I hit him in the stomach, the soft spot just below the bone that makes all of your air rush out. He doubled over, and I held him there by the back of the neck, leaning close to his ear. “That girl is sixteen, Ivan. Strung out on pills. She was totally helpless when you beat her.”
I drew back my knee and drove it in again, same spot. “Let’s hope your cellmate will be a little bit nicer.”
“Hey,” Bolton said. “What the hell?”
I stepped back from Salazko, spreading my hands. “He just fell over. Maybe he has an inner ear problem.”
Bolton smirked at me. “Right.”
“You can return the cuffs at the SCS office,” I said. “Pleasure doing business with you Fraud gents.”
“Likewise,” Bolton said. “Take it easy, freak squad.”
I turned to Lane. “We can go back to work now. My good deed for the day is done.”
When we were in the car, Lane kept looking at me, a small smile on her face. I’d call it smug, if I were being uncharitable. Hex that—it was smug. “What?” I finally demanded.
“You pretend that you don’t have a heart,” said Lane. “That you’re all grit and instinct with that werewolf thing. But you do have a heart—a big one, and you’re trying to make sure it doesn’t get broken.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” I said. “Is it time for my free car yet?”
“That’s Oprah,” Lane said.
“I am disturbed that we’re even having this conversation,” I said.
“Fine, deflect,” Lane said. “But it’s true. You keep this hard shell around your heart so you don’t feel the pain of the people around you. That’s why you may be a decent cop instead of just a burnout.”
“Gee, Lane,” I said as we pulled into Justice Plaza. “Any more of this and I’m gonna start to think you like me.”
She chuckled under her breath. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Lane went to her desk, and I said, impulsively, “We could use one more for our stakeout tonight. You like bad coffee and sitting in a small van in close proximity to a few smelly cops?”
“It’s what I live for,” Lane said, her expression completely serious.
“Great. We’re leaving as soon as it gets dark.”
I thought about Ivan Salazko while I waited for the shift to end and the sun to set. I was sure someone in the crew he sold to had killed Lily. Which one of them was the question. The bills of lading were still in my pocket. Whatever had gotten Lily’s heart cut out was waiting for me at Pier 33.
Surveillance can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. In this case, there were five of us parked in a van, with a microphone. A box of take-out sandwiches sat pressed against Bryson’s knees, and Lane ran the recording equipment while Will manned the listening device and I peered through the windshield with binoculars at the pier. Which was completely deserted.
Excitement, Nocturne City–style.
“Nothing,” Lane yawned. “It’s 3:30 A.M. We should call it a night before I have to get up for work.”
“Not yet,” I said. “This is our one shot before the feds swoop in.”
“I’m so tired I think I may legally be a zombie,” Will declared. “And these headphones chafe.”
“Suck it up for another few hours and if nothing happens, we can shut down,” I said. I wasn’t inclined to give my compatriots much sympathy—if we didn’t catch Lily’s killer tonight, I was as good as Hexed.
Batista let out a soft snore, and I reached back and clipped him on the shoulder. “Stay awake!”
He grunted, and glared at me. “Tonight was my date night with Marisol. Last one before the baby comes, most likely. Thanks a lot, LT.”
“Your sex life is not really my concern, Javier,” I said. “But thanks for sharing, all the same.”
“Hey, shut it,” Bryson said, peering out the back windows of the van. “Someone’s coming.”
A silver Jaguar pulled up to the pier, dislodging four guys in various stages of no-neck disease and one tall gent with a goatee and a bald pate that gleamed under the sodium lights.
I dropped the binoculars and grabbed the surveillance camera with the telephoto lens. It was digital, night shots nearly as clear as day. I snapped the four heavies and Goatee Guy, and looked back at Will. “They saying anything?”
“Chatting in Russian,” he said. “Two of the fatties are from St. Petersburg, sounds like, and the bearded one sounds almost Chechen. Definitely from down south.”
Everyone in the van turned to look at Will and I gave him the eye. The fact that he’d lived long enough to learn every major language several times over if he wanted wasn’t exactly broadcast news among my squad.
“I did an exchange program during college,” Will said, a little too quickly. Lane still looked at him askance.
“They’re complaining that the container crane is late. Their port employee is lying down on the job.”
Goatee yelled something at one of his heavies. “What do I pay him for?” Will translated. “Only without all the cussing. They have a crane operator paid off to come in here and move their containers?”
“Gotta be,” I said. I snapped more pictures, watching one of the thugs grab a ring of keys and start trying them against the U.S. Customs lock on one of the two shipping containers resting on the pier. He got it open and to my great relief, it was empty. I wasn’t looking forward to busting five Russian mob tough guys with only myself and Batista, Bryson, Lane and Will.
“If that thing is empty,” Lane said, “what the hell are they doing here? They should be moving the girls who come in from here to their brothels around the city.”
“Maybe they’re loading the crate to send back? Pick up another shipment?” Batista said. “Lieutenant Wilder said all of the bills were for outgoing cargo.”
“More arguing,” said Will. “Apparently no one in the mob is punctual. They’re waiting on a truck.”
“A truck of what?” Lane said.
“A truck of unicorns and pink ice cream for all I know,” Will snapped. “I’m just translating here.”
“It’s fine, Will,” I said. “They’re waiting, we can wait.”
I watched the five Russians mill around, light cigarettes, check their phones for text messages. “Come on, comrades,” I muttered. “I haven’t got all freaking night.”
An engine rumbled, and a panel truck pulled up to the pier. I snapped a picture of the logo on the side, ameatpacking warehouse. “Subtle,” I said. Bryson chuckled.
“No one accused the mob of having a sense of irony,” he said. “What’s going on out there?”
“They’re unloading the truck,” Lane said. I stared through the lens of the camera.
A thug stamped out his cigarette and opened the back of the truck, illuminating the contents, and I let out a small gasp. Will muttered something under his breath and Lane exhaled sharply. “Is that what I think it is?”
I put the camera back to my eye and twisted the focus. The back of the van revealed rows of sitting figures, some of them slumped over, some clutching their knees to their chests.
Goatee clapped his hands and shouted in English with a heavy accent that would have done a cheap extra from an eighties action movie proud. “Everybody out! Don’t make me move your skinny asses!”
The women stumbled up, alone or in pairs, and practically fell out of the back of the truck. I’ve had enough experience with people who are fucked up on one substance or another to recognize the gait of a person stoned out of her mind. Maybe fifteen of them, all in rumpled clothes, some in pajamas, all with the vacant, dopey expressions of trusting livestock walking into a slaughterhouse.
The Russians herded the girls into the container, shoving them when they didn’t move quickly enough. One girl, a small redhead who looked like she taught school, nursed sick animals or something equally wholesome, fell, twisting her ankle. Goatee grabbed her up and slapped her. “You think this is a joke?” he snarled. She fought him, feebly, and he slapped her aga
in. “Move, bitch!”
I stopped snapping frame-by-frame shots of the encounter and tossed the camera into the passenger seat. “I’m going out there.”
“No, you’re not,” said Will.
I shot him a look, my eyes flickering to gold. “Excuse me?”
“It’s my op,” he said coolly. “And they haven’t done anything illegal yet.”
“Um … they’re loading women into a cargo container,” said Lane. “He’s hurting her!”
“It’s a simple assault at best,” said Will. “The girls aren’t restrained. None of them are protesting. What we’ve got here is a large case of trespassing and a whole lot of circumstantial evidence.”
“He’s right,” Bryson said.
My face heated up and before I could exercise my cop judgment, my were spoke for me. “Are you fucking kidding me? They’re doing something to these women and if we don’t work fast, they’ll be gone.”
“There’s no ship docked here,” Batista said, in what sounded like infuriating logic. “We’ve got a couple of hours before they can move them, at least, if that’s even what they’re doing.”
I put my hand on the door. I had to do something. Had to stop more Lilys … I swore she was staring back at me against my pale reflection in the glass, her milky eyes accusing me of something I couldn’t undo.
“Luna.” Bryson was the one to hold me back. “I can’t believe I’m the one sayin’ this, but don’t you think we should have some hard evidence before we go rushing in there?”
I snarled at him, lips pulling back over my teeth. My gums stung and I tasted blood as my were fangs grew.
“Don’t touch me. They’re moving girls out, not in, don’t you get it? Something worse is going on here than sex slaves and mob money.”
“They’re just going to walk straight back out on our arrest once their mob lawyer comes into the mix,” Will said quietly. “I know this isn’t ideal but we need to take what we’ve gotten here and use it to build a real case, one the FBI and the U.S. attorney can’t step on.”
“And we still don’t know which one of them killed Lily,” Lane put in. They were all trying to talk me out of doing something stupid, and they were all right. I was the one putting my case in jeopardy. If I even had a case.
I shut my eyes, tried to push back the monster that lived in my hindbrain. It was a useful monster, to be sure—it shared my life and my blood, my fears and desires. It was the dark half of me, the side that ran on all of the impulses I fought in a given day of one of the worst jobs the civilized world has to offer.
I lost.
The door was open before I realized my feet were on the pavement, the salt air on my face and stinging my eyes.
“Luna!” Will bellowed. “Luna, goddammit!”
A body chugged up beside me, and I recognized Bryson. Lane was just behind him, her gun already out. Huh. Maybe I’d misjudged her Girl Scout act.
“Nocturne City police!” I bellowed, as a mobster loaded the last of the girls into the container and slammed the door. Above me, the crane whined as its magnetic arm lowered. “Stand where you are!”
I don’t know what I’d expected, really, but it wasn’t for the fattest of the heavies to open his long duster and pull out a Kalashnikov.
Bryson had time to say “Oh, shi’” before we all hit the dirt.
Automatic-weapon fire is like being trapped inside a pinball machine—it’s louder than the voices of the gods and a spray of bullets in your general direction feels like the air is punching you. Bryson and I took cover behind a Port Authority cart parked between us and the mobsters, and Lane rolled behind a Dumpster. Batista and Will were dug in beside the van, returning fire.
“I told you to stay inside!” Will bellowed at me.
Amid the chaos, the crane arm caught the container of girls and whisked it upward and out of my vision. I went low, between the small, fat wheels of the cart, and aimed for Kalashnikov’s legs. Two shots, one for each. He went down, but impressively didn’t stop firing. Tough fat bastard.
One of the mobsters had the presence of mind to back the car between us and them as both sides opened up like we were John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis. Handgun slugs tore the poor little cart to shreds, and Bryson cursed as it rocked and threatened to tip over.
“Wilder, we do not have the fuckin’ advantage here!”
The mobsters grabbed the guy I’d tagged and got him into the Jaguar. The car’s engine roared and I came up, planting two slugs in its bumper out of pure spite.
The Jag fishtailed, righted and then, as quickly as the shooting had started, the car was gone. The container. Everything except a stink from the spent shells and a roaring in my abused ears.
I lowered my gun. “Shit,” I said viciously. “Everyone all right?”
“We’re okay, LT,” Bryson said. Will holstered his weapon, shaking his head. At least he had the grace not to say I told you so.
“We’ve got plenty of evidence,” Lane said to me, almost gently. “We’ll have them IDed and arrested in a couple of hours with these photos and recordings to speed warrants along.”
I looked at the spot the container had occupied. “Somehow that’s not making me feel any better,” I murmured.
Will tried to put his arm around me, give me a squeeze, but I shrugged him away. He gave me a hurt look and I kept my face stony. Those girls with their vacant eyes were all I wanted to think about right now. Men who would do this to innocent people had a monster inside, too.
I couldn’t wait until I introduced them to mine.
CHAPTER 9
“You should sleep,” Will said when he saw me under the lights of the motor pool.
“No,” I said. “I should find out who those men are before they ship those poor girls off to god knows where.”
“Luna…” Will sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. “You have to take a step back and remember that this is a case, not a crusade.”
I blinked at him. “Excuse me? I know you didn’t just get federal and all-knowing with me, your hysterical little woman.”
Will shook his head. “Don’t start. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” I snapped. Lane, Bryson and Batista gave us our space, offloading the cameras and the recording equipment without a word. Once IA had gotten done with their shooting report, it had nearly been morning, and I was no closer to finding one shot-up gangster and his friends.
“Do you really want to have this fight in front of your subordinates?” Will asked me softly.
“Is that what we’re doing?” I said. “Fighting? Because from where I sit it just looks like you’re ordering me around.”
“Listen,” Will growled, grabbing me by the arm. “I know your damage, all right? I know you have a pathological fear of being pushed around, but I’m telling you this as a fellow professional—you are going to have to let this go. You have no case, even if you could get a warrant for the container that the FBI doesn’t sit on. Nothing those men did was beyond a misdemeanor until you started waving your gun around.”
“You know as well as I do that something rotten is going down over there,” I said. “You know that the Russians got Lily Dubois killed. You know nothing good is going to happen to those poor women who are probably on their way to some third-world hellhole this very second.”
Will shoved his hands through his hair, leaving a ruined trail of golden strands across his face. “Knowing and proof are two very different things, Luna. I learned that the hard way, just like you. That’s all I’m going to say, since I can tell I’m already in the doghouse.”
I turned away from him, so furious that I knew if I stayed I’d slap him across the face. How dare he be so condescending and smug and, well, right?
Absolutely right. I had not a shred of hard proof that would allow me to make a case against anything except the shooting. Lily Dubois was a were, but her case would be solved because I was a detective, not a night creature. I had to set my
emotions aside and let those women, those victims, sail away into the night.
Out of all the shitty things I’d had to let ride in my career, this was the worst, the largest. By far. It settled in my stomach like a small ball of ice, cold and foreign, the knowledge that their welfare was on my head. If they died, were hurt, were sold …
“Lane?” I said, as something fell into my head, a piece that stood out as mismatched with what I knew of the gangsters who had murdered Lily.
Lane looked to me like she expected to be screamed at. “Yes, Lieutenant?” Lieutenant. Great. Now she thought I was a hysterical broad like most of the rest of the Nocturne City PD.
“Why are they taking girls out of the city?” I said. “Russia exports sex slaves, it doesn’t buy them from the decadent capitalists.”
“Actually, Russia is a democracy now, with a premier that functions much like the British prime minister,” said Bryson. I gave him my Are-you-kidding-me? glare. “What?” He shrugged.
“He’s right,” Lane said. “And I can’t think of a reason. The sex trade in Russia depends on men in this country paying to exploit the girls from the former Soviet Union.”
“Then why?” I said. “Why send women out?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Lane said softly. “I have no idea.”
Me, either, and it was costing me this case. I decided that punching the rear panel of the van would be an appropriate response, and did it, leaving a dent. Lane flinched. “I do have an old friend who works organized crime,” she said. “I could call him for some background on the men at the port, assuming they manage to keep their friend out of a hospital.”
“Fine,” I sighed, realizing that everyone, including Will, was staring at me like I’d just started speaking Klingon. “Do it in the morning. The real morning.” Sun was peering over the top of the Justice Plaza in a thin gold line. “I’m going to offload these photos onto the department server. The rest of you should go home.”
Batista and Bryson withdrew gratefully, but Lane stayed with me. “It’s never easy to lose an offender, Luna, but it happens. To the best of us.”
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