Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  I could see from his eyes, along with the flinch after I spoke the name of the modeling school, that he knew where I was going before I finished.

  Even so, I only stood there, waiting, after I was done with my little intro. I waited for him to react, I guess, or to finish reacting before I piled more on top of what I’d already said.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I said then.

  I still couldn’t read his expression, other than to see that anger lived there now. The anger grew more prominent on his face the longer he looked at me, until it eclipsed the wariness of before. The anger didn’t feel aimed at me, though.

  He just looked at me, as if thinking, then nodded, once.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said.

  Stepping backwards into the house, he pushed the screen door open a bit wider to let me in, and I caught hold of the edge, opening it all the way and following him inside.

  A few minutes later, I sat on a pristine, pale yellow couch in the middle of a sunken living room with white carpet. I glanced around awkwardly after he left the room, hearing him putter around in the kitchen from a near distance. I wondered at the fact that he’d left me alone in his house after that introduction, but his wariness of me didn’t seem to extend to a concern that I might rip him off, whatever he thought of me otherwise.

  I found myself remembering the police sketch on the news that morning, and winced. I didn’t see a television in here, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have one.

  My luck, he was in there dialing 9-1-1.

  He returned a few minutes later, though, carrying a tray that held a small teapot, two cups, a small sugar and cream set and a china plate with the same pattern holding a number of sugar cookies. I found myself a little unsure what to do with the old school hospitality.

  “Err, thanks,” I said.

  Then, not wanting to seem rude, I took the tea cup he poured for me and picked up a cookie, taking a small bite out of one corner before using the same hand to gesture vaguely around the room.

  “You have a really nice house,” I said, still feeling awkward.

  “Thank you.” Mr Jiāng settled onto the couch next to me. Now his eyes bored into my face, as if trying to read information out of my very skull. “Do you know anything about what has happened to my daughter?” he said. “Where is she?”

  Putting down the cookie, I shook my head.

  “I don’t,” I said. “Not yet. Not for sure. And I don’t know where she is. Right now, I’m trying to find out whatever I can about the modeling show she allegedly signed up for on the day she disappeared.”

  “Allegedly?” he said, frowning.

  I gave him an apologetic look, still gripping the cookie. “We have to say that, Mr. Jiāng. We don’t know anything for sure. It’s all theory at this point. The police would have to say the same thing...no matter what they suspected.”

  “Who has her?” he said.

  I glanced down and saw his hands tighten on his thighs, creating dimples where each of his fingers clutched his pants. Glancing back up at his face slowly, I calmed my voice and expression at once.

  “Mr. Jiāng,” I said gently. “I really don’t know that yet. You need to understand...it’s very possible I will never know that. It’s possible the cops will never know, either. But I’m doing what I can to find out, I promise you. And I promise you, whatever I do find out, I will forward that information to the police and other relevant authorities so that they can look for your daughter.”

  “You’re not looking for her? For JìngYáng?”

  I heard the hurt in his voice and winced a little.

  Part of it was hearing her real name, maybe.

  She called herself “Jazzy” on all of the modeling applications I’d looked at. I could picture the Americanized girl and her somewhat old-school dad, and maybe a mom that was the same as the dad or even stricter. Something about this obviously distraught man calling his daughter by her given name hit me in a place that already felt pretty tender and raw.

  I leaned forward, my arms on my thighs, and looked him right in the face.

  “I am looking for her,” I said sincerely. “But you have to know my chances aren’t good. I’m hoping I can learn enough about the people who took her that I can pass that information on to the cops...or really, the FBI, since I suspect there’s a good chance whoever this is, they’re operating across state lines. Possibly even internationally.”

  I saw Mr. Jiāng’s face fall.

  Still, I saw the understanding there, too.

  In my experience, immigrants understood certain realities of the world a lot better than your average, white bread American did.

  That wasn’t always true, of course, but it often was.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “But I don’t think I’d be doing you any favors by lying to you. I want to find her. I really do. But I’m one person, and usually this kind of thing is organized crime. If I’m lucky, I might find the edges of the organization behind the modeling shows. But I would need enough to go to the authorities...and that’s not as easy as it maybe sounds.”

  “Who?” he said. “Who is it?”

  Seeing the look on his face, I started to shake my head. “I don’t know. Not yet. I don’t even have any solid theories, really––”

  “Who?” he said, his voice hard that time, a command.

  Still looking at the expression there warily, I shook my head again.

  “Look, maybe I’m not being clear here,” I said. “I really don’t know anything at this point. Even if I did, I can’t give you names based on preliminary research I’m doing. Frankly, I doubt I’d give solid information to you or any parent, not until the authorities were involved...”

  His face turned red as I spoke.

  “Why not?” he said.

  His accent grew audible for the first time, I noticed.

  I sighed. “Because I’m not going to risk you doing something stupid that would get you killed,” I said, rubbing my forehead with a hand. I wondered why I was being so honest with this man, who I didn’t know at all. Maybe it was something about his face. Maybe it was the grief he wore like a shroud, or the fact that he used his daughter’s given name, which I happened to know meant roughly “peaceful ocean” in Chinese.

  Maybe it was the idea of anyone’s kid being taken for what I strongly suspected she’d been taken for.

  Glancing at the mantle and seeing a smiling teenaged face I recognized, her cheek mashed up against her father’s as they both grinned into the camera...didn’t help.

  “Shit,” I said, wondering suddenly why this was hitting me so hard.

  I remembered Nik saying something about the lock affecting emotions, even apart from how I felt around Nik himself. Did that mean Nik had been opening my lock, too?

  Rubbing the middle of my chest without really noticing I did it, I faced Mr. Jiāng.

  I don’t know why I said it.

  Maybe it was for all the reasons I just listed.

  Maybe it was that damned picture, which now felt burned into my brain, in a way I knew I’d never be able to extricate the friggin’ thing entirely. Maybe it was because I could tell Mr. Jiāng was going to do something drastic if I didn’t tell him something real, that maybe he really would get himself killed. Maybe it was because I increasingly suspected there wasn’t a Mrs. Jiāng, and that little peaceful ocean had been this man’s entire world.

  Maybe it wasn’t about any of that. Maybe it was for some other reason.

  “I’ll find her Mr. Jiāng,” I said, my voice suddenly firm.

  I sounded pretty damned certain. Certain enough to startle me, but not enough to get me to back down, because apparently I’m an idiot.

  “If she’s anywhere in Seattle,” I added. “...If they haven’t transported her out of here, meaning out of the country...I’ll find her. I promise you I will.”

  I saw Mr. Jiāng measure my eyes with his.

  After another pause, I saw something in his sho
ulders relax.

  He nodded, once, and I saw the relief in his eyes, too.

  I honestly don’t know if that reassured me, or made me feel worse.

  8

  Mochas, Hot Guys and Hot Pink Cars

  I left the Jiāng house about two hours later, feeling something between wanting to kick myself for saying that to him and a more intense resolve than I’d felt up until then.

  I was going to find that damned kid, Jazzy Jiāng, if it killed me.

  At the moment, at least, I cared about that a lot more than terrorist shape-shifters, or sociopathic Michael Evers, or one or both of them peering into Irene’s bedroom window. I maybe even cared about it more than being fingered as a possible terrorist by Razmun.

  The Culare case had just gone from my easy, desk-job distraction from inter-dimensional aliens to my number one priority. I knew Gantry would have a fit when he found out that meant I’d be doing a lot more field work, but I’d deal with him when I saw him.

  For now, I didn’t care.

  After over an hour of looking at pictures of Jazzy and her friends with Mr. Jiāng, and Mr. Jiāng detailing everything he could to me about her life before she disappeared, I felt a little better armed for my search. I drilled him a lot about her friends, especially...particularly the two who disappeared at the same time she did. After he gave me access to her iPad and I read a bunch of her Instagrams and texts, a picture started to emerge of her personality.

  I also knew where I wanted to go next.

  Jazzy had gone to the nearby high school, and since it was getting close to that time of day, I decided to try and talk to a few of her classmates once they got out. I had some time to kill before that, so I wanted to hit one other place first...the hotel where the so-called “model talent show” had been held.

  I found myself thinking about Jazzy herself on the way there, now that I knew a little more about her. I strongly suspected, from what Mr. Jiāng told me...as well as what he didn’t tell me...that little Miss Jazzy Jiāng was a bit of a wild one.

  Not crazy wild. Not wild like Jake and me, for example, with the reform schools and foster parents and skipping school and Jake being busted for stealing and drinking and me being busted for getting in fights and whatever else. More like normal, teenaged, inexperienced, good-natured, goofy wild. Which unfortunately meant that Miss Jazzy Jiāng was exactly the type to get all geeked up about a cheesy modeling contest.

  It was just the kind of “safe” but rebellious type thing that a kid like her would get up to behind her conservative father’s back. Even if she knew it would drive her kind-hearted but old-fashioned father nuts.

  Maybe especially if she knew it would drive him nuts.

  Mr. Jiāng told me he’d had no idea what his fifteen-year-old daughter was really up to that day. She’d announced to him she was going downtown to shop at one of the bigger indoor malls with her friend, Hilary. Jazzy said that she, Hillary and Hilary’s older sister, Marla, would shop, get lunch, hang out and go to a movie if they found anything good to watch.

  As a result, Mr. Jiāng didn’t really get worried until about seven o’clock that night, when Hilary and Marla’s mother called him and asked if he’d heard from the girls.

  The two of them drove to the mall together, and couldn’t find them. They’d asked around, and no one had seen them, either.

  They’d called all of their friends.

  They’d driven around the neighborhood and downtown. They’d talked to more parents. They called the police and told them what happened.

  Then they’d gone back to the mall and searched the movie theaters.

  It wasn’t until two full days had gone by and the police were heavily involved that one of Jazzy and Hillary’s other friends came forward and stammeringly confessed about the modeling show. She admitted that Jazzy, Hilary and Marla lied, that they’d never been to the mall at all. She told the police that Jazzy and her friends had gone to a hotel downtown instead, to an open modeling call by a famous modeling school called Madam Culare’s.

  The friend hadn’t wanted to get Jazzy and Hilary in trouble.

  Apparently she confessed the lie to her parents at some point, and they marched her straight into the police station to repeat her story to them.

  So, given that I had about an hour to kill before the high school got out, I tracked down the hotel the girl had named to the police after I left Mr. Jiāng. I figured it couldn’t hurt to look around, although I knew the police would have been all over this place already.

  It was pretty seedy.

  Walking in from the parking lot, I saw a half-covered, algae-choked pool and a lot of moss growing on the outside walls near a vending machine alcove. The hotel itself was sorely in need of a paint job, despite being fairly close to the Space Needle and in walking distance of the Music Museum and a few other big tourist spots. The whole property looked like some kind of pre-gentrification relic, from back before Seattle became one of the richest cities in the Northwest. It was definitely nothing like one of the fancy hotels downtown, where Culare’s Modeling School had their real-deal talent scout functions.

  It was perfect, however, for a bogus one run by some loser, mobster up-and-comer wannabe.

  Anyway, a kid wouldn’t think to question the location much, certainly not the way an adult would. I’m sure the organizers had some lame reason for the location, too, probably to keep the number of attendees low or some other such nonsense.

  I talked to the manager of the hotel, who happened to be working the front desk.

  Clearly, she hadn’t questioned the whole modeling show cover story, either.

  She took me to the main meeting hall, where the event took place. While she fumbled with keys and kept blowing her badly permed, bleached-blond bangs out of her eyes, she told me how the police had come to look at the same room, only a week or so earlier.

  Not to be an asshole, but she didn’t strike me as the brightest bulb.

  Greedy, yes. She was proud of the hotel, in a way that was almost awkward since I didn’t know how to convincingly feign enthusiasm for the dump. I mean, it must have been nice once, but those days were long gone and probably predated her being here.

  Either way, after talking to her for a few minutes, it was pretty clear she hadn’t questioned the meeting room rental once she had the money in her sweaty, ring-adorned hands. She also confessed to me how “hot” the photographers and model recruiter guy were, and how they seemed legit with all of their expensive-looking lighting and other equipment.

  She also told me––as a lot of people feel the need to tell me in these situations for some reason––that she “got the feeling” there was something off with the guy renting the place. She said she sensed he might not be right in some way, that something didn’t gel with his story or maybe just with him.

  I don’t know why people say shit like that, honestly.

  Truthfully? I don’t think she noticed a fucking thing except how the guy looked in his jeans, and how much money he handed her. Some people just need to convince themselves nothing bad would ever happen to them, I guess. They want to believe that their own spidey-sense is so finely attuned that they can just look at another person and know instantly if he’s a black hat or a white one. Which is total b.s., of course.

  It also bugs me, because it implies that people who get screwed by psycho shitbags like these traffickers were somehow stupid or to blame for what happened. I’d been in this business long enough to know that was b.s., too. It could happen to anyone. Including me. Including this dumpy hotel manager with her lame cartoon sweatshirt and smoke-stained fingers.

  So yeah, I had to fight to not roll my eyes at that one.

  The conference room also needed paint.

  The light fixtures looked about twenty years old and the carpet had been worn nearly threadbare in places. I saw water stains on the ceiling, along with some pretty iffy-looking electrical outlets...but the place was surprisingly large and it had a stage on one end, which is
probably why they picked it.

  The guys paid cash, the manager said.

  She also specified a few times that it had been guys, too, as in all guys...as in only guys...no women at all on the team running the show or even on the phone. The manager told me she’d given descriptions to a police sketch artist, since she hadn’t asked any of them for ID at the time and the names came up as bogus on a database search. According to her, they got zip even using Homeland Sec channels since it was technically an Amber Alert.

  I didn’t ask her where she got her information, just nodded.

  As far as their stated affiliations, they used only the Culare name, which was pretty brazen, but maybe they didn’t figure on it mattering.

  They’d never used the venue before, of course.

  Nor would they use it again, I knew...even if their mob bosses didn’t shut them down.

  They also would never use Culare’s name again, which is probably why they were so cocky about flaunting it, even having fake business cards made up along with the flyers and whatever else.

  After talking to the manager for a half-hour or so, I found myself hemming and hawing about going to my friends in the Seattle PD, if only to get a look at those sketches. I knew I’d probably have to deal with the Yesler stuff, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the amount of time that might take. A part of me wanted to deal with that later, like in a few days, maybe after I’d exhausted a few more avenues in looking for the girls.

  The hotel manager was able to give me a high-level description of the different guys making up the group, at least. When I pressed, I got somewhat more detail with some of the individual guys, too. None of them sounded familiar to anyone I’d researched at Culare’s, and the manager told me they all had accents anyway, so were likely foreigners. From what she said, between their accent and their looks, they definitely fell firmly on the European and/or Caucasian scale, versus some more southern or eastern part of the globe.