“Good interview, Mike,” Sal mimicked. “Good job not blowing her head off after she tried to kill us both, Mike.”
“Sal, shut up!” Mike snapped.
“I thought she was going to gnaw her hand off.” Sal looked down at his own fingernails. “And that scar. Fuck. That was na-sty!”
“Sal, focus,” Robby said. “We’ll have to wait to start until Julia comes back since she took most of the notes.”
“What?” Ignoring Robby, Sal looked at Mike. “Tell me you weren’t thinking the kid was going to chew her finger off.”
“You were never thinking about anything. Your head is an empty cavern that serves only as a holder for your ginormous ears, which,” Mike jabbed, “serve you no purpose whatsoever.”
“Okay. Coffee and biscotti on the way. What have I missed?” Julia asked as she re-entered the room.
“Just Frick and Frack’s Amazing Late-Night Show,” Robby sighed. “Now let’s start at the beginning.”
“Okay, Britney meets a guy in the mall whose name she doesn’t know. He introduces her to Nathan, who strings her into the game,” Mike began.
“Game,” Julia mused. “Funny that she would use that word, no?”
“Maybe. But she seems like a bright kid. Picks up on things quickly. Anyway, she asks too many questions and then gets herself shipped to the Falls, with the option to go to Buffalo—”
“Some option,” Sal snorted.
“Which means that we now know she’s part of the Toronto/Falls/Buffalo ring that we were focusing on.”
“That you no longer have any leads on,” Robby clarified.
“There you go again, old man,” Sal cut in. “Why you gotta be like that?”
“I hear what you’re saying, boss,” Mike said, “but the intel that led us to that hold house was bang on, which leads me to believe that anything we pull from Britney’s phone will bring us back to where we need to be.”
“And she also mentions Chelsea by name,” Julia added, flipping through her steno pad.
“There’s a blast from the past,” Sal commented.
“Right. She did,” Mike nodded, ignoring Sal. “So we’ve got her in the Falls, a bit too vocal, and she meets this Malcolm guy—”
“Who looks an awful lot like Sal,” Julia added with a wink. “That was a scary moment, eh?”
“I’m not surprised,” Mike offered. “Sal’s got that dirtbag look. Only reason he’s in the unit, actually.”
“Nonetheless,” Robby jumped in, wanting to rein in his charges, “we have a couple of names now and some vague descriptions. What else?”
“A signature,” Mike stated.
“Why the fuck you always gotta be making like a big city dick?” Sal laughed. “I never know what the hell you’re talking about half the time, and I couldn’t care less the other half. What is this signature bullshit you’re on about now?”
“The slashes. All of the girls seem to end up slashed somewhere.”
“Two of the girls ended up slashed somewhere,” Sal corrected.
“Not according to Britney. Since you’re not using them, give me your notes,” Julia corrected, grabbing at Sal’s steno pad. “Here. In her first interview. She says… Shit, how can you even read this scribble, Sal? She says that Malcolm routinely slashes the girls. Some bleed to death and get dumped, some don’t. Sounds like a signature to me.”
“So some guy recruits the girls at a mall. Maybe knowing which mall matters right now, maybe it doesn’t…” Robby suggested.
“Not right now, boss. We’ve got victims already,” Mike countered.
“Fair enough. So this recruiter guy hands the girls over to this Nathan character, who then breaks them and gets them in the ring. Once he hands them over, his work is done. We don’t have a contact there, but we do know that this Malcolm character is the ring’s enforcer and seems to travel with the girls,” Robby summarized. “Is that fair to say?”
“Sounds good to me, boss,” Sal said with a nod.
“I think he was asking me.” Mike smiled condescendingly at his partner. “Yeah, that’s about it. And it sounds like Chelsea Hendricks is alive and in that ring.”
“So where are you going from here?” Robby asked.
“I’m just wondering how they get rid of all of these dead girls,” Julia said. “I mean, a dead kid raises eyebrows, don’t you think?”
“A naked hooker in a dumpster in a shitty part of town? How many resources do you think we’d throw at that?” Hoagie asked as he came in with the refreshments.
“Ah, real coffee!” Mike sighed.
“I’m serious,” Hoagie continued, not missing a beat as he placed the tray of coffees and the bag of biscotti in the middle of the table. “Do you think Mr. & Mrs. Joe Average really give a shit about some drug-addicted hooker? If they did, we wouldn’t be sitting here now, would we?”
“Some of us haven’t been,” Sal said. “Some of us have been doing police work while—”
“Some of us have been looking after our families, Sal,” Hoagie said. “Thanks again for the pass, Robby.”
“No worries, Hoagie. All good?”
“Yeah. The wife was just feeling a bit overwhelmed with the baby. You know how it is in the first few weeks. Baby blues and all.”
“We’ve all been there—” Robby began, and then stopped abruptly as he looked at Julia, knowing how desperately she wanted to get pregnant.
“If you want me to stop by any time…” Julia offered. Her words hung in the air.
“I know, and thanks,” Hoagie said with a smile. “So did the girl say why they sent her out? I mean, they must have known she’d talk?”
“We never got to that, but I think they figured we’d shoot her,” Mike suggested.
“I would have,” Sal said.
“And that would have taken all of the heat off them and placed it directly on us,” Robby pointed out. “I can see the headlines now: Cops Shoot Thirteen-Year-Old Girl.”
“Yeah, but she had a gun,” Sal protested.
“That wouldn’t have made it into the story until the last couple of lines,” Hoagie said dismissively.
“Not only that, but everyone in the team would be suspended until the SIU investigation was completed. Think how convenient that would have been for those assholes,” Robby said.
“But nobody shot anybody,” Mike pointed out, “and now we know that Chelsea Hendricks is still alive, which is great. I say Sal and I go interview her parents again and see what they know.”
“They didn’t seem to know too much the last time,” Sal bellyached. “What makes you think they’ll know any more now?”
“Because after two years, we can go back and tell them that their daughter is still alive. That’s a big deal. Which means that maybe now, they’ll want to work with us instead of against us.”
“Before you two go off on a tangent—” Robby cut in.
“It’s no tangent, boss,” Mike insisted. “I really think Chelsea’s parents were holding something back.”
“Yeah, like the name of the guy who recruited her?” Sal said with a laugh.
“You think it’s still the same players all this time later?” Julia asked.
“Worth a try.”
“Assuming it is all the same players,” Robby said.
“Selling underaged sex is a very lucrative business. Why would anyone making a profit leave?” Mike reasoned.
“While you guys are doing your thing, maybe Hoagie and I can go talk to Morality,” Julia offered. “They seem to know a lot more about what’s going on in our world than we thought. Maybe if we shake a few trees…?”
“I’m good with that, Julia,” Robby said.
“Just make sure that whoever you talk to at Morality is really clear on our unit mandate,” Mike muttered.
“Don’t worry, Mikey,” Julia promised. “I already have someone in mind.
Chapter Three
Sunday
, October 30th, 2005 - 1:30 p.m.
“You got a helluva nerve showin’ your face around here,” the rough-looking man said as he opened the door.
“Hello, Jeff. Long time no see.” Mike smiled cordially, looking past the man into the neglected little house. “Brenda around?”
Mike hadn’t spoken to either of Chelsea Hendricks’s parents for at least six months, but he vividly recalled how Brenda was the more cooperative of the two.
“No. She’s not. She’s… out,” Jeff said, checking to see if any of the neighbours he was sure were always watching over their white picket fences were watching now.
“I guess we’ll just have to talk to you then,” Mike replied, pushing his way past Jeff, Sal right behind him. “Still got that snake?”
“Jesus! I forgot all about that!” Sal shuddered, pulling his arms in tight and lifting his feet about a foot off the ground as he stepped
further into the house.
“Naw. Got rid of her. Someone called the city.”
“Wasn’t me,” Mike said, recalling with a shiver the python that had dangled from Jeff’s neck the first time he and Sal were here.
“Why don’t I believe you?” Jeff lit up a smoke as he eyed the two cops walk into his house. “You got a warrant?”
“Do we need one?” Mike asked.
“I guess not.” Jeff walked past Mike into the kitchen at the back of the house and grabbed a bottle of beer out of the fridge for himself. He held one out and waved it at Mike and Sal who had followed him. “Want one?”
“I do, but not with you,” Mike said, reacquainting himself with the house, noticing that nothing had changed, or been cleaned, since the last time they were here. “You said Brenda was out?”
“Yeah. Be back in about an hour.” Jeff cracked the beer open and took a gulp. He looked at Sal and smirked. “How ‘bout you, Slim? Want one?”
“Thanks, but no,” Sal replied, sucking in his gut and pulling his scruffy pants up by the belt loops.
“We can wait. In the meantime, how about the three of us having a little chat?” Mike said pleasantly.
“I got nuthin’ to say,” Jeff replied, taking another healthy swig.
“You didn’t have much to say the last time I was here, either, as I recall.”
“What’s to say?” Jeff checked the label on the bottle, as if brand mattered to him at this point. “My little girl went missing almost two years ago, and you’ve done fuck-all to find her.”
“I think it’s you who’s done fuck-all to find her,” Mike replied, wiggling his jaw so that it wouldn’t tighten as he watched Jeff closely.
“This is gonna get ugly, isn’t it?” Sal leaned over and whispered to Mike.
“What am I supposed to do? You’re the ones with all the know-how,” Jeff said, taking another gulp of beer.
“Seems kinda odd to me…” Mike pushed past Jeff and stood in the living room, idly noting the empty TV dinner trays lying on top of one another on the side tables. “A man’s daughter goes missing without a trace, and that man—her own father—doesn’t want to cooperate with the police. Does that seem kinda odd to you, Sal?”
“Makes me kinda think that the old man had something to do with it,” Sal played along.
“You can both go fuck yourselves on your way out the door,” Jeff snarled, emptying the bottle with a final gulp.
“Tell me you wouldn’t think the same thing if you were me.” Mike walked up to Jeff and stood toe-to-toe facing him.
“I dunno. Maybe the girl’s dad just doesn’t like cops,” Jeff suggested and belched in Mike’s face.
“Maybe,” Mike replied, the muscles in his face involuntarily tightening in disgust as he turned his head slightly and stepped back. “But the cops are the only ones who can find his kid. Makes me think that would be an incentive for the guy to want to warm up a bit.”
“Chelsea’s been gone a very long time. Me and Brenda let you take whatever you wanted from her bedroom. We let you talk to everyone we knew. We gave you everything we had, and you came up dry. Zero. Nuthin’ to show for it. And to top it off, you made my wife and her family think that I had something to do with our daughter’s disappearance. What the fuck am I supposed to think?”
“I get your frustration, Jeff, but I also think you’ve been holding out on us,” Mike said, straightening a framed photo on the wall of Jeff and Chelsea as a toddler wearing only frilly underpants.
“Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“What happened to her cell phone?”
“What cell phone?”
“The one she stopped using right before she disappeared.”
“Dunno.”
“Don’t know, or don’t want us to know?”
“Brenda isn’t here, Mike. I think it’s time for you and your boy to leave.”
Mike knew when he had pushed hard enough. He also knew when he had pushed too hard. He and Sal now had two choices: wait in the house or wait outside in their car for Brenda to come home.
The decision was abruptly made for him.
“Whose car is parked out front?” Brenda Hendricks asked as she pushed the front door open with her hip. She had two bags of groceries in one hand, a jumbo pack of toilet paper in her other arm, and a purse slung over her shoulder. She jiggled the keys out of the lock before she looked up to see Mike and Sal.
Her knees buckled. “Mike! Oh god. Don’t tell me…?”
“No,” Mike assured her from where he stood just inside the front hall. “I don’t have anything new to tell you— ”
“Which is why he and his buddy were just leaving, weren’t you?” Jeff interrupted as he turned to go back to the kitchen to get another beer, making no effort to help his wife with the groceries.
“No. Don’t go. Not just yet,” Brenda began, struggling to get down the hall to dump everything on the kitchen table. “There must be something?”
“I was just telling Jeff—”
“There’s nothing. He doesn’t have anything to say,” Jeff cut Mike off after setting his empty beer bottle down on the floor against the wall with the rest of bottles and twisting the cap off another.
Brenda looked at Jeff and then at Mike.
“Then why did you come?” she asked.
“I just wanted to ask—”
“He’s leavin’, ain’t you?” Jeff said menacingly.
“‘Aren’t you’,” Brenda corrected. “Do you always have to sound like such a goddamned hillbilly when the cops are around? I’m sorry, Mike. It’s just that these past few…several…months have been really hard on us, and we’re just doing the best we can to cope.”
She started putting the groceries in the fridge, then turned to her husband. “You want to put the toilet paper in the bathroom, Jeff?”
“Later,” he muttered, sucking on the new bottle as if he’d never tasted beer before.
“I understand that,” Mike said to Brenda.
“How much have you had to drink today, Jeff?” Brenda asked. “I don’t want to see you drunk again before we at least have dinner.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ start on that one,” her husband muttered, taking another gulp as he stomped out of the crowded kitchen into the living room.
“You could at least wait for me,” she suggested with a slight laugh.
“Drinking isn’t going to help, Brenda,” Mike pointed out.
“Well, it certainly can’t make things any worse, can it?” Brenda countered as she reached up to an empty place in the cupboard. “Where’s the gin, hon?”
“I dunno,” Jeff called back. “You’re the only one who drinks the hard stuff.”
“I need to know who that boy was who Chelsea met at the mall,” Mike said.
Brenda rummaged around in the cupboards until she found an empty bottle under the sink. “Shit. I guess this soldier’s already dead. I don’t know who he is, Mike. Neither of us do. There are lots of guys cruising young girls in malls, and our
little girl loved the attention.”
“She didn’t love the attention. She was just your average teenaged girl,” Jeff called out.
“Is,” Brenda corrected, examining the gin bottle closely before deciding that there might be enough left for one last taste.
“Come on, Brenda,” Mike said, moving closer to her as she reached for a glass in the cupboard above the sink. “Where is her cell phone?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We know she had a cell phone, even though you told us she didn’t.”
“Well, if she did, I had no idea.” Brenda held the bottle up to the light before pouring the last splash into her glass and placing the bottle gently back under the sink.
“You were paying for it.”
Brenda tipped the glass to empty the last drops of gin into her mouth before turning her attention to the fridge. “You ready for another one, hon?” she called out to her husband.
“Let’s cut the bullshit, Brenda. I know you were paying for that phone on your plan. I know that you called her at that number lots of times before she went missing. Nothing unusual there, but the records for that phone also showed that she did not use it on the day she went missing, which means that she didn’t have it with her. I’m thinking that she left it at home that day, either on purpose or by accident. Either way, the phone should have been in her bedroom, but it wasn’t.”
Mike paused, looking for some reaction from Brenda. Nothing.
“Now let me be clear on this one,” he continued. “I don’t give a shit about the phone. I want to see the pictures on it. I know that she would have taken a pile of pictures of herself with that boy at the mall using that phone, so where is it?”
“I have no idea,” Brenda replied, pulling two beers out of the fridge and handing them both over to Jeff who had come into the kitchen. “Can you open that one for me, hon? They screw these caps on so damned hard, don’t they, Mike? Thanks, hon.”
“I’m also wondering,” Mike went on, watching Jeff open both bottles of beer and hand one back to his wife, “if there might be something on that phone that maybe you or Jeff don’t want us to find?”
“Like what? Nudie photos of me and my daughter?” Jeff sneered, then belched as he walked back the few feet to the living room.
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