by Rayna Morgan
“Your mother will be sorry to miss it. She’s always watching gourmet cooking shows on TV. I’ve never figured out why, she never practices it at home.”
“I’ve still got a couple of complimentary tickets. You want to go, Mad?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have an escort.” She propped her chin on her hand and stared at Tom.
“Don’t go batting your eyes at me,” Tom said. “You know I hate those stuffy dress-up affairs. Wearing a shirt with a starchy collar and a tie? Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take a plate of ribs like the ones we had tonight any time over those puffy fish pastries which never fill you up.”
“After dinner drinks?” Lea asked, carrying empty plates to the kitchen.
“Not for me,” Warren said. “I’ve got to finish the chess game with my grandson. I need all my wits about me.”
“How about you, Maddy?” Lea asked. “Irish coffee?”
“You bet. I’m working closing shift tomorrow, I don’t need to get up early.”
“Tom?”
“Black coffee, please. I’ve got the late patrol.”
“I’ll help Lea with the dishes,” Paul said. “You two relax.”
• • •
Tom and Maddy moved to the patio where they could enjoy the breeze blowing in from the ocean. They sat quietly for several moments gazing at the stars.
Tom raised his coffee mug. “May your joys be as deep as the ocean, and your misfortunes as light as its foam.”
“That’s lovely, Tom,” Maddy said, licking whipped cream from the top of her drink.
“One of the guys at the precinct got married on the beach. It was a toast someone made at his wedding.”
“The beach is a beautiful place to get married. Eric and I got married at a ski resort during the biggest snowstorm of the year. Our friends couldn’t get to the wedding; the airports were closed. The lodge where we stayed was stranded in six feet of snow. Snow plows had to dig us out.”
“Sounds romantic, considering you’re a warm weather girl,” Tom said. He could barely conceal a thin-lipped grin. “How did you let him convince you to spend your honeymoon in sub-zero temperatures?”
“Same way I let him talk me into getting married in the first place, but we had our moments. Even though I spent most of the time wrapped in blankets or three layers of sweaters, we managed to build some fires big enough so we could climb out of our clothes at night.”
“Yeah, okay. I get the picture,” Tom said. He looked away to avoid her gaze.
“Tom Elliot, are you blushing?” Maddy asked. She clapped her hands as color rushed to her own cheeks.
“I just can’t picture you as a snow bunny; that’s all,” he said gruffly.
“I’ll admit,” she said, “it’s not something anyone could talk me into doing now. Thankfully, we learn from our mistakes.”
Tom looked down and ran his finger over the rim of the mug. “Do you think marriage was a mistake?”
“Marrying the man I married was a mistake,” Maddy said. She pinched her lips between her fingers.
“Will you ever do it again?”
“Marry my ex?” she teased.
“Forget I asked,” Tom snapped. “You’re making fun of me. This conversation is a joke to you. I suppose marriage is a joke to you, too.”
Maddy looked at Tom, surprised at the change in his mood. “No commitment is a joke to me.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Tom said. He stood up and stretched.
“I’m glad you no longer consider Scott a suspect in Albert Benson’s murder,” Maddy said, willing to change the subject.
“Did I say that?”
“I thought you told Paul—”
“All I said to Paul was that I might move my focus to his client,” Tom said. “You forget it was Scott’s gun which was used to kill Benson.”
“That pistol could have belonged to any of the competitors in the shooting contest.”
“Sorry, your reasoning won’t work. The gun we found at the crime scene had signature markings: five notches cut in the handle, which matches the five trophies I saw displayed at the Miller lodge. Scott’s the only local cowboy who’s won that many championships.”
“All right, I suppose the gun is a reason to suspect him. Do you have anything else on him?”
“I’m no horticulturist, but I could see there was something wrong with the crops at the Benson farm when I was there to interview the son. I picked some samples and sent them to the lab. I should get the results in a day or two.”
“What does that have to do with Scott? He’d never poison another man’s crops. He has too much respect for ranching to do something like that.”
“The way I see it, who better to know exactly how it could be done? And answer me this: why were none of the crops or livestock on the Miller ranch affected?”
“Do you have actual proof or are you making wild accusations out of spite?”
“What are you implying? I have no ill-will toward your cowboy.”
“The fact you refer to him as my cowboy says differently. What I’m suggesting is that you’re unjustly accusing him because you’re jealous of my friendship with him.”
“I’m just looking out for you. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been put in harm’s way on more than one occasion by associating with him.”
“Let’s get something straight. You can’t blame Scott for the hairy situations he and I were in. I got myself in those pickles. Besides, keeping him away from me won’t stop me from taking risks. It’s not my way to live my life on the sidelines.”
“Don’t get riled. I know it’s in your genes to take risks, and I don’t fault you that. In fact, I admire it. But at least your sister knows where to draw lines.”
“Lea’s got a husband and a kid. She’s responsible for more than just herself. She’s got reason to listen to Paul when he gets on her case like you’re getting on mine.”
“Are you telling me that with another person sharing your life you’d be willing to follow orders and stay out of trouble?”
“I don’t take orders, you know that,” Maddy said. “I barely even take suggestions.”
A grin flickered across Tom’s face. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. Besides, I can’t help it; the cowboy’s arrogance gets my goat.”
“Look who’s calling someone arrogant. You’re cocky yourself sometimes, to the point of being insufferable.”
“Are you saying it’s a case of ‘it takes one to know one’?”
“I’m saying that if you think Scott is arrogant, you don’t know him,” Maddy said. “Scott’s comfortable in his own skin. He doesn’t give a hoot about other people’s opinion of him. It may come off to you as cockiness, but he doesn’t need other people to figure out who he is.”
“Since when have you become an expert on human psychology?”
“It’s part of what I’ve gained since moving to Buena Viaje. I’m sorting myself out. I feel more in tune with who I’m meant to be, and I don’t define myself by who I’m with anymore. I’m letting myself be me instead of some version of who people think I should be.
“That’s what Scott is. He’s the only version there is of Scott. He’s asked himself the questions ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I here for?’ He’s one of the lucky people who’s found the answers.”
“Do you ever ask yourself those questions?” Tom asked.
“Oh, sure, there are days when I wonder when my life will add up, if ever.”
“You’re no different than the rest of us,” Tom said. “We all want to be significant. We want our life to stand for something.”
“You seem to be doing what you’re meant to be doing,” Maddy told him. “What does it feel like?”
“It feels like not worrying if something is the right thing to do or how to do it. The know-how comes when you need it.”
“Do you ever question if chasing bad guys is the right thing for you to do?”
“It’s one
of the few things I know for sure, that putting criminals behind bars is what I’m meant to do.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself, Detective,” Maddy teased, “In fact, you sound downright arrogant.”
“That’s what I love about you,” Tom said. He smiled at the way she’d turned the cards on him. “You question the way I see things and make me look at things differently.”
“You do need your point of view tweaked once in a while,” Maddy said.
“Hold your thought,” Tom said, answering his cell phone. “It’s the coroner.”
When he finished, he stood up abruptly. “I have to leave.”
“Where are you going? Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all, but I need to take care of something I should be looking at differently.”
CHAPTER NINE
Tom and Pat were almost at the end of their late shift when they were summoned to a motel in the low rent district of Buena Viaje. The motel was a run-down building the vice squad had visited on frequent occasions.
Tom checked in with the clerk at the front desk, a scrawny, unshaven man who hid the magazine he was leafing through when the police entered. “What is it this time, your customers breaking up furniture again?”
“Good evening to you, too, Lieutenant,” the man said, jerking his head toward the garbage bins at the back of the motel. “Someone reported seeing a body back there. I’ve been too busy to check it out.”
“Yeah, I can see how busy you are,” Tom sneered, returning to the car. “Let’s go, Fisher. We might have a stiff on our hands.”
From the space where Tom parked, the outline of a woman’s body was barely visible. Pat walked over and kneeled beside her, feeling for a pulse. “She’s breathing, but barely. From the heavy makeup, tight skirt, and stilettos, I’d say she’s a working girl. We need an ambulance; she’s been badly beaten.”
“Call it in and stay with her while I knock on some doors. She probably got dumped by someone in one of these rooms. My guess is nobody staying at this joint is going to answer our questions. I’ll be lucky to get them to answer the door.”
Fisher stayed with the body until the paramedics arrived before catching up with her boss.
“Did you get anything out of her?” Tom asked.
“She was rambling about needing her daddy and something about it being her fault.”
“Bottom dollar the daddy in this case is her pimp.” Tom shook his head. “This kind of thing disgusts me. Most of these girls are runaways from home living at the mercy of these scumbags. One wrong move and they end up like her. Or they’re used up, maybe ruined by drugs, by the time they’re thirty years old and thrown back on the streets where they were found after the douche bags make a fortune on them.”
“You sound bitter,” Pat said.
“There was a girl who lived down the street from me growing up. We weren’t close, but we always talked when we rode the bus to school. On days when I wasn’t playing sports, we’d walk home from school together.
“In high school, she started running with a bad crowd. She was having problems at home. Her dad was a drunk, the nasty kind, and her older brother got busted for drugs. My friends and I turned our backs on her.
“She ran away our senior year; never graduated. I didn’t see her again until several years later.
“I was on one of my first patrols fresh out of the Academy. We responded to a call at a local hotel. It was my first dead body. The room indicated a call-girl setup.
“I still remember her lifeless eyes. They appeared to be nothing more than icy, colored marbles. I hardly recognized her. She and I were the same age, but she looked years older.
“The other officer made some lewd comments, and I took a swing at him. He didn’t report me; he said he was doing me a favor because it was a rookie reaction. I didn’t let on that I knew her.
“She had fake identification, so no one would have known who she was. Except me; I knew. On my day off, I drove to my neighbor’s house to tell her mother. I was sure her father wouldn’t care.”
Pat felt his pain. “Is that one of the reasons why bringing down the Kingpin is so important to you?”
“I was never able to prove she was part of his operation, but he preys on runaway girls. Putting him behind bars would keep him from ruining other girls’ lives.”
He rubbed his hand across his forehead like someone trying to dispel a bad memory. “It’s a sour note to end the day on. Go home, Pat. I’ll go to the hospital and fill them in on the details.”
• • •
Tom was beat by the time he arrived at the hospital to confer with the nurse in charge of the night shift. He gladly accepted the coffee she offered.
“What do we have here, Lieutenant?”
“Most likely a prostitute who made her pimp unhappy. If clients play this rough, they get scared and leave the body in the room. We found her by the garbage. It could have been a message from her sugar-daddy.”
“We’re receiving more of these victims lately,” the nurse said. Tom detected sympathy in the woman’s voice. “The game seems to be getting more brutal.”
“We’re seeing the same increase in sex-trafficking that you are. The internet has changed the game by taking these girls off the streets and hiding them behind closed doors. The girls are typically sold on a website, locked in hotel rooms, and forced to have sex for money, sometimes up to fifteen times a day before handing all the cash over to a pimp.”
“This girl hardly looks the type from what I could see under the bruises and cut lip,” the nurse said.
“There are no types. Any girl who is disconnected from her family can fit the profile. The game cuts across all race, gender, and socio-economic factors.” He threw his paper cup in the trash. “What’s her condition, can I talk to her?”
“Most of her wounds are superficial. She’s got a cracked rib which will have to heal on its own,” the nurse said, noting the patient’s chart. “She’s awake, but not for long. We’ve given her a sedative.”
“I’ll only be a few minutes,” Tom said.
“Do you think she’ll tell you who did this to her?”
“Probably not, but I’ve got to try. Most of these women have been convinced by their traffickers and through experience that no adults or police officers can be trusted to help them. They come across as belligerent or refuse to talk.
“They're afraid of their handlers and don't believe anyone can get them out of the situation they're in. The mental manipulation and control these traffickers have over women is the most challenging aspect for us and the welfare agencies who try to help them.”
“From what I’ve seen of her, she’ll have more than a beating to recover from,” the nurse said. “There are track marks on her arm.”
“The man I suspect of running this prostitution ring also heads up a narcotics operation. He uses his easy access to drugs to keep girls under control. Drugs and alcohol help the victimized girls numb themselves so they can cope with what they’re being forced to do. A drug or alcohol abuse program is usually needed to help victims get out and stay out of the business.”
“But you’re still willing to try?”
“When you see a young person rescued from sex-trafficking, it’s one of the most inspiring things in the world.”
• • •
The young woman’s eyes were closed with her head resting on a pillow when Tom entered the room. He could visualize her heavily made-up as most women in the trade appeared when he arrested them. With her face scrubbed clean and bandaged, she looked innocent and vulnerable. He hated to disturb her peace.
“Excuse me, Miss.” He looked at the driver’s license the nurse had given him. “Amber, are you awake?”
Her head turned and her eyes opened, but she didn’t sit up.
“I’m Detective Elliot. My partner and I found you tonight at the motel. How are you feeling?”
“How do I look like I’m feeling?”
Tom knew fr
om her sarcastic tone where the interview was headed. “I need to get some information about what happened to you.”
“I slipped down the stairs and fell against the dumpster.” Even makeup wouldn’t hide the ugly twisted expression which spread across her face.
“Maybe you were pushed.”
“Like I said, I’m clumsy. I don’t walk so good in three-inch heels.”
“What were you doing at the motel? Your name wasn’t on the register for that room.”
“I was visiting a friend, a school buddy from my old neighborhood. Long time, no see; we were having a reunion.”
Tom felt like he’d been kicked in the gut, or maybe it was bad karma.
“I wish I could verify your story, but whoever signed for the room has disappeared. Guess he wasn’t a good enough buddy to hang around to help you after you fell down the stairs.”
“He left before me. He couldn’t have seen it happen.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind giving me his name. An address would help, too,” Tom said. He pulled out a notepad.
“My accident had nothing to do with him,” she said.
“Look, Amber, I’m only trying to help. If you’re a victim, I’d like to find whoever did this to you.”
“How many times do I have to tell you this is my own stupid fault?”
“You know what? I feel sorry for you because you might truly feel being beaten is your fault. But let me give you my version of what happened. I think your pimp came to collect his money after your john left. Your daddy, as you called him at the scene, got mad and pushed you down the stairs.
“What did you do to set him off? Did you hold back some of your night’s take, or maybe you were disrespecting him, and he was trying to teach you some manners.”
“My personal life is none of your business.” The injured woman’s eyes glazed over to match the blank expression on her face.
“I don’t doubt you have reason to be afraid of him,” he said, “but we can protect you. Give us his name, and we’ll make sure he never hurts you again.”
“How easy you make things sound,” she said. She was beginning to slur her words. “Go back to your world, copper. Let me drift off to never-never land for a few hours before I have to return to mine.”
