by Dan Ames
She knew she needed to get up, call someone. Maybe Lace. Or AJ. But not her Mom or Dad. Hell, no. She planned on never talking to either of them again for the rest of her life.
The hope had been to make tonight a nice score, but things had clearly gotten out of hand.
She giggled again. Tried to stand up.
But she couldn’t move.
She could only blink.
And smell the grass.
Taste a droplet of water, mixed with blood, on her tongue.
And watch as a dark figure circled around her.
She wanted to ask for help, but her mouth couldn’t move. No words came out, only a gasp and a sputter.
The shadow stopped. A pair of men’s shoes, brown leather, came to a stop inches from her face.
She heard a voice speak.
“I thought yesterday was trash day,” it said.
One of the shoes was lifted out of her vision.
When it smashed back down, she felt nothing.
2
We met at a bar on Mack Avenue. It was a dark, dingy kind of place where if you had to eat, you chose the burger as it would be the only safe option. Not exactly the ideal restaurant to order a Nicoise salad.
Marvin Cotton was a short, stocky black man with big round eyes and heavy cheeks. He had just a brush of gray at his temples.
He had called me earlier in the day and requested a meeting, preferably not in Grosse Pointe. The bar I’d suggested was a few blocks over the border into Detroit. It was called The Peg.
I guessed who my potential client was and approached him.
“Mr. Cotton?” I said.
He was half-turned toward the door, a draft beer on the bar in front of him. He stuck out his hand.
“Mr. Rockne?” he said.
We shook and I slid onto the bar stool next to him.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said.
“Thank you for giving me a call,” I said. I ordered a draft of a beer called Dirty Blonde. Who didn’t mind a dirty blonde now and then?
“How’d you find me by the way?” I asked. It was always interesting, and a good business practice to find out where your referrals were coming from.
Mr. Cotton mentioned a former client of mine who’d been wrongly fired for being a whistleblower. With the help of an attorney and the evidence of wrongdoing that confirmed his claims, we ultimately got him a very nice settlement.
“You’re probably wondering why I didn’t want to meet in Grosse Pointe,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not my place to wonder, or question. I get paid to be curious about what my clients want me to be questioning. That’s what I focus on.”
Besides, future clients always requested somewhere unusual to meet. Someplace they considered out of the way. No matter how big a community, there’s always a chance of bumping into someone. I was in Chicago once and bumped into an old girlfriend. I don’t think she remembered me, which was kind of par for the course.
“Honestly, I wanted to meet here because my wife doesn’t really want me to be doing this,” Marvin said. “She didn’t want me to hire anyone. Said to let the police do their job. Plus, she’s frugal as hell and would kill me if she knew I was here. Talking to a private investigator.”
I nodded, took a sip of my Dirty Blonde. It was good. Smooth. All my life I’ve been attracted to brunettes. You never know what the day is going to bring.
“So you said the police are involved. What’s going on?”
“It’s our daughter,” he said. His face seemed to collapse around itself. His mouth sagged, shoulders slumped. If ever the phrase ‘the life seemed to go out of him’ applied to someone, it applied to Marvin Cotton.
“Kierra. Kierra Cotton,” he said. “My baby girl. She’s been missing for nearly three weeks and the cops don’t have jack.”
“How old is Kierra?”
“She’s eighteen.”
I nodded and then took out my notebook and pen.
“When did you see her last?”
Marvin sighed. “The scene of the granddaddy Cotton family fight of all time,” he said. “My wife and Kierra really got into it. Screaming. Name calling. Kierra stormed out and we haven’t seen or heard from her since.”
In the back, someone fired up the juke box with a country song about buying a boat.
“So do you think she ran away?” I said. I’d seen it a million times. Big fight, kid runs away to ‘get even’ with the parents. Sometimes, they come crawling back after a few days not liking the big, bad world without the safety blanket of Mom and Dad. Sometimes, rarely, they decide they like the big, bad world a whole lot more on their own.
He shook his head. “Initially I think she just wanted some space. But then I think something happened. We’ve had fights before. Some pretty big disagreements. But Kierra and I are very close. She’s always been my girl.”
Marvin’s face cracked a little bit and he took a sip of his beer.
“She would have let me know after a day or two that everything was fine and where she was,” he added.
That one did give me pause, I have to admit. When someone breaks a familiar pattern or behaves in a way that people close to them call it unusual, it can be a sign of something more serious underfoot.
“Have you tried to locate her cell phone?” I asked.
He nodded. “It doesn’t show up anywhere. She didn’t use it once after the argument.”
“Did the police say they’re checking with your carrier?”
“Yes, they said that, but we haven’t heard if they’ve found anything. I logged onto our account and looked for activity, but it stopped the day we last heard from her.”
“What about her email and social media accounts?” I asked. “Did she have her own computer at home that she was still logged into?”
“No, she wanted a laptop but we couldn’t swing it. Besides, these phones nowadays are practically computers anyway. We told her if she went to college we would get her one.”
His voice caught on the ‘if she went to college’ line and he took another drink of his beer, this one longer.
“Was she planning on going to college?” I said.
“She had the grades to go. She took the ACT and did great. She even applied to some schools at the beginning of her senior year but then…”
He shrugged his shoulders.
I knew there was a lot more to the story, but I didn’t want to press him.
“Can you help?” he asked, after draining the last of his beer.
“I can,” I said. “What I can’t do is make any promises. If she’s truly dropped off the grid, it will be difficult. But nothing is impossible. Sometimes I’ve found people her age in a couple of hours. Some of them have taken longer.” I left out the part about a few never being found.
We sat in silence for a few moments.
“Do you have daughters?” he asked me.
“Two.”
That seemed to help him make up his mind.
“Tell me what you need to get started,” he said.
3
The abandoned factory sat along Jefferson Avenue, a huge, hulking structure that looked like an abandoned set from a science fiction movie. It went on for several city blocks and Clay Hitchfield immediately began to think of breaking in, what might be worth stealing, what kind of security would be present, and if it would be worth a trip back to the slammer.
Considering that he’d just gotten out, and narrowly avoided going right back in thanks to the partner he was about to meet, he decided it wasn’t. Besides, Detroit was a rat’s nest. Every abandoned building in the city had been pretty much picked clean. Most of the time all you found inside were a bunch of junkies with rusty switchblades and toothless gums.
He cruised past the factory in his twenty-year-old Dodge Ram pickup he’d bought with the first of the cash, until he came to the park that butted up against the abandoned property.
Weird place for a park, he thought. But it was a park, even tho
ugh the benches were covered with bird shit and there were more weeds than grass.
Clay pulled into the parking lot, and noted there were no other vehicles around. Across the street from the park was a collection of stores that had seen better days, too. A drug store, a liquor store, and a shuttered grocery store.
He saw the man in the suit sitting on one of the grimy park benches, probably worried about his clothes.
He parked across the street so I couldn’t see his car.
Clay knew how these things worked. Sure, there’d been a couple trips to prison, but those had not been his fault. He’d simply worked with a bunch of dumbasses. And maybe his anger had gotten out of control a few times, but it wasn’t his fault. There were just so many scumbags in the world whose stupidity sometimes got the best of him.
The big Ram truck barely fit into the space he chose. They must have painted the lines of the parking lot and assumed everyone drove some little rice burner piece of shit Toyota.
Last time he checked, he was still in America, goddamnit.
The man on the bench was looking at his phone and didn’t bother to raise his head when Clay shut off the big truck’s engine. Although Clay thought he saw the man’s eyes glance over and then make a quick scan of the area.
Nervous.
Clay smiled, got out of the truck and walked up to the bench.
“Hello, Clay,” the man said. He had a deep voice, clear blue eyes, and wavy gray hair. He was also a big dude, Clay could see that even though he was sitting down. The guy reminded him of an old movie star. From a couple of westerns. The guy that kind of walked funny.
John Wayne. Yeah, that was the actor. John fucking Wayne. Big as life.
“Hey,” Clay said and stayed standing. He knew they made an odd couple, this big guy, dressed in the nice suit with the silver hair, looking like he could clear a town of outlaws all by himself. And then he, Clay Hitchfield, not even six feet tall and weighing no more than a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, with tattoos all over his arms, a shaved head, neck tattoos and a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, neither of which had been washed since he’d gotten out of lockup.
“Thanks for meeting me,” the man said. His voice was deep and powerful, but his tone didn’t seem thankful at all.
Clay had a few questions of his own, but he saw a slight bulge in the man’s suit jacket and he hoped it wasn’t a gun. That would be bad news for the man, since the knife in the waistband of Clay’s jeans would be out quicker than you could say boo and would make an awful mess of the man’s throat. What he really hoped is that the bulge was a bit of money, since Clay never did jobs without a steady payment system of cash. So he kept the questions to himself and let the man speak.
“We need you to find someone,” the man said. He leaned over and Clay saw a couple sheets of paper, two photographs and a cell phone.
The man handed it all to Clay.
“Her name is Kierra Cotton, but everyone calls her Jade. She’s missing. And this is the man who probably knows where she is.” The man pointed at a photograph of a young black man. Clay’s stomach turned at the sight of the black punk giving the camera a tough-guy stare and a sideways peace sign. What the hell did that mean anyway?
“His name is AJ,” the man continued. “There’s a little information in there about him, address and such, but you’ll need to find more. He’s a drug dealer.”
“Of course he is, that’s what they do,” Clay said.
“Who?” the man asked.
“The blacks. That’s what they do. Sell drugs. Have babies. Go on welfare.”
Clay took the photographs and looked at them more closely. The woman was sort of pretty for her kind. The guy looked like your typical ghetto scum.
“The phone is a burner, already loaded with minutes and my phone number,” the man said.
The man’s voice changed register just a hair, and Clay smiled inside. It wasn’t really his phone number. It was just a number for another burner phone. More attempts to distance himself from Clay, it was why he parked across the street in the mall.
“In the envelope is two thousand dollars cash. When you find her and either bring her to me, or bring me to her, I’ll give you eight thousand more.”
Ten grand. Clay could use ten grand right about now. He thought about asking for more, but since this was his first job with this big dude, he’d take the first offer. Once they were further into the shit together, Clay knew he would have some leverage. This was the kind of guy that cared a lot about appearances. And he’d pay to keep that image as clean as possible.
“There are quite a few very important people involved in this,” the man said. “Dangerous people. If you do anything other than what I’m asking you to do, you’ll probably disappear, too. The only difference is no one will ever look for you.”
“You making a threat?” Clay said. He smiled, but prison had taught him to always strike first. At the first sign of trouble. And he was satisfied to see a flicker of fear in the man’s eyes.
“Just letting you know the situation,” the man said, clearing his throat. He lifted his chin toward Clay’s truck. “I’ll let you leave first. Call me as soon as you find something out. And don’t call me until you do.”
Clay hesitated just long enough to let the man know he wasn’t some trained monkey, and then walked back to the truck and fired it up. He wasn’t going to hang around anyway. And he certainly wasn’t going to follow the man. Hell, a quick glance at the mall parking lot and he’d spotted the big black BMW parked on the opposite end right away.
No need to push it. For now.
There’d be plenty of time for him to find out exactly who John Wayne was. And if there was more money for him than just the ten grand.
Clay had a feeling there was more.
A lot more.
4
Facebook.
Twitter.
Instagram.
Snapchat.
“Jesus, doesn’t anyone talk to each other anymore?” I asked my wife.
We were sitting together on the couch, Anna had a Kindle in her hand, I had the iPad. The girls (we have two) were upstairs in bed.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” she said with a smirk on her face. Anna kidded around just as much as I did, if not more. “Something about talking?”
I was looking over the email Marvin Cotton had sent me, that included some of Kierra’s usernames on social media. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any of her passwords. Instead, he’d sent me the names of her pets, their street address, her birthdate, anything that might help me guess her passwords.
I didn’t have much hope.
“Look at these websites,” I said. “Instead of people actually talking. And it’s all fake. No one ever posts a shot of them sitting home alone with a box of Twinkies and a bottle of schnapps.”
“You mean no photos of you when you were single?” my wife said. Smarty pants.
“It’s so sad,” I continued, ignoring her, even though she was half right. About the Twinkies, not the schnapps. I hated schnapps.
“The best parts of my childhood were hanging out with my buddies in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “Riding bikes in the hills. Long walks. Swimming at the dead-end street that ran directly into the lake. All of that would have been ruined with cell phones.”
“It’s funny, though,” my wife said. “Everything is documented. These kids have pictures of everything and they’re stored forever as they’re digital.” She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. “Seriously, I probably have like five or six pictures of me with my best friend from grade school.”
“That’s true, but are our daughters going to know how to live in the moment? Or are they going to be constantly distracted by these stupid things?” I asked, holding up my iPhone.
“Oh, you love being on Twitter. Don’t act like you don’t.”
It was true. I didn’t mind Twitter. Or Facebook. But I really only used them to market my private investigator services. My Fac
ebook page was up to two hundred Likes. But I had to learn how to use all of the social media outlets. Instagram? Tumblr? As a professional, I really need to know the ins and outs of social media for cases just like Kierra Cotton’s.
“I’m only on there to keep tabs on you,” I said. “Make sure you’re not chatting with your old boyfriends from high school.”
She smiled at me. “Nice try. Besides, I blocked you. You have no idea what I’m doing online.”
Anna’s expression changed. “So what do you think happened to this girl?”
“No way of knowing, yet,” I said. “Most of the time, it’s not criminal. Staying with a friend, punishing the parents by not contacting them, that sort of thing. Kind of like the silent treatment you use on me all the time.”
She smiled at me and said nothing.
“I just hope she didn’t get mixed up with the wrong people,” I said.
“Like gangs?”
I nodded. “Yep, recruiters. Get these girls into gangs and then take them out of state, make them totally dependent. I hope that’ s not the case.”
“Find her as soon as you can,” she said.
I knew she was thinking about our two girls sound asleep upstairs, and what kinds of things they’d find out in the real world when they got older.
“That’s the plan,” I said, trying to sound as hopeful as possible.
5
The next morning I was at my office bright and early. Except it wasn’t very bright. Michigan can be just as gloomy as the Pacific Northwest, sandwiched as it is between a few Great Lakes. And, to be honest, it wasn’t all that early, either. But I do like that expression.
I fired up my computer and pulled the paperwork Marvin Cotton had given me. It included a lot of information about Kierra, hopefully that I could use to crack some of her social media accounts. If I couldn’t do it, well, I had someone who could hack their way in. But I didn’t want to spend the money and technically it wasn’t legal. So I thought I would give it the old Rockne try first.