After an eternity, the john’s breath slowed to a regular rhythm. His lips puffed a few ragged breaths. He rolled onto his side, and his bulky arm rasped like sandpaper across her skin. The cheap mattress bounced like a bowl of Jell-O with his movement. Heavy musk from his after-shave mixed with the dirty socks smell of sweat and sex. She gagged and choked back the bile that rose from her empty stomach.
Tonight was her first chance to call for help since she’d decided to escape or die, but dare she move? What if Jabba the Hutt woke? Would he throw his disgusting body on top of hers, groping for her breasts with his slobbering mouth, trying to mount her?
She scooched a few inches away from the ambassador toward the edge of the bed. It moved ominously, but he didn’t wake. He snorted once and rolled over.
She used his movement to disguise hers as she inched closer to the edge of the bed. She wiped cold sweat from her forehead, trying not to jiggle the bed. The fat man squirmed onto his back, and she moved enough to dangle one leg off the bed, feeling for the floor with her foot.
The clock on the dresser flicked over to 2:17.
Do it before you chicken out. She shifted more weight to the foot on the floor and held her breath.
As gently as a lava flow, she slid the other foot off the bed and lowered it to the worn carpet, alert to the slightest change in his sleep. She started to sit up, but stopped mid-motion when the springs vibrated. Her heart felt as though it would burst through her chest.
His snores halted. She froze. The john wasn’t breathing. Sleep apnea. She’d learned about it in high school. Don’t panic. He’ll breathe in a few seconds.
She felt pressure in her chest. Damn, she was holding her breath. Only when he snorted like a pig did Liz exhale. He resumed snoring, louder this time.
She sat upright, shifting more weight to her feet, and lifted her butt off the mattress. The springs remained quiet, and she breathed a silent prayer of thanks.
The john’s clothes were draped over a chair in the corner. Sliding his phone from the holster clipped on his belt, she moved silently toward the bathroom, never taking her eyes off the sleeping john. The phone was different from the one she had owned before Tommy imprisoned her. She fumbled with it in the dark, trying to turn it on. Her hands shook so much that she dropped it. Liz froze as it clattered on the tiled floor of the bathroom. I’m a dead woman. No one could sleep through that noise. Breathing deeply but quietly, she looked back towards the bed. Jabba snored on.
When the ambassador had checked his messages earlier, he hadn’t noticed her peering over his shoulder. Now, she pushed every button on the phone until the light from the screen cast an eerie glow in the dark bathroom. Free or dead, she whispered as she pushed the messaging icon.
Chapter 2
My office phone rang. “Wilbur Jenkins on line one.”
“Thanks, Betty.” I tapped the other button. “This is Chuck McCrary. How may I help you?”
“Are you the guy who shot that crooked cop?”
I have to list the phone number of McCrary Investigations. Who would hire a private investigator with an unlisted number? I hoped this wasn’t another nut job accusing me of murder. Such is the price of fame. Or is it notoriety? Sometimes the caller is a new client. Those are my favorites.
“I prefer to accentuate the positive and say I rescued a woman whom the crooked cop had kidnapped.” I answered modestly.
“So you are that guy?”
“The one and only. How can I help?”
“I’m Will Jenkins. My daughter’s been kidnapped. I want you to find her.”
“Have you contacted the police?” There’s no point wasting someone’s money to do a job the cops do for free.
“That’s the first call I made. They’re working the case mighty hard, but they ain’t got shit, excuse my French. Lieutenant Jorge Castellano, he said to call you, and he give me your phone number. That Castellano fellow, he’s the police detective that you sprung from that murder charge, ain’t he?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Maybe the lieutenant weren’t too proud of that murder charge, even if he did beat the rap.”
“Maybe.”
“The main thing he said was you might could find my daughter.”
“Can you come to my office?”
###
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Carlos McCrary.”
My visitor switched his faded John Deere hat to his huge left hand and shook with his right. “Will Jenkins. Friends call me Will.”
“And I’m Chuck.” I handed him a business card. Too bad it didn’t have a magnifying glass logo like the search boxes on websites.
“The lieutenant, he already give me one of your cards.”
Will’s callused palm matched his sunburned face. With his worn blue jeans, faded cotton shirt, and scuffed work boots, he reminded me of my father. His forehead was white below his thin brown hair.
I got him coffee and led him to my conference room. “What did Lieutenant Castellano say?”
“First, you oughta read these texts my Lizzie sent me early Tuesday morning.” He handed me his phone.
The first text was sent at 2:22 a.m.
Daddy, held captive in Port City FL by white man named Tommy Flannigan, five foot ten, thirty to forty years, medium build, palm tree tattoo on left forearm, pierced left ear with diamond stud. Sex slave. DO NOT CALL OR REPLY TO THIS TEXT. HE WILL KILL ME IF HE LEARNS I USED THIS PHONE. It belongs to a john. Love, Binky
I read sex slave and my stomach clenched like a fist. It stirred a memory of my cousin Emily. No, not a memory, a fear.
The second text was sent at 2:25 a.m.
Four other girls held too, maybe more. Sex slaves. Jill from Chicago, Tawnya from Philadelphia, Delores from Shawnee, and Morgan from Cleveland. Don’t know last names or any addresses. DO NOT CALL OR REPLY TO THIS TEXT. Binky
The last one was sent at 2:30 a.m.
Held in house with three stories, 30 feet wide 80 feet deep, on busy street with two lanes traffic and parking on both sides. Sex slaves. Three gangsters. Scruffy, black, skinny, fifty. Vince, white, medium, forty. One big bald guy no name. DO NOT CALL OR REPLY TO THIS TEXT. Love, Binky.
I swallowed hard and composed myself. “What did the police say?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. First thing I got to know is, can you find her?”
“Did she leave of her own free will, or was she kidnapped?”
“She went to Disney World. Her and her friend Jennifer.”
“Jennifer?”
“She and Jennifer, they been friends since they was this high.” He held his palm three feet off the floor. “Jennifer lives on the farm next to ours, maybe a half-mile down the road. Jennifer’s parents give her a new car for graduation and the two of them decided to drive to Disney World. I fought it, but Lizzie, she saved the money herself and she was legal age. There wasn’t nothing I could do to stop her.” He dropped his head. “We wasn’t getting along too good, her and me, since her mom died.”
Will didn’t say anything else, so I prompted him. “She and Jennifer left for Disney…”
He looked at his hands in his lap. “She was so mad she wouldn’t return none of my calls while she was gone. After three weeks, Jennifer come back without her.”
“Where was Liz?”
Will sighed. “At Disney, Liz and Jennifer met a group of young’uns on a high school trip from Brazil. Liz, she was real taken with one boy in the group. The Brazilians was going to visit Fort Lauderdale after Disney. Liz decided to go with them. Jennifer, she drove back by herself.”
“Drove back to where? Where do you live?”
“Butler County, Nebraska. I’m a farmer. Mostly I grow corn.”
“If you live in Nebraska, how did you hear about my gunfight with the cop who kidnapped that woman?”
“When the lieutenant give me your card, I Googled you. Then I Googled him.”
“I would’ve done the same thing.” I wrote Butler C
ounty. Corn. “How long since she left?”
His eyes glistened. “A little over a year.”
“Did she send you any letters, emails, anything like that?”
“Nope. Not even a postcard.”
“Did she leave Jennifer a note with the boy’s name or address, maybe a phone number where you could reach her?”
“Oh sure. She didn’t sneak off or nothing. She gave Jennifer the boy’s name and phone number. But she made Jennifer promise not to tell me what she done until she—that is, Jennifer—until she got back home to Butler County.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped his eyes. “By the time Jennifer come home, the Brazilian boy, he was back in Brazil. I called him long distance. He said the last time he seen my Lizzie was at the Miami airport when they was leaving for home.”
“You hadn’t heard from her before those texts?”
“Nary a word.”
“Was her cellphone on your plan?”
“Yeah. When Jennifer come home, I called the sheriff in David City—that’s the county seat. He tried to do a phone trace, but Lizzie’s phone wasn’t on the network. The phone company said the last time her phone was used was in Port City a week after them Brazilians flew home. The Brazilian boy, he wasn’t involved.”
His eyes were moist. “I pay for her phone every month… I know it’s lost or stolen or somesuch, but I keep hoping someday she’ll turn it back on. The preacher, he says a faint hope is better than no hope, and I should live with faith.”
“Are these texts the only clues?”
“Yep. Can you find her?” Will cleared his throat.
“With so little to go on, it won’t be easy. I’ll do my best.”
“The lieutenant, he said the FBI can’t do nothing.”
“He’s right. Technically the girls are missing persons. Liz and the other women left home of their own free will. The only evidence your daughter is held against her will is three texts sent from a phone with a diplomatic connection. That’s not enough to involve the FBI. Sorry.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Will sat straighter. “Mr. McCrary, I got one of the biggest farms in Nebraska, and if my Lizzie don’t come back, I got no one to leave it to and nothing to live for. Corn prices are real good; I can pay.”
“I figured that. I just don’t want to raise false hope.”
“I understand; no guarantees.” He stuck out his hand.
I shook it. “Of course I’ll help. What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Elizabeth Marie Jenkins. Everybody calls her Liz.”
I noted that. “Date of birth?”
She was nineteen. So young to be the victim of sex slavery. But any age was too young.
“Do you have a recent picture?”
He pulled two wallet-sized portraits from his shirt pocket and looked at them. “This is her high school graduation picture. I took it last year.” He looked at one and handed me the other. “Keep it. I have plenty more.” His eyes glistened.
The world froze for a moment. It was his daughter’s picture, but, except for the hairstyle, it could have been my cousin Emily. Sun-lightened, shoulder-length hair, pale blue eyes, and a wide innocent smile that knew no fear and saw no evil anywhere in the world. She smiled just like Emily did.
I swallowed hard and blinked. “I suppose you showed these texts to Lieutenant Castellano.”
He nodded. “When the first text come in, my phone whistled like they do. That sorta woke me a little. You know how you kinda hear something in your sleep, but it don’t, like, register?”
I nodded.
“The second text, the phone whistle woke me all the way. I was reading it when the third text come in. When I read it—” His voice broke. He put his hands over his face.
I handed him a tissue.
Will wiped his eyes again. “I tell you, I prayed for strength not to call her back then and there. She felt so close... so close…”
I looked at Liz’s photo again to avoid watching her father weep. How did that innocent girl see the world now, a year later?
“I held that phone another half hour, praying my Lizzie would send another text. I finally give up and I called the airline to catch the first plane to Port City. When I rented a car, I asked the clerk where the nearest police station was. That’s where I met Lieutenant Castellano. That was Tuesday afternoon late.”
He pulled a paper from his shirt pocket and studied it. “The lieutenant, he ran the other girls’ names through the missing persons’ notices. There was nothing for that Jill girl or nobody named Tawnya, but that Dolores girl, Lizzie misspelled her name. It’s not D-E-L; it’s D-O-L. She gotta be Dolores Cherry from Shawnee, Oklahoma. That girl Morgan, she’s Morgan Putnam from Cleveland. Their parents, they reported them missing a year ago. Lieutenant Castellano, he called the police in Shawnee and Cleveland. Nobody has no leads and the girls’ parents, they ain’t heard from them. I promised them both I’d contact them if I found anything.”
“The text mentions a man named Tommy Flannigan. Did the lieutenant find anything on him?”
“There’s no Tommy Flannigan in the police records, the phone book, or nowhere else. This Tommy fellow, he must’ve gave my Lizzie a phony name. Over a hundred criminals named Tommy in Atlantic County fit his description. The lieutenant, he assigned two detectives to check out criminals named Tommy, but it takes time. Castellano says he’s feared this Tommy, maybe he don’t have no criminal record.”
I glanced at his phone again. “What about Scruffy and Vince?”
“The lieutenant, he couldn’t find nobody named Scruffy, white or black, with a criminal record. He did find a folk singer on Google. But he’s white and seventy-three years old. Lives in Nashville. The lieutenant says there are two hundred crooks in South Florida named Vince. They’re checking.”
He slurped his coffee, now cold, and frowned.
“I’ll call the receptionist for fresh coffee.” I did. “Could the lieutenant do anything with the house description?”
“His computer geek, he ran it every which way through the property appraiser website and the Department of Transportation map database. He had the sergeants brief every precinct for all the patrol units Wednesday, Thursday, and this morning. Nothing yet.”
“What did he find out about the phone that sent the text?”
Will referred to his notes again. “It’s a Washington, DC number. It took a couple of days, but yesterday he learned it belongs to a fellow named Pablo Antonio Crucero Obregon. He’s the ambassador from the Republic of San Cristobal.”
“Did anyone interview the ambassador?”
“The lieutenant, he said the ambassador lives in Washington, but he’s been in San Cristobal for the last three weeks.”
“Somebody else has his phone.”
“That’s what the lieutenant said.”
“Okay if I call the lieutenant after you and I are through here?”
“You can call him now if you like.”
“I’ll do it later. I have some boring cop stuff to discuss with him.”
“Nothing about my daughter’s case will bore me.”
“I’ll call him later.”
Betty knocked twice on the door and brought in fresh coffee. I nodded my thanks and waited for her to leave.
Will cleared his throat. “Is there something you want to discuss with the lieutenant that you don’t want me to hear?”
I sipped my coffee while I decided how to answer. “It would take a literal miracle for the cops to find your daughter. That’s why the lieutenant sent you to me.”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t the cops find my Lizzie?”
“Jorge Castellano is a LEO—a law enforcement officer—sworn to uphold the law. LEOs follow state laws and the U.S. Constitution—things such as search warrants and Miranda warnings that protect people’s rights.”
“Okay, but so what? My daughter was kidnapped for crissakes. Her life’s in danger, not to ment
ion the other girls.” Will smacked the table with his palm. “We got to get a move on.”
“The cops follow due process to obtain evidence, or the prosecutor can’t use it in court.”
“You mean that legal stuff I seen on the TV cop shows?”
“Right.”
“I don’t need to convict nobody in court. All I want is to find my daughter.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Jorge knows that he can’t find Liz if he follows due process of law. It just isn’t going to happen. He sent you to me because I’m not a LEO. I couldn’t care less about due process. Sometimes I do things which are, ah, outside the law.”
“Such as?”
“Suppose I find that three-story house Liz described. I would need to search the house to find her. As a private citizen, I can’t get a search warrant, so I might pick the lock or break down the door. If Liz or another of the captives were inside, nobody would raise a ruckus that I broke the law when I freed them. You follow?”
“Good P.R. makes you bullet proof.”
“Right, but if the girls are not there—say the kidnappers moved them somewhere else—I wind up in jail if I’m caught in a B&E.”
“B&E?”
“Breaking and entering.”
Will rubbed his chin. “You take big risks.”
“Goes with the territory. Also, as a private citizen, I don’t give Miranda warnings when I question a witness. I get them to talk to me however I can—whatever works.”
Will caught the implications. “Jesus Christ. If you question somebody, and they don’t answer you—”
I nodded. “Sometimes, I… persuade them to cooperate.”
“How?”
“Are you sure you want to know, Will?”
His eyes became icy. “I want my daughter back, whatever it costs, whatever it takes.”
Chapter 3
Jorge answered on the second ring. “Hola, Carlos. Did a man named Will Jenkins call you?”
“He just left. I’m gonna take the case. Thanks for the referral, I think.”
“Good. You know our hands are tied, but you…”
“Right. What did you turn up on the names in the texts?”
“We’re checking every Vince and Tommy, but nothing’s popped. I have two guys on it. Unfortunately, our records don’t always include tattoos and identifying marks.”
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