by Louisa Luna
“Oh, yeah, sure. Cap, could you unlock that child lock?”
Cap pressed a button, and they heard the lock click.
Devin took another look at her and Cap, opened the door wide, and jumped out.
The smile vanished from Vega’s face.
“Vega?” said Cap.
“Just giving him ten seconds.”
She watched him get onto the sidewalk and tap his phone, lift it to his ear.
“Ten,” said Vega, getting out of the car.
She left the bolt cutters behind.
On the sidewalk, students milled around her holding coffee cups and yoga mats. Lara was still speaking on the phone, the red juice in his left hand at his side. Vega could not make out the words he was saying.
She came up fast behind him and slapped the juice out of his hand. It splattered onto the ground in the shape of a beam cast from a lighthouse.
Lara whipped around and saw her for less than a second before she took two quick jabs, one to each side of his face, right, then left hand, and then as he started to fall backward she jumped and got him once more, the right elbow under his chin, jamming the jaw.
He screamed, fell to the ground, blood bursting from his mouth and nose. Vega squatted and grabbed his phone, which had fallen facedown next to him.
“I bith my tongue,” he cried, sitting up somewhat, spitting blood into his hands. Then he reached into the pool in his palm and picked out a small spongy bit. “Thith ith the tip of my tongue,” he said in shock.
“Would you look at that,” said Vega, indifferent.
She grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him toward her.
“Where is Ben Davis right now?”
Lara’s face twitched and roiled with pain and nausea.
Vega said, “Tell me right now before you pass out or I will take the rest of your fucking tongue out of your mouth.”
“He’th at the houth…” Lara said.
“What house? Where?”
“Thalton.”
Salton, she thought. She’d never been but had seen pictures. A manmade lake, surrounded by double-wides.
Lara shook his head, eyes fluttering, losing consciousness.
“Address,” she said, shaking him vigorously.
“Hey, stop it, you can’t do that,” one of the bros watching remarked.
Vega didn’t turn her head fully but angled it toward the voice and said, “Shut up. He fucks little girls.” Then, back to Lara: “What’s the address?”
Lara passed out. His head was loose on his neck. Vega let go of his collar, and his upper body dropped to the concrete.
She stood up, her shirt and hands damp with blood. College kids stood around, stunned, filming her, texting, speaking quietly. But none taking a run at her. Vega turned and walked past them all, and they didn’t try to stop her. The college kids chattered; she vaguely heard them say, “stop,” “police,” “tongue,” “fucks little girls.”
She tapped Lara’s phone, which hadn’t yet locked, and scrolled through the recents. Then she scrolled through the contacts and found Davis. She pressed her thumb on the name and began to write a text, got into the car, the engine still running.
“Ready?” said Cap.
“Go.”
He peeled out of the spot with a tight scream off the rear wheels.
Again, they heard sirens.
“Where to?” said Cap.
“Salton City,” said Vega. “It’s east.”
Two police cars passed them heading the opposite direction. Cap drove for a minute.
“That’s what was in the trunk—bolt cutters?”
“Yeah—why?”
Cap shrugged. “Didn’t think it would be so low-tech.”
“They’re superuseful,” said Vega somewhat defensively. “Get on the freeway in half a mile.”
She continued her text to Davis.
“Is that Lara’s phone?” Cap asked.
“Yes, I’m sending Davis a text.”
“Pretending to be Lara,” said Cap, beginning to understand.
Vega nodded. Her thumb hovered over the Send button. She checked her map app. Two hours twenty-nine minutes to Salton. She sent the text: “VIP on the way. Text him with directions. Number attached. Will pay triple for youngest we have.”
* * *
—
Later they sat in the car on a street that looked recently paved, the smell of tar pushing through the vents along with the faint scent of decaying plant life. Here and there were houses but they were spread far apart, two or three to each sprawling block but not because they were upmarket properties, because there seemed to be no one or nothing out here. Cap noted that he hadn’t seen another car or human for at least a couple of miles.
“You think I can pass for a VIP?” he said, examining his face in the rearview.
“I didn’t ask you to come here just because you’re good at your job,” Vega said.
“You needed a guy.”
“I needed a guy,” she repeated.
Cap gazed at the house down the block.
“Wish we had some time for recon,” he said.
“We only have until Lara regains consciousness and gets to a phone,” said Vega. “Maybe more if he doesn’t know Davis’s number from memory, which is possible.”
Cap unbuckled his seatbelt and touched the Sig under his jacket.
“You think they’ll pat down?”
“They have no reason to,” said Vega. She tilted her head against the window and raised her eyebrows, looking at the house. “You get in there, let me know. If it feels like we have a shot, we take it.”
Cap breathed hard and hot through his nose.
“What am I there for?” he said.
“The youngest.”
He began to shake his head, almost like he couldn’t believe it but of course he could. Of course there were more Janes, alive right now. For now.
“Vega—” he began, and he knew it sounded like he was about to launch into a protest.
“You have to move quickly,” she said.
He paused.
“Caplan?”
“Vega, don’t mistake my hesitation for lack of enthusiasm,” he said. “I just think I should enter engaging the purpose of recon, and the possibility of rescue.”
Vega faced forward, considering it.
He continued: “What if they’re armed?”
“They might be but it won’t be an arsenal.”
“You sure? They do have a habit of stabbing people in the kidneys and forcibly administering electroshock. These are those guys.”
Vega shut her eyes. Cap shifted his weight in his seat, rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and chin.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Get in a room with a girl and text me. That’s it. Head count, firearms, whatever you want.” She paused, then added, “If you’re in danger, get out. No questions.”
Cap nodded, aware of the blood pumping in and around his heart.
“You should go,” said Vega, when she saw he wasn’t moving.
“Yeah, I’m going,” he said, staring at her, still not moving.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss you,” said Vega.
Cap broke into a laugh. Vega looked out the window.
“Well, shit,” said Cap. “The hell I’m sticking around here for?”
He got out of the car then and walked away quickly without looking back, right up to the long blue house with the rose pink doorframe.
He knocked and waited, then knocked once more. Someone came quickly. It was Davis.
“Caplan, right?” he said.
Cap nodded, looked him over. His hair was about an inch long, blond at the tips, light silvery color in the eyes, narrow but alert.
“You Da
vis?”
“Yeah. Come in.”
He leaned against the door, and Cap stepped past him, into the house.
It smelled like air freshener, the cardboard pine trees that dangled from rearviews, or aftershave. The carpet was tan and stained here and there with bleach spots. Did Davis dye his hair and then walk down the hall, spilling and dripping, Cap thought as he followed him.
Davis led him into a room full of girls. There were nine, Cap counted quickly, all in bras and underwear or skimpy slips. All barefoot. Some looked up at him as he entered, and some watched a game show on a TV in the corner. Two girls lay on their stomachs in front of the screen. Cap flashed briefly to Jaylin Duffy and her sensory deprivation project, and he smiled thinking of her.
“It’s good, right?” said Davis, assuming Cap was happy with the options.
Cap played along.
“Yeah.”
There were drawn blinds on a long picture window in the middle of one wall, an L-shaped counter on the opposite side of the room covered with bottles of rum, tequila, red Solo cups. A nearly obese guy with a black goatee sat on a stool at the counter, a Glock 42 on a belt on his hip. Dammit, Vega, thought Cap. Of course they’re armed.
“Lara said you wanted the youngest?”
Cap felt his stomach churning, smelled synthetic strawberry and vanilla perfume and lotion. He nodded, his eyes covering the room once more.
“Missy’s twelve.”
One of the girls lying on the floor turned her head and looked at Davis.
“That’s her,” said Davis, pointing. “Missy, levántate,” he called to her.
Missy stood. She was maybe four feet tall. She met Cap’s eyes and turned all the way around, 360, so he could see her body from every angle prior to purchase. She wore a skimpy black teddy.
Cap nodded again.
“So that’s six hundred for the hour. We take it up front,” Davis said.
Cap pulled his wallet from his pants and pulled out the hundreds, folded them in the middle, and handed them to Davis, who counted them again.
“Anything you want, just show her,” said Davis. “You can hit but not the face.”
Cap stayed silent and nodded again, almost said, “How much can I pay to hit you in the face?”
Missy came forward and stood in front of Cap. Davis gripped her arm and whispered something in her ear. She looked at the floor.
“Hour starts now,” said Davis.
Missy took Cap’s hand with both of hers and smiled. Cap guessed she was attempting to be alluring but it just looked like a little girl wearing her mom’s makeup in the bathroom mirror. And scared to death underneath.
She led Cap out of the girl room and down the stairs, where there was a hallway with closed doors on either side. She stopped in front of a door near the end of the hall and opened it. She held her arm out, presenting the room to Cap. He stepped inside. The room was about the size of a storage locker. There was a twin bed with only a fitted sheet on it, a folded towel at the foot, and a single-drawer filing cabinet, which Cap registered as odd, even though he was not certain he was processing everything exactly as it was, feeling somewhat in shock.
Missy pressed a button in the doorknob after shutting the door. She stood in front of Cap and smiled again at him, the same pretend-smile. Then she removed the teddy and dropped it on the floor. Her breasts were small and Cap stared at her face so he would not have to look at her body. She took his hand and began to bring it to her breast, and Cap yanked it away. Her eyes lit up with fear and confusion.
“No,” he said, a little too loudly. Then he whispered, calmer, “No.” He reached down and picked up the teddy, handed it back to her. “Please,” he said. “Por favor.”
He mimed putting the teddy back on. Missy stared at him. He pressed the teddy against her.
“Please,” he whispered again.
Missy suddenly became shy and put the teddy on quickly, folded her arms in front of her to cover up even more. She said some words quietly in Spanish; Cap didn’t know much, almost nothing in fact, but he thought he heard a word that sounded like “other,” and he assumed she was asking him if he wanted someone else, some other girl.
He shook his head vigorously and then held up his finger. Wait, one second.
From the inside pocket of his jacket, he pulled out the picture of Maricel Villareal at the window. He showed it to Missy.
“Do you know her?” he whispered in English. “Do you know this girl? Maricel?”
Missy’s eyes flashed with panic. Her mouth opened slightly as she took the picture from him.
“Maricel,” she said.
“Yes, sí,” said Cap. Then he pointed to himself and said, “I’m here to help you. Ayuda,” he added, pointing at her.
Missy seemed stunned, still staring at the picture in her hand.
Then, because he thought it would be impossible to explain how even though he was a private investigator and not technically a police officer, he and his partner were working with the police until very recently when they’d been let go, he placed his open palm on his chest and said, “Policía.”
Missy shook her head and began to chatter in Spanish, too fast for Cap to pick anything out. She pushed the picture back at him and backed away, talking fast and anxious, and kept pointing to the door.
“Rafa,” she said. Then more urgently quiet, as if she were being choked: “Rafa…”
Cap looked toward the door. What was rafa?
“Rafa?” he repeated.
She kept talking, shaking her head no, her small hands and fingers trembling. Cap held up his finger again to indicate one minute more, and he pulled out his phone and texted Vega, “One big guy with Glock in living room with 8 girls. In bedroom with 9th girl. Recognizes Maricel.”
He hit Send. Missy had backed up to the bed now, was curled against the wall, making her body so small and flat it reminded Cap of a pressed flower.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said in his kindest, calmest voice possible. “I’m not going to hurt you. Ayuda,” he said again.
Vega’s text came back: “Any other guys/guns?”
Cap wrote: “No. Only fat man and Davis.”
He tapped Send and then quickly added a separate text: “What does rafa mean?”
Missy was crying, covering her mouth with both hands, the breath from her nostrils audible.
“Come on now, I’m going to get you out of here,” said Cap. He took a small step closer to her, and then his phone buzzed.
He glanced down, saw Vega’s response.
“On my way. Don’t know rafa. Name maybe?”
Just as he felt that land in his head, the door burst open. Missy screamed now, full volume, and Cap saw why: there was a third guy, at least two heads taller than him, built not like a linebacker but maybe like the guy who bullies linebackers in grade school, black hair to his shoulders and pierces in his cheeks, ears, eyebrows, neck. Dead dark eyes.
Rafa.
He was holding something in his right hand but Cap didn’t stop to identify it. Cap reached for the Sig but wasn’t quick enough. Rafa thrust his hand forward and shot him with a standard two-probe Taser, like the kind Cap had been trained to use as a cop. Then Cap fell to the ground but didn’t feel the hit, didn’t feel anything, not asleep and not awake, thinking few thoughts as his eyes remained open and body paralyzed, like he was in an elevator the size of a coffin going down, down, down.
* * *
—
Vega wasn’t getting anything back.
“Respond,” she wrote.
He didn’t.
“Goddammit, Caplan,” she said out loud.
She got out of the car, picked up the bolt cutters with her left hand, and set the jaws on her shoulder. She shut the car door, and then she drew the Springfield with her right hand.
<
br /> She had practiced something like this with John Patrick, as a method of arm strengthening, twenty-pound weights in each hand, swinging each in front of her in windmills. It built the shoulders especially, and she felt the control she had now of the things in both hands.
She came to the door of the house with big strides and swung the bolt cutters up and then down, cracking them into the door near the handle. The wood splintered and buckled but didn’t break so Vega wound it up again and slammed the clips in the same place. The handle broke clean off, and Vega put her hand through the hole she’d made and felt around for other locks. She felt a bolt above and unlocked it. Then she opened the door.
A house with no air and screaming girls. She ran toward the screams into an arched doorway on her right, and right away she took in the girls but didn’t dwell on them (later, later, scuttled through her head). There was a fat guy on the other side of the room, and as soon as he saw Vega, he grabbed a girl standing next to a counter covered with liquor bottles and cut limes. He fastened his arm around the girl’s neck, pinning her in front of him, and put a gun to her head.
“I’ll put her down like a dog you come any closer,” he said.
Vega did a quick diagnostic of the truth and possibility of that statement. Even though there were the two dead Janes, here were nine more in this house, and they were all money in the bank. Whatever the reason was for killing the other two, would collateral against a stranger make the cut?
Vega didn’t think so. She locked eyes with the girl, who didn’t seem particularly alarmed. Shock, thought Vega. The other girls in the room screamed and cried and clung to the walls.
Even though Vega’s right arm was steady, she held the bolt cutters underneath her forearm, crossing just below the elbow to get a flat surface.
“Here’s the thing about the human shield,” said Vega, shutting her left eye. “You have to find someone bigger than your fat ass.”
She fired twice, one after the other, got him in the elbow of his firing hand, then the knee. He cried out and crumpled, fell hard to the floor, and Vega felt the floor shake under the weight. The gun dropped; the girl stayed standing, her bare skin sprayed with blood.
Vega walked in a direct path to the fat guy and kneeled down. He was moaning, writhing as best he could with his various rolls of flesh. Vega got in his face and positioned the bolt cutters in his groin. Hit ’em where it hurts, Perry would have said.