The Missing Witness

Book 5: Quinn & Costa Thriller

by Allison Brennan

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

When a key witness goes missing, Quinn & Costa must find her before a killer silences her for good…

Detective Kara Quinn is back in Los Angeles to testify against a notorious human trafficker, finally moving past the case that upended her life. But when the accused is shot in broad daylight, the chaotic scene of the crime turns up few reliable bystanders. And one witness—a whistleblower who might be the key to everything—has disappeared.

After another person close to the case is killed, it’s clear that anyone who knows too much is in danger, and tracking down the witness becomes a matter of life-and-death. But as explosive secrets surface within the LAPD and FBI, Kara questions everything she thought she knew about the case, her colleagues and the life she left behind months ago.

Now with FBI special agent Matt Costa’s help, she must race to find the missing witness and get to the bottom of the avalanche of conspiracies that has rocked LA to its core…before it's too late.

A Quinn & Costa Thriller

Book 1: The Third to Die
Book 2: Tell No Lies
Book 3: The Wrong Victim
Book 4: Seven Girls Gone

Release date: January 23, 2024

Publisher: MIRA Books

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

My parking garage off Fifth was nearly a mile from where I worked at city hall. I could have paid twice as much to park two blocks from my building and avoid the rows of homeless people: the worn tents, the used needles, the stinking garbage, the aura of hopelessness and distrust that filled a corner park and bled down the streets.

I was listening to my favorite podcast, LA with A&I. Amy and Ian started the podcast two years ago to talk about computer gaming, technology, entertainment and Los Angeles. It had blossomed into a quasi news show and they live streamed every morning at seven. They’d riff on tech and local news as if sitting down with friends over coffee. Like me, they were nerds, born and bred in the City of Angels. I’d never met Amy or Ian in real life, but felt like I’d known them forever.

We’d chatted over Discord, teamed up to play League of Legends, and I often sent them interesting clips about gaming or tech that they talked about on their podcast, crediting my gaming handle. Twice, we’d tried to set up coffee dates, but I always chickened out. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I thought they wouldn’t like me if they met me. Maybe because I was socially awkward. Maybe because I didn’t like people knowing too much about my life.

Today while I drove to work, they’d discussed the disaster that was city hall: all the digital files had been wiped out. The news story lasted for about five minutes, but it would be my life for the next month or more as my division rebuilt the data from backups and archives. It was a mess. They laughed over it; I tried to, but I was beginning to suspect the error was on purpose, not by mistake.

Now they were talking about a sweatshop that had been shut down last week.

“We don’t know much,” Amy said. “You’d think after eight days there’d be some big press conference, or at least a front-page story. The only thing we found was two news clips—less than ninety seconds each—and an article on LA Crime Beat.”

“David Chen,” Ian said, “a Chinese American who allegedly trafficked hundreds of women and children to run his factory in Chinatown, was arraigned on Monday, but according to Crime Beat, the FBI is also investigating the crime. And—get this—the guy is already out on bail.”

“It’s fucked,” Amy said. “Look, I’m all for bail reform. I don’t think some guy with weed in his pocket should have to pay thousands of bucks to stay out of jail while the justice system churns. But human trafficking is a serious crime—literally not two miles from city hall, over three hundred people were forced to work at a sweatshop for no money. They had no freedom, lived in a hovel next door to the warehouse. Crime Beat reported that the workers used an underground tunnel to avoid being seen—something I haven’t read in the news except for one brief mention. And Chen allegedly killed one of the women as he fled from police. How did this guy get away with it? He kills someone and spends no more than a weekend behind bars?”

“According to Crime Beat, LAPD investigated the business for months before they raided the place,” Ian said. “But Chen has been operating for years. How could something like this happen and no one said a word?”

I knew how. People didn’t see things they didn’t want to.

Case in point: the homeless encampment I now walked by.

I paused the podcast and popped my earbuds back into their charging case.

“Hello, Johnny,” I said to the heroin addict with stringy hair that might be blond, if washed. I knew he was thirty-three, though he looked much older. His hair had fallen out in clumps, his teeth were rotted, and his face scarred from sores that came and went. He sat on a crusty sleeping bag, leaned against the stone wall of a DWP substation, his hollow eyes staring at nothing. As usual, he didn’t acknowledge me. I knew his name because I had asked when he wasn’t too far gone. Johnny, born in Minnesota. He hadn’t talked to his family in years. Thought his father was dead, but didn’t remember. He once talked about a sister and beamed with pride. She’s really smart. She’s a teacher in...then his face dropped because he couldn’t remember where his sister lived.

Four years ago, I left a job working for a tech start-up company to work in IT for city hall. It was barely a step up from entry-level and I couldn’t afford nearby parking garages. If I took a combination of buses and

the metro, it would take me over ninety minutes to get to work from Burbank, so factoring the combination of time and money, driving was my best bet and I picked the cheapest garage less than a mile from work.

I used to cringe when I walked by the park. Four years ago, only a dozen homeless tents dotted the corner; the numbers had more than quadrupled. Now that I could afford a more expensive garage, I didn’t want it. I knew most of the people here by name.

“Hey, Toby,” I greeted the old black man wearing three coats, his long, dirty gray beard falling to his stomach. He had tied a rope around his waist and attached it to his shopping cart to avoid anyone stealing his worldly possessions when he slept off his alcohol.

“Mizvi,” he said, running my name together in a slur. He called me “Miss Violet” when he was sober. He must have still been coming down off whatever he’d drank last night.

I smiled. Four years ago I never smiled at these people, fearing something undefinable. Now I did, even when I wanted to cry. I reached into my purse and pulled out a bite-size Hershey Bar. Toby loved chocolate. I handed it to him. He took it with a wide grin, revealing stained teeth.

One of the biggest myths about the homeless is that they’re hungry. They have more food than they can eat. That doesn’t mean many aren’t malnourished. Drug and alcohol abuse can do that to a person.

A couple weeks ago a church group had thought they would bring in sandwiches and water as part of community service. It was a nice gesture, sure, but they could have asked what was needed instead of assuming that these people were starving. Most of the food went uneaten, left outside tents to become rat food. The plastic water bottles were collected to return for the deposit, which was used to buy drugs and alcohol.

But no one gave Toby chocolate, he once told me when he was half-sober. Now, whenever I saw him—once, twice a week—I gave him a Hershey Bar. He would die sooner than he should, so why couldn’t I give him a small pleasure that I could afford? Toby was one of the chronics, a man who’d been on the street for years. He had no desire to be anywhere else, trusted no one, though I thought he trusted me a little. I wished I knew his story, how he came to be here, how I could reach him to show him a different path. His liver had to be slush with the amount of alcohol he consumed. Alcohol he bought because people, thinking they were helping—or just to make themselves feel better—handed him money.

As I passed the entrance to the small park, the stench of unwashed humans assaulted me. The city had put four porta-potties on the edge of the park but they emptied them once a month, if that. They were used more for getting high and prostitution than as bathrooms. The city had also put up fencing, but didn’t always come around to lock the gate. Wouldn’t matter; someone would cut it open

and no one would stop them. Trespassing was the least of the crimes in the area.

I dared to look inside the park, though I didn’t expect to see her. I hadn’t seen her for over a week. I found myself clutching my messenger bag that was strapped across my chest. Not because I thought someone would steal it, but because I needed to hold something, as if my bag was a security blanket.

I didn’t see her among the tents or the people sitting on the ground, on the dirt and cushions, broken couches and sleeping bags, among the needles and small, tin foils used to smoke fentanyl. I kicked aside a vial that had once held Narcan, the drug to counteract opioid overdoses. The clear and plastic vials littered the ground, remnants of addiction.

There was nothing humane about allowing people to get so wasted they were on the verge of death, reviving them, then leaving them to do it over and over again. But that was the system.

The system was fucked.

Blue and red lights whirled as I approached the corner. I usually crossed Fifth Street here, but today I stopped, stared at the silent police car.

The police only came when someone was dying...or dead.

Mom.

I found my feet moving toward the cops even though I wanted to run away. My heart raced, my vision blurred as tears flashed, then disappeared.

Mom.

I knew several of the local cops because I had been volunteering for the last two years with First Contact, a nonprofit that connected the homeless with available resources. I didn’t recognize the first officer that got out, then I saw Officer Juan Perez. He frowned when I approached.

“Violet, you should wait here.”

He wasn’t surprised to see me. He knew that I walked by the park five days a week on my way to work. He understood why.

I shook my head. “I can help.”

I was grateful he didn’t try to dissuade me. I followed him through the broken metal gate. Juan said to his fellow officer, “Steve, this is Violet Halliday. She works with First Contact.”

Steve’s badge read S Colangelo. All LAPD officers had training with the homeless population. There were social workers who could be called upon to assist, but they were few and far between and their response time was pathetic. First Contact was made up of mostly volunteers, like me, and often arrived to a situation before the paid social workers—if they showed up at all.

The wary eyes of the homeless watched as we walked toward the far corner of the park. The cops wore sturdy boots; I had sneakers so was more cautious where I stepped.

A row of five tents were lined against the brick wall of a shelter that housed one hundred people a night. It was just as dangerous for the men and women inside the shelter as it was outside because the shelter didn’t ban drugs or alcohol, had minimal security and handed out pretty little bags with clean needles and straws under the so-called “harm reduction” model. As if dying of a drug overdose was better than dying of hepatitis.

I glanced left and spotted the blue tent with a tear on the roof sealed with zebra-patterned duct tape. Flaps closed. It was the last place I’d seen my mother ten days ago when she once again told me to go to hell.

Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.

My mom was slowly killing herself, so I knew that one day I would pass by this park and she would be dead. But it wasn’t today.

Steve spoke to a couple, a man and woman named Fletch and Gina. First Contact had been working with them since they turned up here two months ago. They hadn’t shared their last names, but every time we came out, they seemed to be more receptive and friendly.

The first step to getting off the street was to obtain ID. Finding family who might pitch in or help navigate the tremendous bureaucracy of the drug or mental health programs was always beneficial. But nothing happened without official identification.

Gina sat on a foam cushion outside a faded canvas tent, Fletch with his head in her lap, eyes closed. Passed out or sleeping or ignoring the commotion. Gina paid no attention to the cops, but turned to me with sad blue eyes and said, “Bobby.”

I knew Bobby’s story. I’d talked to him several times because I thought he was someone I could help.

My mom made it clear that she didn’t want my help, that she resented me even trying to help her, but others were more receptive. Cautious—because they had been lied to and let down in the past—but with enough time and patience, I could reach them.

Bobby was twenty-nine, like me. He got hooked on heroin when he was seventeen. In and out of rehab. Got a job here and there, but couldn’t hold anything down longer than a couple months because he would go “chasing the dragon” and not show up for days. Lived with his mom, who told him no drugs but didn’t enforce the rule. Because she loved him, worried about him, feared for him—all of the above. Then one night when she was working late, Bobby got wasted. He was speedballing, combined meth with heroin and was so wired that he smoked pot to calm himself down, didn’t realize the pot was laced with fentanyl and “went bonkers.” His words. Trashed the house, then crashed. When his mom came home, she had him arrested. He went to jail for three days, court-ordered rehab for thirty. But under California law, any facility that took public money couldn’t be dry. So he popped whatever pills were around and, when the thirty days were up, went back home high as a kite and his mother refused to let him in.

She was crying, but she didn’t budge. I felt like shit, but what can I do? I tried the rehab thing, it didn’t take.

Of course it didn’t take, I thought. Counseling only went so far: Don’t do drugs, they’re bad for you. Here, have a clean needle so you’re safe.

Bobby had been on the streets for three years. The last six months he’d been here, in this tent, never wandering far. He’d deteriorated rapidly over the last few months, as if he’d given up on living before he died.

Both Juan and Steve wore gloves. Steve pulled the latex over his watch—

expensive-looking watch with a yellow face. Gina eyed it with narrowed eyes. I knew she had a shoplifting problem, but I didn’t think she’d rip off a cop.

Juan opened the flap. He didn’t touch the body; the smell announced death. Bobby had died sometime in the last twenty-four hours, probably last night. Steve called it in. They would wait here until the coroner arrived.

The stiff body, the glassy eyes, the stacks of burned foil he used to smoke fentanyl. I had seen death coming. Hope had drained from Bobby’s eyes with each passing week until there was nothing left.

“His name is Bobby Thomas,” I told Juan. “I don’t remember his mom’s name, but Will knows. I’ll call him.”

Will Lattimer ran First Contact. He’d been my lifeline after I learned my mom was living on the streets. My sounding board. My venting partner. My punching bag.

I glanced again toward the closed blue tent with the zebra duct tape. There was movement inside. The flaps opened and a man came out. His pants were around his knees but he didn’t care, made no move to pull them up. He went over to the porta-potty, tried all the doors until he was able to wrench open the last one.

Juan approached and quietly asked, “Do you want me to check on her?”

I shook my head, forcing calm, control.

I will not break down.

I cleared my throat and finally managed to speak. “She probably needed drugs and the only way she can get them is with sex.”

I wasn’t telling Juan anything he didn’t know.

“I have to go to work,” I said, my voice raw. I didn’t have tears left in me, but the anger was always there. “I’ll call Will.”

I walked away before I changed my mind and confronted my mother. I didn’t know if I could handle the emotional roller coaster today.

My family life had never been perfect, but it was okay. My parents bickered, drank too much, but they each had a job and managed to make ends meet. I’d dealt with my mom’s mood swings my entire life—now I suspected she was bipolar, but she’d never been diagnosed, let alone treated. Then my dad killed himself while driving drunk and my mom had to deal with the aftermath. She started smoking pot to help with the stress, she claimed. Then she was in an accident and got a prescription for oxy.

It went downhill from there.

She lost her job, lost her house, and destroyed friendships when someone gave her a place to stay for a few weeks to get on her feet and she ended up stealing from them.

At the time, I’d been living in a studio near Pierce, a community college in Woodland Hills, attending school while working for a tech start-up. I let her move in with me, not realizing how bad she was. When she couldn’t get more pain pills—legally or illegally—she would drink so heavily that she’d pass out. I offered to pay for rehab. I didn’t have the money, but I had one credit card I’d never touched and I would use that. She refused. I told her she had to stop using or leave.

She left. 

The guilt ate at me for years. My tech start-up did exceptionally well and when they sold it, I received a bonus—enough to put a large down payment on a small house in a quiet Burbank neighborhood. Two bedrooms, two baths—I hoped to find my mom and she could live with me. I had a fantasy—that she was clean and sober and we could be a family again.

The first time I found her, she was strung out, living in a condemned building with other strung-out junkies. I did everything to save her. I got her a new identification card. Enrolled her in rehab. Found her an apartment I paid for so she wasn’t living on the streets. I enrolled her in Medi-Cal. I helped her apply for public assistance—then learned that there were plenty of places where you could use EBS cards to buy drugs. Dozens of convenience stores that were dealing in the back room would ring you up for snack food but really sell you meth, heroin, fentanyl. Her benefits ran out and she applied for disability. They awarded her money. Again, she used it for drugs. Not food, not housing, just more drugs.

Six months later, she was evicted for starting a fire. She begged me to let her move in with me. On one condition, I said: she went to rehab. She spat in my face and called me a selfish, ungrateful bitch, then walked away.

I didn’t see her again for years, until I found her living on the streets.

I couldn’t afford a private facility, the kind that doesn’t take government money and requires patients to commit to getting clean. Will helped me find one that would have taken my mom in for ninety days and let me pay for it over a one-year period. She refused to sign the paperwork because she wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

You can’t force someone to get clean. You can’t love someone enough to change them. If my tears were pennies, I could have paid for every man and woman in this park to get help.

I walked across Fifth Street, put my earbuds back in and called Will.

I was blunt. “Bobby’s dead.”

“Shit.”

“Juan Perez responded.”

“I’ll reach out. You okay?”

“I’m done.”

“You’ve put in a lot of time lately, you need a break.”

“Not that. I’m done with these people. I’m going to expose the homeless industrial complex. People have got to realize what’s going on!”

I couldn’t believe that I was near tears. Tears of rage. I had to do something. I felt helpless.

“Violet, it’s all there and no one cares. While I know you don’t like to hear it, none of these setups are overtly illegal. I talk about this all the time to anyone who will listen, but they don’t want to see the truth.”

“I’ll make them pay attention.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Dammit. I sounded.

 like a whiny brat.

He was silent, and I wondered if I’d overstepped. We’d been friends for a while now, though it was a bit weird. We didn’t have much in common. Will was an extrovert, talkative, a decade older than me, a veteran, and had been a social worker specializing in the homeless for the last fifteen years, ever since he got out of the military and started working with homeless veterans. I was an introverted computer geek who felt more comfortable talking to people online than I did in person.

He’d always been honest with me, which I appreciated, but mostly, he listened. I needed that after I found my mom living on the streets. Maybe I was being a Pollyanna. I should’ve been content—happy, even—that First Contact was productive and successful, even if I couldn’t save my mom.

Then Will said, “I have a friend I can reach out to. Someone I trust, who knows the system, who might have some ideas on what we can do.”

“I’ll do anything, Will. This can’t continue.”

“I know you’re upset about Bobby. But what is the first thing I told you when you started volunteering?”

I sighed. I didn’t want a pep talk. “They have to want help,” I mumbled.

“That has not changed. This is not going to be solved overnight. It takes weeks for some people, years for others. The important thing is that we keep going back, make contact, be available when they say, ‘I’m ready.’”

“You have, what, a dozen regular volunteers? And the city has how much money?”

He sighed; I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know.

“Be patient. We’re making progress.”

“How many people are going to die while the city builds million-dollar units for a handful of the people living on the streets?”

“Meet me tonight at The Pulse, okay? My treat.”

I didn’t want to go. I pouted, angry, frustrated. Lost.

“Should be my treat,” I said. “I make more money than you.”

He laughed, and I almost smiled. “Five thirty good?”

“Yeah.”

“Chin up. I’ll let you know what I learn.”

“Can you reach out to Bobby’s mom? The police will tell her, but I know how she’s going to feel.”

That she failed her son. That she shouldn’t have kicked him out. That she should have done more. That she should have forced him somehow, someway, into a program that worked. Done something different, said something else, did more, did less, fixed it. That it was all her fault.

It’s what I felt every day. That I failed my mom because I couldn’t help her. If I’d

only been stronger. Better. Wiser.

“I’ll talk to her,” Will said.

I looked around, making sure no one was paying attention to my conversation; no one was even looking at me. I was a tall, skinny geek who wore no makeup and dressed as casual as I could get away with in city hall. No jeans allowed, but I didn’t have to dress up. Working in the basement had its advantages.

“I’ll do anything,” I told him again. “The information is there. We both know it. I think—the computer virus I’m working on? I think it was planted. What could be in those files that someone would want to destroy? Maybe there’s something in city hall that will help us.”

“Hold that thought. We’ll talk tonight.”

I could dig in. Will had been hesitant because nothing these nonprofits did was illegal. They received billions of dollars to help the homeless, but so few homeless people were being helped. Not when building temporary housing was astronomically expensive—it should never cost a million dollars a unit. Not when drug treatment centers couldn’t actually stop addicts from using. Not when the mental health facilities were so broken, and few social workers seemed to be trained to convince people that they didn’t want to live on the street.

The money was there. Where there was easy money, there was corruption.

I watched the people around me. Walking quickly, on their way to work. Men in suits and ties, women in tennis shoes and skirts, their pumps in bags over their shoulders. Not a mile away, a twenty-nine-year-old drug addict died because of a system that was set up to fail. Not a mile away, a mother turned her addiction to painkillers into an addiction to fentanyl to the point where she exchanged sex for a few blue pills.

It was time to shine a light in the dark and expose those responsible for prolonging this humanitarian crisis.

“Whatever we find,” I said to Will, “we can take it to the press.”

“I’ve tried. They’re not interested.”

“Maybe Amy and Ian will run it.”

“I don’t know that a podcast is going to make a big difference.”

“We have to start somewhere.”

When Will didn’t say anything, I said, “Talk to your friend. Whatever happens, whatever you need, I’m all in.”

I ended the call and hit Play on my podcast. I wanted to know what else Amy and Ian had learned about the sweatshop in Chinatown.

I hoped the asshole who ran it went to prison for the rest of his miserable life.

Monday, October 7

2

Kara Quinn relaxed once Michael dropped Matt off at FBI headquarters on their way from LAX to LAPD headquarters downtown.

Matt Costa, their team leader, would be at the courthouse to listen to her testimony, but his concern for her safety had made her tense. She understood all the reasons why, but his stress gave her one more thing to think about when she already had far too much on her plate.

“He knows this is risky,” Michael said. “Cut him some slack.”

She glanced at her partner. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He doesn’t think you’re taking the threat seriously.”

“I am. I just don’t want to talk about it 24/7. You have my back and I trust you. Matt has talked to court security a gazillion times and we have a dozen contingencies. I’m wearing this stupid vest all day.” She hit her chest. The Kevlar was wholly uncomfortable. She’d never gotten used to it when she’d been in uniform, and it didn’t feel any better now.

The unspoken truth: she was in a relationship with Matt. That was why Michael was coming with her to the courthouse. It was one thing to work together—she and Matt had proven they could be professional on the job. It was another to have the woman you cared about testifying against the criminal who had put a bounty on her head.

She changed the subject. “I wish I was a fly on the wall during Matt’s meeting.”

Michael grinned. “I’d join you.”

Matt was meeting with Assistant Special Agent in Charge Bryce Thornton, the asshole who had nearly destroyed Kara’s case against David Chen. Also in the meeting was an assistant US attorney working on federal charges against Chen. Because the state case was stronger—and because Thornton had fucked everything up seven months ago—the state was prosecuting Chen first.

Depending on what happened today at the courthouse, ...