Cold Jade

by Dan Ames

  Rebecca pulled the bed away and looked at it.

  It was a knot in the wood of one of the planks that made the wall. And at the top of the knot was a small hole.

  But the knot was at the bottom of the plank.

  It reminded Rebecca of something.

  When she was in grade school, a boy named Pat Bobryk had a crush on her. One day after school, they were sitting with some friends on the outfield grass of the baseball field. The fence that marked the outfield was made of wire and wood. The wire ran horizontally, and thick planks of wood made vertical slats in the fence. At the top, the wood slats stuck about six inches above the highest part of the wire.

  So Pat decided to hurdle the fence as a way of showing off in front of Rebecca. He ran, jumped, and his front foot hit one of the slats dead on, and it broke in half vertically, leaving a jagged point that proceeded to scrape along Pat’s hamstring and open up a gash at least a foot long.

  The boy needed 42 stitches to close it back up.

  Now, Rebecca looked at the knot at the base of that plank behind the bed.

  She wondered. If I kicked it just right, and hard enough, would it split? And if so, where?

  Rebecca pulled the bed farther out, and pushed it to the side, then sat on the floor and shimmied up to the wall so that her feet were pressed against the wall.

  She leaned to the side and looked again at the knot and the small hole at its top.

  Rebecca rested her heel just above the knot and traced a line of grain in the wood that ran up and to the left with its origin in the hole.

  It was a guess, but if she kicked it just right, and hard enough, the plank might split along the line of grain. And if it broke loose, the result would be a long sharp piece of wood.

  A weapon.

  Rebecca brought her knee back, tilted the top of her foot toward her so that her heel was leading, exhaled, then drove her heel straight backward.

  The sound was insanely loud in the empty, quiet space, and she felt a stab of pain in her foot.

  She looked at the wall.

  The wood had cracked, but it was still in place.

  Rebecca gritted her teeth and kicked again.

  This time, the plank cracked inwardly, in two uneven shapes that reminded her of Vermont and New Hampshire.

  She got on her knees and went to the wall.

  There was enough room for her to put a finger into the hole above the knot. She slid it in, then hooked the wood and pulled it toward her. It was dry, but still strong.

  It wouldn’t move.

  She studied the plank again. The crack was as she hoped – ending in a jagged point, but she had to break it loose without breaking the plank horizontally.

  Rebecca leaned back, brought her foot forward and kicked one more time.

  The plank popped and the two pieces were fully apart.

  She reached in, and carefully broke the piece free.

  It was wide at the base, and ended in a narrow, jagged point.

  She touched the tip with her finger.

  It was sharp enough to break skin.

  She thought of the back of Pat Bobryk’s thigh, the way it had been sliced clean open.

  Oh yeah, she thought.

  Bring it on, bitches.

  42

  Mack left Denver by the direct order of Hopestil Fletcher and landed in D.C. after an uneventful flight. He powered on his cell phone and checked for messages. There was one from Adelia letting him know everything was going fine at home without him. She had said it and then chuckled.

  He smiled, put the phone away, collected his bag and slid into the backseat of a Bureau car.

  A half hour later they pulled up in front of the Hoover Building.

  Inside, he went directly to the Computer Crimes section where a young assistant with the odd name of Merlin showed him to a war room.

  Inside, there were half a dozen computers linked by various cables.

  A woman stood before a large screen. A keyboard sat on a raised pedestal and the woman was furiously typing away. Mack noted that she wore black, polished cowboy boots, blue jeans, an Oakland Raiders T-shirt underneath a black sportcoat.

  She glanced at him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Wallace Mack.”

  The woman nodded, then looked at the two other people in the room. “Give us a minute, would you?” she said to them.

  They snatched up their coffee cups and left the room quickly, shutting the door behind them.

  Mack sat down at the table, caught a whiff of vanilla flavored coffee from whoever had been sitting there.

  “Who are you?” Mack asked her.

  “I’m Moody,” she said. “Don’t bother with a joke, I’ve heard them all.”

  Mack smiled at her.

  “A tip came in that eventually found its way to me,” she said. “I understand you’re here to help connect the dots.”

  “That’s right, hopefully,” Mack said.

  “The tip was initially dismissed,” Moody continued. “It was somewhat mysterious and unbelievable, until we traced it via the IP address to a certain individual with a proclivity for sexual escapades with minors.”

  “And who would that be?” Mack asked.

  “His name is Charles Starkey and he’s a real prize,” she said. “Rich from his father’s plumbing business, he had a host of charges for assault, improper contact and various degrees of sexual assault with children.”

  “Why is he still running around?”

  “Because he has good lawyers, and apparently has kept his nose clean for a few years now.”

  “So who did the tip come from?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. Charles Starkey provided the information.”

  Mack frowned. “Why?”

  “Well, we dug into his financial records and what we found was complete chaos,” Moody said. She tapped on the keyboard and a screen came to life behind her. Mack could see various financial statements that meant nothing to him.

  “Funds being moved around with dizzying speed but eventually we were able to tease out that he’s blown through all of his money and is deep in debt. To the wrong people.”

  “Loan sharks? The Mob?”

  Moody nodded.

  “So he said he wanted to make a deal,” she said. “He supposedly knows about an Internet ring that sells kids online. And that he’ll tell us everything he knows in exchange for going into the Witness Protection Program.”

  “Is this Internet ring connected to the Mob?”

  “We don’t know. Yet.”

  “This is all great and everything,” Mack said. “But how does this apply to me?”

  “Well, in his message, he says that he recognized one of the girls on sale in The Store.”

  “The Store?”

  “That’s what they call it, I guess.”

  Mack suddenly knew.

  “Rebecca Spencer.”

  Moody pointed at him and said, “That’s correct. Starkey claims she was listed on The Store and that he figures a lot of people are looking for her. He’s hoping that his information will help us find her and we’ll reward him with immunity.”

  “Let’s give it to him.”

  “We plan to. If we can find him.”

  “What?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Great.”

  “And that’s not all.”

  Mack waited.

  “He said that the Spencer girl wasn’t on the site long. Someone bought her right away.”

  EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK

  43

  Butterfly landed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, after a flight from New York to Chicago that included new tickets in different names.

  The Owner had arranged it all.

  Now, she left the Wyoming airport in a rental car, also rented under an alias, and headed toward Colorado.

  The kill cabin was actually closer to Denver than Cheyenne, but she didn’t like to fly into the same airport too many times. Besides, the d
rive from Cheyenne wasn’t bad at all.

  The business in New Jersey had gone well, and she’d ditched the gun in the ocean, about a mile up from where she’d killed Starkey and blown up his boat.

  Butterfly recognized the man as a recent visitor to the compound. He must have crossed the Owner.

  It took her a little under five hours to get to the enclosure, having passed miles upon miles of vast stretches of prairie punctuated by rolling hills and bluffs, and enormous herds of cattle warming up in the sun.

  Now, she turned into the paved driveway of the executive cabin. It was where she had stashed Bernard Evans, while she dashed off to Jersey. It wasn’t an anomaly. Sometimes the customers liked to stay a day or two in the executive cabin while their “purchase” was carefully prepared.

  Evans had been pretty drunk when she dropped him there.

  There was a small staff at the executive cabin, who were given strict orders not to access the other sections of the compound. The employees included a cook and a cleaning woman.

  Butterfly provided security.

  Like the staff, guests were not permitted to leave the grounds of the executive cabin.

  Now, Butterfly parked the rental car, retrieved her small travel bag and went inside.

  She used her key card to open a door that led to her area. The only place she really called home.

  She stashed her travel bag, splashed some water on her face and went to her gun safe.

  Butterfly entered the combination, the door opened, and she stepped inside. Her eyes caressed the selection of weapons. There were handguns, rifles, revolvers, hideout guns, even a whole wall of “throwaway” guns – with their serial numbers removed so she could dump them without fear of a trace.

  She put on a shoulder holster with a S&W .40 automatic, then left her section of the lodge and headed for the bar. Sure enough, she found Bernard Evans there with a glass of amber liquid in front of him.

  Butterfly took the seat next to him.

  The bartender, who also doubled as part of the kitchen staff, nodded at her and placed a glass of sparkling water in front of her.

  “When will I get to see her?” Evans asked.

  Butterfly looked into the bottom of her glass.

  “How about now?” she said.

  44

  Mack knew that pornographers were always on the cutting edge of computer technology. They were the ones who had pioneered VHS, then DVDs and then online movies.

  And the more deviant they were, the more adept they became at hiding their online activities.

  Mack recalled less than a year ago, a child porn ring, all online, had been busted. There had been some twenty-seven thousand subscribers, worldwide to the network.

  The only way to catch them was to get a crack in the armor.

  And Charles Starkey had provided that glimpse.

  “Are you getting his computer?” Mack asked.

  Moody nodded.

  “We’ve got a team on the way.”

  Just then, the door opened, and one of the assistants who’d been ushered out, came back into the conference room.

  “Bad news,” he said.

  Mack and Moody waited.

  “Our team was on the way to Starkey’s house when they pulled over to let fire trucks go by.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  The man nodded. “The house went up in flames, with all of Starkey’s family inside.”

  “Jesus,” Mack said.

  “There’s more.”

  “Of course there is,” Moody said.

  “A boat in the local marina blew up with a body inside. They think it’s Starkey.”

  45

  “That’s all right,” Moody said, casually dismissing the demise of Charles Starkey. “We don’t need his physical computer or network to track him.”

  Mack realized that Moody was all business. No time for compassion. Maybe that’s what drew her to computers. And the Oakland Raiders.

  “Get everyone in here, now,” she barked at the assistant.

  Moments later, the room was full of techies listening as Moody barked out orders.

  Hopestil Fletcher came to the door and beckoned Mack out.

  “The Spencers are not happy,” she said.

  “Do you want me to talk to them?” he asked.

  “No, I want you to put together a profile of who is behind The Store. It’s got to be one person.”

  “I know how to catch him,” Mack said.

  “How?”

  “Tracking computer files is next to impossible, no matter how good Moody is,” Mack said.

  “She’s the best in the world, Mac.”

  “I know. But there’s one thing that’s much easier to follow.”

  “The money,” Fletcher said.

  Mack nodded.

  “The odds are the perp is male,” Mack said. “He’s got a history of sex crimes, that probably stopped some time ago. A knack for computers or a history of hacking. And in the last few days, a huge influx of money.”

  “I’ve got a team looking already, but I’ll make sure they’re looped into what Moody is doing. How much do you think he’s taken in?”

  “Start with five million in the last few days.”

  46

  “We’ve got something,” Moody said.

  Fletcher and Mack sat among the techies, looking at the big screen on the wall, with a blizzard of numbers and computer code.

  Suddenly, one of the strings was highlighted by Moody.

  “This is Starkey’s money going out,” she explained. “It hit first at a bank account in the Caymans. From there it was broken up and sent out into nearly a hundred different amounts, each amount being transferred dozens of times.”

  Mack knew they might never find the money, but they could sure as hell follow it.

  Moody continued. “However, we figured that the amounts must have regrouped at some point, so we picked two to follow. They ended up back in the Caymans, to an account registered to M. Stohr Enterprises.”

  Mack shook his head.

  “The Murder Store,” he said.

  Moody looked at him oddly, then nodded.

  “Here’s the best part,” she continued. “Guess where we tracked it to?”

  The hum of the computer equipment was the only sound in the room.

  “Right here. Washington, D.C.”

  47

  Bernard Evans felt more alive than he’d felt when he first became a multi- millionaire.

  Even partially hungover, the taste of last night’s scotch still in his mouth, he felt positively electric with a thirst for what would soon happen making him practically jump out of bed.

  Evans thought about the money he’d spent, and that it was going to be more than worth it. In fact, he thought about his company’s IPO and how the stock was doing.

  He could sell off another batch in a few months and buy another girl.

  Which reminded him…

  The rules about coming to this place had been very clear. No cell phones. No laptops. Nothing with a wireless connection. Which made sense because there was no Internet service here anyway.

  But Evans was a tech geek.

  And he had figured that for his own safety, he should have something with him just in case he needed to call someone, like his assistant, in an emergency.

  Plus, he needed his protégé Reese Stocker, to be able to reach him in an all-out catastrophe.

  So he had broken apart his phone, taken the battery out, and taken apart his travel clock that he favored on business trips.

  He’d then placed the components of his phone into the rear compartment of the clock.

  The woman, the crazy chick, hadn’t bothered to check. Even though she’d run the bags through an X-ray deal like the security people at airports had.

  Now, he reassembled the phone, clicked the battery into place and powered it up. After a few moments, he was pleased to see that the battery was nearly seventy-five percent charged.

  He fired
up his brokerage account’s app, and checked the balance of his portfolio.

  $123 million.

  Oh yes, he thought.

  He had plenty to make another purchase.

  And soon.

  So he slid the phone into his pocket and when the scary chick came around, the one who called herself Butterfly, he was ready. But sometimes being with this woman felt like a cold wet blanket thrown on him because he felt like he could tell she despised him for what he was.

  At least, that’s what he had initially thought. But now, standing with her, having just looked into her eyes, he realized that what made her so scary was her utter lack of feeling. She didn’t despise him. Because she didn’t really see him as a person. Evans got the feeling that she could reach up and slit his throat and her expression wouldn’t change.

  Evans followed her to a walled compound with a security gate.

  The woman swiped a card and the door’s lock snicked open.

  The area was a wide expanse of lawn with several small cottages spread haphazardly around the area. They were small, like the kind of rustic motel cabins in the country.

  The woman walked directly to the cabin the farthest from the door.

  Evans felt his heart beating faster as they approached.

  The woman got to the cottage and Evans saw that the cabin’s door had the same kind of security system. Butterfly swiped her card again and Evans followed her in.

  The girl was sitting on the bed, her hands in her lap.

  Evans stopped breathing.

  She was everything he’d hoped for.

  And more.

  48

  The FBI’s rapid response team led the way, followed by Mack and a few other agents, as well as some D.C. cops.

  The address was a brownstone near Georgetown.

  According to records, the house was owned by a shell corporation called H. Cide Enterprises.

  The guy was good at mass murder, not so much at stand-up comedy, Mack thought.

  He hung back and watched the armed response team in action. They hit the front door, announced themselves, then used a battering ram to knock the door inward.