Wonderland

by Jennifer Hillier

“Well, we now know he’s much younger than we thought.” Vanessa tapped her pen on the desk. “That makes a big difference, actually, because if he’s around twenty instead of being forty, then he probably worked at the park. I should call Wonderland and ask if there were any employees who’ve gone missing—” She stopped.

  “What?”

  Rifling through the papers on her desk, Vanessa pulled out a file and flipped it open. Aiden Cole’s picture stared out at her. She’d asked that snotty Claire Moran to find his file in the archives the other day when the boy’s father called, but then she’d forgotten all about it because of Homeless Harry.

  “Aiden Cole. Remember him? David Cole called the other day and yelled at me? His son was eighteen when he was last seen three years ago.” Vanessa read through the file quickly. It was woefully thin. “He’d be twenty-one now.”

  “The age fits, but that’s still a stretch.” Donnie looked skeptical. “Where’s he been all this time? Homeless Harry only died within the last week.”

  “Maybe Aiden was homeless,” Vanessa said. “Maybe he did leave on his own, and things didn’t work out as he planned, and he ended up on the streets.”

  “The streets of Seaside?” The detective looked even more skeptical. “Deputy, that doesn’t even make sense.”

  “The streets of Seattle. Or Portland. Or San Francisco.” Vanessa waved a hand. “That part doesn’t matter. It could be him.” Logging into the Seaside PD database, she typed in Aiden’s name. “Shit. No prints on file. I wonder if his dad has anything at home that might still have them.”

  “You really think it could be Aiden?”

  “It’s a lead.” Vanessa’s tone was grim, but determined. “I’m going to call David Cole, see if he’s got anything I can use.”

  “Maybe you should tell Earl first. You did say he was the one working on the ID.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not too concerned about Earl.” She flipped through her notebook, looking for the phone numbers she’d jotted down for David Cole. “I know what Earl’s agenda is, and so do you. If he wants me to close this case, he’s got to let me do my job. My way.”

  “Anything I can do?” Donnie asked. “Other than put on noise-canceling headphones for when the chief yells at you for keeping him out of the loop?”

  “I’m not keeping him out of the loop.” Vanessa gave him a dirty look. “I’m taking the initiative. You want to help, you can go assign Claire Moran to stake out Hovey’s house. I want round-the-clock surveillance, and Earl said I could authorize all the overtime I wanted.”

  “You really do have it out for Claire.” The young detective grinned.

  “Well, I could ask Nate Essex, but I have him searching high and low for Glenn Hovey, the security guard. Plus, yes, I really do have it out for Claire.” She finally found David Cole’s contact information and picked up the phone. “Keep looking for the Wonder Wheel Kid. You’re on all those social media sites, right? Start contacting Blake’s friends, find out what they know. His dad might not be concerned about him, but I am. I swear to god, if one of these people we’re looking for doesn’t show up soon, I’m going to start thinking there’s a bigger conspiracy going on.”

  Donnie’s cell phone rang and he checked the ID. “It’s Nate,” he said, answering the call. “What’s up?” He listened for a moment, then said, “Be right there.”

  “Did he find Hovey?” Vanessa asked, hopeful.

  “Sorry, no. Pete Warwick got a call to the Devil’s Dukes about an assault, didn’t want to go alone, so Nate went with him. They need backup, a girl got hurt, and everyone’s refusing to talk, including the victim.”

  “The Devil’s Dukes? The biker club down on Clove Street?”

  “The one and only. The guys, they don’t respect cops, as Nate is quickly learning.” He stood up. “They do slightly better with detectives, though, so I should go help him out.”

  “Can’t someone else take it? I need you to work on finding Blake Dozier. You’re better at the social media stuff than I am.” Vanessa thought for a moment. “You know what, let me call David Cole really quick and then I’ll go. It’s about time I paid a visit to the Devil’s Dukes anyway. I’ve always been curious about that place.”

  “You sure?” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s kind of a harsh environment for a woman.”

  Vanessa smiled. “You just said the exact wrong thing. Text Nate, tell him I’m on my way. I can call David Cole from the car.”

  “I’d wish you luck, but I’m not sure you need it,” Donnie said. “You’ve got bigger balls than most men.”

  “I’ve been told that before,” Vanessa said. “And I’ve never been able to figure out whether it’s an insult or a compliment.”

  THIRTEEN

  Under the Clown Museum

  Blake had no idea what day or time it was; all he knew was that he was starving, and if the rat ever came back to visit, he wasn’t opposed to killing it with his bare hands and eating it raw.

  Okay, maybe not. He had a squeamish stomach to begin with, but it was crazy the amount of fucked-up thoughts you could have when you were hungrier than you’d ever been in your entire life. A beetle had crawled by earlier and he’d missed it by one swipe. He used to think it was disgusting to eat bugs, like the contestants were forced to do on that old reality show Survivor, but now he understood that if you were starving, that beetle might have tasted like Chex Mix.

  The only thing that outweighed his hunger was his fear that he was going to die down here. Slowly, painfully, alone, and in the dark, with only a trace of dim ambient light coming from somewhere in the tunnel. In this moment he truly couldn’t think of a worse way to go. Drowning, fire, gunshot, bleeding to death—all of those things would be a faster death than what awaited him.

  Blake was in a dungeon of some kind, that much he knew. Wonderland’s midway was the last place he’d been, and the only positive thing about being on an involuntary fast was that it cleared the fogginess out of your brain, allowing you to start remembering things.

  He could remember sneaking into the park and climbing the Wonder Wheel. He was certain he’d taken pictures once he reached the top, but whether he’d gotten a chance to upload them, he couldn’t recall. That was where things started to get a bit hazy. He’d seen movement down below, someone in a golf cart, and then the wheel had begun to rotate. He’d lost his balance, almost slipping right off the goddamned wheel, but he’d managed to hang on long enough to get closer to the bottom.

  And then he’d fallen. He estimated he’d dropped maybe ten feet, not enough to kill him, but enough to create massive bruises on both legs, a sprained shoulder, and what he suspected might be a mild concussion.

  After that, everything had gone black, and at some point later on—much later on? a little later on?—he’d woken up on the floor here with his arms and legs bound. Then he’d passed out again, and when he woke up the second time, his arms and legs were free.

  His best guess was that he was somewhere in the bowels of Wonderland. The crazy part was that he’d heard stories about this dungeon from his dad, but he’d always dismissed them as urban legend. He never thought it actually existed.

  The joke was on him.

  The space he was in could best be described as a jail cell. Concrete walls made up four sides of the ten-by-ten-foot space, and there were metal bars where there should have been a fourth wall, with a locked door in the middle. The key to the door hung on a metal hook outside the bars, about five feet out of arm’s length, just close enough to torment him. He had a flush toilet, a sink with running water (which tasted clean, but you never knew), a small bed with a thin mattress and no pillow or sheets, and a thirteen-inch tube TV mounted to the upper rear corner of the cell, which didn’t work. Whoever had built this had set it up to be a space someone could stay in for a long time, assuming you had food.

  Which Blake did not. His stomach felt
like it was grinding all the time, and when he wasn’t thinking about how to get the hell out of here, he was thinking about food. He dreamed of food. He thought of all the food that was above him at the park right now being wasted: french fries carelessly falling out of paper cups, half-eaten hot dogs with ketchup and mustard being thrown into the trash, stale mini-doughnuts being tossed away and replaced with fresh ones.

  He went over to the sink and splashed more water into his mouth. It didn’t really help, though—if anything, the water made him more hungry. But he had to keep drinking, because he had to stay alive. Because it couldn’t end like this. Whoever had brought him here was surely coming back.

  Walking over to the bars, he put his hands around the cold metal and shook them as hard as he could. They rattled, which was a somewhat satisfying sound, but they weren’t budging. The bars were probably a foot deep into the concrete that also made up the floor and ceiling.

  “Help!” he shouted again. “Help! Anyone! Please!”

  He continued to rattle the bars, but it was no use. Nobody could hear him. Nobody was coming. His hand went to his pocket, feeling for his phone, which of course wasn’t there. He’d done this several times already; he was never without his phone, and he felt naked without it. But even if he could call someone, there’d be no cell service down here. And of course, the battery would be dead by now.

  All Blake could hope for was that enough time had passed for people to actually be concerned about him. He was known for being the kind of guy who had no problem disappearing for a day or two, without feeling the need to tell anyone where he was going, or where he had been. Sometimes he went off on his own, and sometimes he went with friends. Derek Dozier had never been the type of father to worry about him, anyway.

  Maybe this time, though, his dad would sense something was wrong. Maybe this time, he’d know his son was in real trouble and needed help. Blake could only hope.

  He shook the bars some more, then broke down in tears, something he rarely did. A minute later, the crying had graduated to full-on sobs, the likes of which he hadn’t suffered through since he was a kid. They heaved up from his chest in painful spasms to the point where it was hard to breathe.

  And then he heard something. Footsteps.

  They got louder as they got closer, and instinctively Blake backed up, moving away from the bars. A male figure appeared, dressed in all black, right down to the ski mask covering his face. In one hand he was carrying a cardboard box.

  He stood in front of the cell, a few feet away from the bars, staring at Blake with eyes that appeared black in the very dim tunnel.

  “Who are you?” Blake said.

  No response.

  “Who are you?” Blake screamed. “Let me out!” He rushed back toward the bars, his arms reaching through, clawing. “Let me out let me out let me out!”

  It didn’t faze the man in black, who reached into the box and began tossing food into the cell. It was all prepackaged stuff—candy bars, chips, cookies—but there were also a few bags of dried almonds, a few bananas and oranges, and a couple of plastic-wrapped sandwiches. The sticker on the sandwiches said SEASIDE MARKET, which was the grocery store on the south end of Main Street.

  Blake went right for the sandwich, a limp turkey and Swiss on day-old rye bread. He almost forgot to rip off the plastic, and when he took his first bite, his stomach cramped with equal parts pain and pleasure. Nothing had ever tasted so good, and he had to stop himself from cramming the entire thing in his mouth.

  Forcing himself to chew, he looked up. His captor was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  The Devil’s Dukes Motorcycle Club shared a parking lot with Clove Street Auto Repair. Both were owned by a man named Tanner Wilkins, a longtime resident of Seaside who was a biker and an ex-outlaw. While the Devil’s Dukes were described on their website as simply being “a place for Harley riders and cigar aficionados to meet and discuss shared interests,” the long list of incident reports filed with Seaside PD, ranging from disturbing the peace to drug use to assault in all degrees, told a different story.

  Two patrol cars were already parked outside, and a handful of Devil’s Dukes members were standing around the front entrance, dressed in typical biker gear—jeans, shirts, and leather vests with the DD logo sewn onto the back. Officer Nate Essex, who’d been chatting amiably with the group, met Vanessa as she got out of her unmarked.

  Vanessa liked Nate, a young redheaded rookie who’d joined Seaside PD a month earlier. The two had hit it off immediately; Nate was too new to be upset with her for unfairly securing her current position.

  “So is this a club or a gang?” she asked him as they walked toward the clubhouse. “Any illicit business currently going on here? Drugs, guns, prostitution?”

  The rookie shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Deputy, but I’m told Tanner Wilkins runs a pretty tight ship these days. About ten years ago, Double D was heavily into gang activity—drugs mainly, and some gun running. Supposedly they’re clean now. At some point Wilkins decided to go legit, and other than a few old busts for marijuana possession and disorderly conduct, nothing much has happened here. Especially now that pot’s legal in the state.”

  The dozen cars parked on the garage side of the lot were of various makes and models, but they all had one thing in common—they were all American made. “No Jap-crap,” as Vanessa’s father would have said, god rest his racist soul. There were three garage bays, doors open, and all contained cars being worked on by mechanics wearing coveralls.

  A row of Harley-Davidson motorcycles were lined up neatly outside the clubhouse. Their owners scrutinized Vanessa from head to toe as she approached. She recognized Pete Warwick, Nate’s partner, and gave him a nod. She introduced herself to the group.

  Leather vests and boots aside, the club members didn’t seem like outlaws. Only two were sporting beards. The other two looked like they could be bankers on their day off.

  “So why am I here?” Vanessa asked, addressing Nate and Pete.

  “Jenna Wilkins took a beating,” Pete Warwick said. “The witness says it was the boyfriend, Mike Bruin. He works as a mechanic on the other side of the lot.”

  Vanessa didn’t recognize either name. She could only assume the victim was related to Tanner Wilkins in some way. “And where’s Jenna now?”

  “Inside,” Nate said. “She refuses to speak to us, said she fell, but the witness assures us that’s not what happened.”

  “Who’s the witness?”

  “Her friend Debbie. She’s with Jenna inside.”

  “Did you see what happened?” Vanessa spoke to the bikers.

  “No, ma’am,” one of them responded. He had a long gray Vandyke, and the beard made him appear older, even though his eyes seemed young. “We didn’t see anything.”

  “Injuries?” Vanessa asked.

  “Lacerations on the face,” Nate said. “Black eye. Goose egg on the temple. Bruises on the arms, and a gash on the leg from where she fell.”

  “And what’s the story with the boyfriend?”

  “Well, it’s Mike Bruin,” Pete said, in a tone that implied the name should mean something to Vanessa. It didn’t.

  “And where is he now?”

  “Enjoying his last few moments on earth,” one of the younger bikers said under his breath, and his friend with the Vandyke jabbed him with an elbow.

  “Bruin’s in the second garage bay,” Nate said. “Officers Kelly and Cisco are talking to him.”

  “Tanner’s gonna kill him,” the biker muttered again. “He won’t care if Mike’s stepdad—”

  “Shut up, Ed,” Vandyke said. To Vanessa, he said, “We didn’t see nothing, we didn’t hear nothing.”

  Nate was about to say something but was distracted by the shouting coming from one of the garage bays.

  “I want to see Jenna!” a young man was yelling. He was tr
ying to exit the garage, but two officers were holding his arms. “I want to see her! Let me go, you fuckers!”

  “Why isn’t he cuffed?” Vanessa was incredulous. “He should be cuffed and in the back of the squad car.”

  Nate and Pete exchanged a look. “Uh, well, that’s why we called you,” Nate said. “We weren’t sure if that was the right move.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Other than the fact that this had happened at a biker club, this all seemed like your standard, run-of-the-mill assault-and-battery charge. “There’s a victim. There’s a witness. Protocol has it you arrest him and bring him in.”

  “Jennnnaaaaa!” the young man hollered from across the parking lot. “Jenna, I love youuuuu!”

  “Christ,” Vanessa said. “Go arrest him. I’ll talk to Jenna.” She looked at the bikers. “I’d appreciate it if you gentlemen stuck around. We might need your statements.”

  “We didn’t see nothing, we didn’t hear nothing,” Vandyke repeated. The other three dropped their gazes to the asphalt.

  Sighing, she entered the clubhouse, where the light changed immediately from bright sunshine to dim. The first thing she noticed was the smell. The room positively reeked of pot. It seemed to be everywhere, and the sickly sweet smell was so strong she almost gagged.

  It took a few seconds for Vanessa’s eyes to adjust, and when they did, she felt like she’d been transported to a different world.

  Oak walls were stained a dark brown color. A narrow bar lined one side of the clubhouse, where an older man wearing a denim shirt sat hunched over on one of the stools, nursing a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. A few sofas and club chairs of different sizes were dotted throughout the space, and a sixty-inch flat-screen TV was mounted above the giant wood-burning fireplace. It would have been an entirely masculine room, except that the TV was showing the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Vanessa chuckled at the incongruence.

  “If you’re looking for Jenna, head to the back,” the man at the bar said. He didn’t turn around. “First bedroom.”