Bones of the Lost: A Temperance Brennan Novel tb-16

by Kathy Reichs

  “How old are these titties?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Slidell drilled Creach with a look.

  “The ones come those special Mondays, they’re young.”

  “Kids?”

  “Look, man. I don’t ask their IDs.”

  “And sometimes these young ladies rock your world.”

  “No way.” Creach’s head wagged too fast and too many times. “One of them complained about something, it wasn’t me. Or if they’s underage or something.”

  “Uh-huh. Let me guess. You can’t afford poontang at the Bronco, so you go down market to the Passion Fruit. What, the chicks a little older there? Maybe got all their molars?”

  “No. They’s young, too.” Creach was too thick to catch Slidell’s sarcasm. “I don’t like old pussy.”

  “You’re a real discriminating guy, CC.”

  Slidell sounded as revolted as I felt. After pausing a moment, he pulled a photo of Jane Doe from his assortment and whipped it across the table.

  “You know her?”

  Creach scratched an ear as he eyed the image. “Yeah.”

  Slidell’s eyes rolled up to the camera.

  I held my breath.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Candy.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “The Passion Fruit’s not a place for shooting the shit.”

  Slidell crossed his arms.

  Creach shrugged. “She didn’t speak no English, man. None of them did. They talked Spanish or some shit.”

  Slidell slid Ray Majerick’s mug shot across the table.

  Creach studied the face but said nothing.

  “I’m gonna say something here maybe I shouldn’t.” Slidell inhaled deeply, exhaled through his nose. “I think you’re trying, CC. But so far, it ain’t enough. You give me something to work with, I’ll do what I can to make the drunk-and-disorderly beef disappear.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Creach tapped the photo. “This guy was always there.”

  “At the Passion Fruit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He work there?”

  “I don’t know. Honest to fuck, I don’t. The girls called him Magic. Acted scared of the dude.”

  “Why?”

  “No fucking clue.”

  I hadn’t noticed the pumping foot go quiet. Until it started again.

  “This shit’s all confidential, right? It gets out I talked to you, it’s my balls to the wall.”

  Slidell flipped a pen and tablet across the table. “Write it down.”

  “I gave it up. Come on. We’re talking my ass!”

  Slidell was already heading for the door. He turned.

  “Do yourself a favor. Calm the fuck down.”

  “Hey! Wait! What happens to me?”

  I met Slidell in the hall.

  “What do you think, doc?”

  “His story seems to track.”

  “So we got Candy for our Jane Doe’s street name. Maybe Majerick for her pimp.”

  “You figure Majerick works alone, or as a handler for someone else?”

  “Magic’s too mean and too crazy to run a string. If that’s what we’re looking at.”

  I thought about Creach’s words. Young girls arriving every month.

  Arriving from where? Small towns? Middle-class burbs? Big-city ghettos? By buses? Trains? Vehicles in which they’ve thumbed free rides?

  A revolving carousel of women, moving in young and naïve, then sliding down the ladder to places like the Passion Fruit, addicted, broken, youthful optimism gone forever. It was a dispiriting vision.

  Suddenly one of Creach’s comments clicked with something D’Ostillo had said.

  “Show him Dom Rockett’s photo.”

  “Why?”

  “Will you just do it?”

  “Why the hell not.”

  On-screen, I watched the third photo slide across the table, not sure myself what reaction I hoped for.

  “Yeah. He was there.”

  “At the Passion Fruit Club.”

  “Yeah. Totally freaked the chicks out.”

  “They were afraid of him?”

  “Scared shitless.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  Slidell placed Rockett’s picture beside Majerick’s. “Did these men know each other?”

  “Same answer.”

  Slidell flicked impatient fingers.

  “Hell if I know,” Creach repeated himself.

  “Did you ever see them talking to each other?”

  Creach shook his head.

  The monitor receded. The room around me. Facts were clicking together fast.

  Dominick Rockett frequented the Passion Fruit Club. Our Jane Doe worked at the Passion Fruit using the street name Candy. Rosalie D’Ostillo saw Candy and other girls in the Taquería Mixcoatl. The taquería was near the intersection where Candy died. D’Ostillo and Creach thought Candy and the other girls spoke Spanish. Dom Rockett was an importer, probably a smuggler, who made frequent trips to South America.

  I heard Slidell’s footsteps click the tile in Interrogation Room C. The door open, close.

  Creach began whining about his rights. His deal with Slidell. His safety.

  The video and sound cut off.

  I stood in the musty little space, a cold hollowness filling my chest.

  Dear God.

  Could that be it?

  “SUPPOSE THESE GIRLS ARE BEING trafficked.”

  Slidell’s expression was beyond dubious.

  “Human trafficking. Think about it.”

  We stood outside the homicide unit squad room. Behind us, through a doorway, stretched a labyrinth of dividers, file cabinets, and desks. A few were occupied.

  “Creach says the Bronco Club features special dancers every month. Very young girls. You think they’re all hitching rides from Iowa and Nebraska?”

  “They’re strippers. They make a few bucks, they move on.”

  “And enroll in PhD programs at Yale,” I snapped.

  “That ain’t what I meant.”

  “Consider this. Who would be well positioned to meet the demand for a constant supply of young women?”

  Slidell gave me a skeptical look.

  “Dom Rockett,” I said.

  “Just ’cause the guy smuggles dead dogs don’t mean he’d smuggle live people.”

  I listed the points that had just toggled in my brain. Candy. The Passion Fruit. Spanish. Frequent buying trips to South America.

  “And Rockett had cash to invest in S&S Enterprises. Where’d he get it?”

  “You’re saying he greases his pockets trafficking child sex slaves?”

  Easy, Brennan.

  “I’m saying we need to consider the possibility that girls are being brought here illegally then forced to work in the sex trade.”

  “And that Rockett’s the doer.”

  “A number of factors point to him.”

  “Smuggling dead dogs is one thing. Smuggling kids is a mighty big leap.”

  “I understand that.”

  Slidell looked down at the file in his hand. Shifted his feet.

  “Majerick I could see, but that kind of operation is above his skill set. Rockett, eh?” He scrunched one side of his face and shook his head.

  I had to agree. My impression of Dom Rockett was conflicted. A scarred war hero. A man with no interest in helping ID a hit-and-run victim. I felt pity. I felt revulsion.

  “Rockett has the skill set, as you put it. And the infrastructure. The trucks, the supply routes,” I said. “Does he have the coldhearted ruthlessness to traffic helpless kids? I don’t know.”

  The callousness to kill if they rebelled? That thought was too terrible to voice.

  Two more neurons reached out.

  A plastic vial. An antique tusk.

  “Holy crap,
Slidell. I just thought of something else. Larabee found a sliver of ivory in Candy’s scalp.”

  “What’s ivory doing in a hooker’s hair?”

  “Will you let me finish?”

  Slidell looked at his watch.

  “When we were in Rockett’s house I saw a carved tusk in his living room. The thing looked old.”

  “And?”

  “What do you mean, and?” Sharp. “The worldwide ban on ivory has been in effect for over twenty years. Who has the stuff just lying around?”

  “I got an ivory marble my granddaddy give me.”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Calm down, doc.”

  “I am calm. Did you know that, other than drugs and guns, human beings are the most smuggled commodity on earth?”

  Slidell rubbed his chin.

  A phone rang in the squad room behind us.

  “I’ll write up a warrant. Not saying I’ll get one, but we’ve got Creach’s admission the Passion Fruit is a rub and tug. I’ll go with that. Once inside, we see what we see.”

  • • •

  While Slidell tried to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, I headed back to the MCME to do some research. I learned the following.

  A United Nations study put the estimated annual global profit from human trafficking at $31.6 billion. And that figure was a few years out of date. Given the industry’s steep growth curve, some were placing the total closer to forty billion.

  At any given time, 2.5 million people worldwide are in forced labor as a result of trafficking. One hundred and sixty-one countries are affected, 127 as exporters, 137 as importers. Asian and pan-Pacific countries are the most common source, followed by African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern Bloc nations.

  The majority of victims are between eighteen and twenty-four years of age, but roughly 1.2 million children are also trafficked annually.

  Trafficked individuals end up in bonded or forced labor, or in sexual servitude. Bonded laborers work to pay off a loan or service, often for years. Forced laborers work against their will, usually in domestic, farm, or sweatshop settings.

  Forty-three percent of all trafficking victims end up in involuntary commercial sexual exploitation. Ninety-eight percent are women and girls.

  After an hour I sat back, sickened.

  Runaways hoping for better lives as nannies, models, or maids. Teens meeting an exciting new date, an exotic stranger, an older man. Kids playing or walking to school, grabbed and thrown into the back of a van. All ending up in an inescapable hell of strip clubs, brothels, and pornographic films.

  I squeezed my eyes tight. The heartbreaking images remained.

  Children jammed in a pen, hands clutching the wire, eyes begging for help. A girl with bound wrists, face devoid of hope. Young boys on mats in a filthy basement.

  I hovered at the edge of a deep well of helpless rage.

  An e-mail pinged me back.

  I noted the sender. Read the subject line.

  Felt needles of ice dance my skin.

  You’re next, bitch.

  citizenjustice@hotmail.com.

  “Bring it on, you bastard!”

  I opened the vile thing.

  A single image filled my screen, a .jpg transmitted as an attachment.

  The picture showed a woman lying on her back, a dark puddle on the pavement below her head. The woman’s eyes were open and fixed on nothing. Her face was swollen and discolored and streaked with blood.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  The woman’s mouth gaped wide. Too wide.

  “Oh, Jesus. Oh, no.”

  Despite the blood, I could see that the woman’s mouth was empty.

  I stared, shocked and sickened. Knowing. The woman’s tongue had been severed, packaged, and left on my doorstep. Had I met her?

  The woman’s features were too distorted to allow recognition. If I even knew her.

  I ran my gaze down the supine body. The clothing was unremarkable, a jacket, dark pants, sensible shoes.

  I worked my way back up.

  The jacket was stained with what I assumed to be blood.

  My gaze fell on the woman’s neck.

  One heartbeat. Two. A dozen.

  The icy needles burned hotter.

  I grabbed my hand lens. Focused.

  Saw a heart-shaped mark in the hollow of the woman’s throat.

  My fist slammed the desk.

  Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit!

  Tears burned the backs of my lids.

  I got up. Paced. Furious. Miserable.

  Culpable?

  When the phone rang I nearly ignored it.

  “What!” More expletive than question.

  “You okay, doc?” Slidell.

  “I . . . Are you near a computer?”

  “Can be.”

  “I’m forwarding a photo to your e-mail.”

  “Could take a minute.”

  “Call as soon as you get it.” I prayed my voice didn’t reveal how gutted I felt.

  “I thought you wanted—”

  “Do it!”

  More pacing.

  The phone rang twelve minutes later.

  “Citizenjustice. Who is this dickwad?”

  I listened to Slidell’s breathing, knew he was studying the image.

  “It’s D’Ostillo,” I said.

  “The waitress at the Mixcoatl?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure?”

  “See the birthmark on her throat?”

  Slidell grunted.

  “It’s D’Ostillo. She talked to us and was killed.”

  “Now don’t go thinking this is your fault.”

  “Really? Whose is it? Whose idea was it to go to that restaurant?”

  “She’s the one called you.”

  “And for being a good Samaritan she gets her tongue hacked out!”

  I was close to tears. And hating it. Especially when talking to Slidell.

  Slidell was silent for so long I thought he’d disconnected. Given my rudeness, I wouldn’t have blamed him.

  “Getting sicker and sicker,” he said.

  “Whoever did this plays for bigger stakes than one teenage hooker.”

  “You’re thinking Candy and D’Ostillo are connected?”

  “You don’t? Candy was killed near the taquería. D’Ostillo told us she’d seen Candy in there, said she worked at the Passion Fruit. D’Ostillo’s dead, Candy’s dead.”

  “Still liking Rockett?”

  “Right now he’s topping my list.”

  “I’ll send the e-mail over to cyber crimes, see if they can capture an ISP. Techs can analyze the image. Filter it or enlarge it or whatever the fuck they do. Maybe we can nail the location.”

  “What are the chances the body’s still there?”

  Slidell made one of his Slidell noises. Then, “The Passion Fruit belongs to an outfit called SayDo, LLP.”

  “What?”

  He started to repeat. I cut him off.

  “Who are the owners?”

  “They’re not really into talking about themselves.”

  “Someone’s looking into it?”

  “As we speak. In the meantime, I got the warrant.”

  “When do you hit?”

  “Tonight. Putting a team together now.”

  “I want in.”

  “Yeah, I figured that.”

  THE NIGHT WAS COOL, THE air tainted with the smell of diesel and at least one peeved skunk. A full moon hung in the eastern sky, crossed by wispy fingers of black.

  “Nice night for a raid.”

  Slidell spoke from behind the wheel of a police cruiser. A uniformed cop named Rodriguez rode shotgun. I was in back.

  Ours was one of four vehicles idling in an industrial lot on Griffin, a bump north and fifty yards west of the Passion Fruit Club. Three Chevy Suburbans held three SWAT guys each. Slidell had come loaded for bear. His words.

  My heart hammered inside my Kevlar vest. Slidell’s id
ea. The thing was bulkier than the IBA I’d worn in Afghanistan. My ankle ached inside its boot.

  Words spit from a radio clipped to Slidell’s vest. He looked at Rodriguez. Rodriguez nodded.

  We got out. The others did the same, helmeted figures carrying AR-15 Bushmasters and Remington 700P .308 sniper rifles equipped with night vision. Bear.

  “Place has two doors.” Slidell’s face was hard to see in the dark, but the edge to his voice told me he was amped. “We’re going in pincers-style, Alpha and Charlie through the front, Beta and Delta through the rear.”

  “Any weapons inside?”

  “Proceed as though the place is an arsenal.”

  “We know how many are in there?”

  “Negatory. You’ve been briefed on persons of interest. If Ray Majerick or Dominick Rockett is on the premises, bag ’em. By the book. No rough stuff. We don’t want some asshole pinstripe arguing brutality.”

  We returned to our vehicles. Slidell cranked the engine, but not the lights. The armada rolled forward, silent but for the low growl of four motors and the crunch of sixteen tires on gravel.

  As planned, two units stopped outside the tattoo parlor. Two others circled the buildings. A single car sat in front of the Passion Fruit.

  Slidell cocked his head and pressed the transmit button on his rover. “Team Bravo in advance position?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Delta?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Alpha says green light. Let’s boogie.”

  A million headlamps and cherries lit the night. Our car shot forward, stopped so fast the rear end lurched left. Slidell and Rodriguez fired from their seats.

  I opened my door. Slidell pivoted and jabbed a finger in my face.

  “Your cheeks stay glued to that seat!”

  “Fine!”

  That was the deal. Remain in the car or get left behind.

  Slidell and Rodriguez crouch-ran forward, Glocks double-gripped and pointed up at the sides of their helmets. Charlie team joined them outside the Passion Fruit, one to either side, one in front of the door.

  Slidell spoke into his rover, not so quietly now.

  “Go!”

  One Charlie guy booted the door. I heard metal bang an inside wall. Glass shatter.

  Slidell and Rodriguez steamrolled in. Charlie team followed.

  Something boomed. A rear door?

  I heard Slidell’s muffled bellow.

  “Police! Everyone freeze!”

  Someone screamed, high and shrill.