Simon Says... Ride (Kate Morgan Thrillers Book 3)

by Dale Mayer

  “You see, Gerard? It’s not that easy.” Kate turned to him. “When you start pulling tricks like this, it impacts everyone.”

  “My daughter is not of sound mind,” he said.

  “So everybody keeps telling me. Until I see her, and we get her evaluated by a specialist, then nobody will have an answer to that, will they?”

  “You have no right!” he yelled.

  “Your daughter is an adult, and you have no right to keep her here!” Kate stood taller, her legs braced apart, and her arms crossed over her chest.

  “What are you, some kind of a bitch?” he asked, but she was completely unfazed.

  Kate smirked at him, which seemed to anger him more. When her phone rang again, she grandly smiled, as she read the text. “The warrant is in.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You’re not allowed to enter my house.”

  “Did you hear what I just said about a warrant?” She held up the document on her phone. “And your maid already gave us access inside. The warrant just clears the rest of it for us. You certainly may call your lawyer now, if ever, if you wish, and this is the number on our warrant.” Kate read it off to him. “He can do an investigation on this right away, as I’m sure you want him to. In the meantime, you will excuse us, but we’ll be bringing in extra personnel to take a look at your house.”

  “You surely can’t do that,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said flatly, “we can and we are.” She heard the sirens pulling up out front. She looked at Rodney. “You want to let them in? Then we’ll escort Sarah and Gerard out of the way.”

  “Where? What do you mean?” Gerard yelled.

  “Downtown, where you should have gone in the first place. In the meantime, we’ll talk to your maid.”

  “No, no, no, no.”

  “Yes,” she said in a hard tone. “You haven’t been the least bit cooperative so far, and I have no intention of doing it any other way.” His jaw firmed. “I know,” she quipped, with a wave of her hand. “My job’s in jeopardy. My life’s in jeopardy. Blah-blah-blah-blah. Bullies like you just never quit.”

  Kate turned, then looked at the wife and smiled. “You know something. I think we’ll start with you.” As she led her into a different room, Gerard was yelling, “You can’t talk to her.”

  “Oh yes, I think I can, and I will,” Kate snapped.

  He yelled out, “Sarah, don’t you say anything.”

  As she got the woman into the kitchen, Kate faced her. “Where is your daughter?”

  But the woman shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t, because nobody is cooperating. That’s why you have all those flashing lights outside, lighting up your neighborhood, not to mention sirens still blaring. I bet your neighbors are annoyed. All I’m concerned about is that your daughter is safe and sound.”

  The woman’s eyes welled up.

  “No way. The tears might work on others. They won’t work on me.”

  At that, she took a slow breath. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Now that, I almost believe.” Kate studied her.

  “That’s because I really don’t know. I only wish I did.”

  At that, she turned to find Rodney, standing behind her. “Let’s do it. Search the house, top to bottom.”

  He nodded, then took off with the officers who had just arrived.

  She motioned at Sarah to sit. “You can just sit there, while the search is going on. How many rooms are in this house?”

  Puzzled, she closed her eyes, as if counting before saying, “Thirteen.”

  “Thirteen rooms?” Sarah nodded. “And how would you judge which room is which, like, for instance, which would you call the thirteenth room?”

  “Oh my goodness, that would be the second maid’s quarters.”

  “Second maid’s quarters.” She shook her head. “So room twelve would be the first maid’s quarters or something like that? Your maids live-in?”

  “Yes, been with us for years.”

  “So you’re hoping that you pay them enough to be loyal?”

  She stiffened and glared at Kate. “There’s no reason to be insulting.”

  “That depends on what you’ve been doing to your daughter,” she said.

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Everything we did is because we love her.”

  “And yet you won’t even acknowledge where she is.”

  “Because I don’t know,” she cried out passionately.

  “And why do you not know?”

  “Because I haven’t seen her lately.” She glanced nervously out of the kitchen toward the front entrance.

  “You’re afraid your husband’s done something to her?”

  Her eyes widened. “No, of course not.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Kate looked around the kitchen and noted a door on the side. “What’s in there?”

  “Nothing, it just leads to the basement.”

  “Right.” With one of the other cops walking in to assist Kate, she said, “Sit here with her, please, while I go check out the basement.”

  “No, you can’t,” Sarah whined.

  Kate turned, gave her a hard look. “Not only can I, but I will,” she snapped. “I’ve had quite enough of you two and your lies and your delays.” And, with that, she headed downstairs. Kate flipped on the light switch. She stopped and looked around at the main room in the basement, leading off to a lot of other rooms, smaller rooms. Kate called out, “Just what all is going on down here?”

  “Nothing,” Sarah replied.

  “Right.” Kate walked from one room to the next, checking each, while calling out, “Pamela, are you here?”

  Only as she got to the other end of the basement did she hear a voice cry out. She opened the door to see a young woman of maybe fourteen. “Hi, who are you?”

  “I’m here as maid,” she said in broken English.

  Kate stared at her in shock. Surely she’s not the maid who has been here for years. “Are you alone here?”

  She shook her head. “No, two more.”

  “Great, and how long have you been here?”

  “Years.”

  Kate pushed down the anger. Remain calm. She looked around the small room and saw that it had a single bed with a dresser and some clothing. “So, you look after this house?”

  She nodded.

  “Do they pay you?”

  She slowly shook her head.

  “Great, now we have human trafficking to add to the whole mess.” She quickly sent that message to the DA. Then she escorted the young woman upstairs and sat her down in the kitchen. Sarah cried when she saw her. “Oh, your legal and criminal struggles are just starting,” Kate said. To the uniformed officer, she added, “Keep watch on both of them, please.”

  At that, Sarah bawled and bawled.

  “I still haven’t found Pamela though.”

  Sarah looked back at her, tears in her eyes.

  Kate went back downstairs again and followed the other hallway to several other small rooms and the two other maids, who were too scared to call out in answer to Kate’s yells. She told them both, “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here.” She wasn’t sure they understood her. But still Kate found no sign of Pamela. She searched high and low and then came back up with the two females, who were also left in the officer’s charge. As Kate looked outside one of the kitchen windows of the large home, she noted a floor over the garage. “Is anybody in the rooms above the garage?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “But, of course, I don’t believe you, so whatever. It doesn’t really make a difference what you or your husband say.” Kate walked outside and looked at the garage, opened it up, stepped inside, and managed to make her way upstairs. But nothing was there. It looked like it had housed people at one point in time, but nothing was here now. As she turned away to leave, she caught an odd sound. She listened to it and frowned because she couldn’t quite place it. Th
en she remembered something Simon had said.

  She called him. “Hey, I’m at the parents’ house. You won’t believe some of the stuff we found here, like human trafficking. There are fourteen-, fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls here who have been working at the house as maids for years—without pay.”

  “Jesus. Funny how Pamela hasn’t mentioned anything like that.”

  “I’m hearing a weird sound, nothing that I can really pinpoint. But there’s no sign of Pamela.”

  “I was afraid of that. I was hoping she was there, but you know how hard it is to get any information.”

  “I know. I know. And because we found these girls, I’m not upset about it. Believe me. I still feel like Pamela has to be here somewhere.”

  “She’s not being very cooperative, and she’s scared.”

  “Yeah, her parents are pretty scary, but it’s still not helpful. We have to find her and to figure out what’s going on, before we can help her.”

  “Let me talk to her again,” he said.

  “No, just tell her to give me a sign, some kind of a sign, so I can figure out where she is, if she’s even alive. Do you know for a fact that you’re not talking to dead people?”

  When she heard him on the other end almost choking, she said, “Okay, fine. I’m hearing a weird whirring sound.”

  “Whirring,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, you know? Like something going around and around.”

  “She’s riding the bike,” he said suddenly. “She’s on the bike. It’s all she has for sound.”

  “What do you mean, it’s all she has for sound?”

  “I don’t know. All I can tell you is that it’s all she has for sound.”

  But, with that, she pocketed her phone and turned, beginning her search. By following that sound, she got to the far end of the garage and found a door inside a closet. She popped open the door and stepped inside. In there, in a room in utter darkness, she flipped on the lights to see a young woman on an exercise bike. She appeared to be crying silently, as she pedaled the bike faster and faster and faster. Kate stepped over in front of her and reached out a hand to touch her arm.

  The woman shrieked and stopped pedaling.

  Kate waved a hand in front of her eyes, realized this was, indeed, Pamela.

  “Pamela, my name is Detective Kate Morgan. Can you hear me?”

  With her arms wrapped around her chest and shivering, the woman nodded.

  “Can you speak?” she asked.

  And the woman nodded again, then stilled.

  “Now, can you tell me who you are?”

  “I’m Pamela,” she said in a faint whisper. “Simon told me that you were coming.”

  *

  The message on Simon’s phone was short and terse.

  We got her. We’re taking her to the hospital to be checked over.

  He sank back down on the bed in shock. “Thank God,” he whispered. “Finally something decent happening in Pamela’s life.”

  At least he thought it was decent. He didn’t know. Something was still nagging at him. Something that he should have noted but hadn’t yet. He sent back a message. Thank God.

  He received a happy emoji in response. With that, he grabbed a coffee and sat back down in the corner of his couch, wondering if all the incessant background noise and the smells on steroids and everything would stop. Now that Pamela had been rescued, surely the connection wasn’t necessary anymore. At least he hoped so. It’s just so hard to know what was going on.

  As he sat here, he noted a cleanliness to the air that he hadn’t felt in quite a while. Not so much that it was a problem, just that it was different. He smiled. Yet something was going on, something frustratingly nagging Simon in the back of his mind that he couldn’t seem to get to.

  And, as he settled on the couch, lying here, he just let his mind empty. This was the most bizarre case he’d ever had. But then he’d only had very few of them. Smiling, starting to feel a whole lot better, he got up and had a quick shower, pulled off the sheets, then made the bed with fresh, clean bedding.

  When he came out again to the living room, he sat back down on the couch to study the beautiful view in front of him. And then it hit him. He didn’t know what it was yet, but that feeling of wrongness was building and building and building. He grabbed his phone to call her, and Kate answered right away, her voice much happier now. “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know, but something’s wrong. I’m sure of it.”

  “Like what?” she snapped.

  “I don’t know, but it has to do with Pamela.”

  “Okay, if you say so. We’re still at the hospital, and she’s getting checked over right now. She hasn’t done any talking yet.”

  “Right. Does she have a phone with her? Or a laptop? Anything?”

  “She has a phone, but it’s got no battery in it.”

  “Interesting, that doesn’t ring true.”

  “What are you saying?” she asked curiously.

  “I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “But something must be.”

  “Yes, and I know I shouldn’t be saying this, and I have nothing to back it up, but …”

  “Come on. Just spit it out,” she said impatiently.

  “I don’t trust her. There. I said it.”

  “Jesus, you’re the one who sent us there to rescue her.”

  “I know. I know. I just … Something’s wrong.”

  “Good enough. I’ll see what I can figure out.” And, with that, she hung up.

  Now there wouldn’t be any hope for sleep at all for Simon. Because whatever the hell was going on had to do with Pamela. He just didn’t know if she wasn’t telling the truth or if something else was happening. And he wished to God he did know.

  Chapter 22

  Kate studied the woman being checked over in the hospital. Rodney was beside her, a big grin on his face. She whispered to him, “Simon says something’s wrong.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Does he know that we got her?”

  She nodded. “He does. I’m looking forward to interviewing the parents.”

  “Yeah, me too. I can’t believe we found those poor girls down there.”

  “I’m still shocked to know they’ve been there for years, I just …” Like Simon, now Kate was wondering what was going on. “As long as Pamela’s okay here, I’d like to go back and interview her parents.”

  “They’re at the station, waiting for us.”

  Leaving guards to keep an eye on Pamela, they headed back to the station. Separating the parents, she walked in on the father, introduced herself again, put down the tape recorder. “I’m recording this interview.”

  “You can do whatever you want. I’m not saying another word until my lawyer gets here.”

  “I understand. Human trafficking is a pretty serious crime. But, for the moment, I’d just like to talk about Pamela.”

  He snorted. “You don’t have a clue about Pamela.”

  “No, I probably don’t. Something’s definitely wrong.”

  “You think?”

  “Was she normal before she lost her daughter?”

  He hesitated, then said, “All we could figure out is that’s what brought this on.”

  She nodded. “When you think about it, it was pretty traumatic.” He didn’t say anything. She wasn’t even sure how to direct the conversation to help resolve the anxiety building inside her. Then she realized she had one avenue. “Given her depression over what happened, when did you realize she was a danger?”

  He groaned. “She’s always been a little off. When she hates, she hates with a passion.”

  “And so, she directed that passionate hate to the person who killed her daughter?”

  “Yes, of course, but she couldn’t get at him because he was sent to jail.”

  “And now?” She wrote herself a note to check on the
status and the location of the driver.

  “I believe he’s served his sentence and was released. Might want to check on their welfare instead of bothering us.”

  She froze and looked up. “You think your daughter might harm the driver who killed Jillie? And how would your daughter have managed to do something like that? Particularly given the way you were holding her hostage.”

  “I’m not talking. I don’t have any proof.”

  “No, but you have suspicions.”

  He groaned. “I’ve got a hell of a lot of suspicions. I’ve got even more than that. But uh-uh. Not until my lawyer gets here. Then we can talk.”

  “You mean that you want a plea deal for the trafficking in exchange for information on your daughter, is that it?”

  He just gave her a thin smile and buttoned his lip.

  She nodded. “We’ll talk when your lawyer gets here.” She got up and walked out. She reached for her phone and tried to contact the driver with the expired glasses who had killed Pamela’s daughter. There was no answer. Contacting the family, she asked for an update.

  “What update?” the woman said. “He was killed several weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How did he die?” But she knew; goddammit, she knew. “He was hit by a car while riding his bike.”

  “And he was riding a bike, why?”

  “Because he had killed a child. With a felony on his record, he didn’t get to drive again,” she snapped, “at least not for a very long time. And then the irony of it all is that he ended up in a car accident.”

  “And where did that occur?”

  “Up by the university,” she said.

  “I don’t remember seeing an accident report about that.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t see it.” She added, “If you want to find it, it wasn’t right at the university. The accident was just a few blocks away.”

  “Right.” Kate pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do the investigators know who did it?”

  “No, not at all. It was a hit-and-run.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kate murmured.

  “He made a lot of mistakes in his life, but killing that poor child was an accident. He wasn’t paying enough attention, and he needed a new pair of prescription eyeglasses for sure, and, of course, he deserved to be punished for killing someone, but he didn’t deserve to die.”