Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel) (12 page)

“Are there any photos of the girls in these files?” Mason asked.

“Yes, of course. Photos and fingerprint cards on every child in the system. Just in case.”

Nodding, Mason took the files back from me. “Thanks for your help,” he said.

“Yes, thanks. You’ve been more help than you probably know,” I added.

“Will you let me know...about Lexi?”

“Sure we will,” I told him. Then I shot a look at Mason and said, “
I
will, that is.”

Back in the car, I said, “Okay, I know your cop instincts are usually supersonic, but damn, Mason, how can you find fault with that guy?”

Mason sent me a look, that one where he raises one eyebrow. I wanted a picture of him sending me that look. It should be on a calendar. “I think
that guy
gets a little too close to the girls in his care.”

“Yeah. ’Cause he cares more than most.”

“Yeah. Which is suspicious as hell.”

“Yeah. If you’re a dirty-minded pessimist.”

“Or a cop who’s seen this kind of thing way too often.”

I frowned at him. “I think your radar’s off. And I’m positive your
gaydar
is. Maybe you’ve seen too much. Maybe you’re just a little bit cynical, you ever think that?”

“Every day.”

“I think he’s sincere.”

“Yeah. They always are.” He shot me a look. “Maybe you’re the one whose radar is off. You thought Jake was an okay guy, too.”

“And you didn’t like
him,
either. What’s up with that? We’re usually right on the same page.”

He shrugged. “He’s an ex-con.”

“And that makes him bad.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yep.”

“Every time? No exceptions?”

“Let’s just say I have yet to see an exception.”

“He’s not your garden-variety ex-con, Mason. He shouldn’t have done time to begin with. I mean, for running off with his girlfriend?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter what he was in for. He was in.”

I frowned at him. “So even if he was a decent guy when he was sent to prison...?”

“He comes out a criminal. Prison is like...college for crooks. You go in clueless, you come out with a master’s in bad.”

I didn’t say anything, just gaped at him until he looked my way and caught me.

And then he said, “What?”

“I had no idea you were that jaded. Damn, Mason.”

He was quiet for a second or two, his gaze jumping back and forth between the road and me. After a minute, he said, “So...?”

I shrugged. “It’s the first thing I’ve found not to like about you.” I tipped my head to one side, leaning over slowly to put some distance between us. Then I popped upright again. “Okay. I can deal with that.”

He looked at me, then looked again. “Tell you what, you prove me wrong and I’ll consider softening my hard-ass stance. Come back to the station with me and we’ll look over Jake’s backstory together.”

“If we can order takeout, you’re on.” I answered way too fast, and realized that I felt good all over about the prospect of spending a few more hours with him. Even now that I’d found his first flaw. Well, you know, aside from having a serial killer for a brother and covering up his guilt and all that.

But the point here was that despite the awful circumstances, I was enjoying helping him. And, I hoped, helping those girls, too. What the hell was that about? I’d agreed to help out under duress and against my better judgment. I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it.

I reminded myself that I still missed my dog, and decided then and there that she was off her diet for tonight. Treats would abound to ease my guilty conscience.

We picked up Chinese food. The American version of Chinese food, anyway, which isn’t at all accurate or all of China would be morbidly obese. I got way too much peanut chicken, my favorite. I’d never had the nerve to look up the calorie count of an average serving of peanut chicken, because why mar its heavenly perfection when I knew I’d just eat it anyway?

We spread out files across a long wooden table in a slightly larger than closet-sized room at the Binghamton PD. We had Lexus Carmichael’s file open next to Venora LaMere’s. We sat in hardback chairs, side by side, eating with chopsticks (I use mine like mini-spears) and flipping pages, muttering observations to each other when we came to them. The dead girl and the girl whose name she’d cut into her skin had a lot in common. Abusive relatives, absentee parents, a lot of trouble in school and a lot of trouble with the law. Both had been in the foster care system, even though living with a relative. The system still paid the relative a stipend to care for the child until said child turned eighteen. At which point, by the looks of things, a lot of relatives lost their interest in having a kid around.

Neither one of them seemed to have had many viable options when that had occurred. How either of them had any connection to a rich and spoiled girl like Stephanie Mattheson was beyond me. The only possible link was the judge. He was a family court judge, and they’d been in and out of courtrooms like his—maybe including his—for most of their lives. Investigations of their mothers for abuse and neglect, digging into absenteeism reported by their schools and finally being removed from their mothers’ custody and placed into the system.

“We need to see if any of their times in court were presided over by Judge Howie,” I said, reaching for another piece of peanut chicken and spearing only empty space with my chopstick. Damn. All gone. I hadn’t intended to eat that much.

I looked around for my Diet Coke, which I never set down in the same place twice. Mason handed me my plastic-lidded, straw-bearing cup without looking up from his file. Someone tapped twice on the door, then came inside. Rosie.

“Damn, Mason. You haven’t gotta train my replacement just yet. I’ll only be off my feet for a coupl’a weeks.”

“Your job is safe from me, Detective Jones,” I told him.

He smiled at me, not the least bit threatened, and tossed the file in his hands onto the table. “Here’s the file you wanted. Jacob Kravitz. Statutory rape and taking a minor across state lines. I took a look at it already, since you seemed to have plenty to do.”

Mason looked up. “Good, that’ll save me the time. You find anything interesting?”

“I did.”

Mason held up a hand, turned to me. “You wanna put money on whether the ex-con is the bad guy, de Luca?”

“Oh, cute, call me by my last name like we’re colleagues, right?” I looked at Rosie. “We’re banging, you know.”

“I...know.”

“Come on, what do you say, Rache? Fifty bucks.” Mason pulled his wallet out of his pocket, fished out two twenties and a ten and slapped them onto the table.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I took my purse off the back of my chair, got out my wallet, slid out a credit card and slapped it on top of his bills.

He frowned at it, then at me.

“What? I never carry cash.”

“Tell, Rosie. What did you find out?”

“Mr. Kravitz did two years for pissing off Judge Howie. For six months of that time, he shared a cell with Ivan Orloff.”

I was taking another sip of my soda, and I choked on it.

Mason said, “The same Ivan Orloff I shot last November?”

“Yeah, so he wouldn’t shoot me,” I said, when I could talk again. “But more importantly, the same Ivan Orloff who tried to kidnap my personal assistant, Amy, and mistakenly called her Venora.”

Rosie nodded. “The same.” Then he sighed. “We got a positive ID on the girl we pulled out of the river. Venora LaMere. What I don’t get is, she looked nothing like your Amy.”

I blinked and looked at the photo of Venora in front of me. Dyed black Goth hair, nose ring. She could’ve been Amy’s mini-me. “She did when this was taken, though.”

“So Amy was a case of mistaken identity, and good ol’ Jake is in this up to his neck. He’s also the connection to Stephanie.” Mason got up and headed for the door, leaving his cash and my plastic on the table, forgotten.

I grabbed both and hurried behind him toward the chief’s office, keeping pace with Rosie. “So what do we do?”

“We find Jake,” Mason said.

9

M
ason made me wait in the car, which pissed me off so much I almost added it to his list of faults. Fault number one on the list was “labels all ex-cons the same and is irritatingly too often right.” Number two would be “ruins all my fun by trying to keep me alive.”

He didn’t go busting in first, either. That was handled by a half-dozen guys in storm-trooper gear, you know, vests and helmets and shit. They ran up the stairs to Jake’s apartment, and Mason went up behind them. The door got smashed in. I heard it from where I was, in Mason’s car across the street. There was a lot of shouting, but no shots, thank God. I realized I was shaking and rubbed the goose bumps off my arms, then opened the car door and got out. Jeez, he did this for a living. His job was ridiculously dangerous. I mean, I knew that. For crying out loud, of course I knew it. We’d been nearly killed twice since we’d been hanging out together. But until that moment I’d kind of thought that was as unusual for him as it was for me.

Now it was hitting me that it wasn’t. That it was his “just another day at the office.”
Fuck.

I got out of the car and moved a few steps closer to the building. Then Mason came out the door, shaking his head and talking to his radio mike, and the riot cops came out behind him. I was so relieved to see him upright and whole that I might have wobbled a little. Yeah, and it probably showed on my face. He came right over to me, took over rubbing my arms. “You’re bone-white, woman. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Where’s Jake?”

“Gone. Place is about empty. Chief’s sending a team to go over it, but it looks like he skipped.” His frown deepened. “You sure you’re okay?”

“No. I’m kind of done. I’ve had enough of this for one day. You know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He took my arm, led me around the car. “I’ll take you home, okay?”

“I can get myself home. You need to stay.”

“I said I’ll take you home.” He opened my door, and I got in, sank into the seat, closed my eyes.

Mason leaned real close to me and said, “It’s nice you were worried about me.”

My eyes popped open. “Funny, I didn’t find it very nice at all.”

* * *

We didn’t even make it out of the city before the chief called to tell Mason to meet him at the hospital, pronto. So with an apologetic look, Mason changed course and took me with him. Note to self, don’t ride with him. Bring your own car. Dumb-ass.

We didn’t see Chief Sub in the lobby, so we headed up to the ICU in the elevator. The doors opened. We stepped out, turned right and stopped dead.

“How dare you?” Marianne Mattheson practically spat at the gorgeous brunette outside her husband’s hospital room. Her face was wet with tears, her accusing pointy finger trembling. The brunette with the big glossy curls and overdone eyeliner did not back down. “My husband is fighting for his life right now. How
dare
you question me like this?”

Mason moved quickly to stand beside Mrs. Mattheson, and I did, too, so we flanked her sort of protectively. “What’s going on here? Who are you?” Mason asked.

The brunette flashed an ID. “Special Agent Vanessa Cantone. So back off and let me do my job.”

He didn’t get a chance to reply, because I reacted first, taking a single step that put me in front of the weeping Mrs. Judge and the dead-sexy bitch. “Your
job
is harassing people in intensive care units? Do you work for the devil or the Republicans?”

“Is there a difference?” she quipped.

Shit. I didn’t want to like her. She was four inches taller than me and stacked like a goddamn swimsuit model. I didn’t even dare look at Mason, because I did not want to see him staring at her huge bazongas.

He came up beside me. “Take Mrs. Mattheson for some coffee,” he suggested. “I’ve got this.”

“The hell you’ve got this. I’m not going anywhere.” Whoa, who the hell said that? Not me. That was for sure.

“Detective Mason Brown,” he said, ignoring my comment. “The chief told me you’d be here by day’s end, but I expected to meet you at the department.” He didn’t offer a handshake. Neither did she.

“I don’t like wasting time.” She sent me a cool look. “And you are?”

“Rachel de Luca, special consultant to the Binghamton PD.” I wanted to add
And a famous author who’s been on the
Today
show, so back the fuck off.
But instead I said, “Apparently you missed the memo, Vanessa. Mrs. Mattheson is not a suspect. Her daughter is missing.”

“So are nine other girls, including the dead girl, Venora LaMere.”

“Nine?” My smooth, take-no-shit attitude had turned to dust, and my voice sounded like sandpaper.
“Nine?”

“Dead girl?” Mrs. Mattheson blurted. “What dead girl? Mason, what’s going on?”

Thank God the elevator doors opened just then and Chief Sub came surging out. I never thought I’d be glad to see that balding bastard, but I was. I had the judge’s wife by one arm, trying to lead her back into her husband’s room, not out for coffee. I wanted to stay close to Mason.

Okay, okay, stupid and petty not to want to leave him alone with the gorgeous Fed, but it was what it was, and I’d think about it later.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Hal,” Marianne said, addressing the chief by a name I’d never heard him called. “Tell me what’s going on. Is this related to my Stephanie?”

The chief swore and swept the other three of us with a wilting look that should’ve melted our skin off. For once I didn’t blame him.

“You three, go freaking work your shit out in the hospital cafeteria while I talk to Marianne.”

“No,” Mrs. Mattheson said. “No. You’ll stay right here until I know everything.” She sent a look through into her husband’s room.

I did, too. He was in the bed, wired for sound. Monitors everywhere, IVs running, oxygen mask on his face. He looked a little gray, but better than when I’d last seen him.

His wife said, “Let’s
all
move to the cafeteria. We can’t have this discussion here.”

So that was what we did.

I was still completely baffled by Special Agent Beyoncé’s puzzling statement about there being nine missing girls when we all sat down together at a round table in the hospital cafeteria, out of earshot of other diners. I wanted to know about the nine missing girls more than I wanted to find a wart or a wrinkle or a fat roll anywhere on her person. I’d have settled for signs of surgical enhancement. But I couldn’t ask my questions until the chief told Mrs. Mattheson what she needed to know. What she hadn’t yet been told.

“Marianne,” he said softly, taking her by the hand. “We did find a girl this morning.”

“A dead girl?”

He nodded. “Yes. And we’re investigating the possibility that her case might be related to Stephanie’s.”

She didn’t react. Just stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Eventually she said, “What makes you think that?”

The chief looked down. An amateur would know he was holding back. Fortunately Mrs. Mattheson was too distracted by grief and worry to notice the signs. “You know I can’t tell you things like that. Besides, it’s technical. Trust me, Marianne, you know I’m doing everything I can.”

She nodded slowly, as if that went without saying. “But...Hal, Stephanie’s still alive, right? She’s okay, isn’t she?”

“Yes, we have every reason to think so.”

Yeah, I thought. “Every reason” being that we haven’t found her body yet. I wondered if poor Venora had been shot in front of Stephanie and the other one. Lexus. I wondered how terrifying that must have been for them. A blind twenty-year-old without a clue how to get by in the world and an eighteen-year-old who probably knew how a little too well.

Marianne nodded and turned to look at Special Agent Bitch-face. “And you say there are nine other girls—”

The Fed couldn’t look her in the eye. “I really can’t discuss that with you, ma’am.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right, but you could blurt it out in the middle of the ICU. I can see how that would be okay.”

Agent Cantone didn’t seem to have any trouble looking
me
in the eye. I looked right back. “How do you know there are nine?” I asked her.

“As soon as we were told about Venora LaMere and Lexus Carmichael both being in the foster program and both having recently turned eighteen, we checked up on every other girl who’s aged out in Broome County for the past two years.”

“We were going to do that. Just waiting for a warrant,” I said. Did that sound a little defensive?

“We have resources at the federal level that you don’t have. We’ve found nine who can’t be accounted for, including Venora LaMere and Lexus Carmichael.”

That, I thought, was going to devastate Mr. Rodney Carr.

“You have files on them? Photos?” Chief Sub asked.

She held up her phone. “Right here.”

The chief nodded, yanked out a pen and scribbled an email address on a napkin. “Send them here, will you? I’ll have someone print up copies for my people.”

“Happy to.” She took the napkin and started tapping keys on her phone. “Now, as I was telling Mrs. Mattheson, I need access to her husband’s home computer.”

“And as I was telling you, Miss Cantone,” Mrs. Mattheson said, “I know the law. My husband is a judge. And until I see a warrant—”

“Your husband
is
a judge. A family court judge. Eight girls who went through the family court system in his county are missing, and one is dead. Do you want to save your daughter’s life, Mrs. Mattheson, or protect your husband’s reputation?”

“That’s out of line, Cantone,” Mason said, while Chief Sub shot a glare at the agent and put his hand over Marianne’s on the table.

“The only thing waiting for a warrant is going to do is give the kidnappers more time to hurt Stephanie or one of the other girls,” the Fed said, not even flinching under that wilting glare. “I’ll have access to that computer one way or the other.”

“Dammit, Cantone, that’s enough!” The chief was on his feet.

Hell,
I’d
have flinched at that point.

Cantone just stood up and leaned closer. “Fine. I’ll go get a warrant. All it’ll cost us is an extra hour or two. Let’s just hope it doesn’t also cost us another girl.” The chick had guts. Which really pissed me off, because I wanted to hate them and I couldn’t.

“I have to get back to my husband,” Marianne said.

“I’d like to talk to him,” Mason told her. “Is that possible, Marianne?”

She shook her head slowly. “He’s still unconscious. The doctors don’t know when...or if...” She lowered her head, tears welling in her eyes. “Mitch tried and tried to get him to communicate, but...he just can’t.”

Mitch? The horn-dog disloyal boyfriend was being let in to see the ailing judge? What the hell was up with that?

“I’ll stay here with you until he comes around, Marianne.” Chief Sub looked at Mason. “When that warrant does come through, you’ll accompany Agent Cantone to the house. Make sure nothing is disturbed but the computer and that the entire place is treated with respect.”

I leaned closer to Mrs. Mattheson. “I’ll go, too,” I promised. “I had cops searching my home once. I know how it feels. Don’t you worry, I’ll keep them honest.”

She looked into my eyes. Hers were tired, dull. I could’ve sworn the number of wrinkles in her face had doubled since I’d last seen her. She’d aged a decade overnight. “You say in your books that everything happens for a reason, Ms. de Luca. What reason could there possibly be for all of this? What have I done to deserve—”

“It’s not like that,” I told her, searching my brain for some clichéd self-help sound bite to feed her that might make her feel better. “There’s no judge and jury handing out life experiences as reward or punishment. But things do happen for a reason. I can tell you one thing, though. Until Stephanie went missing, we didn’t even know about those other girls. They fell through the cracks of the system. No one’s even been looking for them until now. Stephanie did that.”

Mason was staring at me. I felt it, and when I looked back I saw that expression he sometimes got in his eyes. That one that said he was seeing something pretty fucking awesome in me. I wanted to tell him to knock it off already, but I couldn’t do that without shaking Marianne’s belief in me. And it was her belief that would get her through this. That particular line of bull wasn’t bull at all.

“God bless you, Rachel de Luca.” She reached for my hand, so I let her take it, squeeze it. Then she and Chief Sub headed out of the cafeteria and down the hall.

“What the hell was that?” Cantone blinked at me like a doe in the headlights.

“
That
was how I make my living.” I hitched my handbag over my shoulder. “You ready, Mace?”

“Yeah.” He snapped out of it. I was secretly relishing the way he’d looked at me just then, right in front of Agent Boobsalot. It was good to get it out there right up front that she shouldn’t even think about putting any moves on my detective.

Jesus, who the hell was that? Was that the Rachel who doesn’t want to get too romantic and serious here? Was that
jealousy,
Rache?

Shut the fuck up, Inner Bitch.

* * *

The trapdoor in the center of the ceiling opened. Stephanie heard it, and then the sound of the Asshole’s voice. “Step back away from the rope ladder and I’ll bring down some food.” As he spoke, something dropped with a whoosh. She imagined it was the rope ladder he’d mentioned.

“Stevie?” Sissy said softly.

“Do what he says.” No way was she going to try anything and risk another of them being killed. No way. Poor Venora.

She reached out for Sissy’s arm, and they backed up a few steps. She wasn’t worried about bumping into anything. She’d memorized the entire place, a giant round room with no windows, underground, she suspected, with the furniture the only thing in it besides themselves and the tiny bathroom, with a working toilet and a shower. No sink. But plenty of soap, shampoo and toilet paper. Plenty of tiny plastic combs and makeup, too. She’d gone through all of it, but unless she could think of a way to make a soft-tipped eyeliner into a weapon, there wasn’t anything they could use.