by Flora, Kate;
“So much for a cooperative witness. Let’s see if they know her schedule. If this is how she earns her living, she’s got to turn up sometime.”
Burgess got out and followed Kyle inside. Being jerked around by someone who allegedly possessed critical information about a murder victim did nothing for a temper that had already been tested once today.
He decided they’d play good cop, bad cop. Burgess didn’t care which role he played, but big and fierce as he was, it was Kyle who could turn mere mortals to ice.
“Look,” he said to the guy who seemed to be in charge, who seemed to be slightly stoned, “Kit said she had another hour with her client and then she’d call us. She’s jerking our chain and we’re not happy about it. We don’t want to get anyone in trouble here, but we need to talk to her.” He spread his hands. “Can’t you help us out here?”
The guy shrugged. “Kit’s kinda like that. She doesn’t like to be pressured, and I guess Vonnie put some pressure on her. She gets kinda squirrely when people pressure her.”
“So you’ve got no address for her?”
The guy shrugged again. “Nope.”
“You know when she’s got her next appointment scheduled?”
“Nope.”
“Got any idea how we can find her?”
This time the guy actually grinned when he said, “Nope.”
Really bad idea to play stupid games with a pair of cops looking for a killer. People would do it, though. Human nature could be downright perverse.
“Hey,” Kyle said, leaned down until he was literally breathing in the guy’s face. “I’m sorry you feel this way. See, nope’s not good enough. Not half good enough. You’ve got a gal working here who isn’t licensed. You’ve admitted that. DeSpain’s admitted that. So…” He let the word hang a moment. “So since you seem to like messing with a couple of tired cops who are just trying to find out who killed a girl who got her tats here and then chopped her up, I’ll tell you what these tired cops are gonna do for you.”
The guy was eyeing the door in the far wall, like he was planning to make a run for it.
Burgess moved in closer. Between the wall behind and Kyle and Burgess on each side, he was going to stay and listen.
“First,” Kyle said, “there are all the basic things like reporting you to the licensing board, for letting Kit work here and for putting tats on underage kids.”
The guy shook his head. “Look, I know what you fuckers are trying to do. Forget it. I’m not giving up a friend.”
Kyle shrugged, like the guy had done. Casual. Indifferent. “Really? You know what we’re trying to do? So you know that that kid, the one Kit did the work on, she got beaten to death and the killer cut her head off? And since you know so goddamned much, you probably know what he did with her head after he cut it off?”
The guy gave Kyle another smirk.
Big mistake.
“So here’s what he did,” Kyle said, all casual and conversational, like he was describing someone picking up take-out. “He had these four young girls, Central American, we think, that he was keeping as sex slaves. So he chains ’em up in a basement. No food. No water. Bucket for a toilet. He sets up the head facing them. Oh. Did I mention that he also cut off this girl’s hands, the girl Kit did the work on. So he leaves these girls chained up in an airless box with this rotting head and hands while they slowly die of starvation and dehydration.”
Kyle’s voice had changed as he described the scene until he was at a trembling, barely under control shout. “Really. You knew all this and can’t be bothered to help us?”
The man had lost his smirk and was staring at Kyle in disbelief.
“At least one of those girls will probably die. Maybe the rest can be saved. And that doesn’t bother you? I guess protecting a friend, which also means helping to protect the person who did this shit, is okay with you? You’re the kind of guy who thinks this stuff is okay, long as it doesn’t happen to you or your friends??”
Kyle stepped back. Without taking his eyes off the man, he said, “So yeah. You know what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to stop a monster. We’re hoping those girls we pulled out of a cage are gonna make it. And we’re trying to protect people so he can’t do it again. So if that doesn’t move you, think about this, okay, since Kit is your friend. What if that killer decides Kit knows too much? What then? We can’t find her so we can’t help her.”
Kyle gave the man a twisted smile. “By all means, pride yourself on being defiant. On how you stood up to them and wouldn’t help the police. In return, since we are about helping and protecting the public, we’ll take steps about your license. The licenses of everyone who works here. We’ll also make sure that everyone who parks here for a second more than two hours gets towed. We’ll drop tickets on any vehicle with faulty equipment. We’ll drop in regularly to check that everyone working is licensed. Maybe sit across the street with a video camera, just to make sure your clientele is legit and you don’t have any more kids coming in.”
A slow, stylish shrug. “Lotta competition for you here in Portland. I wouldn’t think you’d want to get on the wrong side of the department, make life hard for your artists. Folks who are just trying to make a living.” He leaned right into the man’s face. “Why the fuck would you want to do that to yourself just because some girl decides to be difficult?”
He stepped back, surveying the man like a bird looks at a worm, his eyes cold and predatory. Letting the silence grow.
Burgess saw the guy shoot a glance at his phone. Maybe because he had Kit’s information there? Maybe because his first reaction to being bullied was to call the cops?
He and Kyle didn’t move. Two big determined men who would wait as long as they had to.
The guy caved. “Fuck it,” he said. “She’s not worth all that.” He reached for the phone and gave them her full name, address, and a different phone number.
“She got a car?” Kyle said.
“Old junk heap. Toyota, I think. Silver. Held together with duct tape.”
“In case you’re thinking that as soon as we leave, you’re going to call and tell her we’re coming?” Burgess said. “Don’t.”
The guy’s guilty shift was confirmation that’s just what he was thinking.
“Thank you for assisting your local police department,” Kyle said. “You have yourself a nice day now.”
They left.
“You were good in there,” Burgess said.
“Had a good teacher.”
When they got in the truck, Kyle was trembling. It hadn’t been an act. Between them, they had almost five decades of dealing with a public like the guy at Sweety’s. Sometimes Burgess thought it would be good to paper a room at 109 with photos from the worst crime scenes they’d worked over the years, blown up in their full color, grisly worst. Blood pooled. Splattered. Staining sheets and rugs. People stabbed so many times they looked like hamburger. Bodies in all the colors of the rainbow. Swollen with decomp. Crawling with maggots. Maybe a special room for murdered children. Just bring people like this guy in, put them in a chair, and leave them for an hour. If it wasn’t cruel and unusual for cops, why should it be cruel and unusual for the public they served?
“We know that dismemberment is not nice,” Burgess said. “But I was considering it. Except I have faith in your powers of persuasion, Terry.”
“Bigger than a mustard seed?”
Burgess nodded. “Much.”
Burgess started the truck and Kyle gave directions. What a fucking waste of time. They could have gotten what they needed from a computer if they’d only had Kit’s last name.
Twenty
They caught up with her as she was about to get to her car. Another minute and she would have been gone again. Maybe it was chance. Maybe the guy made that call anyway. People were a perverse bunch.
Burgess got between her and her door, lounging against it like a man with all the time in the world. Kyle stationed himself on the other side of her. Togethe
r, they made a Kit sandwich. She looked from one to the other, set her chin truculently.
“You were going to call us,” Burgess said.
“Yeah? Guess I forgot.”
“So it’s a good thing we happened to be driving by, isn’t it?”
“I have to go.”
“This won’t take long,” Burgess said. “We just had some questions about Shelley.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s not what Vonnie said.”
“Oh. Vonnie. He’s such a bleeding heart.”
A woman passing by was getting out her phone. Maybe to call the cops. More likely to make a video she could post on the internet. If they were bad guys and Kit was in trouble, this woman wouldn’t be coming to her rescue. These days, people don’t help, they just record. Mothers passed out from drugs on store floors. Kids bullying another kid. Burgess jerked his chin and Kyle turned toward her.
“Police officers, ma’am. Just asking Kit a few questions. There’s nothing to see here.”
Perfectly calm and straightforward. But Kyle’s voice was no nonsense and Burgess knew he wore his “don’t mess with this” face.
Flustered, the woman tucked her phone back in her purse and hurried away. Maybe she should have stayed. Maybe seen some police brutality. Burgess’s patience was wearing thin. He said, “We’re not going to keep chasing you, Kit. We can do this here, or we can arrest you as a material witness and do this back at 109. Your choice.”
“I don’t have to …”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kit. Shelley got beaten to death and someone cut her head off and used it to terrorize other girls. Why on earth would you protect a person like that?”
“I’m not…”
“Fuck yes. You are,” Kyle said.
Melia was always on them about language. Usually they curbed their tongues with civilians, but enough was enough.
Burgess got out his phone, scrolled through to a picture of the severed head. “By not helping us, you’re helping the person who did this.”
Definitely police brutality.
She stared at the picture. Then at him. Then at the picture. “Is that Shelley? I mean, that looks like her hair, but…”
“Come sit in the truck,” Kyle said, taking her arm. “It’s hot out here. We can turn on the air.”
She let him lead her to the Explorer. Burgess started the air.
She was still stunned. “We need her last name, if you know it,” Burgess said. “Anything she may have said to you about her home life. Details about the two men who brought her to her appointments.”
“All right. Whatever. I’ll answer your questions. Just don’t show me any more pictures, okay?”
“Okay,” Burgess said. “Let’s start with her name.”
“At first, she only wanted to be listed as Shelley. But when the guy who brought her, the first guy, had stepped outside to smoke, she told me that she did that because of him. She said he was her foster dad and didn’t want her foster mom to know that he’d brought her in for this. Her foster mom and Human Services. So he didn’t want any record that she’d been here. She said her foster mom already hated her and getting this work done would probably get her thrown out for good. But she didn’t care. She didn’t like either one of them, but her foster dad was nicer to her. She did things for him so he was doing this for her.”
“That mean what I think it means?” Burgess said.
“That’s how I took it.”
“She tell you her last name?”
“Her name was Miner. Michele Miner.”
“Thank you,” Burgess said. “What about the second man. The one who brought her to her last session?"
“I can’t tell much about him. She didn’t talk much that time. I didn’t speak to him, Vonnie did. Vonnie said he was an asshole. All I know and it’s not from anything she said, but just how she was. The poor kid was scared to death of him. He was an older guy. Better dressed than her foster father. Acted like he was slumming, bringing her. He didn’t wait for her. He went out and sat in his car and waited for her. Most of the time he was on the phone.”
“You notice what he was driving?”
“Something big and black. That’s all I noticed. Sedan, not a SUV.”
“What about her implants? Did she have them when she first came?”
“Implants? Like her teeth?”
“Like her breasts?”
“She had ’em. They might have been fairly new, though, ’cuz she made some remark about how weird it was to lie on her stomach. And how they hurt.”
“Did you talk about her bruises? Someone was beating her and it had been going on for a long time.”
“I asked. It was hard for her lie there, when she was hurt like that. She said they hit her when she didn’t do what they said. I said why didn’t she go to the police. Call her social worker. Get sent to a different family. She said she’d tried that and it hadn’t worked and she’d gotten beat worse than before. So, you guys come here, all muscle and threat, but when that poor kid came to you for help, you sent her back to them. And this is how it ended up.”
Maybe she had meant that she went to her social worker for help. He couldn’t believe the police had ignored those bruises. Burgess had seen the state fail kids before. Seen another child die because of bureaucratic indifference, despite multiple efforts to get them to act. But if the Portland police had failed her, too? That would be hard to live with. He hated to be on the cleanup crew because agencies, including his own, whose job was to protect and care for people, had failed. It was sometimes the darkest part of his job. It was also when retirement seemed most appealing. He could separate from those who were responsible for screw-ups like this. For letting down the most vulnerable.
He couldn’t quit in the middle of this, though.
At least Kit had given them some leads. He hoped the name was real. Otherwise, they were left to search through endless DHHS records, looking for a child named Michele or Shelley. In his experience, DHHS was an extremely uncooperative agency to deal with.
“Can I go now?” she demanded. Trying for bravado, but Burgess’s picture had deflated her.
“You have my card?” Burgess said.
A nod.
“You’ll call if you remember anything else?”
Another nod.
“We appreciate your help,” Kyle said. “We know people don’t trust us sometimes. It makes our job harder. But we know you don’t want this girl’s killer to get away with it.”
“I don’t. I just…”
“We know,” Kyle said.
She slid out and hurried to her car. She jumped in and pulled out from the curb, nearly hitting a cyclist.
“We could stop her,” Burgess said.
“Yeah. But we’ve got places to go and people to see. Maybe, while we’ve been out having fun with the obliging public, Rocky or Wink have come up with something.”
Burgess started back toward 109, brooding on what Kit had told them.
He was deep into brooding when, out of the blue, Kyle said, “Are we supposed to give Stan a bachelor party?”
Crap. He was best man. He was supposed to have thought of this. Maybe Perry didn’t want one? He’d ask. He feared Perry would say “yes.”
This was more of the peculiar way that their lives ran on two different tracks. On one track there were pitiful, trafficked children and grotesque crime scenes. On the other were life’s normal events. Family dinners. Children squabbling. Marriage. Birth. And places where the two tracks intersected. Where families failed their children. Foster fathers had sex with the girls in their care. Wayward daughters wrapped their cars around trees.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Kyle said.
“Wishing something about this would be easy.”
“Know what I’m wondering about?”
“What?”
“Why Captain Cote isn’t breathing down our necks?”
“I almost miss it. His pressure and interference
was so much part of the rhythm of our investigations.”
“Well, I don’t miss him at all.”
“I just wonder if he’s okay.”
“You’re such a masochist. It’s a gift, Joe. Enjoy it while you can. And anyway, he did call Stan. So maybe it’s just a different form of business as usual. I’m just glad he didn’t call me.”
Silence returned as they drove past throngs of tourists enjoying Maine’s largest city on this beautiful summer day. Cases like theirs could swallow up whole chunks of summer. A detective gets immersed in a case, works it, and him, or herself, to death, and suddenly notices that weeks have passed. Maybe the season is changing. Or the detective only notices the change because people seen through the window are dressed differently. Tee shirts have morphed into hoodies, sandals have become boots.
“How about that?” Kyle said.
Burgess slowed. In Monument Square, two young women, a blonde and brunette, wearing cowboy boots, denim cut-offs, and no tops, their breasts painted red, white, and blue, were handing out flyers to people passing by. Nice breasts. Pretty women. They looked happy. The people—mostly male—receiving the flyers looked happy.
Burgess shrugged and drove on. If someone was bothered by it, they’d call the police and some poor officer would be sent to deal with it.
“I love patriotism, don’t you?” Kyle said. “Where were they when I was young?”
“You have gotta stop with this being old business. Don’t let Stan get to you. He’s just being a jerk because of the pressure of this wedding.”
“Joe, in case you haven’t noticed, Stan is usually a jerk. He’s just our jerk.”
“Anyway, Ter. You aren’t old. You’re in the prime of life. Because if you’re old, what does that make me as I creep toward sixty?”
“You mean limp toward sixty? A dinosaur.”
“That’s what I thought. Fossil, maybe. Relic.”
They almost made it back. They were waiting to turn onto Federal Street when a woman came running at them, waving her arms. “Help,” she said. “I don’t have a phone and someone needs to call the police.”