“What do you do?”
“I transport people, anyone who can’t drive.”
“Why do you need restraints?”
He laughed but something in it hid an air of evil that reverberated to my core. “My girl, she likes it rough. The kink, you know? Is that how you like it?”
I ignored his question, furious that there was nothing I could take him in for because something inside me was saying the whole world would be safer if he was behind bars.
“I’m going to let you off with a verbal warning, you have a rear taillight out. You need to get this fixed immediately.”
“Aye, aye, Officer.” He strode off, and I moved back to my car, walking at a slight angle so that he was always in my periphery.
Picking up my radio, I reported back to dispatch to let them know I was okay and no action was taken, “Thirteen-nineteen, ten ninety-eight, November.”
“Orange County, twelve-forty hours.”
When I was back in my cruiser, I pulled out my notebook and wrote down everything I could remember from the paper in the man’s car, numbers and colors.
Then I added a sketch of the man’s van from the inside, including the nylon straps, scratch marks, eye hooks, and the bags of women’s clothing. I tapped my pen against the side of my head and thought about all the scenarios I’d gone over in the academy.
It frustrated me, because I had that little insecurity devil sitting on my shoulder from being the youngest McGuire deputy with siblings that had already begun to climb the brass ladder and it was telling me, you fucked up, your brothers would have been able to solve this.
* * *
I dialed my brother and waited for him to answer.
“McGuire,” my brother said, making me grin.
“Hey, McGuire, this is also McGuire.”
“Hey, Bridge, what’s up?”
“Where are you right now?”
“In my office. Why? What’s going on?”
“I just pulled someone over and there was nothing I could find to take him in on, but something isn’t sitting right with me.”
“As a detective, I was taught to trust my gut, so I wouldn’t ignore the feeling you have. Have you gone over everything again?”
“Just in my head. I can’t pinpoint it, but . . . oh, never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Bridge, how far are you from the office?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“I’m running across the street to get some lunch, have you eaten?”
“No.”
“I’ll pick you up something. Come eat with me, I’ll see you in twenty.”
My brothers and I fought—hello, we were typical siblings, but when it came down to it, we were always there for each other.
When I walked into the station, I waved at everyone. After working dispatch for six years, I not only knew all of them, I also knew most of their call numbers by heart. When Callum was promoted to lieutenant detective, he got an office, so every once in a while I would pop in there on my lunch breaks. Now that I was on the road, I seldom stopped by.
“Hey,” I said as I closed his office door behind me.
“Hey, yourself. I got you a turkey sandwich on focaccia.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed it and took a seat opposite him at his desk.
“So, what about the traffic stop isn’t sitting right?” Callum asked before taking a bite of whatever he got for himself.
“At first it was just a weird feeling in my gut, you know, something telling me the guy was off. He had several bags of women’s clothes in the back of his van but said that his girlfriend asked him to drop them off at Goodwill. Some of the clothes had tags on them.”
“That’s not unheard of. Sometimes people just never get around to wearing something before they decide they don’t like it. Was that all?”
“He had restraints in his van, black straps at the legs of the seats, and there were scratch marks, like whoever had been restrained wasn’t all that happy about being there and scratched the shit out of the paint.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“He said they were for his girlfriend, who is into kink. But, Callum, that isn’t the worst thing.”
“Okay, what’s the worst?” Callum raised one eyebrow.
I pulled out my notepad and opened it to the page I’d written on. “He had a piece of paper on the console. I only got to see a small bit of it before he put it back in the glove box.” I handed it over so Callum could read for himself. “This was all I could remember. What do you think it means?”
“I’m not sure. Sort of looks like a menu for ordering wigs . . . but that doesn’t help with the colors. Innocent side, he could be a talent scout or any other hundred things that require someone to write down lists of colors and numbers.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then why would he rush to hide the paper?”
“Okay, women? Stalker, sex trafficking?”
“You think this is like a menu for women? Like a sort of, customize who you want?”
“Honest answer?”
“Always.”
“It could be anything, Bridget. What I’m seeing is a bunch of colors and numbers. Maybe the guy was just a slime ball and he’s keeping a list of all the women he’s slept with, you know?”
“Yeah.” I sighed, feeling as if I were going crazy. Callum was right about how it could be anything, but those scratch marks? They weren’t from someone playing kink games. They were deep, and only people who were genuinely terrified gouged that hard.
“Listen, I’m not saying that it isn’t something more, but something you will learn to do is see horses instead of unicorns.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Occam’s razor? The simplest answer is the right answer? The guy holding the gun is the guy who pulled the trigger?”
“You also told me to trust my gut.”
His sandwich stopped halfway to his mouth, and he nodded. “I did, which is why I’m going to suggest you call Eli and ask him what he thinks. Maybe he knows something that we don’t. That way, no matter which way it shakes out, at least you know.”
“Okay. I’ll send all of this over to him.”
“Even if this turns out to be nothing, you did the right thing by writing the information down. Good work.”
“Thanks.” I took my final bite of sandwich then wadded up my wrapper. One toss, and I had it hitting the rim and bouncing into the wastebasket. “Two points.” Sliding my notebook back into my pocket, I stood. “Thanks again for listening, Cal.”
“I give you a hard time, but you’ve been around this too long, I trust you more than I do a lot of people. Now, call Eli.”
“I will, I will.” I walked out of Callum’s office and headed back to my car standing a little taller. My brothers were supposed to give me the hardest time, it was in some rulebook somewhere, but to hear him say that he trusted me gave me the assurance that I needed.
I was about to pull open the driver’s door on my cruiser when my phone rang with an unknown number.
“Deputy McGuire.”
“When the hell were you going to call me?”
“I’m sorry, what? Who is this?”
“It’s Eli. Don’t fucking play games with me, Bridget.” The anger radiating over the phone line made me flinch.
“First, hello, that’s the proper way to greet someone. Second, I just got in my car from leaving Callum’s office and haven’t had time to call anyone. I’ve barely had time to start my fucking engine. If you’re calling about dinner . . .” I asked as I slid into my cruiser.
“No, this isn’t about dinner.”
“Good because with the way you’re acting, the answer would be when pigs fly.” I was two seconds away from hanging up on his ass.
“My IT guys notified me that you pulled over an Oman Matim today.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So? He’s been on our list of persons of interest for two years, his name keeps popping up in relation with a known sex-trafficking ring. But we hav
e had one major problem and that is we had no fucking clue what he looked like or where he lived.” Huh? He had no idea, his driver’s license had his image and his address but Eli didn’t give me a chance to say anything. “I’m in my office, come here now.”
“Don’t be a fucking dick.”
“Are you cussing at me?” Eli’s tone changed to one of amusement.
“Are you being an asshole to me?”
“You are cussing at me.”
“Guess I am, but I haven’t had time to fucking call anyone.” I put emphasis on the word fucking. “Plus, I’m on duty, I can’t just come to your office when I’m supposed to be working.”
“Hold on, I’ll take care of that.” The phone went silent, so I pulled it away, but my screen didn’t go black and the timer was still counting so we were still connected. “Okay, come here.”
“What part of ‘I’m working’ did you not understand?”
“I understood all of it, but I just cleared the meeting with your supervisor. You are to get your ass to my office. I’ll meet you downstairs in five.” He paused for several seconds, and I could hear him breathing hard, as if he had just run up a few flights of steps. “Please. You have no clue who you pulled over but when my IT department gave me this message . . . just, I need you to please come to my office.”
The phone went silent again, and I looked at the screen. This time, he’d ended the call.
Turning left at the Federal building, I pulled up along the side and saw Eli standing in front, just as promised. He was waving me forward, so I followed his directions and pulled into the parking garage. He followed behind me, flashing his badge to the security guard, who opened the gate and let me pass. “Park over there,” Eli instructed as he pointed to a row of empty spots. I turned off the engine, and as soon as I pressed unlock my door was flying open. “Bridge, are you okay?”
Bridge? Since when did he call me Bridge? Only my family called me that.
“Yes, I’m fine. I would be better if you told me what the hell was going on, though. First, you need to let me get out of the car.” Eli finally took a step back, looking almost nervous as I got out. “What’s going on?”
“Let’s talk in my office.” Eli placed one hand on the small of my back, and I tried to ignore how much I liked the gesture, and how he never once dropped the connection as we made our way through the building.
Eli’s office was much like Callum’s, with windows that looked out to the hallway, stacks of papers piled high, and uncomfortable chairs positioned in front of the desk. “Have a seat.” I did and he took the seat next to me instead of the one behind his desk, which was nothing like the one I’d pictured him working at. Eli always wore suits, so I always pictured him sitting behind a big mahogany desk. But I guessed that was more corporate and less FBI. “Okay, tell me how you came across Oman Matim?” Eli reached forward and cupped my hands in his.
“I pulled over a white van for having a taillight out. It was a standard traffic stop, and he was the driver.”
“What can you tell me about him? We keep coming across his name in an ongoing investigation but have yet to ID him. Outside of some composite sketches, we have no clue what he looks like.”
“What about his driver’s license? His image was on it. I called it in, and it came back as valid and clean.”
Eli got up and moved around to his computer. He was the picture of calm, cool, and collected as he typed something before turning the screen around to me. “Oman Keith Matim. Is this who you pulled over?”
I stared at the image on the screen, but the man in the photo was not the one I had pulled over. “That’s not who I pulled over, nor is it the image that was on his license.”
He nodded, and I started at the beginning, telling him, step by step, about the whole encounter in excruciating detail. When I told him about the bags of clothes, he asked about logos on the bags, if I could remember the brands on the tags, if they were folded or tossed in. When I told him about the straps and scratches, he asked me about how long they were, how many straps were on each seat, if they looked to have wear on them. Hell, he even asked me if I saw any garbage in the van, as if a straw wrapper would break his whole case. When I got to the part about the note, he squeezed my hand and asked to see it.
“Are you allowed to tell me what this guy is mixed up in?” I almost didn’t expect him to answer because he was so busy reading the note, but then he glanced at me.
“He’s part of a large human-trafficking organization that has set up an operation here in Central Florida.” He looked back to the note. “Seventeen numbers, do you remember anything else that was on the note other than this?”
“Not really. I remember thinking that the numbers looked sort of like social security numbers only longer, you know, four numbers dash, three numbers dash, etcetera. But I couldn’t remember them all.”
“Do you remember any of the numbers at all?”
“I remember part of the first set was 5923-76 but that was all. I was trying to speed read and mentally jot down the descriptions. I only got to these three before he snatched the paper away.”
“I want to show you some profile cards, I need you to tell me if any of these guys look familiar, okay?”
“Sure.”
Eli grabbed a giant three-ring binder and handed it to me. “Even if you see someone who resembles the man you pulled over earlier, let me know. He could have been wearing some kind of disguise.”
Right, like people drove around all day every day wearing full-on villain mustaches. Clearly, it would have been in poor taste to point that out, so I opened the binder and started my search.
I’d flipped through at least fifteen pages of six-card panels before I spotted him. “This is the guy I pulled over, but that isn’t his name.”
Eli slid the binder closer to his side of the desk. “Holy shit, that’s Nazari. All this time we’ve been picking up the name Oman Matim and had him registered as another suspect, but he was just another alias.” He opened Nazari’s file on the computer and combined the name Oman Keith Matim with Nazari. “Abdul Sami Rashid AKA Tavi Yael Nazari AKA Oman Keith Matim.” Eli was quiet as he typed away for a few minutes. I was hoping this meant I was done and could leave.
I had just stood up when Eli finally met my eyes and glared. “Hold on,” he said to me and then leaned over his desk and pressed a button. “Perone, we found Nazari. I’m in my office.” Eli moved over to me and reached for my hand, but I pulled back.
“Aren’t you done with me? I told you everything—” But I was cut off because Eli’s office door flew open and a man who resembled Grimace, the purple dude from McDonald’s, stood in the open doorway.
“How the fuck—” He cut off whatever he was about to say. “Sorry, Deputy, I didn’t know that Grey had company.”
“Bridget, this is Supervisory Agent Don Perone, Don, this is a good friend of mine and the one who found Nazari, Deputy Bridget McGuire.”
“Any relation to Patrick McGuire?” Perone asked.
“My father.”
“Ahh, good man. Okay, catch me up.” Perone took the seat behind the desk while Eli caught him up. “So, the bastard is still local. Are we looking for the van?”
“I’ll get on that when I’m finished with Bridget.”
“What about the note?” I asked. Silence fell, and the men exchanged looks. Had I not been focused on Eli, I would have missed the way his eyes subtly moved side to side, as if shaking no.
“I’m not as worried about that as I am about keeping an eye on Nazari,” Eli stated.
“But the note—”
Eli cut me off. “I’ll research it, but I don’t think that note is anything.” Eli reached forward and pulled the note from my hand.
“Hey, give that back, I need that for my files.”
“No, you don’t. It’s now property of the FBI.”
“I’ll let you finish handling this, come see me when you’re done,” Perone said, a slight chuckle in his voice as
he stood and left Eli’s office.
I waited until Eli’s boss was out of earshot before I turned on him. “Make a fucking copy and give it back, Eli.”
“Regardless of what you think, this note is now evidence in an ongoing FBI investigation and will remain so until the courts deem otherwise. I’m sorry if you don’t agree with that, but it’s what is going to happen.”
“Ugh. Fuck.”
“Bridget, we know that Nazari has ties to a larger sex-trafficking ring. You pulled him over today. This is a federal case.”
I was pissed but I had no jurisdiction over federal. “Tell me one thing. What would have happened if I’d hauled him in?”
Eli’s face went bloodless, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have said he was scared. Only, nothing scared him. Nothing. So I was totally confused.
“I can’t answer that for sure, but I can say this. Nazari AKA Oman Matim is dangerous and will not think twice about getting you out of his way . . . however he needs to. Do you understand?”
Yes, I understood, but did he understand that didn’t stop the knowledge that by my inaction, I had left him on the street to snatch more unsuspecting women? That guilt cut deep and settled inside me like a poison waiting to eat me alive.
“Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Bridget, you pulled him over, you’ve caught his attention, you’re on his radar. I don’t want that man to know you even exist. Get me?” He sounded a bit fierce and protective, if I was being truthful.
“Yeah.”
“Do you hear me?” Eli ordered.
My voice was shaky, but I managed to answer him. “Yeah, Eli. I get it.”
“Do me a favor and don’t go chasing this one. If you see him or his van, don’t pull him over. Don’t stop him. Hell, if he’s on fire don’t even stop to offer water.”
“Fine. Are we done?” I stood, not meeting his eyes.
“For now, but I’ll be in touch.”
“Great, you know how to reach me.” I strode from his office and retraced my steps. I wanted to get far away from Eli.
Book ‘Em Bridget: Iron Badges Page 5