“No, I am not add—addict.”
Sure she is. And that’s only the start of her troubles. If her “friends,” as she puts it, find out that she came here, they’ll be none too happy. She risked a lot coming here.
But I can’t tip my hand. I’m not supposed to know any of this. “Okay. Well, can I help you get home?”
“No, is okay. I take bus.”
“Okay, then. Let me show you out.”
We head downstairs to intake. “Wait here a second,” I say.
I walk up to Vitrullo at intake. “Vin,” I whisper, “take a few minutes before signing this girl out. I need five minutes. Pretend like you actually work for a living.”
He glances over at her, then nods. “I can play a cop on TV.”
“Five minutes is all I need.”
Seven minutes later, Sadie leaves the station, turns right, heads south on foot, crossing North Avenue.
By now I’m in my car, curbed on Pulaski, slowly crawling forward.
Sadie’s about to show me where she lives.
Chapter 89
GOOD NEWS. Sadie walks to a bus, the 53 at Pulaski and Division. If she’d hopped on a train, I would’ve had to ditch my car and follow on foot, leaving me stranded wherever we end up and making me more visible to her.
That’s the problem with a solo surveillance. Usually there’s a team—you alternate, you communicate, you don’t have to expose yourself. Doing it alone ain’t easy.
But following a bus is. You never lose sight of it, and Sadie’s eyes will presumably be forward. The stops are a bitch, though; I have to keep my eyes peeled for her getting off.
Luckily, I see her jumping off, walking two blocks, and hopping on another bus heading south and west.
At a light, I check my email. I still haven’t heard back from the Romanian orphanage, but I have a message in my in-box from the prison I called, giving me a list of inmates released within the last three months.
Names and a lot of other information—probably offenses committed, sentences, amounts of time served—things I can’t read in Romanian.
But the names—those I can read.
One of them is Rudolf Vacaru.
Evie—Evalina Vacaru—was calling that prison looking for her brother. Missed him by three months. She had escaped from her traffickers and was trying to find a way home.
The bus ride, in total, is just under an hour, ultimately taking us into a neighborhood that is less residential than industrial.
Sadie gets off the bus and starts walking. Car traffic has lightened, and it’s getting harder to follow her without sticking out.
I park my car on 122nd and follow on foot. I keep a one-block distance, but I’m on the opposite side of the street, the north side, giving me a better angle. Sooner or later, she’s going to turn, and—
She turns left, disappearing through a large opening with an arched sign connecting the posts on either side. Looks like an old industrial park, long forgotten, shut down and left to wither. Once she’s out of my sight, and thus I’m out of hers, I do a hard jog, crossing the street and making up the distance in a few seconds. I hit the wall where she turned and peek around the corner, hand on my service weapon.
Sadie is still walking, the same pace, still no phone, just walking.
It’s a risk, following her down this narrow corridor, because this place is deserted. No crowd into which I could disappear, no reason why anyone should be here. If she sees me, it sets off bells and whistles. This whole thing could go to shit.
I follow her anyway. I need to know exactly where she’s staying.
This is an old mill of some kind. Most of the structures look like oversize garages, closed and locked now, dusty and rusted, but some structures look like old factories, too.
About four minutes into her walk, Sadie stops at a gate and turns. For a split second, I’m sure she’s going to complete that turn, do a one-eighty, and look at me squarely. Instead, she opens a latch, passes through the fence, and closes it.
With Sadie again out of my sight, I hustle up, stopping just short of the gate. I lean over, peek through the grating. It’s a loading area, with concrete steps leading up to a door. No cars. No sign of other people.
Sadie walks up the concrete steps, opens a large metal door, and walks in.
I give it a good once-over. I consider using my phone to take some video, but there’s nothing complicated here. The fence isn’t locked. There’s only one way in.
I double back to look for an entrance on the other side. I don’t see any. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. This was once a company’s small industrial village, and there could be all sorts of interconnecting parts, tunnels, and points of entry and egress. No way to know.
But at least I know where she lives now.
“See you all soon,” I whisper.
Chapter 90
I KILL the afternoon there, sitting in my car, parked a quarter of a mile from the industrial park. Waiting to see who arrives and who leaves. Waiting to see town cars with beautiful young prostitutes coming or going. Waiting to see eastern European thugs coming or going.
Nothing. No action in or out of the industrial park.
Not surprising. I thought I might get lucky, but prostitutes don’t see a whole lot of action by day. It’s night work.
Which is better anyway. I want to do this in the dark.
I head back to the station, do a little paperwork, chat with the crew, let time pass. I go online to learn about the layout of the industrial park. Don’t find much, only that it was once a private boarding school, converted decades ago by an auto-parts company into an industrial park. Then, in the nineties, the company moved out of the city. No architectural drawings. I don’t have time to get them through official means, and I don’t want to do this officially anyway.
I think of that kid, Rudolf Vacaru, getting out of prison and looking for his sister. I think of Evie, escaping her captors and trying to hook back up with her brother.
I think of Antoine Stonewald, rotting in prison for a crime he did not commit.
I think of Valerie, dealing with the crushing heartbreak of Janey’s stroke but staying vigilant, trying to free Antoine, to free girls kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.
When the shift, such as it is, has ended, when the clock reaches seven and the place is nearly empty, I gear up.
A vest. My Glock at my hip, another at my ankle, a Sig in the small of my back. Spare mags if I run out.
A few other toys, too.
I throw a sport jacket over it all and head out.
When I reach the lot, Patti is standing there, leaning against my car.
Chapter 91
PATTI COMES off my car, crosses her arms, looks me up and down, sees my belt, sees the bulge in my ankle. “Looks like you got plans,” she says.
“What’s it to you?”
“Me? Oh, nothing. You’re just my brother.”
“Heading home,” I say.
“Great. Let’s grab a beer first. My treat.”
“Not in the mood,” I say.
“I’ll cook you dinner, then.”
“Patti, don’t mess with me.”
Her chin dips, eyebrows rise. “Then don’t mess with me and pretend like you’re going home when you’re armed like you’re about to invade bin Laden’s compound.”
I don’t answer. But I don’t try to pass, either, to get to my car. Whatever it is, I need to resolve this. I can’t have her on my back all night.
“You want to bust a bunch of sex traffickers, fine,” she says. “Great. I’ll help you. The force will help you. Get Sosh and whatever crew you need, me included, and let’s take ’em down. But going in solo to take on who knows what’s waiting for you in some kind of pathetic attempt at revenge—”
“Pathetic? They killed Valerie, Patti. I’m supposed to let that go?”
She looks at me, really looks at me, searches my eyes. “You don’t know that for a fact, do you? At most, they took credit
for her death. I would, too, if I were them. You have questions, fine, let’s arrest them and interrogate them. But this suicide mission—”
“I don’t have time for this.” I angle past her, but she shoves me hard, knocking me off balance, and places herself between me and my car door.
“They didn’t kill Val,” she says.
“She didn’t kill herself. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that.”
Her eyes narrow. Her head angles to the side. “You really don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember what happened.”
“I…”
A fog. That’s all it is now, a fog. A fog that only separates in my dreams, where it comes back with vivid, crashing clarity. But they aren’t true. My dreams aren’t true. They’re just dreams.
Patti answers for me, repeats herself. “You don’t remember what happened.”
“Okay, so maybe it was a tiny bit traumatic, okay? Is that okay? And maybe that fucking bullet I took to the brain last year didn’t help—”
“Of course it’s okay,” she says, tears in her eyes. “Of course it’s okay. But Billy, do you remember the aftermath? Do you remember ever asking yourself questions?”
“Do I—did I ask myself questions? You mean questions like, why would my wife eat a bullet? Gee, sister, I only asked myself that question about a hundred thousand fucking times. And I got the same answer every time. She killed herself because she was overcome with grief and because I made her feel like shit for not being at the hospital every second of every day. She ran herself ragged trying to be there for our daughter and be there for her clients, and I gave her the guilt trip of all guilt trips. Were there other questions I was supposed to ask?”
“Billy—”
“Oh, here’s one. Maybe I was supposed to ask if someone had a motive to kill her. Maybe I should’ve looked through her case files and realized that she was about to expose a major sex-trafficking ring. Maybe if I’d been a little bit more of a detective and less of a grieving puddle of guilt and self-pity, I would’ve figured this out four years ago, and I wouldn’t be playing catch-up now.” I throw up my hands. “Were there other questions you had in mind?”
Patti closes her eyes, brings her hands together, as if in prayer, against her mouth.
“You came here to say something, Patti. Say it.”
She angles her hands toward me, as if sending her prayer my way.
“What question didn’t I ask?” I say.
She opens her eyes. Clears her throat.
She says, “How’d your Glock get out of the gun safe?”
Chapter 92
I DRAW back. “The—what? The gun? Valerie took it out of the safe.”
Even as I say the words, the ground beneath my feet suddenly feels uneven.
“What, the traffickers broke into the house and forced Val to open the safe, so they could kill her but make it look like a suicide, because she used your gun?” she says. “That’s your theory, right?”
“Why not?”
“Billy.” Her voice trembling. She steps toward me, but I step back. A tear falls down her cheek. “Billy, honey, Val didn’t know the combination to the gun safe.”
“Well, she…”
“She what? She didn’t know, Billy. She didn’t want to know. Remember? She wanted nothing to do with guns. She hated them. You know that.”
“Well, then, I guess I left it open,” I say. “I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life, either, Patti. All I could think about, day and night, was Janey, lying in the hospital. I was absentminded. Maybe I…I left it…left it open.”
Even as I say the words.
An earthquake inside my body.
“Your wife is depressed already, just normally,” says Patti. “And now she’s dealing with about the most gut-wrenching thing a person can deal with. And you left the safe wide open for her to access that gun? C’mon, Billy.”
I stumble backward, reaching out to a patrol car for balance. I shut my eyes and hold on for dear life.
“What are you…what are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying Val didn’t know the combo to the safe. She couldn’t have opened it for herself or for some intruder who forced her to open it. You didn’t even write the combo down, did you? Dad taught us that. Pick a combo you’ll never forget, so you don’t have to write it down, so it’s never written anywhere, so no child or spouse could ever get into that safe. We have the same combo, right? Mom’s birthday. Ten twelve forty-nine.”
I turn away from her, cover my face with my hands.
This isn’t…
No.
It can’t be…
No.
“And there’s no way in the world you left that safe open, kiddo. C’mon—you told me more than once that the last thing you’d ever want to do is leave your wife, with her history of depression, home alone with a gun. That safe was closed and locked.”
I must have. I must have left it open.
My body shaking so hard that the words hardly come out. “You’re saying I killed her. I killed my own wife.”
My back still turned to her. I hear her footsteps as she walks up behind me.
“I’m saying that the person who walked into that bedroom that day may have been you in body. But it wasn’t you. It was a man devastated and racked with grief, walking through a fog, probably drunk from the Jameson he downed on the car ride home. And right or wrong, no matter how you beat yourself up about it, it was a man who was hurt and angry that his wife wasn’t there for Janey when she died. Put all that together—”
“No.” The only word shooting through my brain.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she continues. “Neither do you. Maybe, maybe, I don’t know, you—maybe you said, okay, you’re so depressed, you wanna die, go ahead, Val, here’s the gun—”
“No. No. She was already dead when I got there.”
“That’s just not possible, honey.”
I spin around, nearly hitting her, she’s so close behind me. I grab her by the arms. “How can you say these things to me?”
“You think I want to?” All composure lost now, her face all tears, her words garbled.
“You think I’d forget killing her? I might forget some details, but you think I’d forget that I removed the Glock from the safe and killed my own wife?”
“That’s exactly what you’d forget!” she cries. “Because it’s too horrible to remember!”
“No. She was already dead.” I throw her to the side, open the car door. “She was already dead because they killed her. They killed her! You understand?” I point at her. “Don’t follow me! Don’t ever talk to me again!”
Patti collapses to the ground, pure torture across her face, tears pouring out, chest heaving.
I put the car in Reverse and drive away.
Chapter 93
MY WIFE was already dead when I found her.
Close to eight now. The sun has fallen, at least behind the buildings.
I park in the same spot, around a quarter of a mile from the industrial park.
She was already dead. They killed her.
I wouldn’t forget that. No bullet to the brain would make me forget that.
No amount of traumatic exertion on my brain would make me forget that.
I punch the steering wheel. They killed her.
The street is all but deserted. No people; almost no traffic.
Then a car approaches from the opposite direction, traveling east, toward me.
Slows by the industrial park.
I raise my binoculars, catch a glimpse of the only person in the car, the driver.
That’s one of them. The shorter, stockier of the two guys. The front-seat passenger in the 4Runner in K-Town. The first one of the two caught on the POD camera when I chased them from Shiv’s house.
His car turns into the industrial park. I lose my sport jacket, get out of my car, hustle across the street, and make it to the park entrance. Peek down the corridor. The car has stop
ped by the gate, the same one Sadie opened. The guy gets out to unlatch it, then slides it open wide enough for a car to pass.
That stocky build. Definitely one of the two guys.
He gets in the car and pulls it in. Returns to the gate and slides it closed.
Now I start running, despite the extra weight from the double holster, the three sidearms, and the other accoutrements. But I run like I’m capable, which is pretty fast when I put my mind to it.
I get to the fence and peek in.
The guy is just closing the car door, balancing a pizza box in his hand.
One box. One pizza. Enough for a few people, not a large crew.
Four people. Sadie said four people lived there, if she was telling the truth. Three, minus Evie.
But if she was telling the truth, two men.
This is one of them.
I walk over to the latch, open it slowly, as the man walks up the concrete steps to the front door.
Slide it open just a tiny bit to angle through—the less noise the better—and draw my Glock.
He’s pulling on the front-door lever, balancing the pizza box in the other hand, as I race toward the concrete steps.
“Police: don’t move.” I say it loud and firm enough for him to hear me, not enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
He doesn’t move. I bound up the concrete steps, put the gun against his head.
“What’s your name?”
“Sergio.”
“Who’s inside, Sergio?” I ask.
“Inside here?” Accent, thick. Thick like his neck and shoulders.
“You got two seconds to answer.”
“Just me and a girl.”
“What girl?”
“Sadie.”
“You’re lying to me, you’re dead. You get that, right?”
“I am not lying.”
With my free hand, the one not pressing a Glock into his skull, I grab the pizza box and Frisbee it. Then I clutch his shoulder.
“Go,” I say. “But do it slowly.”
Sergio opens the door. We walk into a vestibule, a small area with a half door and window, like a ticket window at the movies, boarded up. Otherwise, nothing to do but open another door directly in front of us, a solid wooden door, no window.
The Red Book Page 23