Thrill Kill by Brian Thiem Page A

of the report.”
    Sinclair sat on a desk two rows from Braddock’s desk. “The report said that the officers from the area crime reduction team were assigned to an undercover operation on San Pablo Avenue due to complaints about blatant prostitution activity. It said two officers, working undercover in an undercover car, stopped next to a group of four women that they knew were prostitutes basedon their appearance and demeanor. There was some back-and-forth bantering until an officer asked the women if they wanted to go to a bachelor party and have sex with the men there for fifty dollars each. They agreed and the officers signaled the arrest team. The arrest team ran the women and found three of them had recent prostitution arrests and the fourth one, Dawn, admitted she had been arrested for prostitution four years earlier as a juvenile.”
    “Let me guess,” said Braddock. “There was no wire, or it didn’t work.”
    “No mention of a recording in the report. I had the jail pull Dawn from her cell and put her on the phone. She said she hadn’t worked the streets in years, and that she was just visiting her old friends that night when two guys came up talking shit. She said she certainly didn’t solicit them. She admitted to me she was still in the business, but only doing outcalls and wouldn’t even consider doing a bachelor party for less than five hundred. I believed her. I talked to the sergeant who ran the operation. He confided that they were playing fast and loose to make an impact and get the city councilwoman in that district off their backs. He suspected the DA wouldn’t file charges on most of their arrests. I told him Dawn was an informant of mine. He had no problem with me cutting her loose, so I went back to the jail and filled out the eight-forty-nine-B paperwork.”
    “But she wasn’t really your informant and didn’t have any info on murders?”
    “No, but it wasn’t the first time we cut someone loose on a bullshit arrest that we knew wouldn’t be charged in order to cultivate them as an informant.”
    “Fair enough,” Braddock said. “Did she ever come through for you?”
    “She’d call me occasionally and want to talk, but I told her I was too busy unless she had something on a case for me. Then she called me one time and said she was in trouble and needed help. When her parents told us about her returning homepregnant, I thought about the timing and figured that was what her trouble was.”
    “Was the trouble more than just being pregnant?”
    “We met and she said someone, or maybe a group of people, were causing her problems. She never mentioned she was pregnant. She wouldn’t tell me who this person or persons were or the nature of the problem, only that she was afraid and didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her to open up, but she wouldn’t. I figured it was over some john or maybe she got mixed up with some major players. I told her maybe this was a wake-up call telling her it was really time to change her life. She said she couldn’t go home, that she felt dead when she was there. I talked to her a few more times over the next few days, and I guess she realized it was more important to go home and feel emotionally dead than stay here and end up physically dead. That was the last I saw her until the park.”
    Braddock crossed the room and sat on the desk beside him. She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Sinclair thought for a minute. “I guess I knew my relationship with her wasn’t fully professional. I couldn’t really call her an informant because she never provided any info, yet I was helping her out.”
    Braddock laughed. “So you felt ashamed because you helped out a citizen for no reason other than she needed help? Jeez, Matt, isn’t that what police are supposed to do? Not every interaction with a citizen has to lead to the arrest of a bad guy. Maybe you’re afraid you’re reputation as a tough, law-and-order-only cop would