Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  “No,” Pammy said, and frowned. “Do you think you can find out who this man is?”

  “No,” Kelly said with great emphasis. “I’m never talking to my dad again.”

  Pammy nodded. She had some ideas already.

  “I don’t want to help you, either,” Kelly said. “If my dad finds out—”

  “He won’t,” Pammy said. “I won’t say anything, if you won’t.”

  “What about your friends?” Kelly asked.

  “I’ll tell them what I know,” Pammy said. “We found you together.”

  She bent a corner of the folder with one finger, thinking for a moment.

  “This man who took you,” she said, “we’ve had reports from other jurisdictions of people—not just girls—who died wrapped in blankets. Do you think he’s done this before?”

  “You said your friend saw him. He’s still doing it,” Kelly said.

  “But before you?” Pammy asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “He didn’t get that motel room that night. He had it already. There wasn’t a window in the bathroom. It was ready for me. He’d used it before.”

  The anger was back, strengthening her voice.

  “Anything you can think of that would identify him?”

  “I know what he looks like,” she said. “As if that’ll do you any good. Because I can’t draw worth a damn.”

  The police had sketch artists, though. If they could get one to talk with Kelly, that would help.

  But Pammy wasn’t going to ask for that right now.

  “Do you know how he found you?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly stiffened again. “What do you mean?”

  “You had no phone number. Your parents couldn’t reach you. You were living some place that they didn’t know existed, right?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly nodded slowly.

  “How did he find you?”

  She swallowed hard. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t think of it until just now. That means he can still—” Then she let out a self-deprecating sigh. “Well, of course he can still find me. I’m in the damn dorm, and I call my parents every Sunday to report in. Or my mother, actually. I call, I say my name, I say I’ve been to all my classes, I’m doing fine, and then I hang up.”

  “They don’t check up on you?” Pammy asked.

  “I’m sure they’re talking to the House Ass,” Kelly said. “But that’s it. They don’t come here.”

  “Good.” Pammy pulled the flyer out of the folder.

  “Oh, God,” Kelly said. “You are doing a pitch.”

  “Nope,” Pammy said. “If you don’t tell anyone, I’ll give you the class for free. Because you need someone in your corner, Kelly. I want to be that person.”

  Kelly took the flyer. Her hands shook. “Why? Because of your friends?”

  “Maybe in the beginning, yes,” Pammy said. “But no one should have to go through what you’re going through. No one. Let me help.”

  “I don’t know how you can,” Kelly said.

  “Come to my gym,” Pammy said, “and you’ll find out.”

  43

  Eagle

  Eagle went home and changed clothes after her meeting with Brunsan. In a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, she felt more like herself than she had in that summer dress, which was now scuffed along the back—although if she were honest, she had no idea if the scuff marks were from the bench seat in her truck or from the dirty chair in that room at the Berkeley Police Department.

  Her mood kept switching from upbeat to angry. She was happy to have the name of the man in the truck, but furious that BPD had let the bastard go without actually eyeballing that girl.

  Eagle hadn’t been able to ask for the girl’s name again, either. Brunsan had handed her the slip of paper with the man’s name on it and said, This better not come back to bite me, and walked away before she could promise, again, that it wouldn’t.

  Even though she didn’t quite know what she was promising. Even though she didn’t know what she could do.

  She thought about it as she cut across campus. She had to get dinner for herself, Val, and Pammy. Eagle opted for the best take-out in the area, because she needed it. The Dynasty Restaurant on Euclid had actual Chinese food, not American Chinese. She didn’t want to see what the kitchen was like but she knew the results were spectacular.

  She hadn’t even called ahead, and she hadn’t driven her truck. Parking was too difficult, even in the summer.

  Besides, she needed to clear her head.

  The woman that she had seen was, in theory, safe. If Eagle believed Brunsan, and she did. He seemed as frustrated as she felt.

  The Dynasty was small, and smelled of garlic and shrimp. Usually those smells calmed her. Her stomach did growl—somehow she had missed lunch—but the smells didn’t make her feel better. If anything, her confusion grew while she waited for the three large meals she had ordered.

  It hadn’t taken long. The restaurant wasn’t that busy on a Tuesday night. Most of the students who had come in had picked up take-out as well, but unlike her, they had called ahead.

  She eyeballed all of them, boys and girls, involved in their own lives, some of them discussing the moon landing, others their classes, and still others revealing way too much about their sex lives. All of those kids seemed oblivious to any danger that they might have been in. They were self-absorbed and focused.

  Eagle couldn’t remember if she had been that way in college or not. She had probably been too self-absorbed and focused to consider what she looked like to people other than herself.

  She paid cash, asked for a large brown paper bag to make carrying all the food easier, realized she had forgotten to order drinks, and then decided she didn’t care.

  She had to make it all the way across campus before the food got cold, the only downside of her plan.

  So she scurried away, not realizing until she got to Observatory Hill that she hadn’t been watching for a guy in a truck either. Or anyone else, for that matter. Someone could have followed her from the restaurant without even trying hard, and she hadn’t noticed.

  All that self-absorption among the college students, all that focus, and they wouldn’t have noticed at all.

  A chill ran down her spine. It had been easy pickings for that man—once he had found the students.

  But she had no idea how he had found the students. Maybe the way that he found the students could provide the illegal entry point for Brunsan.

  She walked a little faster on the way back, and from Observatory Hill on, she watched everyone around her as if they were following her.

  She supposed the man in the truck—Justin Lavassier, his name was—could have somehow gotten records from the school and waited near the classes to find out where the students were.

  But parents could have hired a regular private detective for that. This man combined his detecting skills with his bounty hunter skills, located the kids, and then took them back to their parents by whatever means necessary.

  She had reached Sather Road by the time she realized she had missed one important point: What about the students who had dropped out? How had he found them? It couldn’t have been easy.

  So many questions, things she hadn’t thought of when she was talking to Brunsan. She hadn’t even thought to ask if Lavassier was working alone. She had just assumed he was, because he was a bounty hunter. Generally, they worked alone.

  At least, she thought they did. She wasn’t even certain she had met one, or knew of one who operated anywhere near her.

  She turned down Bancroft rather than taking Telegraph on her way back to the gym. She didn’t want to see the Mini Mob or the gaggle of hippies who gathered on Telegraph’s sidewalks. She had enough distractions on this cool evening. She didn’t want to look at all of those dirty, drugged-out people who sold ugly tchotchkes on the sidewalk day after day so they could pay for their high. She didn’t want to think about how many of them were missing.

  She had learned the hard w
ay that helping people like that was not her thing. One week at the Berkeley Free Clinic after she returned had made her decide that nothing was worth the aggravation of dealing with the filth and the starving children of the addicts and the problems that came from sharing needles.

  She had known she couldn’t explain the dangers to the people she was seeing in a way they could understand. Or, better, in a way they wanted to understand.

  She had left, deciding that whatever advanced degree she got with her GI Bill, it wouldn’t have anything to do with medicine.

  And then, of course, she had ended up volunteering—albeit reluctantly—at the gym.

  She arrived at the alley faster than she expected, realized that once again, she hadn’t been paying attention, and felt another shiver. She looked both ways before ducking into the alley. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. She knew that Lavassier had no idea who she was and wouldn’t be coming after her for any reason.

  Yet.

  She wasn’t quite sure where that yet had come from. But it had been firm and a bit angry. She hated this man, and she had only seen him once. He had seen her too, but he wouldn’t recognize her. He had been busy—beating a young woman into unconsciousness.

  Whatever he had told Brunsan, it was a lie. Brunsan, to his credit, had known that. He had just run into that horrid place where justice and the law intersected and completely ruled out any kind of real resolution.

  A place that Eagle couldn’t live with.

  She let herself in through the gym’s back entrance. She didn’t hear any conversation in the kitchen. Val and Pammy were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, both looking in Eagle’s direction.

  “Glad it’s you,” Pammy said. She looked even more tired than she had earlier, if that were possible.

  Val still had deep circles under her eyes as well. “Jill is still out front.”

  Eagle couldn’t tell if they had been talking or not. They seemed incredibly tense.

  “I’m going to tell her we have a meeting,” Pammy said. “I’d like to eat in here, but I think she’ll bother us.”

  “How about I put out the food,” Eagle said, “then we serve ourselves and go into the office, and Jill can have some if she wants.”

  “Sounds good.” Pammy pushed open the door. “I’ll tell her.”

  She left.

  Eagle set the large bag on the table. Val got dishes out of the cabinet while Eagle unpacked the Szechuan chicken, the house special chow yuk, the beef and tomatoes, and the vegetable stir-fry that she particularly loved. She also set fortune cookies on the counter and the three containers of rice.

  No wonder the bag had felt heavy. She had carried a lot of food.

  She grabbed serving spoons from the drawer and shoved them into the food. Then she grabbed forks.

  “No chopsticks?” Val asked.

  Eagle shuddered a little. That was one of the things she had promised herself when she returned from Southeast Asia, that she would never have to use chopsticks again. She had gotten good with them, but she had seen them misused as instruments of torture more than she had ever seen forks misused in the same way.

  “Forgot,” she lied.

  “Too bad,” Val said. “I prefer them.”

  La-di-da, Eagle thought, then caught herself. She hadn’t had that kind of sarcastic thought directed at Val before.

  “Get your nap?” Eagle asked.

  “A little,” Val said. “I got some news.”

  “Did you tell Pammy?” Eagle was surprised at how quickly the question came out, at the tinge of jealousy behind it.

  “Not yet,” Val said. “We both decided to wait for you.”

  No wonder they had just been standing, staring at each other.

  The food still steamed from their little containers, which was good, since Eagle wasn’t sure there were enough pans here to quickly reheat everything.

  She helped herself to rice, the vegetables, and the chow yuk, just as Pammy came back in, followed by Jill.

  “Strange group meeting,” Jill said, clearly feeling left out.

  “Yeah, well, we have some things to discuss,” Eagle said flatly. “The food initially wasn’t even meant for you.”

  “Eagle,” Val said, and everyone looked at her. She shrugged. She had already served herself some of the chicken and a little of the veggie dish as well.

  “That’s okay,” Jill said, grabbing the plate that Val had clearly pulled down for Pammy. “I’m used to it. Eagle and I should really call a truce someday.”

  Eagle didn’t respond to that. The last thing she wanted was to acknowledge anything that Jill said.

  Pammy didn’t jump into the conversation at all, which was odd. There was silence while Jill filled her plate. She grabbed a napkin, some silverware, and a glass of water.

  “Use the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

  Then she let herself out.

  “Why don’t you like her?” Val asked.

  “Because.” Eagle sat down in the chair closest to her, then cursed. “I forgot beverages.”

  “I made hot water for tea,” Val said. “I couldn’t find a teapot, though.”

  “We’re coffee people here,” Pammy said.

  “I’ll take tea,” Eagle said at the same time.

  Val found some Lipton teabags and some larger cups. She poured hot water from the kettle into two of the cups and set them down by Eagle and in front of another place.

  Pammy poured the last of the old coffee into another cup, then took a plate from the cabinet.

  With her back to everyone, she said, “This has been a shit day.”

  Eagle looked at her in surprise. Random cuss words were Eagle’s department, not Pammy’s.

  “What happened?” Val asked.

  “You found Kelly MacGivers,” Eagle said.

  “Yeah.” Pammy braced her hands on the countertop. “And I almost wish I hadn’t.”

  44

  Pammy

  Pammy told them everything. How odd it felt to be in Stern Hall. How she had been thinking of Linda, Sue Ellen, and Barbara. How she had found Kelly, and how alone that poor girl had been.

  At first, Pammy could only talk with her back to Eagle and Val. She didn’t want them to see how close to the edge she was. She kept her hands flat on the countertop, the smell of garlic and soy sauce turning her stomach.

  As she talked, she managed to turn around. Someone had already filled her plate with some kind of chicken dish, and something that had those mini corn things as well as bamboo shoots. She added more rice to sop up the sauce, then sat down, happy that her hands weren’t shaking.

  Maybe they weren’t because she was getting the story out. Or maybe they weren’t because she had finally felt the anger underneath.

  She wanted to take those parents and slam them against the wall, maybe toss them into the back of a truck. Or bring them here, have them fight bare-knuckled against a more savvy opponent, let them feel how badly punches and kicks could hurt.

  Eagle didn’t say anything as Pammy spoke, but her eyes didn’t move from Pammy’s face. Val looked down, almost folded in on herself, as if Pammy’s words were personal.

  Finally, she finished. Finally, there was no more to tell.

  Val looked up from her plate. Her brown eyes seemed wider than they had before, her face lined with exhaustion.

  “Is she going to come to the gym?” Val asked.

  And that question, that simple question, more concerned with Kelly’s health than with all of the ins and outs of the man with the truck, of the horrid parents, of those awful events, made Pammy tear up.

  She blinked hard.

  “She needs a community,” Val said. “I don’t know how to provide it for her, and it might be too soon, but it sounds clear. Because she’s in a bad place.”

  Those last two words were soft. Eagle, frowning slightly, looked over at Val as if hearing something deeper there as well.

  “I don’t
know if she’s going to come here,” Pammy said. “I asked her to. I told her—”

  Well, Val didn’t need to know that Pammy had offered the classes for free. Eagle didn’t either. Eagle would probably yell at her for forgetting this was a for-profit business.

  “—that, um, we had a community here. That we would understand.”

  Val nodded. Eagle was still watching her.

  “Poor girl,” Val said.

  “She’s not alone,” Eagle said drily.

  Val glanced at her, startled.

  “I talked to one of the detectives,” Eagle said.

  Pammy looked at Eagle so quickly that she made herself dizzy. She had to remember to breathe.

  “And, surprise surprise,” Eagle said, “he actually tracked down the license plate of that truck.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Val said.

  “Don’t thank your erstwhile deity yet,” Eagle said. “Because this doesn’t end well.”

  She told them exactly what Brunsan had told her—that the man in the truck was running what seemed like a legitimate business, and that Brunsan believed the woman Eagle had seen was still alive.

  “I doubt that she’s well,” Eagle said. “Particularly after everything that Pammy told us.”

  Pammy threaded her fingers together. “I love how this man told the police that he ‘calmed her down.’ In a different motel room, where he terrorized her.”

  “Yeah,” Eagle said. “I didn’t like that part either, and that was before I heard your girl’s story.”

  Pammy’s girl. She supposed that was true. She had acquired another person to worry about, even if she never saw Kelly MacGivers again.

  “This man should be arrested,” Val said, her voice thrumming with passion.

  “I agree,” Eagle said. “The thing is, Detective Brunsan agrees too. He wants this guy, but he can’t find any legal way to get him.”

  “Call him,” Val said. “Tell him about Walnut Creek.”

  “I did already,” Eagle said. “He’s going to contact the department in Walnut Creek. I also told him to investigate the jurisdictional thing you found.”