A Child Shall Lead Them (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 6)

by Flora, Kate;

  It was a long shot, but Burgess had to ask. “Any chance you noted the license number of that car?”

  Shirley smiled. “I wrote it down when I called the police. I have it somewhere. Probably I stuck it in my junk drawer. It may take me a few minutes to find it.”

  She left to look and Deane said, “What my mom’s not saying, because she prides herself on being fearless, and because she’s been such a fighter for me, is that he frightened her badly. I don’t think it was only an exchange of expletives, I think he threatened her with harm to me.”

  A horrible man indeed.

  She came back, smiling at her success, and handed him a sticky note with a number scribbled on it. He checked it to be sure he could read the scribbles. “May I keep this?”

  “Of course. I hope it helps you catch these people. Deane and I are looking forward to the day when we have new neighbors to watch. Real neighbors.”

  “Mom, I don’t watch the neighbors. Well, except to keep you company.”

  “Not now that you’re a serious grown-up business man.”

  “Did the man in the town car come often?” Burgess asked.

  She looked at her son. “I’d say a few times a week. Weekends. Late afternoons. He may also have come at night, but then I’m not paying attention. Deane, is that right?” She looked at Burgess. “Deane’s bedroom is at the front, so he’s more likely to know.”

  “He came pretty often at night. Him or Charlie. Or at least Charlie’s car. Which is really Ida Mae’s car. I’ve seen Charlie’s wife drive it, too. They’d always drive into the garage when they came at night. Mom won’t say this. She’s too proper, but we both think that they were running some kind of prostitution ring.”

  “Because?”

  “Because often, when the car came at night, there would be a man sitting in the back, like a limo passenger.”

  “There would be lights on in the house?” Burgess said.

  “Yes,” Deane said. “When the black car came, there were be lights on inside.”

  That was bold, right here in a residential neighborhood. But he couldn’t imagine bringing customers to a house where there was no furniture, just a couple of filthy mattresses. So what did it mean that last week the furniture had been removed?

  “But you didn’t call us about that.”

  “It was speculation,” she said. “And given how responsive bureaucracy was about my call regarding Shelley, I couldn’t take the chance that cops would check it out, decide things were okay, and then Charlie or his associate would retaliate against us. We’re pretty vulnerable.”

  Burgess was frustrated on their behalf. They were exactly who the department was supposed to protect. He also hated being tarred with the same brush as DHHS, though he kept his thoughts about that to himself.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t feel we could protect you,” he said.

  “We’re realists, Deane, aren’t we? You can’t always be here.”

  The world was full of quiet heroes. He saw them all the time in his work. There were the people who refused to step up, like Kit, and the people like this, who carefully navigated a dangerous world. Who sacrificed for each other.

  “You’ve said that you saw the van come two or three times. Did it ever come at night, Deane, as well as during the day?”

  “It came at night, too. I couldn’t see the driver then, of course.”

  “The house is unfurnished now,” Burgess said. “If Charlie was, as you speculate, bringing men to the house for sex, I would assume that there would have to be some furnishings?”

  He was thinking of those filthy mattresses. Even the most undiscerning would be unlikely to pay to have sex on them. Well. Pay very much. Pay what one would assume would be involved with an arrangement that involved town cars and drivers and pretty young girls with enhanced breasts. He certainly had seen some sordid conditions where people did have sex.

  He wondered about the Guatemalan girls. If men had been brought to have sex with them, wouldn’t that have involved a lot more traffic to the house? Enough, he’d think, to trigger someone’s calls to the police. Maybe they took girls someplace else. He wondered what Kyle was learning.

  “Like I said, a moving van came recently.” Shirley said. “They moved all of Ida Mae’s things out. I wondered if that meant she’d died and her family was cleaning out the house, but I haven’t seen an obituary.”

  Something else to track down. It seemed odd. It sounded like they’d run this thing here for months, why change now? Was this before or after Shelley was killed? Had they had the balls to empty out the house with those girls chained in the basement and Shelley’s blood all over the floor? Had something happened to spook them? Had they moved the operation somewhere else?

  “Have you seen Charlie or his associate or Ida Mae’s car here since the furniture was removed?”

  “A few days ago, both of their cars were here for a longer time than usual.”

  “And the van? When is the last time you saw it?”

  “The day after the movers took Ida Mae’s things away.”

  Was the van bringing the girls? Had there been other girls? Was this a regular thing? The feds might have a better read on this.

  In his simple conversations with two of Ida Mae Wilson’s neighbors, his to-do list had grown immensely. He was ready to end this, grab Kyle and head back to 109 to put some things in motion, but before he left, he asked the open-ended question that sometimes brought surprising results.

  “Is there anything else I should be asking about? Something I’ve missed?”

  Shirley and her son exchanged looks. He nodded and she said, “You should talk with Charlie’s wife. Charlie might be tough to get cooperation from. He’s always been all about Charlie and doesn’t much care about anyone else or what people might think of him. She’s a cold fish, but she’s a professional in a job that involves working with children. That might give you some leverage.”

  “Does she use Charlie’s last name, whichever one he’s using these days?”

  Shirley shrugged. “I have no idea. She was Marilyn Dornan. She goes by Lynn. Last I knew, she was working with refugee resettlement.”

  A woman who worked for a charity that resettled the world’s most vulnerable refugees whose husband ran prostitutes, possibly even prostituted, and murdered, their foster daughter? He hoped his incredulity didn’t show on his face.

  “I know,” Shirley said. “It beggars belief, doesn’t it. But Lynn is likely the brains in that family. They’re like birds. He’s all swagger and plumage. She’s managing the nest. She also affirmatively practices being ignorant about who her husband truly is. Or she seems to.”

  “Seems to?” Burgess said.

  “I’ve always wondered whether Lynn has hidden depths. She was never affectionate toward little Shelley, which made me wonder how she treated the people she was supposed to be helping. And she’s been in and out of the house, with and without Charlie. How could she miss what was going on?”

  He stood. “You’ve been amazingly helpful. Both of you. Thank you for your time, and the lemonade.”

  They followed him to the door. “I hope you catch them,” she said. “It would make the world a better place.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I’ll bet you’re always trying, Detective.”

  In more ways than one, he thought, as the door closed behind him.

  Twenty-Four

  Kyle reached the sidewalk about the same time, and signaled for Burgess to come back to the truck. The day had gotten hot, and Kyle was looking drained. “Air,” he said. “Freaking cats.” So Burgess started the air conditioning. Kyle reclined his seat and closed his eyes. “I think I’m done with this, Joe.”

  “Talk to me,” Burgess said. He was the one who was supposed to be done with this, but Kyle was vibrating, and that was a sign something had seriously disturbed him. Or that he was extremely angry. In this case, Burgess was voting for both.

  “People who know what’s goin
g on and don’t do a damned thing about it. And cats. I am so done with batty old ladies whose houses reek of cats. I think there should be hazardous duty pay for anyone who has to go into a cat lady’s house.”

  “Indifference and cats. Are those in the same house?” Burgess asked.

  “Indifference in the first. Cats in the second. Just drive, okay. I’ll catch you up on the way in. I need a shower. How’d you do?”

  Burgess drove and Kyle talked. “She’s freakin’ seen it, Joe. The woman in that blue house. She saw two men dragging a girl who fits Shelley’s description up the driveway and into the house and they were beating on her the whole time. Who doesn’t call the police about that? Who lets a child be abused like that and goes back to watching TV?”

  “When did she see this?”

  “Three, four days ago. She’s not sure. She’s not sure about much of anything. She’s not sure what day, or month, or year, she saw a small naked girl running down the street and a man grabbing her and throwing her into his car and driving back to the house with her. She’s not sure when it was that she heard awful screams coming from Ida Mae Wilson’s house, but she sure was annoyed that they woke her up.”

  The tremble in his voice nearly choked him. “Why the fuck do we bother, Joe?” They drove in silence a while, then Kyle said, “And those fucking cats.”

  Another silence. Over the air conditioning, Burgess could literally hear him grinding his teeth. Then the grinding stopped and Kyle asked, “You get anything?”

  “Comings and goings of Charlie Dornan, or Charlie Wilson, whatever he calls himself these days, who is Ida Mae’s nephew. The name of the retirement community where Ida Mae is living. Some details about Shelley’s life as the Dornan’s foster child. Cowed, timid, and always bruised. She called social services but no one came to interview her and nothing changed.”

  Kyle muttered an obscenity.

  “I learned about the comings and goings of the second man, the one in the black town car, and his plate number. Witness says he would arrive both day and night with a man in the back seat. They speculated that prostitution was involved, but they didn’t call us because they’d been threatened by the man with the black car. They’re a vulnerable family. The son is severely disabled and in a wheelchair.”

  “I hate this,” Kyle said.

  “I know. But we can’t keep everyone in the city safe. Maybe if one of the neighbors had called us, we could have stopped this before…” But he couldn’t blame Shirley and Deane for their choices. Other neighbors had less reason to be cautious, yet as far as he knew, they hadn’t reported the situation either. He’d have to have the records searched, and check with patrol about whether they’d observed anything.

  “Periodically, a van driven by a man who, in the words of my informant ‘looked like a Miami drug dealer’ would arrive, drive into the garage, and then leave a few minutes later. Makes me wonder if he was delivering girls like the ones we found in the basement. One witness says that a moving van came for the contents of the house three or four days ago. So what spooked them? Have they moved on to another location? And…” This information made him want to grind his own teeth. “The fact that Dornan’s wife works for an agency that helps refugees.”

  “Oh fuck that’s ugly. Her foster daughter is trafficked, murdered, and cut up and she’s getting paid to do good works.”

  “What else is ugly is that second report to DHHS that the girl was being abused. I think we may need to pay them a visit. And let’s take a subpoena this time. We waited for frigging ever last time we needed information from them.”

  “Who’s the AAG on this?” Kyle asked.

  “I don’t know. Melia should be on top of this, but so far he’s MIA. Oh, and while we were immersing ourselves in neighborhood gossip and cat stink, guess who held a press conference and tried to give away the farm?”

  “Fuck.”

  Kyle had pretty much become monosyllabic. He never swore like this. But cases with kids, particularly girls around the age of his own, pierced him.

  “I wonder if they’re ready to spring Stan yet?” Burgess said.

  He called the hospital, worked his way through the usual know nothings and bureaucratic tangles until he found someone who knew something. Whenever they wanted to collect him, Perry was all theirs.

  “I’ll drop you back at 109, then go spring Stan,” he said.

  Kyle made a sound that might have been agreement. Burgess wasn’t sure and didn’t push it.

  He asked dispatch to run the plate number that Shirley Evans had given him. To see what they had on Charlie or Charles Dornan, Charlie or Charles Wilson, and Marilyn Dornan. He called Melia, got voice mail, said he needed to know who their AAG was, described the subpoena he needed and asked Melia to take care of it. “By need it,” he added, “I mean by tomorrow morning, not when it might be convenient for someone. Last time we asked for DHHS records in a homicide, it was like pulling teeth. Cooperation isn’t their strong suit.”

  Burgess was beat, but they had a lot of things to move on, things that shouldn’t wait. He just wasn’t sure where he was going to summon the energy.

  “Soon as you can,” he told Kyle, “can you write up what you learned. For my eyes only. I do not want Cote sharing it with the whole world.”

  “Roger that, Joe. Shoulda left him hanging. We can be too tenderhearted.”

  Burgess agreed. “Not feeling tenderhearted anymore.”

  “I thought you missed him.”

  “Even I can be a fool sometimes.”

  “Roger that.”

  He dropped Kyle off at 109 and watched him stalk inside, heading for the shower to wash off the cat stink. When Kyle was in this state, he was an effective attack dog and a dangerous weapon. Maybe the shower would bring him down a few notches.

  He looked at the clock. Chris would be picking up Neddy about now. Dylan would be in the driver’s ed car, inching closer to sixteen and his license. Nina was staying late so the parents of the twins could grab a quick dinner out. She was good, responsible girl, his Nina, but he couldn’t imagine how she could handle twins. Still, she’d been babysitting since she was twelve, and had been in foster care in a house with a baby. She had more experience than that poor frazzled new mother.

  Knowing it would put something positive in his ugly day, he called Chris. “Hey, Joe,” she said. “I’m in the carpool line waiting for Neddy. How’s your day going?”

  “It’s been amping up my cynicism about human nature. How about yours?”

  Chris worked as an office nurse in a group practice. “Kind of the same. Dr. Curtis was in a snit about something and snapped at me all day, and Dr. Reardon, who is just learning the ropes, got almost an hour behind, so all afternoon we were dealing with cranky patients. I’m tempted to go back to working in the hospital, except there they’d always be trying to get me to work double shifts, which, with the kids, is impossible. I don’t know how people with kids do it. They must have flexible husbands.”

  “I wish I were a flexible husband. This bum knee really slows me down.”

  “Oh, Joe. How is your knee?”

  “Not as bad as the rest of my day. The brace helps a lot.”

  “Coming home for dinner?”

  “What time are you eating?”

  “Maybe an hour, hour and a half. That’s when Dylan is home and he and Neddy are always starving. We’re making pizzas. I’ve got the crusts and a whole bunch of toppings. It’s going to be fun. I think Sandy and Cherry and Maddie might come over, too.”

  That was a lot of people to deal with when he wasn’t at his best, but it was still tempting. “I hope so,” he said. “Things are breaking fast today, so I may get pulled back in, but family dinner would be fun.”

  “If you are coming home, can you grab some Coke and Diet Coke. We’ll be fine without it, but you know how kids are.”

  “Roger that,” he said.

  Chris laughed. “Oh, the carpool is moving. Hope we see you.”

  H
e pulled into his usual spot outside the ER and stepped back out into the heat. He never crossed this parking lot without a sense of trepidation. Not so long ago a bullet had found him here.

  He went through the doors and into a room full of people in various states of misery. His motto was never to come to the ER, but if he had to come, to enter unconscious. Although, to their credit, this place was very good about accommodating cops.

  He found Stan Perry in a cubicle, lying down instead of his usual agitated pacing. He looked deflated and disgruntled. His first words were, “You didn’t tell Lily, did you?”

  “Of course not, Stan. Why would we?”

  “Because she’s been calling a lot and I haven’t picked up because I didn’t want to get into this right now. We’re fighting enough about the wedding.”

  Burgess shook his head. “Stan, how far along is she?”

  That brought Perry off the bed in a hurry. He scrambled for his phone and checked it for messages. Then he looked at Burgess, his eyes wide with panic.

  “She’s here, Joe. She’s in labor.”

  “Then you’d better get your ass up to maternity, don’t you think?”

  Burgess’s plan had been to pick Perry up, take him home, and tuck him into bed, where he could finish recovering and be useful again in the morning. Now he figured he’d better walk Perry to maternity so he could assess how the kid was doing. And to keep him from fleeing. Until now, the baby had been something on the horizon. Now it was in his immediate future.

  He delivered a slightly shaky Perry to the desk and passed him over to a nurse who took him in hand and led him off to Lily’s room. When she came back, he quietly told her that Perry had been in the ER earlier and asked her keep an eye on him.

  She’d swept him from head to toe, and said, “Detective, my job is to keep an on eye on laboring mothers.” Then she smiled and patted his arm. “I’ll take care of him. That poor sweet girl has been in such a state, wondering if he was going to show up.”