TERF Wars

Chapter 2

2

We dropped off Turner at the Estrella Jail and picked up the body receipt, which I would turn over to Assurity Bail Bonds for a fat check.

It was nearly one o’clock when Zahara, Rodeo, and I arrived back at the Hub, a coworking space I worked out of in downtown Phoenix. I parked in the nearby lot between Rodeo’s Mazda Miata and Zahara’s Ford Explorer.

“Any more jobs?” Zahara yawned audibly and stretched.

I checked the email account on my phone. “Looks like Assurity Bail Bonds has another one for us. Let me see if it can wait until Monday.”

I called Sadie Levinson, the owner of Assurity. “Yo, Sadie. We bagged Turner.”

“Finally. I have another defendant for you to return to custody,” she said with perfect professional diction. “Judge Campos revoked her bail this morning after she threatened a witness.”

“Who’s the defendant?”

“Blair Marshall, white female. No priors. Originally charged with aggravated assault. Upgraded to murder one when the victim died a few days ago.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. “My team’s exhausted from chasing Turner halfway across the state, and we’re headed to Vegas for the weekend for my bachelorette party. Can it wait until Monday?”

She made a noise indicating her displeasure. “It’s only Wednesday. The judge wants her apprehended tout de suite. Otherwise, it’ll be my tuchus in a sling.”

“Yeah, well, I’m flying out tomorrow morning.”

“I need this defendant picked up now, Ms. Ballou. She murdered a woman. A transgender woman, I might add.”

“s**t. She’s the one who killed LaTonya Garrett?” A lump formed in my throat. The Phoenix Gender Alliance, a trans support group I was a member of, had staged a protest at the courthouse when Marshall was released on bail, fearing she would hurt another member of our community. “And you posted her bond?”

“I issue bail bonds for defendants on a wide range of charges, including murder. You know this. But now that her bail’s been revoked, I need your help returning her to custody. Neither she nor her attorney have returned my calls.”

“Fine. I’ll take the case.”

“Thought you would. The original bail was set at two hundred grand. Considering the urgency, I’ll pay double the standard rate if you apprehend her by Friday.”

Double the standard ten percent meant a bounty of forty grand. A nice chunk of change if we could apprehend her quickly.

“Email me the documents, and we’ll see if we can’t track her down today. If not, I’ll have Rodeo and Zahara nab her before the weekend.”

“See that you do. This one’s a priority.”

I hung up and turned to Rodeo and Zahara. “We got another one for Assurity. Big payday but not much time to grab her.”

“Darn, I was hoping to catch some sleep,” Zahara said. “Last night’s stakeout is kicking my rear.”

“Go grab some winks, Z,” I replied. “Rodeo, how you holding up?”

He had been running leads with me since the wee hours of the morning. “Could use some coffee, but I can manage for a while yet.”

“Excellent. Careful driving home, girl,” I called after Zahara.

“Will do.” She climbed into her Ford Explorer and drove out of the lot.

“Come on,” I told Rodeo. “Let’s see if we can’t track down one more before the weekend.”

The Hub was housed in what was once a car dealership. The shape of the tall glass-fronted building reminded me of an inverted boat hull. The interior featured a cavernous open space with the only walls in the back where the restrooms and a few meeting rooms were located.

Dozens of computer workstations occupied ten-foot-long folding tables. Neon artwork installations mounted on the exposed steel infrastructure gave the space a cyber-industrial look, sort of a “disco meets the Terminator” vibe. EDM played over the sound system.

Rodeo and I navigated through the tables to the one I shared with Becca Alvarez, my best friend since sixth grade and now my maid of honor. She had been my first friend after coming out as transgender.

These days, she freelanced as an IT security consultant and also skip traced fugitives for me, often providing information that most of the online skip-tracing databases didn’t offer, some of it not entirely acquired legally. She sat nestled among three flat-screens, typing away madly. Empty drink cans and food wrappers lay cluttered among stacks of file folders, loose papers, pens, and computer parts.

“Hey, Becks! How’s it going?” I asked.

Like me, Becca had long dark hair and tan skin. When we were growing up, people often mistook us for sisters. Despite our lack of a blood relation, we were family.

“Morning, you two. Been busy checking a suspected vulnerability on a client’s server. You catch that creepy woman with the corpse fetish?” Her lip curled in disgust.

“We got her.” Rodeo pulled up a chair next to my workstation. “The dead can rest in peace once again.”

I opened my laptop and printed the documents that Sadie Levinson had sent on Blair Marshall, including the arrest report, her bail application, a credit report, and the recent order from the judge revoking bail. “She was a serious whack job. Absolutely convinced she’d done nothing wrong. Had to tase her when she came at me with a knife.”

“Oh my gourd! Glad that locasita’s locked up. You packed for our flight tomorrow?”

Prior to the bachelorette party, Becca and I were getting our geek on at StoryCon, a sci-fi/fantasy convention being held in Vegas over the extended weekend. My other wedding attendants would arrive on Saturday for the party.

“Just about. I was ready to call it a day, but Assurity has one more fugitive for me. Blair Marshall.”

“No s**t. That psycho puta who murdered the trans woman in the Save Mart restroom?”

“That’s her. Judge revoked her bail for threatening a witness. Hoping Rodeo and I can pick her up by the end of the day.”

I labeled a manilla folder and studied the documents I had printed.

Blair Marshall was twenty-seven, five-five, drove a 2016 Chevy Malibu, and lived with her significant other, a thirty-eight-year-old woman named Naomi Hoffman in the north valley off Happy Valley Road. She had good credit, a couple thousand dollars in the bank, and ran a nonprofit organization named Womyn Born Womyn whose mission was spreading harmful lies about transgender people.

In her mug shot, her feminine features and long blond hair belied a stony expression.

In the past year, Marshall’s little nonprofit hate group had tried to push a bill through the state legislature that would have forced trans people to use public restrooms based on their assigned s*x at birth. The measure died in committee only after someone pointed out that doing so would force trans guys—many of whom were bearded and muscular—to use the ladies’ rooms.

Not that trans guys were a threat to cisgender women either. But the bigots realized their proposed legislation would have had the opposite effect of “keeping men out of women-only spaces.”

And now Blair Marshall, self-appointed gender defender of the valley’s restrooms, had brutally murdered a Black transgender woman. Well, if she was going to continue her crusade against my community, she’d have to do it from behind bars. I intended to put her there.

“You need me to skip trace Marshall?” Becca asked.

“Let me go knock on her door, see if we can do this the easy way. I’ll call you if I need any skip tracing.”

She nodded. “Okay, chica. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll see you tomorrow morning at Sky Harbor.”

I gave her a hug. “See ya then, bestie.”

“Take care, Becca,” Rodeo said. “Have fun in Vegas. And keep our girl outta trouble.”

I elbowed him and led him out of the building. We climbed back into the Gray Ghost and drove north.