by Radclyffe
“And look there,” Mitchell noted, pointing to the scripts, “he’s mentioned watching a half dozen times. Could be he’s brokering the real-time feeds.”
“There’s a problem,” Rebecca remarked with a frown.
“What?” Catherine asked in surprise. “Surely, it can’t be entrapment?”
“No—trouble for Jason.”
“You want to spell that out?” Sloan asked, her voice suddenly edged with flint.
Rebecca regarded Mitchell for a moment. Mitchell squared her shoulders, set her jaw, and stared back. Clearly, she was not going to leave until ordered.
“How many of Jason’s chats do we have recorded, Mitchell? Logged in somewhere.”
“All of them,” Mitchell replied immediately. That had been part of her assignment, and she was very thorough.
“That’s what I figured.” Rebecca rolled her shoulders, then faced Sloan, whose eyes had grown hard. “Jason could be in trouble if he’s been soliciting sex from minors on the Internet, even in the course of an investigation. Especially when these transcripts go into anything I take to the DA for a warrant.”
“Soliciting sex?” Sloan’s surprise was evident.
“The interaction mentioned here with HotChic13,” Rebecca clarified, waving the last page. “Is that recorded somewhere also?”
“Yep.” Sloan’s grin reappeared. “Every red hot word.”
“Well then—”
“Except,” Sloan added, “I’m HotChic13.”
Mitchell coughed. “Uh, and I’m PhillyFilly11—BigMac10’s other cybersex partner.”
Catherine laughed. Rebecca fixed Mitchell with a hard stare. “Redefining your assignment, Officer?”
“No, ma’am. Just…expanding it.”
Sloan looked for a moment as if she were going to come to Mitchell’s defense, then thought better of it. You didn’t get between a superior officer and a subordinate. Not and keep the superior officer as an ally, or a friend.
“Just remember you’re a cop, Mitchell. Accountability is part of the job.”
Sloan smothered a smile. She was willing to bet that there were a dozen things a day that Frye never reported and would deny any knowledge of. But she appreciated the detective keeping her rookie on the straight path. “We’ll cease using her, Sergeant, if you think it’s a problem.”
“No,” Rebecca responded. “Go ahead as you’ve been doing. But she doesn’t make contact with anyone else.”
“Roger,” Sloan said with a half-smile. “So,” she continued, turning to Catherine, “you think this LongJohn guy’s our best bet so far?”
“It certainly looks as if he’s pumping Jason for the right kinds of information.”
“Should we be a little more aggressive with him then?” Sloan asked. “Lead him a little?”
Catherine nodded thoughtfully. “Try to run into him tonight. I’d think it would be understandable if Ja—BigMac was curious after their last exchange and asked about real life opportunities. Shouldn’t run up any red flags.”
“Can you stay for a while and monitor the chats in case we get a hit?”
“Certainly.”
“Good. I’ll advise Jason of the plan so he can start trolling that board.” Sloan left with Mitchell close behind.
Catherine regarded Rebecca with a soft smile. “You like Mitchell, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?” Rebecca arched an eyebrow in surprise.
“You’re hard on people you like.”
Rebecca winced. “On you, too?”
“No.” Catherine moved closer and rested her hand on Rebecca’s arm. God, it was good just to touch her. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’ve missed you this week,” Rebecca confessed, feeling her entire body sway toward Catherine as if she’d been offered water in the desert. “Can I take you home later?” At Catherine’s look of hesitation, she added quickly, “I’ll just drive you home. I won’t stay or—”
“Oh, Rebecca,” Catherine said quietly, a too familiar note of sadness in her voice. “Don’t you know how much I’ve missed you, too? Do you think I don’t want you?”
“I just didn’t want you to think I meant…that all I wanted…” Rebecca swore sharply, then leaned the last few inches and kissed her gently. After a very long minute, she lifted her mouth away and murmured, “It’s not just about sex. That’s all I meant.”
“Are you going out tonight?” Catherine asked, stepping back so she could think clearly. It wasn’t all about sex, but the feel of her after days apart drove any semblance of reason from her mind.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter Sixteen
Rebecca waited across the street from the all-night Gateway Diner on the corner of 13th and Locust. The early September night was chilly, and she hunched her shoulders inside her worn leather jacket. Secluded in the shadows beneath the awning of a shoe repair store, she watched the parade going in and out through the revolving doors. Some were bar patrons who had left the neighborhood watering holes in search of something to eat before wending their way home; some were prostitutes of both genders taking a break from working the streets or just socializing with friends; and some were merely lonely people with nowhere else to be and no one waiting for them to be there. At 1:15, as Sandy’s message had said, the young blond approached, walking north on 13th and, a moment later, she joined Rebecca in the shadows.
“Hey,” Sandy said. Dressed in a short black leather skirt, open-toed high-heeled sandals, a pale scoop-neck top that outlined her high firm breasts, and a thin jacket that clearly wasn’t providing any warmth, she shivered visibly and wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off the night.
“You’re gonna have to start covering up if you don’t want to freeze your assets off,” Rebecca remarked.
“If they can’t see it, they don’t buy it,” Sandy rejoined.
Rebecca glanced out into the street, knowing that the occupants of the cars slowly crawling by were cruising the sidewalks for hookers or hustlers, searching for a few minutes of company. “Did you ever think of getting into another line of work?”
“Yeah. Except no one seems to be hiring nuclear physicists at the moment. You know, space travel ain’t what it used to be.”
“There are programs available,” Rebecca said quietly. “Places you could get job training or—”
“Frye, if you keep on with this social-work talk you’re really gonna scare me. Now, do you want the information I’ve got for you, or not?” Sandy had no intention of discussing her choices with the tall blond cop. For one thing, it was none of her business. For another, the quiet concern in Frye’s voice bothered her, and she didn’t want to think about exactly why. When people cared about you, they ended up owning a little piece of you. She didn’t want anyone to have even the smallest hold on her. Because then she was vulnerable.
Rebecca blew out a breath and rolled her shoulders, wondering what the hell she was trying to do. Sandy had probably been a runaway, most likely running from abuse, like the majority of young kids on the streets. Not all of them, she reminded herself, thinking of Anthony DeCarlo’s teenage daughter, who had left home to punish her parents—an act of adolescent rebellion that had almost cost her life. But most of them arrived on buses or thumbed their way into the city, only to end up sleeping ten to a room and selling themselves in one way or another for a meal, or drugs, or merely some human connection.
Sandy had made a choice for survival, and she had used her wits and whatever else she had to make that happen. As far as Rebecca knew, the young woman wasn’t using drugs, and she wasn’t selling herself at truck stops or under bridges in the underbelly of the city. She had a decent apartment, and it looked as if she was eating well and taking care of herself. If she was using her body to make a life for herself, there were worse things she could’ve done. And no matter what she was doing, Sandy was a source of information and that was all.
Rebecca
finally replied, “Yeah, tell me what you’ve got.”
“Let’s go somewhere and get a drink. I’m freezing out here.”
A few minutes later, they were seated at a back table in the Two Four Club, an after-hours place that catered to a mixed clientele whose only common bond was that they didn’t want to go home until they had no other choice. Rebecca walked to the bar and asked for a cup of coffee for herself and a beer for Sandy. The bartender grimaced at her request but poured lethal-looking liquid into a Styrofoam cup and passed it to her across the bar. She carried the cup and Sandy’s bottled beer back to the table, then fished four folded twenties out of her jeans and put them underneath the beer bottle.
“I know a girl who made some movies.” Sandy deftly extracted the bills and slid them into a pocket under the waistband of her skirt.
“Name. When and where. Details this time.”
Sandy shook her head. “First of all, who she is isn’t going to help you, and I’m not telling you. I know what she knows. Take it or leave it.”
“Give me what you got.” Pressing wouldn’t help. Sandy was unyielding about protecting her friends.
“She says she and two other girls had sex with three or four guys.”
“And that’s news?”
“Well, it is when somebody’s filming it for some kind of live TV.”
“What do you mean by ‘live’?” Rebecca’s pulse quickened.
“She says one guy told them that everything they said and did was going to be viewed just like prime-time television—right when it was happening—so to be careful not to use their own names.” Sandy sipped her beer, then continued with an expression of loathing on her face. “And to make sure they, you know, spoke up.”
“Why?” Rebecca asked.
“He gave them a…what do you call it…a script to look over before they started filming. But apparently it wasn’t much, just a list of things to say, you know…the usual…”
“Give me a for-instance.”
“Oh, you know. The things guys like to hear. Oh baby, you’re so big. It feels so good. Don’t hurt me. Hurt me. Don’t come in my mouth. Come all over me.” Sandy looked past Rebecca at some vision only she could see. “That kind of thing.”
“Did your friend say who they were, describe the men in any way to you?”
Sandy shook her head again. “No names. She went along as a substitute for some chick who usually did it but couldn’t make it because her boyfriend’d put her in the hospital. Says she didn’t even know the other girls she was with very well.”
“These girls. How old were they?” Rebecca asked quietly. Under the table, her hands were balled into fists, and she ignored the desire to break something.
“Thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen. But they all look about twelve, especially if they dress for the part.”
“Christ.”
Sandy glimpsed something very close to fury flicker across the starkly handsome planes of Frye’s face. There it was again, that undercurrent of concern that touched something in Sandy that she didn’t want to be awakened. It happened when she was with Dell, too. Even just being around Dell made it happen. Made her feel connected.
“What?” She was startled, realizing that Frye was speaking.
“Did she tell you where this was?” Rebecca repeated.
“Two different places—and apparently the girls don’t know where it’s going to be until that night. Someone picks them up and takes them there, and it’s all very, you know, 007. Darkened windows in the van, that kind of thing. A warehouse is all she told me.” She finished her beer and pushed the bottle aside. “I’m pretty sure it’s in the city, though, because she said it wasn’t more than half an hour, and it seemed like they were driving in circles for quite a while.”
Rebecca felt the familiar thrill of the hunt. This was a real lead. “She give you anything else?”
“Uh-uh. Just that she did two of these runs—one was about six months ago and the other three weeks ago.”
“How often do these live films get made?”
“She’s not sure.” Sandy gathered her things. “Look, I can probably find out more. I just thought you’d want to know about this operation.”
“You did plenty,” Rebecca said seriously. “I’ll take it from here.” She’d have Watts get with someone from Juvie and pull the files on all the girls under seventeen known to be turning tricks and still on the streets. One of them would know someone who’d been in on one of these shoots. The community was too close for this to be a secret. Eventually a location or a name or a description would pop up.
“You know, I could pass, Frye,” Sandy said quietly. “I do it all the time.”
“What?” Rebecca asked sharply, her attention suddenly completely focused.
“For fourteen or fifteen. If I send out the word that I want in…”
She should do it. She should use her. It was probably a better route to whoever was behind the whole operation than waiting for Sloan and Jason to sift through hundreds of pedophiles in hopes of finding one who could open a door for them.
“No. You’re done with this.” Rebecca stood, shrugging into her jacket. “Thanks.”
“Hey, Frye?” Sandy asked casually. “Who’s Catherine anyway?”
Rebecca regarded her impassively for a long moment, then smiled. A brief, quicksilver smile. “Anybody ever tell you that you ask too many questions?”
Then she was gone, leaving Sandy grinning at her back.
*
When Rebecca returned to Sloan Security, she found Jason, Sloan, and Catherine crowded around the large central work station while messages scrolled on three of the four computer monitors simultaneously. Glancing over Jason’s shoulder, she asked, “Any progress?”
“Lots of action,” Sloan responded as Jason continued to chat electronically with someone by the name of Everhard1040. “No sign of LongJohnXXX yet.”
“Mitchell go home?”
“Under duress,” Sloan said with a laugh. “She’d been here since 8:00 yesterday morning, so I told her to take off.”
It was 2:30 in the morning, and Rebecca felt the dull edge of fatigue clouding her brain. She shook herself mentally, annoyed that she still didn’t seem able to function at full speed. “How long are you going to keep at it?”
“A while longer,” Jason muttered. “He might still show up.”
“Catherine, I think you can probably call it a night,” Sloan said with a sigh. “We’ll keep an eye on things here for a bit.”
“If you get anything that looks promising,” Rebecca said, “call me. As soon as we have something solid, I want to take this to my captain and start discussing what we’ll need for a warrant.”
“You might as well start the wheels moving—you know how long the DA’s office takes to make a decision. At the very least, we’re going to need to confiscate any computer equipment we find so I can work on it back here,” Sloan advised with an optimism Rebecca did not share. “Once I have just one CPU that’s been receiving these live feeds, I can start tracing where the broadcasts are coming from.”
“We’ll probably need your crime scene techs on the scene to log everything we find and remove also,” Jason remarked. His eyes were still fixed on the constantly changing messages, and he occasionally typed a message, too.
“Fine. I had planned on giving my captain an update tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning before I meet with him if I don’t hear from you first.”
“Good enough,” Sloan agreed.
Bending down, Rebecca murmured to Catherine, “Are you ready to leave?”
“Yes.” She was used to dealing with people—emotions—in the intimate confines of therapy, one-on-one, face-to-face. Watching the disembodied phrases stream across the screen, knowing that somewhere there was a person attached to them, but having no sense of who that person truly was, disturbed and disoriented her. It left her with a compelling need to feel connected, to see and be seen. “More than ready.”
�
�Is your car here?” Rebecca asked as they stepped out onto the deserted street. Sloan’s building on Front Street faced the river one block away and Delaware Avenue, the sometimes-busy thoroughfare that ran along the waterfront. But at this hour, no one was about.
“Yes, I’m parked just down the block,” Catherine informed her, “but I’ll probably come back to review more transcripts some time tomorrow, so I don’t mind leaving it here overnight. Let’s just take one car.”
“Fine. I’ll drop you off tonight and then swing by and pick you up at your place in the morning before I go in to see the boss.” Rebecca unlocked the passenger door of the Corvette and held it open for Catherine. After walking around to the driver’s side, she slid in behind the wheel and reached to put the keys in the ignition. Catherine’s soft touch on her wrist stilled her motion. Turning to face her passenger, she said quietly, “What is it?”
“Let’s go to your apartment.”
“My apartment?” Rebecca said, startled.
“Yes. It occurred to me over the last few days that all of our time together has been spent at my place. I don’t know where you go when you leave me.”
“I don’t go anywhere.” Rebecca was still for a long moment, then she said in a low voice heavy with feeling, “When I’m not with you, Catherine, I’m either working or waiting to be with you again.”
Catherine smiled fondly, struck by how much Rebecca’s simple words stirred her, because she knew they didn’t come easily. Insistently, she said, “I want to see where you sleep. I want to be able to imagine you there when I’m in bed alone.” She didn’t add out loud, I want to be able to imagine you somewhere other than Sandy’s apartment…or a hospital bed.
“Okay. I have to warn you, though, it’s the maid’s week off.”
Catherine laughed and settled back into the bucket seat. “I promise not to look under the bed.”
From Sloan’s, Rebecca drove south on 4th Street into Queen Village, a pocket of small row houses and restaurants sandwiched between the newly trendy South Street business district and South Philadelphia, the historically working-class Irish and Italian area. Ten minutes later, they were climbing the stairs to Rebecca’s second-floor apartment above a mom-and-pop grocery store that had been owned by the same family for over fifty years. Rebecca tried frantically to remember exactly in what condition she had left her apartment, but she drew a blank. She so very rarely paid attention to her surroundings when she was there. It was a place to sleep, make coffee, and shower before going back to her real home, the city streets.
