by Ethan Cross
He walked past a row of cast-iron street lamps that looked down on him like angry sentinels, watching him, accusing him. He pulled open the car door and slid in behind the wheel. The Prophet was sitting in the passenger seat.
“How do you feel?” the Prophet said. His slow Southern drawl was deep and hypnotic. The words flowed from his mouth like warm honey.
Schofield knew what the Prophet wanted to hear, but it was also the truth. “I feel powerful. Stronger.”
“That’s good. Very good. Did you carry out the ritual exactly as I’ve taught you?”
In a more aggressive tone than he’d intended, Schofield snapped, “I know what I’m doing.”
Before he could react, the Prophet’s hand shot out and struck him hard across the left cheek. “Remember your place, boy. Once you ascend, you’ll sit at the right hand of the father and rule this world. But until then, I speak for the father. Don’t ever forget that. You show me respect at all times.”
Schofield felt like a little boy again. Visions of the Prophet striking him with a barbed whip flashed through his mind. He could almost feel the flesh tearing from his back. He hung his head low and mumbled a quiet apology.
The Prophet placed a hand on his shoulder. His tone softened. “It’s only a matter of days before the Darkest Night. We need your spirit to be ready for the ascension. You’re sure that you carried out the ritual properly?”
“I followed your instructions to the letter.”
“Good. Have you chosen the sacrifice for tomorrow night?”
Schofield nodded, and his pulse quickened with anticipation. “Everything’s in place.”
A sound of deep elation reverberated in the Prophet’s throat. The older man reached up and flicked on the Camry’s radio. The Rolling Stones boomed out of the speakers with Mick Jagger’s voice crooning Sympathy For The Devil.
Schofield put the vehicle in gear and pulled away from the curb. As they drove away, he wondered how he would feel in the morning when he looked into the eyes of his children.
Day Two – December 16 Morning
5
Located twenty miles northwest of downtown Chicago, Elk Grove Village was known as one of the most business-friendly suburbs in the country and was home to one of the largest business parks in North America. The town’s schools ranked among the top educational establishments in Illinois, and the local administration had worked hard to make the city look picturesque and serene.
FBI Special Agent Victoria Vasques reckoned that the peaceful suburb wasn’t the sort of place a person would usually expect to find a human-trafficking ring, but looks were often deceiving. And in her experience, every community, just like every person, had many complex levels that often never saw the light of day. Her partner, Troy LaPaglia, punched a few keys on the keyboard and brought up the video feed for the Starbright Motel—a place that could unofficially be rented by the hour and had a mirror above every bed. She fidgeted in her chair, leaning back and trying to stretch out her legs as best she could. The surveillance van—marked on the outside with block letters cut from white vinyl that read MASCONI PLUMBING AND HEATING—didn’t offer much space, and her legs were starting to fall asleep. The rock-hard little stools didn’t help the situation. Next time, Vasques planned to buy one of those butt pads that old ladies brought to basketball games when they sat in the bleachers. The smell of stale coffee and greasy takeout food floated through the cramped space and was making her feel nauseous. She needed to get out, and she really needed a cigarette. But she had gone two weeks without a drag, and she wasn’t about to let the urges get the better of her now. She popped in another piece of gum and worked it around her jaw.
LaPaglia must have read her mind. “Got a feeling that we won’t be in this van much longer. They should be here any minute.”
“They better be,” she said. “I have to take a piss.”
LaPaglia shook his head. “You’re like a delicate flower, Vasques. So genteel and reserved.”
“I was raised by a single dad who was also a homicide detective. Words like that aren’t in my vocabulary.”
LaPaglia leaned forward, and the light from the display monitor made his face glow bright white. Vasques had always found his surname somewhat comical since LaPaglia was as pasty white as they come, with short blond hair, nothing like his Italian surname would have suggested. She, on the other hand, had inherited bronze skin and dark hair from her Brazilian-American parents, and her Portuguese surname fitted her perfectly. She looked at another of the monitors and saw the pair of officers from the Cook County Sheriff’s Vice Unit sitting in an unmarked beige sedan and waiting for the word to move in and assist with the arrest.
They had been staking out the motel for several days, but their work was about to come to fruition. They were awaiting the arrival of a driver named Oscar Wilhelm. His passenger would be a big Jamaican man who went simply by the name Mr. Chains. Vasques had often found that creeps like Chains had an odd flair for the dramatic. Chains was the operator of a human-trafficking and prostitution ring comprised of Guatemalan illegals ranging in ages from twelve to the mid-twenties. These girls and young women had been promised legitimate work in America when they’d been taken from their poor communities back in Guatemala, but instead they had found themselves sold as sex slaves and were being forced to entertain anywhere from five to twenty-five clients every day.
The driver, Wilhelm, had been hired to provide discreet transportation and security for Chains, but he hadn’t signed on for the world he encountered. He had called in a tip to a group called CAST—Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking. CAST had immediately contacted the Chicago Area Task Force on Human Trafficking, a multi-jurisdictional team trying to stamp out the trade in their communities. And that was where Vasques and LaPaglia had come on board. They had convinced Wilhelm to wear a wire, the plan being to gather evidence against Chains and then liberate his harem.
“There they are,” LaPaglia said.
Vasques watched as Wilhelm parked the car and opened the door for Chains. Then they ascended the stairs of the motel to the bank of rooms they rented out for entertaining clients and housing the girls. She wondered how much money it had taken to convince the motel owners to sell their souls and look the other way. In front of the rooms, a big guy with a shaved head stood watch over the area that, according to Wilhelm, Chains referred to as the holding pen. There were usually anywhere from five to ten girls held inside the single room.
The big guard’s voice hissed out over the small speakers inside the van. His words were faint and somewhat muffled, coming as they did from the wire secured under Wilhelm’s shirt. Vasques leaned in close to hear. “One of the girls tried to run this morning. She didn’t make it twenty feet, but she made a real scene. Lucky nobody called it in and brought round the heat.”
Chains issued a string of what must have been curses in some language that Vasques didn’t understand. She looked back at the monitor as Chains threw open the door of the motel room and stormed inside. Wilhelm followed him in, and Chains’s enraged voice crackled and reverberated around the van’s interior. He screamed out more angry phrases in the strange dialect, and then in Spanish, he said, “I’m not even going to ask which one of you it was. It doesn’t matter. One of you betrays me, you all betray me. You all suffer. If I had other girls lined up to replace you, I’d kill every last one of you and dump your bodies into the landfill with the rest of the garbage. Unfortunately, I don’t have replacements, and I do have a business to run. But you need to see what happens when you betray our little family.”
Vasques leaned forward to the edge of her stool, translating the Spanish in her head as best she could. Then one of the girls issued a shrill scream, and, probably for their benefit, Wilhelm said, “Chains, you don’t need to use a knife on her, do you?”
It was all that Vasques needed to hear. She lunged toward the back doors of the van. They flew open, and her .45 caliber Sig Sauer 1911 Stainless was in her hand before her
feet touched the pavement. She stumbled forward and almost fell, her legs asleep from sitting for so long in the cramped space.
“Vasques! Wait!”
She ignored her partner and, regaining her balance, sprinted across the Starbright’s parking lot. She hit the stairs and flew up them two at a time. She reached the top, and before the bald guard could register her presence or react, the side of her pistol slammed against his left temple and her knee found his groin. She shoved past the dazed man and heard her partner at her back telling the guard to kiss the ground.
She took up position next to the door of Chains’s holding pen. Looking back, she saw LaPaglia slap the cuffs onto the bald guard and noticed the two Cook County deputies racing up the stairs. But she wouldn’t allow herself to wait. Even a second’s hesitation at this point could be the difference between life and death for a young Guatemalan girl who only wanted a better life for herself and her family.
Vasques spun her body round, and her foot struck the door. It splintered inward. “FBI,” she screamed into the room. She slipped inside and caught sight of Chains against the back wall. He held a tiny girl in front of his large Jamaican frame. His arms had snaked around her waist, and her feet dangled two feet above the floor. His right hand held a Glock 9mm. The rest of the room was empty except for the girls, Wilhelm, and a few blankets. The usual bed, television, desk, and cheap photo prints typically found in a room such as this had been removed. The girls hadn’t even been given mattresses to sleep on. An all-too-familiar stench of abuse and fear permeated the air.
“Come any closer, and she dies.” Even as Chains spoke, he began to back toward the bathroom.
Vasques sighted down her weapon and wanted badly to squeeze the trigger, but she couldn’t risk it. The big man held the girl in front of his head, and anything other than a head shot could get the hostage killed. Chains continued to back away into the open door of the bathroom. This had quickly become a hostage situation. The plan had been to apprehend him after he left the motel. This was the very situation they had hoped to avoid. Vasques’s guts churned, and she knew that her rash actions might have done as much harm as good.
“Now get out, or I’ll kill her. I’ll only talk to someone who can meet my demands. You bring me someone in charge!” Chains said, and she watched helplessly as he slammed the door to the bathroom.
“Dammit!”
LaPaglia appeared at her side, and the Cook County deputies started to shuffle the other women and Wilhelm from the room. LaPaglia said, “That didn’t go quite as planned.”
Vasques shook her head in disgust and opened her mouth to comment. But then a thought struck her. She had been focused on Chains in the bathroom, but as the images replayed through her mind, she realized that she had seen a large window over his left shoulder. He hadn’t backed himself into a corner with a hostage. He had been trying to buy enough time to slip out the back and escape.
She lunged toward the stairs. “He’s going out the back,” she screamed over her shoulder. At the bottom of the steps, she scanned the front of the motel. The doors were painted a faded red and the walls were a dingy cream. The row of rooms stretched out fifteen units from her position down to the office. She didn’t have time to run completely around the building. Chains would be long gone. She wheeled around and saw a corridor slicing through the back section of rooms.
Vasques rounded the stairs and sprinted down the corridor. An ice machine from the 1950s, a vending machine stocked with candy bars and chips, and a Pepsi machine sat inside a niche on her left, but she could see daylight ahead. Her arms pumped, and her feet slapped hard against the cracked concrete walkway. The corridor spilled out into a courtyard containing an empty pool filled at one end with a small puddle of greenish water and withered brown leaves. Her stare darted upward and searched for the back of Chains’s room.
Then she saw him. Chains had made his way out the window and was running across the crumbling reddish-brown rooftop heading toward the alley. He hadn’t seen her.
She raced round the empty pool and hugged the wall, shadowing Chains’s movements from the ground. They reached the end of the building, and she slipped around the corner just as he dropped from the roof onto a nearby dumpster. The large container was blue with white lettering on its side. The lid was made of a black plastic that bent under his substantial weight. He slid off the dumpster and stumbled to the pavement of the alley. His back was to her.
Vasques leveled her 1911 at his back and said, “That’s far enough, Chains. It’s over.”
His large black frame turned slowly in her direction. He had an angry, almost animal look in his eyes. The Glock dangled from his right hand. His nostrils flared in and out like those of a bull about to charge.
“Put it down.” She spoke slowly and emphasized each word.
He snorted a laugh, and his right arm started upward.
Vasques fired.
The .45 caliber bullet tore deeply into the meat of his right shoulder, and he folded in on himself with a shout of pain. Within a second, she was at his side, kicking his gun away and covering him as he writhed on the alley’s surface. Speaking again in the strange language, the big Jamaican clutched his shoulder and uttered what she guessed were curses upon her and her family.
She heard LaPaglia’s feet on the pavement behind her. She looked down on the creep and felt a little twinge of regret for not aiming at his head. “You’re going to spend Christmas in jail this year, Chains. And I’m personally going to spread the word that you have a taste for young girls. So don’t worry—you’ll still have a love life when you get on the inside.”
6
Vasques slammed the door of the ambulance carrying Chains off for treatment at Alexian Brothers Medical Center. She glanced around at the assortment of police cars and officers. They were taking statements, gathering evidence, and cordoning off the area. The INS counselors had also arrived to take the girls into custody. They had been waiting on standby. Vasques didn’t know what the future held for the young women that Chains had forced into slavery, but she knew anything had to be better than the hell they had been enduring.
A familiar voice cut through the confusion. “Seems like trouble follows you wherever you go, Vicky.”
Only a couple of people in the world ever called her “Vicky”. She turned to find Detective Sergeant Trevor Belacourt leaning against the hood of a red metallic Chevy Impala. His arms were folded across his chest, and he wore a lopsided grin. Belacourt was a big, older man with a hairline somewhere between thinning and bald. A thick mustache hung under a long nose, and one of his front teeth bent outward. He wore khakis and a light brown cape-wool sports coat over a white button-down shirt. Belacourt had been her father’s partner during the three years before his death and had since been promoted to head of the Jackson’s Grove PD homicide division.
Seeing him here could mean only one thing, but Vasques thought it rude to raise the subject without any preamble. She walked over and gave him a quick hug. “How have you been, Trevor?”
His voice was deep but nasal. “Doing fine. I’ve been checking the mail every day for an invitation to your wedding.”
“I’d have to find a guy first. What about you? You going to spend your golden years as a bachelor?”
He laughed. “Marriage would just cramp my style at the nursing home, little girl. Don’t worry. I’ve got it planned out. I’ll be beating the widows off with a stick.”
She just nodded as she searched for something more to say.
“Go ahead and speak your mind, kid,” Belacourt said. “You know why I’m here.”
“The Anarchist is back. He’s killing again.”
“Found the first one last night. He killed the security guy at a storage yard, then set up his freak show in one of the empty containers. Same MO as before. I already spoke to your SAC and requested that he assign you to consult on the case. He took some convincing but, given your first-hand knowledge of how this guy works and your background in profilin
g, he finally gave me what I wanted.”
Vasques’s chest tightened, and memories of her father’s death flooded back to her. The Anarchist case had been the last he had worked before his death. She had reviewed the files exhaustively. Somehow, finishing his last case had seemed like the best thing she could do to honor his memory. But she hadn’t been able to make any headway. Then the killer had gone underground, and there had been no trace of him for nearly a year and a half.
Vasques nodded as a fierce wave of determination swept over her. She would catch this guy, whatever it took. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go look at a crime scene.”
Day Two – December 16 Afternoon
7
In another life, Emily Morgan had been a clinical psychologist helping police officers work through traumatic events. She had married a man named Jim, a trooper with the Colorado State Patrol. They’d had a little girl and a beautiful green and brown two-story colonial that nestled among the trees of Southeastern Colorado. Then, through pure random chance, Francis Ackerman had come into their lives and changed everything.
But through her battle with Ackerman, she’d met a man named Marcus Williams who had introduced her to another man he referred to only as the Director. She had shown what they had called great strength during the confrontation with the killer, and the Director had offered her a position within the Shepherd Organization as a counselor to the field agents.
It had been a chance to start over, a chance to leave behind the memories of Jim and their old lives, and she had packed up her daughter and moved to a small town in northern Virginia.