Look the Other Way

by Leigh Jones

  Kate rolled her eyes again. “Fine. But I’m calling Doug Cowel so he can get over here and get some photos.”

  “Kate...” Johnson started to protest.

  “What? You’re going to get into those rooms, aren’t you? There’s got to be evidence in there!”

  Johnson hesitated. The police chief wouldn’t like it. But he had ample cause to search those rooms. And if he didn’t, he had no chance of catching Kate’s attacker. He refused to sacrifice that opportunity to the mayor’s public relations campaign.

  “Of course I am,” he said.

  Kate grinned as the medics strapped her onto the stretcher.

  “This is going to be a good story. And it needs photos.” She pulled her cellphone out of her back pocket. “I’ll be back as soon as I get the all-clear. I’ll expect a full, on-the-record accounting of everything you find.”

  Johnson shook his head and chuckled. When Kate disappeared around the corner, he turned to Anna and Slava.

  “Can you guys tell me when all this started?”

  “About three weeks ago,” Anna said. “One night we stay out late, me and my roommates. When we come home, we saw man knock on door closest to stairwell and go in. Another man come out. About 15 minutes later, Slava come to check on us, to make sure we get home okay. While I talk to him outside, I see man come out of room and go down stairs. I thought it strange. How you say? Suspicious. So I went back inside and watched out our window. Men come all night.”

  “When Anna tell me this, I say we must call the police,” Slava jumped in. “America is civilized country. I think, police will not let this happen. But after I call, no one come. So, I call again. Still, no one come. After that, I say, the police are not interested. And I stop calling.”

  “But the men keep coming,” Anna said. “It’s like that almost every night.”

  “Why you no come investigate?” Slava demanded, his voice rising. “If you come investigate, Kate would not be at hospital right now.”

  Johnson sighed. “I know. And if I’d known about it sooner, I would have investigated. But I just found out about it this afternoon.”

  “But we call!”

  “I know, I know. And I’m going to find out why no one responded. I don’t have an answer for you right now. But I will get one.”

  “Da,” Slava huffed. “Police in Ukraine ignore stuff like this all the time. You know why? Corruption. Someone always using police to hide their crimes. We thought America different. Is no different.”

  Johnson gritted his teeth in frustration. Corruption? The police chief called off the prostitution task force to avoid bad press. It was a bad policy decision, but until now, Johnson thought that was all there was to it. The mayor didn’t want to scare visitors away at the height of tourism season. But now he wasn’t so sure. Was there more at stake than protecting the island’s family-friendly image?

  Chapter 21

  Kate cringed as the medics wheeled her into the emergency room. The bright lights stabbed her eyes, making her head throb.

  “Twenty-six-year-old female, with lacerations to her head and shoulder,” the medic said to the nurse who met them. “She’s also got a contusion to the back and one to the head. Possible concussion.”

  “All right. Let’s get you checked out.” With a bright smile, the woman led them around the central desk to the patient areas partitioned with light blue curtains. Kate closed her eyes and willed them to move faster. What were the chances she could get in and out without being spotted by someone she knew?

  “Kate?” Her eyes popped at the sound of Brian’s familiar voice, laced with worry. “What happened?”

  “Hey.” She smiled weakly. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She’d forgotten he would be at work that night. “Would you believe I tripped and fell?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” He crossed his arms and scowled.

  The nurse looked uncertainly between the two of them.

  “I’ll get Dr. Simon,” Brian said.

  When he walked away, the nurse raised an eyebrow at Kate.

  “You two know each other?” she asked as she pulled a blood pressure cuff from it’s holder on the wall.

  “Something like that.”

  The nurse didn’t say anything else as she took Kate’s vital signs and typed notes into the computer next to the bed.

  “Okay. The doctor will be here in just a minute.”

  Kate nodded as the nurse disappeared behind the curtain. A few moments later, Brian ducked inside the fabric partition. Furrows of concern creased the space between his eyes. He pressed his lips together as he looked down at her. Irritation needled the back of her neck. She didn’t want him to make a big deal about it.

  “What happened?”

  “I went back to the hotel to interview Slava and his friends, and the pimp ambushed me. I have no idea how he knew I was on to them. Anyway, it looks worse than it is.” She glanced at her shoulder. “It’s just a few scratches really.”

  “A few scratches? I think it’s a little more serious than that.”

  “It’s not. Really, I’m fine. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Kate, he could have killed you.”

  She sighed. The terror she felt during and immediately after the attack had faded. Brian was right, but she didn’t want to think about how much danger she’d really been in.

  “He wasn’t trying to kill me, just deliver a warning.”

  “Which I’m sure you won’t heed.”

  Kate gritted her teeth. “I’m just doing my job, okay? I wasn’t trying to get attacked.”

  “I’m pretty sure your job does not include taking unnecessary risks.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

  “I just want you to be more careful.” He took her hand and looked at her intently, his eyes searched her face. “You’re... I...”

  The curtain around the bed rustled. On the other side, the nurse rattled off the basics of Kate’s injuries.

  Brian sighed. Leaning over her, he pressed his lips firmly to the uninjured side of her forehead. Then he turned away without saying another word and held the curtain open for the other doctor. Kate stared after him as he disappeared behind a veil of blue.

  She was pretty sure she knew what he was about to say. He’d been dancing around it for weeks. He was forcing her to make a decision. If she couldn’t love him back, she’d have to let him go.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Almost three hours later, Kate walked through the emergency room doors to a waiting taxi. Dr. Simon had cleared her to leave but warned her to watch for signs of a concussion. Thankfully none of her cuts required stitches. She’d talked briefly to Brian before leaving. But everything unsaid between them choked out all but the most basic conversation. She finally told him she’d call later.

  When the taxi dropped her off outside the hotel at 2:45 a.m., Kate counted five cop cars in the parking lot. People still thronged the landings on both floors. The doors of all four rooms once occupied by the prostitutes stood open. Doug Cowel had staked out a spot behind one of the police cruisers, shooting with a long lens into one of the open rooms. When Kate walked up behind him, she could see why he chose that angle. The light pouring out of the door into the darkness perfectly illuminated two officers digging with gloved hands through the trash can.

  When he turned around, the photographer let out a low whistle. “That is gonna hurt in the morning. I called Lewis on my way over here and told him what happened. He’s pretty worried. I told him it sounded like you were going to make it, but I think he was momentarily gripped by the terrifying prospect of having to replace you.”

  “Whatever,” Kate huffed. “That would just save them from having to fire someone.”

  Cowel grinned. “Seriously, you should call him when it gets a bit later, let him know you’re alive.”

  “I will. I’ve got to tie up all the loose ends here first. What’d I miss?”

  “Lots of interviews and evidence bagging. Looks like they
got some good stuff from those rooms. And they hauled someone away in handcuffs. I think it was the manager.”

  “I hope they put the screws to him,” Kate said, fingering the bandage on her forehead. “There’s no way he was clueless about all this.”

  “You should go find Johnson. He keeps asking whether I’ve heard from you. He was over that way when I last saw him.” Cowel jerked his head to the left, toward the opposite end of the hotel.

  As she made her way around the fenced-in pool, Kate spotted the detective talking to a group of other officers. She hung back until he was done. When he turned around and saw her, she couldn’t resist flashing a triumphant grin.

  “I told you I’d be back.”

  “You should be home, in bed. There’s nothing here that can’t wait until morning.”

  “And miss all the excitement? Not a chance. Besides, I had to get my car.”

  Johnson shook his head. “Right. Your car. I suppose you want an update on what we found?”

  “You bet.”

  “Well, it’s obvious what was going on here. We’ve found used condoms in the trash cans, and the sheets in one of the rooms are gone. So much for housekeeping. Other guests said they noticed the same suspicious activity you did. But your young Ukrainian friends are the only ones who said they called the police. I think you know just about everything else.”

  “What about the manager?”

  “He claims he knew nothing and saw nothing. He said the people who rented those rooms paid in cash, one week at a time. When we asked him if it was the same people each time, he said, ‘No. I don’t know. No.’ Then he said he wouldn’t say anything else without his lawyer.”

  “He has a lawyer?”

  “Evidently. He’s obviously lying. He had to have known what was going on. There’s no way to get up those steps without walking past his office. But if he continues to play dumb, I don’t know that we’ll be able to charge him with anything. We need someone to come forward and give us evidence that he was cooperating with the pimp, but I doubt that’s going to happen.”

  Kate thought fleetingly about Miss Kitty.

  “I need an official response about why you guys didn’t respond to the calls.”

  Johnson paused for so long Kate thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  “I think I’d better let the chief handle that one,” he finally said, turning to look her in the eye. “But if I were you, I would ask him why the prostitution task force members have been assigned to other projects for the last month when they seemed to be on such a roll after the last sting operation.”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  Pressing his lips together in a thin line, Johnson nodded. “For now, it is. I’m sorry.”

  Kate tapped her pen on her notepad and contemplated whether she should play the guilt card to try to goad him into saying more. Johnson had a keen sense of right and wrong. If he thought someone in the department was covering up illegal activity, especially after she was attacked, he would expose them, even if it meant losing his job.

  “It doesn’t bother you that the mayor’s request, or order, or whatever it was, made all of this possible?”

  “It does! Especially after what happened to you. I just haven’t figured out yet whether that was his intention. I don’t think it was. He just wants to keep tourism up as much as possible. That might be short-sighted and naive—”

  “And shady and self-serving—”

  “But it’s not criminal.”

  “There’s not a little part of you that thinks this is all a bit too tidy?”

  Johnson sighed. “Yes. But I learned long ago not to trust my gut exclusively. I have to have evidence to back up my suspicions. I have absolutely no evidence that anything more than poor decisions was at work here.”

  “Did the chief call anyone after the mayor called him during the council meeting?”

  “Not that I know of. If he did, I never heard about it. We’re only here tonight because you got attacked. The lieutenant said he would call the chief himself when it got a little closer to 6 a.m. I’m sure he’ll stop by shortly after that. You can ask him yourself when he gets here.”

  Kate rolled her eyes.

  “You know, it’s entirely possible the mayor’s phone call had nothing to do with what you asked him,” Johnson said. “Or, maybe it did but he called someone else. Maybe the city’s PR flak?”

  That was possible, of course. But why would he come back to the meeting looking so flustered? Kate sighed.

  “Anything’s possible,” she said. “But in the absence of evidence, I tend to lean toward what’s probable.”

  “Well, just be careful. Even what’s probable can turn out to be wrong. I’ve got to go check on my guys. You should really go home. But I suppose you’re going to stick around to talk to the chief?”

  “Do you really need to ask?”

  Kate spent the next hour interviewing other hotel guests and watching investigators pack evidence into paper bags. By 4:30 a.m., she could barely keep her eyes open. Deciding she could risk missing the chief’s arrival, she drove down the seawall to a coffee shop that had just opened. The barista looked as bleary eyed as Kate felt, but she managed to concoct a vanilla latte with two extra shots of espresso and bag three of the gooiest looking pastries in the case. Kate figured the sugar and caffeine would counteract the drowsiness of the pain meds and keep her coherent until at least 9 a.m.

  She drove back to the hotel parking lot and sat in her car with the windows down, eating her breakfast while the damp morning air coated the inside of her windshield with salt-crusted condensation. Her head had started to throb again and her shoulder ached. Now that the burst of energy that had carried her through the last six hours had worn off, she was starting to feel the crushing weight of disappointment. Not only had she been attacked, her juicy scoop had slipped through her fingers. Flares of frustration licked the inside of her chest as she thought about the missing pieces of the puzzle. She would never get a confirmation that the mayor had called off prostitution stings for the rest of the year. It might not be criminal, as Johnson had pointed out, but Kate was sure Hanes hadn’t done it for the city’s benefit. All he cared about was maintaining his image.

  Police Chief Sam Lugar’s unmarked cruiser pulled into the parking lot a little after 6 a.m. Kate watched him get out and stride over to where one of the lieutenants and several detectives, including Johnson, stood in a semi-circle. She gave him five minutes to get his bearings before she got out of the car and made her way toward him. The other officers stopped talking as she got closer, prompting Lugar to look over his shoulder and see her when she was still about 10 feet away. His narrowed eyelids and pursed lips told her he was as unhappy to see her as she expected him to be.

  “Morning chief. I have a few questions when you have a moment.”

  “I’m still trying to get a report from my men, Miss Bennett. I can’t really tell you anything until after I hear it from them.”

  “Fair enough. But since I was here when the whole thing went down, I don’t think I have any questions for you about that. I want to talk to you about what led up to this.”

  Lugar’s nostrils flared. Kate had struck the right chord. She wanted him angry when she talked to him. He was more likely to let something slip if he was battling to keep his emotions in check.

  “Fine,” he snapped as he waved over one of the junior officers hanging around the edge of the parking lot. “Sanders, please escort Miss Bennett over to my car and be sure she waits there until I’m ready to talk to her.”

  Kate smirked at him but followed Sanders without complaint. Fifteen minutes later, Lugar joined them, waving the officer back to his previous post.

  “Now, Miss Bennett,” Lugar said, his voice dripping with condescension. “What was it that you wanted to ask me?”

  “How did your prostitution task force miss this operation? Especially when several guests here said they called to report suspicious activity. It almost
looks like you guys went out of your way to ignore what was going on here.”

  Lugar crossed his arms tightly in front of his chest and glared down at her. “I can assure you that is not the case. I don’t know about these calls people claim they made. Oftentimes people say they called the police after the fact, because they want to get attention. Nine times out of ten, they never called. I’m not saying that happened here, but it’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Well, I suppose it would be easy enough to check the 9-1-1 logs.”

  “You’re talking about a lot of records. I wouldn’t say looking for one call, or even several calls, is easy.”

  “But surely, if you’re going to suggest someone is lying about something like this, you would check.”

  “Miss Bennett, I hardly see how this is relevant.”

  “Your task force, the one you established to clean up crap like this, was on a roll about a month ago. But ever since then, those officers have been assigned to other duties. Why? They obviously hadn’t eradicated prostitution from the island. So why call them off the job?”

  “Who says they were called off the job?” Lugar almost shouted, sweat beading up on his forehead. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, Miss Bennett, but no one’s been called off anything.”

  “Then why didn’t they find out about this until someone attacked me? Everyone’s gotten away—the pimp, the girls, the johns. And your guys are standing around scratching their heads like they had no idea what was going on right under their noses. How did that happen?”

  “That’s enough!” Lugar thundered. Out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see several of the detectives stop talking and look over in their direction. “How I direct my men is my business, and I don’t have to justify anything to you. But in the middle of summer, I do not have the extra manpower to cover every square inch of this island. We do the best we can with what we have. The task force members were reassigned temporarily to cover other things. And as you yourself said, we’ve busted up some sizable operations in the past. If this group has the balls to set up somewhere else, I promise you we’ll nail them.”