Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  But it was Epps who said, “Hell, let’s do it.”

  Roarke left the cab of the truck and walked through the wind, across the parking lot, up onto the sidewalk, into the open corridor that housed the elevator as if he were a motel guest, while Epps waited a few moments before he exited the cab himself and circled around toward the back of the motel.

  When Roarke moved past the elevator and out the end of the corridor to the back side of the motel, the pimp was still on his phone . . . and a beat too late understanding he was surrounded.

  Just as he was turning to deal with Roarke, Epps had his Glock to the guy’s head, ordering, “FBI, don’t move.”

  The pimp froze . . . then sprinted. Epps sprang, did a full-on tackle, and both men hit the ground, Epps on top. There was a satisfying crunch of bone as Epps ground the guy into the asphalt, and Roarke was over him in the next second, grabbing his arms, locking them behind his back, securing the plastic cuffs. The man spat a curse in Spanish, but ceased struggling.

  Epps held his head to the concrete as Roarke searched him, pulling a Ruger from his waistband, a cellophane bag of powder from a pocket, and a plastic key card from another. The key was still in its cardboard sheath, with the room number in blue ballpoint: 212.

  Epps reached for his service belt, handed his own set of cuffs to Roarke. “Be my guest,” Epps said. “I’ll keep our friend company.”

  Roarke climbed the stairs, his adrenaline climbing even higher. The last time he’d been on a takedown like this, just over a month ago now, he’d shot a man point-blank in a filthy brothel, a virtual prison of enslaved women and girls.

  At the top of the stairs he looked out the doorway into a stuffy, filthy hallway. A twenty-year-old carpet. Smears of substances he didn’t even want to know about on the walls.

  He moved silently to room 212, used the key card, and pushed open the door, leading with his Glock.

  “FBI, don’t move!”

  The fat man sat on the bed with his pants around his ankles, oversized gut mercifully shielding his nakedness. The girl stood above him in a tank top and panties. The john froze in place on the bed, looking dully alarmed. The girl backed up toward the wall, slid down it to sit heavily on the floor, arms crossed protectively over her head as if to ward off blows.

  There was another woman in the room, sitting frozen in an armchair in the corner, a bleary-eyed, mixed-race, fleshy woman in her late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a robe. The “bottom girl,” there to keep the new one in line, keep her from running.

  “You,” Roarke ordered her. “Get down on the floor. Facedown, hands behind your head.”

  He watched her lower herself to the floor while he kept the john at gunpoint.

  When the woman was stretched out flat, he motioned to the john. “Now you. On the floor. Hands behind your back.”

  The fat man dropped awkwardly to his knees, then onto the stained carpet. Roarke kept the Glock trained on the woman while securing the cuffs on the man.

  Then he shut the door behind him and stood in front of it, barring it. The room was small and rank. Rubber curtains, a garish bedspread, toiletries and clothes strewn on the floor. The surface of the dresser was cluttered with liquor bottles and fast-food wrappers. There were pill bottles and scattered powder on the desk. The smell of spunk and stale alcohol was heavy in the air.

  With both adults now immobile, Roarke turned toward the girl and tried to speak gently.

  “What’s your name?”

  She glanced up, and he got his first good look at her. She had caramel-colored skin, with brown hair and brown freckles, and her face was plump with baby fat. He felt a crush of disappointment.

  Not Sarah Jane.

  He fought that initial feeling down and willed himself to be there for the girl in front of him. He kept the Glock trained on the john as he asked her, “How old are you?”

  The girl mumbled, “N-nineteen.”

  “How old are you really?” Roarke said without missing a beat.

  “Fifteen,” the girl answered automatically, and then looked frightened. She shot a glance at the woman on the floor.

  Roarke turned his eyes to the john. His face behind the glasses was shiny with sweat. “Fifteen. That would make you engaged in a felony.”

  “I didn’t know,” the john muttered.

  Roarke strode forward. The fat man flinched, anticipating a kick. Instead Roarke stood above him and demanded, “Look at her.”

  “Then she shouldn’t be on the website,” the john said petulantly.

  “We just here partying,” the older woman complained from the floor.

  “You ask for two?” Roarke asked the john.

  “Bitch was here when I got here.”

  “Making sure no one runs?” Roarke said to the woman. “Kidnapping. False imprisonment.”

  He stared down at his captives, bile rising in his throat. He wanted to say something, anything, to name the extent of their depravity, to reach anything that was still human in them.

  Instead he reached for his phone and called Escobar.

  Chapter 54

  Down at the station, the girl gave up her story to the female detective Escobar had brought in to question her. Her name was Carmen. She was fifteen and she was far from home.

  Unlike Becca, she had a home to go back to. Her aunt had reported her missing from Phoenix two weeks ago. The pimp from the motel was not her abductor; apparently she’d been sold to him upon arrival in California and was being held in the motel and “seasoned”: one of the pimp’s prostitutes was with her twenty-four hours a day, including while johns came in to have sex with her.

  When Escobar had shown up at the motel, he’d looked at Roarke and Epps through narrowed eyes, but he’d made the arrests and taken the pimp and the john and the older woman away.

  Another three down.

  But in this case they had no idea if anyone would be prosecuted. It was up to Monterey County now.

  The agents drove the rig back to the impound lot and picked up their fleet car. Roarke took the first shift driving and headed for the 101 North.

  They were both silent, dazed by the roller coaster, the adrenaline rush of a bust, combined with the downer feeling that they’d been had, lured away from the real action into a dead end.

  At least Carmen was going home. If she wanted to go.

  Roarke knew he should be glad for it. Instead he had a crushing feeling of failure.

  Molina’s voice suddenly spoke in his head. “You tell me your way is working, Agent Roarke, and I will call you the liar you are.”

  He had the overpowering sense she was right.

  He stared out the windshield at the road, the slash of headlights through the fog, and more questions swirled through his head.

  Was all that what Cara had wanted them here for?

  The chances of finding the sex worker who would point them to the motel, where they would see the john transacting business with the pimp . . . no one could have set that up. It felt too random.

  “It’s good,” Epps said abruptly from the seat beside him, as if sensing his thought.

  Roarke looked at him.

  “S’all that counts. She’s out. Becca’s out, too. It got done.”

  “Yeah,” Roarke said, and all he felt was despair. Epps studied him in the dark of the car.

  “Is this because of Cara? You feel like you didn’t get it right?”

  That’s exactly what it is. Nothing was solved. It’s a drop in the bucket. Not even a drop.

  He gripped the steering wheel, struggling with his feelings, and finally spoke. “I feel like we could’ve gone into just about any motel along I-5 and had a good chance of finding the same thing. I think I could throw a rock right now and just about hit someone up to the same damn thing. I think that’s where we’re at.”

 
; “Maybe that is the message,” Epps said.

  Roarke looked at him . . . then flinched as his phone buzzed on his hip. He picked up to Singh’s voice, taut with tension.

  “Chief, there is some kind of event in progress.”

  Roarke handed Epps the phone and repeated, “Action going down,” and pulled the car over to park on the shoulder.

  Epps hit the speaker button on the phone so they both could hear and asked Singh, “This in the Tenderloin?” Roarke held his breath, thinking of Mills and Jones.

  Singh’s voice answered. “Not the Tenderloin. International Boulevard. I have been monitoring the Redlight forums. I am copying some posts to your emails.”

  Epps grabbed for his iPad and a moment later passed the tablet to Roarke.

  The top subject thread on the forum was:

  Weird shit going down Inty/19th

  “Nineteenth. That’s the peak of the stroll,” Epps muttered.

  The first post read:

  TRACKSTER: Some bsw is freaking the fuck out on Inty and 19th. Hoe just ran out on the corner screaming her brains out.

  “Are Mills and Jones over there?” Roarke demanded.

  “On their way. I am on dispatch with Oakland PD—” Singh said something he couldn’t hear, and then came back on the line. “Dead body found in the driver’s seat of a late-model Lexus SUV, in an alley just below International and Nineteenth Avenue . . .” Her voice cut out again.

  Epps hit the dashboard with his fist. “Fuck, it’s Cara. She brought us down here so she could hit up there. Goddamn it.” His face was stormy in the dark.

  Singh’s voice came back on the line. “Male, early thirties, gunshot to head . . . Wait.”

  Gunshot to the head? Not Cara, then?

  Now Epps looked as confused as Roarke felt.

  Singh returned to the call. “I have just heard again from Oakland PD. There is a second dead body in a Mazda CX5 parked off International on Twenty-Third Street. Male, thirties, passenger door open, condoms on passenger seat.”

  Four blocks from the first.

  “Cause of death?” Roarke asked tightly.

  “His throat is cut.”

  Roarke and Epps turned to each other in the dark of the car.

  “Another pair,” Roarke muttered. The one in the Mazda with the condoms, obviously cruising; the other in a luxury SUV, favorite of pimps.

  “A pimp and a john,” Epps said.

  “But the pimp . . . Gunshot to the head?”

  The agents stared at each other as the fog from the fields rolled around the car, nearly drowning the headlights.

  And Epps finally said it. “Who the hell are we dealing with now?”

  DAY EIGHT

  Chapter 55

  Roarke jarred awake to find himself in a postapocalyptic landscape of barred-up liquor stores and run-down motels, auto repair shops, Latin grocery stores and Mexican food dives. And botanicas. Every few blocks, another botanica.

  In the driver’s seat beside him, Epps cruised the dismal track of International Boulevard, gravel-eyed from the long night and the two-hour drive from Salinas through mind-numbing fog. Roarke had taken the wheel the first hour so Epps could grab a nap, then they’d switched.

  Roarke looked out the passenger window. Shiny aluminum trailers were parked in almost every street-corner parking lot, with groups of workingmen lined up to get breakfast. In one lot, a news van was parked beside a taco truck. A blond reporter in a tailored crimson suit interviewed the men huddled at the counter, a splash of bloodred in all the grayness. The vultures descending, now that the action was over.

  Another pimp and john dead.

  And no worries about whether those two will ever be prosecuted. They’re out of commission for good. Done.

  There was an appeal to that idea that suddenly terrified Roarke.

  He turned sharply to face forward again and looked out the windshield at the strip. While the Tenderloin was a grid of short blocks built on hills, the gray blocks of International seemed to go on forever in one endless line. “How long is this thing?” he said aloud.

  “A hundred blocks straight just from Oaktown to San Leandro,” said Epps. “That’s what makes it so damn hard to patrol. You stake out twenty blocks and the pimps just move the girls forty blocks down.”

  In his half-conscious state, Roarke heard Molina’s voice again. “You tell me your way is working, Agent Roarke, and I will call you the liar you are.”

  He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

  By the time they arrived at the alley off Nineteenth Street, they were too late to see the bodies in situ. The coroner’s van had already taken them away. But the crime scenes remained, taped off in the gray dawn. Both men killed in their cars. Two new wrinkles: the little piles of offerings left beside each car . . .

  And the incontrovertible fact that one of their killers was now using a gun.

  “Two men are dead after a bloody rampage last night on Oakland’s infamous International Boulevard.”

  In the conference room, Roarke, Epps, Jones, and Mills watched the screen as the blond reporter Roarke had seen beside the taco truck spoke into the camera, her blue eyes wide and dramatically serious.

  Singh stood at the podium, playing the news broadcast on the TV monitor suspended from the conference room wall. The remains of an enormous breakfast lay on a side table: Mexican pastries and carne asada and breakfast tamales.

  On the screen, the camera panned across the grim block behind the reporter.

  “International is known as a prostitute stroll, glamorized in rap songs like ‘Pimp of the Year,’ ‘Rules of the Game,’ and ‘Pimpology.’ The reality is much bleaker. On Inty, pimps routinely sell girls as young as twelve years old, dooming these children to a life of violence, exploitation, and abuse. Oakland police declined to speculate who is responsible for the murders. But residents of the neighborhood have their own theories.”

  The camera focused on a makeshift shrine on a street corner. Roarke stared up at a three-foot-tall idol positioned on the sidewalk, the familiar skeletal figure, with offerings piled up at its feet, spreading out on the sidewalk in a ten-foot radius: flowers, candles, cigarettes, candy, bottles of tequila.

  The reporter continued in voice-over. “The statue you are looking at is known as Santa Muerte: Lady Death. These shrines are appearing on street corners up and down the five mile ‘Track’ of International Boulevard. Shrines to an unconsecrated saint that the Catholic Church has refused to acknowledge. The people you are about to hear from would not show themselves on camera for fear of retaliation by the pimps and gangs who control this strip of Oakland. But these residents are speaking out nonetheless.”

  The camera cut to the silhouette of a hefty woman who spoke from the shadows in a thick Hispanic accent. “For years our children are living with these criminals selling their drugs and these young girls. The police do nothing. Now we ask the saint’s help.”

  Next was a man in shadow, speaking in low Spanish, with voice-over translation creating an eerie bilingual echo to his words. “They are offerings of thanks to the saint, la Santa Muerte. The police have tried, but the gangs are too powerful. La Santísima guards the neighborhood now. The people give prayers for her continued protection.”

  The reporter came back on screen. “We’ll have more on the Santa Muerte Murders after the break.”

  Roarke felt a chill at the phrase. He had always disliked the media’s habit of nicknaming notorious killers, but this was more than simple irritation. This was a whole different kind of trouble.

  Singh paused the news video. “These interviews continue in the same vein.”

  Epps was on his feet, shaking his head in disbelief. “Two murders in their ’hood and they’re offering ‘prayers for continued protection’?”

  Mills tossed a half-eaten samosa onto his p
late and shoved it away. “The ‘Santa Muerte Murders.’ So now we got some specter to deal with, too? Tell me this is a bad dream.”

  Roarke knew exactly what he meant.

  Singh turned to the two new whiteboards standing in front of the previous ones. “I have compiled photos of the scene. The crime scene videos are loaded for display on the monitor, as well.”

  The agents moved over to stand in front of the boards, studying the shots, fixated on the one glaring addition to the mix: the corpse slumped in the front seat of the SUV with the remains of his head splattered on the windshield.

  Jones said it first. “So who’s using a gun now, Lindstrom or Jade?”

  They all felt the dissonance of it.

  “These killings are different from the previous ones in several aspects,” Singh said. “Before we make assumptions, I must also submit this.” She stepped back to the computer control and hit a button. A website appeared on the screen. “This blog post went up online at five a.m.”

  And the War Begins

  Roarke looked up at the screen as Singh scrolled through the article. “The article is the first instance I have been able to pinpoint of calling the killings the Santa Muerte Murders. That is how the news stations picked up the phrase. And the blog author has been constantly updating the blog with links to other news articles and broadcasts about the Santa Muerte connection: the shrines on Inty, the interviews with residents.”

  She scrolled to the bottom of the blog article and highlighted the last sentence.

  Santa Muerte is out there. And she is pissed.

  “Fanning the flames,” Epps said.

  Singh nodded to him. “The blog author has written about both the Salinas murders and the Inty murders and is making an issue of the paired kills, linking them to the murders in the Tenderloin. Again, the article specifically points out that the killer is striking at abusers from both sides, pimps and mongers. No one guilty is safe.”

  “So she’s spelled out a blueprint for further killing,” Roarke said. Then he thought of the arrests at the motel the previous night. A pimp and a john. Probably back out on the street already.