by Lisa Gardner
Which really started to annoy the locals. So in June 2005, they voted overwhelmingly to incorporate as a city, overnight becoming the seventh largest in the state. First order of business for the brand-new city council: form its own police department to crack down on the area’s less desirable elements. Sandy Springs was jumping on the urban renewal bandwagon, by God, right down to a new collection of very trendy restaurants.
Kimberly hadn’t worked with the new PD yet. She figured the officers would either be fresh-faced recruits or fifty-year-old state police retirees coasting into a second career in a middle-class metro area. She got a little of both.
Kid that met her at the door looked about three years away from shaving. The night sergeant, on the other hand, with his thinning hair and growing middle, had clearly been around the block. He shook her hand warmly, angled his head at the kid and gave her a look that said, Can you believe the puppy I got working for me? In case that wasn’t enough, he smiled and winked.
Kimberly didn’t return the wink or the smile and after a moment Sergeant Trevor gave up.
“We picked up the girl shortly after one a.m.,” Trevor reported. “She was working the MARTA station on—”
“She was working at the train station?” Kimberly couldn’t help herself. Somehow, she’d assumed the girl had been pinched during a raid on a massage parlor. Streetwalkers were reserved for the red light districts such as Fulton Industrial Boulevard. In theory, Sandy Springs was too … hip … for that kind of obvious display.
“Happens,” Trevor said. “Especially since we’ve started raiding more of the establishments. Some of the girls think they can blend in with the clubbers, you know, except the hookers show slightly less skin. Others … hell, they’re too strung-out to care, or operating on orders to pick up more chicks, that sort of thing. Gotta replenish the henhouse, you know.”
Trevor puffed out his chest, clearly wanting to impress the fed. Before this job, he’d probably been a security officer, Kimberly decided. Any occupation that allowed him to wear a uniform.
The kid had disappeared. Kimberly suspected that was also due to Trevor’s orders. He wanted this to be his show. She pinched the bridge of her nose and wished she were back at the plane crash.
She asked for Trevor’s report on the arrest. He printed it out, she skimmed the particulars. Time, location, other activity. It seemed very straightforward. Girl had been found with an ounce of meth in her pocket, and was now looking at doing some time. So naturally Delilah Rose insisted she was an informant for the feds.
“I’ll talk to her,” Kimberly said.
“Is it drugs?” Trevor blurted out. “She gonna turn in a dealer, maybe a supply network? Meth, hell, it’s taking over the entire state. Make her give you someone big. No penny-ante crap. The state’s due for a major arrest.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kimberly assured him drily. “Where is she?”
Trevor led her to an interrogation room, the other advantage of crying snitch. Rather than waiting in a holding cell, Delilah got her very own tiny square room and a can of Diet Coke. Not bad for a night’s work.
Kimberly paused outside the door. Through the one-way glass, she had her first view of the “informant.” She did her sizing up quickly and without giving anything away on her face.
Delilah Rose was white, a surprise in a state where the majority of prostitutes were African American or, especially in the massage parlors, Asian. She appeared to be early twenties, with the blotchy skin and dirty-blond hair of a woman living too hard, too fast.
As Kimberly stood there, the girl raised her face belligerently and stared at the mirror. Bright blue eyes, hard-set jaw. Tough. Sober.
Good.
“I’ll take it from here,” Kimberly told Trevor. “Thanks for giving me a call.”
“No problem. You’ll let us know—”
“Thanks for giving me a call,” Kimberly said again, and shouldered her way past the hefty sergeant into the tiny room.
Kimberly took her time. Closed the door. Pulled out a hard plastic chair. Had a seat.
From inside her jacket pocket, she pulled a mini-recorder. Next, a small spiral notebook and two pens. Finally, she made a show of checking her watch and writing the time at the top of the pad.
Then she set down her pen, leaned back in her chair, and, folding her hands over her stomach, proceeded to stare at Delilah Rose. Minute passed, then two or three. Kimberly wondered if Sergeant Trevor was watching on the other side of the mirror. No doubt he was rapidly growing impatient with this lack of show.
The girl was good, but Kimberly better. Delilah broke first, picking up her Coke, then realizing the can was empty and returning it nervously to the table.
“Want another?” Kimberly asked quietly.
“No, thank you.”
Ah, manners. Most suspects, informants, addicts tried them on for law enforcement, maybe falling back on that childhood promise that if you just used the magic word … They were very polite. At least at first.
Kimberly returned to silence. The girl cleared her throat, then began rotating the empty can with her fingertips.
“You’re trying to make me nervous,” the girl said at last, her tone sulky, faintly accusing.
“Are you high, Delilah Rose?”
“No!”
“Police said they found you with meth.”
“I don’t do drugs! Ever. I was just holding the bag for a friend. How was I supposed to know it was meth?”
“Do you drink?”
“Sometimes—but not tonight.”
“I see. And what were you doing tonight?”
“Hell”—now the attitude was coming out—“I wasn’t doing nothin’ tonight. Just visited a club for a little dancing. Then catching MARTA to fly home. Since when is needing public transport a crime?”
Kimberly merely eyed Delilah’s outfit. Underneath a navy blue jacket that was too thin for this time of year, the girl was a walking advertisement for spandex. Short, shiny skirt the color of eggplant. Jet-black halter top, so tight her breasts spilled out the sides. Then there were the four-inch stiletto heels.
Kimberly caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a spiderweb, inked around the girl’s navel, before Delilah self-consciously tugged her shirt down. A second tattoo peeked out from the back of the girl’s neck, a spider climbing into the girl’s hair.
“Who did the work?” Kimberly asked, pointing to Delilah’s neck.
“Don’t remember.”
“Nice web on your stomach. What’s the ring in your navel? A spider for the web? Clever.”
The girl didn’t say anything. Just stuck out her chin belligerently.
Kimberly gave her another minute, then decided she’d had enough. She started straightening up, grabbing her mini-recorder, the spiral notebook, the first pen.
“What the fuck?” Delilah cried.
“Excuse me?” Kimberly asked calmly, sticking the mini-recorder back in her pocket.
“Where the hell are you going? You haven’t even asked me any questions yet. What kind of FBI agent are you?”
Kimberly shrugged. “You said you weren’t doing anything. You claim the drugs aren’t yours. So okay. You’re the Virgin Mary, and I’m going back to bed.”
Kimberly reached for her second pen. The girl grabbed her wrist. For a skinny, malnourished thing, Delilah Rose was strong. Kimberly understood that kind of strength. It was called desperation.
Very slowly, Kimberly met the girl’s overbright gaze. “I don’t know you. We’ve never met. Meaning you’re no informant of mine, and as far as I’m concerned, Sandy Springs can do with you whatever they’d like. Now let go of my wrist, or you will regret it very fast.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’ve been here six minutes. You’ve had nothing to say.”
“I don’t want Sergeant Nimrod listening.” The girl had let go of Kimberly’s wrist. Now her gaze flickered to the one-way mirror.
“Sergeant Trevo
r isn’t your concern. I am your concern, and you’ve still not given me any reason to stay.” Kimberly picked up the pen, tucking it away.
“He’ll kill me.”
“Sergeant Trevor?”
“No, no. The man … I don’t know his name. I mean, not his real name. He calls himself Mr. Dinchara. The other girls, we call him Spideyman.”
“Mr. Dinchara?”
“You know, arachnid. It’s a … what do you call it? An anagram.”
“Oh please.” Kimberly couldn’t help herself. She eyed the girl’s getup again, arching a brow skeptically.
“He’s different.”
“Uh-huh.” Kimberly was already pushing back her chair, rising out of the hard plastic.
“He doesn’t pay for sex. At least not in the beginning.” Delilah’s voice was growing more urgent. “Spideyman pays girls money to, like, play with his pets. You know, ten bucks if you’ll touch the tarantula. Thirty if you’ll let it crawl up your arm. Freaky kind of stuff like that.”
“Play with his pets?”
“Oh, the venom from a tarantula isn’t strong enough to harm you, you know.” Delilah actually sounded earnest. “They’re really very shy and like … fragile. You have to handle ’em gently. Otherwise, you can hurt them.”
Kimberly didn’t talk anymore, mostly because she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Delilah, on the other hand, was finally on a roll: “So at first, you know, the things he wanted involved his pets. But then he didn’t want his spiders just walking across your arm. He wanted to watch them walking across other areas. And, well, that got him pretty turned on. So then he wanted other activities, and yeah, maybe it’s a little different and not all the girls were into it, but then again, he paid pretty good.”
“What’s pretty good?”
“Hundred for a hand job, one fifty for oral. Two if you’d let the spider watch.”
“Watch?”
“From inside its cage, of course. I mean, you can’t just have a tarantula wandering about when you’re not paying attention. You might squish it.”
“Exactly what I feared,” Kimberly murmured. Just when you thought you’d heard it all, some pervert pushed the boundaries yet again. “Okay, so you and Dinchara have a little thing going on.” Kimberly eyed the girl’s tattoos again. “I gotta be honest. Sounds like you two are a good fit, and as you said, he pays well. So why are you here?”
Delilah looked away. The chatty spell had ended, they had returned to the land of silence. “Something went wrong,” the girl mumbled at last.
“No kidding. Come on, night’s not getting any younger. Why did you ask to see me?”
The girl’s lips trembled. “Because of Ginny. Ginny Jones. She went away with him. And nobody’s seen her since.”
Kimberly took a seat. She got out her notebook and pen, turned on the mini-recorder. The girl eyed the machine nervously, but didn’t protest.
“I want protection,” she blurted out.
“You want protection? Like what?”
“A … a safe house. Police protection. Whatever it is you see on TV.”
“Delilah, that’s TV. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that. You gotta pay to play.”
“Pay to play? What’s that mean?”
Kimberly was serious. “That means you have to provide real information on a real crime. Something specific and detailed. If I can corroborate it, then we can talk options.”
“How specific?”
“Let’s start with a name. Ginny Jones. Real or alias?”
“Virginia,” the girl whispered. “Her real name was Virginia Jones, but everyone called her Ginny. She was nice. Not into drugs, some of the stuff you see. Just … I don’t know. Something had happened somewhere.” The girl smiled wanly. “Doesn’t it always?”
“When did you last see her?”
“Three months ago. A Wednesday. Maybe a Thursday. I’m not sure anymore. She’d gone with the guy before. She’s, umm, she’s the one who told me about him. You know, when she saw my tats. Said there might be this guy, kind of freaky, but by the looks of things, nothing I couldn’t handle, and hey, the money’s good—”
“So Ginny knew Dinchara?”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, okay.”
“And she was okay with the eight-legged audience?”
Delilah shrugged. “Ginny said the spiders didn’t bother her. She used to tell me she wasn’t afraid of anything. At least not anymore.”
“So when did you last see her?”
“While back.”
“Delilah.”
“Ummm, several months ago, maybe one-thirty in the morning. Dinchara came by in his SUV.”
“Describe it.”
“Black. Silver trim. Fancy. A Toyota, I think, but a souped-up version. You know they sometimes upgrade them? This one has the fancier rims, the leather seats. Limited Edition.”
“License plate?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said immediately.
Kimberly took a moment to study her again. The answer was too quick, especially in this day and age, when the hookers also watched CSI and understood the value of information. “Was it a Georgia plate?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Starting letters?”
“I don’t know. Honestly.” More defensive now. “I try not to know too much, okay? The girls that get into that … It’s like asking for trouble.”
“Describe him.”
Delilah’s eyes fell. She worried her lower lip. “Um, white. Middle-aged. Brown hair. Kind of wiry maybe, like a carpenter, someone who works with his hands. He has a smell to him, too. Some kind of chemical. I always figured he did some kind of trade, but I never asked.”
“Any distinguishing marks?”
“Like what?”
“Scar, tattoo, birthmark.”
“Well, you know, it’s not like the guy takes the time to undress …”
“On his face then?”
But Delilah merely shrugged. “I dunno. They all look alike to me.”
“They?”
“Men, johns, pervs, whatever you wanna call ’em. They’re all the same.”
Kimberly gave her a dubious look.
Delilah finally perked up. “Hey, there was one thing. His hat. He always wears a red baseball cap. I’ve never seen him without it. He doesn’t even take it off, when, well, you know. So a red baseball cap. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“It’s something,” Kimberly conceded and dutifully made a note. “Other clothing?”
“Jeans,” Delilah supplied. “Long-sleeved shirt. Kind of Eddie Bauerish, I guess. Outdoorsy, but preppy outdoorsy. I think he has money.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The car, the clothes, the hourly rate. Not just any shlub can afford that.”
“Describe his voice.”
“Ummm, a guy’s voice?”
“Accent?”
Delilah considered the matter. “Southern. A drawl, but not too deep.”
“Where are you from, Delilah?”
But the girl wouldn’t answer.
“Accent? Vocabulary? Do you think he’s educated?”
“He knows a lot about spiders.”
“So do you.”
Delilah flushed. “My brother had one as a pet, long time ago. Named her Eve. I used to help him catch crickets for her. She was really pretty. Spideyman … he’s not just a pet owner. He had this white spider, I once called it a tarantula and he got all mad at me: ‘She’s not just some tarantula, she’s a Grammostola rosea …’—some Chilean kind of tarantula or something like that. He got pretty angry I didn’t know the difference. He kind of …”
“He kind of what?”
“He scared me.”
“How?”
“Just, the look on his face. I don’t know.” The girl shrugged. “For a moment, I kind of thought … maybe I was a specimen, too. You know, Slutto hookeroso.” Delilah smiled wanly at her joke, but her eyes weren’t in it
.
“Did he threaten you?”
“No. He didn’t have to. You could see it on his face. Some guys are like that, you know. They want you to see it coming.”
Kimberly didn’t comment on that. She’d been involved in law enforcement long enough to know Delilah had a point. “So how does he approach girls? In his car?”
“Not always. I mean, it’s not exactly a street corner kind of game out there. It’s more, you go to the right places, hang out, maybe you’ll meet the right man.”
“You go to a club,” Kimberly filled in. “You make a move, he makes a move. Then what happens?”
“You follow him. Maybe to a car, or someplace … quieter. You work out the details along the way. Get the money up front, do what you gotta do, then bada bing, bada boom, it’s all done, and you’re outta there.”
“And in the case of Mr. Dinchara, where did he lead you?”
“His SUV.”
“Did you ever have a problem getting back out?”
“No, but I make it quick. If you get the money up front, then you can make your exit while he’s still … happy. Makes for a better getaway.”
Kimberly arched a brow. “So basically, while the guy’s pants are still down around his ankles, you’re exiting stage right.”
“Works like a charm.”
“So you know Mr. Dinchara, and Ginny Jones knows Mr. Dinchara. Now why do you think Mr. Dinchara had something to do with Ginny going away?”
“Because the last time I saw her, she was with him. I saw them walking down the street, away from a club. I was actually a bit pissed, you know. I mean seriously, he paid half a night’s work.”
“And?”
“And that’s the last time I saw Ginny.”
Kimberly took a moment, organizing the information in her head, composing her next statement. “Delilah, this is all very interesting, but I can’t do anything with it.”
“Why not?”
“No evidence of a crime.”
The girl looked at her funny. “Don’t you believe me? I’m telling the truth. Ginny was my friend. He hurt her. He should pay!”
“In the last three months,” Kimberly asked bluntly, “have you seen Spideyman again?”
Delilah’s gaze slid away. “Maybe.”
“Did you conduct any business with him?”
