“This tie has been cut and there’s blood on it. The girls were restrained.”
“I also found two sharp boxes with used syringes in it. I’ll need to run tests on them, but my guess is that they contain some sort of sedative like Flunitrazepam.”
“The date rape drug,” I thought out loud. “To keep them under control.”
“It looks like this one fought back,” Joyce pointed out, handing Kenny back the bag. “Were any of the girls raped?”
Kenny shook his head. “Not in this room. I didn’t find a single trace of semen.”
“This must be where they kept the virgins for their auctions,” I surmised, my stomach churning with bile. “Those bastards.” I lowered my head and raked my fingers through my hair. I needed to suppress the anger. It was wasted energy. “Kenny, okay if we go in?” The red checkmark indicated that he was finished with the evidence collecting but being courteous goes a long way with these guys.
“Go ahead, I’m done,” he replied. “But I doubt you’ll find anything. The Feds have been all over this place. Even Paul was out here yesterday.”
“Oh, good. I’ll check in with him after we’re done here,” I responded.
Unlike Joyce’s office apartment, this apartment had been gutted and insulated for sound with thick blankets nailed to the walls and area rugs on the floor. The window had boards nailed over it, preventing the sun from coming in or the hostages from crawling out. I counted eight sleep mats lying helter-skelter on the wooden floor. They must have moved the girls in a hurry and didn’t bother with the cheap foam mats. There were evidence markers all over the room and I squatted down in front of one and examined the floor. Someone had scratched four vertical lines with a diagonal line across them. Then another three lines. That person had been there for eight days.
“Trina! Trina, come here!” Joyce cried from the bathroom.
I jumped up and ran over to her. “What is it?”
“Look,” she said, pointing at the bathtub. “That’s the tub I saw in my dream.”
The bathtub was small, with chipped porcelain and rusted spigots, just as Joyce had described it.
“Hey, Kenny, can you come here a moment?” I shouted.
He stepped inside the apartment and stood in the bathroom door. “Yeah?”
“Did you find anything in here? Anything unusual?”
“Nothing surprising. Just a retainer and a princess bra.”
I was almost as disappointed as Joyce looked. “Okay, thanks.”
“Wait, there is one thing. They knocked a hole in the closet that leads out to the stairwell.” He walked over and opened the closet door. There was a large, splintered hole in the wall, like he said, and I could see the stairwell through it.
Joyce knelt beside the tub, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. “They were just three doors down. Why didn’t I know? I could have saved them.”
“These guys are experts at what they do,” I explained. “The place was rigged for sound, the girls were kept sedated, and they were snuck inside from the stairwell. There’s no way you could have known.”
She stood up and by the time she turned to look at me, her face was red with anger, her eyes piercing and cold, and her hands clenched in fists. “I should have known, damn it.”
When someone angrily shouted at me, my nature was to angrily shout back. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Wonder Woman? Well, you’re not, so knock it off.” The shocked look on her face made me instantly regret my anger. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I won’t let you shoulder the blame when it wasn’t your fault. Let’s concentrate on catching these bastards and finding those kids.”
The warmth slowly returned to her eyes as she released her anger. She still had a twinge of heat in her voice when she said, “Fine, let’s go upstairs and see if they found anything.”
We took the stairs to the tenth floor, and I spotted Eula in the doorway of the first apartment. She was taping a piece of paper to the door that had a big red checkmark on it.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
Eula turned and looked at me, and then at Joyce. If she was surprised by Joyce’s FBI jacket, she didn’t show it. “I’m finding a lot, but I won’t be able to connect the dots for you until I get back to the lab and process everything.”
Her standard response. Now that she’d gotten that out of the way, she’d talk to me. “Is this Joey’s apartment?” I asked, opening the door and peeking into the living room. It was garish, loud, and obnoxious. In a word, ugly. The room looked like a designer, hell, two or three designers, had puked all over it.
“We believe so. There was semen all over the place, and by that I mean everywhere. Even the closet. I found blood spots that I believe are from the hymen breaking.”
“Virgins?” Joyce and I both asked at the same time.
“Yes. And there were at least five different spots,” Eula expounded. “Just in this apartment alone.”
“That bastard,” Joyce exclaimed, echoing my sentiment earlier. “I knew he liked to brag about deflowering the girls, but I thought it was just him being a jerk.”
“Based on the evidence I’ve found, I believe that he’s been raping minors for years,” Eula added.
“Why hasn’t this bastard been put away years ago?” I asked angrily.
“Because he’s a ghost,” Joyce said. “Every time we get close to him, he disappears. Like now.”
Still aggravated, I said, “Back to the informant problem. Sounds like we may have more than one snake in the grass.”
“Well, it is organized crime, after all,” Eula joked.
“They’re only organized until we dismantle them,” Joyce countered.
“And I am especially eager to dismantle Joey, limb from limb,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, well, get in line,” Joyce warned.
“Right behind you,” I assured her. Turning back to Eula, I asked, “Did you learn anything else?”
“No, and what I do find, I have to turn over to the Feds.” She looked at Joyce. “I guess you’ll want to know as soon as I know anything, right?”
“Yes, I would appreciate that,” Joyce said. “Can I call you this afternoon?”
Eula shrugged. “Not if you want to know anything. You can try tomorrow afternoon but I’m not promising anything.”
“I’ll do that, thanks. Do you have a card?” Joyce asked.
I started to say that I had her number, but it was on my personal cell phone and it was locked up in my apartment.
Eula pulled off her rubber gloves and reached inside her lab coat. “Here you go,” she said, handing Joyce her business card. She noticed Joyce’s fingertips and glanced at me. She knelt and picked up her toolkit. “I don’t accept calls after hours and like I said, I won’t have much for you tomorrow.”
“I think Joey has my sister. We’re identical twins, and Trina has my DNA on file. If you wouldn’t mind cross matching what you find with my DNA and letting me know as soon as possible, I would be very grateful.”
Eula stood up and regarded Joyce for a moment. Her face softened as she said, “I promise that I will work as fast as I can.”
“I appreciate that. Trina said that you were the best, and I realize now that she wasn’t just talking about your work.”
I was impressed. Without realizing it, Joyce had Eula eating out of her hand. It took me years before she would do much more than grunt at me.
Eula’s phone rang, and she pulled it from her lab coat pocket. She held up her hand to excuse herself. “This is Eula…. No, Paul, I don’t have anything new since an hour ago… Yes, I’ll call you if I do.”
“Can I talk with him?” I asked, holding my hand out.
She nodded and said into the phone, “Hang on a minute, Paul.” Then she handed me her cell phone.
“Paul, it’s Trina. Yeah, we’re here doing some looking around.”
“Damn it, Trina. You need to check in more. Is Ruby with you?”
“Ye
ah, she’s right here,” I replied, looking at Joyce.
“We found her sister.”
Chapter Twenty
Happy Reunion – Ruby Grace Sutherland aka Joyce
“You found her sister?” Trina asked.
I snatched the phone from her hand. “This is Special Agent Sutherland. You found my sister, Emily Ann?”
Trina pulled my hand holding the cell phone toward her and hit the speaker button.
“Yes, and if you’ll come into the station, I’ll explain everything,” Paul replied.
“Not going to happen, Paul,” Trina said. She tapped the mute button and said, “We can’t, Joyce. It’s too dangerous. Ask where she’s at.”
I wanted to argue with her, but I knew she was right. I had to keep Emily safe. I unmuted the phone and said, “Detective, where is my sister? Is she all right?”
“She’s at Houston Methodist in room 2209. She’s going to be all right, but they want to keep her another night for observation,” he explained.
“Oh, thank God,” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
We could hear Paul grunt, obviously annoyed. “It looks like a mugging gone wrong. And before you ask, no, she wasn’t raped.”
“Thank God,” I exclaimed again, instinctively crossing myself. Paul was still talking. “What? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“I asked what Trina’s next move was?”
“We’re going to attack on two fronts,” she replied.
We are?
“How so?” Paul asked.
I looked at Trina, and she shook her head.
“I can’t tell you, Paul. Not until you sniff out that mole. Joyce and… I mean, Ruby and I will come in when we think it’s safe.”
“Copy that. I’ll let the captain know.”
“Thanks, Paul,” Trina said. “I’ll check in again tomorrow if I can.”
“Watch your back,” Paul said.
“I’ve got her back,” I said without thinking.
“And so have I,” Paul countered. “Don’t get my partner killed, Special Agent.”
That pissed me off, and I started to let him know it when Trina put her hand on my arm to stop me.
“All right, Paul, bye-bye, now,” she said, and ended the call.
“Want to go to the hospital and check on your sister?” she asked.
“Yes, but I thought we were keeping a low profile?”
“We are. I’ve always wanted to play doctor, how about you?”
“Sure, with the right woman,” I teased.
“You got that right. Let’s go.”
“Excuse me,” Eula said, holding up her hand to stop us. “Can I have my cell phone back?”
“Oh, sorry, Eula,” Trina said with a sheepish grin and handed her the phone.
Feeling lighter than I had in days, I laughed at Trina as I walked down the hall.
It didn’t take us long to get to the hospital and make our way to the surgery floor. We walked into the changing room acting like nurses coming on shift and grabbed some scrubs, booties, and paper masks and changed in the locker room. Thankfully, the room was empty, so we were free to talk as we dressed.
“Listen, when you talk with your boss tonight—”
“Wait. Aren’t you coming with me?” I asked.
“No. I’m going to stay in the car and watch your back,” she replied, unbuttoning her shirt and tossing it on the bench.
“So that if there’s trouble, you’ll be between it and me. I don’t think I like that idea very much,” I said, slipping out of my jeans.
She shrugged. “It’s SOP, you know that.”
Frowning, I said, “There’s been nothing standard about this operation. Fine. What do you want me to ask Jack?”
She pulled on a blue scrub shirt. “Ask him if he knows he has a mole in his ranks.”
“But we don’t know if the mole is a Fed or not,” I rebuffed, tying the drawstring on the uncomfortable-fitting pants.
“True, but it could be a Fed just as easily as a cop. Hell, there could be two of them. We have to cover all the bases.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed.
“And don’t be any longer than twenty or thirty minutes, okay?”
Frowning, I paused for a minute, working all the angles. Finally, I looked at her and said, “Ah. Okay, I get it. What kind of pizza do you want me to bring you?”
Grinning, she asked, “Are we in sync or what?”
Rolling my eyes, I was smiling as I finished dressing. Thinking about what I was going to say to Jack, I realized that if I told him about the rape, he would pull me off the case and send me to a shrink. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to see this through to the end. That was all the healing I need.
We found Emily alone, asleep in her room, so we quietly walked in. Trina stayed by the door as I walked up to Emily’s bed. It was a small observation room, with a bed and one plastic chair beside it. A patient’s visitor was not meant to stay long in this room. I didn’t want to wake her, but I needed to hear her voice, to hear her say that she was all right.
“Again?” she whined. “I just fell asleep.”
“Emily, it’s me. It’s Ruby,” I whispered.
Her eyes popped open, and she looked at me. “Are you all right?”
“Am I all right? You’re the one in the hospital. What happened?”
“I was working a couple of hours in the soup kitchen before catching my flight to Johannesburg. I told you about going there for two months to help with our school, right?”
“Yeah, I remember that,” I replied. What I didn’t tell her was that I had only just remembered it.
She looked at me intently, studying my eyes. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”
She looked at Trina, expecting me to introduce her, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
“Yes, I told you everything is all right; now tell me how you ended up in here.”
“I was stupid. That’s how I ended up in here. I told Father Matthew that—”
“Father Matthew?” Trina asked, crossing to the bed.
“Yes, he runs a soup kitchen over by the airport.”
“Oh, okay, different guy,” Trina said.
Emily frowned at me and then looked at Trina.
“Oh, sorry. Emily, this is Trina Wiles, my friend.” Trina glanced at me before smiling at Emily. “Trina, this is my sister, Emily.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Emily,” Trina said. “But don’t let me interrupt. Your sister is on a mission to find out what happened to you.”
“Price you pay for having an FBI agent for a sister, I guess,” Emily teased. I rolled my eyes and groaned. Chuckling, she reflexively rubbed her ring finger. Then she frowned. “I was leaving the soup kitchen and took a shortcut through the back alley, intending to hail a cab from the main street so I could go home and get my suitcase and purse. My way was blocked by a large man in the rigors of withdrawal.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“I know what that looks like,” she replied. “He was shaking and sweating profusely. He asked for money, and I told him that I was a nun and didn’t have any money on me. He could see I wasn’t carrying a purse and he began to panic. He saw my ring and pointed at it, demanding that I give it to him. Obviously, he thought it was gold, but our rings are only gold plated. Anyway, I refused to give it to him, and he grabbed me by the arms and shoved me. I tried to run. I tried to pray. I tried to fight back. I shoved him away and tried to run past him but the next thing I knew, I woke up here. The police said that I was hit from behind with a board.” She looked down at her hand. “I guess he got what he was after.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Joyce?”
“Oh, my God,” I repeated as a memory burst into my mind.
“Ruby, are you all right?” Emily asked with a worried look.
“You remembered something, didn’t you?” Trina asked.
Nodding, I sat down on the side of the bed and searched the
memories streaking through my head. “It’s a long story, Emily. We don’t have time to go into it, so I’ll give you the CliffNotes. I lost my memory recently and am still getting parts of it back, usually when triggered by something said. You were attacked in an alley beside a large dumpster, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered. “How did you know?”
“I was there.”
“You were there?” Emily asked incredulously. “Then why didn’t you—”
“No, I wasn’t there during the attack. You remember I told you I would be unreachable because I was working on special assignment?” She nodded. “I went to the soup kitchen to tell you goodbye and wish you a safe trip. But by the time I got there you were gone. I missed you by at least an hour. Or so I thought. I came in the back way and saw police tape across the alley by a dumpster. I didn’t think anything of it considering the area, but as I was leaving, I spotted something shiny under the trash bin. It was a gold ring.”
“A ring? My ring?” she asked excitedly.
“Yes. I think so. I didn’t have time to do anything other than pick it up and slip it into my sock, then I hurried back. The police have it now. Trina will make arrangements for you to get it back.”
She looked toward the ceiling and said a quick prayer. Then she crossed herself with a tear in her eye.
“What are the odds that your sister was the one who found your ring? Unreal,” Trina stated.
“Not unreal, ordained,” Emily corrected her.
Trina nodded. “Of course, Sister,” she said and then looked at me. She tapped her wrist, indicating we were running out of time.
“Emily, one more question. Did Grady ever say anything inappropriate to you? Touch you in any way he shouldn’t had?”
“Who’s Grady?” Emily asked.
“Sorry, I meant Harold Rogers, the maintenance man at the convent.”
“No, he was a nice man,” she stated, shaking her head. “Why do you ask?”
“I have to go now,” I said, avoiding the question. “I want you to promise me you won’t leave the convent. Not until I get this case solved. Promise me.”
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