by Sean Black
If someone did see the breached door, or had heard him kick it in, and decided to call the cops, he planned on telling them why he was here and hoping for the best. But it was a conversation he’d rather avoid if he could. Breaking and entering was still just that, regardless of how noble your motive was.
A final sweep of the place threw up a utility bill. It had what he assumed was Soothe’s real name, Desiree Washington. He took a picture of the bill with his phone and walked out, pulling the door closed behind him.
Pulling up his collar, he flew back down the stairs and walked back outside to his car.
Ty drove a few blocks down and pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. He called Lock. He didn’t pick up. He left a voicemail, giving his partner the bad news.Monocle had given him another lead, but this one, Ty suspected, would be a lot harder to chase down.
23
Dressed in her standard business attire, Carmen walked into the bedroom where Lock was sitting up in bed, papers and books about human trafficking scattered all around him. She’d reluctantly agreed to him discharging himself, but on condition that he rested up at home. The doctors were fairly sure he’d suffered a concussion and told him that driving would be a bad idea, never mind anything else.
Leaning down, Carmen kissed him. “I have to go into the office. No sneaking out.”
“As if I would,” said Lock, feigning shock that she’d think he would.
“I mean it, Ryan.”
His cell phone lit up with an incoming call. It was Jenny Chu.
“I have to take this,” he said.
“Call me later and let me know what you’d like for dinner. I’ll pick something up on the way home.”
He nodded, picking up the call as Carmen walked out of the bedroom. He heard her hunting for her car keys and then the front door closed behind her.
“What you got for me?” he asked Jenny.
“Okay, so I managed to access the phone records for Kristin’s cell phone.”
“And?”
“Goes cold shortly after she goes missing. No outgoing calls. Looks like it was switched off entirely.”
Lock sank back a little further into the pillows. It was the result he’d expected, but it was still disappointing.
“Sorry,” said Jenny.
“Listen, thanks for looking into it,” he told her.
“I did find something though.”
He sat up.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, after you left, I got kind of interested in this whole trafficking deal and how it’s pretty much internet based these days.”
“What do you mean?” said Lock.
“You heard of a website called Backpage?”
“No.” He grabbed his laptop and typed in the name.
“Don’t go looking for it,” said Jenny. “It was shut down by the Feds back in 2018, but it was basically like a classified ads site for sex workers. Including people who’d been trafficked. You could go on and see who was available in your area, call a number and hey, presto. Plus, anyone could put up a listing as long as they paid the fee and checked a box saying the person was over eighteen. It wasn’t like they were checking, and if they had been, people could upload a fake ID.”
This was all interesting, and unsurprising, but he wasn’t sure what it had to do with finding Kristin Miller, especially as it had been shut down.
“But you just said it was shut down.”
“It was,” said Jenny. “But cyberspace abhors a vacuum so there’s now a bunch of other sites, most of them hosted outside the US that do the same job.”
“So, we should start looking there?”
“No need,” said Jenny. “I already did, and I think I might have found her.”
Lock pushed himself up, so he was sitting upright. Still holding the cell phone in one hand, he swung his legs out of bed. The sudden movement made him feel suddenly woozy. His stomach lurched and for a second he thought he might throw up on the bedroom carpet.
He steadied himself and stayed still.
“Great work, That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” said Jenny, ever modest. “Anyway, I said might because the faces are blurred out on these things. There’s software you can use to unblur them, but it’s not like it gives you a totally clear image. For what I can see, it looks like her, but the description fits. I mean, the listing says she’s nineteen because they’re not going to give her real age, but it could be her.”
“Can you send it over to me?”
On the other end of the line, he heard Jenny pecking at a keyboard. “Done. Hey, when you spoke to her family, did they say anything about a birthmark or a tattoo?”
“No, I don’t think they mentioned either of those. In fact, I’m sure her mom said she didn’t have any tattoos, only that her ears were pierced.”
Jenny’s email pinged into his inbox. He opened it and clicked on the link she’d attached without looking at it.
“Okay, scratch that then. This girl has both.”
The sound of her deflation matched his own. It seemed like every time it looked like they were about to get a solid lead, it turned out to be nothing they could actually use.
“I can take a look at the site,” said Lock. “But we think they had her out working on the street.”
“Okay,” said Jenny. “I suppose I haven’t found her then. Would have been cool though.”
“Listen, I appreciate you going the extra yard.”
“Hey, these people are scum of the earth. I’ll keep looking. Let me know when you find her.”
“Will do. Thanks again.”
Lock took a moment as he sat on the edge of the bed. He really needed to take a leak and he could use a shower. The shower would probably wait, but the call of nature wouldn’t.
Slowly, he eased himself up on to his feet and took several tentative steps. He felt strange, disoriented. He focused on his breathing, inhaling for four seconds, holding for another four before slowly exhaling.
A few more steps and he was at the bathroom door. He grabbed the sink for support and made it to the toilet. Now he had a debate. Stand up and pee like a man or sit down and pee like a man who felt he might black out.
“Screw it,” he said to himself.
He would stand. When the time came that his only option was to sit down to relieve himself, he’d stick stones in his pockets and go for a long swim.
He heard the front door close.
“Carmen?”
They had a cleaner twice a week, but they’d given her a paid vacation over the holidays, something that apparently made them a rarity among the people that employed her.
“Yeah, sorry, I forgot something,” he heard Carmen saying. “You’re not out of bed, are you?”
“I needed to take a leak,” he called through the closed bathroom door.
He finished up, washed his hands and walked back out into the bedroom.
Carmen was holding his lap top up. She turned the screen around.
“This better be to do with this case,” she said, laughing.
“Yeah,” said Lock, tired from his short excursion across the carpet. “Jenny found it, she thought it might be Kristin, but it doesn’t check out with the description.”
“No tattoo, huh?” said Carmen, studying the provocative picture gallery that showed a young woman on a bed.
“Nope. They didn’t mention a birthmark either, but I’m going to call them just to be sure.”
“That’s a really bad tattoo as well,” said Carmen. “I mean, what does that even mean? Is it like a band or something?”
Lock’s head started to spin again. He kept his game face on. The last thing he needed was to collapse in front of Carmen. She’d never let him back out to work on the case this side of Easter if he did that.
“What?” he said. “I haven’t really looked at it yet.”
She turned the screen back round. “Hanger? Have you heard of them?”
24
Kristin
didn’t think that being inside could be worse than being out in the freezing cold on the track. After all, she was inside. It was warm. There was a bed rather than the cramped seats of a car, and there was a bathroom where she could clean up and so could the men.
She had been wrong.
Out on the track, she might have had a half hour between being dropped off and finding a new trick. Here the men arrived in an endless procession. There were so many of them that she lost count.
Sometimes Soothe would have to wait to give a man waiting downstairs the room number because the one Kristin was with hadn’t finished.
Hanger had disappeared, leaving Soothe and Kristin alone. Kristin had thought they would share the Johns, but Soothe didn’t seem interested in that. She answered the phone and sat outside, smoking and waiting for the next call.
One hour melted into another until time lost any meaning. After every man, Soothe would come in and take the money they had left. Then she would tell Kristin to get ready because the next guy was outside.
When Kristin had complained about being hungry, Soothe had walked over and pinched her stomach, hard enough to make Kristin yelp.
“You could use losing some of that puppy fat anyway, bitch. There’s a time to party and there’s a time to work and this is work time.”
Day passed to night. Still the men arrived, did what they wanted and left. One choked her so hard that she passed out. When she came to, he was gone and Soothe was standing over her asking where the money is. When Kristin told her what had happened, Soothe slapped her and told her she’d have to make it up.
After a time, Kristin seemed to go somewhere else again. She watched herself from above, like her shadow had slipped from her body.
Then it was over. As she waited for the next man, Soothe came back in, collected the money and told her to go take a shower because they were going out.
Kristin stared at her. All she wanted to do now was sleep.
“You can sleep later,” said Soothe. “I thought you said you were hungry, bitch.”
“I was,” said Kristin. “I mean, I am.”
“Quit complaining and go shower, you smell skanky.”
Soothe took her to a diner. They sat together at a booth near the kitchen. At one point the kitchen doors swung open, and Kristin glimpsed a man hunched over a range. He was fat and sweaty, and she recognized him as one of the men who had visited her motel room.
He looked up. Their eyes met for a second and then as she saw a flicker of recognition as to where he knew her from, he quickly looked away, like he was ashamed. The doors swung shut and Kristin had lost her appetite.
She picked at the food on her plate. Soothe scolded her for not eating and called for the check. She paid and Kristin followed her back outside where a cab was waiting.
“Come on,” said Soothe, getting in.
“Where are we going?”
Soothe held the door open. “We’re going to make you official.”
Kristin didn’t know what she meant, and she didn’t want to ask in case Soothe got mad or changed her mind. Right now, anything that avoided her having to go back to the motel room came as a relief.
25
Ty stared up at the building, a six-story brownstone with an ornate metal entrance, three blocks from the ocean in Santa Monica. It was going to be difficult to get inside the building, never mind the apartment, especially at this time of day. That was why he’d come up with an alternative plan. One that may have been short on subtlety, but scored high on impact.
A well-heeled couple in their forties, residents by the looks of them, walked towards the entrance. They were in workout clothes, although neither looked to have broken much of a sweat.
They eyed Ty with suspicion as he pulled out his bundle of flyers.
“Excuse me,” said Ty. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
The guy waved him off, patting his pockets. “Sorry, buddy, I don’t have any change.”
“I’m not panhandling, brother,” said Ty, mock offended and making sure they couldn’t easily step around him.
“We’re kind of in a hurry,” said the woman, shooting a nervy look at her male companion.
Ty handed them one of his freshly printed flyers. On it was a picture of Hanger. Above the picture, in large lettering, it read: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Below the picture read, WANTED FOR CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING. Then there was a phone number.
The woman took it without looking at it. “Thanks,” she said with a tight smile, moving to step around him and get to the entrance.
Ty shifted over a step. “Look at it,” he said. “It’s important.”
She glanced down.
“Listen, we don’t want any trouble,” said the guy.
“All the more reason you should look at it too,” said Ty. “In fact, don’t just look, read what it says back to me. Do that and I’ll get out of your way.”
The exchange had gotten tense. Ty felt bad. They were just two people trying to get back into their apartment after yoga or a run on the beach or whatever rich white people did that passed for exercise.
“Listen, buddy, I’m not reading it back to you. Now, do you want me to call the cops?”
As the guy argued, the woman started to study it.
“Oh my God, Lawrence,” she blurted out, jabbing a finger at the picture. “This guy lives here.”
Lawrence looked down at the flyer. His expression shifted from one of annoyance to one tinged with skeptical concern.
Ty took a step back. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to come off rude like that. It’s just that, I don’t know, you may have children living around here.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lawrence. “Anyone renting or buying here has to undergo a background check before the coop board approve them.”
Ty had no idea if Hanger had ever been convicted. He doubted it. He’d probably been arrested a bunch of times, maybe even convicted on lesser charges, if at all. But if he’d been found guilty of trafficking, it was unlikely he’d still be out here doing what he was doing to kids like Kristin.
“Sometimes people slip through the cracks, or people miss things when they run checks,” said Ty.
The guy wasn’t buying it. The woman was more concerned. Women were usually more tuned in to stuff like this. A lot of men’s instant reaction was one of disbelief. If you didn’t have to spend your whole life dealing with creeps, you were less likely to understand how many of them there were out there.
“Listen, I’m not a cop. I’m just helping out a family whose daughter got tangled up with this man,” said Ty. “She’s only fourteen.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” the woman said.
Ty thought about it.
“I’d really like to be able to put one of these in each of your neighbors’ mailboxes. If you could let me in to do that, that would be great.”
“I don’t know,” said Lawrence.
Counting out a few dozen flyers, Ty held them out to him. “Or, if you’re not comfortable, maybe you could do it for me.”
That seemed to do the trick. The guy pushed away the fistful of flyers like they were a bomb. He clearly did not want to get involved.
He stepped back. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it. But you have to leave after you’ve done it. This is a quiet building, we don’t want any trouble.”
“I understand completely,” said Ty. “No trouble.”
“And you’re positive he’s guilty, because, you know, if he’s not then you could be in a lot of legal trouble.”
If there was one thing Ty knew about a piece of shit like Hanger, it was that they enjoyed attention about as much as a cockroach enjoyed the beam of a flashlight. Sure, Hanger could try to sue him for libel, but that would involve going to court, and court was the last place that someone like this wanted to be anywhere near.
“Don’t worry,” Ty reassured the couple. “I’m a hundred percent.”
“Okay then,” said Lawrence, still not convinced.
Ty stepped out of the way and followed them up the short flight of stone stairs, through the gate, and into the cool, stone floor lobby area.
“Thanks for your help,” said Ty, walking over to the mailboxes as the couple made for the elevator. “Oh, I probably don’t want to drop one of these in his mailbox. You know that trouble thing you wanted to avoid.”
“Three C,” said the woman.
“Thanks,” said Ty, waiting until the elevator doors closed before heading to the stairwell.
26
Kristin clenched her teeth at the low buzzing sound of the tattoo gun. The needle jabbed her skin.
“Try to stay still,” said the tattooist, an acne ridden young skinhead sporting a Skrewdriver t-shirt.
“Sorry,” said Kristin, settling back into the chair and closing her eyes.
It hurt like hell, but she found the pain strangely soothing. It was so immediate, so pronounced, that she couldn’t think of anything else. That came as a relief. There was only the staccato jab of needle into flesh rather than the endless loop of nightmare images from the past few days.
How long had it been? She tried to recall. Nothing came to her. She didn’t know the day of the week, never mind the date. She had left before Christmas and now it was what?
She didn’t think it was the new year because she was sure Soothe would have partied. Or maybe they had, and Kristin had already forgotten.
The tattooist wiped a cloth across the patch of flesh just above her hip to reveal a letter H. He glanced back over his shoulder at Soothe who was smoking a cigarette and leafing through a tattoo magazine.
“We doing ‘property of’ or just the name?”
“Just the name,” said Soothe.
“You got it,” he said, switching the gun back on and going to work on the next letter in Hanger’s name.
27