Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (11 page)

“You hired a psychic?” I asked. “’Cause you can’t be talking about me after I told you—”

“Down, girl.”

My eyes widened, and I looked at Mason. “Did he just ‘down, girl’ me?” Then Chief Sub. “Did you just ‘down, girl’
me?
”

Ignoring me, Chief Sub shifted his attention to Mason. “Now, there’s one more thing.”

I stood there holding the form and wondering how the hell I’d just been out-argued, bossed around and dismissed. None of my usual tactics worked with this guy.

“What’s that, sir?” Mason asked.

“According to Rosie’s report, Venora LaMere’s last known location was two miles across the state line in PA.” He said PA, not Pennsylvania. No one in the Triple Cities calls PA Pennsylvania. It’s too close and we say it too often to waste time. Or syllables. “It looks pretty solid that’s where she was abducted. The state line was crossed.”

“By two miles,” Mason said.

“Doesn’t matter. That makes this federal. I’ve spoken to the FBI already. They’re sending a field agent. Be here by the end of the day. You’ll be working under him. For now, get over to Social Services and start digging into those two girls’ files.”

“I’m gonna need a warrant for that,” Mason said.

“It’ll be there before you are.”

Mason got up and opened the door. Rosie went through it, and I started to follow, the chief’s form still in my hand.

“Scribble your Hancock on there and leave it, de Luca,” the chief said.

“Chief, I don’t sign things without running them past my—”

He tapped his desk with a forefinger, three insistent times. I slapped the paper down, picked up a stray pen, scribbled my Social in the appropriate spot and signed the bottom. Then I pushed the paper across the desk toward him, lifting my head to look him in the eye.

He looked right back. And then he smiled. “Your antennae are off, by the way. I actually
do
like you, de Luca.”

“Only because I let you win Round One,” I said. “Just don’t get used to it, Chief.”

“I love a challenge. Get out of my office.”

8

S
tevie woke up with a heavy throbbing head and a bad case of cotton mouth. She was in bed. At least it felt like a bed. She stretched her arms out to the sides. She was right. It was an actual bed, not a hard little cot. And there were pillows and sheets and everything.

Her heart jumped and beat faster. Had she been rescued? Was she safe again?

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

A soft groan was her answer, then Lexi’s voice. “Damn, my head...”

“Lexi?” She scrambled to the edge of the bed, feeling her way. “Where are you?”

“In a bed, same as you.” Stevie moved closer, following Lexi’s voice, feeling her way. She bumped into a small table, rectangular and low, then an overstuffed chair, before she found the other girl’s bed and sat on its edge.

“Where’s Number Four?”

“Sissy,” Stevie said, thinking hard and finding the name in the foggiest depths of her memory. “I heard the Asshole call her Sissy before I passed out altogether.”

“Sissy, huh. How the hell you remember anything? Fucking drugged us like animals. Freaking darts.”

“Lexus, where is she?”

“Still sleepin’, by the look. Tell you what, we got us some better digs, that’s for
damn
sure.”

“Tell me.”

“First, it’s round. And there ain’t no windows. I think it must be a basement or something. You know? Walls made outta stone blocks.”

“Cinder blocks?”

“I guess. Except they’re curved. There’re four beds, sort of evenly spaced around the edge. One part of the right curve is walled off, with a door in it. Then in the middle, looks like somebody’s livin’ room. Got a little table, a couch, a couple chairs, a stack of board games.” She sighed. “Ain’t no TV, though. Damn, I miss TV.”

“Me, too. And the internet. And my phone.”

Sissy whimpered in her sleep. Stevie got up and started feeling her way to the other girl’s bed. “Four, huh. Must be they’re still gonna bring in one more girl.”

“Looks like.”

She made it to Sissy, sat on her bed and touched her shoulders. “Easy. You’re okay.”

She felt the girl come awake. It was nothing in the way she moved or anything she said. Just a shift in the feeling of her. It was odd how easily she could distinguish awake from asleep. She wondered if she’d been able to do that before.

“Where are we?” the new girl asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s better than where we were.”

Stevie heard Lexi get up and walk around, heard a door open. “It’s a bathroom. Shower and everything.” There was the sound of running water. “It works.” Lexi moved back into the main room. “I don’t see no door. How the hell they get us in here without a door?”

“There has to be a door somewhere,” Stevie said. “Maybe there’s a trapdoor in the floor or something. Under one of the beds or—”

“I see the door.” Sissy’s voice trembled when she said it.

Lexus took a few more steps. “Oh,
hell
no.”

“What? What is it?”

“The door... It’s way up in the ceiling. And there’s no way up there. No steps, no ladder.” Lexi released a shuddery breath. “Girl, we definitely underground.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God, we’re underground!” Sissy wrapped her arms around Stevie, buried her head against her chest and sobbed.

Stevie was stunned by that, she didn’t know what to do, so she just did what her own mother would’ve done. She stroked the girl’s hair and told her it would be okay. She was damned if she believed it, though.

* * *

“I miss my dog,” I said, when we arrived at the building that housed the Office of Children and Family Services. Judge Howie’s courtroom was right across the street.

“Aw, come on, Rache. You’ve been away from her a lot longer than this before.” Mason parked the car and got out. I got out, too.

“I don’t care. If I’m going to be bullied into working on this case, then I’m bringing her with me from now on.”

“Yeah, because she’d rather be dragged around with us all day than home playing with Josh. And no one bullied you.”

“What the fuck do you mean, no one bullied me? Your chief—”

“Don’t even try that with me. If you didn’t want to be here, you’d have crumpled the paper in your fist, bounced it off his head and told him where to shove it, and then you’d have been out the door. But you’re here, aren’t you?”

I narrowed my eyes on his stupid gorgeous face. “I hate that you know me so well.”

“Yeah, well, if you really want me on the other side of the chief’s desk, you’re gonna have to lighten up on the old guy.”

“Never.”

He smiled at me. “Good.”

We approached the entrance to the building. An officer in uniform waited outside, official papers in hand. Our warrant, I guessed. He handed them to Mason, who thanked him by name. I was no longer paying attention. There was too much else going on. A guy was sitting on the sidewalk a few yards away, wearing a heavy green military-looking coat, even though it was in the mid-sixties outside today. He was skinny as a rail, and his gray-flecked brown beard probably had things living in it. He was humming real soft. Too soft to attract anyone else’s attention, but it had mine. He had a beautiful voice and a heart of gold and a head that was all mixed up.

“Rache?”

“Yeah?” But the guy met my eyes just before I looked away and flashed me a grin dentists must see in their nightmares.

I fished a twenty out of my wallet, walked over and handed it to him. He took it, pocketed it, broke eye contact and went back to his song.

“That’s Randy,” Mason said when I got back to him. He held open the door, and we went inside and started up the stairs of the sterile office building.

“Randy, huh? So you know him?”

He nodded. “Sleeps at the Y when it’s cold but prefers to be outside. Keeps his stuff in a wrecked car out behind Phil’s Auto Graveyard. Sleeps there sometimes, too. He’s fine as long as he stays on his meds.”

“And he’s on them now?”

“Oh, yeah. Trust me, you’d see a different guy if he wasn’t.”

“Different how?”

“Shouting, swearing, violent.”

“Schizophrenic?” I asked.

“I think it’s technically schizoaffective disorder. It’s a shame. He’s a sweet guy.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” We were walking down a hallway. Other people came and went. There was a very clear difference between the clients and the workers. The workers were all in professional-looking suits or skirts and blazers, the women with their hair and makeup in decent shape. The clients wore jeans or sweats and T-shirts. They were mostly either overweight or severely underweight, and their hair was just the way it had grown, though sometimes in a ponytail. And at both ends of the spectrum, they were mostly women.

The social worker who met us halfway across the child welfare office was an exception to that rule. He was a super-good-looking, blue-eyed blond male who was way more interested in checking out my guy than me. “Chief Subrinsky phoned and told me you’d be coming by. You’re Detective Brown?” he asked.

Mason nodded and accepted the man’s handshake.

Hot Gay Guy finally got around to me. “And you’re Rachel de Luca. I can’t tell you how much your work has meant to me. It’s truly a pleasure to meet you.”

He shook my hand, too, clasping it with both of his and squeezing like he really meant it. I was getting used to that. People saying my work had helped them, changed their lives, saved their lives or their marriages or jobs or whatever, and on and on. I’d given up believing it was all complete bullshit. Mason had convinced me there had to be something to it, and I’d been coming around to thinking that way myself. But I hadn’t wanted to dig too deeply into that end of things. Because, frankly, I didn’t want to screw it up. The stuff came to me, I wrote it down, tweaked it with my own attitude and voice and it worked. If I started taking it as some kind of spiritual mission, I was going to fuck it up for sure.

But now there was this new twist. The NFP and its new level of weirdness. And I had to wonder if the one thing had anything to do with the other. And if so, what? And what did it mean? And what was I supposed to do about it?

“I’m Rodney Carr,” the social worker said. “We can use my office. Right this way.”

So we went straight through the bustling reception area—no, it was too glum to be called that, it was a waiting room, a stark, unpleasant, crowded waiting room. Going straight back without even warming a seat there earned us hate-glares from some of the women sitting in the chairs that lined its walls. They held their runny-nosed toddlers by their chubby arms to keep them from wobbling away. Waiting for their appointments, I guessed.

What was it with the runny noses, though? There seemed to be an age where a kid just had a perpetual snotty face. Thank God Mason’s boys were way past that, because
ick.

Carr’s office was small but had fresh white paint on what I could see of the walls. Which wasn’t much, because there were photos everywhere. Kids, all ages and races, were plastered all over the place. They stood in cheap frames on every surface, and were tacked and taped to every available piece of wall. I looked at them, then at the plaque on his desk and read it aloud. “‘There’s no such thing as a bad child.’”

“Only bad parents,” the social worker said. “But with so many of them in here every day, I needed a plaque that left that part off.”

“Probably a good idea.” I sat in one of the chairs in front of the neat but completely covered desk. Carr sat in his chair behind it. Mason stood beside me, ignoring the vacant seat to my left.

“The chief was vague on the phone,” Carr said. “What’s going on?”

Mason looked at the photos again. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Carr. We found a girl’s body this morning,” Mason said. “We’re still waiting for positive ID, but we have reason to believe it’s Venora LaMere.”

“Venora?” That reaction was real. The news hit him where he lived. No one could fake me out that thoroughly. “Venora’s
dead?
”

“I’m sorry,” Mason said again. “You knew her?”

Blinking fast, Rodney Carr got out of his chair and went to the wall, pointing at a photo of a smiling teenage girl with short, Gothic-black hair and a pierced nose, smiling at the camera. But not with her eyes. They were empty, I thought.

“This is Venora.” His voice seemed thicker than before. “It was taken a year ago. Her mother’s an addict who abandoned her. She was living with an uncle last we knew. What happened to her?”

“Last you knew?” I asked. “You mean, you don’t keep track?”

He was looking at the photo, not at me, as he heaved a huge sigh, and I thought he might cry any minute now. “She turned eighteen last year. I don’t have funding or authority to follow up on the girls once they age out of the program.” I frowned at him, so he went on. “We basically set them adrift to sink or swim on their own. Happy eighteenth birthday. Good luck surviving to see your nineteenth.”

Mason went to the photo, looked at it closely for a long time.

“Now that you’ve seen the photo—” Carr began.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, I’m more sure than I was before.”

The social worker blinked three times, lowered his head. “How did she die? She didn’t use drugs, at least not—”

“Looks like she was shot,” I said, earning a quick look from Mason that told me I wasn’t supposed to be revealing stuff like that.

“Oh, come on, how’s it gonna hurt to tell him that? The jogger knew. You really think she’s not gonna Tweet that she found a body on her run down the Rail Trail this morning?”

“Jeez, Rache, you want to show him the case file while you’re at it?”

I shrugged. Rodney Carr wasn’t paying attention to us. He was still looking at the girl in the picture. “I can come in, if you need someone to...identify the body.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Mason said. “We do need her file, though, along with the file on Lexus Carmichael.”

That got his notice. He sent Mason a sharp look. “Why? Is Lexi in trouble, too? What’s going on here, Detective Brown?”

“We don’t know yet,” he said.

So Carr looked at me instead. Right, you want to know something, ask the blabbermouth. I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s true, we really don’t know,” I said.

He nodded, believing me. Not Mason. Then he turned to one of the file cabinets lining the walls of his office. It was stuffed so full he could barely pull out the file he chose. He handed it to me, then moved to another and repeated the entire process. “These should’ve been archived by now, I’m just...way behind on filing.”

Too busy trying to make a difference in the lives of kids no one else gave a shit about, I thought. I liked the guy.

“Lexus was living in an apartment downtown with an elderly great aunt. The address should still be good. She only aged out of the system two months ago.”

“Wait a minute, she aged out, too?” Mason asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mr. Carr, about how many girls in the system have turned eighteen so far this year?”

He tapped a few keys on his computer. “Forty-seven,” he answered, and I heard what he didn’t say. Every last one of them was a knife in his bleeding heart. God, how a guy like this survived in the business he was in was beyond me.

“I’m gonna need their names. I need to check on every last one of them,” Mason said.

Carr picked up the warrant from his desk, scanned it, shook his head. “The warrant doesn’t cover that. Just says to give you the files on Lexi and Venora. If I comply without a proper warrant, I could lose my job.”

My impression of him took a nosedive. “Yeah, but you could save some girls’ lives.”

“I do that every day. But if I’m not here, I won’t be able to do it anymore.” He lowered his head, licked his lips nervously, then said, “I’ll tell you what I can do, though. I can check on them myself. At least make some calls, unofficially, while you work on getting a new warrant.”

Okay, I liked him again. ’Cause that was pretty much above and beyond his pay scale, I thought.

“If some of them seem to have...dropped out of sight, you’ll let me know?” Mason asked.

“Of course I will.”

Mason nodded, handing me the two bulky files so he could take a card from his shirt pocket and pass it across the desk. Rodney Carr took the card and walked back to Venora’s photo, then closed his eyes. “Is there anything else I can do?”