“You don’t know for sure that was the case. It’s a theory. You’re remembering a lot of your time in the house now. I can tell. What’s that like?”
“Are you being a doctor right now?” Willow asked, halting in the doorway and forcing Josh to stop quickly, and bump into her slightly.
“I’m just asking.”
“It’s awful. Sometimes I feel like I was just a fly on the wall. I feel like I’m looking down on myself, watching it all play out. But sometimes it all feels very real and I remember I was really there.”
“But you aren’t anymore,” Josh said, brushing her short blond hair away from her downturned eyes. “This is all moving really fast Willow. I know that Piper and Bobby are on a time crunch and I don’t think they understand what this is putting you through. Maybe we should have them back off?”
“No, I want this moving fast. It’s like a Band-Aid; I just want to yank it off so I can start to heal. I want to find Josephine. Bobby is my best chance at that. We don’t have to be getting along perfectly for us to still get this done. I can manage how I’m feeling.”
“Okay,” Josh said, shrugging. It was clear to Willow that he wanted to press her to keep talking about this, but he just nodded and continued. “I’ll call Tony and we can head over to the apartment.”
“I’m going in this time,” Willow said with a glare in her eyes that flamed with resolve.
“Then so will I.”
Chapter Ten
“I think you’re being a jerk,” Piper called over her shoulder to Bobby as she hailed a cab and considered getting in without him.
“A jerk?” he said incredulously, hopping in beside her and nudging her firmly with his hip as Piper gave the driver the address to the police precinct. “She’s the one with the bad attitude. I reached out to her last night after dinner but today she’s all snippy with me again.”
“She has every reason to be a mess right now. You need to support her. Take a couple on the chin and soften your approach with her. She doesn’t need a grumpy big brother figure telling her how she feels is dumb.”
“Well what does she need?” Bobby asked, his tone no softer than it had been all day. “She’s out there thinking she can play detective. Did you see that pile of notes? She’s in for a rude awakening when these cases turn out to be messier than she thinks. Whatever she’s dreamed up in her mind about the outcome is highly unlikely. It’s not going to turn out how she wants.”
“Exactly,” Piper sniped as she checked her phone for messages.
“What do you mean exactly? What is that telling me?”
“Figure that out Bobby and I think you’ll finally get it. I swear, for a sweet and smart guy sometimes you’re a dumb jackass.”
“I love you too, honey,” he grumbled playfully. “Do me a favor, when we get to the precinct please let me do all the charming. Judging by this conversation, your skills are rusty.”
“I’m right about this Bobby. Stop going hard at her. She doesn’t need it.” She slipped her hand into his and they laced their fingers together. “I’m glad you’re my dumb jackass,” she whispered as she rested her head on his shoulder.
“I couldn’t think of any other pain in the ass I’d want calling me names,” Bobby replied, kissing the top of her head.
As the cab pulled up to the police department Bobby fished his badge and notebook out of his pocket. They passed through the front doors and stepped up to the wooden booth with a window in it. Through a static filled microphone, the cop on the other side scrutinized Bobby’s credentials and his authority to be there. After thirty-five minutes and four phone calls, they finally let them in.
“Hello Officer Wright, Miss Anderson, I’m Detective Denny Styles. I head the cold case task force. We get lots of families in here begging us to look into something or other, but it’s not often I get a cop in here saying he might have leads for me. You’ve piqued my interest.”
“Thank you for meeting with us right away Detective Styles,” Piper said with a smile as they walked down the long and painfully bland hallway toward the back of the office. She took note of his out of date mustache and mustard pinstripe yellow shirt, his pocket lined with pens. He looked like the kind of man who was more at ease in a dingy quiet office digging through a mountain of paperwork than having to deal with people.
“Please call me Denny, and don’t thank me yet. What I’m sure Officer Wright will tell you the second I leave is the only reason they’ve assigned me to help is to determine if you really have new leads on cold cases. If you do, it will be my intention to steal said case and information from you in order to further the success of my department. I’m less of a liaison and more of a double agent.”
“But admirably honest.” Bobby grinned. “Call me Bobby, and trust me, we’re fine if you take point on the case. I’m on a limited timetable here and I’m just happy to have some help. That’s if there is a case at all. I’ve gotten a tip from a close friend of mine and I want to see it through. This first one I’m bringing you doesn’t seem very promising, but maybe one of the others will pan out.”
Denny showed them into a small room and flipped the overhead lights on, sending the bulbs instantly into a hum. “You have a friend with information on multiple cold cases? Are you sure he didn’t commit them?” Denny laughed, his wide smile lifting his large ears up almost an inch.
“She was seven years old, I think it’s safe to say she wasn’t involved.” Piper retorted curtly and she knew she was being too sensitive. The cops she’d gotten to know through Bobby, all had a crass sense of humor at times. It was an obvious coping mechanism for processing the horrors they saw on a weekly basis.
“Here’s the case file number,” Bobby said, taking a seat across from Denny and sliding the notebook to him. “This morning the girl worked with a sketch artist to come up with a rendition of the missing person she remembered. Then I searched the missing persons database with the information she could recall and we got a strong match. My friend ID’d the picture I showed her.”
“Josephine Vasquez,” Denny muttered as he scrolled through the case file on the computer screen in front of him. “It’s not a cold case, it’s closed. She’s dead.” The disappointment in his voice wasn’t rooted in mourning the loss of a girl, but the loss of a chance at being a hero in a cold case.
“That’s so sad. How did she die?” Piper asked, trying to quietly guide the man back to his humanity.
“Killed herself,” he replied flatly, Piper’s attempt clearly unsuccessful. “The missing persons case was filed by her mother. She was assumed a run away. Josephine resurfaces in 2006 when she’s arrested for possession of narcotics and prostitution. That’s what closed the missing persons case, but she continued to acquire a long record after that.”
“We think she may have been originally taken to be sold into some kind of sex trafficking. Is there a chance the prostitution was against her will?” Bobby asked, scratching down all the information Denny was offering.
“Could be. There aren’t many ways to distinguish something like that until places get raided and the conditions the girls are living in come to light. I worked on a team a few years back that focused on prostitution. The girls in that area, where Josephine was picked up a few times, run without a pimp. Plus she was arrested six more times for the same charge over the following year and a half. She was put into a mandatory drug center. If she was being held against her will and forced into prostitution that may have been a good opportunity to break free. She went back out a few weeks later and got arrested in an area about seven miles from the corners she was working before. In my experience, this sounds like a profession of choice.”
“You say it like that takes away from the fact that she’s dead. Like it matters less. She was missing for eight years. Aren’t you interested in who took her, where that time in her life went?” Piper was pacing around the room as she felt her anger build. Going to school for victims advocacy had been a cathartic but sometimes traumatic expe
rience for her over the last few months. She knew it was what she wanted to do. She could feel it in her bones. But the stories, all the horrific stories she heard on a weekly basis, were enough to make her want to scoop up all the hurt and exploited children and save them.
“I’m not saying she’s worth any less because she was a hooker, I’m saying she’s dead and there isn’t anything we can do to change that. There’s no case here.” Denny crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
“You said suicide? Is it solid?” Bobby asked shooting Piper a look that said he understood her point but it wasn’t going to help them to keep pushing it.
“Looks like it. She OD’d on pills. Left a note and made a few phone calls to girls she worked the corners with. Notes here say she was troubled. The other girls weren’t surprised when they heard.” Denny scrolled through more pages of documents as he whistled a cheery tune that didn’t match the somberness of the situation. “Nothing in here about where she was for that missing time. She never filed any complaint against anyone for imprisonment or kidnapping. Maybe your friend, she was only seven at the time, maybe she got it wrong. Maybe Josephine wasn’t sold. She might have just been a runaway who stayed off the radar for a while.”
“My friend’s parents were possibly the ones who took her and brokered the deal to get her sold into trafficking. It was their M.O. and she’s certain this girl was there against her will.”
“If that’s the case, there is another scenario that might make sense. These girls, the ones who go in real young, they cater to a certain market of men who desire that age. Josephine may have become obsolete in those circles as she got older. Sometimes they kill the girls, sometimes they get them hooked on dope and toss them out on the street, banking on the fact that they’re too damaged to be taken seriously or too scared to ever go after the people who hurt them. There’s a lot of brainwashing done to these girls.”
“Here’s the information on my friend’s parents. They’re deceased, but we believe they might have been very active in the sex trafficking world. There are other girls. Maybe they’re alive, or their cases still open.” Bobby slid more papers over to Denny.
“If this really isn’t a competition for who closes these cases, then I’d like to talk to this girl. I’m willing to put in the manpower and resources if she can link her parents to an open or unsolved case. But I’m not going to drag this out. Call her up, let’s do this today.”
“It’s difficult,” Piper said, finally taking a seat next to Bobby and calming her jittery legs. “Willow’s been through a lot. She’s fragile. We were letting her ease into the memories. She doesn’t even know the outcome of Josephine’s story yet. That’s going to crush her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. If you want the support of this department and its resources, then bring her in today.” Denny’s face lacked any empathy as he grabbed a toothpick from his pocket and stuck it between his teeth.
“I’ll call her,” Bobby said finally giving in. “But remember she’s a victim too. I don’t want to push her over the edge.”
“You really think you have some viable leads? We’re talking fifteen years ago, these girls are all likely gone in one way or another.”
“I know,” Bobby admitted as he ran his hand over his stubble-covered cheek. “I’m just not sure she knows that, no matter how many times I’ve told her.”
“I’ll leave you two alone and you give her a call. The sooner you can get her in here the sooner we can move forward. It sounds like this might be more about closure for her than anything else. You understand that we just don’t have the resources to help her with that.”
Bobby and Piper were silent after Denny left the room. Bobby stared down at his phone for almost a full minute before he spoke. “I get it,” he said quietly. “They are likely all going to pan out this way, but knowing that isn’t going to stop Willow. Nothing I say is going to change her mind. Any of the girls she remembers are probably going to have a similar story.”
“Probably,” Piper breathed out, squeezing down on Bobby’s thigh, reminding him she was still there for him even if he was being an idiot.
“So me sitting there telling her this is how it’s going to turn out isn’t helping. Being right doesn’t really matter,” he muttered, the realization clearly not sitting well with him.
“That ship has sailed, she’s already out there. You need to decide who you’re going to be when it starts to sink.”
“I get it,” Bobby said again shaking his head. “I’m not sure who she needs me to be. I want to warn her and protect her. It was different with you. Even with Jedda, it felt different than this. Why is it so hard for me to just support her?”
“She’s not very likeable,” Piper admitted with a half-smile. “But sometimes when people are acting their worst it’s when they need love the most.”
“You’re starting to sound like Betty again,” Bobby chided with a grin as he took her hand in his.
“Not even close. If Betty had heard you acting like this, she’d have slapped you upside the head by now. I let it go on longer than she would have. I just don’t want to see you be the bad guy when Willow goes looking for one. You have to let her do this.”
“It’s counter-intuitive. Watching someone you care about do something you know will end badly. Standing by while they walk off the edge of the cliff.”
“It’s her cliff. Her life might be waiting for her after the drop.”
“She’s going to come here and find out what happened to Josephine. It’s going to knock her down.”
“And we’ll pick her up.”
Chapter Eleven
“No,” Willow said, crossing her arms over her chest, her lip clamped tight between her teeth. She’d gotten the phone call from Bobby and listened to the news he’d given her but she didn’t believe it. “That doesn’t make any sense.” It wasn’t as if Willow hadn’t prepared herself for the chance that Josephine might be dead, she knew that could be the reason the case was closed. What she hadn’t considered was that the girl would have been so broken she’d take her own life.
“Where are you going?” Josh called quickening his pace to try to catch her. “They want us to head down to the precinct.”
“I can’t take this bullshit anymore. I don’t care what you say Josh, I know you think this is crazy and pointless. You’re humoring me, but if I told you right now I was done, you’d be relieved. You’d tell me I was doing the right thing by letting all this go. You want me to get on a plane and go back to Edenville and act like everything is fine. That’s all anyone wants from me, to be fine. To act fine.” Willow pulled hard on the handle of a parked cab and threw herself in, slamming the door before Josh could respond. As he hurried to catch her, the cab sped off. She didn’t bother looking back to see his reaction. She didn’t care. Or at least she was going to force herself not to.
“I want to go to a bar,” she said leaning forward and flashing the driver a twenty. “Something in the city, something off the beaten path.” The driver grabbed the twenty and grunted as he headed away from the hotel. Willow switched off her phone and pulled the battery out of the back, not wanting to be tracked. She’d heard all of Bobby’s words about Josephine but she wasn’t letting them sink in. If she didn’t acknowledge the truth maybe it wouldn’t hurt.
When he and Piper called, it had taken Willow off guard. Tony had just called back to tell them he’d be able to open up the apartment sometime around seven that night when his son went out. When Josh had asked about her parents belongings Tony let him know there were boxes in the basement storage unit of theirs but they’d long since been buried by years of clutter from other tenants. It would a huge job to dig them out.
They’d headed back to the hotel and for a little while. Willow felt a vulnerability that felt welcomed and scary all at once as she sat across from Josh in the lobby. They’d made a promise to not talk about what Willow was trying to do, how she felt, or what she wanted. Instead, t
hey talked about music. It was something that connected them on a cellular level, a language that permeated their souls. It made her think of Marcario. It made her long for a chance to sing in front of his bar again, to see him smile. Not because she loved him, but because there, in disguise she felt so much more protected than she did sitting here with Josh. He made her feel raw and exposed. He’d seen her stripped back and vulnerable. It was a cold and naked feeling that she couldn’t seem to turn off in his presence. Maybe that’s why after Bobby broke the news about Josephine it felt easier to run.
As the driver pulled the cab in front of the small box-shaped bar with peeling siding and a half lit sign Willow felt herself on a new mission. Drink. Grab a bottle and keep pouring until the sting wore off, until the sharp edges of her memory grew fuzzy. Drink until the anger evaporated. “Thanks,” she called out to the driver as she slammed the door and he sped off.
Pulling open the heavy door, she stepped inside and was hit with a wall of cigarette smoke, something she thought was banned in bars, but no one seemed to give a shit. Those were the kind of people she was hoping to be around right now. The ten or twelve bar stools were mostly empty, only a couple of heavy set guys hunched over the bar struggling to keep their faces out of their half empty glasses. A few other men sat in the corner at a table chatting quietly.
No one looked at her, not even the stocky, balding bartender as she took a few more steps in and grabbed a stool at the far side of the bar. When he finally looked up and slugged over, he scanned her with bored eyes. “You old enough to drink kid?” he asked, his hand stretched out for her ID. She pulled it from her bag and slapped it down.
“I’ll take a rum and coke, heavy on the rum. And keep them coming.”
“I don’t want to be picking your skinny ass up off my bar floor in an hour,” he growled, raising a skeptical eyebrow at her.
Settling Scores (Piper Anderson Series) Page 8