Chapter 4 - THE BADGEAmelia stared at the photograph until her vision blurred.
“That can’t be him.”
Luca placed the image on her kitchen table.
“It is.”
Detective Reeves wore a baseball cap, but his face was visible as he turned toward the parking lot camera.
The timestamp read 1:16:42 A.M.
Less than four hours after Raymond attacked Amelia.
“Where did you get this?”
“The storage company’s cloud backup.”
“The police said the camera system was down.”
“The camera inside the building was down.”
Luca tapped the photo.
“The laundromat across the street wasn’t.”
Amelia sat.
Everything Reeves had said replayed inside her head.
His sympathy.
His questions.
His interest in the drive.
“You think he works for Victor?”
“I know he has taken money from Victor.”
“How?”
Luca opened his laptop.
Bank transfers filled the screen.
Companies Amelia had never heard of.
Payments routed through businesses with meaningless names.
“What am I looking at?”
“Detective Reeves owns a condominium in Florida.”
“So?”
“He earns ninety-two thousand dollars a year.”
Luca scrolled.
“He paid nine hundred thousand cash.”
Amelia’s mouth went dry.
“You’ve been investigating a detective?”
“For eighteen months.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel’s original case file disappeared from police evidence.”
Amelia stared at him.
“And Reeves handled the evidence?”
“He was a patrol officer then. But his father was a detective.”
“Was?”
“Retired six months after Daniel died.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Amelia jumped.
Luca immediately stood between her and the hallway.
“It’s Mills,” a voice called.
Luca’s jaw tightened.
Amelia opened the door.
Detective Karen Mills entered alone.
She saw Luca.
“Of course.”
Luca closed the laptop.
Mills looked at Amelia.
“Richard regained consciousness.”
“Did he see who attacked him?”
“He remembers two men.”
“Was Reeves one of them?”
Everything stopped.
Mills looked slowly toward Luca.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“What truth?”
Amelia pushed the photograph across the table.
Mills stared at it.
Her expression barely changed.
That was almost worse.
“You knew,” Amelia whispered.
“I suspected.”
“You knew your partner might be involved with the people threatening me, and you let him stand in my hospital room?”
“I didn’t have evidence.”
“You had enough evidence to suspect him.”
Mills stepped forward.
“I’ve been working with Internal Affairs for four months.”
“And nobody thought I should know?”
“We were trying to protect the investigation.”
Amelia laughed bitterly.
“The investigation.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Amelia—”
“I spent years being told to stay quiet because somebody else knew what was best.”
Her voice broke.
“I’m not doing it again.”
Mills absorbed that.
Then she nodded.
“You’re right.”
Luca glanced at her, surprised.
Mills removed her badge and service weapon, set both on the table, and sat down.
“This is everything I know.”
For the next hour, she explained.
Victor Fletcher had built an invisible empire through legitimate companies.
Waste management.
Construction.
Nightclubs.
Trucking.
Private security.
Nothing illegal on paper.
But prosecutors had suspected his companies were washing millions from robbery rings and extortion schemes.
Witnesses disappeared.
Evidence vanished.
Audits failed.
Investigations collapsed.
Six years earlier, a federal informant had been preparing to testify.
He died in a house fire.
Three years later, another witness vanished on her way to court.
Then Detective Mills found a pattern.
In both cases, Nolan Reeves had accessed protected police databases shortly before the witnesses were compromised.
“Why hasn’t he been arrested?”
“We needed proof he was selling information, not just accessing files.”
Luca opened his laptop again.
“You have proof now.”
Mills looked at the bank records.
“Where did these come from?”
“You don’t want to ask me that.”
“Yes, I absolutely do.”
“No, you absolutely don’t.”
Amelia interrupted.
“What was on the flash drive?”
Neither answered.
She looked between them.
“You both think it matters.”
Luca finally spoke.
“Daniel kept financial records.”
“Of Victor’s organization?”
“Yes.”
“He put them on a flash drive?”
“I believe so.”
“Then how did Raymond get it?”
Luca’s gaze dropped.
“After Daniel died, his office was cleaned before I could reach it.”
“By Raymond?”
“Maybe.”
Amelia thought about her old life.
Raymond had always kept one suitcase packed.
She assumed it was because he traveled for work.
Then something surfaced.
“Wait.”
She stood.
“The suitcase.”
“What suitcase?”
“When I left Raymond, I took one of his by accident.”
Luca leaned forward.
“The drive was inside the lining.”
“Yes.”
“Then Raymond never put it there.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
But Luca’s face suggested another possibility.
Daniel.
Perhaps Daniel Moretti had hidden it himself.
A sudden crash came from the hallway.
Luca pulled Amelia behind him.
Mills grabbed her weapon.
Someone ran down the stairs.
Luca opened the door.
A brick lay on the hallway carpet.
Wrapped around it was a piece of paper.
Mills unfolded the note.
BRING THE GIRL TO THE OLD PACKING HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE. OR THE MANAGER DIES.
Below the message was a photograph.
Richard Bell tied to a chair.
Amelia covered her mouth.
“He was in the hospital.”
Mills grabbed her phone.
Within minutes, they confirmed it.
Richard had disappeared during a fire alarm forty minutes earlier.
Security footage showed a paramedic wheeling him through a rear exit.
The ambulance was fake.
Amelia felt sick.
“They took him because of me.”
“No,” Luca said.
“They took him because they’re running out of options.”
She turned.
“Same difference.”
“It isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
She pointed toward the photograph.
“That man has a wife. Two daughters.”
Luca’s voice remained calm.
“And walking into Victor Fletcher’s hands won’t help them.”
“He wants me.”
“He wants what you know.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Then he wants to know whether you made copies.”
Amelia froze.
Mills noticed.
“Did you?”
Amelia looked toward her bedroom.
Three years earlier, when she discovered the encrypted drive, she had tried opening it at a public library.
The files wouldn’t open.
But she had copied the entire drive onto an old external hard drive before putting it inside the ceramic angel.
She had completely forgotten.
Until now.
“Yes.”
Luca’s eyes sharpened.
“Where?”
Amelia crossed the bedroom and pulled a battered laptop bag from beneath her bed.
Inside was a black external drive.
She placed it on the table.
Luca stared at it.
Mills whispered, “My God.”
Amelia plugged it into Luca’s laptop.
A folder appeared.
D.M. PRIVATE
They opened it.
Hundreds of encrypted files.
But one wasn’t encrypted.
A video.
Luca clicked.
His brother appeared on-screen.
Daniel Moretti sat in an office, exhausted and frightened.
Behind him, a digital clock showed 2:03 a.m.
“If you’re watching this,” Daniel began, “I’m probably dead.”
Luca stopped breathing.
Daniel looked directly into the camera.
“Luca, do not trust anyone inside the department.”
Then he said something none of them expected.
“The person running Victor Fletcher’s operation isn’t Victor.”
Amelia leaned closer.
Daniel continued.
“Victor takes orders from someone much more powerful.”
He reached toward the camera.
Before the video ended, he spoke a name.
Detective Mills went white.
Luca whispered a curse.
May you like
And Amelia finally understood why nobody had ever been able to bring Victor Fletcher down.
Because the man protecting him was the same man currently serving as Chicago’s deputy mayor.
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