“Like what?” she asked.
He smiled wider. “Let’s ride.”
Much to Kid’s surprise, he led them to the garage rather than the truck. There were several bikes there, including their dad’s old Triumph. Kid gave Snake a puzzled look, and Snake silently answered his question by handing him a helmet.
“Really?” Kid asked.
“Yeah, really,” Snake answered. He gave Baby a helmet and said to her, “You should probably ride with me, though.”
“Asshole,” Kid said, chuckling.
Baby wrapped herself in Snake’s leather jacket and they all roared down the driveway, headed in the opposite direction of where M.J. had gone.
By the time they hit the open road, M.J. was nearly to Hollywood. She pulled into the motel where she’d left Todd. As she walked up, she ran into Rose. The woman was juggling several canvas bags full of groceries, so M.J. was quick to lend a hand. “Twice in one week!” Rose exclaimed happily. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“Just wanted to check up on our little friend,” M.J. said. “How’s he doing?”
“Quiet as a mouse,” Rose replied. “No one in or out all night. You must have put the fear of God into him.”
“Nope. Just the fear of M.J.” They shared a smile before they entered Rose’s living quarters out back. It was a modest one-bedroom apartment attached to the back of the office, and just as cluttered, kitschy, and homey as the rest of the motel.
“So what’s the story there, anyway? Or can you say?”
“I’d rather not,” M.J. said frankly, knowing Rose would understand. “Suffice it to say that no one needs to know where this kid is for a while, and leave it at that.”
“I’ve been watching that room like a hawk,” she assured. “It’s not like I didn’t trust you, but you never know with kids on drugs. So I can personally guarantee that no one came in or out from the time you left yesterday.”
“I appreciate it,” M.J. told her, squeezing her arm. She helped her put away her groceries and then headed straight for room 201.
Her approach slowed when she realized that the door was slightly ajar. She glanced downstairs toward the office, wondering if maybe he went for the vending machine or outside to smoke. But the only thing that stirred on the lower level was Rose as she watered her plants.
M.J. eased her keychain from the back of her jeans and slipped it into her hand, the spikes of the keys protruding through her clenched fist. With her left hand, she pushed the door open.
There was someone sitting on the bed, but it wasn’t her tweaker. In fact, she didn’t know who the hell it was.
The man, who was likely in his late twenties, sat casually on the edge of the bed, which had been made up with crisp military corners. He was tidy himself, with laundered jeans, brand-new sneakers, and a button-down shirt that looked freshly ironed. The only thing that looked battered at all was his brown leather jacket. Even his five o’clock shadow, which looked as though it had arrived four hours early, was trimmed and neat. His flinty blue eyes glinted as he stared at her. He clearly had the advantage.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked, holding her fist at her side but poised to strike. She tensed as he reached inside his jacket, until she saw that he had retrieved a badge to flash at her. She rolled her eyes and put her keychain back in its place.
He stood. “Detective Kelly Harris,” he introduced himself. “LAPD, homicide.”
“Of course,” she said. She glanced around the rest of the room, which she immediately saw was empty. “What can I do for you, Officer?”
“Nothing,” he said shortly. “I want you to do absolutely nothing.”
Her hard eyes bored holes into his. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a smart girl.” He grinned. “You’ll figure it out.”
She walked over to the long desk under the mirror opposite the bed. On the desk was a pizza box. She lifted the top. “Full pie decimated,” she said before walking to the fridge, which had been emptied of all the soda she kept supplied there. “No sodas.” She walked to the bathroom, flipped on the light. “Shower used,” she said as she stepped inside to feel the towel left on the floor. “Still damp.”
She emerged from the bathroom. “From the looks of things, a teenager occupied this room, unsupervised.” She picked up a soda can and listened for the fizz. “Up until fairly recently. Within the hour, I’d say.” She faced him. “What did you do with him?”
“He’s safe. That’s all you need to know.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I need to know a hell of a lot more.”
He chuckled. “You would think so. But you’d be wrong.” He walked to the long desk, picked up the box, folded it in on itself, and fit it in the trash can. “This is a police investigation and that kid is our only witness. He’s been relocated for his own safety.”
“He was safe,” she corrected. “No one knew he was here.”
“Then how did I find him?” Harris challenged.
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him. “He called you.”
Harris tapped his nose. “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. You know I have to say, you have all the makings of a fine detective. Runs in the family, maybe?”
Her jaw clenched. “Get to the point, Harris.”
“The point, Ms. Bennett, is that I had been working with this kid for a couple of weeks prior to that incident in the alley.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said. “But shelve your alibis, honey. I don’t give a shit about some dustup with small-time thugs. The only thing that matters is the ticking clock. We have to find a couple of girls before they become victims five and six of the Hard Candy Killer. This kid can help me. And nobody, and I do mean nobody, is going to interfere with me doing my job.”
“You know you’re going to lead the killer right to this kid, right? With the media attention you have with this case, and the gossip sites that keep trying to break news first, all eyes are on what you guys are doing. You take this kid into custody and he’s dead.”
Again Harris chuckled. “I had heard about your messiah complex, but it’s rather impressive to see firsthand.”
She rolled her eyes, done with the conversation. She tried to brush past him, but he easily grabbed her arm. She glared daggers into his soul as he pulled her close against his fit body. “If that kid thought you could keep him safe, he would have called you this morning and not me. Let that sink in, Ms. Bennett.”
“Just keep him safe, Detective,” she replied, seething. “Because if you don’t, you’ll have to deal with me. Let that sink in.” She wrenched her arm free and stalked from the room.
8. NO CHURCH IN THE WILD
Detective Harry Landers and Agent Benjamin Llewellyn sat across from each other in a retro Hollywood diner known for its pies. Now that they had a witness in protective custody, Landers’s appetite had returned with a vengeance. He ordered the soup, the salad, a burger, a double order of crispy fries, and a piece of pie topped with sky-high meringue. Llewellyn chuckled to himself as the waitress brought his order on two big trays.
“Hungry?”
“Starving,” Landers answered. He gave the cute waitress a wink and glanced at the single cup of soup and crackers his colleague had chosen. “I don’t quite have your restraint.”
“Military dad and evangelical mom. I was taught self-control from the womb.”
“It serves you well,” Landers said and shrugged. He dipped into his pie first.
“Reserve your praise for when we crack the case.” Llewellyn smiled. “Our job isn’t over by far.”
“Yeah, but you gotta admit. We’re a helluva lot closer than where we were.” He wolfed his double-decker burger. “So you’d be the one to ask. Why didn’t he finish this kid off? Seems sloppy.”
“Clearly he didn’t feel motivated to kill him. Two possible reasons for this. The first and si
mplest answer is that this guy never saw the killer and can’t identify him. So he’ll sacrifice him like a pawn on a chessboard just so we have something to preoccupy us.”
“A false lead,” Landers concluded.
“I mean, we could have gotten lucky, and this kid slipped through the cracks. But as careful as our killer has been for months, I think it’s unlikely.”
Landers’s chewing slowed to a stop. “And the other reason?”
“He targets a very specific type of person for his own purposes. My guess is he kills because he thinks his work is righteous warfare. From the way he’s punishing the prostitutes rather than the pimps and traffickers, I get the feeling this guy truly believes in preserving a patriarchal society. Throw in morality as a motive, which I would guess stems from a staunch religious upbringing. The temptation of Eve and the fall of man. That kind of thing. Women are the enemy simply because they are so enticing. He probably faced a lot of guilt and shame during his sexual development, which is why his victims are literally gutted. He’s angry and pious and entitled, and that’s a dangerous combination.” He took another sip of his soup. “Let’s face it. Most morality is subjective. In his world, the greatest evil is when a young, pretty, innocent girl is corrupted by sex, because she can then corrupt man. He would likely see a male junkie as being beneath him at this point. The ones he’d really want are the girls in the photo, if he doesn’t have them already. That’s where he would spend his energy.”
“So while we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to protect this kid, he is able to pinpoint his next victim.”
“And not just any victim,” Llewellyn amended. “A victim who has already bested him by getting away.”
“Would he risk capture trying to find her?”
Llewellyn considered this. “If he thinks he can be captured at all. That was pretty ballsy, revisiting the original crime scene.”
Harris joined the other two men at their table. He was visibly frustrated. “Problems?” Landers asked.
“I just got the distinct pleasure of meeting M.J. Bennett.”
Landers chuckled. He understood Kelly’s frustration immediately. “You look fairly unscathed. Consider that a win.”
“Tell me again why we put up with this. She’s obstructing justice. It’s asinine that we can’t bring her in.”
“First of all, it wouldn’t work. She’ll sit in that jail cell, her mouth on lockdown. Her entire network of friends is likely already in place to protect her sources at all costs. And unlike us, they have no real rules of conduct to go by. They’re also very unlikely to call on us if they get a little nervous, like your young informant.”
“And two?” Harris asked.
“You leave her on the streets and you can track that network, track those friends, and track her,” Llewellyn pointed out.
Landers nodded toward Llewellyn. “You gotta understand, with M.J. you’re playing poker. Sometimes you have to show your hand just to see what she’s holding. God knows she won’t show you for free.”
“It’s bullshit,” Harris announced as he sat back in the booth. “These are games. They don’t solve anything.”
“All games require some form of strategy.” Llewellyn shrugged. “And a strategy can solve everything.” Harris sighed.
“Look,” Landers said, leaning across the table. “M.J. isn’t a bad person. She’s not a criminal. Her heart really is in the right place, even though I don’t know where the hell her mind is half the time.”
Llewellyn leaned in too. “You know, in a lot of ways, she’s like our killer. The flip side to the coin, as it were. Think about it. She has a righteous purpose: to save vulnerable street kids. She’ll break laws and sidestep police, whom she disdains, to fulfill that purpose.”
“So we should let them battle each other?” Harris asked, and Llewellyn laughed.
“That’d be some show, wouldn’t it?”
“Who would win?” Landers asked.
“Whoever cares the least,” the agent answered. “The great advantage of the bad guy, there’s no one to bargain. The hero always has something, or someone, to lose.”
Landers shook his head. “That doesn’t apply to M.J. She hasn’t been close to anyone in a good decade or better.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care,” Llewellyn corrected. “It just means she loves enough to keep her most important people out of harm’s way. Like you said, her heart’s in the right place.”
“Wait till you meet her to decide where her heart might be,” Harris cautioned as he snagged a fry from Landers’s plate. “She’s cocky. She’s sarcastic. She’s single-minded to the point of obsession. And she always thinks she’s right.”
Landers and Llewellyn suppressed their smiles and shared a glance. “Yeah,” Landers agreed. “That would be really annoying.”
Harris glared at the both of them. “Very funny.” He scooped a spoonful of pie and told his partner, through a mouthful of meringue, “Enjoy your meal, Tubby. I’ve got a witness to question.”
He slid out of the booth and headed for the door.
M.J. slammed through the front door of Snake’s darkened home. It echoed through the old house, a hollow, lonely sound. “Hello?” she hollered, but there was no response.
If Snake even thought about taking Baby to Wyndryder, M.J. would snap his neck.
But instantly she knew that was not the case. If past history was any indication, he’d dig his heels in and do everything he could to keep Baby away from the biker life. They had all learned the hard way that evil walked among them, and there was precious little that could be done to protect their most vulnerable.
M.J. thought about that cocky detective, Kelly Harris, with a scowl. To her, the most dangerous thing was a righteous man who did all the wrong things for all the right reasons. M.J. knew that her homeless witness was no safer in protective custody. That idiot cop had signed his death sentence for sure, but there was jack shit she could do about it.
Well, almost jack shit. There was one thing she could do, but it was a long shot at best. One should only ask favors from friends, and she had no friends in the higher echelon of the Los Angeles Police Department. Just passing acquaintances.
So she did what she always did. She took matters into her own hands with her own brand of investigative work. She snooped in Baby’s room for anything that would lead her to the killer on her own.
Despite being a teenage girl, Baby kept her new room nice and neat. She had scattered her new knickknacks and novelties around the room, including a pillow with a cheerfully designed B on the front, making it more her own. But she kept her new clothes hung neatly in the closet or folded in the drawers.
M.J. checked every pocket of every article of clothing, digging in piles of jeans and shirts, flipping through paperback novels. There was nothing more there than what M.J. had purchased for her.
With a sigh, M.J. plopped on the bed. That was when she spotted the edge of the large sketch pad peeking out from under the mound of stacked pillows. She pulled it out and opened the front page, where there was a new self-portrait of Baby with her dark hair and goth clothing, with the name “Baby” spelled out in graffiti lettering. The drawing was meticulously detailed, demonstrating quite a bit of skill for such a young artist. She turned the page, taking note that remnants of a missing page were caught in the spiral binding of the book. Her brow furrowed. She replaced the book back under the pillows and checked the wastebasket, but it was empty.
She didn’t bother with any lights as she headed to Snake’s bedroom. She collapsed on the bed with a grunt, her arm slung across her eyes as she tried to regroup and focus. The sun was down by the time her brood returned from the desert, dusty, dirty and sunburned, but happy.
Snake had taken them to Joshua Tree, a national park located less than a hundred and fifty miles east of L.A. This was a regular playground for Snake, who loved to escape the city and “rough” it in the rugged desert landscape at least once
every season, even in the oppressive summer. It was a Scoggins family tradition, so they’d promptly initiated their newest addition.
M.J. was surprised at the difference in Baby after her first trip to the desert. She was burned to a crisp, and could barely walk or move thanks to her bright red, tightening skin. But she was eager to share what they had seen and done with M.J. Both kids ambushed her in the living room, flanking her on either side, to share their day with her. Kid had taken tons of photos on his phone, and as he swiped through the album, M.J. could see the budding affection Snake’s shy brother was developing for the girl who had landed in their lives with such a dramatic splash.
Even more impressive was the way Baby was blooming, just like a desert rose. Day by day she was shedding her shy and timid nature. She was funny and lively, a little ray of sunshine, and she had more backbone than most adults M.J. knew.
It touched something deep inside M.J. For the first time since Joe Bennett’s funeral, M.J. felt herself soften for someone new. Though she’d never felt like she had a maternal bone in her body, she found herself eager to tend to this budding rose, like a rescued plant showing its first signs of vitality in a new garden. It was both sweet and terrifying.
When she finally extricated herself, she found Snake in the kitchen, preparing their evening meal. She walked up behind him as he stood at the stove, an apron around his hips. He was stirring something in a cast-iron Dutch oven. She wrapped her arms around his waist and peered over his strong shoulder. “Goulash?”
He smiled. “Your favorite, right?”
She rested her chin on his shoulder. It was her favorite dish, and if she knew Snake, it was prepared according to her grandfather’s recipe, to the letter. “Among many things,” she murmured. “Sounds like you guys had a great time in the desert.”
He nodded. “The weather was mild and the tourists were minimal. It was almost perfect,” he added with a sideways glance.
She squeezed his waist. “Maybe we can plan something sometime,” she finally said in a soft voice.
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