Swerve

by Inglath Cooper

  “I will do your legs and a Brazilian. You know what this is?”

  Mia turns her head to the wall, a fresh wave of humiliation hitting her. How can this really be happening to her?

  “I see that you do know. I won’t lie. It’s unpleasant. But it will be over quickly. And I have a special cream that will take away the sting.”

  She rips the first strip of wax from Mia’s leg, and Mia bites her lip to keep from crying out.

  For the rest of the time during which the woman spreads more wax, waits for it to cool, and then rips it away, Mia keeps her eyes closed. She tries to make herself believe that she is somewhere else, that she is someone else, that she will wake up and find this is all a nightmare. That none of it ever happened.

  But the woman unhooks the ankle restraints and says, “Spread your legs, please.”

  Mia refuses to do so.

  “Shall I call Hugo and ask him to spread them for you?”

  Pure rage burns in the back of Mia’s throat as she does as she’s been asked.

  The woman laughs a short laugh. “I suggest you get used to the idea. The doctor will come in to fit you with an IUD once I’m done. All guests are asked to wear protection, but accidents do happen.”

  At that moment, if she could have gotten her hands on a knife, a cyanide pill, a gun, she would have killed herself.

  No question at all.

  The Proprietor

  “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

  —Sun Tzu

  THE TEXT SIMPLY read:

  Please schedule a meeting for account 98. Would like to bring guest.

  The message had arrived on the phone she used for her most exclusive accounts—98 was Senator Hagan. Odd that he was asking to bring someone with him. Discreet was Hagan’s middle name, and he’d never made such a request before.

  She types a reply.

  Will need more info on guest.

  The reply is nearly immediate.

  100% reliable.

  Did he really believe that?

  She certainly didn’t.

  Not possible.

  Wouldn’t ask if it weren’t necessary.

  Necessary? Seriously?

  Irritation needles her, but she pushes it away. Senator Hagan is the perfect client. Pays in cash. Takes care with the girls. No power plays or kinky crap.

  But this is a big ask.

  Will need dossier.

  Already prepared it. Will send it by courier this afternoon.

  If dossier pans out, when would account 98 like a meeting?

  Tonight, if possible.

  Booked.

  Tomorrow night then.

  I will let you know.

  Look forward to hearing from you.

  She does not like being strong-armed, but resists the urge to wage a power play. Hagan has brought her a number of good clients, but none with such short notice. Something about it raises her defense hackles. She’ll look at the dossier, but the intuition she has always prided herself on tells her this one will warrant extra scrutiny.

  One cannot be too selective or too careful.

  Emory

  “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’”

  ―Kurt Vonnegut

  WE’RE ON THE way to the store where Madison had worked. Knox wants to ask some questions of other employees there. He’s already warned me we’ll have to wait if there’s any sign of other cops or detectives doing the same. Clearly, he’s trying to avoid another entanglement with his chief.

  We’re sitting in traffic on I-66 when he looks over, one hand draped on the steering wheel. “What happened to your parents?” he asks, his eyes intent on mine.

  I glance out the window of the Jeep, not sure how to voice the real answer. I could give him the one believed to be true by the rest of the world, the one that didn’t make me look like the awful person I know myself to be.

  The silence expands to fill the vehicle with a heavy expectation. He says nothing further, just looks straight ahead, driving. When I finally speak, my voice is laced with the heavy, bitter price of regret. “I’m fairly sure I killed them.”

  He swings a glance my way, and I can feel the question in his eyes. “What does that mean, Emory?”

  “That people can die from hurt.”

  “How did you hurt them?”

  I’m quiet for a stretch, weighing the words. “By rejecting them. Rebelling against who they were.”

  He’s quiet for a good bit, and then, “Do you think you’re unique in that?”

  I shake my head, still refusing to look at him. “No. I’m sure I’m not. But that doesn’t make it any easier to live with.”

  “I looked it up. Head-on with a drunk driver.”

  I do look at him then, surprise underscoring the single word question. “Why?” And then I realize the answer. “Because I’m a suspect.”

  “In the beginning, we have to consider all angles.”

  I shrug. “Yeah.”

  “Did you have a fight with your parents before that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Said things you wish you could take back?”

  “Yes.”

  “We all have, Emory.”

  I look down at my hands, see the places on my palm where I’ve dug my nails in. “But some of us get the chance to apologize. Ask for forgiveness.”

  “True. But they loved you, right?”

  “Yes. Although from here, I can’t imagine why.”

  “Do you think they would want you to live with guilt over their deaths?”

  “No. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

  “My guess is you’ve devoted your life to your sister in an effort to make up for that guilt.”

  “I love my sister. There wasn’t anyone else.”

  “Not every eighteen-year-old would be willing to grow up overnight to raise a sibling.”

  I consider this, but cannot imagine having made any other choice.

  “Life took a horrible turn, and you made the most of it. Give yourself credit for that.”

  “What kind of person would I have been to do anything other than what I did?”

  “The kind I meet every day in my job. The kind who takes their shattered dreams out on their kid so they end up in the foster system. The kind who beats their dog because they had a bad day. The kind who dumps their old dad at the nursing home and never gets around to going to see him. A lot of people operate from the origin point of self first. So, yeah, you could have made some very different choices given your age and how much essentially becoming a parent was going to change your life.”

  I let the words sink in, and, on some level, I do know that I’ve tried to do right by Mia, to make up in whatever way I could for the ragged ending of my relationship with my parents. “One of the things I find myself telling patients most often is the need to figure out how to forgive themselves for the things they can’t seem to let go of. And yet, I can’t do it myself. That doesn’t make me much of a psychiatrist, does it?”

  “It’s a tall order,” he says, his voice dipping under a note of what sounds like empathy. “Believe me, I know.”

  I want to ask how he knows, but I’m not sure either one of us needs to go there.

  The Proprietor

  “All cruelty springs from weakness.”

  —Seneca

  SHE COULDN’T FIND a speck of public dirt on Senator Will Arrington. She’d run him through her standard check process, and it was rigorous.

  So she contacted the next rung on her ladder, a former FBI agent who’d been released from his position when he’d been caught selling information to a foreign government. Ten years in prison had honed his already admirable willingness to go to whatever lengths necessary to meet a client’s expectations.

  He’d hand-delivered a dossier to her with nuggets of useful feedback she knew weren’t available on the regular person’s internet. But then she wanted the s
tuff that wasn’t readily available elsewhere. Those things that exposed a person’s true vulnerabilities. Made it impossible for him to choose owning up to conscience as an option.

  The ex-agent had found her a juicy piece of leverage that provided her with ample confidence that letting him visit Hotel California with Senator Hagan would not be an unwise move.

  The senator had asked for two appointments this evening. He would be bringing the younger senator for dinner with dessert scheduled at ten p.m. She thought it would be a good idea to serve up her newest project for the younger senator’s first time.

  Based on the ex-agent’s revelations, the delectable Mia should still be in the age range of what suited his well-hidden tastes. In fact, they would make her appear younger for the occasion. A little less makeup, a dress with some lace here and there, and they would make the senator extra happy. So happy, that she had no doubt he would be a return customer. Trapped, like all the others, by the need to feed his own desires.

  No matter the cost.

  Knox

  “How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.”

  ―Marcus Aurelius

  HE RECOGNIZES DAWSON Healy’s unmarked car sitting in front of the retail store. He considers circling the block and waiting for them to leave. Healy won’t be a problem. But his partner will. Nonetheless, he’ll get information out of Healy he won’t be able to get elsewhere, so it’s worth the risk. And there’s the fact that Healy will probably talk his partner down from the ledge of reporting back to the chief.

  He’s just cut the engine to the Jeep when Healy and Detective Marsha Rutgers walk out of the store, headed for his black sedan. “Stay here, okay?” he says to Emory and gets out, calling, “Hey, Healy.”

  The detective turns, a smile accompanying his look of surprise when he spots Knox. “What are you doing here?” he asks, covering the sidewalk between them in a few long strides. He claps Knox’s shoulder with a wide-palmed hand. “That’s just shit about your disciplinary leave, man.”

  “I’m calling it unpaid vacation.”

  “The unpaid part sucks.”

  “Thought I might head down to the Bahamas for some sun and fun.”

  “You? Yeah, right.”

  “Not convincing, huh?”

  “Not in the least. So what are you doing here? I heard you’re temping for the sister of that missing girl.”

  Knox shrugs. “Yeah. I assume you’re here on the murder last night?”

  Healy nods. “Didn’t get anything promising in there though. What were you doing here last night? Some connection between the missing teenagers and this girl?”

  “Maybe. She was seeing a Colombian guy who bought clothes here. I think he might be the same guy I spotted on security footage at the music festival the two girls attended the night they disappeared.”

  “And he offed her for talking to you?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Damn. Any leads on the guy?”

  Marsha Rutgers saunters over, nailing Knox with a you-know-better glare. She’s five-five and bench presses three hundred and twenty-five. It’s a well-known fact around the department that Detective Rutgers will chase a perp down like a German-trained dog given the Fass! command. “What are you doing here, Healy?” she asks, even though it’s clear she already knows.

  “Shopping. You?”

  “Like hell you are. You’re on leave. Or did you forget?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. Need some new clothes for my unexpected vacation.”

  “You wouldn’t be in that particular boat if you hadn’t been dicking around with a senator’s wife.”

  “Language, Rutgers,” Healy admonishes, folding his arms across his chest. “Helmer has a right to shop wherever he wants. I noticed they’re having a good sale.”

  She leans back and gives him a silencing stare. “Do I look like I just fell off the turnip truck?”

  “Actually, you’re looking pretty hot today, Rutgers,” Healy says, grinning. “If you’d like to practice that bench press, I’m pushing three hundred these days. I’ll volunteer my body.”

  “You want me to get you written up too?” she asks without cracking a smile.

  “No, ma’am,” Healy says.

  “Afraid I’ll have to let the chief know about your shopping excursion, Helmer.”

  “Sure thing,” he says. “Might want to let her know about the sale too.”

  Rutgers turns around and strides back to the black sedan.

  “You see the smoke coming out of her ears?” Healy asks with a grin.

  “Yeah. She can’t stand me.”

  “I think she has a crush on you, actually.”

  “Right. I think she has a crush on the chief.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “What are you, blind?”

  Healy shakes his head. “I’ll see if I can get her to cut you a break.”

  “Would appreciate it. You learn anything at all in there?”

  “Seriously, no. No one knew anything about the guy except he was a rich Colombian who paid in cash.”

  “Mind if I give it a try?”

  “Not if you share what you get.”

  “Will do.”

  “Hey.”

  Knox turns to find Emory standing beside him. “Hey,” he says. “Emory Benson, Detective Dawson Healy.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she says, sticking out her hand.

  Healy gives her a look that Knox recognizes. “You too,” he says. “All right then, better get going. Already got an irate partner.”

  “Later,” Knox says, taking Emory’s elbow and heading toward the store. They’re at the door when his phone dings with a text notification. He glances at the screen and sees the one word message from Healy.

  Snack.

  He shoves the phone in his pocket and opens the door, waiting for Emory to step inside.

  “Something wrong?” she asks, giving him a look of concern.

  He wonders what she would say about Healy’s assessment even as he knows he would never tell her. Something about it doesn’t sit right with him, even though it is typical of something Healy would have said to him about other women they’ve encountered.

  Besides, that’s not what he needs to be thinking about right now anyway.

  “No,” he says, heading for the register. “Everything’s fine.”

  A very tall, very thin, twenty-something man stands behind the counter, piercings in an array on both ears, each nostril, and his lower lip. His name badge reads Jason. He gives Knox a once over and says, “Can I be of assistance? We have a very cool, gray leather jacket just in that I am imagining would look fabulous on you.”

  He feels Emory’s smile but determines to focus on why they’re here. “Thanks,” he says, meeting the sales guy’s hopeful stare with a look that immediately squashes any visible hope of a sale. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you with the police?” he asks, fingering the loop in his lip and looking suddenly suspicious. “I told the two who were just in here what I knew, which is nothing really.”

  “I’m not officially with the police,” Knox says, putting a hand on Emory’s shoulder to bring her into the conversation. “I’m doing some private work for Dr. Benson here. Her sister and a friend were abducted. I believe the man who murdered Madison Willard might have had something to do with their disappearance.”

  “Well, that sucks, clearly,” Jason says, looking a little more sympathetic. “But after what he did to Madison, do you think it seems like a good idea for me to rat on the guy?”

  “Did you ever meet him?” Knox asks.

  “Once.”

  “Here in the store?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was your impression of him?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ice, man.”

  “W
hat do you mean?”

  “Something in those eyes. Like there was nobody home.”

  “So what did Madison see in him?”

  “She liked the flash, I guess. She said he would take her out to dinner and pay for a three hundred dollar meal with cash.”

  “She didn’t find that suspicious?”

  He shrugs a narrow-shouldered shrug. “Not as much as she found it appealing, I guess.”

  “She tell you what he does for a living?”

  “She didn’t know. I said, girl, you don’t think he’s with the mob, do you?” He angles Knox a wide-eyed look. “I mean, is there a Colombian mob in our country? He certainly fit the make.”

  Knox ignores the assessment, saying, “Did she tell you anything about where he lives? A place he might have taken her.”

  “She said he only wanted to go to her place. She was curious about what kind of place he might have, but she said he kept putting her off when she’d ask to see it.”

  “Can you think of anything she might have told you that could help us find him?”

  He’s silent for a few seconds, then slowly shakes his head. “I wish I could. But no. Nothing.”

  Emory has been standing next to him the entire time, silent. She steps forward, her voice low and urgent when she says, “Jason, my sister and her friend are seventeen years old. I am praying they are still alive. To think otherwise is unbearable. I will take any lead, no matter how small it might seem, if it gives us even the slightest hope of finding them. Please. Can you go over the times you saw him in the store just one more time. Anything that stood out about him? Anything at all?”

  Knox stays quiet, letting Emory’s plea stand on its own.

  Jason studies her for a long moment, taps the stud in his left nostril with his index finger. And Knox can see there is something Jason is weighing the wisdom of divulging. It’s a risk. Knox won’t lie to him and say it isn’t. The guy they’re looking for is clearly a psychopath and intent on cleaning up loose ends. Knox can’t blame Jason for not wanting to be one.