“We can’t wait. We’re already here, and I want to know if Emily’s in one of these rooms before her kidnapper sees us.”
Lance put his hand on the door handle. “Man, we are so dead.”
“We’re just going into the office.”
Lance blew out a sigh and opened his door. Barbara got out and tried to assess the risk. At least they wouldn’t have far to walk. She locked the car and waited for her son, wishing she had a gun. When Lance was beside her, she pushed into the front office.
The motel clerk sat behind a barred window, in what looked like a cage. The room was thick with cigarette smoke and body odor.
The once-white linoleum was rotted and peeling, and mold grew on walls that had once been a mint-green. Leak stains soiled the ceiling.
She stepped up to the window and peered through the dirty glass. “Excuse me.”
The round, bald man looked at her like she was a nuisance. “We don’t got no vacancies.”
“I’m not looking for a room.” She thrust a picture of Emily between the bars, through an opening in the glass. “I’m looking for my daughter. She’s eighteen, blonde, pretty.”
He took one look and shrugged. “Fits the bill of half our girls.”
“She would have checked in last night.”
“Didn’t see her.” He turned away from the window.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see your guest registration?”
He laughed. “This ain’t the Marriott, lady.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“I don’t have a guest registration. I don’t ask questions. Rent the rooms out by the hour, day or week, and that’s that. And there weren’t no girls checking in last night. I was here, and I’d remember.”
Lance stood stiff, his hands in his pockets. “Mom,” he said in a quiet voice, “maybe she didn’t check in. Maybe she just went straight to somebody’s room with the guy she was with.”
That could be a possibility, but how would she get to the bottom of that? “She was with a man. They may have come here for drugs.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and gave a phlegmy laugh. “Oh, why didn’t you say so? Yeah, the drug dealer, he’s in room 2308.” He threw his head back and guffawed. “You think I’m crazy, lady?”
She looked at Lance, who was staring at his feet as if afraid he’d make the guy mad. “Mom, let’s go.”
“I guess I’ll have to go door-to-door,” she said. “I’ve called the police to help me. I’m going to find my daughter if we have to question every person here.”
He kept laughing, and she realized why he was sitting in a cage. Someone probably wanted to kill him three or four times a day.
She bolted out of the office. Thankfully, Kent was pulling up in his unmarked car. She let out a lungful of air. “Thank you, God.”
“Ditto,” Lance said.
Kent got out. “Barbara, what are you doing?”
“I’ve come to get my daughter,” she said, walking past him and rounding the office. “I would appreciate your help.”
He caught up to her. “You’ll never find her, barging up to their doors like some narcotics agent.”
She swung around, hair slapping her mouth. “Well, since you brought it up, why aren’t the narcotics agents doing something about this place?” Tears of rage reddened her eyes, and she resumed her trek. “Don’t tell me the cops don’t know what goes on here. Why do they allow it? Why do they turn their heads to this kind of evil?”
“We do the best we can, Barbara.”
“Well, the best you can stinks! I’ll make them talk to me. I’ll give them money for information. I have a little cash.”
“You may not get out of here with your life, much less your cash. And bringing Lance with you? Barbara, please let us handle this.”
“You’re not handling it,” she grated.
“Yes, we are. We’ve already been here.”
“Did you interview everyone here? Did you show them her picture?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t want to hear it. Whatever they’d done, it wasn’t enough. Emily could be in one of these rooms right now, held against her will. She pushed past him and headed for the cluster of men who’d frightened her earlier. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Can I have a word with you?”
“Mom! ” Lance whispered.
“Barbara, I’m warning you — ”
“I’m looking for my daughter.” She thrust the picture at the first one she reached. He had tattoos covering both biceps, and a dirty sleeveless T-shirt with food stains on it. “She came here last night in a cab. Did any of you see her?”
The men looked deadly, but she didn’t care. “Naw, we ain’t seen nobody,” one of them said. “I’d remember her.”
The others snickered.
“There’s a reward,” she told them.
Kent stepped forward and flashed his badge. “Kent Harlan, Atlanta PD, Homicide Division,” he said, getting between her and the thugs.
“There’s a reward for any information that leads to our finding her,” Barbara said again.
“A reward?” one of the men asked. “How much?”
She didn’t even pause to think. “A thousand dollars.”
“On the spot?”
She hesitated. “I don’t have it in cash. I have two hundred dollars cash right now, and will pay you the rest after we find her.”
“Give me the two hundred now, and I’ll talk to you,” a man with no teeth said.
“Information,” she repeated. “Tell me where my daughter is.”
The man cursed her and backed away, and the rest of the men scattered, some walking up the street, others going into rooms.
“I’ll go talk to the desk clerk,” Kent said, “but right now, I need for you to wait in the car.”
“But I — ”
“Barbara, they know you have cash. You’re a sitting duck. Sit in the car with the doors locked.”
His tone brooked no debate, so she did what he told her. She led Lance back to the car. When they were inside, she locked the doors and watched Kent go into the office.
Lance shook his head. “Way to go, Mom. Blazing up there like Jack Bauer. My mom, the terror of dope dealers everywhere.”
She didn’t find it funny.
“You think they have room service here?”
He was clearly trying to break the tension, but she couldn’t find a smile within her.
“Pool looks nice.”
Her gaze gravitated to the pool. There were no lights over it, but in the moonlight, she could see the black algae floating on it.
Kent came back out, his face grim, and knocked on her window. She unlocked the door, and he slipped into the backseat. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said, leaning up on her seat. “When I got your hysterical phone call, I was on the phone with Trish’s credit card company. Trish Massey’s credit card was used to buy gas and some grocery items at the convenience store across the street, just this afternoon. Last night it was used to buy about a thousand dollars worth of stuff at Sears.”
She frowned. “What kind of stuff?”
“High-ticket items. Stuff that was probably pawned for cash.”
Drug money, she thought. Or maybe Emily was just trying to raise cash for a place to sleep.
“We don’t have the authority to bust into these rooms without a warrant. Now if you can wait until morning, I can get video of the person who used the credit card, and we can see if it’s Emily.”
The back door opened, and Barbara jumped. A woman slipped in. “If they see me, they’ll kill me,” she said. “So if you want to hear what I have to say, start driving.”
Barbara started the car and glanced at Kent in the rearview mirror. He nodded. She pulled out of the parking lot. “Did you see my daughter?” she asked.
“You said something about a reward?”
Barbara stuck one hand in her purse and pulled out all the cash she had. “I h
ave two hundred dollars. It’s yours, if you give me some information I can use. Eight hundred more after the banks open, if your information leads us to her.”
“I saw the two people who came in a cab yesterday,” she said. “I didn’t see them leave, but I saw them get here.”
Barbara glanced back. Shadows kept the woman’s features dark, and she couldn’t see her eyes.
“Did you see what room they went in?”
“Yeah, they went in 4C. Give me the two hundred.”
Barbara looked at Kent.
“Did they check in,” Kent asked, “or was that someone else’s room?”
“Somebody else’s,” the woman said. “Belongs to a dude named Free-Roy. He’ll kill me if he knows I talked to you.”
“Is he a dealer?” Lance asked.
She looked at him. “Yeah, and I ain’t kiddin’ about him killing me.”
Barbara almost ran into the car in front of her. She pulled into a dark parking lot and handed the woman the cash. She looked at her fully now. She had black teased hair, like a fifties beehive, skimpy clothing, too much eye makeup. “If you see her again, call me, and there may be eight hundred more.” She gave the woman a card with her phone number on it. “Do you want me to take you back?”
“No, I can’t be seen with you. I’ll walk back.”
“But isn’t it dangerous?”
“It’s my ’hood,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
The woman got out of the car and took off up the street. Barbara imagined she would spend that two hundred within the hour. She looked back at Kent. “What now?”
“Back to the motel,” Kent said. “I’ll call for backup, and we’ll see who’s in that room.”
twenty-six
Andy and four backup officers showed up with a search warrant that Andy had acquired by waking up a judge. Kent made Barbara and Lance wait in the locked car as they searched 4C. Even though the dealer had had plenty of time to dispose of his drugs, knowing a cop was sitting in the parking lot, they were still able to find enough to lock up everyone in that room.
Unfortunately, it was only three men. Emily was nowhere to be found. As Kent escorted them out in handcuffs, he glanced through Barbara’s windshield and shook his head. She slammed her hands on the steering wheel.
Kent didn’t like making deals with drug dealers, but sometimes it was necessary to get information about important cases. Tonight was one of those nights. He took the men outside and separated them in three police cars. He went to the man who seemed in charge and leaned inside the door.
“Tell me something about the girl, and I might lower your charge from distribution to possession.”
“I don’t even know their names, man! They come in last night and got some dope from somebody.”
“You?”
“No, not me, man. I don’t do that. They didn’t have much money, so they left and raised some cash and come back again.”
“How did they raise the cash?”
“Got a ride to Sears, bought a bunch of stuff with a credit card, then pawned it all. They come back a few hours ago, got what they wanted. Took off after that.”
Kent went back to his car and got Emily’s picture. Shining a flashlight on it, he said, “Is this the girl?”
The man studied it for a minute. “Naw, man, I don’t think so.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure. I seen that girl on the news. I’da recognized her. The girl I saw been here before. Dude with her too. Wasn’t their first time.”
Kent studied the man, not sure he was getting the truth. “After they got their dope, how did they leave? Did they have a car?”
“I think they left with somebody, man. I didn’t see ’em no more. But I’m tellin’ you, that ain’t her.”
He questioned the others and got the same story. Finally, he left the cops to complete the bust and went back to Barbara’s car.
“He says the girl who came here wasn’t Emily.”
Barbara slammed her hand on the steering wheel. “Give him a lie detector test or something.”
“I don’t have to. The girl and guy we’re talking about went to Sears this afternoon and used Trish’s card. I’ll get the time of the transaction and look at the Sears security tape. Hopefully, we’ll get a clear picture tomorrow and know for sure.”
The crushing disappointment on Barbara’s face would haunt him tonight. He doubted she would sleep a wink with that unanswered text screaming out to her.
twenty-seven
When Kent’s alarm clock went off at seven, he felt the lingering sleep deficit deep in his bones. He forced himself out of bed and stumbled to the coffee pot. The urgency of the missing girl kept him from wasting time, and he hurried to shower and shave.
At his office an hour later, he had a voicemail from Jack, the video tech who’d been working on the security tapes. “Hey, Kent, give me a call. The state lab just got back to me. I have some info for you.”
Kent called him right back. “Jack, what have you got?”
“Check your email,” he said. “I just sent you the new, enhanced video. They identified what we saw next to the car. It was definitely the back door opening, and a hand with a tattoo.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Could they identify the tattoo?”
“It’s a rising phoenix.”
“Perfect, thanks. I’ll look at it right now.”
He hung up and downloaded the picture. So this guy could be the one with Emily in the cab.
He checked the fax machine, found the credit card report he’d asked for last night. It showed the Sears purchase at eight o’clock the night of the murder. He checked his computer for the pawn shops open late. There was one in the area that was open until midnight. That had to be where they’d pawned the stuff they bought.
He grabbed a coffee on his way to Sears and found the manager, who took him to security. He studied each person on the video who’d gone through the line in the few minutes around the time the transaction had been made.
There was a girl who looked a little like Emily, with a guy in a baseball cap. Kent paused the tape and squinted at it. Could this girl be Emily? He pulled out Emily’s picture, compared it with the girl on the screen. The girl’s hair was shoulder-length, instead of long like Emily’s. And it was all one length. Emily’s was layered. Of course, the picture he had of Emily was almost a year old, and drug use had a way of thinning hair. And she could have cut it. But Emily was small, and this girl looked taller, rougher … and older. But he couldn’t be sure.
As for the guy … there it was. A tattoo on his right hand. The picture was too blurry to tell whether it was a phoenix, but the scale was certainly the same.
He downloaded the picture to his computer and called Andy on his way back to the office.
“Okay, let’s think this through,” Andy said. “So this dude is the one who got out of Trish’s car after the murder.”
“Right,” Kent said, “which means he could’ve been the one to kill Trish, instead of Emily.”
“Or they were working together. So was robbery the motive?”
“Not the main one. It was too premeditated. The Tubarine, the chloroform.”
“Maybe the robbery was an afterthought.”
Kent thought back over the video of Emily jumping out of the car. She hadn’t hung back to wait for the guy in the backseat. She’d launched out as if terrified. The guy had waited a few minutes before getting out. If he’d been with her, wouldn’t he have run when she did?
“What if Emily really was an innocent bystander?” Kent asked. “What if this guy was waiting for Trish? She had her itinerary up on her Facebook account. But she didn’t say that she had someone traveling with her. He could have expected Trish alone. Maybe Emily was a surprise.”
“Wouldn’t he have seen them walking up together?”
“Not if he was hiding in the backseat. And if he did
see them coming, Emily was straggling behind Trish. Maybe he didn’t realize they were together.” Kent tried to imagine what the girl would have done if she wasn’t involved. She’d stood outside the car to finish her cigarette. When she got in the car, what would she have seen?
“If Emily got into the car, saw her interventionist slumped over, and a killer in the backseat, of course she would have jumped back out and run for her life. Dude finishes the job, then slips out and disappears.”
“But they wound up together.”
“I’m not sure about that. The girl in the Sears video may not be Emily.”
“So if she’s an entirely different person, where was the Sears blonde while Tattoo-man was killing Trish?”
“Who knows?” Kent said. “Maybe waiting for him over in the taxi line.”
Andy was quiet for a moment. “Or maybe she was the driver of the Infiniti. We never saw whether that was a man or a woman. Emily could still be part of a conspiracy.”
“But then who got into the cab? No, that was a man and a woman. A woman who looked a little like Emily, but wasn’t her.”
“I don’t know, man,” Andy said. “There are still a lot of holes in this thing.”
“You’re right. I’m headed over to Barbara Covington’s hotel to show her the Sears video. She’ll know for sure if it’s Emily. But this girl looks to be in her late twenties, not eighteen.”
“Can you trust her mother to tell you the truth? You know, we haven’t considered the possibility that drugs have really changed Emily’s appearance. A year’s a long time. A lot of damage can be done in a year.”
“Still … a mother knows her daughter. I’ll be able to tell if her reaction is authentic. And the kid brother will react. He’ll tell me what I need to know.”
He called Barbara from the hotel parking lot to see if she was awake. She answered on the first ring.
“Barbara, it’s Kent. You got a minute? I’d like to come up and show you some video.”
“All right. Come on up.”
Within minutes he was in her room, pulling up the video from Sears, as she and Lance stood behind him, staring over his shoulders.
“Right here,” he said. “This couple.” He pointed to the man and woman in question and looked up at her.
Intervention Page 13
