Bill Harvey Collection

by Peter O'Mahoney

  Ever since she received her first number game book, joy flooded through her when she saw a new one. This month, he smiled broadly when she jumped up and down with delight, holding the book to her chest.

  For her, there was no disputing the numbers. There were no mistakes. It was either right or wrong. She loved that consistency.

  But importantly, the number books reminded her of her dear grandmother; the time her gran spent tutoring her after school every day, sitting patiently next to her, watching as she learned day-to-day. When she lived at home, she barely saw her parents, but her grandmother was a constant, caring presence in her life.

  Under the guise of the moonlight, she felt her way through the night and found the bag of food, reaching in to pull out the loaf of white bread. Pulling out the first slice, she pressed it into her fingers. A small sigh of pleasure escaped her mouth when she found that it was still fresh and soft.

  By the time he came next, the bread would be stale. Almost like eating cardboard.

  She eased her teeth into the soft bread for the first bite.

  Closing her eyes and tilting her head back, she felt the softness; bringing a sweet rush of joy through her body. It tasted so delightful, so moist. The piece of bread cushioned between her teeth, lightly being chewed between hums of satisfaction.

  Her shoulders relaxed, and all the tension disappeared from her body. Like a wonder drug, the bread made her feel high, contented, and totally calm within the first bite.

  Over the years, she had learned to savor the feeling that fresh bread brought.

  When she was younger, when she first came to the basement, with nothing else to do, she would eat the loaf of bread in the first two days. She would eat it fast, like she had done for the entirety of her young life.

  But as the years slowly ticked past, she learned her own life lessons. She learned that the slower she ate the bread, the more she relished it. The longer she took for each mouthful, the longer she could enjoy the magical moment.

  Sometimes, he even brought apples. Those were her favorite days.

  Once, he even bought two bags of apples. She almost cried she was so happy. When he brought fresh fruit, it took all her willpower not to eat it all on the first day. She would stare at the bag, almost like it was calling out to her. Occasionally, she let herself go and binge on the fruit, becoming dizzy with the hit of gratification.

  Once the first slice of bread had been slowly consumed, she climbed up on her camping bed and peered up through the small window. Angling the right way, she could see the moon in all its glory—shining bright and full through the clear sky.

  Using a piece of wood that she carved years ago, she scratched another circle into the wooden wall at the end of the stairs. Another full moon. A big, beautiful part of life, shining down brightly on the earth, covering the world in a gentle, kind glow.

  With a smile on her face, she sat back on the end of her bed, careful not to tip the camping bed over. Looking around at her small place in life, at the dirty concrete floor, at the cold hard walls, and at the old wooden stairs that led to the door, she wondered what the world was like out there. What was the food like? How much bread was out there? An endless supply? How amazing would the bread be? Could people even have fresh bread every day of the year?

  Hugging her knees to her chest, she smiled.

  Life was good.

  She had food, shelter, books, and puzzles.

  The thought of staying in the basement crossed her mind. Maybe this was all life had to give. Maybe this was the best life she could hope for. That was what he said. That’s what he told her.

  And maybe he was right.

  She did like it.

  Life did make her happy.

  But there was a feeling inside her—a growing sense of fear.

  Sometimes, she could remember what it felt like to be outside. Remember what it was like to be around other people. Sometimes, in her dreams, she had a fleeting moment that reminded her of family, of friends, of another world. In those moments, she knew she had to leave.

  Time used to be on her side.

  But the thought of a new man coming into her world made her grip her knees tighter. She couldn’t bear the thought of a new man taking her away. She couldn’t bear the thought of what he would do to her. Her hands began to shake as she thought about the horrid possibilities.

  She would run.

  It would break his heart, but she would run.

  For her own safety, she had to run.

  The time had come to break free.

  Chapter 5

  The innocent world buzzed around the two people standing next to the Lake Forest skate park, a coffee in each of their right hands.

  Looking out of place in the lively hip area, Bill Harvey stood tall; a fitted suit amongst the loose T-shirts, long shorts, and long socks. Not only did his dress sense look out of place, but he also felt like dishing out life advice to every young person that whizzed past him.

  The morning sun beat down on the concrete structure of curves, twists, and jumps, as sweat began to bead on Harvey’s brow.

  LAPD Detective Stacey Oates looked quite at home in the area, and she felt it too. There were two places that the thirty-year-old felt at peace—flying around on her skateboard, and chasing down criminals. Just not at the same time.

  With an arm full of tattoos, usually covered during working hours, long black hair, and toned tanned limbs, Oates could be mistaken for a twenty-something bum with no job.

  But whoever thought that would do so at their own peril.

  Oates took a long sip of her coffee, adjusted her cap, passed the coffee to Harvey, dropped her skateboard down, and then roared into the skate park with speed. She hit the concrete with her left foot, stopping, propping, and then launching herself off the steepest slope in the park. With a sudden burst of speed, she rode to the other side of the jump, and sprang into the air. Harvey grimaced as he watched her land. One wrong step, one wrong position, and no amount of beauty products would cover that damage.

  Not that Detective Stacey Oates would mind. Beauty products weren’t her thing.

  Once she had roared around the track, hitting hollies, flips, and grinds, she cruised back to Harvey with a poise that he could never hope to equal on a piece of wood with four wheels.

  “I know that this isn’t just a friendly visit. I know what you came here to ask me.” Stacey grunted, sliding up next to him. “So hurry up and get those words out of your mouth.”

  “If you know what I’m going to ask, why don’t you just answer it?” Harvey handed the coffee back to the slightly puffed woman.

  “Because you haven’t asked it.” She smiled. Her black hair was pulled back tightly, almost like she wanted nothing to do with it. It had betrayed her many times; men saw her feminine locks and immediately thought she was an easy target.

  That would be their mistake.

  Harvey knew that. He had been in the boxing ring with her.

  “What have you got on Kevin Wu?”

  He remembered the left hook that she landed on his chin in the ring. Clean, fast, and dangerous.

  Three years ago, at a bar with a group of LAPD detectives, a visiting Japanese police officer challenged him to a Sake drinking contest. Whoever lost had to step into the ring with Oates for one round of boxing, with their hands tied behind their back, ducking and weaving from her gruesome gloves for three minutes.

  As he spent his youth near a boxing gym, Harvey managed to last two minutes, but she threw a perfect combo—left jab, left jab, short right uppercut, and finished with a short left hook. It landed square on his chin and instantly floored him. The detectives went wild, but they all patted him on the back after he stepped out—no officer had ever lasted more than thirty seconds against the tall former underage boxing champion.

  That performance also earned the respect of LAPD Cold Case Homicide Special Section Detective Stacey Oates, and the lines of communication had been open ever since.

 
“Come on, Harvey. It’s my day off. I come out here to escape the job, not to be harassed about it.”

  “This is important, Stacey. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  She drew a long breath and stared at the man she respected. “Alright. We’re close to Kevin Wu. Really close. Five years ago, he was the prime suspect in the disappearance, and likely murder, of Tiffany Lee, Monty Lee’s daughter. The department was sure it was him—everyone was sure it was him. The lead detective was sure, the captain was sure, the victim’s father was sure, but the problem came with the DA’s office. They said we didn’t have enough evidence to charge him, and unless we were able to get a confession out of him, then he would be walking away.”

  “And no confession came?”

  “None. We brought him in, but he lawyered up very quickly and didn’t say a word to us. Not a word.” Stacey drew a long sip of her coffee and then flicked her skateboard up into her arms.

  “And now?”

  “We got a tip off a month ago. A woman called our department and stated that they saw Kevin Wu and a girl exiting a car near the entrance to Deb Parks Rd in Montecito Heights, at the gates leading into the Ernest E. Debs Regional Park.”

  “What did they claim to see?”

  “A car pulled up to the entrance of the park, and Wu stepped out of the passenger seat. Then he took a girl from the trunk of the sedan. He grabbed her by the shirt on her shoulder and walked out of sight.”

  “Identification of the driver?”

  “It’s shady.” She grimaced as she watched a teenage boy crash into the concrete not far from them. “The anonymous tip-off stated that they thought it may have been Kevin’s old muscle, Terrance Marshall, but they couldn’t confirm it.”

  “I know Terrance Marshall. I’ve defended him before.”

  The teen brushed himself off, winked at Stacey, and then continued skating. Stacey rolled her eyes as she looked back at Harvey.

  “Wu drags the girl off into the park, and two hours later, he returns to the car without the girl, and the car drives away.”

  “A body?”

  “We’ve already spent two days looking for it and found nothing. The problem is that the reserve is massive, and they only saw them at the entrance of the park at the time.”

  “So he could have buried her anywhere in the reserve?”

  “Or he may not have buried her at all. She might not even be dead. He could say that he was just talking to her and she escaped into the reserve and ran away. All we have at this stage is a possibly unreliable tip-off from an anonymous source, and unfortunately, without the body, he has a defense against a murder charge. We could go for kidnapping, but we want murder one. We have to find a body before we press ahead. We’ve got a forensic team scheduled to look through the reserve in a few months, searching for clues around the area that she was taken from the car.”

  “Why the wait? Why not continue to search the reserve now?”

  “If she’s dead, she’s not going anywhere. We’ve had one look and turned up nothing. We’ve got a big caseload, and we’ve fitted this tip-off in when we can. And if she’s been buried there for five years, another couple of weeks won’t hurt.”

  “If she’s dead.”

  “That’s true.” Stacey shrugged. “Kevin Wu and his second wife Eva Wu were rumored to be importing women from Hong Kong and keeping them locked up while they pimped them out for prostitution. He was even rumored to keep some in his basement, just for himself. They were said to traffic young women from Hong Kong, use them, and then send them back. Maybe Kevin sent Tiffany Lee to Hong Kong along with the others.”

  “No pimping charges were ever laid against him.”

  “That’s because of stupid defense lawyers arguing the technicalities of the law. They let guilty men walk back onto the street.”

  A wave of guilt washed over Harvey as Stacey’s glare almost cut him in two. At the time when he defended Kevin Wu, he hadn’t realized the extent of the criminal behavior he was involved with. He was charged with one single act of pimping and pandering, and he convinced Harvey that it was a mistake. Kevin Wu walked away from the court, avoiding prison due to a technicality of law.

  “I can’t argue against that.” He looked away from her. “How about CCTV footage from the reserve?”

  “Strangely enough that day of footage is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “It was before cloud computing—none of that technology was in common use at that time. We get that a lot in cold cases—technology from today would have solved so many more crimes if they were in use back then. The reserve manager, nice old guy, said that they backed everything up on USB drives each month, and when he went to check, he found that the footage of that month was missing. He was stunned that the month was missing because he’s usually so thorough. You should have seen his storage room—everything was labeled, perfectly organized, and absolutely spotless. He thinks the USB drive must have been stolen because the month before is still there, as is the month after, but he has no idea when it was stolen. It was backed up at the end of each month, so the thief must have taken it after the month finished.”

  “And the tip-off? Any idea where it came from, or why the person waited five years to make it?”

  “It happens.” She frowned. “People deal with the guilt for as long as they can, and then one day it all becomes too much. The person was probably scared of what Kevin Wu would do if they found out it was them, and now that his operations have been shut down, they aren’t as scared of him. He’s still very dangerous, but he’s not as powerful as he once was.” She looked over her shoulder to see another young man jump into a dip and spin. “But the incident has probably played on their mind every day for half a decade. We get that a lot.”

  “So, is it a missing person’s case or a murder case?”

  “At this point, officially, it’s still a kidnapping. We don’t know that she’s dead yet, but we presume that she is. Tiffany Lee could still be alive somewhere, but they’ve given it to our section to follow up.” Stacey adjusted her loose T-shirt on her shoulder. “And I sort of get Kevin Wu’s anger. If Monty Lee killed his only daughter, and no justice came to the murderer, then I understand that he wanted revenge, I just don’t understand why he would’ve targeted the kid.”

  “You’re siding with the criminals now?”

  “Not a chance. That’s your job.” She turned her cap backward. “If he murdered that girl, we’ll get him. That’s what we do in the cold case team; we get the scum that thought they got away with it.”

  “So Kevin knows you’re close. He knows that you’ve almost got him,” Harvey stated, watching a seven-year-old girl zip past him with more coordination and coolness than he could ever dream of.

  “He does. What happens to you if he’s successful in the civil court?”

  “I’ll be broke, struck off the bar, and lose my job. And worse, every person I’ve ever worked with in hypnotherapy will come at me with their problems. If they do something wrong after the sessions—a car accident, a bad relationship, a poor gambling decision—they’ll lay the blame on me. And every other hypnotherapist in the world will become a target for the courts.”

  “Sounds bad.” Stacey adjusted her loose shirt again, ready for another run. “What’s your next move?”

  “It’s a lot harder to win a civil case if you’re in prison. Not impossible, but it sure is a lot harder convincing a judge that you’re an angel when you’re wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

  “That’s a good tactic. I guess that you’re just going to let us do our job then?”

  “I need him arrested before then. I don’t have time on my side.”

  “There’s not a chance that we can push this case up the list, Harvey. This is a low priority case, and even if I push it, I won’t get approval for the search for weeks. But there are two things that you could do to help us.”

  “Go on.”

  “The reason they couldn’t prosecute him in the ill
egal brothel case was because of a lack of evidence, but we all know that he had a little black book full of names. All you would have to do is find the black book, and then convince Kevin Wu to testify the validity of it, in return for a reduced prison sentence.”

  “That’s not a very plausible option.” Harvey placed his hand in his pocket. “I hope option two is better.”

  “If you find the missing footage of the Ernest E. Debs Regional Park, you will help my case, and I can guarantee that I’ll push the case for an arrest if I have the hard proof.”

  Harvey nodded. “I’ll start with Terrance Marshall.”

  “Tread carefully. Kevin Wu might have had his operations shut down, but he’s still a very dangerous man.” She slapped her skateboard down. “If he thinks you’re a threat, he’ll have you killed, but not until after he’s killed everyone you love. Right now, he’s backed into a corner, and he’s at his most dangerous. He has nothing to lose.”

  “Looks like we’re in the same position.”

  “The closer you get to his world, the more you’re inviting danger into yours.”

  “It’s the only shot I’ve got.” Harvey watched her take off for another skate around the course, before musing to himself. “And what’s life without a little bit of danger?”

  Chapter 6

  Randall D. Woods was an impressive speaker. His deep baritone voice, smooth sentence structure, and mesmerizing green eyes captured attention everywhere he went. His tall frame meant that he talked down to most people, and he used his size to coerce people into doing what he wanted.

  That was probably why he was the president of the American Association of Hypnotists.

  “He must have signed a form stating that you’re in no way responsible for his actions. I can’t imagine that you would have started a session without that disclosure form?”

  “He did sign the standard form. I still have a copy of it.” Harvey sighed, placing his fork next to his bowl of pasta. “He’s not arguing that fact, but he’s claiming that the impact of the sessions went beyond sensible expectations. He’s claiming that the damages caused by the hypnotherapy sessions went beyond what a normal person would consider reasonable.”