by Blake Pierce
“Jeez, Ray—Internal Affairs? What the hell did you do, break his other elbow?”
He didn’t answer and they sat without speaking for a good two minutes. Neither minded it. They weren’t angry. In fact, the silence was comfortable. Eventually, Ray spoke.
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”
“We are that,” Keri agreed.
Ray got on the 405 freeway at Culver Boulevard and headed south.
“Care to tell me where we’re headed?”
“A truck stop in Tustin. Chiqy mentioned a trucker who was supposed to transport Sarah and two other girls to a meet there. He was supposed to hand them off to a guy in a red big rig, who was going to take them to something called the Bad Place.”
“What’s the Bad Place?” Keri asked.
“He didn’t know much about it, just that it’s where the ‘problem’ girls are taken. I tried to get a location out of him but he didn’t know.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was pretty…forceful in my interrogation. He gave up everything else. If he knew where this place was, he’d have told me.”
“So what are we looking for exactly?” Keri asked, her mood if not her stomach slightly better as a result of having a lead.
“The trucker’s name is Curt Stoller. Edgerton sent me his DMV photo and info on his vehicle. Unfortunately, he’s almost certainly handed off the girls to whoever was driving the red truck by now. Patterson’s looking through video footage from the truck stop right now, trying to tag any red eighteen-wheelers.”
Detective Garrett Patterson was Edgerton’s right-hand man. Nicknamed “Grunt Work,” Patterson was a short, bookish guy in his thirties who loved poring over minutiae that bored just about everyone else. He was definitely the right man for this job.
“That’s a start,” Keri said with more enthusiasm than she’d felt in hours. “Maybe he’ll have something for us by the time we get there. What I’m wondering is if there’s any information on this Mr. Holiday.”
“I wondered the same thing,” Ray said. “Suarez put the name and physical description that Lanie gave us through the system and came up completely empty. I can’t believe that someone who runs such a huge sex trafficking operation has never been picked up or even ID’d. It’s like he’s a ghost.”
“That is weird,” Keri agreed. “He’s either really lucky or really good. Speaking of Lanie, I was thinking of calling the Caldwells to check in and see if those scratched letters I found in the headboard mean anything to them. You think it’s too early?”
Ray looked at the car’s clock.
“It’s not even six thirty. I’m hoping they managed to fall asleep for a few hours. If you call, it’ll get them all riled up when we don’t have anything worth sharing. Maybe text them when we’re closer to Tustin?”
“Yeah, that sounds good. It’s a fine line, you know—trying to keep parents informed but not drive them crazy.”
As she said it, she realized she wasn’t just talking about the Caldwells. Ray knew it too and tried to delicately broach the subject again.
“Listen, Keri, I know you don’t want to get into it. But if you change your mind, I’m here, okay? I’m always here for you. You know that, right?”
“I know and I appreciate it. But she’s gone, Ray. I was so close. I saw her. She called out to me. And now there are no leads and there’s nothing I can do about it. And I just can’t let myself process that right now. If I do, I think it might break me. I’ve just got to put it away in a box and focus on what’s in front of me. It’s the only way I can survive this.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray said quietly.
“Yeah, me too. But accepting that has helped me make a decision.”
“What’s that?”
“I may not be able to save Evie,” she told him. “But I’ve still got a chance to save Sarah Caldwell, to bring her back to her parents. And if I have to go to hell itself and drag her back out, that’s what I’m going to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Keri was getting anxious. They were only a few minutes from the truck stop and Patterson still hadn’t pinpointed which red truck Curt Stoller might have transferred the girls to. After sending the text to Mariela Caldwell’s phone, she called Patterson for the third time in less than an hour. Ray looked at her dubiously.
“Keri, don’t you think he’d call us if he had something?”
“That guy gets so into the details he might just forget. I’m going to give him a little jumpstart.”
“You’re going to give him an ulcer,” Ray countered. But it was too late. Detective Patterson had already picked up.
“I’m working on it,” he said before she could speak.
“Yeah, well I’m going to help you work on it, Garrett, because we’re almost there. You found Stoller’s truck, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “I saw it on a surveillance camera driving past the main building before it went into the huge lot in the back.”
“That’s great. What time was that?”
“About four a.m.” he replied. “But there are over fifty trucks back there and all the cameras are mounted on buildings hundreds of yards away. There’s no way to see vehicle colors, much less license plates.”
“Okay, let’s try it another way, then,” she suggested. “I bet there are more than just three girls being transported in that red truck and I doubt the driver is going to want to hang out in a crowded, public place like that any longer than he has to. So check for red trucks that arrived less than an hour before Stoller got there and left within an hour after he arrived.”
“Checking,” Patterson said, obviously glad to have another course of action.
Keri looked over at Ray while they waited and gave him her best “I told you so” look. He stuck out his tongue at her.
“How’s it coming, Garrett?” she asked after waiting in silence for two minutes. “We’re pulling off the freeway now.”
“Okay, I’ve got three red big rigs that fit your criteria. Kevin is cross-checking the plates to see if any of the drivers have records.”
“Edgerton?” Keri asked eagerly.
“Patience please,” he said irritably over the speakerphone. “Even geniuses need a moment or two.”
“Cut them some slack,” Ray whispered to her. “They’ve been up all night.”
“Got it!” Kevin shouted. “Of the three drivers, only one has a record. He’s been busted three times, all drug trafficking convictions. His name is Reginald Jones. I’m sending you his info now.”
Ray had reached the truck stop but pulled over on the side of the road, waiting for instructions.
“Good,” Keri said. “Edgerton, we need to know which way that truck went.”
“Checking cameras now. It went north on the 5 Freeway. Then it took the 55 north to the 91 east. That’s the last we have of it. As of ten minutes ago, it was approaching the 241, headed toward Corona.”
“That seems odd,” Keri noted. “Why would one guy take them south, only to have the next one take them northeast?”
“Maybe this Mr. Holiday ordered it,” Ray suggested, as he pulled back onto the road and made a U-turn back to the freeway. “He seems big on compartmentalizing information.”
“Regardless,” Edgerton butted in, “if you take the 241 and really book it, you might be able to cut him off near the 71.”
“Already on it,” Ray said as he turned on the siren and hit the accelerator.
*
Less than twenty minutes later, Ray and Keri, along with a half dozen squad cars from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, had the truck in their sights. Unfortunately, the driver was well aware of them and didn’t seem interested in pulling over.
In fact, he picked up speed so that at one point he was pushing ninety miles per hour.
“Pull back,” Keri shouted into the radio. “If there are girls in that truck and it crashes, none of them will make it.”
The cars did as she asked and at first,
it looked like the truck was easing up to match them. But it quickly became apparent that he was slowing down for another reason.
“He’s getting off at Green River Road,” one of the sheriff’s deputies announced.
Sure enough, the truck veered onto the exit ramp and went barreling along, ignoring any potential traffic.
“Where does this road go?” Keri asked anyone willing to answer. They were well out of her neck of the woods. A random deputy answered.
“It skirts along the eastern edge of the Cleveland National Forest before heading east and reconnecting with the 15 freeway. Luckily, there’s not much traffic around here at this time of day.”
“Do we want to get ahead of him and place a spike strip?” another deputy asked.
“No, it’s too dangerous,” Ray insisted. “We may just have to wait him out.”
Keri turned to him with a worried look on her face.
“I don’t think we can just wait. Who knows what he might do? Pull up next to him and I’ll try to talk some sense into the guy.”
“What if he’s armed?” Ray asked, clearly not convinced.
“We’ll have another unit pull up on the passenger side. If he pulls a weapon, they can take him out. Hopefully I can get him to slow down enough that the truck will be okay if he’s incapacitated.”
“I don’t know, Keri.”
“Just keep an eye out. If things go south, you can always hit the brakes. I’m going to pass the word.”
She explained the plan to the deputies as Ray prepared to pull up on the driver’s side of the truck. As he did, Keri lowered her window and took off her seatbelt. When they were right beside the truck, she waved at the driver, an African-American man in his forties who looked at her incredulously.
But amazingly, when she motioned for him lower his window, he did so.
“Reginald,” she shouted, “we don’t want this to end badly.”
“Don’t see how it can’t,” he yelled back. She noticed he had slowed down a bit from about sixty to fifty. Ray reduced speed to match him.
“Whatever cargo you have isn’t worth dying for. Pull over. You’re obviously just a courier. Roll over on your boss and you might not even do much time. Let me help you out.”
“There’s no way I’m not going down for a long time if I give up,” he yelled, slowing even more so that he could be heard.
“That depends on who your boss is. If he’s a big enough fish, you never know. It’s better than the alternative.”
“What’s the alternative?” he asked.
She could tell from his voice that he wanted this to end well, that he didn’t have some kind of death wish. She decided to play to that.
“If you don’t stop, it probably ends with you crashed in a ditch or with a bullet in your head.”
“What? Over some bricks of coke?”
Keri looked over at Ray, who was as shocked as she was. Then she turned back to Reginald, who was now going barely over thirty miles per hour.
“Reginald, are you telling me that you are only transporting drugs?” she asked.
“What else would I have?”
“Girls—underage girls.”
“I don’t got no girls in here!”
“Prove it,” Keri demanded. “Pull over. We’re looking for kidnapped girls. If you don’t have them, your day might not end so badly.”
Just then, Keri glanced at the road ahead and saw that she was wrong. It was going to end very badly for Reginald Jones. He was looking at her and clearly hadn’t noticed the sharp leftward bend of the road coming up. Even at his reduced speed, he was too close. There was no way he would make it.”
“Reginald, look out!” she shouted. “Hit the brakes!”
He looked up and immediately saw the danger. The road veered sharply left and he wouldn’t be able to make the curve without toppling over to the right. He slammed on the brakes.
The road, on the edge of the forest, was dusted with morning dew and his wheels didn’t grip as he hoped. The truck skidded off the road and slammed into a rocky mountain embankment before careening left and tipping over.
Ray pulled over. Keri got out even before he was completely stopped and ran to the vehicle. If he was lying and there were girls in that truck, it was hard to imagine they’d fared well.
As she got close, two arms appeared at the passenger side window, which now faced the sky. Reginald pulled himself up and sat on the exterior of the door with his hands up.
“You better not be lying to me about not having girls in there, Reginald, or I will shoot you a lot.”
“I don’t ship girls, lady,” Reginald insisted. “I’m a drugs man.”
Ray had caught up to her. As he caught his breath, she spoke.
“I think he’s telling the truth.”
“If that’s true, look on the bright side. If those girls were in there, they’d be in bad shape right now.”
“Yeah,” Keri said. “But if Sarah’s not in that truck, where the hell is she?”
*
Sarah reminded herself to stay calm. She’d already screamed enough. She screamed when she awoke an hour ago to discover that she was lying in the undercarriage of a big rig, speeding along a freeway. She screamed again when she realized she was packed in with over fifty other girls.
By the time she figured out that the vehicle was actually a cattle truck and that the cows were right above her, her screams were more rasps than anything else. She didn’t even react when the animal waste from above drained down and dripped onto her and the other girls.
Even though it was daylight, everything was dark under the truck and it was impossible to identify anyone among the mass of bodies. She had no idea if Lanie was there with her. And she was too tired and cold and sore to call out anyway.
She managed to reposition herself so that she was close to the side of the undercarriage. If she adjusted her body just right, she could see out of the metal slats to the side of the road. She grabbed hold of two slats and leaned back so that she had a better angle.
It worked. She was now able to see the signage on the side of the freeway. It said that she was on the 5 south. That rang a bell for her. But with her exhaustion, dehydration, and physical pain, along with the overwhelming smell of cow waste, she couldn’t quite comprehend what it meant.
Then she saw another sign and everything became clear. It read: Mexican Border – 79 miles. That’s when Sarah realized where the Bad Place was. She and about fifty other girls were being shipped across the border, like human cattle, to be abused in some off-the-grid whorehouse in another country.
And that’s when another realization hit her. If she crossed that border, she’d never see her parents again. She’d never go back to school. She’d never be heard from again, unless it was by someone who stumbled across the shallow grave Mr. Holiday was certain to eventually dump her in.
And knowing that, despite having no voice and no strength, Sarah began to scream again.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Keri felt like slamming her cell phone against the dashboard. It took her last ounce of self-control to grip it tight and continue to speak in a professional voice.
“Patterson, I don’t understand how you could pinpoint almost the exact location of Reginald Jones’s truck but you’ve completely lost the other two red big rigs that left the truck stop around the same time.”
“We haven’t lost them,” Patterson said in a tone that suggested he was trying to keep it together as well. “We know they both got on the 5 freeway headed south. There just aren’t as many cameras along that stretch of highway so it’s taking longer to pin them down.”
Keri bit her tongue. She knew everyone was exhausted and on edge. Pushing them further wouldn’t help. It was a waiting game now.
“I’m almost out of gas,” Ray said. “Let’s pull over at that gas station. I’ll fill up. We can take bathroom breaks and load up on coffee. Maybe they’ll have something new by then.”
Keri nodded.
As he got off the freeway, she reviewed the status of the case. Assuming Chiqy had been telling the truth, the girls were in one of two red big rigs headed south on the 5 freeway. But at a certain point the 5 connected with Interstate 8. That meant they could be headed to Arizona, San Diego, or possibly even Mexico. But without that camera footage there was no way to know for sure.
When they pulled into the station, Ray pumped the gas while Keri went to the restroom. She did her best to freshen up, splashing cold water on her face.
Looking in the mirror for the first time since she’d been woken from her slumber on the floor of her apartment, she was shocked at how much she’d aged in just sixteen hours. Yesterday afternoon, she’d been a well-rested, sober-for-a-month, thirty-five-year-old turning heads and solving cases.
Now she looked about a decade older. Her whole body hurt. She’d fallen off the wagon again. She’d soon have to go in for questioning for leaving the scene of a crime at which she’d killed the man who’d abducted her daughter. She had almost saved Evie, only to have her ripped away, possibly forever this time. And she had no leads in the kidnapping of a girl she’d promised to return to her parents.
Not a great stretch.
She chuckled slightly to herself at the magnitude of how badly things had gone off the rails, then stopped herself short, consumed by guilt.
She headed into the convenience store to get a big coffee and a pastry she could wolf down before taking some more of the pain pills the EMT had given her last night.
Glancing at her phone, she saw that it was 8:15 a.m., over an hour since she’d sent the Caldwells the text and photo of the headboard scratches. She was surprised she hadn’t heard back and hoped that it meant they were deep in sleep. In the days after Evie was taken, that was often the only time she could get a break from the pain of losing her. And sometimes not even then.
She returned to the car and waited for Ray to come back. Just as she was finishing her apple fritter, Mags called. She thought about sending it to voicemail again but decided against it and picked up.