Hollywood Taken Read online

  “I don’t think so. She knew about Daniel’s tapes and about him telling me he would be dead if I ever received them.”

  “I’ll talk to Greer about our agents putting Daniel on their watch list. If the Swarm does have him, I doubt that it’s a consensual relationship.”

  “Meaning he’s their prisoner.”

  He nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  We went on for several minutes, spinning different scenarios and talking about the effects of Daniel being taken in by the terrorist group. My sister, Lindsay, had gone undercover months earlier, trying to take down those involved in the same terrorist organization. She hadn’t been successful and was now in a witness protection program. I knew that the trauma of what Daniel was enduring would be life long, if he somehow survived.

  “Why don’t we find a restaurant and have a late lunch,” Joe suggested, sensing my despair and putting an arm around me. “We could even go down by the beach, take a walk after we eat.”

  I was about to respond when my phone chimed. I glanced at the screen, seeing that I had a text from Olivia.

  I read the text, messaged Olivia that I’d see her shortly, and put my phone away. “Sorry, but duty calls. Something’s breaking on my case.”

  His pale blue eyes held on me. “Is it always going to be like this, one of us answering the call to duty?”

  I smiled and hugged him. “It’s what we do.” When we parted I said, “Thank-you.”

  He regarded me. “For what?”

  “For what you said the other day and for being my best friend.”

  “I meant every word of it, Buttercup. Let’s get you back to the station.”

  ***

  Joe dropped Bernie and me off then headed for the airport to work a case in the Pacific Northwest. When I entered the station, Lieutenant Byrd called everyone together in his office. Jenny and Molly then told us what they’d pieced together.

  “Molly and I went back over everyone connected with this case and every scrap of evidence,” Jenny said. “That’s when we realized something about Misty.”

  Al’s forehead tightened. “Who?”

  “The Allman’s three-year-old daughter. As you all know, their daughter Brook is in her early twenties. We thought it was interesting that there were so many years between their two children. Then we realized something. Misty was adopted.”

  “The adoption was arranged through an agency in the Ukraine,” Molly said. “The Allman’s got her when she was an infant.”

  “I’m assuming that wasn’t a coincidence,” Lieutenant Byrd said.

  “Not in the least. As it turns out, the Allmans made multiple trips there to arrange for the adoption.”

  I tried to connect the dots. “Do you think that’s when Ben began making connections to arrange for girls from that country and from Russia to come here so he could use them in his prostitution scheme?”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t acting alone,” Jenny said. “When you talked to Chloe Foster, didn’t she tell you that Ben came to her agency about three years before Anna Levkin was placed with them, wanting nannies?”

  “Yes, she said something about some of his business contacts wanting au pairs.”

  Molly spoke up again. “We had the interpreter contact the agency in Odessa that arranged for Misty’s adoption. As it turns out, that same agency arranges for au pairs. It’s also the agency APN worked through to bring Anna here.”

  “Do you think Foster knew about Misty’s adoption?”

  “Maybe, but there’s nothing to indicate that.”

  “This is all interesting,” Leo said. “But how does it relate to our case?”

  “When Ben made those multiple trips to Odessa, he wasn’t alone.”

  “Laura went with him?” Olivia said.

  Molly shook her head. “Brook. She was there every step of the way. The placement worker in Odessa said she even spoke their language.”

  A thousand lightbulbs began to come on as my mind sifted over the events of the past several days. Brook was right there in front of us. Had a sweet, innocent killer been hiding in plain sight all this time?

  “You’re trying to tell us a college kid is Matrona, the head of an international sextortion and murder ring?” Al said.

  Jenny answered. “Brook is not what she appears. We went back over her academic record. She was a gifted child, considered a genius by her teachers. She’s fluent in multiple languages, including several Slavic dialects. She’s also taken advanced classes in computer science, including programming and coding.”

  “Ben told us Brook was a pre-med student,” Olivia said. “We even met with her outside a biochem class.

  “Maybe she had other interests. Her actual major is international business relations and finance. She used that to make a small fortune.”

  “We’ve learned that Brook owns lots of real estate,” Molly said, “including several income producing properties. All of it was bought with dirty money, laundered through her father’s marketing company.”

  Molly gave us more details about how they thought things went down. “Brook set up the game of Prank, using multiple players at different levels. She was close in age to the girls that were recruited, giving her insight about what it took to control them. Some of the girls were from Eastern European countries, including the Ukraine and Russia, but there were other girls like Zoe Saldana that were undocumented that they used in the game.”

  “Brook worked with the Matchmakers, people like Jason Murray, to obtain the sexually explicit photos and videos to coerce the girls into playing the game. Calling them Daisies, Angels, and Swags probably made some girls who were abused and brainwashed like Donna Roberts think their lifestyle was exciting.”

  “And, Anna?” Olivia said. “Why would Brook set up an au pair who she helped find and lived under her own roof?”

  “We can only speculate,” Jenny said. “It’s likely that Brook and her father considered Anna special. She was young and extremely attractive, and would have brought a high price if she’d worked her way up in the game. And, the game was all about money. Nothing else mattered to them. It might even be that Anna had no idea Brook and her father were behind what was happening to her.”

  “I’m missing something,” Al said. “Brook was the one who told us Murray was probably sexually abusing Anna. If he was one of her matchmakers, why would she give him up?”

  Jenny answered. “She probably knew we were closing in on him. After setting him up, she had him murdered using a technique that was previously used by a Russian mob, hoping our investigation would stop there.”

  “What about Anna’s phone?” the lieutenant asked. “Why would they toss the phone in a dumpster?”

  “Other than calls to a burner phone and some texts to her mother in Russian, everything had essentially been deleted,” Molly said. “They probably never thought the images and texts could be restored.”

  We were all quiet for a moment, letting what they had said sink in. Al finally spoke up again. “So, you’re telling us that Ben Allman worked for his daughter?”

  “He did until things started to unravel with their sextortion business. The tattoos were Brook’s way of marking girls as Expendables if they defied her. She was sending a message to the others in the game not to cross her. When we began to close in on her father, she realized she needed to eliminate anyone who had direct knowledge of her involvement. That also made him an Expendable.”

  “She murdered her own father,” Olivia said, trying to come to terms with that fact. She looked at me. “I suppose stranger things have happened.”

  I knew that Olivia was hinting at her relationship with her own father who had abused her as a child and she suspected had murdered her sister. She told me that she’d harbored fantasies about killing him when she was a teenager.

  I looked at Jenny and Molly. “Why do you suppose Brook let her mother live?”

  “She probably knew that, no matter what happened, her mother would never give her up,” Jen
ny said. “Daughters are often closer to their mothers than their fathers, even when they’re cold-blooded killers.”

  “And, she went to jail to protect her daughter,” Molly added.

  “What about the Russian connection?” Olivia asked. “How do you think that fit into the picture?”

  “It’s likely that Brook and her father developed connections with them when they brought girls into the country,” Jenny said. “There’s probably several other players out there.”

  “All this leaves us with one unanswered question,” Al said. “Who killed Anna Levkin?”

  I answered, based on what we knew. “Maybe Jason Murray or one of the johns they forced her to hook up with. The only person that can probably answer that question is Brook Allman.”

  We continued to process what Jenny and Molly had speculated for the better part of the next hour. When we were all on the same page, Lieutenant Byrd gave us his thoughts.

  “If things went the way we think, it means that Brook Allman is a brilliant deranged killer. Let’s find her and bring her in, but let’s not take any chances. We put Matrona behind bars and everyone goes home tonight.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  Molly and Jenny had managed to get Brook Allman’s college schedule from UCLA and learned that she had a class in iterative business analytics that afternoon. I told Olivia that I had no idea what a class like that was about and it was a good thing we’d become cops.

  As we drove to the college with Bernie, with Leo and Al following, she asked me about my meeting with Harlee Ryland. I gave her a brief overview, adding, “If what Harlee said is true, it means that Daniel is essentially a prisoner of the Swarm.”

  “Do you think he could really come to believe in their cause?”

  “I don’t really know him, so it’s hard to say.” I sighed. “But I imagine they’re very persuasive.”

  She glanced at me. “Did Joe have any ideas about how to find him?”

  “He’s going to ask his boss to put Daniel on their watch list. We can only hope that he surfaces at some point and they can extract him.”

  “It sounds like the group is still active, even though Harlee’s in custody.”

  “I think they’ll just go underground, stay off the radar for a while. When they’re ready to strike again, I imagine it will be something big.”

  Olivia reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t give up hope.”

  I forced a smile. “I won’t. Sometimes that’s all you’ve got.”

  After parking, Olivia and I met with Leo and Al in a lot near the Cornell Building at the Anderson School of Management. It was late in the day, with just a scattering of cars in the lot and a few students coming and going from the building.

  Olivia checked the time on her phone. “Brook’s class should let out in about ten minutes. I say we stage at the entrances to the building and take things from there. We should assume she’s armed, so let’s be cautious. We don’t want any civilian casualties.”

  Olivia and I took up positions at the east entrance to the building with Bernie, while Leo and Al covered the opposite side. We watched as students began filtering out of the classrooms, but we didn’t see any sign of our suspect.

  “What do you think is going on?” I asked Olivia when there was no sign of her.

  “Not sure...” Her phone chimed. “It’s Leo,” she said before answering the call. She listened for a minute, before saying to him, “Got it. We’re heading over there now.”

  Olivia put her phone away and we began walking toward the opposite side of the building. “They’ve spotted her, but are staying back until we get there.”

  As it turned out, Brook was headed toward the far side of the campus, away from us. By the time we met up with Leo and Al she was on a grassy knoll, a good hundred yards from her classroom.

  We began walking in her direction, closing in. When we were about twenty yards away, I called out to her, saying the one name that I knew would get her attention.

  “Matrona.”

  Brook stopped in her tracks, but held her ground, not turning toward us. We had also stopped walking, each of us with our service weapon in hand. Bernie tugged on his leash, on alert.

  “It’s over, Brook,” I said. “Turn around and put your hands out to your side.”

  She stood still, not complying.

  “I’m only going to say this one more time,” I said. “Give yourself up. We know about the game, your involvement as the controller, and that you murdered your own father.”

  Brook Allman, the killer who went by the Internet name Matrona, slowly turned in our direction. I was surprised when her hands went out to her sides and she smiled.

  “I supposed you want me to go quietly,” she said.

  “Get on your knees, now,” I yelled at her.

  She did as I requested, her hands still out at her sides. I nodded at Leo, a signal that he should begin moving up to cuff her.

  “I won’t go away,” she said, as Leo approached her.

  “Not another word,” I said, as Olivia, Al, and I continued to train our weapons on her. “Stay down.”

  She laughed. “But you will go away. All of you will go away and I’ll eventually walk. You have no idea the power I possess.”

  “We’ll see what your mother has to say about that,” I said, deciding to play a bluff as Leo grabbed her wrist.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “The DA is at the jail talking to her right now. She admitted everything. She’s going to turn state’s evidence against you.”

  Brook pulled away from Leo and fell to the ground. Leo was reaching for her other hand, trying to get the cuffs on her when we heard a popping sound behind us. We all turned, seeing that a girl had a gun pointed in Brook’s direction. After firing the shot, she dropped the weapon, holding her hands in the air.

  Olivia and Al went over and got her under control, as Leo and I attended to Brook. She had a chest wound, the blood pumping out of her body with each beat of her heart.

  “It’s the same girl from Brook’s class that we saw arguing with her before,” Olivia said, after coming over to us.

  I now remembered that we had seen Brook with the girl when we’d last talked to her at the school.

  Even as Al had the girl who shot her in handcuffs, we heard her screaming at Brook. “Die, you rotten bitch.”

  “Who is she?” I asked, bending down to Brook.

  A thin smile played on her lips, as she choked, “One of...m...my S...swags.”

  Leo and I applied first aid, but moments later Brook Allman sucked in her last breath. Her heart stopped beating, ending what had been a brilliant but deranged life. Matrona was dead, killed at the hands of one of her many victims.

  SEVENTY

  “What’s gonna happen to that dirt bag Lance Worman and his assistant?” Mo asked me the next morning as we ate breakfast in our sun room. It was a Saturday and I was happy to have the day off work.

  Natalie worked on a scone. “I hope the tosser and that Popov woman get life.”

  Bernie came over for a piece of my muffin. “I doubt that’s going to happen, but they’re facing multiple counts of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. I wouldn’t be surprised if they serve several years in prison.”

  Otto came in and set a steaming plate of potatoes on the table. Mo served herself half of them and asked, “What’s going to happen to that girl that killed Brook Allman?”

  “Her name is Daria Vasin. She’s undocumented, just like Anna was. We learned that she was one of Brook’s earliest victims, someone who was forced higher in the game until she couldn’t take it anymore.”

  What I hadn’t told them was that Brook had made a fatal mistake by revealing her identity to Vasin, who she probably believed was so under her control that she would never cross her. Brook’s killer was facing murder charges, but there were a lot of mitigating circumstances that would likely lessen her sentence, including her naming power players that were part of the
game.

  “I just hope all them guys that were using the girls go down for the count,” Natalie said.

  “They will,” I said, “along with several other players, including the Matchmakers who exploited the girls and some members of the Russian mob that Brook was using.”

  “And Brook’s mum? What’s going to happen to her?”

  “Laura Allman’s still not talking but she’s also facing several counts of conspiracy. We have no doubt that she knew everything her husband and daughter were doing and kept quiet about it.”

  “And the girls that are still in the game?” Mo asked. “What about them?” She was now working on the world’s largest plate of eggs, potatoes, and bacon.

  “We got the names of some of them from Brook’s computer, but there are probably others out there that we still don’t know about. All we can hope is that they eventually come forward.”

  Otto appeared in the doorway and said to Natalie and Mo, “You have visitors in the living quarters. They said something about you needing to catch a plane.”

  Mo stood. “Let’s go baby sis, we gotta be in place by noon.”

  We all went into the living room where we found Nana, Fred, and Mattie.

  Nana looked at me. “I suppose you’re staying home.”

  She was wearing headgear that looked like something an aviator from early in the last century might wear, while Fred and Mattie wore dark sunglasses.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Natalie and Mo.

  “Today’s the BC Challenge,” Natalie said, grabbing a bag off the counter. “We gotta be going.”

  Fred came over to me. “I think you should come with us. I’d like to see what you’re made of.”

  “The royal family will be talking about this event for years,” Mattie said, with a haughty British accent.

  “I don’t know what you have in mind and I don’t want to know,” I said.

  Mo came over to me as Nana was making reference to me being a member of the feline family, something that started with the letter P. “You don’t gotta participate, but you need to promise us you’ll be on Hollywood Boulevard a noon today.”