by Jack Hardin
It was one of the greater ironies of modernity that the world could lay claim to private aerospace companies, smartphones, and driverless cars, while billions of people across an enlightened globe continued to secure their valuables and protect their loved ones behind Civil War-era technology, easily bypassed after three minutes spent in front of the proper YouTube video. It was not a petty fact that nearly ninety percent off all door locks, from Buenos Aires to Toronto, from Beijing to Cape Cod, all utilized the ubiquitous and infirmed pin tumbler lock, which, as it turned out, made keys, rather than a necessity, only an easy convenience which served to lull the mind into a false sense of security.
It was just such a lock that now held Ellie’s attention. The mechanism was simple: inside the plug—the space where the key entered—were several vertical holes, each containing a driver pin and a key pin, with the latter under spring-driven pressure. The pins were there to block the plug from rotating and freeing the lock; they were responsible for keeping a lock locked. To properly pick a pin tumbler, all one had to do was set the driver pins up out of the plug by gently pressing each one into the top of their respective holes. Once the pins were out of the way, the lock would be compromised, and the plug would be free to rotate.
The bent bobby pin would serve as a tension wrench. Ellie inserted it into the bottom of the keyway and applied a small amount of rotational torque. Her second bobby pin would serve as the actual pick, and Ellie brought it out and inserted it above the tension wrench. While keeping outward pressure on the wrench she raked the pick back and forth, probing the driver pins until she found one that bound up and separated from the key pin beneath it.
In less than a minute, all the pins were set, and when Ellie applied extra pressure to the tension wrench, the plug rotated fully, and the bolt slid away from the door.
Ellie pressed gently on the door, and it moved inward a half inch. Earlier, when she was observing the building from the street out front, there had been a thin crack of light coming from the side of the roller door. But it was dark inside now. So dark, in fact, that Ellie couldn’t see her eyelashes, much less her nose.
Gently and cautiously, she pushed the door back. It hadn’t moved three inches when it hit something with a muted thump and stopped. Ellie slipped her hand behind the door, and her fingers fell onto a cold and rigid surface. It was another door—a steel mesh door by the feel of it—but it responded to an easy push and swung silently into the darkness. After opening the outer door enough to step in, Ellie moved lightly across the threshold. She was hit by the heavy scent of bleach as she drew the outer door shut and brought out a flashlight from the bag. She turned it on, unsure of what the light might reveal.
Fifteen feet in front of her stood an unpainted wall reaching halfway to the ceiling high above. There was an open door in the center of it. It was a back room of sorts. A few folding chairs sat around a small table, and a toilet with no privacy barrier was positioned at the far end. She turned her light to the door she entered through. On the inside, the steel mesh door was mounted flush to the floor and the wall, as if to ensure no access through the rear exit.
Ellie stepped through the door in the center of the wall and came into the main area. Metal-framed shelves lined the exterior wall to her left, all of them empty save for a few paint cans. Several panels of sheetrock were leaning against the wall, and a yellow janitor’s bucket sat near the roller door, its mop handle leaning out like a broken reed. An empty container of Clorox was turned over beside it. Her light revealed a flight of metal steps leading to a windowed area at the top. She hurried to the stairs and was careful not to touch the railing as she made her way up to the room.
It was a small office. Save for an empty desk and chair against the right wall, the room was vacant. Ellie was beginning to think she’d found this place a little too late. They had cleared out. She stepped to the desk and slipped her fingers beneath her hoodie before opening the drawers one by one. They were empty too. No leftover papers or forgotten folders. Not even a rogue pen or a stray memo.
Ellie pulled out the chair and set her bag on it, then stood the end of the flashlight on the desk so the light reflected off the ceiling and covered the room. She unzipped the middle pocket of the backpack and removed several items before placing them on the floor and taking a knee.
The desk was dark wood. Ellie opened the bottle of talcum powder and sprinkled a light dusting along the top edge. Then she selected the large makeup brush and gently flicked the outer bristles over the powder in a circular, back-and-forth motion. Near the front right corner, she found what she was looking for. She set the brush down and brought out the roll of transparent packing tape, then tore off a strip before leaning over and blowing out a gentle puff of air. With steady hands, she laid the tape over the fingerprint and pressed gently. She peeled it up and held it to the light. Other than an area near the bottom where the powder was over-distributed, the ridges and curves of the print were clearly visible. She cautiously laid it across the floor and tore off another strip of tape, placing it over the exposed side of the first strip. The print was now encased in tape. She put it in her bag.
Crime scene technicians used fingerprint dust that contained a mixture of elements: ferric oxide, rosin, and lampblack, as well as inorganic chemicals such as bismuth, lead, and cadmium. But when such powder was not accessible, white talcum powder could be used to dust on dark surfaces, and cocoa powder on lighter, non-porous surfaces. When applied properly against a clear print, they got the job done.
Moving quickly, Ellie dusted the arms of the chair, the light switch, and the door handle. A partial print showed itself on the switch plate, but Ellie wasn’t able to pull it off before it smudged off on the tape.
After checking the office window, she left the room and dusted portions of the handrail, then went to the back room and checked the table, the chairs, and the toilet’s lid and flush valve. The handrail presented nothing, and the back room was spotless, as though it had been carefully and thoughtfully cleaned. As though evidence had been intentionally cleared away.
Hurrying back upstairs, Ellie pulled out a pack of baby wipes and a dishcloth that she hadn’t bothered to strip the tags from. Using the wipes, she cleaned away the powder and brought in the cloth behind them to draw away any leftover residue.
She was done now. She zipped up the bag and, after taking a final look around and turning off her light, exited the same way she had come in, using the bobby pins to lock the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was nearly one in the morning when Ellie walked in the twenty-four-hour Starbucks in Cape Coral, and her senses were quickly mauled by the trenchant smell of over-brewed coffee. Jet was in the back, nestled into a plush leather chair, and he waved her over. She took the chair across from him and laid the backpack at her feet.
“Do you have as many questions as I do?” he asked.
“Maybe more.”
“So how did we end up in the same place tonight?”
Ellie didn’t know, but she spent the next five minutes relaying her conversations with Avi and Barry and how something the latter had said had brought her to the old fire station.
“So this Breakwater,” Jet said, “Avi said they might be inflating invoices?”
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like money laundering.”
“That’s what Barry said. But what about you? You said you were looking for the girl? Juanita, right?”
“Yeah. She went missing in Miami a couple months ago.” Jet went on to tell her about his time in Miami yesterday: Alex giving him the tour of the shelter, the young man who told him about Felipe, and stopping off at Papi’s La Cubana to see Saint. “Saint called me this afternoon. Someone he knows said Felipe was doing some work out of that old fire station. That he was usually there at night. He didn’t know anything more than that, but I thought it was worth following up on.”
“And you think that guy in the ice chest tonight is the one who took t
he girls?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know. Honestly, I feel like I’m walking with one eye open. I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for.”
“Me neither,” she agreed.
“Ellie, the only reason I’m not telling the authorities what we saw tonight is because I don’t want to scare the wrong people off if they think someone is getting close. If Felipe really was this Jesse, the guy who took Juanita, then him getting killed is the least of my worries.” Jet sighed at that point. “Except that it means my one lead just got fed to the fish and I’ll be spending a lot of late nights up on that rooftop with my camera. It would have been nice if I could have gotten a glimpse inside.”
That was when the corners of Ellie’s mouth turned into a suggestive smile. Jet had spent enough time working alongside her at the DEA to know that when she smiled like that, and when it was accompanied by that easy twinkle in her eye, she was about to say something he was going to like. “What?” he asked, studying her. “Wait. Is that what you were doing? You went back there?”
Ellie reached down, unzipped her bag, and handed him the double strip of tape.
“What is this?”
“There was an office inside. That’s a print from the desk.”
“You’re kidding me.” And now it was his turn to smile. “How did you get in? I tried a back door in the alley after you took off. It was locked.”
She gave a coy shrug of response.
“You broke in?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t break anything.”
Jet turned the strip of tape over, examining it. “So that’s what you were doing while I was just sitting here? You were in there getting this?”
“I was.”
He shook his head, unbelieving.
“What’s your turnaround time on finding out who that print belongs to?”
“Tomorrow afternoon at the latest. I’ll have to take it in and get someone to scan it.”
“Have you run the plates yet?”
“No. The state doesn’t want any PI’s on this new directive having wireless VPN access. I can only access that database from my office. I’ll run them in the morning and let you know as soon as I get something back.” He had a leather satchel sitting on the floor next to his chair, and he was careful as he slipped the tape inside. “What all did they have inside that building?”
“Not much. But it looked like whatever they had going on, they’re on the way out. The office upstairs was completely empty, as was nearly everything else. I could be reaching, but there was a back section that could have been a perfect place to keep a kidnapped girl. Or several.”
Jet’s posture noticeably straightened. “How so?”
Ellie explained the table, the toilet, and the steel mesh door secured over the rear entrance. “If someone stayed to guard a girl, or girls, from somewhere inside, there would be no way for them to escape. That said, the mesh door could have served another purpose a long time ago, and the back area could have been a break room that accommodated awkward trips to the restroom.”
“Maybe,” Jet mused, and Ellie could see the sprockets turning behind his eyes.
“Also,” she said, “they cleaned the whole downstairs with bleach. The back area too.”
“You’re kidding.” They both knew that strong applications of bleach killed DNA, making it impossible to use skin or fluid samples in lab tests.
Ellie asked, “Did you look up who the building is registered to?”
“Yeah. It belongs to a Sandstone Holdings. I couldn’t find anything else on them, and based on what we both saw tonight, I’d be willing to bet it’s a shell company. What about who sent you that email? Have you heard back from them?”
“No, but I only replied back before dinner time and basically said that I went and saw Avi and asked what they want to know. I didn’t say anything about Barry or where I was going tonight.”
“Smart girl.” He drummed his fingers on the chair’s armrest while they both worked silently to gather loose streams of information into a cohesive picture.
Ellie finally asked, “It is a given that whoever took Juanita is trafficking her?”
“Yes. I haven’t been given a reason to think otherwise.”
“So do you think they’re taking the money they get from that operation and are using Breakwater to launder it?”
Jet folded his hands and set his knuckles under his chin. “Maybe. Maybe,” he said again, this time with a little more certainty. “That could make sense. Let me see what else I can find on Breakwater.”
And suddenly it dawned on Ellie that not only had her investigation merged with Jet’s but that at the end of this serpentine trail of unenlightened inquiry might be a scared and hurting young lady. A couple of days ago, when Ellie was at Jet’s office, he showed her a picture of Juanita. But at the time, Ellie was processing the unnerving idea that Nick may have been murdered. “Do you have that picture of her on you?”
“I do,” he said, and unzipped the side pocket of his satchel. He plucked it out and leaned forward, handed it over.
Juanita’s black hair was shiny, and well-defined cheekbones accentuated a slender face. She was beautiful. But her was smile was artificial, prosaic, as if it had been manufactured in the moment strictly to appease the incessant demands of an over-eager photographer—“say cheese! say cheese!” And her eyes, like the entrances to twin tunnels bored in the center of a cold mountain, were dark and absent of mirth. A beautiful girl holding a bad deck of cards.
Ellie studied the photo. “Juanita,” she mused, “where are you, sweetheart?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
She would never get used to stepping out of the shower and still feeling dirty. No amount of soap or scrubbing could clean her skin which crawled with what men had done to her. What she had to do to them. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It wasn’t so much that her skin—every inch and pore—felt dirty. It was that she felt filthy on the inside. Somehow her very soul had become contaminated, like a used rag, absorbing people’s scum.
Juanita toweled off and dressed into cotton leggings and an oversized t-shirt.
There were eight girls in all, each with her own room decorated in what Juanita could only guess was like a very expensive hotel suite. A large bed with silk sheets and a thick bedspread lay against the back wall. Noticeably missing was anything that could be used as a weapon. No candelabras, no glass-top table that could be smashed, no bedside lamps; the lamps were mounted into the wall above the nightstand. Each girl had her own clothes dresser filled with plain, comfortable clothing.
Each of the eight bedrooms was windowless and successively ran the length of a single hallway that terminated at an elevator. On the other end was a communal bathroom and, beyond that, a large community room with several couches, a small kitchenette, and a flat-screen television with access to Netflix and Hulu. The kitchenette was stocked with flimsy plastic utensils, a microwave, and a refrigerator. A pantry contained basics such as oatmeal, dry cereal, and crackers. There were no windows there either. No sunlight at all, leaving all of them to wonder just where they were.
Other than the exploits they were forced to engage in, they had been treated well enough. Decent food, comfortable clothing. Juanita was no fool—not like she had been when she had trusted Jesse. She knew they were treated this way because of the type of clients they serviced. If the girls were kept comfortable, the clients would sense it.
They were put to work only on the weekends, and that, only one night of the two. Once every seven days. The clients were paying extra for a “fresh” girl, and this is where they came to get it.
Fresh girl. That’s how one of the men referred to her one night. The bald one with the fat neck and double chin and those evil, beady eyes. The clients were promised a girl who had been untouched for the last week, and which one did they want tonight?
All the men who entered her room were well dressed—nice suits, fancy shoes, perfectly combed hair, and smelling like ci
gar smoke—as though they had just come from an important business meeting. And each one, without exception, spoke with thick, accented English. Juanita didn’t know her countries very well, but she didn’t think that any of them were citizens of the United States. Some had blonde hair and sharp jawlines, some slanted, oriental eyes, and one of them spoke only Spanish. But all of them, without exception, carried themselves with an air of dignity that would have been comical were it not so repulsive.
The clients would step into the room with a sickly smile on their faces and a thick key card in their hands. Several of the girls had peeked their heads out of their doorways after the men left their rooms. They would see the card being scanned near the elevator and the doors open. From there, they didn’t know if the elevator went up or down. The elevator shaft made no sound. The doors slid shut...and that was it.
No one knew just what day it was. There were clocks in each room. But this was only so they could keep track of the time on the one night of the week when it was necessary for them to do so. The man with the strange looking nose—one of the girls had nicknamed him “Pig Nose”— would come down and restock their toiletries and food. He would tell them, in the event they didn’t know, that tonight the clients would arrive. Nine o’clock. Be dressed. Be ready.
They hadn’t started their new lives at this location. After waving goodbye to her brother and waking from her gas-induced nap in the van, Juanita had found herself in an old building with brick walls and a bare, concrete floor. Several mattresses lay side-by-side on one end, a table and open toilet on the other.
On their third day, Jesse had shown up, and every few nights thereafter. He would always come at night. He told the girls how sorry he was and how much he cared for each one of them. He told them that he was in trouble, that he had been forced to take them, and that if they didn’t help him, some bad men were going to kill his family.
