Sleep Don't Come Easy

by McGlothin, Victor

  There was a time when he’d been her best friend, and she could talk to him about anything, and he got her. He really got her; even when everybody else around her thought she was a loon, Drew had a knack for knowing exactly what she meant, or what she was trying to say, or what she was going to say. Somewhere along the line, shit went awry between them, but in a crunch, he was still her friend, butter babies or no butter babies.

  They sat next to each other on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder, sipping on wine, forgetting all about the fact that he was seeing another woman, and that she hated him for it. But she could never blame him for leaving her for someone else. She was just pissed that he couldn’t have picked somebody less superficial than the redhead.

  “Toni had pages of files on that Alina Petrov—search queries, pictures. And now both of them are dead all of a sudden? Does that sound right to you?”

  He took a drink of wine, before responding. “Don’t ask me to be the investigative reporter, Fatema. I’m just a jock, and for all I know, it could simply be coincidence. Didn’t you say she had all kinds of articles and stories about missing people?”

  “She did, but—I don’t know. Something in my gut tells me that there’s more of a connection here.”

  “Maybe there is, but for the life of me, I can’t see what it could be.”

  She leaned forward and sighed deeply. “The cops still don’t have any leads, at least none that they’re willing to talk about.”

  He rubbed his hand across her back. “They’re working on it. It’s going to take time.”

  “You sound just like them.” She finished the wine in her glass and filled it again. “I tracked down this guy I think she was seeing. Nelson Monroe. He works at the shelter where she volunteered.”

  “Thought you said she was seeing some cat named Luke?”

  “She broke up with Luke, for Monroe, I think. Anyway, he’s a do-gooder like Toni from what I hear. She was really feeling him, too.”

  “You talk to him?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. We’re going to talk over coffee on Thursday. The police have really been grilling him, and for the most part, he’s all talked out. I think they were getting pretty serious.” All of a sudden, Fatema choked up. “It’s so unfair, Drew—for one human being to think they have the right to take life away from another. Toni—that young woman—they both had their whole lives ahead of them, and—”

  Drew pulled her close and held her in his arms. Fatema had him trained, or sprung or something, because all she ever had to do was call, and he came running. They’d been divorced for almost a year, and despite the façade of having moved on, he always kept one foot in Fatema’s doorway, waiting for the opportunity to try one more time. Fatema might’ve been blind to it, but Aisha, the woman he had been seeing, wasn’t. He never told Aisha that he still saw Fatema, but he never had to, and the thing is, he never denied it either.

  Detective Bruce Baldwin didn’t believe in coincidences either. Toni Robbins was on to something. He suspected she wasn’t even really sure of what that something was, but she had pieces of a puzzle that she had no idea how to put together, or maybe she did, and maybe that’s why she was murdered.

  The press hadn’t reported it yet, but the woman had been sexually abused and there was evidence of drugs in her system. Speculation among police was that Alina Petrov was too visible; her picture had been splashed across every newspaper and on every news channel across the country from the moment she’d been abducted. Someone didn’t want to be found with Alina, and the only way to make sure that didn’t happen had been to discard her.

  He slowly flipped through copies of Toni’s files, seeing face after face of abducted women and children. Locally, a prostitution ring operating under the guise of a massage parlor that had been closed down a few months back housed half a dozen illegal Korean immigrants, all female, forced to sleep on dirty floors, allowed to eat a can of soup a day, forced to have sex with patrons, and beaten or tortured if they refused. He remembered the case. The women were terrified victims who refused to talk, fearing they’d be deported or killed. He came across another article about a group of men from Mexico, forced to work eighteen-hour days in peach groves for pennies with hardly any food to eat, and no medical care for those who became ill.

  If Miss Robbins was always down for the cause, as her sister had put it, then she picked one hell of a cause to be down for. One as ancient as time itself, and the pessimist in him settled into the fact that this modern day slavery would certainly outlast him.

  New Friends

  The television didn’t do him justice. Nelson Monroe was incredible to look at, with a genuinely charming personality. His hazel eyes and strikingly white teeth were a dramatic contrast to his dark complexion, and shoulder-length locks added to the exotic appeal of the man. He reminded her of one of those men immortalized on the covers of romance novels.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as soon as he sat down. “Traffic.”

  The waitress appeared as if by magic. “Hi. What can I get you?”

  “Just coffee,” he said, taking off his coat.

  “And are you still good?” she asked Fatema, without ever taking her eyes off Nelson.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  Fatema wondered if he truly knew how mesmerizing he was to women, but from the indifferent look on his face, she figured that was her answer. Involuntarily, a comparison between Drew and Nelson formed in her mind. OK, so it was lame of her to compare every man to her ex-husband, but until she got a new husband, Drew was all she had to work with in recent years. Drew was that pretty kind of handsome, chiseled, and defined. Nelson, he was grown-man handsome. Rugged? No. Just earthy. Almost as if you could smell a breeze coming from him. She made a conscious effort not to stare.

  “I didn’t see you at the funeral,” she said during the conversation that came surprisingly easy to both of them.

  “I was there,” he said, quietly. “Saying goodbye was difficult.”

  “Yeah,” Fatema said reflectively. “Still is.”

  “She used to talk about you all the time. Had some pretty interesting stories.”

  Fatema looked frightened. “What did she say?”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. Nothing I could sell to the tabloids.”

  For some reason, she found very little comfort in that.

  “How long were the two of you seeing each other? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Not long enough,” he said sadly. “She started volunteering at the shelter about six months ago, and I fell for her the first day I laid eyes on her.” He smiled. “She wasn’t feeling me like that, though.”

  Boy, please! She wanted to scream. If she knew Toni the way she thought she knew Toni, then she knew without a doubt that she was feeling him too.

  “Did you ever meet her family?”

  “I met her sister, Tracy. Spitting image of Toni.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t let her hear you say that. She’s got a major case of the don’t-compare-me-to-my-big-sister syndrome.”

  “Yeah, but you could tell she was proud of her, though. Looked up to her like she was the big sister.”

  Fatema smiled. “This is true. I think we both did. I’m older than Toni by three months, but she was always the more responsible one, and most of the time, I tried to do whatever she told me because she was usually right.”

  “She usually was.” He sounded melancholy.

  “It was pretty serious between you two, though?” Fatema probed further.

  He nodded. “It was on its way to becoming very serious. I’d never met anyone like her before. Toni and I were on the same page about a lot of things. I’ve been in plenty of relationships where women come into it believing they can handle my commitment to The Broadway, until they get a taste of what that really means.”

  “They couldn’t handle it?”

  “They could as long as it didn’t interfere with the weekends, evenings, holidays.” He laughed. “Those a
re the peak times at that place, and I have to be there. Toni understood that, and there were many times when I’d look up on Thanksgiving or Friday evenings, Sunday mornings, and see her coming through the door, ready to don an apron and get to work. It meant almost as much to her as it does to me. And she wasn’t fronting. She genuinely cared.”

  Fatema broached the next question carefully. “Did she ever talk to you about a man she called Luke that she may have been seeing at one time?”

  He hesitated before answering. “Yes. She told me about him.”

  “Did she stop seeing him because of you?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “He was married.”

  “And she came to her senses and cut him loose?”

  “She cut him loose, and I’m sure his marriage had something to do with it, but there was more to it than that.”

  Fatema smiled. “She fell for you.” She winked.

  He smiled back. “Eventually.”

  “Good for her.”

  “Luke is the mayor, Fatema,” he reluctantly admitted. “Lucas Shaw.”

  Fatema’s chin dropped. “The mayor?”

  “The one and only,” he confirmed.

  “She was screwing the mayor,” she said making sure to keep her voice low. “And she dumped him because—why? Because he’s the mayor and he’s married?”

  “She stopped seeing him because he’s the mayor, and he’s married, and he was cheating on her.”

  “Who?” she asked, confused.

  “Toni.”

  Awe washed over her face. “Let me get this straight. He was cheating on his wife with Toni, and then he was cheating on Toni with somebody else?”

  Nelson shrugged.

  “I need something stronger than coffee,” she exclaimed.

  He laughed. “Yeah, me too.”

  All sorts of thoughts ran through her head, like what the hell was Toni doing sleeping with the married mayor in the first place?

  “Did she ever tell you what she saw in him?” Nelson was the wrong person to be asking this question, but it just sort of fell out of her mouth before she could catch it.

  “I think he just happened to come along at the right time in her life, to be honest. Toni was vulnerable and lonely, and he worked it.”

  “Toni was gorgeous, Nelson. How the hell would she ever have time to be lonely? Men fell at her feet.”

  “Not necessarily the right men, though.”

  Okay. She could see that. Toni always could get a man, but thinking back, some of them fools should’ve been neutered at birth to prevent reproduction. And she usually fell for them and she usually ended up regretting it.

  “He’s a successful man, rich, powerful, and she fell for him. And she hated the fact that she’d fallen for him. So, when she found out that he was sidestepping on her too, she called it quits, only he wasn’t trying to hear it.”

  “He’s got nerve!”

  Nelson laughed. “He didn’t want to let her go, and he let her know that all the damn time. I asked her if she wanted me to step in and run interference, but she was afraid of how it might affect the shelter as far as funding and grants go. I didn’t think it would affect it one way or another, but it was her business and she asked me to stay out of it. What choice did I have?”

  “For the life of me, Nelson, I can’t believe she ever let herself get involved with someone like that. I mean, so, he’s not a bad looking brotha, but he’s married. She’s always frowned upon any woman who would stoop to that level, and here she was doing the same thing she condemned other women for. All I can think is that he must have some serious game, or she must’ve been mighty desperate.”

  “Honestly,” he sighed, “I think it was a bit of both, and I think that if she were here, she’d tell you the same thing.”

  “She was at the shelter the night she died. Were you there?”

  “Yeah. And I feel like shit about it, too. She was getting ready to leave. It was about eight-thirty and I offered to walk her to her car, but she told me not to bother because it was in a lot a few blocks away. I told her to wait for me, and then one of the volunteers interrupted us and when I turned around, she’d left already.”

  Fatema shook her head. “Stubborn.”

  “Very,” he agreed. “She said she was going home. I told her I’d call her later, but—”

  “The police seem to think she was running away from someone, but I’m confused. Both her car and the shelter were in the opposite direction,” she said, thinking out loud. “If she were headed for her car, then what would make her run in the opposite direction? And what would make her run past the shelter if she knew you were still there?”

  “You got me,” he said, frustrated. “The cops have been grilling me since it happened, and I don’t know what to tell them, Fatema. Because I don’t understand it either. I was there for at least another half hour, and then I went home.”

  “They say she was killed between eleven and three in the morning. It’s like, she never left?”

  “Maybe she stopped at one of the bars for a drink or met someone,” he speculated. “I’m just guessing.”

  Fatema had speculations of her own. “I wonder where Shaw was that night?”

  Nelson couldn’t believe where she was going with this. “You don’t think—I mean the man had it bad for her, Fatema, but I don’t think he had it bad enough to—he’s got too much to lose to do something crazy like that.”

  “He’s got too much to lose to be cheating on his wife too, but that didn’t seem to stop him. I’m not saying anything except that maybe he’s the reason she didn’t go straight home. I’m not saying he did this.” But she was thinking that it was a possibility. Men killed women they loved all the time. It was that if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-can syndrome. It was a stretch, but Fatema was just considering it. That’s all.

  “Well, it’s possible, I guess. She worked a few blocks from The Broadway too, so maybe she saw someone she knew and they stopped off for coffee or something.”

  “Maybe. I did a story a few years back for PBS called Invisible People: The Plight of the Homeless in America. Did you ever see it?” she asked, hopeful that someone saw the damn thing.

  His eyes lit up. “That was you? I watched it a couple of times. Even taped it.”

  “Really?” she asked proudly. “Yeah, that was me. My hair’s different now, and I’ve actually lost a few pounds.”

  “I thought you looked familiar. I kept wondering where I’d seen you before. It was a great piece, by the way. Very informative and real. You really touched on some issues most people don’t want to acknowledge.”

  “Thanks. I really tried to—anyway, we filmed a few days with a man named Lazarus. Lazarus was absolutely fascinating.

  “He’d spent twenty-three years in prison for a vehicular homicide that occurred when his car collided with another, killing a man and his six-year-old daughter. Lazarus suffered some pretty serious head injuries, but he survived and went to prison, and ended up living on the streets after he got out.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, he actually used to live under that viaduct where they found Toni’s body. Years ago, it was where he used to sleep almost every night. Apparently, he had his accident not too far from there and there’s this spiritual connection or something that draws him to that place.”

  “You think he could’ve been there that night?”

  She sat back and folded her arms across her chest, and gloated. “If he’s still alive, then I’d be willing to bet money on it. It’s dark in some of the corners and nooks and crannies down there, Nelson. A person could hide there and not be seen.”

  “Well, if he was there, why do you think he wouldn’t stop something like that from happening?”

  “He’s crazy.”

  Nelson looked at her like she was grasping for straws.

  “I know it’s a long shot, Nelson, but I think it could possibly be a lead of some kind. Lazarus is crazy, but he’s a creature of habit too. H
e may have been there and he may have seen something. Even if he didn’t actually witness the murder, maybe he saw someone chasing her, or maybe he saw someone leaving the scene.”

  “Do you think you can find him?”

  “Like I said, he’s a creature of habit, and I spent two days following the man around with a camera. I don’t think he’ll be hard to find.”

  “If he’s still alive,” Nelson reiterated.

  “If he is. Yes.”

  Partners in Crime

  Dan Goodwin was the closest thing to a friend that Baldwin had. They’d partnered together briefly on a couple of cases during their careers, and tolerated each other’s company well enough to enjoy a beer together every now and then. Goodwin worked in vice, and every now and then, their paths crossed and they sometimes helped each other out.

  “The world ain’t big enough for coincidences,” Goodwin said, gulping down his beer. “Your dead woman and my dead woman are connected some kind of way. We just need to figure out how. Found this on the Russian woman’s wrist.” He pulled a piece of paper from his inside coat pocket, unfolded it and spread it out on the table in front of Baldwin. It was a photocopy of the front page story from the newspaper edition with Toni’s picture on the front. It looked as if the newspaper had been torn into thin, even strips, and then pieced back together to reform the picture.

  Baldwin nearly spit out his beer when he saw it. It was damn near the whole front page article and photograph of Toni Robbins the day after her body had turned up. Baldwin stared stunned at Goodwin, who sat back smirking.

  “Them patient motherfuckers in Forensics carefully removed it from my victim’s wrist, then pieced this crap back together until they came up with this. Looked like a paper chain a kid would make or something.”