She laughed at her grandiose thoughts and swung her purse as she walked across the lot. It was almost nine and the adjacent stores were locked up tight. Hoping she hadn't made the trip for nothing, knowing she should have called first, but in such a good mood that she didn't really care if her detour was for nothing, Cori took the first step up to the backdoor of The Mercato.
Her good mood disappeared as she took the next two steps and saw the backdoor hanging loose. She put out her hand and touched the sharp splinters; she could see the contrast between the weather beaten frame and the yellow/orange inside wood. Cori breathed in and the scent told her the split was fresh. She put her fingertips on the inside door. Whoever had closed it threw the deadbolt before it actually shut and that meant it only looked secure. Licking her lips, Cori put her shoulder into it and pushed until she had cleared enough room to look into the hall.
The doors to the bathrooms were open, but the highchair that had been stored at the end of the hallway was toppled and one of the stacks of boxes listed as if someone had bumped into them. She listened but heard nothing. That could mean she wasn't close enough to hear whatever might be going on or the owners had just forgotten to lock the door when everyone went home. Cori didn't come close to believing the latter. She had been a cop long enough to know when to pay attention to a hinky feeling, and she had a mother of a hinky feeling.
Embracing the hink, Cori let her heart drum against her chest and took a second to think about Amber and Tucker and Finn. After that she let it all go – the fear, her family and Finn – because distractions were dangerous.
Weapon in hand, Cori stepped inside and eased the door shut so that the deadbolt once again rested against the frame. She inched down the hall and slid her purse inside the first bathroom. Thumb held straight, support hand tight, she gripped her pistol and kept going. She stepped around the highchair, freezing when she heard the crunch of glass underfoot. The framed picture of Hailesa Lassie had fallen and the glass was shattered.
Cori lifted the ball of her foot and swiveled on her heel as she tried to find a path through the shards. When she put her foot down again it was in a clear space. One step. Two steps. Gun steady, hands cool and dry, she took the next three steps and stopped in front of the curtain that separated the hall from the dining room. She peered through the ripple where the fabric didn't hang plumb.
The dining room was empty and clean. The velvet picture with the embedded lights still twinkled, the African masks and paintings looked ominous in the semi dark. Light was coming from the second room where Emanuel and Finn had their coffee but it wasn't direct. Cori knew the kitchen was behind the coffee bar so that must be where the light was on. Both those rooms made her nervous. There were too many places to hide in the coffee bar and too many things that could be used as weapons in the kitchen not to mention those rooms were both dead ends.
Cori reassessed the dining room. The length was greater than the width and that meant someone coming out of the coffee bar unexpectedly had her at a disadvantage. The burlap draping was high and tight to the walls giving her no place to hide. The hostess desk was the only place that would give her solid cover. It was a very long way to go and small comfort when she didn't know what was waiting for her.
Disliking what she was seeing, Cori was about to take a step back and call for assistance when she heard a scream.
CHAPTER 26
Finn sat in a very deep, very big, very comfortable chair in front of a very, very big screen in the home theatre where Sharon Stover had sent him. There were twelve of these chairs, but he was willing to bet that she sat in this place alone more often than not.
He had seen women like Sharon Stover; he remembered them from his boyhood village. Widows and abandoned women and angry spinsters who believed that the world men created had treated them poorly. There were the women mistreated by their fathers, brothers and intendeds; women whose chances were missed or who had taken a chance and failed. Perhaps they all had good reason to be angry, but in Finn's village no one dare incur their wrath by asking about their pain. He could already count a number of things that drove Sharon Stover's anger, but the core of it, the bitterness, was a thing long rising in the heated oven of her heart and it was not about her leg or her husband.
"It's late so don't give me the crap about being on duty." Sharon put a beer on the table beside him. "All I've got is Tecate."
She dropped a shot next to it.
"You're going to need that, too."
She went around him and took the chair on his right. She had a bottle of Woodford Bourbon for herself and a glass of fresh ice. The splash, it seemed, could be done without. Sharon talked while she settled herself: pouring the bourbon, raising the leg-rest on the chair, pulling a computer onto the table at her side.
"I'll give you a quick rundown, we'll watch a little and then you can ask whatever you want. Just don't do anything stupid like trying to trick me into saying something I shouldn't. I've seen all the movies and actors are better at that stuff than cops. Plus, I don't like to waste time. You do that and you're out of here. Got it?"
Finn lifted his glass, "Lovely to know the ground rules."
Sharon gave him a curt nod and tapped out a few codes on the computer. She took a drink.
"So, I was pretty jammed after my accident. I mean I lost everything – my livelihood, a lot of my so-called friends, the guy I thought I was in love with, my sexuality. It's damn tough to have part of you gone. It's like you're always looking for that one piece. You think that if you find it, you can put yourself back together and everything will be like it was before. I'm here to tell you, that's not the way it works.
She licked her lips. Did one more thing on the computer and then spoke directly to him, her cat eyes shining through the low light.
"Just when I was at my worst, Tinsel Town got politically correct. Producers decided that they wanted to show how sensitive they were and how diverse they could be. They didn't just want people of color; they were looking for everyone who didn't fit the normal starlet bill. Ugly chicks, fat guys, you name it they had a part for the misfits. Did you ever see the movie Grindhouse, detective?"
"I favor Barry Fitzgerald myself. Bells of Saint Mary's."
Sharon snorted.
"Bet you're a stitch on the beat," she drawled. "Anyway, I auditioned for that roll because it called for this amputee chick to strap a machine gun on her leg and take everyone out. I was just furious enough at that point to think I might go out in a blaze of glory. You know, get the part and everyone would remember me as the one legged broad who made this great movie and then offed herself."
"Not a very good plan."
"Are you kidding? It was a great plan. It would have gone down in Hollywood history." Sharon smiled for the first time. It wasn't the warmest one Finn had ever seen but it was a start. "I didn't get the part. Too old. They green screened the whole leg thing with a name actress. I thought about killing myself anyway, but I wasn't as brave as I thought. Do you know what really saved me?"
Finn shook his head. He didn't speak because she didn't seem to be expecting an answer.
"An actress, and she wasn't even a friend of mine. She had auditioned for another part in Grindhouse and had seen me at the call. She got the part but got cut when they found out she had breast cancer. The doctors were going to take off both her boobs.
"Now she could get surgery and get her boobs back, but she understood that the real part of her was gone forever. She could accept that, what she couldn't accept was that if she tried to get back in the game she would be dishonest. She figured I had some wisdom to help her get to a good place. I don't know why I agreed to see her. I really don't."
Sharon went quiet. Finn heard the ice cubes tinkle against the glass every time she took a drink. He drank with her, knowing well enough how a body could think she might learn to live without the thing that had been ripped away only to find it an impossible task. Whatever is lost defines a life ever after. Where would he start
to tell this woman of his wounds and, if he did, would his hurt come close to hers?
Probably not.
Who really cared?
Hurt was hurt and only the person carrying it knew how deep it truly ran.
Finn took his shot. He drank his beer. He would wait only so long. This was not a therapy session after all; it was an investigation. Before he could guide her back to Takrit, Sharon Stover resumed her story.
"So I saw her, and I talked to her and it turns out that I've got a real talent for this kind of stuff – helping women get through some really rough times. So I…" Sharon paused, thought about something and then changed her mind. "Forget it. Let me show you what I'm doing and then we'll talk about Emanuel and Takrit."
She pushed a button. The houselights went off and the room went black. The first thing Finn saw on the screen was the image of a wall constructed from the mutilated bodies of women and the words A Women's Wall Production.
***
The first person Cori came upon was the mother. Her long green and yellow dress was twisted around her legs. She lay in a puddle of her own blood. Cori hunkered down, released one hand and touched the woman's neck. No pulse, but she was still warm. Cori put her butt against the wall and used it as leverage to push herself up until she was flat against it, standing near the table where she and Finn had eaten the spongy bread and drunk honey wine. Cori listened to the sounds of an assault in progress coming from the adjacent room.
A man grunted. Feet shuffled. The man said things but Cori couldn't make out the words. A woman whimpered and cried. Cori heard the flat wet sound of flesh being beaten and the sharp crack of bones breaking. Whatever was hitting the woman it wasn't the man's fist and that meant time was of the essence. One woman was already dead; she didn't want another gone that night.
Cori closed her eyes, slowed her breathing and counted herself to a Zen place where her weapon was an extension of her body and her body a servant of her training and survival instinct. On the count of three, when she distinctly heard the word 'bitch' uttered as the man put his weight behind a blow, Cori swung around the corner. Legs apart, elbows locked, she pointed her gun at the blond haired man's back. He was standing over a woman who had pulled herself into a fetal position on the floor at the end of the bar. A marble rolling pin was raised over his head, ready for the next strike.
"Drop it now or you ain't gonna see the sun come up, cowboy."
The man paused and straightened. He took a step back and lowered his arms but he didn't let loose of the rolling pin. Cori took it upon herself to remind him that he didn't have any options.
"I don't mind putting some lead in your back if I have to, so I would suggest you step away now. Two steps back, drop the pin, turn to the right and face me."
The man hung his head but Cori wasn't reassured. Knowing she couldn't lose her focus, she fought the urge to see to the woman on the floor until this man was secured. She moved a step forward, keeping the gun level, reaching out with one hand intending to turn the sucker since he didn't seem to want to do it on his own. Before she touched him, though, he started to laugh. At first Cori wasn't sure she heard him but when the chortle turned to a belly laugh her blood ran cold and everything changed.
The attack was peremptory and skilled. He swung his arms in an arc, holding the piece of marble in both hands, swinging it at her skull like a sledgehammer. In that instant, the faces of her child and grandchild flashed in Cori's mind and she dropped and rolled toward the bar. The pin smashed into the floor beside her. On the first turn, Cori raised her weapon. Praying that her assailant was the only one standing, she fired wildly at the same time the rolling pin crashed into her leg. The pain was blinding. Reflexively, her hand opened but Cori managed to get the gun back in her palm. She clasped it in one last-ditch effort to save herself, but in the next instant that marble cylinder crashed into her head. The last thing she saw was a flash and the last thing she heard was an explosion.
CHAPTER 27
Finn O'Brien was grateful for the shot and the beer. More than a little fortification was needed to watch what Sharon Stover was showing him. He was admiring of her eye for storytelling and her passion for her subject and her cast iron stomach. Finn also applauded the logo. The Women's Wall was a symbol for all the suffering and abuse women endured in this modern age and, given what he was seeing, it was more than apt.
From clips of unattended childbirth to stoning and child marriages to men old enough to be their grandfathers, the documentary of crimes against women was bad enough but then it took a turn that even Finn, a man who had seen bodies and blood and bloodshed, could hardly stomach.
There was film of women being gang raped and of acid attacks recorded in such detail he could swear he heard the sizzle of flesh. He watched an honor killing and its aftermath: a father and brother rejoicing over their daughter and sister's body. Almost more sadistic than the acts themselves was the fact that these things had been recorded. It would be a long while before he could unsee and unhear it all. Sharon paused the film on the face of a young woman, a girl really, who had lost her nose and ears as punishment for the mortal sin of wanting to go home to her mother rather than be the fifth wife of an old goat herder.
"Buckle up buddy, the next one is kind of hard to take," Sharon said.
"Missus, they are all hard to take," he answered.
"True, but this one is the Al Khansa."
Sharon made a rueful little sound that indicated he should heed her warning and prepare himself.
"Al Khansa is a troop of female Islamic state religious police and they are really a piece of work. They're named after a woman poet who wrote elegies for her dead brothers way back when Mohammed was around. I don't get the connection between these bitches and poetry, but that's beside the point. Watch what they do when they find a woman hiding out in the bus station trying to breast feed her kid."
The film began again and it wasn't long before Finn turned his head away. The female 'police' – burka clad, AK47s in hand – had clamped spiked metal jaws around the woman's naked chest, humiliating and torturing her. All this was shown in eloquent silence: the woman's agony, the torturers' delight, the cowardice of those who witnessed the event. The clip played for forty-five seconds and then cut to interviews of women who had suffered even greater horrors at the hands of this aberrant group.
Finn barely heard a word of those testimonies because he was thinking of Cori. What if this was Cori? What if it was Amber? What if it was Bev, his soon to be ex? What if it was his mother or sisters? Finn would kill anyone who dared harm any of them and he would do it with his bare hands. He was thinking this when Sharon turned the lights up a click. She picked up her bottle and poured Finn another shot. He didn't object.
"So Takrit was part of this? A film maker?" he asked.
Sharon shook her head. She twisted in her chair so that her leg was tucked beneath her and the blade still stretched out on the footrest.
"Takrit was my star, or she was going to be," Sharon said. "I heard about her a long time ago, but it was a process getting her involved. We both knew what we were doing was dangerous. That's why I made her an employee of my company. I told everyone her name was Diane, so she could fly under the radar. We were on track for a Christmas release when we heard Emanuel was headed this way. That's why we stepped up the release date. I moved her in here for her own safety and her grandmother's. The old lady didn't know what had been done to her granddaughter or that Takrit had smuggled out spectacular footage of torture in Eritrean prisons. We've been releasing that initial footage on social media for the last few months as a run up to the premier. Literally, every single post has gone viral."
"Not to be disrespecting your work," Finn said, "But quite a few people have called attention to atrocities like these."
"But Takrit had film of her own torture, her circumcision. Can you imagine how impactful that would have been? Her facing down Emanuel in the flesh when this film was shown?"
"If you coul
d get him to the theater," Finn said.
"Oh, he'll be there," Sharon said. "What we've got set up isn't illegal, but I know the reach Emanuel has so it's better if I don't tell you."
"How does Aman fit into this? I suppose you know about him. Takrit's husband?"
"I know Aman. He showed up a few months ago and demanded that Takrit walk away from the project. He told her they had a chance to be safe and happy because they were in America. Look how that turned out," Sharon said. "Did Aman tell you they brought him in to watch when they cut her? Did he tell you they did it in front of male guards? Did he tell you they did it in a prison so filthy that it would have been better done in a cave with a rock?"
"No, he didn't tell me about that," Finn said, not wanting to tell her that Aman had been all but mute.
"Well they did all that and more. He should have been sitting beside Takrit in this film, he should have been showing that face of his to the world, not trying to silence her," Sharon said. "But she was going against Aman. She knew how important this was."
"How did she get here, much less bring that film with her," Finn asked. "Certainly Emanuel didn't just wish her well and send her on her way."
"Hardly," Sharon laughed. "I got her out."
"You run in influential crowds, then, missus."
"Not really, but if you do this kind of work you meet the folk who know how to do that stuff. Believe me, they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. I sent a shit load of money over there; Aman worked the escape route to the border. He bribed people in country and then the people I paid took it from there. Takrit never talked about how it really went down and I didn't ask for details. It took her more than a year to make her way to the U.S. Aman was supposed to follow, but Emanuel's men got him first."
Foreign Relations: A Finn O'Brien Thriller (Finn O'Brien Thriller Series Book 2) Page 19
