PROLOGUE – DAWN

April 14, 2018 – 0545 hours / Figueroa and 92^nd, Los Angeles California

Detective Johnson Kennedy stared in silence at the body covered by a white sheet. Do I know her? It had to be one of his girls, or else Robbery-Homicide wouldn’t have called the Human Trafficking Task Force. Christ, I’m not ready for this. Since it was a Sunday morning, none of the regulars who worked the Figueroa track, a long Los Angeles street notorious for blatant prostitution, could be eliminated as potential victims. Try as he might, one nagging thought kept bouncing around. This was Darius’ fault.

By the time Johnson arrived on scene, his partner and supervisor, Stacy Manafort, was already there. Stacy had a habit of arriving first and Johnson watched her through his car window as she walked towards the dead body.

Working the detail was no easy feat. The pimps were assholes, the girls were bitches, the johns loser fucksticks who saw no harm in prostitution, and everyone hated the cops. Most of the sex-workers they ‘rescued’ fell back into the Life and, more often than not, the idealistic officer they recruited into the unit left a demoralized detective.    

His partner was different. She had never become jaded. Beyond sharing the same dark-colored skin with many of the trafficking victims she tried to help, she grew up in Compton, the same neighborhood as many of their girls. She listened to them, didn’t judge them for their decisions or waste time feeling sorry for them or treat them like some kind of social science experiment. They begrudgingly respected her for it and so did Johnson. 

He wanted to be like her. Someone who never lost patience with these girls as they covered for their traffickers. He didn’t want to take their attitudes, or curse words, or mean things they said, personally, but it was hard not to. How did she do it? 

Maybe she was just stronger than him. He wasn’t surprised that she jumped out of her car and walked right up to the corpse. She didn’t sit in the front seat, wondering which girl it might be, or whether it was their fault because they were late to a scene, or didn’t visit a victim one more time when she was finally ready to talk.  

Someone had already opened the back doors of the Medical Examiner’s van and a Coroner’s investigator walked towards a handful of police officers half a block away. A rookie brought Stacy a cup of coffee from a makeshift command center set up behind some yellow tape on the corner. 

Onlookers crowded behind the artificial barrier, while several detectives tried to interview potential witnesses with little success. It was rare for the people who lived in the area to cooperate with law enforcement, certainly not in broad daylight, as they were scared for the safety of themselves and their families.

A photographer from Forensics snapped photos while a deep crimson stain spread over the northern end of the sheet, probably from the victim's head. A smaller puddle of blood pooled to the west of the cadaver, likely from its chest or back. Two small yellow placards had been placed next to two .40 caliber casings no more than two feet from the deceased. 

A detective from Robbery-Homicide bent over the unfortunate soul like a catcher at a ball game, jotting notes into a small, worn, spiral notebook. A cracked silver flip phone lay about a foot away. The streets knew it as an ‘Obama phone,’ a relic in the age of iPhones, yet the device remained the lifeblood of streetwalkers and their pimps.  

Johnson watched as the detective nodded at Stacy, as if he had been in her position before. Had he experienced the same pain of recognition that was sure to fill his partner momentarily and then him after that? He punched the steering wheel, feeling so … small, so … insignificant. 

The detective took his pen between his thumb and forefinger and positioned it under the white sheet. Stacy took a deep breath. No one could prepare for a familiar face. 

As the detective lifted the sheet, Stacy’s knees buckled and Johnson turned his head before he saw who it was. His partner’s gasp was audible, Johnson heard it down the street. He looked back and the guy from robbery-homicide had placed the sheet over the body again. The forensic photographer was holding Stacy up now. The strongest person he ever met had to be held. Johnson took a gulp of air. And another. He really didn’t want to get out of the car.