Forgive Me

by Daniel Palmer

  CHAPTER 29

  Exhibit D: Excerpts from the journal of Nadine Jessup, pages 44-50

  I am here in the basement on my bed (my bed, ha that’s a good one, like I want to claim it for my own . . . mine, mine, mine). Anyway, here I am on a bed in my, oh let’s call it “designated area,” my cube (like where my dad’s employees work) down in this bogus maze of makeshift rooms. I’m staring up at a ceiling carpeted with so much mold I want to gag, waiting for something to happen, something I don’t want to have happen. I don’t want another job, another man, but someone will show up because someone always shows up. To pass the time, I’m sneaking in a little journaling, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I still feel sick and dirty and disgusting. Whatever was me, the old me, I think has rotted away and now whatever I am is all that’s left.

  At least I have something inside me to numb the pain, something Tasha gave me, something small and blue that makes the mold on the ceiling ripple like waves and my body feel weightless and my soul feel free. I can do anything in this state of mind. Even let them use my body as an ATM for “Stinger” Markovich, Ricardo, and the others. I understand that I’m here, trapped in this situation because of me and nobody else. I could have said no to the pictures. I could have somehow not fallen for Ricardo, not trusted him, escaped from that first apartment when he gave me the chance. I could have said no to the work, no to using my body, but I didn’t fight them because I was afraid—afraid of them—and now I’m a part of this. You can’t separate a part from the whole without suffering, Ivan said to me. He told me you can’t cut off an arm and not have it bleed.

  I could try and leave this place, sure, but I know it’s going to hurt if I do. Somehow it’s going to hurt badly, so I’m stuck here and probably I’ll stay here until I disappear like Jade, the older girl they starved until she wouldn’t eat. I’ll stay here until the day another girl takes my place and lies on this very bed (my bed/her bed), staring up at the same mold-covered ceiling.

  I saw Ricardo for the first time in a while. He kissed me on the lips, but I played possum, acted like I was dead, didn’t kiss back at all, and he didn’t like it so he didn’t stick around for anything more. He said he’s with a new girl now and he’s not going to bring her here because he loves her too much. Strange. For all the horrible things Ricardo has done to me, horrible horrible things, I thought he couldn’t possibly hurt me anymore than he already had.

  I was wrong.

  The craziest thing just happened. I mean crazy! I’m still freaking out. My heart is racing like mad and Tasha gave me something to calm me down, but I don’t think it’s working. I don’t know what to do. I’m so happy I want to burst into tears, but I’m so scared I want to cry, as well, so I’ll be back in a minute because I’m going to the bathroom to cry my eyes out and probably puke.

  Miss me? Ha-ha. No, really I did leave and I really did cry, but I didn’t puke. Whatever, I feel so much better, but I’m still not sure what to do or what to make of what just happened. Here’s the skinny. I’m downstairs in the room (yes, that room) just chillaxin, high as a raindrop spit from a cloud (my friend Brianna used to say that) so that was good. I’m numb to this now, so I can be (as my mom would say) flippant about what it is I do to survive, though the pills help, the pills make it a whole lot easier to get the job over with. And this job was some middle-aged guy with a middle-aged belly and it was gross what he came here to do so I hated him right away. But I played with him because that’s what’s expected of me and the alternative is the hole.

  Tasha was awake when I got back upstairs. She was making tea, something she did a lot. She had on gray sweats and a blue T-shirt and looked super relaxed which was so weird to me. This was just Tasha’s life. This was her normal and I guess it was my normal, too. It was hard to get my head around that one. When we weren’t downstairs being fantasy gals or release valves for these sicko Johns we wore sweats and drank tea and watched television and did Sudoku and read books and cried. Just because we are prostitutes doesn’t mean we stopped having feelings.

  Tasha had a funny look on her face and I asked her what was wrong. She told me she went out with Ricardo, Casper, and Buggy for drinks with a couple of the girls. I knew which ones without her having to say. Getting out of here had everything to do with how long a girl had been on the job. Like I wrote, I go out rarely, and I’m always accompanied. For the most part I’m kept indoors like a house cat. Tasha has more freedom because with more years comes more trust.

  Tasha told me she was hanging out at Club 324 and some guy came up to her and started talking. Casper got all territorial (her word), but she told him to go away. It could be business, right? Then this guy starts asking questions about me. He describes me anyway, calls me Nadine (Tasha didn’t know my real name) and he showed her a picture of me on his phone. He told her my mom was looking for me and she had hired him to find me. Tasha told me she didn’t say yes or no, but the guy is persistent. He says he followed Ivan to the apartment building. And they think I might be with him. He thinks he knows what this place really is. So Tasha on the sly told this guy that I’m fine and healthy and all that, and then she gave him the cold shoulder, but not before the guy gave her a phone and a card of some woman named Angie.

  After this big news I’m all kind of freaked out. Tasha poured us both a cup of tea and we sat on the futon aka my other bed. She placed the phone and business card on the coffee table and told me the choice was mine. My body went hot and cold at the same time and it had nothing to do with being high (which I was BTW). It was the weirdest feeling ever, I mean so surreal I can’t even begin to explain it. Tasha knew exactly what that phone call might mean. Police. A raid. A rescue. But what about her? This was her life now. She had no family. No money. No relatives. She had nothing but Casper, Buggy, Ricardo, and Ivan. And horrible as it was, it was better than the unknown and that’s where she’d be headed, into the unknown. No money for food, no place to live, and nobody to supply her with pills. Believe me, the pills were an important part of the equation. But she said she knows what this life is, and what it will do to me. It’ll turn me into her and she doesn’t want that for me, so she gave me the phone and said the choice is mine. But what will happen to Tasha if I make that call? What would happen to me?

  And that’s when I started to panic. Could I just leave? Should I? What was I going to tell my mom and dad once I got home? What would they think of me when they found out what I had done? I don’t belong there anymore. I belong here, right where I am.

  Tasha called me her little sister. She said she’d understand if I made the call and I shouldn’t worry about her. I told her how scared I was, how I was afraid of going home, afraid if I left they would find me and kill me or kill my mom and dad. If I left, they would put everyone who stayed behind down in the hole, including Tasha. I wanted Tasha to reassure me that I was overreacting. I wanted her to tell me I had nothing to worry about, that nothing would happen to me, or to her, or to my parents. That’s what I wanted her to say. Instead, she told me she understood and that she’d feel the exact same way.

  CHAPTER 30

  Angie left her father’s house at 4:30 in the morning. She woke her dad to tell him she was going, and without delay got in her car and drove out of town. She would talk to him about the check registers later, when he was more awake and his memory could be trusted. She drove north instead of east, a long detour on her way to DC because some news had to be delivered in person.

  Carolyn Jessup came to her front door dressed in a checkered bathrobe, looking half asleep. Angie had awoken her with a phone call made from Carolyn’s front porch. She made the call so Carolyn wouldn’t have to wait long to find out what Angie had come to share. Carolyn’s hair was tangled, and her eyes, ringed with dark circles, showed the strain of her daughter’s absence.

  “We think we’ve found her,” Angie said. “We believe your daughter is alive and in good health.”

  Carolyn’s legs buckled as her eyes misted over. Ang
ie grabbed Carolyn’s arm to hold her steady.

  Carolyn placed a hand to her chest, her ragged breathing made it difficult to speak. “Where—where is she?”

  “Baltimore,” Angie said.

  Carolyn let out a sob. “Why? Who is she with?”

  “Invite me in. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Soon they were seated at a kitchen table. Carolyn didn’t offer Angie any tea, not even a glass of water. She only had time to get the facts.

  Angie explained to Carolyn how they had followed Nadine’s trail from Union Station to an apartment building in Baltimore. She told her about Mike’s encounter at a bar with a woman he believed knew Nadine.

  “Who does she know in Baltimore?” Carolyn asked.

  Angie pulled her lips tight. Breaking news usually involved breaking hearts. “You need to brace yourself. We think Nadine is being trafficked for sex.”

  Carolyn made an expression Angie had seen on people who had just been shot—horror, shock, sadness, and confusion blended into one.

  “She’s just a girl,” Carolyn said, her lower lip trembling. “She’s my baby girl.” Tears. “I need a drink. Excuse me a moment.”

  Angie waited at the kitchen table while Carolyn got the vodka from behind the cereal. Who was she hiding it from? Angie wondered. Herself?

  Carolyn poured a shot of vodka into a chilled glass she got from the freezer, downed it, and then poured another. “What now?”

  “Now we try to get her out of there. Safely.”

  “Can’t she just leave?”

  “It’s not that easy. Your daughter is very scared.”

  “Who has her?”

  “We think it’s a Russian named Ivan Markovich. We don’t know the other men involved. We’re working on getting IDs. These are very bad people, Carolyn, I’m not going to lie to you. Your daughter is in danger.”

  “Then call the damn police and get her out of there.” Carolyn’s jaw tightened as her eyes turned fierce.

  “We already did. My associate Mike has gone to the Baltimore PD and filed a report.”

  “And there’s been no action taken?”

  “No.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Hard to say. These things happen. They did send a cruiser by the apartment, but that’s it. Nobody is storming the castle. It could be that the police have used the service, if you know what I mean, and some detective with the Baltimore PD has an incentive to do nothing.”

  Carolyn’s disgusted face said it all. Angie didn’t tell her about the runaway named Elise and the standoff and how that police action turned out. In a way, Angie was glad no action had been taken.

  “Look, I know this hard to hear. I do. But Mike gave the woman a phone to give to Nadine. There’s a chance we can coax her out of there, and that’s what we’re going to try and do.”

  “But they’re going to hurt her.”

  “I don’t think so. They want your daughter healthy so she can . . . can . . . work for them.” Work for them. Angie grimaced at her turn of phrase. What else was she supposed to say? The truth, she supposed, but Carolyn was smart enough to figure out the euphemism all on her own.

  “Can you get her out?” Carolyn’s hands were trembling, and the third shot of vodka didn’t quiet the shakes.

  “She’s probably rooted. I want to give her some time to think her options over. We believe she has a phone now, and my card.”

  “Let me call her or text even.” Carolyn sounded desperate, but Angie was going to hold firm.

  “We’re waiting for her to make the first contact.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we can’t be certain who has the phone. It could be the woman we gave it to, or Nadine, or someone else. What we don’t want is for Nadine to be linked to the phone. It could be dangerous for her. Best to wait and see if she makes first contact. I’m counting on it that she will. We’re going back on stakeout. When she wants out, we’ll be ready to receive her. Meanwhile, we’ll keep putting pressure on the police.”

  Carolyn stood, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She knelt and put her head in Angie’s lap. Her sobs came in waves, her body convulsed in sputters.

  Angie stiffened at first. Her job was to hunt, to find, to retrieve. She was a task-oriented person, goal-driven, and so she froze, unsure exactly how to comfort Carolyn in her time of grief. Then, very gingerly at first, but soon with more confidence, Angie stroked the back of Carolyn’s head and shushed her the way her mother had consoled her.

  “Promise me you’ll bring her home,” Carolyn said, her voice cracking.

  Angie knew better. So much could go wrong, so many terrible things could happen. Of course she knew better. “I promise,” she said, smoothing the back of Carolyn’s head. “I promise.”

  Raynor Sinclair had followed Angie all the way from Arlington to Potomac and that amused him. Wasn’t she the purported expert at tailing someone? And he was tracking Angie in plain sight, never once rousing her suspicion. She made a pit stop at her apartment before journeying to Maryland, but the detour wasn’t to evade him. She had gone upstairs and came down minutes later, taking enough time to water a plant and check the mail, he supposed. There were dozens of ways Angie could have lost him if she had wanted to, but she took no counter measures.

  Highway driving made it especially easy to spot him in his Acura SUV. All Angie had to do was change speed—say, drop her speed from seventy-five miles per hour down to sixty. If she still saw his car in her rearview mirror, it would be cause for concern. With little traffic on the roads at that time of morning, he was relatively easy to spot, but she was clueless. She was focused on all the wrong things.

  Good for him, bad for her.

  Angie left the highway. Raynor did the same, following at a safe distance as she drove along leafy streets dotted with fine-looking homes, all with well-tended lawns.

  They reminded him of his childhood home in Madison, Wisconsin. More specifically, the lawns reminded him of his father, now long dead, the man who had taught him how to grow grass and the proper way to cut it. No grass grew where Raynor lived now, a two-bedroom luxury apartment in DC that boasted of being a big city sanctuary in the middle of everywhere.

  His father had taught Raynor many things, including how to hunt. Raynor might have shunned grass for a concrete landscape, but he still loved to hunt, and tracking Angie counted as sport.

  A hundred or so yards up ahead, she pulled to a stop. Raynor pulled over as well. From his car, he watched her ascend a flight of stairs to the wide front porch of a colonial home. A woman came to the door and Angie went inside. No other cars were parked curbside, so he decided to drive around the block. A check of the address told him it was Carolyn Jessup’s residence. Angie’s business there was perfectly justified.

  He had a good idea where she’d be headed next. With only one way to get there from where he was, Raynor drove off and found parking where he could wait without being conspicuous. Eventually, he would affix a GPS tracker to the undercarriage of Angie’s car so he could watch her all the time. The technology, though, didn’t feel like sport. It felt like cheating.

  Sport. Hunting. Raynor again thought of his father, Truman Sinclair, a stoic disciplinarian who’d corralled four sons with lies about needing only the Bible, when what he really used was his belt. Of the four brothers, Raynor, who was the youngest, was also the best hunter. He could innately judge his quarry’s pace. As Wayne Gretzky famously said of the hockey puck, Raynor went not to where the animal was, but to where the animal was going to be. He could spot blood on a trail as if he possessed a hound’s nose for the scent.

  A memory came to him—the blur of a grouse carving through thickets.

  It was a difficult shot, one Raynor’s brothers and his highly skilled father would have passed on. But Raynor thought he could hit the bird, even though his backside hurt from the belt beating he’d taken the day before. Only fourteen years old, and somehow he could block out his excruciating pain to get a lo
ck on his target.

  Raynor and his father were grouse hunting by themselves.

  “Quality time,” his dad called it as he tightened the laces of his boots. The hunt was Truman Sinclair’s way of apologizing for the thrashing he had given his son over a stack of video games Raynor stole from the home of a neighborhood kid.

  He had been at the boy’s home the day of the theft, so it wasn’t a stretch when suspicion fell on him. Parents exchanged phone calls, and upon returning home from his job at the insurance company, Truman Sinclair went on a hunting expedition of a different sort. In no time, he found the missing items in a shoebox stashed underneath Raynor’s bed. Confronted with the evidence, Raynor had no choice but to confess. Punishment was meted out swiftly and without mercy. The belt, oh the damned belt.

  Tears clung to Rainer’s eyes as his father drove him to the neighbor boy’s home to return the stolen items. The pain from the welts on his backside paled when compared to the agony of his humiliation. While the boy stood in the doorway of his ranch home looking smug, the mother stood behind her son as triumphant as a queen rejoicing over her enemy’s head on a spike.

  She wasn’t rejoicing the day Raynor shoved a stick through the spokes of her beloved son’s bicycle wheel as he barreled down Ridge Road. The bike stopped rolling, but the boy kept going—right over the handlebars and onto the unforgiving pavement, where he landed with a crunch. The boy suffered a cracked skull, broken leg, and a raft of internal injuries. Police never did find out who shoved a branch through the bicycle wheel. That was because while the boy lay on the ground, bleeding from the ears, Raynor set the heel of his boot on the boy’s throat and swore he’d kill him if he ever told.

  The kid spent two weeks in a hospital recovering. He was really never quite the same. Popular and preppy before, Smash Mouth (that’s what Raynor called him) turned moody and withdrawn. At a class reunion years later, Raynor heard that Smash Mouth, then in his twenties, had overdosed on painkillers while living in his parents’ basement.