Maybe after doing it this one time she would realize it wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe she would even enjoy it and want to keep working for Promise Stone. She doubted that.
Lena hopped off the bed and went over to the bar. She took a swig of vodka hoping it would relax her and almost choked from the sting of it. She considered changing into the slinky lingerie she had purchased just for this occasion, but Amanda told her that this client wanted her in her school uniform.
She took another swig of vodka, then went around the room dimming all the lights. She went to the mirror and unbuttoned her shirt enough to see the rise of her bosom. Then she gave herself a little pep talk convincing herself that she was sexy. She also told herself that she had to do this in order to get into college.
Lena sat on the bed and awaited her client. Her legs began to tremble when in walked the same man that left her on a street corner in Southeast DC. She didn’t remember exactly what happened that night, but she did remember being in a hotel room with him one minute, then shivering on a street corner the next.
“Oh, this is my lucky day,” he slurred. To top everything off, he was drunk. If he left her on a street corner when he was sober, what would he do to her now that he was drunk?
Lena was paralyzed with fear as he pushed her down on the bed and climbed on top of her.
“Don’t be afraid little girl. I won’t hurt you.” He blew his hot stinky breath in her face as he clumsily unbuttoned her blouse with one hand and fondled her with the other. This was her worst nightmare. Last time he was so sensitive and gentle, she almost wished to have that time back again. She wouldn’t disappoint him.
He unzipped his pants and starting probing her roughly. She knew she couldn’t do this. She frantically scratched at his face and tried to free herself.
“Little girl, please don’t make me hurt you. Just do what you’re supposed to do. I paid good money for you.”
Lena fought harder. But she got nowhere. When he violently slapped her across the face, she lay stunned and unable to move.
“Good, a little cooperation,” he said when she didn’t move, thinking he had won. “Now, take me into your mouth and pretend I’m a lollipop.”
Lena gently reached her hands into his pants pretending to obey. Then she dug her nails into his penis and scratched him with all her might. He cried out in agony. She pushed him off of her and ran into the bathroom.
***
“Ms. Clark, you gotta help me, please.” Lena’s frantic voice echoed as if she were talking from an enclosed space like a bathroom. Delia heard pounding and yelling in the background.
“Lena, are you okay?”
“No, he’s crazy. He … he’s drunk. He hit me.” She started crying.
“I’m calling the police.”
“No, please don’t, Ms. Clark. Just come get me, please.”
“Where are you?”
“The Willard.”
“The Willard Hotel?”
“Room 249. Please hurry.”
Delia didn’t bother to get dressed. She squeezed her feet into a pair of sneakers while simultaneously grabbing her coat and keys. The elevator in her apartment building was out of order so she ran down the stairs.
What had Lena gotten involved in? One night she was picking her up on a dirty street corner in Southeast D.C. and the next time at one of the most extravagant hotels in the country. Delia decided that whatever she was involved in was probably too much for either of them to handle. She needed to get the police involved.
The police beat her to the scene. When she stepped off the elevator, two officers were standing near the door of room 249 speaking in hushed tones.
“Who are you?” one asked as he restrained her when she tried to enter the room.
“There’s a girl in that room. I’m her teacher. I called the police. She … she called me for help. I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“I’m very sorry. It’s too late. The girl in that room is dead.”
Chapter 25
She didn’t remember exactly, but somehow she ended up at the police station still in her cloud pajamas. A tall, dark-skinned black man handed her a cup of coffee and sat across from her.
“I know this is hard for you, Ms. Clark. We just need to ask you a few questions so we can get a better idea of what happened tonight.” His voice was deep and soothing. She wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep to the calming sound. She wanted to wake up to find that it had all been a dream. Lena hadn’t called her for help and she hadn’t failed her. She hadn’t let her get murdered. “We know you said she called you frantic and begging for help.”
Delia nodded.
“Do you remember what time that was?”
“About 2:45. I remember looking at the clock when the phone rang. And then on my way to the car, I called the police.”
The officer wrote some notes down. Delia didn’t know his name. She wondered if he had told her and she just forgot.
“Had she done anything like this before?”
She nodded again. “About two weeks ago she called me at three o’clock in the morning asking me to pick her up from Southeast. I did and she spent the rest of the night at my place. She begged me not to tell anyone so I didn’t.” Realizing how cold she suddenly felt, Delia held the steaming cup of coffee against her face and closed her eyes. She wished she could go back in time to that night. She would have driven her directly to the police instead of to her apartment. What was she thinking? Maybe all of this could have been avoided.
The officer wrote down more notes.
“Is she really dead?” Delia asked. He nodded. “How? What happened? It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes.”
“From what we can tell, Lena had locked herself in the bathroom to hide from the man she was with. After she hung up with you, he apparently burst through the door. It appears as though she was leaning on the door and the force of the intrusion sent her head-first into the bathtub. She died instantly. Unfortunately, the man escaped and with dozens of fingerprints in the hotel room there’s no way we can pinpoint a culprit.”
“Oh, God.” Delia’s stomach turned. Even though she was freezing, she began to sweat and shake. More tears formed from a seemingly endless source. “Why was she in a hotel with a man like that?”
The officer sighed. “Have you ever heard of Promise Stone?”
Her eyes expanded. “Yes, yes I have. Something about prostitution.”
“About ten years ago, it started out as a high-class escort service. But soon the clientele began requesting the services of younger and younger women. So, they started recruiting high school students. But the clientele didn’t want the run-of–the-mill high school student. They wanted the high society girls. They fulfilled some sort of sick fantasy for them. They wanted girls whose parents they could read about in the financial papers and political journals.
“The Promise Stone leaders found it difficult to turn those types of girls into prostitutes so they started trapping them. They first got them caught into cheating scandals. They helped them achieve the grades their parents and Ivy League schools expected. Once they were caught up in the cheating, they forced them into prostitution, using the fear of getting expelled from school and dishonoring their families.”
Things started to become clear for Delia. She knew Lena had somehow become involved in cheating, but she had no idea it had led to something as serious and vile as prostitution.
“The cheating couldn’t be something as obvious as changing grades in the computer system. That could be caught easily. They had to cheat at a fundamental level where it looked legitimate and couldn’t easily be traced. Have you noticed a change in Lena’s grades in your class?” Delia nodded. “Do you have any idea how she accomplished it?”
“No, the first time I noticed something strange it was on a test I gave about a month ago. The next day, I gave a different test without telling the students in advance. The results were very much the same. I have no idea how they did
it. No one knew I was giving a retest.”
“They?”
“Yeah, another girl and two boys.”
The officer scribbled down the names when Delia provided them.
“We’ve suspected Angie Morris for a while.”
“But how can the boys be involved? Are they male prostitutes?”
“It’s possible, but not likely. They’re probably the informants running the operation from the student end. This is a highly organized group that we’ve been trying to track down for years. Every time we build a case against one or two of the members, something always breaks down before we can get to the true leaders.”
For some reason Delia sighed. She was relieved to know that Chase was probably not a male prostitute. The thought repulsed her. But it still made her distraught to know that he was somehow involved in Lena’s murder.
***
“Donovan, this is getting serious. We now have a dead teenager on our hands. We’ve got to end this and soon.” Sammy paced the alley behind the Black Cat, C.J.’s regular hang out. Chase knew he was in trouble. Sammy only called him by his last name when he was extremely angry.
“I know.”
“What the hell happened tonight?” Sammy kicked over an empty beer bottle, sending shattered glass through the alley.
“I don’t know. I guess a client just snapped. He couldn’t have been a regular; we would’ve known if he had a record of violence.”
“Well, someone screwed up and big time. Why weren’t you watching her?”
“I don’t know.”
“If I find out you were fooling around with that school teacher I’ll —”
“You’ll what, Sammy? You’ll do nothing. You’ve invested two years into this. You’ve invested two years into me. You’re not gonna give up the whole operation and let another girl get killed.”
Sammy kicked the door of his car, causing a large dent in his silver Audi. He knew Chase was right. He had too much invested in this to back out now. There was too much on the line. “You have three weeks, Donovan. Three. And if I find out that teacher is making you lose focus, I’ll get rid of her for you.” He jumped into the car then sped off.
Chapter 26
Delia didn’t want to wallow in pity and sorrow. She had been doing that her entire life. She’d cried so many tears for herself, but at least she was alive. Lena wasn’t. And Delia wanted to make sure her death didn’t go unpunished. She was determined to figure out the secrets of Promise Stone.
She considered talking with Jason. She figured if anyone could tell her what it was all about, it would be their best client. But her wounds hadn’t healed. Even though she missed Lena and wanted to avenge her death, she just couldn’t bring herself to talk to her husband about his infidelities.
Delia never really confronted the fact that her husband was unfaithful. She knew he had cheated on her, with several women, but she always made excuses for him. She somehow tried to deny it or found ways to blame herself for it, as if the reason he sought love from other women was because she had failed him in some way. But there was no excuse for his addiction to prostitutes, especially if he had used underage ones as well. That was just disgusting.
One of the most difficult things she ever had to do in her life was go back to work after Lena’s murder. Several times, she nearly broke down in tears when she looked over at her desk and realized she wasn’t there.
When she dismissed the class, she did break down. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Delia,” Chase said as he gently rubbed her back. She hated that she was crying again. She hated that he was there to comfort her. Most of all, she hated that she wanted him there comforting her.
“Don’t touch me, C.J.”
Chase seemed pained by her reaction.
“Don’t touch me, speak to me, or even look at me again until you’re ready to explain some things.” Delia stood and wiped tears away from her face as she backed away from him.
“Do you know how much it hurts to see you look at me like that? Don’t you know how much I love you? Why are you still afraid of me?”
“Why? I know nothing about you. I meet you this summer and you completely sweep me off my feet. Then you do this 180 and show up in my classroom … as … as a student! A seventeen-year-old student! Then you get arrested for dealing drugs. Then you reveal all this privileged information about my husband as if you’re spying on him. I mean, how do you know that stuff?”
Chase closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
“And then you mysteriously show up around every corner and know exactly how and where and when I get attacked.”
Delia stepped towards him and physically confronted Chase or C.J. or whoever he was.
“And for that matter, how do you make A’s on everything I assign? And what do you have to do with Lena suddenly making A’s?”
“Oh my God. You think I’m responsible for Lena’s murder too, don’t you? You think I had something to do with it.”
“I don’t know what to think.” Delia turned away from him. She couldn’t look into his dark blue eyes and let him know she thought he was a murderer. A painful silence befell them. They stood there sharing space, but not sharing understanding. Finally, Delia turned around to face him, but he was gone.
***
“Sammy, I’m done. I can’t do this anymore,” Chase announced as he burst into Sammy’s office.
Sammy scrambled to shut the door so no one else would hear. “What’s this about?”
“I quit. I’m done.”
“Look, kid. I know I was hard on you. I didn’t mean to lose my cool. I was just upset about an unnecessary casualty. Don’t give up on me now. You do good work. We’re so close.”
Chase whipped off his Saxon Arms blazer and plopped into a chair.
“Is this about Delia?”
Chase didn’t respond.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should let you quit. She’s obviously distracting you.” Sammy sat behind his desk, twisted the chair around and looked out of the window.
Chase put his head in his hands. He never imagined that feelings for a woman would have this much of an effect on him. Her opinion of him mattered so much. He just couldn’t live with the thought that she saw him as a murderer. She even thought that he was the one to attack her. All he could see was the look of disgust in her eyes. But, on the other hand, he had an obligation to fulfill. An obligation that he began long before he met her. An obligation he couldn’t turn his back on.
He was dying inside. There had to be a way to make her see.
Chapter 27
“So what do we know?” Donna Lee asked, sitting Indian style on her sister’s bed. She stared at Delia as she sat at the kitchen table amidst an array of papers. Somehow, Delia had turned the whole situation into a mathematical puzzle.
“Everything leads back to Chase. He’s the center of it all.” Delia crossed her arms and sighed.
“What if he’s a cop?” Donna Lee asked suddenly. “What if he’s like undercover or something?”
Delia sighed. “I thought of that, but what are the chances? This isn’t a TV show. I mean would the police really send someone undercover in high school? That’s crazy. Plus, I saw him get arrested at school the other day.”
She’d hoped that through her detailed evaluation she’d find an explanation for Chase’s involvement and all of his lies. But she couldn’t. In fact, one of her scenarios had him as the second in command of Promise Stone after Principal Howard. Principal Howard. She suddenly had an idea. An idea that was either pure genius or downright stupidity. She could ask him out on a date or something and try to find out more about him. Maybe he could lead her to the truth since Chase was less than forthcoming.
“That’s crazy,” Donna Lee said. Apparently, Delia had been thinking out loud.
“What? You don’t think I can seduce him into talking to me?”
“Men are easy. They can be seduced by cardboard cutouts if necessary. What
’s crazy about it is that at best, this guy is a pervert who doesn’t mind his faculty getting it on with members of the student body and at worst he’s a murderer.” Donna Lee hopped off the bed and approached her sister. “Sorry, Dee, I don’t see a happy conclusion to that idea.”
“I’m not gonna put myself alone with him or anything. Dinner in a public place should suffice.”
Nobody Girl Page 15