by Alex Gates
“Could have fooled me.”
Harding seemed amused at least. I preferred a whiskey in his hand to a loaded gun. “I’m saving you from yourself, before any more of your mistakes end in bloodshed.”
“What mistakes?”
“Your opinion of me.”
I sat backwards, the driver behind me. Harding had extended the privacy glass, and the interior windows were tinted dark. A few cars and streetlights pierced the darkness, but I couldn’t see the roads or where we headed.
“Why don’t you make it easy then?” I said. “Tell me how I got it wrong and confess.”
“Confess to what?”
“You killed Baby Hope. You raped the girls from Grayson House. And you attempted to murder Hannah Beaumont.”
Harding didn’t blink. “I didn’t murder the infant. The rape—I assure you—was mutual. And Hannah’s accident was orchestrated by my political consultants—Connolly, Travers, and Rowe.”
“Oh, of course. You’re completely innocent.”
“I never said that. In fact, I was a fool to trust CTR and what they’d promised me.”
“Which was?”
“Power. The senate race. Connections to every rich, powerful, and elite member of Pennsylvania’s society.”
“And all it took was ruining the lives and bodies of a few teenage girls.”
“Oh, trust me. More lives have been ruined than what those crack-whores did to themselves.” He lowered his drink, his hand tightening on the glass. Condensation beaded over his fingers. “Ten months ago, during my election campaign, I signed with CTR as a consulting firm to help grow my brand, improve my numbers, and secure my senate seat.”
“It worked.”
“Just as they’d intended.” He met my gaze. “They’re blackmailing me, Detective.”
How honest was the devil?
In this moment, he seemed sincere. But I’d been charmed by his attractiveness before. His blue eyes, a dimpled smile, and broad shoulders had fooled me once. I wasn’t about to fall victim to him again.
“Richard Connolly and John Rowe are old, present in the company in name only. Kent Travers, however, is as shrewd as he is dangerous. He deals in favors and expects payment in blood. He’s a man who is everyone’s enemy and greatest ally.” He paused. “Unfortunately, he’s gifted in politics and a necessary evil for any campaign. I thought he learned his skills through experience. I was wrong. His only talent is amassing files on all of his opponents and clients. If information is power, he’s memorized the nuclear codes.”
Now I understood. “And he’ll be your patsy for this crime?”
Harding scowled. “You don’t know how hard I’ve worked to keep you alive tonight. If you had any sense, you’d thank me for my kindness and keep your mouth shut until you realize just how fucked we really are.”
I gestured around the car. “The doors are locked. I’m not going anywhere. But I’m sure that’s just your preferred foreplay.”
“Kent Travers has worked with Charles Geralt for years, using his facilities for private, discreet political fundraisers and events. Geralt earns his money by supplying the party favors for CTR’s more discerning clients.”
“The girls.”
“Yes.”
“So, it’s all CTR’s fault that the girls from Grayson House are being exploited.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t know a damn thing about what was going on at your benefits and fundraisers?”
“Everyone knew. Don’t be so naïve, London. Everyone knew, from the commanding officers in your department to the judges on the bench to hell…even folks in the FBI.” He caught my glance with a raised eyebrow. “Stories pass around. Opportunities become available. Every man is tempted now and again. The deeper the pockets, the greater the curiosity. Money can buy more than just fancy houses, cars, and political seats. It buys experiences.”
“Those girls aren’t experiences. They’re people.”
“They’re whores. Whores with no name, no families, and absolutely no consequences for taking them in every sick and twisted manner these men can imagine.”
“You’re a monster.”
“You know it’s true. Hell, you see it every day in your line of work.”
“But I don’t indulge in it—I do everything I can to stop it. Something you can’t understand.”
Harding laughed. “How could I have stopped it? These men—my patrons and supporters—wanted more. More girls. More time with them. More chances to act out those perverted fantasies that only a young body with dead eyes can provide. And Travers knew that. He was more than willing to provide them…at a cost.”
“Which was?”
“Surveillance footage. Photographs and videos. Evidence of their wrongdoing.”
I frowned. “Is it too much to hope that he’s an undercover agent for the FBI?”
Harding laughed, a rich and melodic sound that must have endeared him to so many people.
“He acts on his own reconnaissance. Keeps those images and naughty little mementos for his own gains. And, when the time is right, and he needs a favor—money, a phone call, a particular vote in the senate…” His eyebrows rose. “He sends the scrapbook.”
“How many people does he have blackmailed?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Then what’s he got on you?”
He didn’t break eye contact. “Sex with a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“Rape.” I corrected. “The rape of a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember it.”
“That’s not gonna fly in court.”
Harding didn’t react. “I was drugged, Detective. Something in my drink. They put her in my bed, and I didn’t know her name, where she’d come from, or how old she was. They videoed what transpired.”
“The rape.”
“From what I can tell…” He had the decency to look shamed. “It was not violent.”
“She was fifteen.”
“And only Kent Travers knew that. They took the video and the pictures, and, from that moment forward, I worked for CTR, and not the other way around.”
I gripped the seats, holding tight to the door’s handle while we made a turn. More circles. Doubling around the same intersection. Apparently, we had no destination in mind.
Unless he planned to kill me once he confessed his sins.
I nodded. “What about the other girls?”
“What other girls?”
“The ones you raped.”
“Why would I have needed to rape any other child? I’m happily married, Detective. And Travers had everything he needed. I avoided the girls.” He sipped his whiskey. “Until months later…when I learned Emily Casco gave birth to my child.”
Jesus Christ. “Your child?”
“Of course.”
“Hope is your baby?”
“Why do you think I followed the story? Why do you think I surveyed the hospital, paid for her bills, picked her foster family?” Harding’s voice tightened, strained over a concealed rage. “Christ, Geralt and his braindead administration managed the girls. They didn’t even realize she was pregnant. Between the drugs and the parties Geralt forced her to attend, she didn’t show until it was too late. CTR had to pay good money for an abortion, but on the day of the procedure, the girls escaped.”
“They wanted to keep the baby as proof of the rape,” I said.
“You give them too much credit,” he said. “These are girls with no education or home life. As I’ve said before—there are no values in this damn city anymore. They weren’t trying to prosecute us. They wanted the baby, especially when they realized what Geralt and CTR would do to her.” He leaned back, ice clinking in his glass. “My associates were willing to let them go, figuring they’d find some dirty needle in a back alley and finish what they’d started a year ago. Everything was fine…until the story of an abandoned baby hit the news. Suddenly Baby Hope threatened everything Tra
vers had built.”
The words sickened me. “And you killed her.”
Harding took offense to the charge. “I didn’t kill the baby. I saved her.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“London, Hope is alive.”
“You’re a sick son of a bitch,” I said. “Why would you lie about her?”
“It’s the truth. Travers attempted to kill my daughter to ensure he wouldn’t be implicated if the prostitution ring came to light.”
I didn’t dare to hope. “So, you took the baby?”
“I had to. London, you misjudge me.” His smile grew. “She’s my child.”
“And a piece of evidence that you can use to control Kent Travers.”
“Now you’re getting it. Here.” He picked up his phone, dialing a number. He spoke softly. “Show her to me.”
The screen flickered, and he handed me the phone. The FaceTime revealed a darkened room—a nursery painted pink and blue. An ornate, white crib was pushed against a wall. Inside, a little bundle soundly slept.
Hope.
The world crashed around me, and the relief threatened to burst my chest. I stared at Harding, not daring to let my defenses down.
“Your men were inside the foster home,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes. And my influence with Assistant Chief Esposto closed the damn case and signed the death certificate. CTR believed the baby was dead until you made a ridiculous mess of things. You exposed us. Nearly ruined everything.” He let the irritation slip away. “But I will thank you.”
“…Why?”
“Because without you, I couldn’t see the way out.” He grinned. “I have a proposition for you, Detective.”
“The answer’s no.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be inclined to agree.” He poured me a drink I didn’t ask for and handed to me. I took it if only to have a bit of glass as a weapon. “I have the baby in my possession, hidden, of course. Safe. Travers can’t use her against me now, but he still has the video and photographs of me in bed with Emily Casco. He knows that I am willing to compromise.”
“So, what do you need me for?”
“I want you to mediate.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because that’s how you will save the girls from Grayson House.”
Oh, the evening went from disaster to suicidal without the comfort of a knife against my wrists.
“How would I get the girls back?”
Harding seemed confident. I didn’t know if that was good for me or terrible for us all.
“We’re ending everything tonight. We walk away—from the conspiracy and each other. Mutually assured destruction is merely the opportunity for freedom. The baby is safe. Once Travers releases the blackmail material, I’ll have no reason to encourage Chief Graziani to move forward with the investigation into the Grayson House. Reissing was no fool. In his will, he left me the proof of every payment Geralt made to him in exchange for sentencing the girls to the facility. I’ll take my photos, Geralt will receive the evidence of his crimes, and you will allow Travers to walk away free of handcuffs.” He clinked his glass against mine. “Everyone wins.”
“That’s not how this works,” I said. “These girls were being abused. They deserve justice.”
Harding didn’t care. “We are beyond the scope of justice, London. Instead of investigating cases you will never solve and forever sleeping with one eye open…why not take the gift that is given? If you want those girls to live, you do as I say.”
What choice did I have? The teenagers had suffered enough. They deserved their freedom just as much as the men who’d abused them deserved prison. Despite how evil these men were, despite the absolute injustice of rapist and child abusers, murderers and thieves walking free…
I would never have forgiven someone if they’d put the law over my freedom while I so desperately prayed for rescue.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“Everything I tell you to do, London.” He finished his whiskey in a quick guzzle. “Tonight, we put an end to this insanity.”
28
“It’s wise to be afraid…”
-Him
Carrie Furnace had been abandoned for decades.
And tonight, Senator Harding’s campaign promise came true. Young girls would have an opportunity for a new life, blessed by the industry of the past, present, and future.
But the rusting, deteriorating, collapsing blast furnace on the Monongahela River was no one’s salvation. It stood as a monument to Pittsburgh’s steel-forging history, a monolith of jagged walkways, overgrown ore yards, and stripped railways. The bellies of six, one-hundred-foot-tall stoves once hungered for a constant stream of fuel. Now starved, they rotted in a wind-swept silence, towering over an empty, destroyed lot.
Once, it had never slept, never stopped, never let the arrogant night encroach on the streams of flashing embers and leaping sparks from poured, molten iron.
As one of the last-standing but derelict furnaces in the city, it became the forsaken industry’s eternal tombstone.
But I wouldn’t let it become mine.
The limo bumbled over a graveled and gritty path that once served the furnace, popping through the sprouting weeds and crumbling potholes. Harding removed his phone from his pocket but only offered me a pitiful flashlight, hardly larger than my palm. Neither would do much against the descending darkness that cloaked the riverside facility in absolute isolation.
“I used this location as the cornerstone of my reelection campaign.” Harding waited for his driver to open the car door. I slipped out next to him, my gut churning as the night stole the path, the buildings, everything…save for the outline of ore shoots and walkways, hoppers and a huge, metal framework twisting into the clouded sky. “Revitalization, London. That’s what my plan has always encompassed. New technologies. Old values.”
“It’s been paved in blood,” I said. “And built on the backs of those innocent girls.”
“They’re not innocent.”
“But they don’t deserve the rape and brutality.”
“Then we will right all the wrongs together.” He flicked the flashlight on his phone and offered a cold smile. “Follow my instructions, and the girls will be free of Grayson House and will serve their sentences in a high-security facility, as you’d prefer.”
“They’d be safer there.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Follow me.”
How could he know where he was going?
Darkness tangled in the weeds and uneven brick that led into the lair of the furnace. I swept the light over the nearest building. The cast house, though I only knew the label from a local TV documentary that rotated shows on Pittsburgh landmarks. I regretted only paying attention to the show on Kennywood and other amusement parks. The Carrie Furnace complex stretched for over one hundred acres, twisting in rusted machinery, abandoned rail lines, and the echoes of the past.
They’d hide a body here with no problem.
Multiple.
This was a great location for a murder, but a better place to bargain with lives, blood, and the fate of girls already lost to humanity’s perversions.
“Inside.” Harding’s light flashed over an opened doorway. The oversized doors must have rusted away long ago. “Mind your step.”
No kidding.
The cast house stretched into darkness, beyond my sight and hidden by walls and catwalks, uneven floors, and rusted stairs. Most of the room was empty, gutted with huge troughs in the floor where the molten iron used to pour from the very crown of the entire facility—the blast furnace.
The outline of the dark, rusted monstrosity filled the entire back wall. The bell-shaped behemoth once birthed thousands of tons of iron and slag, but now it stood broken and abandoned, teased with graffiti and humbled by time. Its only duty was to stand guard over the half-dozen people who used its shadow for danger and corruption.
We climbed the stair
s, trapping ourselves on the landing overlooking the casting channels below. Not a safe place, but a single staircase fed the platform. No unwelcomed guests could ambush the three men. A fair truce.
I counted seven people, but any number of men could be lurking in the crevices and secrets of the furnace. Hell, they wouldn’t even need to hide. If they stood outside the weak light pulsed from our flashlights and phones, they could circle, stalk, and plan their attack from mere feet away.
Close enough to hear how I forced my breath to sound calm.
Near enough to touch the cold sweat soaking my clothes.
Hovering just behind me, waiting for the moment when backs turned and caution ebbed, and this conspiracy ended in blood. Easy to wash away. Easier to forget.
But I wasn’t the helpless little girl trapped in a monster’s cellar anymore. And I certainly wasn’t the naïve detective who nearly lost her life three months ago, desperate to help those who refused to help themselves.
I welcomed the fear, the gnawing, slashing pit in my stomach that grounded me in this danger. Courage was overrated. The only thing that’d save me in this was caution, fear, and welcoming the deadly dark that surrounded Senator Harding’s clandestine meeting.
We settled into an uneasy triangle. Harding and I forged the point near the door. Charles Geralt herded a sniffling, tearful group of four teenage girls close to the wall. Kent Travers stood cross armed at the base of the old furnace. Only four beams of light crossed within the empty space, hardly bright enough to check for weapons in their spare hands. I kept my light modest, studying the ground and the surroundings as cautiously as I dared the beam to travel.
Harding flashed his directly at the others. “Let’s get this over with.”
The darkness framed Geralt’s smarmy smile. “So eager to end our partnership?”
“No.” Travers stood perfectly still, as tense as me. “He’s only saving himself.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” Harding asked. “For the past ten months, you’ve held my entire career hostage.”
“A career I made.”
“We made.”