by Matthew Iden
“But the question is,” I said, “if Gerry’s only a manager, who’s supplying the girls?”
“Right. I’ve been picking up signs that it’s just one smooth talker who’s been convincing local girls into hooking. He doesn’t strong-arm them—he brainwashes them into thinking they’re in love or this is a better life than they’re leaving at home.”
I glanced at Chuck. “Our man.”
Sarah nodded again. “I didn’t have a name, but it makes sense. Whoever this CEO is, he let Gerry run his string of girls out of this place, so Paul never met the guy.”
“We got to get to this guy Gerry. It’s the link we were looking for . . .” Chuck said, then trailed off as Sarah shook her head. “What?”
“Gerry took two bullets in the back of the head sometime in the last four hours. I just came from the crime scene.”
I swore. “He’s covering his tracks.”
“Anything at the scene?” Chuck asked, a thin note of desperation in his voice.
“That’s how I knew to come here,” she said, her face sympathetic. “A pack of matches and a little legwork from a friend. And it’s the seediest motel in the area. But I’m not sure there was anything else, Rhee. I’m sorry. I can put you in touch with the detective who’s in charge of the homicide.”
Chuck’s shoulders slumped.
I said, “What about the girls? They might know something.”
“Runaways, Singer,” Chuck said. “They’re not going to know shit.”
“They might,” I said cautiously. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, either. “We’ve talked about how what he’s doing with Lucy doesn’t fit the MO. It’s a regular kidnapping, not a bait-and-switch to get her to sell herself willingly.”
Sarah shrugged, nodded. Chuck stared at the floor.
“And, killing this guy Gerry,” I continued, exploring the idea. “It smells desperate. Pimps aren’t hit men. The ones in the city aren’t anyone to mess with, but some amateur out in the boonies—even an entrepreneurial one—isn’t going to go around snuffing people at the drop of a hat.”
“What’s your point, Singer?”
“I think,” I said, choosing my words carefully, articulating the idea even as I was saying it, “that this isn’t business as usual. It’s a big play.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked.
“I think he’s selling her,” I said. “And for so much money, he’s willing to start shooting people to protect the deal. Maybe that wasn’t the original plan. Maybe he meant to make his money and keep running the girls.”
“But then I braced his pimp,” Sarah said. “He caught wind of it and that was the end of Gerry. The boss started cutting ties on his one-way ticket out of town.”
“You think the girls might know what this big deal is?” Chuck asked me.
I shrugged. “If they hated his guts, probably not. But some might be more or less in love with him. Maybe they talked about their hopes and dreams. Maybe he let slip that he had a big payday on the horizon . . . and where it was coming from.”
We were quiet for a minute.
“Let’s go,” Chuck said, then gave voice to what we were all thinking, but were too afraid to say. “It’s all we got.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
How long could a road be?
The lights of Jack’s home had long since faded into the darkness and Lucy already felt like she’d been walking all night. Heat had been leaching from her body from the moment she’d stepped off the porch and the blackness of the night was so absolute, she felt as if she were wearing a hood over her head. The combined elements made it feel as if she was walking on a treadmill in the dark. She could be walking in circles or down a dead end, for all she knew. Maybe she was still unconscious and this was the worst of all nightmares. Or she was already dead and this was all there was. Her mind began to flirt with the edge of panic as she considered the possibility that life after death was to walk forever in the dark and the cold.
Stop it. Two things told her she wasn’t imagining it all: the edge of the pavement by her feet and the thin cone of light emanating from the flashlight in her hand. Without the light, in fact, she was sure she would’ve gone crazy in the first ten minutes, if she wasn’t already. She would’ve simply . . . given up. But with Jack behind her and woods to either side, there was nowhere to go except forward. The easiest thing to do—the best thing to do—was to force herself to focus on the simple mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other. All roads lead somewhere, right?
Unfortunately, while the monotony of clomping alongside the road helped her calm down, it also let her mind wander.
It was crazy how dependent she was. Without a watch, she didn’t know the time. Without a phone, she couldn’t call for help. Without the flashlight in her hand, she would’ve crawled into a hole and died. With a cop for a brother, and living so close, she’d let herself just ignore the dangers that probably every other girl her age thought about all the time.
Some guy won’t leave you alone? Call Chuck. Stranded downtown and it’s too late to catch the Metro? Call Chuck. If she got out of this mess, she promised herself, she wouldn’t take him or her jobumo for granted, no matter how much they both got on her nerves sometimes. And she’d also pay more attention to how dangerous and unpredictable life could be.
Like who she dated. Tuck, that creep. That was another promise she could make. If he thought she’d kicked his ass before—when he’d grabbed her and tried to pin her down, telling her it was time for her to give “it” to him—he was going to get the surprise of his life. Just imagining her foot being planted against the side of his head in a perfect circle kick gave her energy. Which she needed, since her teeth were literally chattering from the cold.
But then thoughts of Tuck put her situation squarely back in front of her. As in, who was this guy Eddie and what had he planned to do with her? It hadn’t taken long to figure out that he hadn’t wanted to rape her or even hurt her—it made her queasy to think about, but if that had been the goal, it would’ve happened before she’d even come to in his car. Not that he had her best interests at heart, that was for freaking sure, but what did he want with her then?
When do you handle something you don’t care about . . . with care? She went cold inside when the answer, so obvious, stared back at her.
When it was a delivery.
She wasn’t a person to Eddie, she was a package. An object that had been requested, paid for, and was on its way to be delivered. And delivered intact. It all made a sick kind of sense. Eddie refusing to hit her, offering her water and a coat, threatening Jack if he so much as touched her.
The thought made her sick all over again, followed by a thought that astounded her, a revelation—someone had ordered her, like a hamburger or a book or a movie. She was an object to someone out there who didn’t know a thing about her or care if they did. And whoever that was, they were the one who wanted her for sex or worse. It could be the only reason Eddie hadn’t touched her and warned Jack not to, either.
The thought was horrifying, frightening, enraging. Her feet were numb from the cold, but she stamped them on the ground with twice the force than she needed to out of anger. A minute ago, only Tuck had been in her sights. Now she had a list. It started with Tuck, went through Eddie, and ended with whoever had made the mistake of adding her to their wish list.
With her head bent against the wind and her eyes locked on the little splash of illumination from her flashlight, Lucy was so focused that she didn’t see the headlights until they were close enough to blind her. For an instant, instinct urged her to turn and bolt into the woods. But she stopped herself. This was what she’d been looking for, a car or a person or a business where she could get some help, call the police, or at least hide from Eddie. Unless it was Eddie.
She relaxed as the car, a red For
d Focus, stopped next to her. A woman—white, maybe fifty, with fake, brassy blonde hair—looked at her in surprise and concern from behind the wheel. A thick white scarf hid the lower half of her face, while a bulky Ravens team coat seemed to swallow her body. The driver’s window was down and heat emanated in delicious waves from inside the vehicle. Lucy was so cold, her body automatically gravitated a step closer to the car.
The woman pulled the scarf down past her mouth. “Honey, are you all right? What are you doing out on the road at this time of night?”
“Please,” Lucy said. Her chin and lips were so cold they felt like rubber, making it hard to talk. “I need help. I just—I know it sounds crazy—but I just escaped from some lunatic at the end of the road. He was keeping me for this other man who kidnapped me last night. I need to call my brother. I need to get out of here.”
“Oh my God,” the woman said, her mouth and eyes describing the same O of surprise. “Of course I can help, honey. Get in. There’s a police station half an hour from here. One of the cops there is a friend of mine.”
Lucy moved around the car as fast as she could and slid into the passenger’s seat. Once she was inside, the smell of beer and perfume made her wince, but the heat felt so good that the car could’ve smelled like anything and she still would’ve been happy. She held her hands against the vents. Her arms were shaking and her muscles twitched.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice breaking. “Thank you so much.”
The woman executed a three-point turn in the middle of the road, then took off the way she’d come. “Is that warm enough for you?”
“It’s wonderful,” Lucy said, her head spinning at how her luck had turned around. An hour ago, she’d been kidnapped and on her way to become some faceless sex maniac’s toy. Now she might be an hour from being back home.
“You were kidnapped?” the woman asked. “And you were being held somewhere? How in the world did you escape?”
Lucy described the night from the beginning at Tuck’s until the moment she’d seen the woman’s car. The woman oohed and aahed at every sentence, interjecting with “Get out of town!” and “Oh my God!” several times.
“You know what?” the woman asked rhetorically when Lucy had finished. “I should call my friend right now and tell him about this. He might want to haul out to this guy Jack’s house and collar the creep right now.”
She fished around in a side pocket of the Ravens jacket and pulled out a cell phone with a scarlet, sequined cover. With practiced ease, she glanced down at the phone once and found the number she wanted from her speed dial list. Lucy could hear the phone ringing. A voice answered.
“Hey, it’s me,” the woman said. “I just found a cute little Asian girl wandering along Platter’s Lane, frozen to the bone and scared to death. Said she was kidnapped last night, got taken to some man’s house, and barely escaped with her life.”
The voice said something on the other end.
“Uh-huh,” the lady replied. “She said that she—what’s your name, hon?”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy? Okay—Lucy said that she clobbered the guy, then headed for the road on foot, hoping to find help. I know, can you believe it?”
The voice said more in a quizzical tone.
“What? No, I don’t think so.” The woman pulled the phone away and turned to Lucy. “He wants to know if the man, you know, touched you. Should we be going to the hospital instead?”
“Oh, no. He didn’t do anything like that,” Lucy said. “He looked like he wanted to, but we never got that far. I guess I knocked him out before he could try anything.”
The woman put her phone back to her ear. “She says no, she blasted him before he could try. What? Yeah, that probably makes sense. Where?”
Murmuring on the other end.
“Okay, I’ll see you there,” the woman said and, glancing briefly at the screen, hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket. She looked over at Lucy. “He says he’s actually just around the corner. We’ll meet him, then he can take you back to the station to help you.”
“May I use your phone?” Lucy said. “My brother is a cop, too. I know he’s out looking for me and I’d like to let him know I’m okay.”
The woman’s face wrinkled apologetically. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry, my battery’s almost out and my husband’s going to be worried if he doesn’t hear from me soon. My police friend is only five minutes away. Can you wait that long?”
“I guess so,” Lucy said in a small voice, then sank back into the seat. She gazed out the window as they drove, watching blindly as the night passed by. Now that the fear and terror were gone, the adrenaline was going, too, leaving her feeling hazy and not quite fully awake as the warmth crept through her body. It’s so remote out here, she thought. I feel like I haven’t seen a light in hours.
The woman made lefts and rights down fence-lined country roads, humming to herself, glancing occasionally at Lucy and smiling. She took a left at a lonely four-way stop. A convenience store, brightly lit in white-and-yellow lights, seemed to sprout out of the ground at the corner. The woman pulled into a parking slot in front of the store and put the car in park. She took out her phone, poked at a few buttons, then lifted it to her ear again.
“I’m here,” she said after a moment, then twisted in her seat to look behind them. “Yeah, I see your lights. See you in a minute.”
She put the phone away and smiled at Lucy. “Almost here.”
Lucy struggled to sit up, fumbling with the seat belt. As she got the buckle undone, she heard the deep, throaty growl of a powerful engine as a car came to a bucking stop in the parking spot next to her.
She barely had time to turn in her seat before the door opened and a face bent down to look at her. When she saw who it was, she opened her mouth to scream, but the woman behind her reached forward and covered Lucy’s mouth with her scarf like it was a garrote.
“Hello, Lucy,” Eddie said. The lump on his forehead pulsed angrily and the look on his face was unsmiling and steely. “It’s good to see you again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Daddy?” Sarah said, holding the phone up and looking at the hooker skeptically. “Seriously?”
The girl sitting on the edge of the bed shrugged and turned her head to stare into the corner of the room. She was thin and tall, with a long neck accentuated by a white tank top and dark black hair gathered in a bun. Skinny legs sprouted from cutoff jeans, the outside seams of which were cut extra short to expose as much thigh as possible. Footwear was a pair of yellow flip-flops despite the subzero temperatures outside. Her face, though thin, was made up of soft lines. Sarah would eat her hat if the girl was seventeen.
Playing the only lead they had, the three of them had decided to split up, with Rhee going solo while Singer stayed with her. She didn’t appreciate the sidekick, but Singer had pointed out that his involvement in whatever it was they were doing wasn’t even remotely official and it would be nice if he had some cover from the only ranking Maryland cop among them. Chuck was out of his jurisdiction, but at least he had a badge.
Sarah hadn’t liked the reasoning. The likelihood of the local police arriving on the scene was slim to none. Who was going to call them? The girls wouldn’t dare, their pimp was dead, and the local PD was either being paid to ignore the motel or they considered it such a low priority that it amounted to the same thing. Cops making a random check on the Crowne? Not gonna happen.
Which was all to the good, since she was so far from being aboveboard on this that Kline wouldn’t have to file a report to fire her ass, he’d simply laugh her off the force. And, from Rhee’s description of their reasons for being here, he and Singer had gone off the rails the minute they’d started looking for Rhee’s sister.
But she knew competence and motivation when she saw it and these two had it in buckets. They moved like partners and, despite
their reasons for being there, had exuded calm—even when she’d pointed her Glock at them. Even when they all knew they belonged to the same club, neither one had tried to pull rank on her or feed her a line of bull.
True, she hadn’t liked what she’d seen from Rhee, when he’d knocked the manager around, but after learning what he was after, she understood the situation better. If her sister were still alive and Sarah could’ve saved her by slapping someone in the head, Paul would’ve lost more than his glasses. In any case, it would be nice to have backup on this little mission of hers, even if they did amount to the law enforcement version of the Keystone Kops.
So, with Singer in tow and her badge at the ready, Sarah had started banging on doors. Most had opened to reveal nervous junkies or weary immigrant workers stuffed six to a room. A girl had answered their knock on the fifth door. The look on her face was simultaneously bored and faux coquettish, an expression that changed rapidly to fear and dismay when she saw the badge. She’d made a halfhearted attempt to shut the door on them, but Singer had planted his foot in the frame, allowing Sarah to bull her way in.
While she talked to the girl, Singer searched the room, revealing no coat, no shoes except the flip-flops, no purse or wallet or keys. But what Trish, the girl, was lacking in basic human needs she made up for in tools of the trade. A twenty-four box of condoms, a makeup bag, and a cheap, disposable cell phone. The phone had contained just one number in its contact list and call history: Daddy.
“Trish, do you remember me? I was the one who came to the house yesterday,” Sarah said. “You peeked out from around the corner.”
The girl nodded. “I remember.”
“What are you doing here, Trish?”
“Nothing.”
Sarah crossed her arms. “If I asked the motel manager how often you’re here, what do you think he’d say?”
A shrug.
“You have any family in the area? Somebody I can call?”