Except for the dream. The dream she remembers. It cannot be ignored.
Dressed now, and adequately disguised in a wig and makeup, she makes her way downstairs, uses her room card to let herself into the empty business center, and logs on to one of the computers. She rarely uses computers, and only public machines. But at the moment she feels safe enough. If she had no idea where she was, then the chances are slim that anyone else knows.
The first thing she notes is the date. A full day and a half after the burning of the guard. What else she has done in the interim is a complete mystery to her.
She pulls up a search engine. It takes her only seconds to find the pertinent news. This blogger, one of the ones who call themselves Bitch, has found details that would not ordinarily be released. Another man has been killed in an alley, throat slashed, his own semen fresh on him. A trick. A monger, as they call themselves.
The news brings a rush of sensations through her. Heat and cold, startlement and confusion, curiosity and anger. And fear.
She breathes slowly and tries to focus as she reads carefully through the article, her pulse rising as she reads the references to the dark saint. When her visitor offered help, she’d had no idea how far it would be taken. Someone is invoking. Deliberately. Rashly.
When she has finished reading, she knows that something has begun that will not end on its own. And not without far more blood.
She clears the history from the computer and stands.
Outside the hotel she finds a sandy path on the cliff, and a trailhead leading down to the beach. The day is windy. Strong gusts whip her hair and push her against the rock wall as she winds her way toward the muffled roar of the ocean. She has no thoughts, only a mass of feelings rising up from her gut, threatening to choke her, and a single, stark word.
Trap.
She reaches the sand and runs across it toward the water, pushing against the wind and the downward pull of the sand. At the water’s edge she halts and paces along the tide line, feeling the waves rumble like a train in the earth beneath her feet. The wind beats against her face, lashes her clothes.
The urge to flee is overwhelming. Staying anywhere near here is madness, a sure road to imprisonment, with no possibility of a second reprieve. She must not get caught up in this new game.
Go. Now. Run.
But the girl.
The girl is both the instrument of her liberation . . . and her biggest obstacle to freedom and life. She is dangerous. She cannot be left out there alone.
The girl. The girl. The girl.
She holds her head and screams into the surf.
Chapter 38
Roarke sat in his office for some time, clicking through the links Singh had sent him to get to the Street Action forums. He was shocked at how many threads were virtual real-time records of the cruising on the stroll. It was a gold mine. There were threads for the Tenderloin, and even more for International Boulevard in Oakland, as well as pinned threads with useful tips for “hobbyists”: Keep a cleanup kit in the car so that a spouse or significant other doesn’t catch on to the “hobby.” Keep a dedicated cell phone for the “hobby,” with bills mailed to a PO box under a different name.
There were camera phone photos, links to classified ads showing sex workers with availability “right now,” and warnings of law enforcement sightings and transvestites.
It would be like having dozens of eyes on the street with them, unknowingly reporting in.
Reading through individual posts, he experienced much the same kind of disgust he had felt emanating from Singh. But he also noted an interesting groundswell of panic among the regulars on the board. In the middle of the usual threads warning about law enforcement sightings, there was one thread titled:
SW Gone Wack?
Roarke clicked on it to read the posts.
MRDISCREET: Heard a monger got offed the other night by some loca SW.
MONGER83: On Inty?
MRDISCREET: No dude, in the TL.
BONEDADDY: I heard the same. Got hisself robbed and knifed after a BJ.
Roarke scrolled through useless speculation and conflicting reports . . . then stopped on a response by a poster with the screen name Ballsout.
BALLSOUT: Maybe he deserved it. Maybe the great goddess karma is walking the streets.
Naturally the responses that followed were violent reactions to the suggestion: profanity-laced, misspelled invectives against the poster.
There was one last chilling post:
BALLSOUT: There will be more. It’s time for a reckoning.
And then the thread had been closed by the moderator to further comment.
Roarke reached for the police sketch in his in-box and studied the image of the young blogger: that cool, assessing gaze . . .
He started as someone stepped into the office doorway. He looked up to see Singh. She held her tablet in her hand. “Your theory that Goldman was a sick trick seems to have been corroborated.”
He tensed up. “Mills found something?”
“Not Mills. Your blogger.” She passed him her tablet. He looked down at another article.
The Secret Life of an Ordinary Citizen
Meet Andrew Goldman. By day he sells high-end office equipment. He has a wife, two children, a mortgage on a house in Millbrae.
By night he downloads rape porn and trolls the streets of San Francisco looking for underage prostitutes.
That is, he did. Until this week. When his hobby got him killed.
Something is happening in San Francisco. Someone has said, “Enough.” And said it in a way that sex offenders can’t mistake.
Roarke read on.
The blogger had hacked into Goldman’s porn accounts, including links to videos in categories like “Schoolgirl Rape.” She had reprinted some of his posts from the Redlight forums, where apparently his handle had been Beaverstretcher.
Roarke pulled himself away from the article as Singh spoke. “She is a very skilled hacker,” the agent said. She was looking down at the sketch on his desk, and Roarke heard admiration in her voice. “I would like to talk with her about her methods.”
Roarke dropped his gaze back to the article.
The blogger had also interviewed sex workers about Goldman.
Girls on the street were familiar with “Beaverstretcher.” The more experienced knew to avoid him. “Bad news” was the general consensus. “He raped a girlfriend of mine,” said one sex worker, who asked to remain anonymous.
Goldman may have believed, as many men do, that there’s no such thing as raping a prostitute. Or, being a rapist, he may not have cared one way or another. But whatever he believed, he won’t be raping any more prostitutes, or schoolgirls, or anyone else. Because Goldman was killed on Thursday, his throat cut from ear to ear in an alley off the Tenderloin stroll known to “mongers” as a safe spot for a quick blowjob. Just two days ago a pimp was killed two blocks away, in exactly the same manner.
There is a killer out there who gets it.
Singh spoke from the other side of the desk. “I find it interesting that she has not written about the murder of the guard, Driscoll.”
Roarke looked up sharply. Singh was right. He didn’t know what it meant, though. She doesn’t know? She’s not in touch with Cara? Or she knows and is protecting her?
The article went on.
Some people reading this may not believe Goldman’s crime was as great as that of the pimp DeShawn Butler. Men like Andrew Goldman tell themselves that they’re paying for a service. But a “sex worker” under the control of a pimp is not working for herself. Five prostituted girls can earn $1,500 a night for a pimp, and the women see almost none of that money themselves. In exchange for servicing ten or more men a night, these women get nothing but clothes, fast food, and the drugs that keep them enslaved to their exploiters.
&nb
sp; Mongers like Andrew Goldman perpetuate that hell.
Let’s be clear about the men who have died. They are sex traffickers. Rapists. Child predators. Abusers of every ilk.
Pimp or john, they’re finally getting what they deserve.
This is a call to arms. This is a war against rape culture.
Roarke looked up from the tablet with a knot in his stomach. The words arms and war echoed in his head.
Hyperbole? To an extent. But how many people were reading this? And how seriously might some of them take this “call to arms”?
Singh was watching him. He spoke slowly.
“I think the blogger is on the forums. This poster seems to have her phrasing, and she used a sentence . . .” He turned to his own computer and clicked on a few threads, located the poster with the screen name Ballsout.
Singh leaned forward to scan the thread, then looked up. “Agreed. The diction is similar.”
“The question is, is she instigating, or is she more physically involved?”
Singh thought on it. “Obviously she has been in contact with other girls on the street and has gleaned what we suspected: that Goldman was an abusive trick.”
“Which means that Jade might have been after Goldman specifically, not just randomly hunting . . .” Then something inside him went still. “Has Bitch been talking to girls? Or has she been talking to Jade?”
Jade had been at the courthouse during the demonstration. Certainly the blogger would not have stayed away.
And what am I thinking now? That they’re all in it together? Madness.
He looked up at Singh. Her gaze was far away.
“I think we must find this blogger.”
When she had gone, Roarke swiveled his chair to look out at the city. The Tenderloin was literally at his feet, fifteen stories below.
The feeling of dread was back, in full force.
What am I sending my people into tonight?
Chapter 39
She has been driving for some time. South on the 101, then east through the vineyards of the Sonoma Valley.
Driving to be on the move, driving to calm her agitation, driving to pass the day until the dark, when the moon will talk to her.
The safe thing would be to go north, into Oregon, Washington—to cross as many state lines as she can, put distance between herself and San Francisco, get lost in the endless miles of forest in the states between California and the Canadian border. The fewer people the better. Always.
But that is no longer possible. There will need to be a plan, a lure. She must set her own trap now, and not become tangled in the other’s web.
She concentrates on the road, on the bleak winter light over the pale grass on gently rolling hills. As she nears San Francisco, she can feel Roarke focusing his thoughts on where she might be. Tracking her. He has his job, just as she has hers.
So she veers off the main highway onto the 116 toward Napa, taking different small highways, the 29, the 12, wending her way east in the largest circle she can make around the San Francisco Bay Area, before heading south again.
Near Lodi, the road signs give her the choice of continuing east, and her hands tighten on the wheel. The pull is strong to make the turn, to drive far out of reach. She can be in the Sierras by nightfall, and she has a cabin there, bought for cash years ago, completely off the grid. She could hole up, recover from the disorientation and displacement of jail, sleep for a month in the peace of the wilderness . . .
Impossible.
There is no such thing as safety with the girl out there, loose. She cannot leave this unfinished. And she cannot do what she needs to do without Roarke out of the way.
So when she sees the turnoff to the I-5, she takes it south, watching the road and waiting for a sign.
There are vast stretches of California with no houses, no businesses . . . where the blank canvas of the white-gold hills and fields makes certain configurations stand out and assume meaning. Trees and animals grouped into signs that can be read. Streams of slanting light through holes in the clouds. Dust spiraling up from a field like smoke from a witch’s cauldron. An inexplicable field of uprooted trees, all laid out like corpses in their rows, bare roots obscenely exposed.
The clouds move quickly, casting looming dark shadows over the hills. She thinks of the shadow in the cave and is reminded that there is something else at work now, beyond the blogger, even beyond the girl, a wild card she cannot begin to interpret. The thought starts a coldness deep inside her.
She grips the steering wheel and drives on, asking for a sign.
Chapter 40
Roarke exited the BART station at Twenty-Fourth and Mission and walked blankly toward home. In his mind he saw Jade sitting in the dark of the Belvedere House lounge, covered in her defiant body art, small and still.
A sixteen-year-old girl out there in the night. Planning . . . hunting.
Is it Jade, though?
Who are we setting this trap for?
Multiple killers. Viral murder. Santa Muerte.
And what had Singh said, after the first blog article?
A living myth. A force beyond the merely human.
As if it all hadn’t been strange enough to begin with . . .
His steps slowed as he became aware that something about his surroundings seemed off. He stood still, disoriented . . . and realized he’d made the first turn off Mission and strayed from his usual route. He was now on a darker side street.
The facade of a building ahead blazed with a mural, the wildly colorful Mexican artwork so typical of the Mission District. The painting adorned a basement-level shop with stairs descending from the sidewalk to a low door. A botanica, a Mexican occult shop. They were so common in the neighborhood, these tiny shops squeezed between the liquor stores and groceries and bars, that Roarke barely noticed them anymore. But now he moved toward it and stopped on the sidewalk, staring into the lower window of the building. The feeling of unreality hit like a slow-breaking wave.
A life-size skeleton figure stared out on him, dressed in a white gown, globe in one hand, scythe in the other. An owl was nestled in her robes, and candles of all colors burned at her feet, along with the now-familiar offerings: candies, tequila, cigarettes. The entire window was an altar to Santa Muerte.
How often have I passed it? he wondered as he looked into the saint’s bony face. A hundred times? A thousand?
He moved down the stairs with a sense of sleepwalking.
The doorway was low and he had to duck his head to enter. Inside, the shop had the low ceiling of a converted basement. The air was thick with incense and candle smoke, and the shop was crammed with a maze of shelves that reached all the way to the ceiling, holding prayer books, candles of all colors, glass candleholders decorated with pictures of saints. Cellophane packs of herbs hung from clotheslines stretched above counters full of more esoteric items. Roarke scanned the shelves, taking in brown bags labeled in Spanish and sometimes in English, leaving no doubt as to their contents’ purpose: Attract Love. Big Money. Protect the Traveler. Take Away Evil. Underneath the scent of incense he could smell garlic, peppermint, chamomile, tobacco, and any number of familiar and unfamiliar herbs.
A hushed conversation in Spanish came from deeper in the shop. He stepped to the end of an aisle to look down and caught a glimpse of a tiny woman garbed all in white. She stood behind a long glass counter, engaged in intent conversation with a middle-aged female customer. Roarke recalled that many of the Mission’s Latino immigrants had no health insurance, and the curanderas of the botanicas provided herbal cures, as well as spells for less tangible troubles.
He turned away, giving the women their privacy. Against the next wall were four altars with near-life-size statues: the Virgin Mary, a dark male figure Roarke was unfamiliar with, yet another Santa Muerte, and some Egyptian animal god. Each altar had numerous l
it candles and offerings of all types: money, roses, food, alcohol, dishes of what looked like honey. The Santa Muerte altar was the most eclectic and startling: smoke curled from a lit cigarette stuck in the skeletal mouth, and a wad of dollar bills was tucked into the crook of her arm.
Roarke moved into the next aisle . . . and was unnerved to find himself facing a whole row of the saint figures, three feet tall, grinning bonily down from the top shelf. Lower shelves held smaller figurines dressed in robes of different colors. Hundreds of them.
A line from Bitch’s blog ran through his head. “Numerous shops report half or more of their profits are earned from Santa Muerte paraphernalia.”
An underground he’d had no idea existed. Now it seemed vast, and ominous.
A voice spoke behind him, so close he twisted around in the narrow, crowded aisle.
“La Santísima . . . Santísima Muerte.”
The white-garbed curandera stood directly behind him. She was as tiny as her shop; the top of her head didn’t reach Roarke’s chin. But there was a presence about her that commanded attention.
Her eyes flicked to the rows of saints. “Usted la conoce.” You know her.
She spoke Spanish as if she were certain he would understand, and to a point, he did. He had a grasp of the basics of the language—part of the job, part of being a native Californian.
“No mucho . . .” he responded. Not much.
The tiny woman nodded emphatically. “Sí. Está muy cerca de usted.” Yes. She is very close to you.
Roarke looked at her, wondering. She dropped her voice and spoke rapidly. “Está de su parte. Pero debe tener cuidado. Mucho cuidado. Hay enemigos.”
He was struggling to follow, but he thought he understood most of it. You have her favor. But you must be careful. Very careful. There are enemies.
Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) Page 19
