Lee and Omo were supposed to follow the armored car in but stay out of the SWAT team’s way. Both were dressed in LAPD body armor and wore their badges where they could be seen. An aid car was parked two blocks away, ready to respond if there were casualties or if Amanda was found.
Lee was at the wheel and followed the war wagon onto the street where Conroy lived. She pulled over to the curb as the armored car pulled in to block the driveway. Once the boxy vehicle stopped, doors flew open, and the SWAT team boiled out. There were two teams. One raced up onto the front porch while the other ran back along the side of the house to secure the shop.
Lee and Omo drew their weapons and followed team one up to the front door. The first officer was equipped with a battering ram and the second was armed with an assault rifle. “Los Angeles Police Department!” Ferris yelled through a bullhorn. “Open up! We have a search warrant.”
There was a short pause. Then the door swung open to reveal a little girl. She appeared to be eight or nine years old and was clearly terrified. The first officer took her by the arm and pulled her out onto the porch. That allowed the SWAT team to surge inside.
Lee knelt next to the girl. She had mousy hair, freckles, and a double chin. “Hi. My name is Cassandra. Don’t worry, no one will hurt you. Are you Lisa Conroy?”
The girl nodded.
“Okay,” Lee said. “We’re looking for your father. Where is he?”
“He’s in the back,” Lisa said. “Working on his van.”
“Good,” Lee said. “Thank you. Where is your mother? And your brother?”
“Inside,” the girl answered, and pointed to the house.
“Got it,” Lee said. “Now, this is very important . . . Does anyone else live here?”
Lisa shook her head. “Not right now.”
“But they have in the past?” Omo inquired.
Lisa looked at the mutant. “Sometimes,” she said.
Lee noticed that the little girl was willing to speak with Omo. Most children raised in the green zone had been taught to fear mutants. But maybe she didn’t realize that Omo was one . . . Lots of people wore masks. “Who were they?” Lee inquired. “Who were the people who stayed here?”
“Mommy and Daddy help runaways,” Lisa explained.
Lee felt her heart start to beat faster. “That’s very nice of them,” she said. “Were the runaways boys? Or girls?”
“Girls.”
“So where do the girls go after they leave here?”
“They go to homes. Places where nice people take care of them.”
“I see,” Lee said. “What about this girl . . . Did she stay here?”
Lisa examined the photo. “Yes, that’s Mandy . . . She tried to run away, and Daddy caught her. She cried when Daddy hit her.”
Amanda Screed had been nothing more than an objective up to that point. A spoiled rich girl Lee was supposed to find. Now, as Lee listened to Lisa, the kidnap victim was starting to become a real person. A young woman who had been snatched off the street, held prisoner, and had enough guts to make a run for it. Now Lee felt a burgeoning sense of sympathy and an even stronger desire to find the missing woman. “How long?” Lee inquired. “How long ago did your daddy take Mandy away?”
Lisa frowned. “I don’t know . . . Three or four days maybe.”
Lee stood. There hadn’t been any gunshots, and that was a good sign. She took Lisa’s hand and led her over to where a uniformed officer was standing. “This is Lisa . . . Please place a call to Family Services. Tell them there’s a brother, too . . . A boy named Neal.”
The officer nodded and smiled. “I’ll take care of it.”
Lee thanked her, and with Omo in tow, made her way past the war wagon to the backyard, where lots of people were milling around. Ferris was present and that meant the SWAT team had cleared the house and gone out through the rear door. He saw the officers and came over to speak with them. “We’ve got them. That includes Conroy, his wife, and the boy. Conroy was hiding in the attic.”
“Nice job,” Lee said. “I spent some time with the daughter. She’s out front and confirms that Amanda was held here. And the mom was in on it.”
“Yeah,” Ferris agreed. “There’s no way Conroy could have been holding women here without his wife’s knowledge. Come on . . . There’s something I want to show you.”
Lee and Omo followed Ferris into the brightly lit shop. A messy workbench ran the length of one wall, an engine dangled from a chain hoist, and the floor was stained with grease. An especiale was parked under the motor and next to a white cargo van. One of thousands that looked just like it except for one thing: This vehicle was equipped with four-wheel drive.
As Ferris led them to the back of the garage, Lee saw the cages. There were three of them, all made out of chicken wire stapled to wooden frames. But these coops weren’t made for chickens as could be seen from the cots, jury-rigged toilets, and the leg irons that lay on the floor. Lee felt a combination of shock and disgust as she turned to Omo. “Come on. Let’s say ‘hi’ to Wheels.”
Conroy and his wife Mona were outside. They had been separated, and a couple of uniformed officers were getting ready to take Wheels away. Lee recognized the long, stringy hair and the beady eyes. A sneer appeared on his unshaven face as Lee and Omo approached. “Oh look . . . More pigs. The same ones that tried to bust me in the TA.”
Lee ignored Conroy and addressed the officers instead. “Did you read him his rights?”
The cop nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Take good care of him.”
“I’ll remember you bitch!” Conroy yelled, as the officers took him away.
“I think he has a crush on you,” Omo observed.
Lee smiled. “Tell me something, Ras . . . Can we trace calls into the red zone?”
“I don’t know,” Omo replied. “There hasn’t been any attempt at cooperation for a long time.”
“But they sent you.”
“Yeah . . . Things have improved, and they’re worried about the Aztecs. Why do you ask?”
“When they let Conroy use a phone, he will call an attorney. Then he’ll try to warn the people he works for.”
“And you want to know who they are.”
“We want to know.”
Omo nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll get on it.”
“Thanks. I’ll call McGinty and try to buy some time. Maybe we can push the calls into tomorrow.”
Lee took Omo back to LAPD headquarters to get his truck. Where was he staying, she wondered. In Freak Town? Probably . . . Since a regular hotel wouldn’t accept him. Omo hadn’t complained—but he rarely did.
It was well past midnight when Lee arrived home, parked out front, and gave her motorcycle an affectionate pat as she walked past. Then it was up the stairs to the top landing. And that’s when she saw that the area around the locks was badly splintered, and her front door was ajar. The bottom fell out of Lee’s stomach as she drew the Glock. “Los Angeles Police! Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air!”
Lee waited. There was no reaction. So she toed the door open. It was dark inside the apartment, but no one fired at her. She tried again. “Los Angeles Police Department! Come out with your hands up.” Still no response.
Lee held the Glock in one hand as she entered. That left her other hand free to turn the lights on. Everything looked normal so she stopped to listen. The refrigerator hummed, and a dog barked somewhere nearby, but there were no other sounds.
Lee went from room to room. The apartment was empty. The TV had been left untouched. That seemed strange. But how about the small stuff? Jewelry and the like? There was only one way to find out. She returned to the kitchen where she closed the door and wedged a chair under the knob.
Then Lee took a careful inventory of the front room, but as far as she could tell, none of her
belongings had been taken. Her father’s bedroom was next. The hollow-core door had been forced, but that was to be expected. Any burglar worth his or her salt would see the padlock and assume that the good stuff was inside. Boy, were they disappointed, Lee thought to herself as she entered the room.
Still, there was the possibility that the intruder had taken items that belonged to her father. His badge, his cuffs, or something like that. She circled the room. Some items had been moved—but all of them were there. Or so it seemed until she came to the worktable.
Her papers had been shuffled around and that made the task more difficult. So she put everything back the way they had been to the extent that she could. And that was when Lee realized that something was missing. The picture of Roscoe McGinty, Alma Kimble, and her father was gone.
What felt like cold ice water entered her veins. McGinty had broken into her home! Something he could do since he knew she was participating in the raid. No, that was absurd. But who else would take the photo and only the photo? The obvious answer was the Bonebreaker. As for why, that was unknowable.
Lee continued to search her apartment. But nothing else was missing. Should she report the burglary? As well as her suspicions? According to McGinty, people were well aware of her efforts to solve her father’s murder. And they weren’t likely to see a connection between the missing picture and the serial killer. More than that, they might decide that she was crazy and place her on administrative leave. That would be disastrous. Because having seen the chicken-wire cages, Lee was all the more determined to find the traffickers and bring them in. So no, she wasn’t going to report the burglary, but she was going to get a better door.
Lee fortified her front door as best she could and went to bed. She would call a carpenter and a locksmith in the morning. And, if she was lucky, Wheels would lead her to the traffickers. She took the positive thought to bed with her, but it wasn’t enough to stave off a succession of bad dreams.
When morning came, Lee put in a call to a carpenter she’d used in the past and asked him to replace both doors. And because Lee would have to leave the apartment unlocked, he agreed to come right away. Once he was done, she would contact a locksmith.
So in spite of recent efforts to show up on time, Lee arrived late. McGinty gave her a dirty look but continued the briefing. Once McGinty finished talking about the case that Murphy and Dunbar had been working on, he turned his attention to the Screed kidnapping. “By now all of you know that last night’s raid was a success. With help from the SWAT team and the patrol division, we managed to nail one of the people responsible for the Screed kidnapping.”
That produced a chorus of congratulatory comments, and McGinty nodded. “Unfortunately, our efforts to trace the suspect’s calls into the red zone weren’t successful. Even though the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department has been cooperating with us, a lot of their communications infrastructure was destroyed after the plague hit. And the new stuff isn’t fully compatible with our equipment. We were able to record Conroy’s calls, but he played it smart. Once a person answered, he said, ‘This is Wheels. The LA police put me in the can—and I could use some help.’ Then he hung up.”
Lee felt a profound sense of disappointment. She’d been hoping for a breakthrough. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll go to work on Mrs. Conroy then.”
McGinty nodded. “You do that. Now, let’s talk about the Compton sniper.”
Once the meeting was over, Lee and Omo left for the MDC where Mona Conroy was being held. Once they were outside, Omo looked her way. “Are you okay?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
Omo shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem worried.”
Lee thought about that. She was worried. And with good reason in the wake of the burglary. It wasn’t fair. Omo could see her nonverbals, but she couldn’t access his. “I’m afraid that Amanda is somewhere in the red zone by now,” she replied evasively. “The clock is ticking.”
“I’m sorry the trace didn’t work,” Omo said glumly.
“Don’t worry, Cowboy,” Lee said lightly. “We’ll get them. By the way . . . The good cop–bad cop thing worked with Sims. But let’s try good cop–good cop with Mrs. Conroy. Odds are that she’s scared enough already.”
Omo nodded. “Got it.”
As before, it was necessary to pass through multiple layers of security before being shown into an interview room. Mona Conroy was there waiting for them. She might have been pretty once, but the intervening years had been less than kind. Mona had bleached blond hair, dark roots, and china blue eyes. They had the furtive look of a dog that has been beaten and always expects the worst. “I’m Detective Lee, and this is Deputy Omo,” Lee told her. “I spoke with Lisa last night, and she’s a cutie.”
Mona’s lower lip quivered. “They took her away.”
“Yes, they did,” Lee agreed as she sat down. “But it’s my hope that you’ll be reunited with your children soon.”
“They need me,” Mona said pitifully.
“We understand that,” Omo said sympathetically. “But here’s the problem. It looks like your husband took part in a series of kidnappings. And you were in on it.”
“I didn’t want to,” Mona said earnestly. “He made me do it.”
“And I believe you,” Lee said soothingly. “Unfortunately, in the eyes of the law, you were an accessory. That means you can be charged, tried, and sent to prison. But, if you help us find Amanda Screed, or any of the other women who were taken, that could be helpful. The prosecutor might cut you some slack.”
“He might cut you some slack,” Omo added for the sake of the camera. “We can’t promise anything.”
“No we can’t,” Lee agreed. “But it’s worth a try. Deals get done every day.”
“Willy would beat me,” Mona said pathetically.
“Willy is going to be in the slammer for a long time,” Lee predicted. “And we will protect you.”
Mona hung her head. Lee felt sorry for the woman. Eventually, the blue eyes came up to meet hers. “What do you want?”
“We want to know where Willy took the girls,” Omo said. “And who he delivered them to.”
“The first part is easy,” Mona replied. “He took them into the red zone. To someplace outside of Phoenix.”
“Okay,” Lee said. “Who was he working for?”
“He mentioned a man named Vincent Rictor,” Mona replied.
Lee wrote the name down. “Good. That’s a start.”
The interview continued for thirty minutes after that. A picture began to emerge. Conroy would get a phone call, prepare the van for a trip, and disappear. Often for a week or more. Then he would return to the house with one, two, or even three girls chained to the van’s floor.
When that occurred, it was Mona’s job to feed the prisoners, empty their potty buckets into a toilet inside the house, and guard them when her husband went off to spend time at the local tavern. And that was the situation the night Amanda escaped. She had been one of two prisoners at the time. After using some of her own feces to lubricate an ankle, and bending her foot in a manner that most people couldn’t, she’d been able to remove the ankle bracelet.
And if Amanda had chosen to leave the garage at that point, she would have gone free. Instead, she made use of Conroy’s tools to break into the neighboring cage and was trying to free a girl named Shelly when their captor returned.
Conroy was drunk. He beat Amanda, put her back in her cage, and tightened the ankle bracelet. Then he entered the house. Mona was watching TV. “He called the children into the living room,” Mona said miserably, “and he told them how stupid I was. Then he forced them to watch while he beat me.”
Lee was experiencing all sorts of emotions by that time. Admiration for Amanda, a fierce desire to punish Conroy, and concern for Mona’s children. “I will tell the prosecutor everything you told me,” she prom
ised. “You should have reported your husband to the police. But, if you continue to cooperate, there’s a chance that you’ll get off without doing any time. We’ll see.”
The police officers left after that. “So,” Omo said, as they arrived on the street. “What now?”
“Rictor,” Lee said. “Can you get somebody to pull his package? There’s bound to be one.”
“I’ll get to work on it.”
“Good. Then we need to find Amanda. We need to find all of them.”
After they returned to the sixth floor of LAPD headquarters, Omo borrowed a desk while Lee went to get coffee. She returned to find her partner staring out a window. She put a cup and a straw on the desk next to his elbow. “So? What did you learn?”
“Rictor had a record all right—and it’s as long as your arm. He was wanted for murder among other things.”
“Was?”
Omo turned to look at her. That particular mask had a sardonic expression. “Somebody shot Rictor last night. He’s dead.”
SEVEN
AFTER GRABBING SOME sleep, Lee had been ordered to attend a high-level meeting with the chief of police. And that was a rare event indeed. It made sense, however, since Bishop Screed was still throwing his weight around—and there was every reason to believe that Amanda was alive.
Lee felt nervous as she followed McGinty and Omo into the large conference room located adjacent to Chief Corso’s executive-style office. The walls were decorated with artistic black-and-white photos of the “new” LA, planters were full to overflowing with carefully arranged greenery, and the glossy-looking redwood conference table could easily seat twenty people. Corso was ten minutes late and clearly in a hurry. “Okay,” he said as he claimed the seat at the head of the table. “I’m taking flack on the Screed case . . . Bring me up to speed.”
McGinty provided Corso with a good summary of what had taken place over the last few days, and Corso nodded. “Good job. But here’s the deal . . . In spite of all the progress that has been made, Bishop Screed feels that things are moving too slowly.”
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