Alibi Island

by SLMN

  While the shit was turning to water in his bowels, Huey started making calls to his retinue; they had to keep a lid on this, they had to keep it quiet. They had to find the girl fast, and they had to employ someone good—really fucking good—to get this done.

  There would be no police. There would be no press. This would be a silent operation.

  So when the cop cars rolled into the compound, and the satellite trucks had parked at the end of the drive, and the news reports about “Missing: Alaina Ralston, Oil Heiress and Daughter of Prospective Senator Huey Ralston” started to run across the TV, and the alerts started pinging on his cell phone, Ralston had tracked down Brenda in her dressing room. She sat, bottle in one hand and telephone in the other, just getting off the phone with her cousin Randal in the FBI. It had been all he could do to not set Brenda on fire and kick her down some fucking stairs after he’d done so.

  After the press conference on the steps of the Federal Courthouse on Smith Street, Huey and Brenda went back inside. They went into a back office the Governor had put aside for them to use, and as it began to fill up with Crane and Ralston’s staffers, he raised his hands.

  “Thank you everyone for your support today, but if I could have a few moments alone with Mrs. Ralston…I think we’d like just ten minutes to gather our thoughts.”

  “No, it’s okay…” Brenda began, but Ralston took her hands gently in his and stared into her eyes. He smiled, kissed her forehead, and then hugged her. As his mouth came into line with her ear he whispered, “Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way, clear?”

  He felt her head nodding next to his, the hiss her skin made against his stubble—“Stay unshaven, it makes you look more concerned,” Crane said—told Ralston of Brenda’s supplicant assent.

  Crane turned around and shooed everyone out of the room.

  When they were alone, Brenda had the look of a puppy that had been found next to a chewed up pair of expensive shoes. But that look didn’t give Ralston pause.

  It never did.

  He knew that she knew what was coming. Ralston needed her for the press conference on the steps of the Court House; she wouldn’t need to be seen in public for a good few hours yet.

  “Please, Huey. I didn’t think. I was just scared! I just want her back.”

  “If this fucks up my campaign, you will pay, Bren. You will pay. Do you understand? I wanted the Police out of this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ralston punched her hard in the stomach. Always best to avoid the face, especially with the sunglasses. Brenda fell down onto her knees, winded, her shoulders drooping and hands knotting and twisting over the site of the punch. A tiny groan escaped her lips.

  “Get up you stupid cunt, and sit down over there,” he said, pointing to a green leather chair in the corner of the wood-paneled room. “The grown-ups have work to do.”

  4

  “You come highly recommended.”

  Passion recognized the man who had met her at the side entrance of the Federal Court House as Stephen Crane, Huey Ralston’s media wrangler and spokesperson. He was dressed soberly, but he still had something of the wolf about him. Passion noticed as they entered the cool marble innards of the building, and made their way along a gloomy corridor, that Crane’s feet made no sound on the cold surface of the corridor. He knew how to arrive anywhere without telegraphing an announcement. That was a hard acquired skill that not many civilians could do.

  A useful skill in Passion’s business, but in a press secretary?

  Crane led the way, walking two feet ahead of Passion. There was nothing friendly or welcoming or relieved about the way he had responded to her arrival, but it definitely had that “employer leading an employee to her desk” feel. Passion didn’t know whether to be insulted or impressed. When there’s a crisis going on, you need people around the place who cut briskly through the panic and slice off all the bullshit. Passion had a job to do, and they wanted her to do it.

  “You have received my bona fides?”

  “We have, Ms. Durant.”

  Crane called her by her cover name, not by her real name. The bona fides wouldn’t have given away anything about her true identity. They would just indicate that she would arrive, listen, leave, and that she would transmit updates to the Ralston family every four hours until the girl was found.

  “This way.”

  Crane turned sharply onto a smaller, shorter corridor. The doors were mahogany, with gold leaf numbering. The whole place had the sense of a solid, dependable edifice, where sober decisions were taken by old white men and where you didn’t expect to hear a woman crying at any point in the proceedings. So that when Passion heard the sobbing, she was flicked back to the emotional engine that would be running Crane’s professionalism. He was having to juggle a lot of balls—and the fact that his demeanor could be the same one he’s displayed just showing a new secretary to where the office water-cooler was situated—spoke volumes of his abilities.

  Crane double knocked on the door from which the crying was emanating and didn’t wait for an answer.

  Several things hit Passion as odd as the door opened on a small office that had tall windows overlooking the quad behind the Court House. Brenda Ralston was sitting on a green leather chair, holding her stomach and was crying freely. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and there was an unpleasant snail trail of snot hanging from one of her nostrils, swinging like a bulby pendulum as her shoulders shook.

  Secondly, as she stepped in and Crane shut the door with a secure click behind her—she still could not hear his feet—the room stunk of cheap food, like a cross between BO and a bad fart. It was comparable to the way fast food smells when some asshole insists on eating it on a subway train. There was grease and hot meat in the air. Passion felt her nose wrinkling. And lastly, there sat Huey Ralston—jacket off and tie off, shirt opened three buttons, and in his hand was a sloppy burger in the process of going to his mouth while blue cheese dressing slid out the rear of it like slime and coated the back of his hand.

  The matrix of dissonance made by the woman—left alone to sob out her heart as her husband stuffed his face like he didn’t have a care in the world, while in a room that smelled of a hobo’s armpit—stopped Passion in her tracks.

  This was absolutely not what she’d expected to find.

  Usually when she met the parents or families of those who had been kidnapped, there would be tears, shock, or sometimes a stoic façade collapsing into a quivering heap of tears. Those displays of emotion wouldn’t help the situation any for sure. But this? This was weird, not just unexpected. Like something out of a sick joke horror movie.

  “Ms. Durant, Sir. From the Agency.” Crane said, going behind the desk to stand at Ralston’s side.

  At the mention of the word “Agency,” Brenda Ralston’s tear-streaked face lifted, eyes sparkling with hopeful expectation. “FBI?”

  Before Passion could even start to shake her head, Ralston made a swift movement with his hand, one that said I’ll handle this. Be quiet.

  “No, honey,” he said in reality as Brenda sank back into the chair. The way he said honey, it could have rhymed with cunt. “This is Jennifer Durant. She’s come to help us, but she’s not from the FBI. She’s from…a different agency. Please, Ms. Durant, take a seat.”

  Ralston’s eyes were looking at Passion as if the next bite of meat conveyed to his mouth was going to be from her. Passion had acute Slimeball Radar. She prided herself on it. She needed it in her dual role as fashion model and undercover hostage locator. Like the ‘tog at the shoot last night, there was always some guy—and more rarely women—who would see her availability to dress in any way they desired to promote their clothes or businesses as a form of sexual availability. Passion was happy to disabuse them of that notion. But the way Ralston looked at her now, there was zero subtlety and maximum slime. It was making the hairs on the back of her neck raise with distaste.

  Ralston was a piece of work. Passion got that fro
m the get go. Anyone who could think of food and the sexual availability of a woman like Passion, when their daughter is in the hands of kidnappers, needs to have a serious talk with themselves.

  Passion sat down. She didn’t offer to shake Ralston’s hand. It was still smeared with blue cheese dressing.

  “Sorry about the burger. Gotta eat on the go today as I’m sure you understand,” Ralston said putting the half-eaten fast food back in a carton on the desk. He wiped his hands with a paper napkin, and then sucked on the straw of a soda. He swilled his teeth like someone about to spit out mouthwash, but instead swallowed. Then he continued, “Can you find her?”

  “I’ll try, Mr. Ralston…”

  “Huey, please.” Ralston slimed.

  “I’d prefer to keep this formal and professional, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Ralston’s face flickered with annoyance, this was a man not used to being told no, especially by a woman. But he recovered well. He nodded and flipped the annoyance into a small smile.

  “Has there been a ransom demand?”

  “We’ve not received any communication at all, right Stephen?”

  Crane nodded. Brenda sighed sadly.

  Passion got up from the chair and knelt before Brenda, putting a hand over the older woman’s own, giving the tiniest of squeezes. She could smell alcohol on the woman’s breath, and close up could

  see the broken blood vessels in her nose. The signs of drinking inadequately covered by make-up told Passion all she needed to know about the woman and her addictions. She felt a rising swell of compassion for the woman and a sense of understanding. Anyone who had to live with Huey Ralston would turn to drink to get through the day. That much was given. “Mrs. Ralston, our Agency is uniquely qualified to carry out the search and rescue of your daughter. We’ve done it many times before. I will work night and day to get this done. You have my word.”

  Brenda could only whisper “Thank you,” before her eyes dissolved to tears again. Passion gave Brenda a handkerchief from her purse, and returned to the chair.

  Ralston’s eyes and Crane’s uncomfortable shuffling from foot-to-foot indicated that the prospective Senator was not used to having the center of attention moved from him to anywhere else. Especially not his grieving wife.

  Passion gave nothing away, but she felt herself enjoying the moment, noting it as a tactic for later use. She’d had clients before who felt they knew best, that they could shape the situation and maintain their control over everyone in their orbit. That was another notion Passion was happy to disabuse those clients of. The only way this worked is if she had the minimum pushback from the client and maximum control over her areas of expertise.

  Ralston looked like he was winding up to make such pronouncements, and so Passion held up her hand as he was sucking in the breath to speak. “If I may, Mr. Ralston?”

  Ralston looked like he was about to throw up his burger, but said nothing. Crane’s eyes looked like they had defocused with shock.

  “Your daughter hasn’t been seen now, by anyone for 26 hours. She left the family compound of your estate yesterday morning, but I understand that because of an arrangement she’d made with your security operative, the digital files of the surveillance cameras had already been reset so that there was no evidence of her leaving. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.” Ralston’s voice was thick with discomfort.

  “I also understand that Alaina had not been happy for some time. There had been many fights at home…”

  “My wife…deals with…I mean, I…”

  Brenda sobbed quietly.

  “I understand, Mr. Ralston. It happens in busy families where both parents have high pressures in their work life impacting on their ability to spend time with their children. It’s the modern way.”

  Ralston’s Adam’s Apple bobbed.

  “I understand that six weeks ago, she cut her hair, dyed it black, and pretty much changed her appearance. But her Facebook page doesn’t reflect that change. There are no pictures of her on social media under any of her accounts?”

  “I don’t…ummm…Stephen?”

  “We monitor Alaina’s social media footprint of course, for security and safety reasons.”

  “And you didn’t think it odd, that an 18-year-old girl—who had completely changed her look—had not updated her profile picture and told the world that she was unhappy?”

  It was Stephen’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Well…we assumed that she didn’t want to embarrass her father or the family. The press can be very difficult when there’s a campaign in the offing. They’ll do anything to try to dig up…”

  “I’m aware of what the press are like, sir. But no one thought to flag this up? I don’t know an 18-year-old girl on the planet who would comb her hair a different way in the morning and not Instagram it to every single one of her friends.”

  “Well, I don’t see…”

  “It means she has accounts you don’t monitor, Mr. Crane. It means that she probably has several phones you don’t know about. It means that I need to talk to her best friend or friends, and I need to talk to them now. Who is her best friend?”

  Ralston’s Adam’s Apple bobbed like that was all it was capable of doing and was trying to set a new world record for bobbing. “My wife…she ah…she deals with…”

  “Mrs. Ralston?”

  Brenda shook her head, “I…I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Ralston recovered some of his composure and placed his hands flat on the desk. Passion was unsure if it was to recover some of the power dynamic in the room, or just to stop his elbows from shaking. He sigh and said, “Okay. You’ve made your point. I’m a shitty dad, and my wife is a shitty mom. You think we don’t know that?”

  Passion said nothing.

  “But bottom line: You do this. You find her. And you do it before the cops or the press get to her, and you bring her home. None of this can get out. None of it.”

  And there it was. It was the Slime-Dunk.

  “Surely it doesn’t matter who finds her, as long as she’s found.”

  “No, Ms. Durant. It does not.”

  Crane walked Passion out of the building. Ralston’s recovery of the control in the room had not been total, but Passion knew in no uncertain terms what the priority was for him:

  His reputation rather than his daughter.

  Passion got the distinct impression that he’d be most happy if Lainey was found dead. A dead child, who couldn’t show evidence to the world that not everything in Ralston World was all hunkies and dories, would absolutely help the Senatorial campaign, not hinder it.

  For a moment she considered calling Bryan and telling him she didn’t want this one, it was too dirty. Ralston made her skin itch and just being in the same room as him made her usual professional performance want to slip two notches and punch his damn lights out.

  But no.

  The M.O. was what kept her in the game.

  The similarities to the other girls in the last year. The lack of ransom demands, and in four of the five cases, no bodies. Just an absence in the world where the girls had been was what gave Passion the hunger in this one. This one she wasn’t going to lose on the table. This one was going to work out okay.

  She was not going to get to Alaina Ralston too late to save her, and she was going to bring her home.

  The midmorning heat of Houston hit her like a baseball bat as they exited the building, clipping down the stairs and walked to the parking lot serving the Court House.

  Passion noted that Crane’s feet had started to make sounds now. It was not just Ralston’s sensibilities she’d ruffled.

  “I want to speak to the bodyguard.”

  “Mr. Ralston fired him.”

  “Just forward me his cell and address. I’ll do the rest.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll need access to the house, to Alaina’s bedroom, to all her tech, and all her passwords that you know.”

  “Already in hand.”
>
  They reached Passion’s black Hyundai Santa Fe Sport. She’d rented it from the Hertz at George Bush Intercontinental Airport last night before the execrable shoot. The heat was starting to cook her now, and she wanted to get in the SUV and have a long blast of air-conditioning. It was not just to cool her down, she admitted to herself, but to blow Huey Ralston’s actual and metaphorical stink out of her hair and off her skin.

  “You’ll make sure the staffers at the Ralston Home know that I’ll be coming? I’ll need to work fast, I won’t have time to screw around with petty door-Nazi’s shutting the stable door after the filly has bolted.”

  “Your credentials and ID have already been circulated. There will be no issues with access.”

  Passion punched the key fob with her thumb and opened the door of the Hyundai. “Then I’ll bid you good day. I’ll be in touch every four hours, if not sooner.”

  “Excellent. I really hope you’ll be able to find Alaina…Passion.”

  Passion blinked at the unexpected use of her real name, rather than her cover name. Crane turned away and walked back to the Court House without looking back.

  Only now his feet had gone back to making no sound.

  No sound at all.

  5

  Lainey awoke in the dark.

  Her hands were tied behind against her spine, and her ankles were bound together. There was something hard sticking into the small of her back, and it felt like there was thick plastic tape across her mouth. She could still breathe through her nostrils, and the prevalent smell in the hot black space was of old damp carpet and engine oil. The kind of oil from that which had burned on the metal of a leaking engine.