Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

But the relief had vanished. “No girl.”

  “Yeah, here’s the thing, he had her.” Brunsan crossed his arms and leaned back. “But he’d already gotten rid of her.”

  Eagle felt like she had whiplash. Found the man, but didn’t find the girl. Had the girl, had gotten rid of her.

  She didn’t like that wording. He had killed her, and Brunsan couldn’t find the body.

  “What do you mean, ‘gotten rid of’?” she asked.

  “Not quite what you’re thinking,” Brunsan said. “Here’s the thing. This guy, he’s legit.”

  Eagle frowned. “What?”

  Brunsan shrugged. “I don’t like what he does, but he can do it. He’s got papers and everything, and there’s nothing on the books that—”

  “He can hit women and throw them around?”

  “Well, that, no, technically he can’t do that.” Brunsan sighed. “And frankly, that’s your word against his since I can’t legally get the name of the girl from that night.”

  Eagle shook her head. She felt like she had slipped into a Twilight Zone episode. “What do you mean you can’t legally get her name? That woman was screaming for help. He knocked her unconscious and tossed her in his truck. How is that possible? How is that legal?”

  Brunsan uncrossed his arms, and held up his hands, palms facing Eagle, as if he were trying to placate her.

  “Lemme tell you what we found first, and then you can bitch all you want, because I did too. I even talked to my captain, okay?” He sounded frustrated. And open. She hadn’t expected him to be open.

  Eagle wrapped her fingers around that stupid purse so that she would have something to focus on.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Okay.” Brunsan took a deep breath, and scooted his chair forward. “I was kinda hoping I wouldn’t have to talk to you, because you know, in twenty years of doing this job, this is new to me. But, rich people, you know?”

  “The guy in the truck is rich?” Eagle asked.

  “Captain,” Brunsan said, chiding her, “you said you would let me tell you what I found.”

  “Okay, right.” Eagle ran her thumb on the clasp of the purse. The metal dug into the skin just underneath her stubby nail.

  “This guy, whose name is, um, LaSalle, Laventer, something—I’ll get it for you, because while he might be legal, I don’t like him.”

  “Thank you,” she said, not sure where this was going. Why would Brunsan want her to have the name?

  “This guy LaCross or whatever, he, um, he’s a licensed bounty hunter from Louisiana.”

  “I’m sorry?” Eagle asked. She didn’t understand. Bounty hunter? “That girl was a fugitive?”

  “No,” Brunsan said. “If she was, I’d’ve told you and we’d be having a different conversation. Let me talk, Captain, okay?”

  “Okay.” Eagle tucked her thumb under the purse, and focused on Brunsan.

  “Okay,” Brunsan said. “This Levenser, he’s a licensed bounty hunter, but somehow, he’s combined it now with detecting. He’s a private investigator too, but he specializes in finding people.”

  “Finding people,” Eagle muttered.

  “Yep,” Brunsan said. “He hires out—expensive rates too—mostly to rich people. Started in the so-called Summer of Love, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Not exactly,” Eagle said.

  “All them kids, coming here, wearing flowers in their hair like that song. Most of them kids are missing, at least as far as their parents are concerned. Most of them kids are middle class, and they’re gonna stay missing. But some, they come from money, and money, it tends to get what it wants.”

  Eagle was still having trouble following this. “He’s hunting kids?”

  “Not children,” Brunsan said. “Teenagers. Not quite twenty-one. If they’re not twenty-one, Mommy and Daddy are still responsible for them, and they don’t got any rights. They can be dragged back home any which way, you getting me now?”

  She was beginning to. The teenagers, the twenty-year-olds, would leave home and lose touch with their parents, and their parents would hire the man in the truck to find them.

  She frowned, combing her memory of Saturday night. It was dark, but that man wasn’t holding a girl. Eagle had gone over it and over it. He had been fighting with a woman.

  “That woman I saw? She was under twenty-one?”

  “Yep,” Brunsan said. “And I’m not telling you who she is. I talked to her parents. They wouldn’t let me see her, said she was upset as all get out and would say some stuff about cops that I didn’t need to hear. I didn’t press the point, not that I could, really. But they assured me she was okay.”

  “She needed medical attention,” Eagle said. “I can guarantee that.”

  “And I remembered that. I said the very same to them, and they assured me they’d taken her to see their family doctor, and she’s a bit bruised up, but she’ll be fine. Absent a warrant, I couldn’t barge in, and I didn’t have cause.” Brunsan’s florid face seemed even darker.

  “Are you sure she’s the woman I saw?” Eagle asked.

  “Pretty sure,” Brunsan said. “She was staying in an apartment about three doors down from yours when he grabbed her. The parents told me that she got home yesterday morning, so the timing works.”

  Eagle’s frown grew deeper. How would she know if that was the woman? How would he? Absent finding the woman in that truck or in that man’s hands, the timing was all they had.

  Her stomach was churning. She went over everything Brunsan had just said.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “Parents hire this man to find their missing children?”

  “Yep,” Brunsan said.

  “And they don’t care if he beats them?” Eagle asked.

  “C’mon, Captain, you know it’s never as simple as that, specially now.” He ran a hand over his chin. “Those kids take all kinds of crap. They get wild. Drugged-out. I can tell you some stories—”

  “I can tell you the same,” Eagle said.

  He looked at her, and frowned a little.

  “I’m a nurse,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember,” he said. “I been thinking of that since we found the guy. I wished I could use your words to get a warrant, but I can’t. The parents won’t let me in, and they got custody of her right now.”

  What a nightmare. Eagle bent the clutch purse ever so slightly.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Detective,” she said. “That woman didn’t strike me as an out-of-control drug addict. She seemed like a woman screaming for her life.”

  “I get that,” Brunsan said. “I trusted that. I did. And I did what I could. I looked at his truck, which, by the way, he’d cleaned pretty damn good—something I find suspicious right there. I called on his license, and yep, it’s valid in Louisiana, which means we gotta honor it here. Both of his licenses, because he’s a cross-your-i’s and dot-your-t’s kinda guy—”

  Eagle didn’t even smile that Brunsan had gotten that wrong. She was too upset.

  “—he’s got a detective license, even though he don’t need one of those with his bounty hunter’s thing. Anyway, he’s legit. He had a hotel room, which was damn near as clean as the truck, which I didn’t like either, but he told me he didn’t use it on Sunday night. He took the girl somewhere, he couldn’t remember where, got her coffee, calmed her down, and then drove her to the parents, who paid him in cash, even though they’d paid him with a check for the first half, and he was done.”

  Eagle tapped the clutch purse with her forefinger. Every muscle her body was taut. “How can this be legal? Isn’t it kidnapping?”

  “If she was twenty-one, yeah, probably. If he did more than just toss her in his truck and we can prove it, yeah, probably. But we can’t prove nothing, the parents say they’re happy, and they’re not letting the girl say nothing either. He didn’t have scrapes or scratches, and both parties say the girl is fine too. Even if I knew who the family doctor was, and I don’t, he has no
legal obligation to talk to me. I don’t got jurisdiction over the daughter. The family’s in Marin.”

  Eagle hated this jurisdictional stuff, not that it was the entire problem. But it was part of the problem.

  She just couldn’t believe that the girl was all right.

  “She should have gone to the hospital,” Eagle said. “She probably had a concussion from the way he slammed her into that truck.”

  Brunsan opened his hands, as if to say he had nothing to do with that.

  “There’s got to be a way to see her,” Eagle said, more to herself than to him.

  “Nope,” Brunsan said. “We don’t have cause.”

  Cause. One of those legal wiggly words. She hated those. Maybe she could come up with cause.

  “Was he blackmailing the parents?” Eagle asked. “That would explain the cash.”

  “It would, wouldn’t it?” Brunsan asked. “But I told you, I was thorough on this.”

  She believed him. He wasn’t talking to her today like she was some dumb college student. He was talking to her like another adult. He truly must have been bothered by this.

  He said, “I talked to the bank. I saw the canceled check from the front part of this month. Bank hasn’t sent it as part of the statement yet. They paid him a buttload of money. Pardon my mouth, but you shoulda seen that check. It was for a lot. I could’ve bought a house with that money. But that check, it was made out to this Levenger’s business, his bounty hunter business. And if I was blackmailing rich people, I wouldn’t have no check written to my legal business, at least not after the first time, and I know this wasn’t his first rodeo.”

  “How do you know that?” Eagle asked.

  Brunsan shook his index finger at the air, and raised his eyebrows, as if rewarding himself for being clever.

  “Parents,” he said. “They got LaVally or whatever’s name from some other parents. There’s a whole network of these people, trying to get their kids back.”

  “Back from where?” Eagle asked.

  “That I didn’t get. I’m thinking drugs or something, but they didn’t say. Just ‘bad influences,’ which could mean anything. Bad boyfriends, bad drugs, anything.”

  Eagle nodded. That she did understand. Whenever she thought about those kids, particularly the Mini Mob on Telegraph, she wondered where the parents were. Maybe they were searching for the kids in the Mini Mob as well.

  “So,” she said slowly, “you have no proof of anything.”

  “Nope,” he said. “That license plate number brought us to LaSalle, or whatever, and his shady little business, but it didn’t bring us anything truly illegal.”

  Eagle swallowed. She liked this version of Brunsan better than the man who had called her Annie Oakley, but she was still wary.

  Wariness, however, wouldn’t help all those kids who were disappearing.

  “What if I can get you something illegal?” she asked.

  “Honey,” he said, immediately reverting to the Blue Meanie who had come to her apartment, “you’re not supposed to get me anything. You can’t get involved.”

  She wanted to throw the clutch purse at him for the word honey alone. Instead, she just gripped the purse as tightly as she could.

  “I already have something,” she said.

  “You didn’t go off half-cocked with that gun of yours, did you?” he asked.

  She gave him her most withering look. He met her gaze for a moment, then smiled just a little.

  “I should know better, right?” he asked. “You’re not that dumb.”

  “I’m not dumb at all,” she said coldly.

  He nodded, not chastened, exactly, but a little subdued. “Then how did you get something?”

  “I was talking to a friend. I was telling her about what happened, and how upset I was.” Eagle was laying it on a little thick, but she needed to. “And she told me about a conversation she had with someone in Walnut Creek.”

  “Gossip isn’t something,” he said.

  “This is more than gossip,” Eagle said. “It seems that the truck pulled into the Enco station there, with a girl screaming in the back—”

  “On Saturday night?” Brunsan asked.

  “In June,” Eagle said.

  “How do we know it’s our truck?”

  Eagle opened her mouth, nearly telling him about the license plate number that was off by one, then realized there was no way she would have that information.

  “The descriptions match,” she said. “The girl was wrapped in a blanket, bound, and screaming. The gas station attendant called the police.”

  “Good for him. They do anything with the truck driver?”

  “No,” Eagle said. “By the time they showed, the truck driver and the girl were gone. The driver had tossed the gas station attendant around like he was made of straw, and then had poured gasoline on him and threatened to toss a match on him.”

  Brunsan’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” she said, buoyed up by his interest. They both knew the gasoline incident was something he could use. “And one more thing. Apparently, they’ve found some bodies near Mount Diablo, wrapped in blankets.”

  The light faded. “That’s jurisdiction again. They’re not going to want us to mess with their cases.”

  “You can talk to them, though,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t got a reason to right now. We don’t have any active cases that pertain to theirs.”

  She wanted to scream with frustration. It wasn’t about jurisdiction. It was about stopping the man with the truck.

  “What about that dead girl that you and Oakland have been fighting over?” The words were out of her mouth before she thought to couch them in something else.

  “What dead girl?” Brunsan peered at her.

  “A different friend,” Eagle said, constructing the lie hastily, hoping it would hold up. She shrugged, pretending to be all girly and concerned. “I needed to talk to people.”

  “A different friend what?” Brunsan growled.

  “She works near 61st and Dover. She says a body was dumped there, and no one’s investigating it. She’s been scared ever since.”

  “When was that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eagle said. “I just think there might be more than the one thing I saw, given how many people are seeing things.”

  He grunted, frowning. “Sounds like you’re investigating.”

  She shook her head. “If I were investigating,” she lied, “I wouldn’t be talking to you. I know how this works, Detective.”

  He grunted again. He clearly didn’t believe her. “I warned you to stay out of police business.”

  “You did, and I did,” she said. “I’ve been pretty upset. I know a lot of people, and frankly, you were right. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Girly again—or the best she could do which, compared to Pammy and her friends, was piss poor.

  “You’d be surprised, Detective,” Eagle said softly. “It seems everybody has a horror story.”

  Brunsan tilted his head as if he didn’t know what to make of her. “Like what?”

  “The blanket thing,” Eagle said. “Twice.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” he said, his tone a lot less conversational. “What else?”

  She might as well go for broke. “The girl they found in Tilden Park yesterday.”

  “How do you know about that?” he snapped. “We haven’t released it yet.”

  “I know someone at the university,” Eagle said, which was kind of true. Not entirely true, but close enough. “She had to see the pictures. I guess some detectives needed help with ID…?”

  “That girl was not wrapped in a blanket,” he said.

  “I didn’t know,” Eagle said. “I just heard she died defending herself.”

  He looked down, then shook his head. “Someone was pretty angry at her.”

  “Are you on the investigation for that one?” Eagle asked, hoping she seemed even more gir
ly.

  “No, thank God,” he said. “Kids like that, you don’t want to see them.”

  “Another college student?” Eagle asked.

  Brunsan raised his index finger again, this time to request silence. “I said too much. Don’t you go off repeating that.”

  “I won’t,” Eagle said. “If you just call the police department in Walnut Creek.”

  “I can’t get a warrant for a family in Marin because of information from Walnut Creek,” he said.

  “But maybe Walnut Creek can go after the man with the truck, once you give them the information,” Eagle said.

  Brunsan studied her, his expression flat. She had no idea if police departments were competitive with each other, if they held their cases tight the way some doctors did.

  She hoped not, for that girl’s sake.

  “Okay,” Brunsan said. “You don’t say nothing about the Tilden Park girl, and I will talk to Walnut Creek about their gasoline nut job.”

  She smiled at him, not girly at all this time. She let out a small breath. The relief wasn’t as strong as it had been when she thought he had solved the case, but it was there nonetheless.

  “Deal,” she said.

  He started to stand, but she didn’t move.

  “You promised me something at the beginning of this conversation,” she said.

  He glared at her. “I’m not giving you LaSalle’s real name,” he said. “You been investigating, and I don’t want you going off half-cocked.”

  Naw, she wanted to say, if I went off, it would be fully cocked. Loaded for bear. Whatever damn cliché you wanted.

  “I’m not going to do anything,” she said. “Except, warn people like you had suggested earlier. I’ll have them call you if this man shows up around them or their friends. How’s that?”

  He squinted at her. Then he nodded.

  “Fair enough. I don’t like this LaFarge character. I want him to go back to Louisiana where he belongs. Maybe if we can cut off his gravy train, we can get him the hell out of here.” He slapped a hand on the table. “I’ll be right back with the name.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” Eagle said.

  He was almost to the door. He stopped and pointed at her.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” he said.