by Eric Beetner
Dale stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at the three dozen pairs of eyes staring back at him. He felt Lauren come up next to him. “What the hell is this?”
“Oh, shit.” Lauren had been so distracted, her knowledge of the building layout had escaped her for a moment. “These are the girls.”
“I can see that.”
Lauren’s eyes skipped across the faces staring back at them. “More like concubines.”
“These are all Tat’s girls?”
“You know as much as I do. I only know this is where he houses all his working girls.”
“Holy…” Dale let the thought hang. The girls all stared at the two new faces, mute and nervous like abused dogs in a shelter, untrusting of anyone.
Lauren moved her gaze from one girl to the next. All young, all brown skinned and scared. She doubted many of them could speak any English, doubted any of them knew they’d end up here when they agreed to work for Tat, if they agreed at all. Slavery, that’s what she was looking at. Modern slavery in the service of sex with strangers. Almost immediately she thought the sickening worry that her dad had visited, or been visited by, one or more of these girls.
The day her relationship with her father changed was when she found out about his affair. It never got out to the public, but it nearly tore the family apart. She was a media consultant on his first campaign. Lauren remembered meeting the woman at the Christmas party, but Lauren was only fifteen and she didn’t recognize their obvious flirting.
She overheard a vicious fight between her mom and dad about the media consultant. He swore he’d never do it again, Mom countered with “That’s what you said last time.”
The hurt in her mom’s voice was something she’d never heard. Lauren realized then that she had been living with the public wife of the candidate for a long time. Rising through city council ranks and now to the protracted mayor’s race that seemed to go on for a year. Her mom had been in permanent photo-op mode and keeping a varnished and graceful veneer for all to see, even her daughter. But now it had cracked.
She never trusted her father again. And it was the secret, the fact it never came out in public, that shaped Lauren’s career choice more than she realized. This was her chance for revenge. For her and by proxy, her mother.
So the idea of her dad being visited by a teenage prostitute wasn’t inconceivable. One more item to add to her research list, though there had been a number of things so far in her investigation she hadn’t wanted an answer to. Or at least she went in to the first few expecting to find nothing, and then dealing with near nausea when she learned the truth. This one, she might not want to know, ever.
But any man who partook in the abuse of these girls ought to be outed, exposed. Her dad? He deserved to be exposed, shamed, humiliated. His balls crushed in a vice.
Lauren itched to get out of the building so she could sit at her computer and get it all down, to not lose any detail so people could see what she saw. The pale green of that girl’s loose-fitting top and how it matched her eyes. The fear in the younger girls’ eyes and the deadness behind the older girls’ blank stares. The way the metal wires of the walls crisscrossed in patterns that made it difficult to see to the end of the row without them blending together to form a nearly solid wall.
The oddly frightening specter of the empty cells, filled only with questions about where the former occupants went.
Where windows should have lined each wall behind the cages, only flat metal panels stood in place. The entire floor was cut off from sunlight or any vision of the outside world.
Dale’s voice broke her tunnel-vision trance. “We can’t leave them.”
Lauren looked at him, saw the same revulsion she felt reflected in his eyes. “We can’t take them with us either.”
“We can let them go at least. Let them make it out too, just like us. Maybe there’s power in numbers.”
Lauren did a quick head count. “There’s got to be thirty of them.”
“I know.”
“How do we get them out?”
“That I don’t know.”
Dale stepped forward to the nearest cage. The four girls inside retreated to the far side of the cage without a word. He noticed none of them wore shoes, their faces were dirty, and their bones showed through the loose clothes they wore. Runway-model-skinny girls for your sexual pleasure. Exotic foreign lasses who won’t talk back, because they don’t speak your language.
He watched the girls eye him up and down. The blood drying on his neck from the knife wound to his ear, his dirty clothes and bloodstained shirt—some his, some from others. He certainly didn’t look like salvation.
He pulled at the door. Locked tight. The mechanism reminded him of prison cells. He followed the metal workings up to the ceiling. He was right. All the cells were linked together by thick metal hinges and bars right out of a max security cell block. At least Tat had a sense of humor about his headquarters.
He tried to meet the eyes of the girls inside, but they all looked away. “Wait here.”
Dale walked down the row of cells, the girls moving in a mass away from him wherever he went, backing away from the chain link when he arrived, stepping back up to it after he’d passed to watch what he was doing.
Lauren followed too, not asking questions, just trying to memorize the faces of each girl to tell it later.
At the far end of the hall Dale found a corner station for a guard, it seemed. A small desk, a bank of video monitors with feeds of cameras mounted above each cage. He hadn’t noticed them before, but he scanned the ceiling now and matched the small black camera box to the view on each monitor screen.
There was no dinner plate-sized ring of keys hanging on the wall. No row of buttons with a number for each cage on it. He found nothing to help him open the locked cells.
Lauren approached the small desk. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. Some way to open the doors.”
“Don’t you think somebody has the keys on them?”
“Probably. I don’t know. Where are they, then?”
“These girls don’t look like a real priority. Not exactly the kind of place that needs a twenty-four-hour guard on staff, is it? I bet Tat thinks his men have better use of their time.”
Dale searched the walls around the small guard station. Beyond him was the landing to the elevator behind a thick metal door inset with a square of plexiglass. They could leave. He and Lauren could continue their mission to get out of the building and they could send help later. Somehow it didn’t seem like enough.
Dale felt helpless to save Dahlia. He was helpless to save himself. He stood now in front of thirty girls he could save, he could help.
“What about that?”
Dale looked up to see Lauren pointing behind him. On the wall was a large button on a box like a light switch. It was painted grey like the walls and blended in. He’d seen it but glossed over it thinking it too easy. Might as well have had a Press Here sign mounted over it.
“That’s nothing.” He pushed it to prove his point and a great metallic rattle echoed throughout the floor. The gears turned, hinges swung, and at once every door opened like meal time on the cell block.
Dale and Lauren stared at the wide open doors. The girls didn’t move.
Dale stood and went to the first open cage. “Come with us. You’re free now. You can go.” The three girls inside stayed put.
Dale looked to Lauren for help, maybe a female telling them it was okay would hold more weight. “Really, you can leave. Come on. Everyone, come on.”
They both waved their hands, beckoning, like new owners with untrained puppies. The girls traded silent looks with each other, bare feet rooted to the spot.
Dale felt exasperated and confused. “Why won’t they come out?”
“They’re scared shitless.”
“They don’t have to be anymore.” He went to the next cage. Two girls inside
. “Come out now. It’s safe. Safe.” Dale adopted the rising volume and overly pantomimed body language of a man speaking to people outside his native tongue.
“Safe now. Okay. You go. Can leave. Tat is gone. Not going to hurt you anymore.”
Dale noticed a glimmer of recognition when he mentioned Tat’s name.
“Yes. Tat won’t hurt you anymore.” He decided to tell a small lie to make them feel safer. It might as well have been true. “Tat is dead. Dead and gone.” He dragged a finger across his neck, then tilted his head and hung his tongue out the side of his mouth to indicate the state of deadness.
Finally a murmur ran through the crowd of girls. They traded whispers between cages. An excited energy moved through them as if they were one organism.
Dale increased his volume, encouraging them to take advantage of their new freedom. “Yes. Tat dead. He’s dead. Shot.” He pantomimed a finger gun. “Shot dead.”
Most of the girls had moved to the open doors of their cages now, though none had stepped out. A girl in a tan tank top and short blue skirt stepped forward. Her long black hair was greasy and the nipples on her tiny, almost adolescent breasts showed through the thin cotton shirt.
“Dead?” Her accent was undefinable to Dale. He smiled and nodded his head eagerly.
“Yes. Dead.”
The girl turned to her cell mates and they spoke hurriedly in their own dialect. The message passed quickly between cages from small group of girls to small group. The energy built until the girls finally crossed the barrier of the doorways and flooded the hall.
Dale and Lauren shared a look of accomplishment, of pride that something good could come of this clusterfuck of a day.
The girls moved as one, a mob of bone-thin teenagers in too-small clothes. Dale’s excitement turned to confusion as they seemed to gain a burst of hidden energy. When they screamed they did so as a group. The fear and timidity in their eyes changed to anger as the gang charged their would-be liberators.
Dale started backing toward the exit door. “What the fuck are they doing?”
Lauren put a hand on Dale’s arm. “They’re going to fucking kill us.”
The girls attacked. A flurry of tiny fists pounded on Dale like a sudden hail storm. Lauren skidded backward, trying to stay upright and swinging her own fists at the approaching girls. Fifteen girls surrounded Dale and punched, kicked and scraped at him. At once his ear wound opened up again and blood flowed freely.
He didn’t know what to do. It was like being attacked by an all-girls school. There was no force behind their punches, but working together he felt like he was being pummeled by a pillow case full of oranges. Dull thuds bruising his body all over.
Dale curled into a ball while he thought of what to do.
Lauren had cornered herself. She reached out and flipped the guard desk over to act as a barrier between her and the group of girls attacking. The desk was no more a deterrent on its side than it had been upright, but the action and the loud sound drove the girls into retreat for a moment, long enough for her to set her stance and act like she was prepared for the next wave.
She still had a gun in her belt, but she didn’t want to bring it out. How could she convince them she was trying to save them?
Bony fingers grabbed Dale’s hair. He screamed as he was pulled along the floor, more feet kicking at him and hands swatting him. He ran the same scenarios about his gun. He couldn’t shoot them. He needed to make them understand. He needed to explain his lie, maybe that would do it. But first, he needed them off of him.
He spun his body, kicking out his legs in a way he hadn’t done since he tried to learn breakdancing in high school. His legs swept six girls in a semicircle around him. Their brittle, branch-like legs bent and they fell to the ground. The fingers released his hair.
Dale swiveled to his knees, his fists balled up and ready to go, but when he saw the face of the girl nearest him, saw how young she was and how fragile, he couldn’t swing. Punching an old woman in the face put him over his limit for the day.
The girl had no such reservations. She clenched a tiny fist and socked Dale in the mouth.
They went straight for Lauren’s hair. It was a cat fight, and a very lopsided one. At least ten girls crowded around Lauren, reaching in for locks of her hair. Lauren swung at them blindly, her head tilted down from all the pulling. She felt her fists connect with ribcages that hurt her knuckles, elbows that stung like hitting wood. This was going nowhere. She felt her skin bruising, softening up. She couldn’t see Dale but doubted he was faring any better.
They weren’t going to get the hint that they were being rescued.
Lauren felt a tug at her scalp and swore she felt some hair pull loose. That did it. She reached around behind her and found her gun with a fumbling hand. Blindly she pulled it free from her waistband and raised it over her head, fighting through a tangle of skinny arms.
Dale had taken to pushing girls, shoving them back into whoever stood behind them and sending two at a time to the floor. They didn’t stay down long and they came back angrier. They all shouted nonsense at him. Words he didn’t understand said with emotion he couldn’t misinterpret.
He kept the throng marginally at bay while fists and feet still hit him from all angles. It was like falling down an endless flight of stairs.
A gunshot rang out, rattling the cages. As one, the girls screamed and scrambled.
Oh, no. Oh, no, Dale thought. She didn’t.
Feet thundered past his head as the girls all retreated to their cages, like a fire drill had been called in reverse. They all scurried back inside in a well-rehearsed group.
Lauren pulled the trigger again, but the gun was empty. Luckily, the one shot seemed to have done the trick. The girls flowed like water back into their containers. Once she could see the last girl slip inside, she turned and kicked the grey button on the wall and the doors closed again, en masse.
Lauren ran to Dale crumpled on the ground.
He turned to lay flat on his back, nose bleeding, ear bleeding, lip swelling and cracked.
“You didn’t kill one, did you?”
Lauren tried to catch her breath which had been beaten out of her. “Warning shot.”
Dale nodded and they both stayed in place, trying to recover.
CHAPTER 18
The car was some seventies vintage thing. Dahlia didn’t know much about cars, and classic cars even less. It was one of those cars that was an eyesore in its day, but now young men like the drug dealer in the driver’s seat bought them and fixed them up. New paint, new leather for the seats. Made the cars look presentable again, even though they were still gas-guzzling, non-airbag death traps of steel and chrome.
“So tell me about the guy who just shot up my place.”
Dahlia knew she wasn’t getting a charity ride. This guy was a criminal. He thought he could get answers from her and that’s probably the only reason he took her along. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Enough of that. Who is the guy? If you think this is over, you’re fucking wrong.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“Bullshit.” Pooch sped the car deeper into a part of town she didn’t know.
“I really don’t. He came to my door, tried to abduct me, and I ran.”
Pooch chewed his lip, thinking about how to get this guy back. “Well, does he want you dead or does he want you alive?”
“Alive, I think. I may have pissed him off though.”
“I’d say you did.”
“If you can just get me to…” Dahlia had no idea where she would be safe. Home was out, the police proved unreliable, she didn’t know where Dale was. She almost chuckled thinking the safest place she could be was at her appointment, which she could still make.
Pooch’s mind kept on spinning. “So why’d he want you? Like a kidnapping or something?”
“I guess.”
“Are you, like, rich or something?�
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Dahlia scoffed. “No.” Not on Dale’s cop salary, she thought. The only way they’d get rich was if he started getting kickbacks or bribes on the job. If he went “on the take” as they said. But not a wuss like Dale. Never gonna happen.
Pooch sped along, the big V8 engine making a rumbling growl as they bounced on soft shocks over uneven pavement. “He must have thought you were worth something if he’s coming to grab you.”
“I guess so. I really don’t know what he thought I could give him.”
Pooch reached into his belt and drew his gun. He set it in his lap, aimed at Dahlia. “Why don’t we find out, huh?”
CHAPTER 19
Chief Schuster ran both hands through his nearly grey hair. He slapped his palms, slick with grease from his scalp, onto both knees. “We gotta do something.”
The officer in charge, Greely, looked at his boss from the command center inside the cramped mobile SWAT truck. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Schuster stood but kept his shoulders hunched. The confined space made him anxious. Even though he could have stood up straight, he felt the roof bending down on him. “It’s been an hour.”
A military-sounding uniformed man with perfect posture didn’t look up from his console as he called out the time. “Fifty-four minutes.”
Greely let his hand hover over his walkie button. “Chief, we’re ready to go when you say the word. I can have two more trucks down here in ten.”
Schuster turned away. “No, no. Hold on. Let me think.” He opened the back door and let it swing open. He stayed in the back of the truck, staring out at the tree line separating them from the acreage of the office park. “How do you think he’s doing in there?”
