tell 260

J.T. Ellison

them what happened. That whatever they’ve been given is a fake.”

Baldwin and Price exchanged glances again. Price spoke first. “Taylor, I can’t stop this immediately. We have to go meet with the Office of Professional Accountability. They are making some serious noise.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

She looked at Baldwin.

“Don’t worry, babe,” he said. “It will all be fine. Go with Price. I’ve got some calls to make. We’ll figure it out, I promise. Okay?”

Taylor stared at him, recognized that he was barely holding it together. Things must be worse than she could imagine. She licked her lips and gave him a tiny smile. She realized he’d been holding his breath.

“Okay.” She turned to Price. “But Captain, tell me one thing. How did this tape make it to the media?”

He had the good manners to look embarrassed. “I got an anonymous phone call around seven-thirty this morning, saying you were filmed in a compromising position. The caller assured me that it was going to air on the midday news. But whoever did this coordinated their attack, Taylor. The sex tapes haven’t broadcast yet locally, they are on the national cable news networks. Damn media fuckers didn’t bother to confirm the source. It was out before I had a chance to stop it.” His voice broke. “And I did try, Taylor. I did try. We could demand they take down the story, but that’s going to add fuel to the fire. The sex tapes and the subsequent shooting video, all of this has been carefully planned to take you down. We’ll figure out another way to fight it, I swear to you.”

Judas Kiss

261

Oh, this was not good. This was not good at all. The word national replayed itself in her mind a few times, giving her a real flavor of the exact type of shit she was in. Taylor shut her eyes, tried to remember the last time she’d been called in front of the OPA. It was still called the Investigative Services Division then, and it hadn’t gone well. There were new people involved now, new management. Maybe this would go smoothly. A knot in her stomach gave way to a fiercer, gnawing pain. She winced, swallowed hard, then opened her eyes.

“Fuck,” she said.

Twenty-Eight

Metro’s Office of Professional Accountability was freezing cold. Someone had turned the air-conditioning on full, complete overkill considering the still moderate temperatures outside.

It took all of Taylor’s self-control not to shake. She didn’t want to give the wrong impression, didn’t want Captain Delores Norris to think she was scared. She figured the air-conditioning was a trick they used. Anything to make themselves feel more powerful. Price didn’t seem affected, just crossed his left ankle over his right knee and sat quietly, obviously lost in thought.

Taylor hadn’t had much contact with the OPA since David Martin’s death, only a standard investigation a month ago when she’d been forced to discharge her weapon into the killer called Snow White. That was fine by her. The officers of the OPA weren’t ever very popular with the rank and file. They couldn’t afford to be chummy, had to keep themselves separate, above reproach. No fraternization.

Judas Kiss

263

When the ISD became the Office of Professional Accountability, Fitz had immediately christened them the Oompas. Homicide had gotten a good laugh out of that, the name drifted through the ranks until it was almost second nature. Taylor figured everyone called the OPA crew the Oompa-loompas. Behind their backs, though. Never to their face.

When the new OPA captain had been tapped three months ago, the unit’s nickname became more prescient, and Taylor often wondered if their Chief of Police actually had a sense of humor. The new captain’s name was Delores Norris, and she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. She beat Metro’s minimum height requirements by being black and a woman, moved quickly through the ranks and ended up as the head of the most hated department on the force. Her diminutive physical presence only perpetuated the nickname, and it didn’t help that she had slightly bowed legs that forced her body into a swaying walk. As she waddled down the halls, a faint strain of Oompa, Oompa could be heard. Taylor didn’t know how the woman stood being the center of so much derision. Especially now. At the moment, Taylor was the target of the Oompa’s derision, and she didn’t feel at all amused by the situation.

Delores Norris sat high, back straight as an arrow, the cloth of her starched uniform jacket not touching the back of the chair. Her hair was cut short, close to her head, with wiry gray curls around the temples. She read a report in front of her, tapping her pen along the manila edge. Every third second, she looked up at Taylor over bright red plastic half-moon glasses and 264

J.T. Ellison

shook her head slightly. After what felt like an hour of this scrutiny, Norris closed the file, set the pen alongside.

“So, Lieutenant. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to see you in my office today. You’ve had an exemplary career with Metro, one worth watching. I’ve been keeping my eye on you, young lady.” Her accent was odd, not foreign, but strange, like she was covering a severe lisp. She put emphasis on the wrong words, making the cadence of her voice grating.

Taylor felt like an errant schoolgirl. Making fun of the Oompa was easy when you weren’t face-to-face with her principal’s scowl. Taylor just nodded weakly, not sure what the woman wanted her to say. The Oompa stared at her a moment longer and Taylor swore the woman’s lip twitched. Damn her, she was enjoying watching Taylor’s discomfort. The realization simply served to piss her off. She sat straighter and looked the Oompa in the eye. She’d done nothing wrong, she wasn’t going to be made to feel she had.