Touching Silver

by Jamie Craig

  Because Gabriel was running scared now. Somehow, some way, they had spooked him. Why? An open hit with all the finesse of an amateur was a definite sign of fear. What did he want them to avoid finding? What was the Silver Maiden? What was the secret worth killing for? And how close were they to discovering it? She rolled that over in her mind as she pulled up in front of the church.

  The white building hadn’t begun life as a church. It had been a house once. She used to drive by it every morning on her way to school and there would always be a fat hairy man in a grimy wifebeater, a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, with two kids and three dogs playing at his feet. They weren’t quite a picture of domestic bliss. The man always looked like he was on a hair trigger and the dogs and kids all flinched if he lifted his hand. It made her wonder what happened to them when there weren’t any witnesses. But one morning they were gone and a sign welcoming the Children of the Lamb congregation had replaced the lawn chair.

  Rico Vargas waited for her on the front porch, a cross the size of a soda can hanging from a thick gold chain around his neck. His face didn’t match his age. His eyes had seen too much of the world and he was old before his time.

  “Detective Wright.” Rico reached for her hand as soon as she stepped onto the porch. “Would you like something to drink? A cup of coffee maybe?”

  Olivia smiled. Rico always offered a cup of coffee, regardless of when they met. His elderly aunt had raised him—a woman who had gone blind and partially deaf by the time the boy turned five—and now he was trying to hammer together a veneer of respectability. Apparently, somewhere along the line, he’d picked up the notion that a good host always offered coffee.

  “No, thank you. I’m good.”

  “Come inside where it’s cool. We’re going to have choir practice in an hour…”

  “It won’t take that long,” Olivia assured him. “I just have a few questions.”

  “Then come into my office.”

  Rico had converted a bedroom into a decent office, and she still remembered the morning he had given her the grand tour of the house-cum-church. The office had been the last stop, the crown jewel of the tour. He’d never had his own room before, and he’d been bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for her reaction. She understood that kind of delight. Her first place of her own had been a crappy studio apartment with a toilet that ran if she didn’t jiggle the handle exactly a dozen times and a view of an adult bookstore, but she’d invited her parents over for dinner her very first night in the place and finished the night floating high. She had never been so proud.

  Olivia pulled seven glossy photos out of her bag and arranged them on Rico’s desk. “Six of these girls are missing. This one,” she tapped the picture of Stacy, “was recently found. I need to know what happened to the other six, Rico. I need to know if they’re still alive.”

  He stared at the photos for a long time. When he looked up at her, his brown eyes were saucers. And frightened. “No, you don’t want to get involved with this.”

  “It’s a little too late for the warning. I’ve been involved since these disappearances went into Cold Cases.”

  “No, this isn’t good news.”

  “Why isn’t it good news?”

  “Look, these girls…they’re like his special obsession or something. I was never involved with picking them up, but I know where he kept them for awhile and sometimes I’d have to keep an eye on them.”

  “He was keeping them? For what?” Horrible possibilities filled her mind. Pornography, prostitution, white slavery, old-fashioned sadism. “Did he hurt them?”

  Rico shook his head. “It’s not what you’re thinking. And that’s what makes it so weird. Man, he treated those girls like they were princesses. I think a few of them were starting to like it. ‘Rico, I need this.’ Or ‘Rico, take me to the mall.’”

  She nearly swallowed her tongue. “To the mall. He was allowing these girls to go to the mall?”

  “Not all of them. Just one or two who seemed to be happy to be there. He never planned to hurt them. But I think they’re probably gone now.”

  “Gone?”

  “Look, I heard on the street that he was unloading all his real estate. The first thing on the market was his place in Twenty-Nine Palms. That’s where he was keeping all the girls. So either he moved them or…”

  “Or he unloaded them, as well.”

  “Right.”

  “But why is he getting rid of all his real estate? That’s part of his cover.”

  Rico shrugged. “I can’t speculate. I’ve been out of there for two years now and he was already a bit crazy when I left.”

  Olivia frowned. Nothing made sense. What was Gabriel playing at? Everything she’d learned about him showed him to be damned careful. Isaac and others had been trying to bring him down for years and now she had a half-dozen fingers pointing in Gabriel’s direction.

  “Crazy how?”

  “Just crazy. Obsessed.”

  “You keep using that word. What is he obsessed with?”

  Rico shook his head and folded his arms. Every line of his body screamed he was done talking.

  “Is it the Silver Maiden?” It was a shot in the dark, but something whispered in the back of her head that it wasn’t such a bad one. “Is the coin feeding his obsession?”

  Rico narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that?”

  “Somebody mentioned it.”

  Now he looked almost relieved. “I don’t know what to think of that shit. I mean, Gabriel was always so focused. Right on point. Except when that stupid coin was involved. One time I got a look at his books. He sends more money to Argentina than he keeps here in LA! He was always going on about how important it was to protect our own and whatnot. Real motivational speaker, except meanwhile he’s bleeding his banks for who knows what in South America.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was looking for it.”

  “It?”

  “You know. The Silver Maiden. Are you even listening to me?”

  She was, but she was also hearing Isaac’s voice, explaining why she had to trust Remy. Because she’d faced Gabriel down and walked away. All because she’d turned over something he wanted.

  “Things have gotten so weird since this summer that sometimes I wonder if he found it.” Rico shook his head. “That coin is the Devil’s own work.”

  “How can a coin be the devil’s work? It’s just a collector’s item, isn’t it?”

  “Gabriel isn’t a good guy. When I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I knew I needed to get away from Gabriel. But man, he scares me. And not because of the violence. He’s sick.”

  Olivia frowned. “Do you mean he’s mentally ill?”

  “I mean this Silver Maiden…it’s consuming him. It was consuming him two years ago. There’s probably nothing left now.”

  And that scared her more than anything else.

  She expected Isaac’s desk to be meticulous. Everything from the way he conducted business to the way his tie matched his socks suggested it. So the array of plastic and wire strewn across its surface took her by surprise. She settled in the seat opposite him.

  “This is why people buy those rubber stress balls.” She gestured toward the mess. “Less collateral damage.”

  He didn’t rise to her bait. Any amusement she might have had about his predicament vanished. “The bug was in my phone.”

  Ouch. A professional like Isaac would take that hard.

  “Well, I hope you have another one of those stashed away somewhere.” She kept her tone light. He didn’t need recriminations. Something told her he was an expert at doing that to himself already.

  With a sigh, he picked up one of the larger pieces and turned it over and over between his fingers. “I’m getting a clean one from one of the tech guys. He salvaged my SIM card so at least I’m not losing my contacts. I just can’t figure out how the hell Gabriel even did it. Or how long it’s bee
n going on. Or if this is why he’s always been one step ahead of me.”

  “Have you swept your apartment yet?”

  He shook his head. “I’m waiting on the gear from tech so I can go home and do that. Just to be safe, though, I’m doing Nathan and Remy’s place too. No more chances of fucking things up.” The plastic clattered where he tossed it back onto his desk. He leaned backward in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “It might be smart for you to have everything double-checked too. He heard Nathan telling me that he doesn’t think the girls are dead. He knows we’re on to him.”

  “We’re on to him? What are we on to? Fill me in.”

  The walls came slamming back up at her careful questions. The same walls went up every time she sensed there was something more for her to find out. It all came back to the Silver Maiden nobody really wanted to talk about.

  “We know he’s got the girls somewhere. There’s no way he’d be running scared like this if he wasn’t trying desperately to cover something up.”

  “Rico told me he’s seen the girls before. Gabriel treats them well.” Olivia leaned forward, her elbows resting on his desk. “So you’re one of the most powerful gang lords in the city. Why would you kidnap seven girls to treat them like princesses and keep them in a house in Twenty-Nine Palms?”

  “Maybe he’s starting his own little harem. He already thinks he’s God. Maybe he wants to be David Koresh too.”

  “You know, I wish I could take that off the table as a possibility. But I can’t, even though Rico didn’t seem to think he was hurting the girls. Right now I don’t think anything could surprise me about this case.” She fished her phone out of her pocket. She just needed something to do with her hands. “Do you want me to help you out with the sweep?”

  For the first time since she’d walked in, Isaac brightened. “You’re not chasing around on other interviews today?”

  “I have an appointment later tonight, but we should be done by then.” It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything better to do than help Isaac, but maybe if he trusted her a bit more, he would finally tell her about the Silver Maiden. “And we still haven’t really had a chance to exchange information.”

  Isaac smiled as he stood up. She rose as well, all too aware of how he towered over her when she was seated. He was broad too. He filled out his suit very, very nicely.

  “We’ll be able to grab some lunch afterward. How do you feel about ribs?”

  “You know, I think a girl could gain ten pounds if she spent a week with you. What do you have planned for dinner? All you-can-eat-pasta?”

  He held the door open for her, inviting her to exit first. “Trick is to make sure you work it all off. You can eat anything you want then.”

  Olivia studied his face. Was he flirting with her or extolling the virtues of exercise? He might have been joking—she was beginning to appreciate his sense of humor—or he might have been making some sort of insinuation, or he might have been simply informing her of his daily regimen.

  But his intentions didn’t matter. The real question is: Do I want him to be flirting with me?

  The answer should have been no. But she’d had glimpses of Isaac when he felt truly comfortable with somebody. His relationship with Nathan was clearly very close and regardless of what he might say, it was obvious he even cared about Remy the way he might care for an incorrigible little sister or younger cousin. And she kind of liked what she saw.

  He once again announced he would drive. She couldn’t have concentrated on navigating Los Angeles to find his apartment anyway. They kept their conversation to a minimum in the car. It would need to be swept too.

  “I guess you saw them to the airport without further incident?” she asked, once they stood outside his apartment door.

  “If you count having a front row seat to them making out not an incident.” He pushed the door open and stepped inside, immediately flipping on the light.

  To say the apartment took her by surprise would be an understatement. The living room Olivia walked into was warm and inviting, walls painted a pale taupe, the curtains and plush couch a deep reddish-brown. An oriental rug covered the middle of the floor space, with a carved square coffee table separating the sofa from the oak entertainment center on the far wall. Plants thrived in strategic corners and, as she followed him in, she watched him head to a large aquarium tucked along the wall behind the door.

  “You can just drop your stuff right there by the door,” Isaac said. He gestured to the console table at her side. Her eyes widened at the rustic detailing of the obviously very expensive piece of furniture.

  “So is the reason you drive the Toyota because you’ve spent so much on your apartment?”

  He grinned. “No, it’s because every time I start getting serious about replacing it, somebody else shoots at me or bleeds in the back seat.” He crouched and opened a small cupboard beneath the tank. “Let me get Sonny and Cher fed, then I’ll make some coffee.”

  After carefully placing her bag and sunglasses on the table, she wandered over to the aquarium. “Sonny and Cher, huh? You a fan of the classics?”

  “When I first got them, Sonny wouldn’t stop chasing Cher around the tank and she kept acting like she didn’t want anything to do with him. And since she’s so much bigger than he is…” His shrug was noncommittal. “I thought it was funny. And it drove Nathan crazy that I named the fish he got me after a singer he hates. Which made it funnier.”

  “He hates Cher?”

  “No, he loves Cher. But he loathed Sonny Bono.”

  She smiled. “How do you know the big one is a girl? It’s a little hard to tell with goldfish, isn’t it?”

  “Not if you know what you’re looking for. Males have little bumps on their head that turn white when they spawn.” Isaac waved at the tank as he continued to pull out a variety of small, carefully labeled containers. “Go ahead and take a look. Sonny’s are just starting to turn color.”

  She peered into the tank, looking for the two small fish. She saw a tail in the castle and tapped the side of the tank to scare the fish out, but it didn’t move at first. She was so preoccupied with the hidden fish that she didn’t notice the other until it floated right past her line of vision.

  “Oh my God.”

  Isaac straightened, balancing four different tubs with colored food in them. “What?”

  Olivia wanted to push him away, wanted to protect him from the surprising sight of two headless bodies floating in the water—and oh God, where were the heads? It was insane. He wasn’t a child. He was a man—a very large man, who regularly saw more horrible things than decapitated fish.

  “Your fish…have lost their heads.”

  She knew the second he saw them, or at least saw part of them. His eyes widened, and his skin blanched, and he snatched up the net hanging on a small hook at the side while opening the lid of the tank.

  Olivia hung back as he dipped the net into the water, scooped up the head of a small black fish, and pulled it to the surface. He didn’t even pull it out all the way, as if doing so would kill it again.

  In the blink of an eye, everything in him hardened.

  “That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  “You think Gabriel did this?” As awful as it was, this felt more like a frat prank than gang violence.

  “Who else?” He dropped the head back into the tank before practically throwing the net back onto its hook. “The bastard wants me to know he can get to me anywhere.”

  Olivia folded her arms to stifle the sudden urge to give him a hug. She had yet to see him this upset. It unnerved her. “Do you think that’s his style? Why is he all of a sudden worried about what you’re doing?”

  “I think he’s been watching too many Godfather movies.”

  Marching back to the door, he grabbed the bag she’d left there and pawed through it, pulling out the device Tech had given them to sweep the room. He turned it on and began walking around the perimeter of the room, eyes intent on the display as he p
assed it over lamps, around the entertainment center, even along the bottom edge of the couch.

  “I think…” he turned the scanner off, satisfied that he hadn’t found anything, “…he knows we’re working together on Stacy’s case. And he’s scared. It explains why he sent thugs after Remy and Nathan this morning, why my phone is bugged. It also means we need to double the watch on Stacy’s room and make sure nobody gets to her.”

  Olivia resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. It all sounded completely plausible, except for the fact that it made no sense at all. “If he’s upset you and I are working together, why go after your fish and Remy? Because his thugs went directly for her this morning. They didn’t even spare me a second glance until I broke somebody’s nose. Not to mention that the biggest gang lord in the city does not need to fuck around with fish. Even ones with clever names.”

  “The biggest gang lord in the city doesn’t want to stop being the biggest,” he countered. “Look. Before last night, everything in my life was just hunky-dory. Then I hook up with you for this missing girls case and all of a sudden I’ve got Gabriel’s people trying to shish kebab my friends and turn my fish into Marie Antoinette. Clearly he’s afraid of us working together. Maybe each of us has information the other needs to finally put him behind bars. I don’t know. The point is, yesterday my fish were alive, and now they aren’t.”

  If she were heartless, she might have told him they were just fish. She would buy him another pair of fish. But she wasn’t heartless. After all, if she came home and discovered…

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “We have to go to my place. Now.”

  Isaac didn’t even ask for an explanation. He simply scooped up his keys, settled his hand in the small of her back and guided her out the door.

  Chapter Six

  Isaac watched her over his menu. Olivia wasn’t sure why, but he was definitely looking for something. She lowered her own menu and arched her brow. What do you want? He just smiled and shook his head before pretending to peruse his options again.