“You could learn. Swimming is amazing.”
Or he could keep his feet on dry land. Yeah, that worked, too. “Nah, I’m okay. No one gets attacked by sharks on land.”
Crud. He hadn’t meant to say that.
Not that sharks weren’t something to fear, but still. Real cool.
“I’ve never had a problem with them, here or anywhere else.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You do a lot of swimming in these waters?” Why had he thought yesterday was an isolated incident?
“Like a fish.” She gestured to the black water licking hungrily at the boards beneath their feet. “There’s a whole other world down there. It’s beautiful.”
There was enough beauty in the dry world that he didn’t need to explore the underwater one.
They reached the boat and Elly stepped on board.
Funny how she made it look so easy. He sent a glance at the water before making an exaggerated step over it.
He probably looked as ridiculous as he felt.
Good thing Morgan wasn’t here or he’d never live it down. Elly, if she noticed, chose not to say anything about it.
Gripping the handrail, he followed her up the too-steep steps to the deck above.
As they approached the main cabin, he saw Monica sitting on a chair opposite one of Elly’s brothers. The African dude with dreadlocks, although he couldn’t remember the man’s name at the moment.
He eased out a breath. Part of him had been afraid he’d show up and Monica would have disappeared. Again.
But there was nowhere to go this time.
Monica’s eyes met his. Her smile, which had looked genuine seconds ago, slipped. Lines creased her forehead quicker than fog rolled in on the bay.
So this meeting hadn’t been her idea. Surprise, surprise.
He owed Elly a big thank you.
Maybe in the form of a nice dinner. With roses…
He pushed the thought away. There would be no nice dinner, nothing that could even remotely resemble a date, until this case was closed.
Perhaps not even then.
Elly opened the door to the cabin and led the way inside.
The smile Elly’s brother offered was shockingly white in his dark face. “Zander, man. Good to see you again.”
Tension eased from Zander’s limbs. “Yeah, you too.”
Funny thing. He meant it.
Something about that man felt like hanging out with an old friend. Which was ridiculous because he hardly knew a thing about him, including his name.
Elly lightly touched his arm. “Josiah and I will wait out on the deck.”
Josiah. Yeah, that was the right name.
“No!” Panic laced Monica’s word. “Please stay.”
Glancing over, he found Elly looking at him, questions lingering in her lilac eyes. He nodded. “If she’s good with it, you’re welcome to stay.”
Elly eased onto the sofa that sat at an angle beside Monica’s chair.
“Well, I should head for the prison. Got a study in two hours and I need time to prepare.” Josiah pushed up from the chair and headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the knob to turn back and smile at Monica. “And Monica? You can trust this dude. God vouches for him.”
Right. Because that would loosen Monica’s tongue…
Some of the fear melted from Monica’s face as she nodded.
Weird. Well, whatever worked.
As the door clicked shut behind Josiah, Zander sat in the chair he’d just vacated. He smiled at Monica. “Thanks for talking to me.”
A single nod answered him.
He softened his voice. “I just want you to know that I’m going to record our conversation so I can remember it all later.”
He set the recorder on the table and pushed a button to start it.
Monica’s eyes locked on the recorder.
Dang. He’d hoped this wouldn’t become a big deal.
After listing all the pertinent details, he focused on Monica. “Don’t worry. This is standard. I know this is hard, but I was hoping you could tell me what you saw the day Jessie died.”
The light reflected in her dark eyes and she swallowed. “Jessie thought we might be safe at the center. We were hiding.”
Her voice was soft, slightly scratchy, whether from emotion or lack of use, he wasn’t sure. “From whom?”
“I don’t know him. Jessie did. She said he was bad news.” A tear escaped from the corner of her eye, cutting a wet track down her cheek. She made no move to wipe it away.
“How did Jessie know him?”
“I–I don’t know.”
“How did you guys get in the kitchen? Was the alley door unlocked?”
She shook her head. “No, Jessie…”
Hesitation, combined with Monica looking away, told him she was lying. Or at least thinking about it. “Jessie…?”
“Picked the lock.” Monica flicked her dark eyes up to him. “She didn’t do that often. But that man was after us and…”
“It’s okay. He can’t get you.”
Monica shook her head with such force he thought her neck might snap. “I can’t talk about this! I can’t.”
“You have to. It’s the only way we’ll get justice for Jessie.” Resting his elbows on his knees, Zander leaned in. “Monica, I’ll level with you. We have no fresh leads. The case is already growing cold. If something doesn’t break soon, it’ll get filed away as a cold case and no one will ever know what really happened to Jessie. You can help keep that from happening.”
A sob broke from Monica. “It was my fault.”
Her fault? That was something he hadn’t expected. “How is it your fault?”
“She was trying to help me. I…” Monica clamped her quivering lips together as if to hold inside whatever secret was trying to break out.
“Help you what?” He gentled his tone even further.
Tears spilled over and silent sobs wracked her body but she made no effort to answer him.
Whether it was emotion that silenced her, or the fear she wore like skin, he wasn’t sure. As much as he had to be careful about leading her to give the answers he wanted, maybe offering a little of what he knew would loosen her tongue. “Does this have anything to do with the drugs we found under the gazebo? Or Tranquility Day Spa?”
She gasped. Wide eyes stared at him from a tear-streaked face that carried the gray pallor of death. She didn’t move. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.
Well, he had his answer. She hadn’t reacted to the drug question. This had everything to do with the Spa.
Monica might just hold the key to breaking this case wide open.
Nineteen
“It’s not a spa.” Monica’s words sounded wrenched from a raw throat.
“We thought the same thing. Can you tell me what it is?”
“It’s a horrible place.” Monica’s eyes shifted downward, settling on the hands she clenched in her lap.
Elly placed her hand over Monica’s and gave a small squeeze.
“What do they do there?”
Silence met his question.
When it lengthened for a few seconds, he lowered his voice. “What did they do to you there?”
“They sell us.” Her throat worked as though trying to regurgitate the words. “People come and pay for us. Usually men, but not always. If we don’t do exactly what they tell us to do…”
So it was what they thought. While his imagination needed no help to come up with what happened inside those fancy walls, hearing it from the mouth of this girl, this victim, made him want to punch someone. “Do they beat you?”
A single nod. “Sometimes worse. One girl tried to run and they broke her legs.”
“Wouldn’t that hurt their cash flow?”
Monica’s eyebrows knit together as she met his eyes. “C-cash flow?”
Of course she wouldn’t understand the slang. “They couldn’t sell her if she couldn’t… perform… right?”
Unders
tanding flickered on Monica’s face. “They still did. There were people who liked the fact she was hurt.”
Sick. Sick and wrong.
“They made us watch.” Fresh tears filled Monica’s eyes. “Sometimes I hear her screams.”
“How many people are they holding against their will?”
Monica wiped at her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Just think of the people you knew there and give me your best guess.”
She closed her eyes, moisture hanging on her black lashes. “Maybe fifty. Maybe more. I never saw them all.”
“Never?”
Dull eyes settled on him. “We worked in shifts. There were about thirty in my shift. I don’t know how many shifts there were but at least one more.”
“And these girls, are they all as young as you?”
“Most of them. A few are older, like twenty. Some are younger.”
“How much younger?” Did he really want to know?
“I don’t know. Eight?”
Eight years old. And forced into prostitution. While he knew it happened, somehow hearing about it from an eyewitness made it so much more real.
“And they aren’t all girls. There are a few boys there, too.”
Of course. Something for every customer.
“But you got away.”
“When girls got pregnant, they’d kill the babies and make them keep working. When I found out…” Monica’s hand rubbed her stomach.
She was pregnant? A glance at Elly found that she didn’t look surprised.
Naturally. God probably told her.
“… I had to get away. This baby deserves that much.”
“Where do they find the girls,” Wait, she’d said they weren’t all girls, “and uh boys, uh, all of you?”
“Some get taken right off the street. Others are people like Jessie, who’re just trying to survive and pick up the wrong guy. Most of us are shipped in, though.”
Bingo. “So that’s what happened to you?”
“This guy came to my village. He told us about this great job and that we’d make lots of money. He said he’d help us send it home to our families.” Fresh tears slipped out from the corners of her eyes. “My parents couldn’t afford to feed us all, so I said I’d go, make money, and send it to them to help out.”
But, of course, she hadn’t been given any money. Nor had she been able to help her family.
He didn’t ask her what kind of work the man had said she’d be doing. It didn’t matter. Whatever she’d been told was a lie.
“A lot of the kids in my village did the same thing. We joined others, then were crammed into a big smelly room on a boat and were on the water forever. It was dark and cold. Lots of the kids got sick. A few died. The men on the boat barely came down to see us, other than to give us a little bit of food and water each day.”
She rubbed her arms, as if retelling the story brought back the dank cold of the ship’s hold. Elly nudged a cup toward her and she lifted the shaking cup to her lips for a small drink.
“I could tell when we got here ‘cause the boat felt different. But they didn’t let us out right away. When they finally came for us, there were lots of ‘em. One guy grabbed my arm and dragged me upstairs. It was dark. One of the other girls cried and a guy jabbed something in her arm and she fell down. After that, I wasn’t gonna make any noise ‘cause I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me.”
She was crying hard now, the words coming out shuddery and broken.
“They shoved us in this van, lots of us, all packed in tight. We rode for a while, then they dragged us into a building. We each got our own room. At first, I thought it was real nice. It was really high and I could see the city and the ocean from this big window. There was a bed and bathroom with running water and everything. Then they collected us and told us what we’d be doing. I didn’t get it until the first guy showed up in my room.” She squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her chin to her chest.
Elly pressed a tissue into her hands and held her close while she cried.
As much as he needed the information Monica had, he didn’t push. While she cried, he processed the information he had.
Kids being promised a future but finding themselves in slavery.
A fancy building that housed the ugliest of things. He remembered the dark windows climbing into the sky. Those ugly things had been happening while he’d sat right outside.
Wait a second.
For someone who didn’t grow up in the country and couldn’t have had much of an education, Monica’s English was succinct and clear. Almost too clear. Was she telling him the truth? How had she learned to communicate so clearly in what was sure to be a secondary language?
Only one way to find out.
He waited for the crying to even out. “Monica, your English is really good. Did you grow up speaking English?”
She slowly straightened from Elly’s comfort. “I’ve picked some things up here, but there was this missionary who lived in our village when I was a kid. She taught all of us English. And French. She said that good communication skills would help us have a better future.”
“You speak French?”
Monica said something in some language he couldn’t decipher, then added, “But not as good as English.”
Okay, so maybe that made sense. Kids did learn languages much faster than adults, so it was possible she could have picked it up that easily.
Maybe.
Back on track. Regardless of whether or not he could believe everything she said, the fact remained that Tranquility Day Spa likely was involved in human trafficking and Monica likely was a victim.
She was also the only witness to Jessie’s murder.
“Why would they keep you in such a nice room, with windows where you could maybe escape or signal for help?”
“We were really high up and they told us the windows couldn’t be broken. I think they were those ones where you can see out and not in.” She rubbed at her cheeks with her sleeves. “Besides, there were cameras everywhere. They knew what we were doing, all the time. One girl slit her wrists in the shower once. She told me they were there in a minute, bandaged her up, and had her working before she even dried off.”
As fast as skin dried, he doubted that, but he got the gist. No hiding from the all-seeing eyes.
If there truly were cameras everywhere, then the clients were being recorded as well. Did they know?
Somehow he doubted it.
“I guess I thought that a place like that would have windowless rooms in the basement.”
“There are some of those, too. If we were bad, they’d put us down there.” Another shudder rippled through her. “You didn’t want to be down there. Those don’t cost as much and the guys who come through there are meaner.”
He couldn’t wait to get the hard evidence he’d need to shut that whole place down. “Did you meet Jessie there?”
“Jessie was never there. I met her after I got away.”
“If the place is so secure and fortified, how did you get away?”
“The guy who was in charge of everything liked to party hard with drugs and girls. He has private quarters in the penthouse. So I went to him.” Monica’s face shifted to a gray pallor and her lips curled down. “Waited until he passed out, then stole his keys and snuck out on the roof. There was a fire escape. Jessie found me a few days later. I hadn’t eaten in days and was disoriented and crying and she must’ve felt sorry for me.”
Pieces started clicking. “And you told her your story and she decided that it had to stop?”
“Yeah. At first we were just in survival mode, but after she found Jesus, things changed. She wanted to help the others who are still there.”
“So the guy who chased you in the alley…” The one who’d almost killed him… “Is that the guy you stole the keys from?”
“No. That was Fernando. He’s in charge of security. Hector…”
“Hector Gutierrez?”
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A blank look met his question. “I don’t know his last name.”
Naturally. The guy had been peddling flesh. Niceties like introductions were surely below him. Zander scrambled to remember the dead man’s stats. “Uh, a little shorter than me, scrawny, tattoo of a gargoyle on his neck, shaved head?”
Monica nodded. “Yeah.”
Yes! Another link between the two deaths. Of course, it was possible there was more than one Hector that fit that description, but it seemed unlikely.
So. Had Hector been killed because he’d let Monica get away?
Probably not. That would be a relatively minor infraction on the scheme of things. No, more likely there was still something he was missing.
“So, this building…” Zander tried to recall how many floors he’d seen. “There’s what, five stories?”
A single nod.
“The top floor belonged to Hector, right?”
“Part of it.” A shrug lifted her slight shoulders. “There are also offices, I think. Maybe a storage room or something. I never saw the whole thing.”
“Then you said that you and the others lived on…”
“The next three floors.”
The fourth, third, and second floors. The first floor no doubt had a reception area and rooms that looked legitimate to fool anyone who might walk in for services that were actually legal.
So if Monica was right and there were about fifty captives, each with their own bedroom, that was at least fifty bedrooms across those three floors. Safe estimate would be twenty bedrooms per floor… He conjured up a mental image of the spa. Yeah, it was possible. The place was roughly the size of some hotels.
“And the basement is for punishment.”
“And drugs. Mostly drugs. They process drugs and get them ready to distribute from down there.”
“Is there a subbasement? Or anything other than parking below the basement?”
“I never went down there.” Monica absently twisted a chunk of her black hair.
This was good. Maybe even enough to get a warrant. If he could just get a shred of hard proof, they’d have enough to nail these guys. “Did you take anything with you when you escaped?”
“No. I didn’t have anything to take.”
“Do you know where those drugs came from? The ones under your gazebo?”
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