Foster stared from one to the other. "Oh, Jesus Christ."
"Serrano," who was actually a Bakersfield detective named Jose Felipe-Santoval, aimed his weapon center mass on Foster's chest, while Dance, relieved of her weapon but not her cuffs, ratcheted the bracelets on.
Adding to Foster's shock, the agent who'd been pretending to be the deceased Pedro Escalanza hopped to and dusted off his jeans, drawing his own weapon. He'd been lying facedown, head hidden from the trio in the hotel room.
"Hey, TJ."
"Boss. Good takedown. How's the blood?" He glanced at his legs, spattered red. "I tried a new formula. Hershey's syrup and food coloring."
"Big improvement," she said, nodding at the tile.
Foster gasped, "A sting. The whole fucking thing."
Dance pulled out her cell
phone. Hit speed dial five as she glanced down and noticed her Aldo pumps had a scuff. Have to fix that. These were her favorite shoes for fieldwork.
She heard through the phone Charles Overby's voice: "Kathryn? And the verdict is?"
"Foster's our boy. It's all on tape. He's the only one."
"Ah."
"We'll be back in a half hour. You want to be there, at the interrogation?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
Chapter 90
Disgust overflowed in Foster's face as he looked from Al Stemple to Dance to Overby. They were in the same CBI interrogation rooms where Dance had held the phony interview of the phony Serrano last week.
TJ was elsewhere; the faux blood was good, yes, but it stained far more than he'd thought it would. He was presently scrubbing hands and ankles in one of the nearby men's rooms.
Foster snapped, "Jesus, you wanted Kathryn unarmed and demoted to Civ-Div but still talking her way onto the interviews with the suspect to track down Serrano. So I wouldn't feel threatened by her."
Yep. Exactly.
Overby added, "So you'd be free to cut a deal with Serrano when he pulled a gun on you."
Dance told him: "We made the case against the real Serrano ten days ago. Handed it over to the FBI, Amy Grabe in San Francisco. So you wouldn't get wind of it. She busted him. He rolled over on Guzman. They're both in isolation. The, quote, 'Serrano' you saw was Bakersfield PD. Jose works undercover. He's good, don't you think?"
Not professional, she observed of her comments. But she was in a mood.
"We got him because he looks like the real Serrano."
Anger joined Foster's revulsion: "Jesus. We were all suspects. And you faked the, quote, 'leads' to Serrano--with Carol, the bungalow in Seaside. With Gomez, the houseboat. At the motel just now. You ran the same set, the same play at every one of them. TJ played the dead snitch. All I saw was the legs and torso. Not his face."
Overby filled in, "Except at the houseboat. That was Connie Ramirez, playing...what was her name again?"
Dance answered, "Tia Alonzo." She continued, "It was a test we put together. The real traitor'd save himself. Those on the task force who were innocent? Well, I'm afraid they had a few bad moments when Jose turned his gun on them. But it had to be done. We needed to find who'd sold us out."
In the first set, Carol had suicidally lunged at the fake Serrano, knocking a table of ceramic keepsakes to the floor. Gomez had sighed and resigned himself to death and said a prayer.
And Foster had played the OG card, invoking the name of Lamont Howard to save himself.
"If you'd passed the test, it would have meant Steve Lu was the snitch. Since you said you told Kathryn you were the only connection, he's clean."
"You fucking set me up."