Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel)

by Maggie Shayne

  Mason looked up. “Good, that’ll save me the time. You find anything interesting?”

  “I did.”

  Mason held up a hand, turned to me. “You wanna put money on whether the ex-con is the bad guy, de Luca?”

  “Oh, cute, call me by my last name like we’re colleagues, right?” I looked at Rosie. “We’re banging, you know.”

  “I...know.”

  “Come on, what do you say, Rache? Fifty bucks.” Mason pulled his wallet out of his pocket, fished out two twenties and a ten and slapped them onto the table.

  Not one to shy away from a challenge, I took my purse off the back of my chair, got out my wallet, slid out a credit card and slapped it on top of his bills.

  He frowned at it, then at me.

  “What? I never carry cash.”

  “Tell, Rosie. What did you find out?”

  “Mr. Kravitz did two years for pissing off Judge Howie. For six months of that time, he shared a cell with Ivan Orloff.”

  I was taking another sip of my soda, and I choked on it.

  Mason said, “The same Ivan Orloff I shot last November?”

  “Yeah, so he wouldn’t shoot me,” I said, when I could talk again. “But more importantly, the same Ivan Orloff who tried to kidnap my personal assistant, Amy, and mistakenly called her Venora.”

  Rosie nodded. “The same.” Then he sighed. “We got a positive ID on the girl we pulled out of the river. Venora LaMere. What I don’t get is, she looked nothing like your Amy.”

  I blinked and looked at the photo of Venora in front of me. Dyed black Goth hair, nose ring. She could’ve been Amy’s mini-me. “She did when this was taken, though.”

  “So Amy was a case of mistaken identity, and good ol’ Jake is in this up to his neck. He’s also the connection to Stephanie.” Mason got up and headed for the door, leaving his cash and my plastic on the table, forgotten.

  I grabbed both and hurried behind him toward the chief’s office, keeping pace with Rosie. “So what do we do?”

  “We find Jake,” Mason said.

  9

  Mason made me wait in the car, which pissed me off so much I almost added it to his list of faults. Fault number one on the list was “labels all ex-cons the same and is irritatingly too often right.” Number two would be “ruins all my fun by trying to keep me alive.”

  He didn’t go busting in first, either. That was handled by a half-dozen guys in storm-trooper gear, you know, vests and helmets and shit. They ran up the stairs to Jake’s apartment, and Mason went up behind them. The door got smashed in. I heard it from where I was, in Mason’s car across the street. There was a lot of shouting, but no shots, thank God. I realized I was shaking and rubbed the goose bumps off my arms, then opened the car door and got out. Jeez, he did this for a living. His job was ridiculously dangerous. I mean, I knew that. For crying out loud, of course I knew it. We’d been nearly killed twice since we’d been hanging out together. But until that moment I’d kind of thought that was as unusual for him as it was for me.

  Now it was hitting me that it wasn’t. That it was his “just another day at the office.” Fuck.

  I got out of the car and moved a few steps closer to the building. Then Mason came out the door, shaking his head and talking to his radio mike, and the riot cops came out behind him. I was so relieved to see him upright and whole that I might have wobbled a little. Yeah, and it probably showed on my face. He came right over to me, took over rubbing my arms. “You’re bone-white, woman. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Where’s Jake?”

  “Gone. Place is about empty. Chief’s sending a team to go over it, but it looks like he skipped.” His frown deepened. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “No. I’m kind of done. I’ve had enough of this for one day. You know?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He took my arm, led me around the car. “I’ll take you home, okay?”

  “I can get myself home. You need to stay.”

  “I said I’ll take you home.” He opened my door, and I got in, sank into the seat, closed my eyes.

  Mason leaned real close to me and said, “It’s nice you were worried about me.”

  My eyes popped open. “Funny, I didn’t find it very nice at all.”

  * * *

  We didn’t even make it out of the city before the chief called to tell Mason to meet him at the hospital, pronto. So with an apologetic look, Mason changed course and took me with him. Note to self, don’t ride with him. Bring your own car. Dumb-ass.

  We didn’t see Chief Sub in the lobby, so we headed up to the ICU in the elevator. The doors opened. We stepped out, turned right and stopped dead.

  “How dare you?” Marianne Mattheson practically spat at the gorgeous brunette outside her husband’s hospital room. Her face was wet with tears, her accusing pointy finger trembling. The brunette with the big glossy curls and overdone eyeliner did not back down. “My husband is fighting for his life right now. How dare you question me like this?”

  Mason moved quickly to stand beside Mrs. Mattheson, and I did, too, so we flanked her sort of protectively. “What’s going on here? Who are you?” Mason asked.

  The brunette flashed an ID. “Special Agent Vanessa Cantone. So back off and let me do my job.”

  He didn’t get a chance to reply, because I reacted first, taking a single step that put me in front of the weeping Mrs. Judge and the dead-sexy bitch. “Your job is harassing people in intensive care units? Do you work for the devil or the Republicans?”

  “Is there a difference?” she quipped.

  Shit. I didn’t want to like her. She was four inches taller than me and stacked like a goddamn swimsuit model. I didn’t even dare look at Mason, because I did not want to see him staring at her huge bazongas.

  He came up beside me. “Take Mrs. Mattheson for some coffee,” he suggested. “I’ve got this.”

  “The hell you’ve got this. I’m not going anywhere.” Whoa, who the hell said that? Not me. That was for sure.

  “Detective Mason Brown,” he said, ignoring my comment. “The chief told me you’d be here by day’s end, but I expected to meet you at the department.” He didn’t offer a handshake. Neither did she.

  “I don’t like wasting time.” She sent me a cool look. “And you are?”

  “Rachel de Luca, special consultant to the Binghamton PD.” I wanted to add And a famous author who’s been on the Today show, so back the fuck off. But instead I said, “Apparently you missed the memo, Vanessa. Mrs. Mattheson is not a suspect. Her daughter is missing.”

  “So are nine other girls, including the dead girl, Venora LaMere.”

  “Nine?” My smooth, take-no-shit attitude had turned to dust, and my voice sounded like sandpaper. “Nine?”

  “Dead girl?” Mrs. Mattheson blurted. “What dead girl? Mason, what’s going on?”

  Thank God the elevator doors opened just then and Chief Sub came surging out. I never thought I’d be glad to see that balding bastard, but I was. I had the judge’s wife by one arm, trying to lead her back into her husband’s room, not out for coffee. I wanted to stay close to Mason.

  Okay, okay, stupid and petty not to want to leave him alone with the gorgeous Fed, but it was what it was, and I’d think about it later.

  “Thank goodness you’re here, Hal,” Marianne said, addressing the chief by a name I’d never heard him called. “Tell me what’s going on. Is this related to my Stephanie?”

  The chief swore and swept the other three of us with a wilting look that should’ve melted our skin off. For once I didn’t blame him.

  “You three, go freaking work your shit out in the hospital cafeteria while I talk to Marianne.”

  “No,” Mrs. Mattheson said. “No. You’ll stay right here until I know everything.” She sent a look through into her husband’s room.

  I did, too. He was in the bed, wired for sound. Monitors everywhere, IVs running, oxygen mask on his face. He looked a little gray, but better than when I’d last seen him.<
br />
  His wife said, “Let’s all move to the cafeteria. We can’t have this discussion here.”

  So that was what we did.

  I was still completely baffled by Special Agent Beyoncé’s puzzling statement about there being nine missing girls when we all sat down together at a round table in the hospital cafeteria, out of earshot of other diners. I wanted to know about the nine missing girls more than I wanted to find a wart or a wrinkle or a fat roll anywhere on her person. I’d have settled for signs of surgical enhancement. But I couldn’t ask my questions until the chief told Mrs. Mattheson what she needed to know. What she hadn’t yet been told.

  “Marianne,” he said softly, taking her by the hand. “We did find a girl this morning.”

  “A dead girl?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And we’re investigating the possibility that her case might be related to Stephanie’s.”

  She didn’t react. Just stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Eventually she said, “What makes you think that?”

  The chief looked down. An amateur would know he was holding back. Fortunately Mrs. Mattheson was too distracted by grief and worry to notice the signs. “You know I can’t tell you things like that. Besides, it’s technical. Trust me, Marianne, you know I’m doing everything I can.”

  She nodded slowly, as if that went without saying. “But...Hal, Stephanie’s still alive, right? She’s okay, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, we have every reason to think so.”

  Yeah, I thought. “Every reason” being that we haven’t found her body yet. I wondered if poor Venora had been shot in front of Stephanie and the other one. Lexus. I wondered how terrifying that must have been for them. A blind twenty-year-old without a clue how to get by in the world and an eighteen-year-old who probably knew how a little too well.

  Marianne nodded and turned to look at Special Agent Bitch-face. “And you say there are nine other girls—”

  The Fed couldn’t look her in the eye. “I really can’t discuss that with you, ma’am.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right, but you could blurt it out in the middle of the ICU. I can see how that would be okay.”

  Agent Cantone didn’t seem to have any trouble looking me in the eye. I looked right back. “How do you know there are nine?” I asked her.

  “As soon as we were told about Venora LaMere and Lexus Carmichael both being in the foster program and both having recently turned eighteen, we checked up on every other girl who’s aged out in Broome County for the past two years.”

  “We were going to do that. Just waiting for a warrant,” I said. Did that sound a little defensive?

  “We have resources at the federal level that you don’t have. We’ve found nine who can’t be accounted for, including Venora LaMere and Lexus Carmichael.”

  That, I thought, was going to devastate Mr. Rodney Carr.

  “You have files on them? Photos?” Chief Sub asked.

  She held up her phone. “Right here.”

  The chief nodded, yanked out a pen and scribbled an email address on a napkin. “Send them here, will you? I’ll have someone print up copies for my people.”

  “Happy to.” She took the napkin and started tapping keys on her phone. “Now, as I was telling Mrs. Mattheson, I need access to her husband’s home computer.”

  “And as I was telling you, Miss Cantone,” Mrs. Mattheson said, “I know the law. My husband is a judge. And until I see a warrant—”

  “Your husband is a judge. A family court judge. Eight girls who went through the family court system in his county are missing, and one is dead. Do you want to save your daughter’s life, Mrs. Mattheson, or protect your husband’s reputation?”

  “That’s out of line, Cantone,” Mason said, while Chief Sub shot a glare at the agent and put his hand over Marianne’s on the table.

  “The only thing waiting for a warrant is going to do is give the kidnappers more time to hurt Stephanie or one of the other girls,” the Fed said, not even flinching under that wilting glare. “I’ll have access to that computer one way or the other.”

  “Dammit, Cantone, that’s enough!” The chief was on his feet.

  Hell, I’d have flinched at that point.

  Cantone just stood up and leaned closer. “Fine. I’ll go get a warrant. All it’ll cost us is an extra hour or two. Let’s just hope it doesn’t also cost us another girl.” The chick had guts. Which really pissed me off, because I wanted to hate them and I couldn’t.

  “I have to get back to my husband,” Marianne said.

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Mason told her. “Is that possible, Marianne?”

  She shook her head slowly. “He’s still unconscious. The doctors don’t know when...or if...” She lowered her head, tears welling in her eyes. “Mitch tried and tried to get him to communicate, but...he just can’t.”

  Mitch? The horn-dog disloyal boyfriend was being let in to see the ailing judge? What the hell was up with that?

  “I’ll stay here with you until he comes around, Marianne.” Chief Sub looked at Mason. “When that warrant does come through, you’ll accompany Agent Cantone to the house. Make sure nothing is disturbed but the computer and that the entire place is treated with respect.”

  I leaned closer to Mrs. Mattheson. “I’ll go, too,” I promised. “I had cops searching my home once. I know how it feels. Don’t you worry, I’ll keep them honest.”

  She looked into my eyes. Hers were tired, dull. I could’ve sworn the number of wrinkles in her face had doubled since I’d last seen her. She’d aged a decade overnight. “You say in your books that everything happens for a reason, Ms. de Luca. What reason could there possibly be for all of this? What have I done to deserve—”

  “It’s not like that,” I told her, searching my brain for some clichéd self-help sound bite to feed her that might make her feel better. “There’s no judge and jury handing out life experiences as reward or punishment. But things do happen for a reason. I can tell you one thing, though. Until Stephanie went missing, we didn’t even know about those other girls. They fell through the cracks of the system. No one’s even been looking for them until now. Stephanie did that.”

  Mason was staring at me. I felt it, and when I looked back I saw that expression he sometimes got in his eyes. That one that said he was seeing something pretty fucking awesome in me. I wanted to tell him to knock it off already, but I couldn’t do that without shaking Marianne’s belief in me. And it was her belief that would get her through this. That particular line of bull wasn’t bull at all.

  “God bless you, Rachel de Luca.” She reached for my hand, so I let her take it, squeeze it. Then she and Chief Sub headed out of the cafeteria and down the hall.

  “What the hell was that?” Cantone blinked at me like a doe in the headlights.

  “That was how I make my living.” I hitched my handbag over my shoulder. “You ready, Mace?”

  “Yeah.” He snapped out of it. I was secretly relishing the way he’d looked at me just then, right in front of Agent Boobsalot. It was good to get it out there right up front that she shouldn’t even think about putting any moves on my detective.

  Jesus, who the hell was that? Was that the Rachel who doesn’t want to get too romantic and serious here? Was that jealousy, Rache?

  Shut the fuck up, Inner Bitch.

  * * *

  The trapdoor in the center of the ceiling opened. Stephanie heard it, and then the sound of the Asshole’s voice. “Step back away from the rope ladder and I’ll bring down some food.” As he spoke, something dropped with a whoosh. She imagined it was the rope ladder he’d mentioned.

  “Stevie?” Sissy said softly.

  “Do what he says.” No way was she going to try anything and risk another of them being killed. No way. Poor Venora.

  She reached out for Sissy’s arm, and they backed up a few steps. She wasn’t worried about bumping into anything. She’d memorized the entire place, a giant round room with no windows, underground, she s
uspected, with the furniture the only thing in it besides themselves and the tiny bathroom, with a working toilet and a shower. No sink. But plenty of soap, shampoo and toilet paper. Plenty of tiny plastic combs and makeup, too. She’d gone through all of it, but unless she could think of a way to make a soft-tipped eyeliner into a weapon, there wasn’t anything they could use.

  “Lexi, where are you?”

  Lexi came to her other side and took her by the hand. “Oughta jump him. Kill his ass and climb the fuck outta here.” She whispered it very softly.

  “The other one’s up top, waiting, Lex.” They’d noticed, a couple of times, the presence of another man, one who never got too close or spoke out loud, and they’d named him the Douche Bag. “He’d just pull up the ladder before we could get out anyway.”

  “How the fuck you know anyone’s up there? I don’t see nobody.” She was leaning forward, and Stevie imagined her looking up at the opening as she did.

  “I can hear him breathing, moving every now and then. Trust me.”

  “Yeah. I trust you. Got ears like a goddam bat.”

  The Asshole reached the bottom, then said, “Okay, send it down.”

  Lexus said, “You two some kinda geniuses, huh? Lowerin’ our food down here in a basket like that. Yeah, we dealing with some rocket scientists here, we are.”

  “Don’t antagonize them, Lexi.”

  Stevie heard movements, rattling plastic, and Sissy narrated. “He’s taking a shopping bag out of the basket.”

  “That’s right,” the man said. “It’s a bag full of pretty clothes for you girls. You’re gonna put ’em on for me. You’re gonna do it now, quickly, no arguments, and then I’ll let you have the food. And if you give me any arguments, I’m gonna shoot another one of you.” He shoved the bag into Stevie’s chest. “You first.”

  “Okay, okay.” She opened the bag and reached inside. She felt silky fabrics and sheer ones and tiny hangers. Tissue paper and price tags were still attached. “What is this? Is this lingerie?”