Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  A hundred campuses hit overnight.

  There’s something happening here. No doubt about it.

  Chapter Five

  Roarke strode into the concrete monolith of the San Francisco Federal Building, in the heart of downtown. Flashed his Bureau ID to the guard in the giant bulletproof glass cube in the blue-veined marble lobby. Rode the elevator up and stepped out into the gleaming corridor, lined with framed newspapers and photos depicting the history of the Bureau. Walked past the windows with their views of the Bay—always breathtakingly beautiful—and the seedy squalor of the Tenderloin.

  He paused for a breath in the outer office of his Special Agent in Charge. And he forced himself to relax, to remember his circumstances. The publicity from the case he had cracked open last month—almost in spite of himself—had gone viral. He was returning a hero. He was walking into his SAC’s office holding all the cards.

  He opened the door with confidence.

  It all began so well. Reynolds behind his wide desk, intently listening as Roarke paced the office, laying out the proposal for his task force.

  The first step was a complete overhaul of ViCAP, the Bureau’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The database was supposed to have revolutionized law enforcement, especially in regard to sexual assault cases. Unlike Canada’s successful version of the same program, it still hadn’t happened. Out of 18,000 police agencies in the US, only about 1,400 currently participated in the ViCAP system. Far less than one percent of violent crimes were ever reported to the database.

  So Roarke’s first priority was to get ViCAP up to speed.

  The second, but simultaneous, action would be to tackle the national rape kit backlog. Hundreds of thousands of rape kits, with crucial DNA evidence that could convict tens of thousands of serial offenders, currently sat unprocessed in police labs across the country. The case he’d just solved, the horrific attack on fourteen-year-old Ivy Barnes, abducted, raped, and burned alive, might very well never have happened if the rape kits of two previous victims had been tested and entered into the ViCAP system. Roarke wanted a national clearinghouse for rape kit processing. He knew his teammate, Antara Singh, could really sink her teeth into that one.

  He spelled these first two pillars out for Reynolds, and concluded with the third aim.

  “On our own turf, I want to shift the focus of the team. Use RICO laws to pursue and prosecute traffickers. If there’s anything we learned from the killings in Oakland and the Tenderloin, it’s that there’s nowhere near enough law enforcement focus on trafficking. At present the only nationwide task force dealing with domestic sex trafficking is Operation Cross Country, a once-a-year sweep.”

  Last year’s OCC action had resulted in the recovery of 82 children being victimized by prostitution, and the arrest of 239 pimps. Less than a drop in a bucket of filth.

  No, it’s not enough. Nothing could be enough.

  “There needs to be a year-round task force. A dedicated unit here in the Bay Area will mean more resources, higher penalties, more kids rescued, more pimps put away for so long that the gangs, cartels, and independents will start thinking long and hard about going into the racket.”

  He took a breath. “And, most importantly, we can be a pilot program for other field offices. And branch out to work with other organizations like Thorn, Polaris, MISSSEY, and Children of the Night, who are using innovative strategies to combat trafficking online and in the streets.”

  And there was so much more to do. Taking Social Services and the juvenile justice system to task, aggressively prosecuting abusers of all kinds, from parents to pimps to law enforcement officials.

  But it was all possible.

  His team was the best he could hope for. Special Agent Damien Epps, the most moral man he’d met in his life. Street cred. Uncanny instincts. True outrage about the evil that men do.

  Special Agent Antara Singh. A brilliant tech expert, researcher, and analyst. India-born, Cambridge-educated, with a keen perception of the international issues of trafficking.

  Crime scene techs Lam and Stotlemyre, supervising the forensic aspects of the task force’s investigations. Coordinating the overhaul of ViCAP.

  Roarke hoped as well to recruit his old mentor, retired Special Agent Chuck Snyder, as the task force’s go-to profiler.

  When Roarke had finished speaking, Reynolds nodded for a long time. “I’m extremely impressed, Matt. You’ve put a lot of thought into this. You’re addressing systemic failures and it’s all sound. More than sound.”

  Already Roarke was tensing up. He could feel the “but” coming.

  “Sir, I appreciate that—” he began.

  “But before we get into more specifics, I’d like to know what you saw over there in Berkeley this morning. Is this Bitch?”

  Roarke tried to keep his voice even. “All due respect—that’s not what I’m here to discuss. You know my conditions for coming back.”

  “I do,” his boss assured him. “But I’m getting pressure to investigate these campus attacks.” He opened a manila file, and Roarke looked down at a stack of faxed photographs. A spray-painted stencil of Santa Muerte stared up at him. “They were nationwide, but they were particularly concentrated in California, so—”

  Roarke couldn’t wait for him to finish. “Bottom line—it’s vandalism. I don’t know why we’re even—”

  Now Reynolds spoke over him. “The Bureau is extremely concerned with cyberterrorism right now, and this was a coordinated attack, organized online, through social media and encrypted accounts. It’s clearly the opening gambit in a protracted action, if we don’t move to shut it down.”

  Roarke had to force himself not to answer in anger.

  If the Bureau is so concerned with cyberterrorism, where was it during the election, when democracy was being hacked by a totalitarian power?

  He thought it, but didn’t say it. It was one of the ongoing questions of the new world order.

  He was silent for a moment, forcing himself calm. And then he spoke again.

  “There’s only one reason I’m coming back on, and that’s the task force.”

  “And you’ll get your task force. This vandalism . . . this action,” Reynolds was struggling to name it, “this is now. This is top priority. You know the potential players. You have the contacts. There’s no one else in the country more prepared to handle it. And we need to handle it, before . . .”

  “Before what?”

  His boss paused. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  No one has seen anything like it before. But the protests are only a reaction to a government that no one in the US has ever seen before.

  “What do these campuses expect us to do?” Roarke asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  Reynolds started, “They know we’re familiar with the organization Bitch—”

  “My team ceased investigating the organization in December, when Cara Lindstrom was arrested. It was never a full investigation to begin with, just an avenue of inquiry. But that’s beside the point.” Roarke pointed to the file of photographs on the SAC’s desk. “Since when is tagging a federal crime?”

  “The campus boards say it’s creating a climate of fear.”

  Roarke laughed. He couldn’t help it. At the same time, he felt the familiar sick churning in his gut, the sense that they were living in a system turned on its head.

  He gathered himself and spoke as evenly as he could. “So for decades these campuses have been covering up rapes, protecting rapists, intimidating the victims into silence—or in some cases, suicide—and never once have those campuses asked for federal help to deal with their rape problem. But there’s a rash of graffiti—and suddenly they want federal intervention?”

  “The administrators claim other students also feel threatened.”

  “Only if they’re rapists.” Roarke didn’t even try to keep the edge out of his voice. “The message is pretty clear: don’t rape. The answer is pretty clear, too. These c
ampuses could get rid of the problem by expelling the rapists.” He stared at his supervisory agent. “You’re not seriously suggesting we get involved with this.”

  Reynolds lifted his hands, placating. “All I’m asking is that you go down to Santa Barbara for a day or two.”

  Despite himself, Roarke was curious. “Why Santa Barbara?” If the protests had been all over the country . . .

  “The situation there is—elevated. It’s the only campus where a couple of students were actually attacked.”

  “Attacked how?”

  “That’s one of the details I hope you’ll be able to clear up.”

  Roarke had the sense the SAC had just evaded the question, but the older man continued. “It’s a simple job. Go down there, find out what happened, see if there’s anything to it.” He spread his hands, appealing. “You know how this works, Matt. You give a little to get a lot.”

  The implication was clear: do this and I’ll support your task force.

  So that’s it. The offer I can’t refuse. Roarke had to hold down the surge of resentment. Go along to get along.

  He was blindingly angry when he left the SAC’s office.

  He slammed into his office and indulged himself in a way he rarely did, by kicking the side of his desk. It felt so painfully good he turned and punched the wall.

  Then he caught sight of Singh, standing outside the window of his office. Her shimmering dark hair, luminous, her watching dark eyes. Still as only Singh could be.

  He had no doubt that she’d seen his outburst.

  She met his gaze. Then she quietly opened the door and closed it behind her. “Not good news, then.”

  He shook his head. His breath felt like an animal trapped in his chest, clawing to get out. He turned away from her and gripped the windowsill, staring out. “Of all the fucking jerk-off assignments. Now. Now, when . . .”

  His memories closed in on him: fresh, raw, agonizing.

  Ivy Barnes. Laura Huell. Jade Lauren. Marlena Sanchez.

  The young rape victims he had come to know over the last two months. Girls who had been abused beyond his comprehension, and betrayed by the very systems charged to protect them.

  He’d sworn to himself, sworn to them, that he was not going to leave these kids to fight It on their own.

  The sense of urgency was back, more oppressive than ever. Running out of time. Your days are numbered.

  He was on the verge of walking straight out again and never coming back. Instead, he summoned himself.

  I owe them this.

  “Get Epps,” he told Singh. “Tell him we’re taking an early lunch. Meet me in the plaza.”

  The agents met up in the Civic Center Plaza—a Beaux-Arts square surrounded by the classical architecture of the City Hall, the state building, the library—and walked its octagonal paths past pigeons and wandering homeless.

  Singh and Epps strode side by side, professionally formal, not touching, yet moving in tandem. They had been a couple for months, at first staying completely under the radar. Now they had submitted a domestic partner declaration to the Bureau, with Roarke’s complete approval. But their conduct on the job was impeccable.

  The agents bought coffee and street tacos from a food truck and sat on a bench along the alley of pollarded sycamore trees. By unspoken agreement they fell silent any time a pedestrian passed nearby.

  Roarke could pretend to himself that this outdoor meeting was to clear his head.

  The truth was he no longer felt safe to speak in his own office.

  It was a sign of the new Not Normal—an extraordinary sense of paranoia that Roarke’s team could feel even a continent away in California.

  There was a cloud permeating the whole Bureau. FBI officials in Washington were being overtly pressured by the administration to back “alternative” versions of events, to deny the White House’s ties to Russia and the Russian influence on the election itself. The administration had the whole intelligence community in its sights. No one knew who might be collaborating.

  How quickly democracy fails.

  At least Roarke had his team. It was just him, Singh, and Epps, now. They’d recently lost their newest member. Special Agent Ryan Jones was young, hungry. When Roarke had taken his indefinite leave of absence, Jones had requested a transfer. Roarke understood perfectly, wished him well. Roarke himself hadn’t intended to be back, ever, so why wouldn’t Jones move on to a more conventional arrangement?

  It was for the best. He hadn’t had the chance to fully know Jones. An ambitious agent was susceptible to the attention and promises of his superiors.

  Whereas Epps and Singh, he would trust with his life.

  And even that. That’s the way I’m thinking now.

  What have we come to?

  Is this the end of America? Is it?

  He put his chaotic thoughts aside and gave his agents a terse version of the meeting. Even outdoors, this far away from the Federal Building, he was speaking in a hushed voice, wary of passersby.

  Before he’d finished he could feel Epps seething.

  “So that’s the deal,” Roarke ended. “Not in those words, but—no task force, not even a discussion of it, until we handle this investigation of whatever the hell it was that went down last night.”

  The men both glanced automatically to Singh, knowing she would have the latest.

  She nodded, always centered, always serene. “I have been monitoring the reports that have been coming in all morning. There have been over three hundred campuses hit. All in the same night.”

  “Holy mother . . .” Epps murmured in disbelief—and admiration.

  Roarke had to admit he was stunned by the scope of the—Action? Protest? Demonstration? He was having as much trouble naming it as Reynolds had been.

  “It is astonishing,” Singh agreed. “Less than two months ago, we saw Bitch turn out over a thousand women to protest Cara Lindstrom’s arrest. That number is not especially unusual for San Francisco. But that was before the inauguration, and the Women’s March.”

  The protests in January, the ones Roarke had missed, the Women’s March demonstrations, had changed everything. The day after the inauguration, an unprecedented number of women, men, and children had poured into the streets. In city after city across the country, there had been such a mass of humanity there was no way to police it. It had been the largest political protest in America, ever. Three to four million people, all told.

  Astoundingly, there had been no violence, no arrests. But it was still early days. The marches had shown the size of the opposition.

  How many ways could that energy be harnessed?

  The administration had cracked down immediately. In eighteen states, more every day, laws were being proposed and expedited that would severely curtail peaceful protest. The legislation had been started in Southern states in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of the fall, but now more states were jumping on that bandwagon, ramming harsh legislation through—even one law that would decriminalize killing a protester with a vehicle, if that protester was blocking traffic. A law like that was nothing less than an open invitation for a certain element to commit vehicular manslaughter.

  And now Bitch had responded with an escalation of its own.

  Singh concluded, “I believe it is clear what higher-ups are really afraid of. The sheer scope of Bitch’s action is worrisome. A nationwide, coordinated blitz attack that is not simple protest, but something more actively threatening.”

  Given the current political landscape, Roarke could hardly blame the protesters. But Singh was right. What was alarming about this campus-centered vandalism was the consistent symbolism of it. The skull, the hanging dummies, the focus on rapists. It was on point, it was an overt threat of violence, and it continued to coalesce, even anthropomorphize, around the mythic force of Santa Muerte.

  Now that Roarke was recovering from the sting of the setback, he had to admit that there might be some merit in assigning him and the team to investigate.r />
  He asked, “Why do you think Bitch targeted campuses? Why that focus, particularly?”

  Epps was the first to answer. “Because it worked. They sure as fuck got their message out there. But I’m not the one to explain it.”

  Both men looked to Singh.

  She took her time, answering slowly. “I would say that there was already a large network of activists to tap into. Before the election there had been a surge of grassroots activism. A coalition of young women who have survived sexual assault only to be victimized again through the legal and university systems. Young women willing to make a stand, to fight their rapists and their college administrations for justice. Hundreds of these young women. On hundreds of campuses. With a tech and social media savvy unprecedented in the history of protest.”

  Roarke nodded, intent.

  “And now there is the added, profound distress of the election, the normalization of sexual assault by the most powerful of our leaders, in the very highest offices of the land. And those lawsuits these young women have worked so hard for, against such odds, are in peril because of the new regime. The new secretary of education has so far refused to commit to taking these lawsuits forward. So, Bitch knew that there was anger and youth to be tapped into. There was—there is—a willing and able army.”

  She looked at the men with her dark and luminous eyes. “It seems a perfectly obvious move, does it not?”

  Roarke stared at her, unnerved. “That sounds like war.”

  “Yes,” she answered softly. “I believe it is a declaration of war.”

  Chapter Six

  It is not even dusk when she sees her, so it cannot be blamed on the shadows, or a trick of the light.

  She stands on a rise, looking down on Cara. The skeleton girl.

  Forever fourteen. Flesh burned away, down to her bones.

  The specter of Ivy Barnes. A girl from her past. Abducted by a monster, a vicious predator, one of the worst incarnations of It she has ever encountered. Raped, burned alive, miraculously surviving, her flesh eaten by fire.

  She will not come near, but she watches Cara as she gathers kindling for the stove.