Alibi Island

by SLMN

  “I do not know. Some of them perhaps. Hold on. Go back.”

  Passion went back two pictures to a boy, thin faced, blond-haired. Gary Malcolm.

  “Him. But not at any parties. He dropped her back at the compound a couple of times when she was legitimately out. He drew my attention because of the car: a beat up Camry. Not the kind of car you’d expect Alaina to come home in.”

  Passion clicked on Gary’s profile. A succession of pictures flooded his timeline about his car—the beat up Camry— his buddies, and his nights on the town. After digging through 20 or so pictures, Passion found what she was looking for. It was a selfie of Gary in his car—with three girls in the back seat, holding bottles of Becks, looking like they were seat-dancing to something on the radio. Gary had the look of a boy who couldn’t believe his luck.

  Two girls were unknown to Passion, but the girl on the end—half a face obscured as if she didn’t want to be in the selfie—was Alaina. The selfie had been taken before she’d changed to the Goth look, but it was definitely her. Everyone else in the picture had been tagged except Alaina.

  Bingo.

  Gary Malcolm had not been hard to find. There was enough information on his Facebook page, reading it from Alaina’s legit account to cross-reference enough with Houston internet directories to find him and his family.

  Gary’s parents’ house was on the approach to Houston along the expressway, five miles from the Ralston Compound. A modest detached ranch style property with a low roof, a garage with a baseball hoop above the door, and a small well-kept garden.

  Painfully suburban. Painfully average.

  The Camry was on the drive, and as Passion pulled the Hyundai to a stop, she saw that there was a police car there as well.

  Shit.

  She checked her watch. It was 30 minutes before she was due to make her first report to Ralston.

  Working against the Police rather than with them was always a risk. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. In fact, the anonymity of the Agency and its secure working methods made it very attractive to the high end clients who could afford its services. But working against the Houston PD, or the State Police in the US was a much more difficult proposition than working against the police in a place like Manila. Bald corruption and a laissez faire attitude in the police of countries with a different set of priorities made doing her job a lot easier if palms could be greased, eyes suggested to look the other way. Here in the US the cops would be looking for Lainey as hard as they could. It was a social corruption Passion was working against here. Lainey was rich, white, and from a powerful family. It’s not like she was a black kid from the projects, with a dad in jail and a mom bussing tables in the day and turning tricks in the evening to make ends meet.

  Those were the kids society said could stay lost.

  Passion was from somewhere in between those two worlds. Her family hadn’t been rich, but neither had they been poor. Her father was Mexican, and her mother was from Canada. They’d met at college and made a life for themselves that was nearly as beautiful as the child they made.

  Passion was a pleasing hybrid of both cultures—with naturally brown skin and auburn hair that would only be curled by chemicals or tongs. Left to itself it could have been used as a ruler. She was tall and thin, yet well-proportioned, and walked like she was riding a cushion of air and had an easy beauty which never bordered on heroin chic. She was blessed with a body frame which made any clothes hang like they had been designed especially for her.

  Passion’s mother Veronica had been recruited by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service when she was still at college. She was a fine mathematician and naturally gifted in code breaking. She’s risen rapidly through the ranks and been spying successfully undercover in the Middle East and Europe by the time she was 26.

  Joel, Passion’s father, had been an athlete, boxer, and marathon runner. He was a man of immense competitive spirit, but also capable of great compassion.

  At college, Passion herself had become known to CSIS, and they had toyed with the idea of recruiting her too. Veronica had been all for it; her career was going from strength to strength and could guarantee Passion a great trajectory within the service.

  That dream had all gone to shit when Veronica had been burned in a sting operation that had gone wrong in Estonia. Passion’s mom had ended up tied to a concrete pillar and thrown into the Baltic off the coast of Tallinn by a faction of the Russian Mafia who were trying to sell weapons-grade Plutonium to ISIS.

  Veronica had managed to intercept and expose the coded transmission between the groups, revealing the potential sale, but in doing so had lost her life in the operation that followed. Russian Mafia didn’t cut corners when it came to disposing of people who had crossed them.

  Veronica Valdez had died hard.

  Joel died a year later of a broken heart.

  Passion was 21, and that was seven years ago now. When she made it clear to CSIS that she would not be interested in joining them even if they were the last intelligence service on planet earth, the Agency had come calling.

  She was told the Agency was wet up, yet it was never confirmed. Bryan was her only contact with the organization—by ex-members of CSIS the CIA, FBI, MI5 and MOSSAD—the Agency was an Extra-Governmental private security concern, providing conflict resolution, hostage negotiation, kidnap protection and recovery, as well as cypher communications, bespoke security solutions, and bodyguard acquisition.

  The Agency didn’t advertise. They didn’t need to.

  They had more business than they could ever need—according to Bryan—and they only took the best.

  Passion had spent two years being trained in personal combat, weapons skills, counterespionage measures, good old fashioned detective work, digital comms systems, asset acquisition, and how to be a model.

  All the Agency’s Field Operatives had cover jobs and cover names. And although Passion had never knowingly met any of the other agents, Bryan occasionally would mention names like The Surgeon, The Actor, The Journalist, The Parliamentarian, and even The Clown. At the mention of the last name, Passion said she’d really appreciate a set of tickets for that circus. Bryan, in whom she hadn’t detected much of a sense of humor, had cut the call and told her not to be such a “twat.”

  The British were so good at swearing.

  Passion checked her watch; ten minutes until the Ralston update was due. The Police Car was still sat on the driveway next to the Camry, and all was quiet.

  Passion turned off the engine and opened the driver’s side window. The afternoon heat radiated in from outside. Her lack of meaningful sleep was again in danger of creeping up on her. She needed a coffee or a cold shower—preferably both.

  The door to the Malcolm house opened, and two uniformed cops came out. One was carrying a laptop, the other a case for a desktop PC.

  Dammit.

  That woke Passion up. She was hoping to get access to those computers before Houston PD.

  What to do?

  She’d still needed to speak to Gary. He was the only possible link she had between both of Lainey’s profiles that she had right now.

  The cops put the computer gear in the trunk of the car, said a few words to someone in the dark doorway who Passion couldn’t make out, and then got in the car. Within seconds, it rolled backwards off the driveway.

  As the police car moved past Passion’s Hyundai, she continued pretending to fix her lipstick in the rearview mirror. From the corner of her eye, she saw the boy appear from behind a bush where he’d obviously been hiding. It happened so nonchalantly that she’d almost missed him climbing out of the shadows thrown by the harsh sun, down through the garden and onto the street. The boy walked quickly along the sidewalk away from the house, but towards the Hyundai.

  It was Gary Malcolm.

  Passion recognized him from the Facebook profile identified by Sven. He looked like he hadn’t slept for nearly as long has Passion. His cheeks were hollowed and there were dark
rings around his eyes. His t-shirt was damp with sweat, and his sneakers were smeared with mud. He’d been hiding in the trees by the side of his house for some time, possibly since the police had pulled up onto the driveway next to his car.

  Gary obviously thought he had reasons to avoid the police right now and had done so. He walked nervously and furtively, looking at his smartphone in his hand as he moved, his finger hovering over the power button. His head was down, not seeing anything but the phone, and for all the world he seemed like a kid who wanted to be anywhere now except for here, and wanting it badly.

  As he approached the Hyundai, Passion stopped pretending to put on make-up. She pressed the control that would lower the roadside window and leaned across the car.

  “Gary?”

  At the sound of his name, Gary stopped in his tracks; a look of pure shock on his face. He visibly flinched. This wasn’t a boy who was just avoiding the police. He was terrified of anyone and everyone.

  “I didn’t speak to them!” he hissed. “I hid in the damn garden!”

  Passion of course had no idea what Gary was talking about. “I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not the cops. But I can help you. And baby, you look like a kid who needs help.”

  Passion fixed Gary with her most convincing stare and then allowed the ghost of a friendly smile to pass her lips. “I’m looking for Lainey. I think you can help me too. Shall we help each other out?”

  Gary’s forehead ran with sweat, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed three times.

  “I don’t know who you are…”

  “Get in the car, and I’ll tell you.”

  Gary’s eyes flicked back along the street to his house and the Camry, then back to Passion. What clinched the deal was a police interceptor—perhaps the one that had just left—emerging from a side road, and trundling back toward Gary’s house. “Okay,” he said, spit barring at his lips, collecting in a white paste of fear in the corners of his mouth. He scooted up to the Hyundai, and jumped in before the interceptor went past. The interceptor rolled past Passion’s car, and then straight past Gary’s house. Whatever the police were looking for, they weren’t yet looking for Gary.

  Gary’s eyes were bulging, his chin set. Passion could see he was in no position to talk right now. So she started the engine, and pulled smoothly away from the curb.

  Passion drove for three miles telling Gary to just try to calm himself, and they’d talk when they found a place.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Jennifer, and I’m looking for Lainey. I’m freelancing. I reckon there might be a reward for information leading to Lainey’s return yeah? Ralston has big bucks.”

  The boy nodded, eyes darting, looking worriedly at the cars rolling past and people going in and out of the stores on the strip. “What do you mean by freelancing?”

  “I’m a private investigator, and I want nothing more than to see Lainey Ralston safe and back home.”

  That information seemed to relax Gary enough for his spine to slacken and for him to sit back in the passenger’s seat.

  Passion parked up in a lot adjacent to a nondescript strip on the outskirts of the city. There was a Denny’s across the street, but the boy didn’t look like he was in the mood to eat.

  “I’ve been told not to talk to anyone about Lainey.”

  “Told? What do you mean?”

  Gary held up his smartphone. There was one message from a withheld number, which indicated it had landed on the phone three hours ago. It read simply, “If you talk to the police, Gary, we will kill your family.”

  7

  Pictures of Macy’s dead and broken body—before it had become the main meal for some of the island’s cannibal faction—had been circulated to the girls in D-Wing as both a warning and a reminder.

  The guards and Owners did this often when one of the girls challenged the status quo, or tried to escape. Vengeance and execution were swift and terrible on the island. They had a small population to control, and the best way to do that was through abject fear.

  Mary-Joy understood fear all too well.

  For two years before she’d even reached the age of eleven, she’d already been scratching a living on the rubbish heaps surrounding Davao City. The Philippines, a country of huge contrasts between the mega-wealthy and the mega-poor, had wide and stinking slum towns crusting like scabs on the wounds of their cities. These squatter homes were backed against the stewing garbage fields and supported a population of rummagers. Mary-Joy, with her younger brother Benjie, worked the garbage for scraps of metal wire or anything else they could sell. It was their main source of income; without it, they would starve.

  While other kids Mary-Joy’s age in the affluent areas of the world would go to school, play with their friends, chat on social media, watch TV, and generally live lives of unimaginable privilege, she and her brother would be searching the piles of the city refuge for copper.

  The privileged and unthinking throw away so much stuff. So many things that are still valuable to a child who has no meal to look forward to. That next meal was dependent on filling a bag with copper, reclaimed from discarded electrical goods. This waste was often thrown into the trash because the objects were the wrong color or their shape no longer matched the newly decorated room where they’d previously sat. These bits of tech could be snapped open or cracked with rocks, and tiny lengths of copper wire could be reclaimed. Electrical leads could be stripped with teeth and precious wire pulled out with bloody fingers. Once the bag was full, Mary-Joy and her fellow trash-sifters would sell the copper to the first sharks up in the poverty chain. The small amount of money she made went into food for her and her brother to consume in the dark, dank shack in which they lived. It stood on the edge of the garbage fields and landfill, next to an open latrine that served as a street. Occasionally Angel, their mother, would join them if she was too sick to work the streets in the nearest red light district. Otherwise they wouldn’t see her for days on end.

  Angel would call her condition sick, but what it was in reality was a lack of Shabu in her system. Enforced meth withdrawal—when Angel couldn’t afford any of her drugs of choice from her street supplier, or couldn’t find one who would fuck her for meth—was a body slam of crushing fatigue setting in like a hammer blow. Her mood would drop like a baby from a burning building. After that came the paranoia and the hallucinations. While Benjie cried confusedly in the corner of the shack, Mary-Joy would be holding her mother down, trying to stop her from howling like a wolf, or running naked to offer herself to anyone or anything who would give her enough money to buy the even the smallest wrap of Shabu.

  Mary-Joy made damn sure she sold the copper to the hawkers before she made it back to the shack in the evenings, because if Angel showed up, the daily copper wouldn’t be the first thing she would steal to feed her habit.

  Mary-Joy couldn’t say that she’d loved her mom anymore; there was too much broken between them now. But Benjie, whom she had become the de facto parent for in the stinking slums and landfill, still wanted Angel around. He wasn’t old enough or educated enough to know any better.

  Not that Mary-Joy had been educated beyond fifth grade. She’d had to leave school to work the rubbish heaps, amongst the fires and the violence, once Angel’s habit took hold. When everything she had earned selling her body went to her drugs, Mary-Joy knew that unless she worked the hellish refuge glutted landscape, she and her brother would likely die in the dirt.

  Mary-Joy could read, and sometimes that skill provided some relief. The constant search through the garbage—with bare hands, breathing in the foul stench of methane and chemicals rising from the layers of rotting detritus—would often lead to finding pages from newspapers and magazines. Sometimes when she was very lucky, she discovered whole books.

  One day she found a torn and damp copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and had slipped it inside her shirt. She managed to read it five times to Benjie, his face lighting up at the pictures, laughing at the
words and hugging his sister tightly as she read to him. On the sixth night, Angel came back to the shack, sick and shivering, and had thrown the book onto the fire because she was cold.

  That memory burned Mary-Joy way more than the tiny amount of heat that the book had made in the hearth.

  D-Wing was home to 25 girls. Only two of them had been there longer than Mary-Joy’s three years. At 18, she was thin yet not emaciated like some of the other girls. Her hair was cut short into a bob, with eyeliner and lip tattoos that had been designed to her face. These tattoos hadn’t been her wish of course, and she’d been threatened with a severe beating if she didn’t hold still while they were applied. So she sat there on the reclining chair, in the room they called The Parlor, and allowed the island’s resident tattooist to work on her eyes and face.

  Every two weeks the girls were forced to the Parlor to have their treatments—eyebrows micro-bladed, Botox injected for those who needed it, teeth whitened or other cosmetic dentistry, discussions about the best time for breast implants for the girls who were flat-chested, or those the Owners wanted to make grossly large for the customers who liked that sort of thing. Mary-Joy’s chest seemed to be adequately proportioned…for now.

  The girls in D-Wing—whose ages ranged from eight to twenty—were split every morning into their respective groups. Mary-Joy and those in her cohort would be sent to the gym for two hours of rigorous exercise to tone their muscles and increase their stamina. Another cohort was sent to the dining area to eat high-fat high-sugar foods. Eat or be forced to eat; the Owners and guards didn’t seem to care. These girls were prepared for the clients who liked a bit of puppy fat on the children they abused, or liked their victims to be massively overweight. These girls were some of the unhappiest of all on the island, Mary-Joy had noted. No one was happy to be there, it was true, but those girls treated and fed like farm animals seemed to carry the most upsetting cloud of depression around them. Perhaps they realized that with their bodies blown up and their hearts strained, they would never have the strength or agility to escape—not just from D-Wing, but from the island itself.