Five hours earlier . . .
“Hey.” I stepped into the observation area attached to the interrogation room. Matt was standing by the two-way mirror, staring at the woman he’d called in for questioning.
“Hey. Sorry to call you in, but I think you’re going to want to be here.”
“Okay.” I stepped up to the glass.
The woman at the table was young, probably in her early twenties. Her hair was trimmed short, like a man’s, except for the mass of bangs that covered her forehead and fell completely over one eye and covered part of the other. The roots were black but the bangs had been bleached to near white. Her shoulders were hunched forward as her elbows rested on the table, but even with her slouched position, you could tell she had a broad frame. Much bigger than most women.
And she was familiar. Her head was tipped down so I couldn’t get a good look at her face—that damn hair was in the way—but she was familiar. I searched my memory but when nothing came up, I shrugged it off. I probably just found her familiar because I’d seen her on video surveillance.
“Who’s this?”
Matt handed me a manila file. “Nina Veras. She’s number eleven on our list of potential subjects, and I brought her in this morning to ask her some questions about the murder. When I got two different answers to the same question, I stepped out and called you. I’ve got a feeling we’re onto something here.”
I nodded and flipped open the file.
Nina Veras was twenty-two. She worked as a barista at one of the downtown coffee shops. She had no criminal record. No speeding tickets. No parking tickets.
“I trust your gut, so if you’ve got a feeling, I’ll go with it. But, Matt, this girl is squeaky clean.”
“You’re right. She is. But take a look at this.” He handed me another file. “That’s her boyfriend. I pulled it right before you got here. Look familiar?”
The mug shot paper-clipped inside raised the hairs on my arms. With dark eyes and a red bandana tied over his black hair, the man in the photo was wearing a white, threadbare tank top as he glared at the camera and held his identification board. A dog paw print was tattooed on one shoulder. Across the base of his neck were the letters MOB—Member of Blood.
I had no trouble putting his face to a name.
“Samuel Long is her boyfriend?”
Matt nodded.
“Shit.”
Samuel was a known gang member with the Bloods. Him and a couple of his cohorts were currently under surveillance by the gang task force. I scanned Samuel’s file, stopping after the first three pages because I’d seen enough. Vandalism. Theft. Drug trafficking.
All gang related.
Montana had seen an increase in gang activity over the last ten years. Gang transplants from California had come to Montana to stake their claim. Our department had been diligent in making it clear that Bozeman was no place for them, but as the town grew and our resources stretched thin, keeping a handle on their influx had become more difficult.
Nina Veras didn’t look like a murder suspect, but I’d learned over the years to never rule out the influence of a gang. They were masters of brainwashing, trapping kids into their circle so tight not even parents could pull them out.
And if Samuel Long had his hooks into Nina Veras, there was no telling what he’d asked her to do.
“So what’s your plan?”
Matt set the files down on a chair behind us. “I know you aren’t going to like this, but I’d like Simmons to come in and help with the questioning.”
“No.”
“Hear me out.” He stopped me before I could object again. “Simmons is shit at fieldwork, we both know that, but he’s got more documented confessions than any other officer in the BPD. If we’re going to get anything out of her before she clams up, he’s our best bet.”
I blew out an angry breath, rubbing my jaw as I considered Matt’s point. Simmons had a knack in the interrogation room, I’d give him that much. He was able to build trust with his subjects faster than anyone else I knew. Maybe it was his pudgy nature—he was far from intimidating—but Matt was probably right. Bringing Simmons in to help was smart.
“Fine.”
Matt clapped me on the shoulder and walked out of observation without another word. Fifteen minutes later, I stood at the mirror as he entered with Simmons on his heels.
“Nina, this is Detective Simmons.” Matt took the chair across from her. “He’s going to be listening as we talk, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes darting to Simmons, before returning to her fingers. She was picking so nervously at her cuticles, one had started to bleed.
I took a seat in one of the chairs and watched as Matt asked some basic questions. Do you remember the liquor store murder five years ago? Can you recall where you were at that time? Every question was answered with a shake of her head. The minutes passed and my hopes of getting Nina to give us any clue as to her whereabouts that day shrank further and further. Her answers were as short as possible and she refused to make eye contact with Matt—who was getting just as frustrated as I was, based on the fists he was making under the table.
Matt circled back to the beginning, repeating a question he’d already asked, when Simmons held out a hand, stepping in.
Simmons began asking Nina questions that had nothing to do with the case. He did it for an hour. Then another. And by the time I’d been watching her in that room for nearly three hours, her shell was finally beginning to crack. They talked about her job at the coffee shop. What she’d done for Christmas last week. How she was enjoying the fresh snow.
As Simmons and Nina chatted about a movie they’d both seen recently, Matt excused himself from the interrogation room and joined me in observation.
We watched as Simmons got up and brought her a paper cup of water from the cooler in the corner. “I appreciate you coming in to visit with us today. I’m sorry it’s taking so long.”
“Can I go?”
“Soon.” Simmons sat back down. “But first I need to ask you some questions about your boyfriend.”
Nina’s face paled. “Okay.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “Where’s he going with this, Matt?”
“Fuck if I know, but he’s gotten farther with her than I did so I’m sure he’s got a plan.”
I sure as hell hoped so. The longer I watched, the tighter the ball in my gut twisted. Matt was right. There was something here. Just like him, I had a feeling about this woman, and we couldn’t afford to have Simmons fuck it up.
“Nina, I know Detective Hernandez explained that you were here because we had some questions about a murder five years ago.”
She nodded to Simmons.
“Do you remember that day at all?”
Her eyes darted to the mirror. “No.”
Lie. Her body language was all over the place. She sure as fuck remembered that day. I’d bet my life on it.
“Hmm.” Simmons hummed. “It was in May. The murder happened at a liquor store. It’s closed now, but it used to be next to the grocery store on Twenty-Third Street. Do you know which one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Well, it was a long time ago. I can see how you’d forget something after five years. You would have been what, seventeen?”
She nodded.
“And your boyfriend, he would have been twenty-three. Is that right?”
“Um, twenty-two. He’s five years older than me.”
“You’re right.” Simmons chuckled. “I never have been good at math. Good thing one of us has some brains in here.”
Nina gave him a small smile but kept her eyes pinned on the table.
“Listen, I’ll be straight with you. We have reason to believe that your boyfriend committed the murders at the liquor store.”
Her head flew up, her eyes like saucers as she gasped.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, shifting to the edge of my seat. What was Simmons doing?
“You seem like a nice girl, Nina. But your boyfriend is mixed up in some bad stuff. We’re bringing him in later today and charging him with two counts of first-degree murder. I don’t want you to get mixed up in all of that, so I need you to think. Think hard. Where were you at the time of the murder?”
She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “No. No, he didn’t kill anyone.”
“This is really important, Nina.” Simmons pressed harder. “The district attorney wants to ask for the death penalty. You could be brought in as an accomplice if we can’t verify your alibi. So think. Where were you?”
A tear rolled down her cheek as she shook her head. “He didn’t kill anyone.”
“Nina, he did. He’s going to jail for the rest of his life. If he’s lucky, they’ll give him two life sentences. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison and that’s if he’s lucky enough to find a judge that won’t order lethal injection. Samuel is gone. He’s dead. Don’t end up in jail too. Tell me, where were you the day of the murder?”
She cried harder, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook.
I almost felt bad for the girl. Almost. Simmons was using the love for her boyfriend and some well-strung lies to break down her walls. He was capitalizing on her youth and the emotional stress of being trapped in a colorless room for hours. Simmons was using it all to push her over the edge.
“Nina,” he said gently. “Just tell me what happened. I’ll do whatever I can to help you. Just . . . let it out. Tell me what happened.”
She sobbed again, then dropped her hands. Her eyes were begging Simmons to understand. “Samuel didn’t kill them. Please, it wasn’t him.”
Simmons waited, stretching the silence out until it was nearly unbearable, until finally, Nina whispered, “It was me.”
The words came out of her mouth and rang in the air as guilt and relief and sorrow washed over Nina’s face.
Maybe she’d been wanting to confess. Maybe she had been tired of keeping it in. Whatever the reason, there was no doubting the truth in her voice.
Nina Veras had killed Jamie Maysen and Kennedy Hastings.
I fell back into my chair, shocked to my core.
Simmons had done it. He’d been the key to breaking this case all along.
I’d been holding out hope, praying that we’d be granted a miracle. I’d wished that this day would come. But I’d never actually thought it would happen. I’d never thought about how I’d feel in this moment.
I was relieved. I was grateful. But it was painful too.
I hurt. For Jamie. For Kennedy. For Poppy. My heart hurt now that we’d learned the truth.
That a seventeen-year-old girl had killed two people.
“He did it,” Matt whispered. “Holy fucking shit, he did it.”
Simmons reached across the table and took Nina’s hand as she cried. “Okay, Nina. Tell me what happened.”
Over the next thirty minutes, Matt and I sat and watched as Nina Veras gave a complete confession to the liquor store murder.
As Matt had suspected, her involvement with Samuel had been the motive. The couple had just moved to Montana from Los Angeles, where Samuel had been a long-standing member of the Bloods. He’d been sent here to branch out, to make money and start a new crew for the gang.
And part of his crew was a girlfriend willing to do whatever he’d asked, no questions.
So Samuel had sent Nina into the liquor store with a gun and clear orders. Get the money from the register. If anyone refuses or puts up a fight, kill ’em.
It had been her test.
Nina swore up and down that the first shot had been an accident. That she hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, but the gun had gone off in her shaking hands. Maybe that was true for the first shot. But twice? I wasn’t buying it. I think she’d panicked and killed Kennedy to save herself—not that my opinion mattered.
A judge and jury would decide her fate.
“I can’t believe all this.” Matt shook his head. “We should have found her in the bathroom.”
“Yeah.” I scoffed. “We should have.”
After she’d run out of the liquor store, Nina had disappeared behind the shopping complex. She’d stripped out of her sweatshirt and baseball hat and, just as I’d suspected, snuck into the loading dock at the grocery store.
She’d hidden in a cabinet under the sink in the women’s bathroom—a place very few men would fit, which is likely why no one had checked. She’d stayed hidden for two hours, only to come out when Samuel had texted her that the police had finished sweeping the grocery store.
Samuel—that fucker—had been sitting in the parking lot the whole time.
He’d come inside the grocery store, snatched a couple of plastic bags, then snuck into the bathroom. Then the pair had carried Nina’s disguise and gun through the front doors like they’d just bought steaks for dinner.
Being so young, I had dismissed Nina when I’d seen her on the video footage. Just like all of the cops had done that day as they’d watched the young couple walk to their black car and drive away.
Leaving ruined lives in their wake.
“How am I going to tell Poppy all of this?”
“I don’t know.” Matt stood from his chair. “But it’s good that you can be the one to break the news.”
I followed Matt out of observation to the hallway but stopped as the door to interrogation opened. With Simmons gesturing her through the door, Nina stepped into the hallway. Her eyes were aimed at her feet, but when she saw Matt and me, she looked up. Then with one hand, she brushed her hair back, holding it out of her eyes.
For the first time, I got a full view of her face. A face I recognized after all. A face I knew from years ago.
My feet faltered and my shoulder crashed into the wall.
Time slowed as Nina stared at me, recognition dawning on her face at the same time it did on mine. She held my eyes, unblinking, until Simmons shuffled her along, down the hallway to process her arrest.
No. No, it couldn’t be her. Nina Veras couldn’t be the young girl I’d caught six years ago one night on patrol. It couldn’t be her.
Except it was.
“Please. Please, Officer, please.” The girl clung to my arm. “Please don’t arrest me. I promise, I’ll never do something like this again.”
“Look, kid. I’m sorry. But you and your friends were vandalizing private property. Graffiti is illegal, even if that building is condemned. I can’t let you go.” Especially because she was the only one of her gang that I’d managed to snatch.
“No.” Her eyes begged me as she spoke. “I swear. I wasn’t even painting. Look.” She held up her fingers, all of which were clean.
“Then you won’t get in much trouble. Let’s go.” I took her elbow and started walking her back to my car.
“Please.” She was tall, probably five ten or eleven, so she kept up with my steps as she kept pleading. “I’m only sixteen. If you take me in, they’ll send me back to California. But I can’t go back. I can’t. My mom’s boyfriend . . .” She stopped her feet, tugging my arms so I stopped too. “Please. I can’t go back to live with him.” With her free hand, she lifted the long, dark hair off the nape of her neck, revealing a cluster of six cigarette burns shining under the streetlamp.
Fuck. This girl might be playing me, but the tears in her eyes and the torment on her face looked like the truth.
“You’re sixteen?”
She nodded.
“How did you get to Montana?”
“I came with my boyfriend. He’s twenty-one and we moved here together. But my dad lives here, he just doesn’t have official custody.”
“And was this boyfriend one of the punks who was vandalizing that wall?”
She shook her head. “No.”
My eyes narrowed at her lie. “Really?”
“I won’t do it again,” she whispered. “Please.”
I let her arm go and took a deep breath. Without a trace on her hands, I couldn’t prove she’d been spray-painting. All I could show was that she was with the crowd, which meant she’d probably get a slap on the wrist and a one-way ticket to California from social services. So instead of dragging her to my cruiser, I put one finger in her face. “This is your once. Your one chance. If I catch you again, I’ll drive your ass to California myself.”
“Thank you.” She threw her arms around my middle. “Thank you.” The second she let me go, she turned and ran in the opposite direction.
“Be good!” I called to her back.
“I will!” She waved and disappeared around the corner.
“Cole.” Matt put his hand on my shoulder. “Cole, are you okay?”
I watched as Simmons steered Nina Veras down the hallway. When they were out of sight, I shook my head, sinking to the floor as the world tipped upside down.
If not for me, Nina Veras would have gone back to California.
She would have been in the system. She would have been a thousand miles away from the liquor store and Samuel Long.
And Poppy’s husband would be alive.