by Hadena James
My giant team member disappeared into the office of the motel. I hated cloak and dagger stuff, but I had a feeling that was exactly what we were planning at the moment. Or rather, that was what Lucas was planning at the moment. It made me wonder what I had been planning. Had I intended to call the women on the cards and just start asking about missing women? That seemed counter-productive.
After a few minutes, Lucas came out carrying a room key. He unlocked the SUV using the fob and motioned me out. I followed him down the row of rooms. The room he had rented was the last room on the block; as far away from the office as he could get. He slipped the key into the door and I smiled. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had seen an actual room key. The door swung open and we both entered.
I have a theory that motels all shop from a catalogue. It further states that all small motels shop from the same catalogue. The pressed wood furniture looked worn and well used. The single king-size bed was the dominating feature. It was complimented with night stands that looked small and broken down. There was a square table, a rarity in rented rooms, with three chairs; the fourth side had been shoved against a wall where it was rubbing off the wall paper.
“Do we have a plan?” I asked as I settled down into a chair.
“Yes, I’m going to call and set up appointments with the women on these cards. When they arrive, we are going to interview them, pay them something for their time and send them on their way,” Lucas was already reaching for the motel phone.
“As long as you have a plan,” I closed my eyes, slumped in the chair and decided to catch a few minutes of sleep. I wasn’t Xavier, I couldn’t instantly fall asleep, but Lucas made me feel safe, so my body relaxed.
Twenty-Three
My nap lasted a little over an hour. Lucas woke me a few minutes before our first prostitute was scheduled to show up. I stood and stretched, feeling stiff from sleeping in a chair that was created to be uncomfortable. My neck popped six or seven times as I rotated it, my knees popped, my shoulder popped and one of the muscles in my back had tightened. I bent down, touching the top of my shoes with my hands, and felt all the muscles stretch. As I stood, I stifled a yawn.
“Does Gabriel know we are planning on spending some of our budget on prostitutes?” I asked as I stood back up.
“Yes,” Lucas answered.
“And?”
“He wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but agreed it was the most likely way to get information.”
I sat down and we became silent again. There was never an awkward silence with Lucas. I was as much at home with him as I was Nyleena. While I was comfortable with the rest of the guys on my team, I couldn’t claim to be as close with them. Well, maybe Xavier, but there were things I trusted Lucas with that I did not trust Xavier with.
Ten minutes passed without a word passing between Lucas and I before there was a knock on the door. Lucas stood and let a woman in.
The woman was tall, leggy, blond, fit, with small breasts and a very shapely behind. I could see why she was an escort. She was most men’s fantasy girl.
“You didn’t mention another woman,” the blond said.
“Come in,” I motioned her forward.
“It’ll be extra if you expect me to perform with her,” the blond said.
“I expect nothing of the sort. I’m asexual and he’s gay. You aren’t here for anything like that,” I said to her.
“This is a weird sting operation,” she gave me a look and shifted her gaze to Lucas.
“Abby, why don’t you sit down and we’ll explain everything,” Lucas offered her a chair next to me. Physically, I was less intimidating.
“We are with the US Marshals Serial Crimes Tracking Unit. We just want to talk to you for a few minutes about missing prostitutes and if you’ve heard anything,” I plunged right in.
“Whores going missing all the time in this town,” she gave me a skeptical look.
“Please don’t use that term. It is so derogatory and negative. I don’t like it,” I told her, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.
“What am I supposed to call them?” Abby asked.
“Prostitutes, call girls, escorts, concubines,” I suggested.
“Ok,” she gave me a weird look.
“So, one of the bodies we found in the desert, belonged to a prostitute named Jill Canter. Her street name was Jazzy Jill. Did you know her?” I asked.
“I don’t know every working girl in the city,” Abby lit a cigarette. I watched the smoke curl up.
“That’s a no then?” I continued after I got over my urge to light up with her.
“No, I didn’t know her.”
“What about other girls that you know that have gone missing?” Lucas asked. He had slipped into psychologist mode. His voice was soft and polite, his face unreadable, his fingers were steepled together and his eyes were kind.
“There are a lot of missing girls,” Abby sighed. “Look, I have work to do.”
Lucas moved, pulling a one-hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and placing it on the table in front of him.
“I realize that time really is money to you,” I said softly. “We really need some information and we’ll pay you for the twenty or thirty minutes you spend with us.”
Abby looked at the hundred for a couple of heartbeats. Finally, her defensive posture relaxed and she flicked her ashes into the ashtray with less vehemence.
“We are not interested in busting you for what you do. I think your job is necessary and shouldn’t be stigmatized. I think it should be legal all across the country. We just need information about missing women, we’d like to stop this guy from killing more,” I told her.
“I’ve heard about you guys,” Abby said after another few heartbeats.
“Good or bad?” I smiled at her.
“Good. I don’t know that I can help, but I’ll try.”
“Great,” I nodded at her. “So, missing girls?”
“There are dozens of missing girls. Some have moved on, gone to other places, Vegas can make you money, but it is really easy to get busted and ruin an entire night or more of work. Mostly, we deal with tourists, but on occasion, we get locals. Some of the others have just disappeared from the face of the earth,” Abby looked at me. “What’s your name?”
“Aislinn Cain,” I answered. “Do you know anything about the missing girls?”
“Not really. I had a friend who went for a modeling job and never came back. I reported her missing, but the Las Vegas Police Department isn’t concerned about a missing who...” She paused. “A missing prostitute. They have other things to do, like drink coffee and film TV shows.”
“Did your friend say where the modeling job was?” I asked.
“No, just that someone had approached her on the street about modeling for him. She said something strange though, she said it wouldn’t make her famous, but the money would be good and hundreds of men already saw her naked, a different way of oogling her made no difference.”
“And you don’t know what she meant by that?” I asked again.
“No, but there are all kinds of crackpots here. Guys who want to take our pictures or video or have us model weird things for them. A month or so ago, I was asked to model costumes based on a TV show and when some of the conventions happen, it gets even weirder. I was once asked to wear a Star Trek uniform.”
“Sounds like fun,” I frowned. “When did your friend go missing?”
“Four months ago,” Abby said. “The police told me she had probably moved. But she wouldn’t have done that without telling me.”
“Ok,” Lucas slid the hundred to her. “We’ll see what we can do to get the locals onto her disappearance. We appreciate your time.”
“Are you really going to look for her?” Abby took the money and stared at it.
“Technically, we can’t,” I answered. “But we can set a fire under the asses of the locals to make them look for her. If we find a large enough pattern, we can involve the FBI or if we can
find some connection that gives us the possibility of a serial killer, we can personally handle it.”
“The last one seems like a bad deal,” Abby stood and pocketed the hundred.
“Yes, it does,” Lucas said to her. Abby stood there for a few minutes, sighed loudly and left. I lit a cigarette as soon as she was out the door.
“Well?” Lucas asked.
“Well what?” I asked back.
“What do you think?”
“I think that one missing prostitute going to see someone about modeling doesn’t really help us. The fact that there are dozens of missing prostitutes might though.”
“Actually, it probably doesn’t. Prostitutes go missing all the time. They move, they get disfigured by violent Johns and pimps, they find a less stigmatized line of work, they die of drug overdoses, they are killed by violent pimps and Johns, sometimes, they just fall off the face of the earth. Prostitution is not like Pretty Woman.”
“I am aware. They have been easy prey for thousands of years. However, in a city like this, why do so many go missing?”
“Because there are so many,” Lucas sounded sad. “The next one will be here soon. Her name is Star.”
“Is that her real name?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Beats me,” Lucas answered.
More silence followed as we waited. I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray. I didn’t know if the smoking room was for me or for the working girls that were going to be streaming through and I didn’t care. I was just grateful to not have Xavier badgering me about wearing patches. There were small squares of irritated skin on both arms. I had taken off the patch yesterday morning and not put another one on. My cigarette cravings were getting worse as a result.
Lucas seemed to have allotted forty-five minutes for each woman. We went through another six before a robust woman walked in wearing what I expected a prostitute to wear. She was in a tube top, short shorts and high heels. The others had all been dressed sexy, but nice. This one was not like the others.
“No one said anything about a woman, I don’t do women,” she said as she heaved herself onto the bed.
“You won’t be ‘doing’ either of us,” Lucas said. “We’re US Marshals and uninterested in your services or your trade. We just need to ask you some questions about missing prostitutes in Vegas.”
“Is this some kind of sting?” She narrowed her eyes and glared at me.
“No,” I responded.
“Good, ‘cause you suck at it,” she said.
“What’s your name, your real name?” I asked, ignoring her decision that we were incompetent.
“You don’t need that.”
“Well, I’m not calling you Tinkerbelle, so we need something to go on,” I told her. Her face card proclaimed her name to be Tinkerbelle Fey. The joke wasn’t lost on me, but she looked nothing like Tinkerbelle or a fairy, in my opinion. She did kind of remind me of Anna Paquin, if Ms. Paquin put on seventy pounds, dyed her hair platinum and talked like she was from the slums of New York.
“That’s your problem,” Tinkerbelle Fey said to me. I sighed heavily and counted to ten, determined not to strangle her. She’d been in the room less than five minutes and had my hackles up.
“Did you hear about the bodies found in Death Valley?” I started.
“Yes,” she said, blowing a bubble with her chewing gum. It was a weird pet peeve, but I hated gum.
“Ok, one of them was a prostitute and most likely a victim of a serial killer. We are investigating the serial killer. Do you know any prostitutes that have gone missing lately?” I said it slowly, trying not to let my agitation show.
“Honey, pros go missing all the time. Nobody gives a shit, including other pros, it just means more business for those that are left,” she informed me.
The urge to strangle her resurfaced. I looked at my hands, folded calmly on the table, belying exactly how I felt. Lucas jumped in to rescue me from the spiraling situation.
“We do not feel that way. We are just interested in any information you might have on missing prostitutes. Do you know any that have gone missing?” Lucas asked.
“I know dozens that have gone missing over the years. Some quit the business, some move to other cities with better pay and more normal Johns, some have gotten dead by their pimp or a John that is now locked up. We aren’t exactly considered important members of society,” she said the last sentence with disdain. That was something I could relate with; I understood the reasoning behind having prostitution and I considered it a societal necessity. My opinion was, of course, in the minority, but I was used to that.
“Do any stand out as being strange or different?” Lucas pressed.
“Not really. As I said, some move on, some die.”
My urge to strangle her was being replaced by an urge to beat my own head against the table. It was in her manner of speech, her indifference to what we were trying to find out and my own intolerance. I realized all of this and floundered helplessly to figure out what to do.
“None of them disappeared under mysterious circumstances?” I nearly pleaded.
“Well, maybe a few. A few over the years have talked about being approached by a guy about modeling. He’d give them his card, they’d go model and then they’d disappear. The weird part isn’t the modeling or the guy, it was the pros. They weren’t pretty. They were plain. I could never figure out why they were being asked to model and the beauties, like me, weren’t.”
Lucas thanked her, paid her and watched as she left. I put my head on the table.
“Would you consider our victim, Jill, to be plain?” Lucas asked.
“What?” The question caught me off guard.
“Jill, would you consider her plain? Her photos never showed her with anything special, no funky hair, no long, daggerish nails, just pretty in a natural way.”
“I suppose so,” I sat up and frowned at him.
“Maybe these ‘plain’ prostitutes were his type,” Lucas seemed to be reflecting. “That’s three prostitutes that have mentioned their friends disappearing after being offered a modeling job. I wonder if we can find pictures of all of them.”
“I’m sure there are booking photos for most. Casinos hate competition,” I said.
“Is that why prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas?”
“Yes. It was originally given consideration in Vegas, but the mob bosses that ruled the city at the time, figured it would cut into their legitimate businesses. Now, it would cut into them even further. If you are spending money on call girls and concubines, you aren’t gambling it away,” I stood.
“We still have some interviews.”
“Shit,” I sat back down and waited for the others.
Twenty-Four
On the way back to our regular hotel, Lucas and I stopped for breakfast. We’d found a pattern of women who went to model and never returned. Lucas was optimistic. I wasn’t. It might be a pattern, probably was, if I was being completely honest, but none of them had known the “who” behind the modeling jobs. They knew model seeker paid well and seemed to randomly approach women, not interested in sex, but in capturing their beauty.
Whatever deep thoughts this caused Lucas was beyond me. To me it said serial killer pattern, but we still had just a little more than zero. The sun had come up while we were interviewing and Gabriel had called to say they were headed back out to talk to homeless people. I was glad for the breakfast and the reprieve from talking to the homeless.
It wasn’t the smell, prostitutes wore too much perfume, which put them into the same category as the homeless; they both smelled badly. It wasn’t their mannerisms or behavior; I dealt with all kinds of people in my line of work. It wasn’t even that they were homeless. For whatever reason, there was just something about them that made me uncomfortable.
My day spent interviewing them had just solidified my discomfort with the homeless. My night spent interviewing prostitutes had been more my speed. A few had irritated me for whatever personal pet pee
ve they were trampling on, but they hadn’t made me uncomfortable and most had been personable enough. They understood there was something wrong with me after a few moments and adjusted to it. That was sort of what they did. Despite Lucas’s protests, I thought there were a lot similarities between being a prostitute and being a psychologist.
“That card you grabbed for evidence from the politician’s house, did it have an address?” Lucas asked as I was half way through my plate of meager breakfast foods that I could eat.
“I think so,” I said.
“He is a favorite artist of Trevor’s. I’d like to get something for him before we go, but it is nearly impossible to get a piece from a gallery.”
“I think there was also a phone number on it.”
“I think it would be better to just show up. I hear he’s a bit of a recluse and has been since his wife died a couple of decades ago.”
“When are you going to find the time to go art shopping?” I asked.
“We are going after breakfast. As a reward for our night spent with the working girls of Las Vegas, we have the day to sleep. We can swing into Henderson, grab some art and go back to the hotel for a couple of hours of sleep.”
“I don’t shop.”
“I thought you found the sculpture on the card interesting?”
“I did. It was titled something like ‘Agony or Ecstasy.’ It was interesting.” I paused. “I think he did the painting at the hospital as well. The two vaguely have things in common that I would say are unique to artists.”
“Great, so art shopping after breakfast.”
“And if he won’t let us in?”
“At least I tried.”
We finished in silence. Back in the car, Lucas got the address of the reclusive artist whose name I had already forgotten. The phone conversation completed, we began the drive to Henderson.