by Kathy Reichs
“Eggers is a jackass.”
“Aqsaee identified you as the man who stole Ara. He would have told the village elders.”
Remembering the Polaroid in my backpack, my loathing burned more fiercely.
“Why Ara? Why not Khandan or Mahtab or Laila or Taahira? Or were they in the crosshairs, too, you miserable sonofabitch?”
“Girls have shit going for them over there.” Cold now. Controlled. I again tightened my grip.
“And you were going to make the world their dance floor.”
Gross brought one knee up and planted his foot. Swayed. Steadied himself.
I raised the pipe. “One move and I bash in your skull.”
Our eyes locked. Gone was any trace of the falsely accused war hero. Before me was a calculating predator.
Several beats, then Gross made his move. Too slow, too obvious. I read it and sidestepped his kick. Thrown off balance, Gross stumbled, then spun to face me.
I raised the pipe, ready to swing harder than I’ve ever swung in my life. But my action was also signaled. Gross lifted his forearms to parry the blow.
I checked my motion, dropped the pipe low, and brought it up in his crotch with all the power I could muster.
Gross doubled over.
Giving me time.
I hammered his shins. His kneecaps.
Gross dropped and curled fetal.
I stepped close and raised the pipe over his head.
My heart pounded. My breath wheezed in jagged gulps.
A thin wail penetrated the pandemonium in my ears and chest.
I stood, weapon poised, muscles flexed.
The wailing separated into sirens.
Reason overrode primal fury.
Or maybe I knew help was at hand.
I did not bring the pipe down.
Shortly, cruisers screamed up to the fence. Doors slammed. Lights pulsed red and blue on the house of horror at my back.
EPILOGUE
October is schizophrenic in Charlotte. One day you’re in shirtsleeves. The next you’re pulling on jacket and gloves.
The cold arrived on Sunday. It was a bitch bringing plants inside one-handed.
Monday I decided to build a fire. After much clumsy choreography, flames danced behind the antique brass screen shielding the hearth. The parlor smelled faintly of smoke and pine.
I’d done my duty in the wee hours of Friday morning. Seated in the back of a cruiser, I’d answered a barrage of questions from Slidell, a few from reporters who’d caught word via police-band receivers. I’d even given Allison Stallings a heads-up.
I’d seen Gross and his victims placed aboard ambulances. Heard Slidell contact headquarters to ensure that the girls were met by interpreters and SANE nurses. Watched Majerick and Rockett loaded into an ME van. Then, at Slidell’s insistence, I’d accepted a ride to the emergency department at CMC.
Thanks to Skinny’s phone bluster, I was treated immediately. X-rays revealed a broken scaphoid and a linear fracture of the distal radial border in my right wrist. The ED doc was astounded at my tale of hefting a pipe. I went home in a thumb spica splint the size of a mallet.
Perhaps he knew the strength of the painkillers I’d been issued. Perhaps he was busy grilling Story and Gross. Slidell gave me the weekend before coming to visit. Bearing a floral arrangement the size of an offshore rig.
In the intervening days Slidell had learned the following.
The bullet Larabee dug from Rockett’s brain was fired from Majerick’s gun. So were the two dug from his gut, and one dug from the brick behind him.
The bullet in Majerick needed no explanation. I would not be charged. The shoot had been ruled self-defense, and extremely lucky.
Luck was with me twice, actually. Once when I pulled the trigger. Once when Gross did. He’d scooped up Majerick’s gun while chasing me from the warehouse. The magazine wasn’t full when Majerick arrived. He’d emptied it while shooting Rockett.
Raids on the other SayDo massage parlors had turned up eleven more girls, all Afghan. Those from the NoDa operation were found in the basement of a closed beauty parlor, in conditions similar to those at the South End warehouse.
None of the girls spoke English. None had a legitimate visa or passport. Their ages appeared to range from thirteen to seventeen. All were now in the custody of ICE.
The girl Majerick was beating when I surprised him was named Huma. Little Bird. She came from a village not far from Sheyn Bagh. Huma had contusions, abrasions, and a broken nose, but was doing well.
Archer Story had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder as to both Ara and Rosalie D’Ostillo, with maintaining establishments for prostitution, and with promoting the prostitution of minors. He was also charged with multiple counts of human trafficking.
John-Henry Gross was charged with all of those offenses, plus attempted murder as to me.
The madams of all four establishments were charged with participating in the prostitution of minors and with human trafficking.
North Carolina statutes state that an individual commits the offense of human trafficking by knowingly recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining by any means a person to be held in involuntary or sexual servitude.
If the person is a minor, that constitutes a class C felony. At forty years per offense times at least sixteen victims, the defendants were looking at 640 years just on the trafficking counts. No wonder they were all scrambling to make deals. Story and the madams were singing like canaries on crack.
Story was claiming ignorance of any knowledge of trafficking or prostitution. His lawyers were proposing full cooperation in return for a sentence not to exceed fifteen years. Mrs. Tarzec and the other madams were offering guilty pleas in exchange for maximum sentences of eight years.
Gross’s attorney had approached the DA about a plea to reduced charges. The DA wasn’t biting.
“Will any of the girls testify?” I asked.
Slidell snorted. “They’re so freaked they won’t even raise their eyeballs when I’m talking to them.”
“But Majerick is dead and Gross is behind bars.”
“The pigfucks kept them cowed by threatening harm to their families. Majerick made the rounds with your morgue shot of Ara and Majerick’s pic of D’Ostillo. Said if anyone tried to run or slack off they’d get the same.”
“Majerick was citizenjustice?”
“Ee-yuh. Smarmy little bastard was watching from a truck outside the taquería. He dimed Gross to report that D’Ostillo was talking to us. Gross ordered her taken out in a way that would impress.”
“D’Ostillo saw Majerick with Ara and the other girls.”
Slidell nodded glumly.
“More coffee?”
“You able to pour with that sledgehammer you got for a mitt?”
“Funny. Three sugars, right?”
I went to the kitchen, returned, and handed Slidell his refill.
“Did that bird just tell me to kiss its ass?”
Charlie was raised in a brothel, rescued by Ryan, and gifted to me following the raid. His was not your standard “pretty bird” repertoire. I didn’t feel up to explaining that to Slidell.
“Why kill Ara?” I asked, resuming my seat.
“Majerick was driving her to the joint in NoDa. The version he gave Story was that she jumped from the truck. Archer was shocked when he learned about the accident. After the fact, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Majerick was violent and had a hair-trigger temper. When the kid rebelled, he probably lost it and ran her down.”
I pictured an imp in a group of six, holding mischievous fingers above her friend’s head. Knew it was true. Knew Ara had possessed the spirit to resist.
“And the monster just left her there.”
“Majerick told Story there was too much traffic to collect the body without being seen. And no chance he’d take her to a hospital, anyway.”
I recalled the em
pty stretch on which Ara had died. Felt tears start to form. Slidell’s question brought me back from the brink.
“How’d you finger Gross for the doer? He was never on our radar.”
“His tattoo.”
Slidell’s brows floated up in question.
“I saw it at the Article 32 hearing at Camp Lejeune. But only part of the lower half, below his cuff, so I got it wrong. I thought it said RIP, meaning rest in peace.”
“No better friend, no worse enemy.”
It surprised me that Slidell knew a Corps slogan.
“Except Gross is a disgrace to the military,” I said.
“Fuckin’ A. He ain’t what marines are about.”
I wondered if Slidell had history with the Corps unknown to me. Was sure I wouldn’t ask.
“Anyway, I saw the tattoo again in the tavern snapshot of John-Henry Story and Dom Rockett, but it didn’t register. The image was reflected in a mirror, so everything was reversed. When I was going over photos Thursday night, it suddenly clicked. I’d seen the Task Force Ripper patch hanging in Rockett’s living room. RIP. Ripper. Gross was the guy shooting the pic. That connected him to Rockett and Story.”
“I hear you.”
“I checked the Article 32 charge sheet, saw that Gross’s middle initial was H. Henry. Then I confirmed that his mother was born Marianna Story. John-Henry Gross was the nephew of John-Henry and Archer Story. After that, it all started tumbling.
“Gross was on his fourth deployment to Afghanistan. I compared the photo I’d found in my backpack to the one I’d taken of the hit-and-run victim. Our Jane Doe’s hair had been bleached, but it was definitely the same kid. Also in the shot was Khandan, the girl who spoke to me at Bagram. When I looked carefully, I could identify a distinct rock formation behind the village of Sheyn Bagh.”
“The place you dug up the bones.”
“Yes. That’s when it all made terrible sense. The man I had helped at Camp Lejeune had in fact murdered Aqsaee and Rasekh. Aqsaee had seen Gross take Ara away. When Aqsaee recognized Gross at the cordon-and-knock he ran toward him yelling ‘Ara,’ not ‘Allah.’ Gross panicked and used the firefight to gun him down. Rasekh as well.”
“You think this kid Khandan slipped the Polaroid into your backpack?”
I nodded. “Shortly after she approached me we spent time sitting side by side in a bunker.”
“Who snapped it?”
“We may never know that.”
“How’d Khandan come to have it?”
“No idea. But she must have treasured that photo. She’d put the thing in a plastic sleeve.”
I was about to ask a question when Slidell beat me to it.
“How’d Ara come to have John-Henry Story’s US Airways club card?”
“Has Archer commented on his brother’s involvement with the massage parlors?”
“He claims to know shit.” Dripping with disgust. “But Mrs. Tarzec said John-Henry had been a regular customer.”
“Maybe John-Henry dropped the card. Maybe Ara lifted it from him. For whatever reason, she kept it.”
“Good thing. That hunk of plastic was our first leg up.”
For a beat we both gnawed on that. Then, “You sure Story died in that fire?”
“Larabee reviewed the entire file,” I said. “He still feels confident about the ID.”
For several moments we watched orange tendrils twist and curl behind the filigreed brass. Charlie used the interlude to squawk one of his favorites.
“I want your sex!”
Slidell’s eyes stayed on the flames. I felt compelled to explain.
“It’s a line from an old George Michael song.”
“Tell me this.” Slidell looked my way. “How’d you know to go to that warehouse?”
“An inspired guess, really. Larabee found a sliver of ivory embedded in Ara’s scalp. Not many uses of ivory these days, but it was once common on piano keys. Impact against a keyboard explained the patterned injury on Ara’s shoulder.”
Slidell hitched his shoulders. And?
“The FBI report listed difluoroethane among the ingredients in the smear on Ara’s purse. Difluoroethane is a propellant added to aerosol paints.”
Again the shoulders.
“The warehouse across from John-Henry’s Tavern was supposed to be converted into lofts, but the project never went forward. So it was empty. The day we talked to Sam Poland, I saw an old piano on the loading dock.”
“Spray-painted with graffiti.” Slidell snapped a finger and pointed it at me. “Not bad, doc. And by the way, that’s the last time you go swanning off after one of your hunches without me. I’m the detective. You’re the anthropologist.”
“Noted.”
Slidell nodded sharply, as though he’d scored a point.
“Ara must have been at the warehouse the night she died,” I continued. “As Majerick tried to force her into his truck, she probably struggled, and her head and shoulder struck the piano.”
My mind flashed an image of the Huma-Majerick silhouette wrestling in the dark. Another of a hatted corpse.
“Rockett was never part of the trafficking, was he?” I asked.
“Dew’s getting the whole story, but it looks that way.”
“Why did he lie about knowing John-Henry?”
“The guy was a dick, but he probably suspected something. He was a customer at the Passion Fruit, must have noticed that the girls didn’t speak English. He had to wonder where they came from.”
Slidell slipped the faux Ray-Bans onto his nose.
“We’re gonna need you to write all this up.” He gestured at my cast. “When you’re good.”
I smiled and lifted both hands. “No problem. I’m amphibious.”
Either Slidell missed the reference to the Charles Shackelford amphibious-ambidextrous gaffe, or he didn’t get the humor. I let him out with a promise to e-mail a statement.
When Slidell had gone, a shocking realization struck.
Dirty Harry hadn’t once chastised, ridiculed, or laughed at me.
An hour later, Dew showed up. He was wearing a black suit, blue tie, and eye-blistering white shirt. Still no fedora.
Dew and I assumed the same chair and sofa positions as during my visit with Slidell. Unlike Skinny, Dew sat ramrod straight with heels together, enormous hands cupping enormous knees. He declined my offer of coffee or tea.
Dew had the following to report.
Early in his second deployment, John-Henry Gross hooked up with a French private security contract worker named Jean Pruet. Pruet had spent six years in Afghanistan, and, over that period, deposited almost $2 million in a Swiss account. Pruet was returning to Europe, and, for a fee, rolled his network over to Gross.
The scheme was far from original. But it was lucrative.
Central to the operation was an Afghan national named Maroof Hayel, the man I’d seen reprimanding Khandan the day she approached me at the Bagram shops. Hayel was Khandan’s father and Ara’s uncle.
Hayel recruited young girls by promising them, or their parents, jobs in the United States. He drew mostly from the slums of Kabul, Charikar, and Jalalabad, but also from villages in the surrounding provinces.
Hayel was paid $200 for each girl he delivered. A Photoshop whiz kid in Kabul supplied false passports and visas at $40 a pop. The girls were escorted from Khwaja Rawash Airport in Kabul to Washington Dulles by an Afghan woman named Reja Hamidi. Each ticket cost around $1,600.
The girls were met by Mrs. Tarzec or one of her counterparts and driven to various locations in North Carolina. John-Henry Story paid his nephew $50,000 for each “employee” supplied, no questions asked.
“Counting round-trip tickets for Hamidi, Gross’s outlay was less than five thousand dollars per girl.” I couldn’t keep the loathing from my voice. “Placing his profit at roughly forty-five thousand dollars per transaction.”
“Yes. Pruet had made approximately the same sending them to France.”
“Sweet
Jesus. How could someone sell his own flesh and blood?”
“In Ara’s case, it was ‘her.’ ”
“Sorry?” I didn’t get Dew’s meaning.
“Ara’s mother turned her over to Hayel.”
“She sold her own daughter?”
The snowy cotton stretched, eased as Dew inhaled then exhaled slowly.
“Ara’s mother is a woman named Gulpari. At age seven Gulpari saw her mother raped by Taliban fighters. When Gulpari’s father tried to intervene, the men shot him.
“Following the rape, the dishonored widow was shunned. With no prospects for remarriage, she kept her daughters, Gulpari and Noushin, clothed and fed by begging and performing menial tasks.
“At fourteen, Noushin was sent to marry a man in a neighboring village. The man’s family worked the girl sixteen hours per day and forced her to sleep in their unheated barn. When Noushin was caught trying to escape, her husband and father-in-law held her down and doused her with acid. Two days later, Noushin managed to return to her mother’s house. She died of infection resulting from her burns. Gulpari was twelve.”
Dew stared at his hands as he continued.
“Gulpari was raped by the Taliban at age fifteen. Like her mother, she was spurned by the village and treated with scorn. Ara was born on Gulpari’s sixteenth birthday.”
“Gulpari wanted a better life for Ara.” Barely trusting my voice.
Dew nodded, still looking down. “When Hayel talked of jobs in America, Gulpari believed him. He was her brother. Why would he lie?”
“Hayel sold Ara to Gross.”
“For two hundred dollars.”
I got up to stir the embers. Pointless, but I needed to move. To divert the anger and grief threatening to overwhelm me.
“After John-Henry died, did Archer continue with business as usual?” When I’d returned to my chair.
Dew cleared his throat. Twice. Met my eyes.
“Of the sixteen girls currently in ICE custody, two were brought into the country after Archer assumed management of the various Story enterprises, including SayDo.”
“How does he explain that?”
“Mr. Story claims to know nothing of his employees’ histories. And he vehemently denies any knowledge of prostitution at his establishments, forced or otherwise.”
