by SLMN
The girl had died hard.
“We’re waiting on DNA and formal identification from clothes and possessions. But initial indications are that this is Lainey Ralston.”
A brutal sob shuddered from Ralston’s lips. His head fell into his hands, and tears began to trickle down his nose falling onto the blotter on the desk. This was a broken man.
Stephen Crane pulled the door wider. “Leave. Now.”
Outside in the corridor, once the door was closed, Passion rounded on Crane, who had followed her out. “This is bullshit, and you know it.”
“Ms. Durant…” Crane’s eyes burrowed into her like black lasers, “…née Valdez. Let me be very clear. You were brought onto this investigation to assist the family to maintain its hard-won privacy. The discovery of the body has transmuted that desire to a sadly moot endeavor. We thank you for your efforts.”
It hadn’t been a fluke then.
Crane did know her real identity, her real name. Did Ralston? Did Myer?
Passion made the quick calculation that it would not be political to either confirm or deny that Crane’s information—wherever it had come from—was correct. To do so felt amateur and would give too much away. Perhaps there was a simple explanation. Perhaps Ralston’s prominence in the political sphere gave him access to information held by whatever NSA, CIA, or FBI files there were on the Agency and its workings.
Or perhaps it was more complex and she would do well to keep her powder dry until she had more information. Perhaps Crane was the kind of man who enjoyed wielding power, loved showing that he knew more than the person he was dealing with. Perhaps he’d made the mistake revealing his hand so early. Maybe this was a chink in his armor, not one in Passion’s.
She smiled, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just as shocked as anyone that Lainey is dead. I really thought I had a chance to find her.”
Crane’s smile was like that of a wolf singling out a lame deer. “We’re all terribly shocked too.”
His words had no connection to the expression on his face.
“Please tell your superiors to invoice at the earliest opportunity, and we will ensure a swift payment, for the time spent on the case. Whatever it was you did, which I gathered from your reports, was very little.”
Again, he was trying to make her rise to the bait. Passion wasn’t playing. “We didn’t really have time to build up the momentum needed, I apologize if our service was less than satisfactory.”
Passion could see that Crane was enjoying watching her turn onto her back, put her paws up and offer her belly in supplication. Men like Crane loved winning. Men like Crane hated losing.
It was something that she might be able to use to her advantage, because if anyone thought she was giving up on Lainey Ralston, then they had another thing coming.
Driving away from the Ralston residence in the Hyundai through the raging Texas heat, Passion drove without purpose in a random direction—mirroring the thoughts in her head. She was heading towards the city, yet she didn’t have a direction in mind. She didn’t know where she was going to go next, or who she should speak to.
Passion needed to get her thoughts in order, and she needed to do it fast. Only with that in mind could she make a plan of action that would keep the investigation on track until she was certain Lainey Ralston was either really dead, or could be found alive.
Passion reviewed what had just happened. Her anger boiling, to the point where the world outside would need air conditioning just to stand next to her.
The result of that meeting was not how Passion envisioned it.
She had initially assumed she’d been called to the residence to give a face to face update. Her remote updates had been passed to Ralston through Crane. She’d assumed the politician was the kind of hands-on guy who would occasionally want to have a same-room meeting. It wasn’t unusual. Once the shock of a family member going missing subsided, typically the father started to recover his sensibilities. The commanding, business-focused side of his personality overcame the acute grief and shock. When that happened, they invariably would start to think they could direct the operation better themselves.
Passion understood perfectly well where that notion came from.
These men were used to leading and making decisions. They wanted to be useful, to contribute. They really thought they could, when in reality, they were taking Passion from the vital investigative work to come to their offices and service their egos. It would only take a few face-to-face meetings to placate them, make them feel their suggestions were worthwhile and that they were getting their money’s worth by employing the Agency.
Passion thought that this is what Ralston was doing, but when she’d been presented with the broken man sitting behind his enormous desk and tried to reconcile that with the image of Ralston as a strong, confident businessman and politician, the two personas couldn’t have been further apart.
Ralston now had the look of a man from whom someone had unscrewed the cap of his resolve and had allowed it to leak out all over the floor. Crane and Myer had been the leaders in that room.
Ralston had just been a bit player.
Could that really be because of the news of finding a body? A body with no face? Passion’s RADAR was spinning and blipping—there was something about that whole situation that didn’t ring true.
Crane and Myer thought they could play her for a fool.
Gary Malcolm was no killer.
And if Malcolm was no killer, then that body need not be Lainey. It just needed to be a body to end the investigation. That body could have been anyone, any missing runaway girl that no one cared about—dressed up, strangled, de-identified with a boat propeller and dumped in the river for anyone to find.
It was all too neat.
What would Ralston and the others gain from ending the investigation in this way? They had to be sure the real Lainey Ralston wasn’t coming back from the dead.
And who the hell was Fake-Jake? Why had he spent months grooming the girl if it was just for a one night kill? That kind of investment in time and energy for a single murder just didn’t add up.
Passion could feel the tectonic plates of something huge below the surface of all this rumbling and creaking. She couldn’t as yet guess the cause of it, but the shape of it was there—black and jagged.
Perhaps Fake-Jake had targeted Lainey to get to Ralston, and that had caused them to agree to close the operation down. It had to be a high level conspiracy if Ralston could get Myer and Houston PD to either be involved at an intrinsic level or be so stupid as to buy the “dead girl without a face” thing…
Passion’s smartphone rang, and she thumbed the steering wheel control to instruct the Bluetooth to take it to speaker.
“I have something for you.”
It was Bryan.
Passion decided against telling Bryan that she’d just been kicked off the case. Well not until she had the information he was about to give her at least.
“Our people have traced the cell number Jake was using to communicate with the girl.”
Our people was the cozy euphemism The Agency used for their contacts within the NSA and FBI, occasionally those links would come up with gold dust; and it seemed like now they had.
“Since the day of Lainey’s disappearance, the telephone has been switched on twice and connected to local cell towers. Not for long, but enough for us to triangulate a fix. The first occasion was in the vicinity—well a couple of miles from the Ralston residence. Possibly, the phone and Jake were on their way to the rendezvous with Lainey, and they were communicating. Those particular logs from the cloned phone, as you know, have not been downloaded to Malcolm’s cell phone, which is why we don’t have them.”
Passion drummed her fingers on the steering wheel at Bryan’s annoying propensity to beating around the bush. Bryan, she was sure, would call it thoroughness, but Passion just wanted him to cut to the chase.
“Yes, figures.”
“The other time it came on, was
yesterday morning at 9:37 a.m., and it was on for 24 seconds.”
“That’s not long enough to get a fix…”
“Normally no, especially out in the badlands of South Texas…they are Badlands aren’t they? I used that correctly, didn’t I?”
“Whatever, Bryan, did we get a fix?”
“Oh yes indeed, Passion. The phone lit up cell towers like a Christmas tree.”
“And?”
“Well, in some ways it’s good news. Good, in the sense I have a location for you to investigate, maybe get some CCTV perhaps, maybe ID Jake and his accomplices. I mean, that’s all very positive.”
Passion felt her heart sinking.
“And the bad?”
“It was at the Roman Field Private Airport and Executive Transport Facility to the north of the city. From their website, they say they’re the busiest Business Travel air facility in the Houston area. Thirty to fifty executive arrivals and departures a day.”
“So if Lainey was taken there. She could be anywhere now?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Shit.
16
The President had not been pleased with Bimala.
She had been returned to E-Wing by the guards. Her nose was bloody, her shoulder ached from the way the President had forced her arm so far up her back that she had feared at one point it would snap out of its socket.
Govindethi sada snanam Govindethi sada japam, Govindethi sada dhyanam, sada Govinda keerthanam
If it hadn’t been for her prayer, then Bimala might not have been able to respond in the ways the President had complained to Carla about. He shouted into the chalet telephone that the girl was “Fucking useless. She’s just lying there like a fucking doll! I paid for a willing girl, one who wanted to enjoy herself with me, not a lifeless piece of shit! I’m not a monster. I’m not a rapist! I want one who likes it!”
Carla had come to the chalet, and was full of apologies to the tall man, who stood in the corner of the room, his white shirt open to the waist, showing the paunch that was well hidden by the cut of his suit. His tie, hanging around his neck in two thin strands, his hands shaking with rage.
“I am so sorry, Mr. President, I will bring you a replacement immediately. I think Desiree has sufficiently recovered from your last visit for you to see her again.”
“I’ve had her! I wanted a new one!”
“I can authorize a 50% reduction in your fee sir, if you’ll see Desiree tonight.”
The President ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. “Okay, okay. I’ll see Desiree. Get this useless slut out of here.”
It had been Carla who had bloodied Bimala’s nose. Not in front of the President, but as soon as they’d gotten outside of the chalet.
The blow from the blond woman’s fist had exploded with a bright cloud of pain and a red spray of blood, stunning Bimala and propelling her to her knees.
“I see my trust in you has been misplaced, girl. You need more training it seems. Training in looking like you’re enjoying what they’re doing to you. And your training will begin tomorrow. I shall take personal charge of it myself!”
Bimala was pulled to her feet by two guards and dragged back to the accommodation block where she was thrown onto her blanketless bunk. Once there, she sobbed herself to an uneasy and uncomfortable sleep.
“Bimala! Bimala!” called someone in the dream.
At first she had trouble placing it. It was like a ragged memory that tugged at the thoughts without becoming clear—as if it were something she’d tried hard to forget, but only came back in nightmares.
Aunt Chaaya. It was Aunt Chaaya.
Aunt Chaaya’s voice was always too shrill and too harsh, Bimala had grown used to it over the years she’d been living with her and Uncle Bharat. Bimala tolerated Aunt Chaaya, but she loved sweet Uncle Bharat as if he had been her own father.
Where Chaaya was cold and shriveled, Bharat was warm, forgiving, wise, and hilarious. Many evenings while growing up, Bimala would spend time in the Mumbai garden of the Professor and his wife—laughing, playing, and talking to Uncle Bharat. He would tell her about the flowers, their scientific names, and their medicinal qualities. “The pippali,” Uncle Bharat said holding the small green, elongated cone between his fingers, “good for coughs, colds, and asthma.”
He moved on to the small greenish brown berry-sized fruit on an amla bush, “A good rasayanam. Rasayanam means to purify and develop the seven constituent tissues of the body. The texts of the Ayurveda tell us amla is good for many ailments that upset the body. It will promote the healing of wounds and can even help with the symptoms of diabetes.”
Bimala could listen to Uncle Bharat teaching her for hours. She never grew tired of his gentle voice, nor his measured tones. The knowledge spilled from him in generous waves. He was Bimala’s most favorite person in the whole world.
Aunt Chaaya on the other hand would always break the spell when she saw Bimala in the garden with her husband. She would call from the veranda, bringing Bimala to the house to do her chores in the kitchen, or in her bedroom. Chaaya would stand over Bimala while she did her homework, and whenever Uncle Bharat would come in to see what Bimala was writing, Aunt Chaaya would say: “Do not interrupt her in her studies, you old fool. She doesn’t want to listen to your nonsense!” And she would bustle him away from Bimala, as if she were jealous of any time they spent together.
“Bimala! Bimala!” In the dream Aunt Chaaya’s voice floated though the memories like the smoke created when all of your favorite things were burned by someone who hated you.
Bimala’s Aunt and Uncle never had any children of their own, and Bimala often wondered if that had been for the best. Aunt Chaaya treated her as nothing more than a house pet, and Uncle Bharat was often so busy with his work in the University faculty—where he was senior a Professor on the Board Of Studies in Education—that she wouldn’t see him for days on end, especially as he became more senior and more esteemed and took on more responsibilities.
This left Bimala with school and home. As Bimala had gotten older, Aunt Chaaya had allowed the girl very little time outside her chores and studies to visit school friends or develop friendships. The house was in a suburb of Mumbai that was not necessarily one with a high crime rate, but not one where Aunt Chaaya thought a young girl “should be playing in the street with urchins. Who knows what might happen?”
So as the years rolled on and Bimala grew, her time with Uncle Bharat became more precious, and her much more intensive time with Aunt Chaaya more problematic. Whenever she did get time with Uncle Bharat, Aunt Chaaya would redouble her efforts to pull them apart. It was almost as if she were jealous of their relationship in some way. This possibility played on Bimala’s mind so much, that on the day before her twelfth birthday, while Uncle Bharat was away at a conference in Europe, she approached her Aunt in the living room and asked, “Auntie, may I ask you a question?”
Aunt Chaaya sighed, and taking off her glasses, looked with piercing intensity at Bimala. “What is it, child? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
All Bimala could see was that her Aunt was sitting down on the enormous patterned sofa, in front of their enormous TV, eating sweets while watching reruns of the supernatural drama Naagin.
If that was busy, then Bimala hated to think what being relaxed might entail. “Auntie, please, there is something I do not understand. When I was younger, Uncle Bharat would spend time with me in the garden, teaching me about flowers and the plants. He would read me stories, and we would watch TV together when we could. But now, it does not happen.”
Aunt Chaaya tutted, “He is a busy man. He doesn’t have time to waste on you, especially when you should be doing your chores or your homework. Now run along and clean the kitchen. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“But I’ve cleaned the kitchen.”
“The stairs then!”
Bimala’s worlds came out in a rush. “But Auntie, please. I know Uncle Bharat is a busy man, but ev
en when he does come to see me, or ask to take me to the garden, you say no. You send me off and keep us apart. Why is that? It is almost like you are jealous. Like you do not like us spending any time together. I miss my Uncle, and you do everything you can to keep us apart!”
Aunt Chaaya exploded from the sofa, shaking her hands in the air, muttering words Bimala could not make out. Her Aunt stalked towards her, face consumed with rage. She then did two things which Bimala was not expecting. First, Aunt Chaaya reached out to the front of Bimala’s sari and squeezed the chest beneath.
Since Bimala had been eleven her breasts had been starting to swell. She knew all about puberty, and what to expect from the changes that would come to her body. The developing of breasts was just a part of growing up. They just existed. Bimala didn’t really pay much attention to them, or the fuzzy, wiry growth of hair that was starting to spread across her groin. Just puberty. Just life. Nothing to worry about.
No one had ever touched Bimala’s breasts before, and the shock of it happening was almost as upsetting as how hard her Aunt squeezed them, sticking her nails through the fabric of the sari and digging into the flesh.
The second thing Aunt Chaaya did, once she’d stopped sticking her nails into Bimala’s breasts was she slapped the girl hard across the face.
Bimala spun away from the crack of the blow, falling against a metal framed occasional table, knocking over a vase of yellow and white Gerberas. The vase shattered, and the flowers scattered in a puddle of sugar water.
Bimala reflexively put her hand up to her cheek and raised her other arm in an attempt at protection as her Aunt stepped forward another pace. “Your Uncle is a man! You are no longer a girl! Young sluts like you cannot be trusted with older men! I’ve seen the way you look at him! I’ve seen the thoughts you have, girl! It’s written all over your face. I’m not having his career and my life here threated by a disgusting jezebel like you! You keep your eyes and your titties to yourself!”