Mills heaved his bulk into the front seat of the van and twisted the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life. Roarke stared into the monitor, searching the shadows as he half-shouted into the phone.
“Epps. There’s someone in a mask, following you. Dark pants, dark hoodie. Use extreme caution.”
“Copy that,” Epps’ voice came back.
Polk and Hemlock was maybe three minutes away as the crow flies, but the narrow, one-way streets of downtown San Francisco were a logistical nightmare. Mills drove like a madman, one hairpin turn after another. As the van swerved, Roarke held on to the sides of his seat to stay upright and glanced into the monitor at the static street scene, snapping into the phone, “Epps, where are you?”
Silence from Epps’ end.
“Epps,” Roarke repeated sharply. And felt his heart drop . . . as the phone disconnected.
He reached for his weapon, twisted around in the dark, and was pushing open the back door of the van before Mills had come to a full stop. Roarke was out in an instant, hitting the sidewalk and sprinting toward Hemlock.
It was a short block, just four large buildings long, but felt like the longest run of his life as he pounded the pavement. He whipped around a corner . . . and pulled up short as he nearly ran into three startled streetwalkers. Two of them screamed, sending his pulse skyrocketing. He held up his Glock in a flat palm.
“You’re all right. Looking for a tall African American man. Jeans, dark hoodie. Have you seen him?” he demanded.
The girls shook their heads, wide-eyed.
His eyes swept the hazily lit street behind them. A few scattered transients drinking. Nothing like a sexual transaction going on . . .
Then he spotted the opening of an alley between two warehouse structures and bolted toward it, Glock at the ready again . . .
He rounded the corner and saw two silhouettes moving ahead of him in the mist: a portly man with his arm around a much slighter figure in a tube skirt, wobbling on high heels.
As Roarke barreled toward them, the man whipped around to face him.
“FBI,” Roarke shouted. “Don’t move.”
Both the man and the girl froze. Roarke looked the young woman over quickly. Black hair . . . older and thinner than Jade.
He walked up to them, his weapon in one hand and his credentials in the other. He focused on the man, a pasty-faced, pudgy man in his late forties. “Are you Hungman?” he demanded.
“What? Who? No,” the man said. The look on his face said otherwise.
A shadow suddenly loomed up behind the couple.
“Freeze!” Roarke shouted, aiming the Glock in the dark . . .
And recognized Epps. They locked eyes; then his agent lowered his own weapon, looked from the young woman to the man. “Looks like we caught ourselves a monger.”
Roarke glanced toward the young woman. “You can go.”
She needed no persuasion but teetered away as fast as she could move on too-high heels. Roarke turned back to the man, who shifted on his feet, looking trapped and defensive. “You—are taking a ride.”
Hungman sat hunched into himself on the bench seat in the van, glaring at Roarke and Mills and Epps, reeking of pot and sweat.
On the computer screen, the bust was already being documented on the Redlight forums.
BIGBOPPER: Hey bros watch out! LE just dragged a monger into a locksmith van at Polk and Hemlock.
NINJA: Game ovah 2night.
“Well now, look at that,” Epps told their collar. “You’re famous.”
Mills was already on the guy. “This you?” He pointed to the screen, showing him the post by Hungman.
The man glared and said nothing.
Mills looked him over. “Hungman. You’re a man of subtlety, aren’t you? Here’s the deal, Hungman. At the moment you are under arrest for soliciting. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. On the other hand, we could have a conversation. And at the end of this convo we turn you loose . . . if you talk about this girl you posted about last night. No booking, no record, no hard feelings.”
The pudgy monger looked from Mills to Roarke sullenly. “Or?”
“Or we take you in right now. Booking, charges, plenty of hard feelings, not the good kind.”
The man settled back on the bench of the van and waited truculently. Mills put his beefy hands on his knees.
“Alrighty then. Let’s get this party started. Name?”
“Frank Wilson.”
“Address?”
The man looked trapped.
Mills shrugged. “Hey, the wife never has to know. Long as you cooperate.”
Wilson answered reluctantly. “453 Green. Hayward.”
“So you were out cruising last night and you saw this sex worker you describe here?” Mills turned the computer screen toward Wilson so he could read the post:
HUNGMAN: Need intel on young wsw spotted near bakery on Polk. Smoking little body, tight hot ass, black short hair, silver tube top, black mini, freaky all-over tats.
Wilson glanced at it, glowered. “That’s what it says.”
“Yeah. It also says ‘Hungman.’ This is why I don’t believe everything I read.”
Before Wilson could protest, Mills put the mug shot of Jade down on the makeshift table between them. “This the girl?”
Roarke felt himself tensing as the john looked it over. “Hair’s different. But it looks like her.”
Roarke and Epps exchanged a quick glance.
“You ever get with her before?” Mills asked.
“No.”
“Now, hold up. I want you to think about it. Consider your response. Remember the nice, cushy cell we got waiting for you.”
“I never went with her,” Wilson said, sounding injured. “Not last night, not ever.”
“You saw her, you were askin’ for intel on her, but you didn’t go with her,” Epps said flatly. “I don’t guess it was a flash of conscience, so what happened?”
A rush of expressions moved across the man’s face: anger, resentment, embarrassment.
“The truth,” Epps warned.
“She just left, okay?” Wilson snapped. “She looked me over and said, ‘Move along, asshole. Not your night.’”
Roarke and Mills exchanged a glance.
Jade. It sounded just like her.
“Were you posting in real time, soon as you saw her?” Roarke asked.
“Pretty close.”
“So this was just before midnight last night, 11:40 or so?”
“If that’s what it says.”
“What about the tats?”
“What about them?”
“A description.”
The john shrugged. “She had on a tube top. There was art all over her back. Like, fire. Winding up her neck into her hair.”
Roarke felt a twinge of excitement. Lots of sex workers were tattooed, but Jade’s were heavy on the fire imagery and she definitely had them running up into her hair. It was a dangerous and painful procedure, not as often seen. He was both glad for the ID and sick over it. Jade had been cruising the Tenderloin the night of Andrew Goldman’s murder. Not good news.
“About how old was she?”
The man started to respond and then stopped himself. “Eighteen,” he finally said sullenly. “Nineteen. How do I know?”
“Try sixteen,” Epps said.
“Don’t know anything about that.”
Mills shook his head. “Now, see, we thought that your use of the word young in your postings might indicate otherwise.”
The john sat in silence.
Mills sighed, leaned forward, and slapped a photo of the dead john, Goldman, in front of Wilson. “’Kay, let’s try this. You see this guy while you were out last night
?”
“No.”
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
Mills replaced the photo of Goldman with the composite sketch of the blogger. “How about this woman? Ever seen her before?”
Wilson barely glanced at the sketch. “Not my type.”
Mills looked two seconds away from murder. “You think I give a shit? Take a good look and tell us if you’ve seen her before.”
Wilson dropped his gaze to the sketch, studied it. “I don’t know.”
Roarke reached for his own iPad and pulled up a photo. “You see anyone dressed like this out there?” He passed the tablet over to Wilson, who looked down at the skull head, the shadowy shot from online. He startled back in his seat.
“Jesus. No.”
Mills and Roarke exchanged a glance.
“Sure about that?” Mills demanded.
“You think I wouldn’t remember?”
“You got lucky,” Roarke said. The john looked stupidly blank. “Guys like you are getting killed for mongering.”
For the first time, Wilson looked genuinely shaken. “Thought that was just some bitch trying to stir things up on the boards.”
“Oh no,” Mills said. “It’s for real. Body count’s rising.”
“So why don’t you catch this cunt?” Wilson asked petulantly.
Roarke had to keep his arm pinned to his side to keep from hitting him. Instead he spoke tightly. “You really don’t get it, do you? How close you came?”
“Not doin’ anything wrong,” the john said.
There was no point in staying out. The takedown had been broadcast on the forums; streetwalkers and johns alike had scattered. The streets were deserted. The agents got Wilson’s details, then turned him loose. The three of them sat in the dark back of the van, just the light of the computer screens on their faces.
“It was Jade, right?” Epps said. “She was right there with him.”
Mills nodded slowly. He looked to Roarke to confirm. “But she didn’t kill him. Why?”
Roarke was thinking on it. “Maybe they’re not random kills. According to Wilson, he didn’t know her. She came up to his car but didn’t go with him. Maybe she mistook the car for someone she did know and backed off when she saw Wilson instead of Goldman.”
“Goldman didn’t drive a MINI,” Epps pointed out.
Roarke realized it was true. “Maybe Goldman wasn’t the only one she was looking for,” he replied. Then he felt cold at the implication. Does she have a list?
“You mean, it’s personal,” Epps said.
Chapter 44
The moon is waxing. December moon. Cold Moon.
Through the windshield, she watches it rise in the sky, bathing the hills in icy light, illuminating the long, slow serpent crawl of trucks in the far lane.
So clear, what it is saying to her now, and it is not hard to find what she needs.
She has circled the freeways and highways around Salinas for several hours, but there is one stop in particular that draws her. Off the 101, and large enough: the exit ramp is crowded with several gas stations and a couple of motels, and there is a constant flow of travelers off and onto the freeway, stopping to use the facilities and moving on.
And there is the truck stop, a good-size one, with a gas station, convenience store, and diner. Restrooms with shower stalls. A weigh station. A truck wash.
She parks the Toyota among two dozen other cars on the windowless side of the diner and convenience store, across from the truck lot with its rows of eighteen-wheelers. She turns off the engine and kills the lights, pulls the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head, then sits in the dark and watches the aisles of trucks.
The grounds are flat, and it is easy to survey the lot: a full ten long rows of enormous rigs with their big, dark windows and different colors of shiny hoods nosing out from the aisles. Mist drifts from the surrounding farmland and snakes through the corridors of looming vehicles, illuminated by the lights on top of the truck cabs: blue, white, pink, yellow, like a bedraggled, oversize string of Christmas lights.
She ignores the first nine rows. There is only one to watch: the last one, farthest away from the diner and closest to the field. The darkest row, in more ways than one.
All over the country, at stops just like this, that last line of trucks is known as Party Row. The women who service the truckers are called “commercial ladies” by the more polite. The rest of the men call them lot lizards. An ugly phrase for an uglier reality.
She sits, and she waits, watching the corridor of trucks. It does not take long. She sits forward as a shadow emerges from between two trucks. Immediately several headlights flash on, a universal signal, beckoning the shadow.
She watches intently as the shadow of another woman emerges from a different aisle.
The women stop briefly to talk to each other, with the tall walls of the truck sides towering above them. One is heavyset, a roll of fat visible between her cut-off blouse and her tight jeans. The other is thin and jittery. The heavier one turns to indicate a truck parked in the aisle. The thin woman listens, nods. A truck turns into the aisle, and the women are lit up in the blinding headlights. Both move quickly back into the shadows, toward the truck the first woman indicated.
But Cara has seen their faces and the way they move. They are not why she is here.
She sits back again and waits, and she watches as the moon creeps slowly higher in the sky. It is not yet full enough to obscure the stars. She can see the constellation Orion, the Hunter, at the far edges of the horizon—and she thinks of Roarke. He will have received her message by now. He will be wondering, and looking out for the next sign. When he gets it, he will come.
At the far end of the row, a truck flashes its lights.
It is a matter of seconds before she sees two more shadows emerge: a wiry man in boots, jeans, and a denim jacket, propelling a girl by the arm toward the truck that has flashed. The girl staggers on wedge heels, her slender legs and arms bare in cutoff shorts and a pale halter top even in this cold. Their bodies in the headlights throw huge, grotesque shadows.
The pimps usually drop the girls off, then stay out of view in nearby motels while the girls earn money for the night. Which means this girl is new and needs watching to prevent her from running. She appears so stoned she likely could not walk without the pimp’s assistance.
As the man strong-arms the girl down the aisle, Cara opens the car door silently, slips out, and walks, following them through the maze of trucks. Not too quickly, not too purposefully, with a bit of a drift to her step. There is only one reason for anyone female to be walking here, and she is flashed by several trucks, but she ignores the lights.
Her hand is in the pocket of her hoodie, fingers loose around the razor. She can hear the night breathing around her. The night breathing . . . and the restless coiling of It.
She waits as the pimp steers the girl to the driver’s side of the first truck that flashed. She watches as the trucker pulls the girl up and inside the cab. The pimp hovers in the shadows, keeping his eyes on the cab’s door as he steps to the side of the truck to fire up a joint. The pungent smoke drifts in the misty air.
She circles the truck, skirting the huge wheels, moving without sound, and is there to meet the pimp on the rear side. A kick to the knee to stagger him, a quick jerk forward on his jacket to land him on his knees, then she is grasping his hair and slicing his neck. His shout is lost in a gurgle of blood. It spills warm and wet on her gloved hands. She tightens her fingers in his hair and holds him just long enough for him to drain out, jerking and shitting himself. Then she drops him to the dirt and turns toward the truck. In one quick move she is up on the runner of the truck, pulling open the door.
Behind the front swivel seats, the girl kneels on the floor of the cab between the trucker’s legs as he sits back on the narrow bed. E
ven drugged as she is, the girl is alert enough to sense the new danger. She scrabbles backward on the small floor space, away from the trucker and out of Cara’s way. The trucker has no hair to grab. Cara lunges forward, seizes his balding head with both hands, and slams it against the back wall of the cab, once, twice, three times. Bone crunches against metal, pulping flesh. As the trucker’s body jerks and slumps, she presses his skull against the back wall with one hand and cuts his throat with the other. The blood sprays, an arterial surge.
She steps to the side and watches the body spasm as he bleeds out on the pallet of the bed.
When he is dead, she turns away, taking in long breaths to slow the wild racing of her heart.
The girl huddles on the floor of the cab, staring up at her, eyes wide and glistening in the dark. The copper smell is thick in the air.
“Don’t scream,” Cara tells her.
The girl shakes her head. She doesn’t move as Cara stands in the dark, her hands at her side, regaining her balance.
“Where are you from?” she asks, finally.
The girl seems to have to search far back in her memory. Her voice is slurred as she answers in a broad accent, “Tulsa.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No,” the girl says savagely. “No no no no no.”
Cara hears it in her voice and doesn’t have to hear any more. Scratched. She nods. “Then listen.”
She speaks, and the girl listens.
DAY SEVEN
Chapter 45
Buzzing. Rattling.
Fire alarm? Burning?
Finally consciousness penetrated enough for Roarke to identify and reach for his phone, by now jumping and clattering at full strength on the bed table. He picked up to Singh’s urgent voice. He was still asleep for the first three seconds of the conversation, but then two words jarred him awake.
“ . . . double murder.”
A sick taste roiled up into Roarke’s mouth. We left too soon. Chased a shadow and missed the action . . .
“In the Tenderloin?” he asked aloud. His own voice grated in his ears.
“A truck stop.”
Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) Page 21
