Celeste Files: Unjust

by Kristine Mason

  “He caused a chain reaction.”

  “Which, to me, makes him just as guilty of murder even if he never touched the women.” Determined to talk with at least some of the women, she opened one of the plastic bags and plucked the picture free. “What happened to you?” Frustrated that the woman’s spirit wasn’t responding, she glanced to the mirror. “If you’re watching, don’t be mad, but I’m losing the gloves. If I don’t get anything off a couple of pictures, I’ll call it quits,” she finished, and took off the gloves. Since neither detective burst into the room, or commented over the intercom, they either were good with this, or not watching her after all.

  With her bare hand, she lifted the photograph and studied the woman’s face. The moment the camera had been snapped it had forever frozen the terror in her eyes, the tears staining her cheeks, the slight lift of her chin which caused her lips to tilt downward as if she fought to stop from crying. Celeste ran the tip of her finger along the photo, outlining the contours of the woman’s sad face.

  “Please let me help you,” Celeste said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “El monstruo me sacó de mi familia.” The woman’s whispered words chased goose bumps down Celeste’s arms. Her Spanish might be rusty, but she understood monster and family.

  Celeste closed her eyes and thought, No hablo español.

  “Prisa. Ver al monstruo,” the woman replied, but Celeste had no idea what the spirit had said. “Ver.”

  Celeste kept her eyes closed, and tried to gain a vision of the woman. “Can you use your phone to look up the Spanish word ver?” she asked John.

  “It means ‘watch’,” Nick’s voice came over the intercom.

  “How do I say, ‘I’m watching. Show me the monster’?” she asked.

  “Estoy viendo. Muéstrame el monstruo,” Nick replied.

  Celeste repeated the words in her mind, then winced when the sharp pierce to her skull returned, along with the roaring in her ears. Like a strobe light, bright white flashes suddenly appeared behind her closed eyes. The flashes grew faster, longer and narrowed to a tiny black pinpoint. As she sat still in the chair, motion sickness set in and her stomach grew nauseous. Wanting the pain in her head to end, afraid she was going to vomit, she opened her eyes.

  Panic gripped her. She blinked but the flashing light, the sensation of being propelled forward, remained. “John,” she called, yet couldn’t hear her own voice over the roar echoing through her head. “Can you hear me?”

  “¡Apresúrese antes de que vuelva!” the woman shouted, her voice frantic, her energy becoming stronger.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” Celeste yelled back with frustration. “No sé, no sé. Don’t you get it? I don’t understand.”

  Everything went black and eerily silent. Panic morphed into fear. Breathing hard, she reached out, searched for her own hand, but couldn’t see a damned thing. “John? Can you hear me?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “¿Hola? Señorita, are you still there?”

  The blackness shattered. As if a box of crayons had suddenly exploded, the world around her became vibrant and colorful. The scent of salt water filled her nostrils. Traffic and car horns sounded in the distance over the crash of waves.

  “Ver,” the woman said, the single word becoming an echo.

  Celeste glanced around, and realized she stood on the shore of a beach. Away from the water were palm trees and other lush greens foreign to her. Beyond the trees, plants and flowers were colorful houses. With the way they sat on the hillside, they reminded her of stacked Lego blocks.

  “¿Dónde?” Celeste asked, hoping she was right about the Spanish translation for ‘where,’ and looked for the woman.

  “Aquí. Ver.”

  Feminine laughter caught Celeste’s attention. She spun toward it, then gasped. The woman from the photo lay on a beach towel, talking on a cell phone. She was more girl than woman, Celeste realized—maybe eighteen or nineteen, and was on her stomach, her knees bent, her feet in the air. Her long dark hair was pulled into a thick bun, while her dark-brown skin glistened under the sun. The girl laughed again, then said something in Spanish.

  As she continued to talk on the cell phone, Celeste called, “¿Señorita?”

  “Ssh. Ver.”

  The girl turned her head when two men approached. One of the men was younger, close to the girl’s age, handsome and Hispanic. The other was older. Due to his tanned skin, ball cap and sunglasses, Celeste couldn’t tell if he was also Hispanic. The girl waved to the men and grinned. “Tengo que ir, adios,” she said, then set the cell phone on the beach towel. “¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?” She moved to her knees, and adjusted the spaghetti strap holding her bikini top in place.

  The younger of the two men knelt next to her and smiled, while the older man looked around the vacant beach. Dread settled in the pit of Celeste’s stomach. The young man acted friendly, flirty. With the way the girl smiled back at him, coyly looked away before batting her eyes, Celeste suspected she was attracted to him. But it was the other man that worried Celeste. He said something in Spanish, then edged away from them, as if he planned to give them a bit of privacy. Only once the man walked past the towel, he turned around and slowly crept up behind the girl.

  The young man kept the girl engaged in conversation. Touched her cheek, her shoulder, then slid his hand down her arm. As soon as he took both of her hands in his, the older man slid something from his pocket. Celeste squinted against the sun, tried to make out what the man held, then gasped.

  “Oh, no,” Celeste whispered.

  “Monstruo,” the dead woman said with disgust. “Los dos son unos monstruos.”

  The two of them are monsters. Celeste’s Spanish was rusty, but she recognized enough words to understand the woman. Which meant that the two men were working together. She stared closely at the older man, watched helplessly as he edged closer, then flinched when he plunged a needle into the girl’s neck.

  The girl jerked, tried to move her arms. The younger man held them still, while the older man pulled a cloth from his back pocket and placed it over the girl’s mouth.

  Celeste was abruptly plunged into blackness again. Her stomach dropped and her heart rate quickened. Not with fear for herself, but for the girl and the others like her. Had this been how they’d all been abducted? Had Denis been using local men to help him? Had the older man been Denis?

  The motion sickness returned. Her stomach churned, and acid tickled the back of her throat. The blackness slowly faded into a shadowy gray. Celeste glanced around, then froze. Oh, God. Four girls lay on the floor of…she didn’t know where they were, but the heavy scent of salt water filled the air. A boat? Denis’s boat?

  “El barco?” Celeste asked, remembering learning the Spanish word for boat during an episode of Dora the Explorer, and hoping the dead woman was still with her.

  “Sí. Nos llevó desde San Juan por barco,” the woman replied, her tone rushed, quiet. “El monstruo tomó a cuatro de nosotros.”

  All Celeste could translate was ‘San Juan’, boat’, ‘monster’ and the number ‘four’. The sandy beach where the woman had been pierced with the needle must have been located somewhere in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She looked to the four women, who were unconscious, found the girl from the beach and took a step forward. Sunlight from the deck above filtered into the dark cabin, touching on the girl. Celeste looked to the others, tried to memorize their faces for when she had the opportunity to look at the pictures from Denis’s box, then glanced to the opening leading to the deck. She reached out, and unsure if the wooden stair rail was something she could actually use, she tentatively touched it. Solid. With determination flaring deep in her chest, she quickly rushed up the short staircase. When she reached the deck, everything went black.

  “Damn it,” she shouted. “Let me see everything. Let me help you.”

  Celeste blinked and shielded her eyes as the strobe lights returned. No. She dropped her hand away and looked around the room. Not a strobe, bu
t the flash of a camera. When she quickly found the source, her stomach grew sick with hatred. Only one other time in her life had she wanted someone dead. Thanks to her husband, that bastard’s body was currently rotting in an unmarked grave somewhere in Wisconsin. Except Denis was already dead. Whatever plane she existed on currently wouldn’t change that fact. She couldn’t shoot him, stab him or choke the life from him. She looked to the girl Denis photographed—the girl from the beach, the dead woman who had brought her here, then to the others huddled together, crying, clutching and consoling one another. She couldn’t save them, either. She couldn’t do a thing to help them. Helplessness, along with deep-seated anger festered like an infected wound. She glared at Denis, now recognized him as the older man on the beach, and rushed toward him.

  The man didn’t flinch when she invaded his space. In his current world, she didn’t exist. Still, the anger, the hatred and outrage bursting inside her needed to be unleashed. “You deserved to die,” she shouted at him. “I’ll never let you have your revenge.”

  Denis snapped a couple of more pictures of the girl, then everything went black.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Ssh. Conocer a mi nuevo monstruo,” the dead woman said, her voice so damned sad, Celeste ached for her, for all of the women whose lives Denis had destroyed. Celeste thought about what the woman had just said, remembered that nuevo meant ‘new’. A new monster? One worse than Denis?

  The room brightened, only she wasn’t in the same small room where Denis had been photographing the women. This one was a simple bedroom, clean, uncluttered, with a twin bed and nothing more than a barred window. The girl from the beach lay on the bed. Gone were the tanned sexy curves. Instead, she was pale, bruised along her face, thighs and arms, and too damned skinny. Her once thick hair was now nothing but a thin tangled mess. And her eyes…the laughter and excitement, the vibrant life she’d been honored to see, was gone.

  Along with hope.

  Celeste covered her mouth and fought the tears, but couldn’t stop them. She now realized what the dead woman was showing her—the stages of her death.

  The door to the room opened. The girl didn’t stir. Deep sadness washed over Celeste as the dead woman’s energy grew increasingly despondent. She looked toward the door, just as two men stepped inside. Her stomach fluttered with both fear and excitement. Her visions, readings and trances had always been unpredictable. There had been times when what she’d wanted to see had been clear. Other times the objects, or people, had been frustratingly obscure. Not this time. She could see the men, their faces, hair color, build. Like she’d done during the case she’d worked with her husband back in Wisconsin when they’d first met, she would be able to give a detailed description of the men to a sketch artist. One of the men had light brown hair, blue eyes and she pegged him to be twenty-something. Between the other man’s salt and pepper hair, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, she figured he was in his mid-fifties. Although there was an obvious age difference, with matching jaw lines, eyes and noses, Celeste took a leap and assumed they were related. Father and son? Uncle and nephew? Bloodline didn’t matter at the present moment. What mattered was that she could identify the woman’s killers. But who was the woman?

  “¿Cómo te llamas?” Celeste quickly asked, as the men approached the twin mattress where the girl lay. When the dead woman didn’t answer, Celeste once again asked for her name.

  “Soy Solana Aldez,” the woman whispered.

  “Solana,” Celeste repeated, her excitement growing. She had a name, she had the men’s faces, she knew where and how the woman had been abducted, and couldn’t wait to tell the detectives. But sometimes knowledge came with a price. Based on her previous visions and trances, Celeste was certain that for the knowledge she’d been given, she would be forced to witness the unthinkable.

  The final moments of this girl’s life.

  “I told you not to keep drugging and beating her,” the man with the graying hair said. “You never were good at taking care of your toys.” He eyed the girl with disgust. “Christ, Blake, you only had her for a month. For what I paid, I expected you to at least keep her for two or three. Virgins aren’t cheap. Hell, I plan on selling my girl off when I’m done with her.”

  Oh, my God. These men were sick.

  “I didn’t think she’d end up like this,” Blake said.

  “Bullshit. I heard you come home last night with your buddies.” He pointed a finger at Blake. “I didn’t buy that girl so you could share her. Would you let any of your drunk friends drive the souped-up Jeep Wrangler I bought for your last birthday?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Well, guess what, moron. The girl cost almost as much as the car, and you let those drunk assholes use her.”

  Blake sighed. “Sorry, Dad. I’ll start feeding her and quit giving her drugs.”

  The father walked across the room, then stared down at the girl. “I’m a business man, not a doctor. But even I can see that the only way she’ll survive is if we take her to a hospital.”

  “Dad,” Blake said, alarm in his voice. “There’s no way—”

  Blake’s father raised a hand. “She’s seen our faces and could describe parts of our house. She’s not going to a hospital.” He stepped away from the bed, and moved toward the door. “Get rid of her.”

  “What? You want me to kill her?” Blake asked. “You’ve never murdered the women you’ve bought.”

  “That’s because I’m not stupid enough to starve, beat and drug my women to the point that they’re on the brink of death. So now you have to deal with it. I’ll send Paul with you to make sure you don’t fuck it up. I can’t have the police coming around here.”

  “I don’t need your bodyguard’s help. I can handle it.” Blake rushed across the room, grabbed a pillow off the floor, then pressed it over the girl’s face. “See? No big deal,” he said, the muscles along his arms, neck and shoulders tensing as he applied pressure.

  Celeste clutched her throat, and wept for the girl. The poor thing had been brought to such a weakened state she didn’t even try to fight him. Her body didn’t move, and there was no sound except for Blake’s heavy breathing.

  Solana’s quiet cries filled Celeste’s mind as the room blackened. Seconds later, Celeste stood in a parking lot. Although dark, the moon and the few streetlights revealed the weeds growing from the potholes and cracks in the asphalt. The boarded-up building to her left—a restaurant she assumed based on the architecture of the building—had a rusted dumpster next to it. The dumpster overflowed with garbage, which had spilled onto the parking lot. A Jeep pulled into the lot, its headlights touching the dumpster before they were extinguished. Celeste immediately recognized Blake when he stepped out of the vehicle, and made his way around to the back end. A part of her wanted to snap from the vision—she already knew the end result—but the other part of her wanted to follow through, and be with Solana until the end. She’d been killed without a thought, without remorse, without anyone to cry for her. Celeste ached for the woman, but she would do her damnedest to memorize every single detail Solana showed her. She, and the other forty-seven women, deserved justice, and she wanted to start with Solana.

  Celeste followed Blake to the back of the Jeep, which was white, watched as he swung open the gate, lifted, then exposed a large black garbage bag. Wearing gloves, Blake grabbed the bag, then tossed it over his shoulder. He walked toward the dumpster, shook his head when he looked to the overflowing heap, then dropped the bag on the asphalt. Using the trash on the asphalt, Blake covered the bag. Once it was no longer visible, he climbed into his Jeep, and drove away.

  The dumpster, vacant restaurant and parking lot disappeared, and everything went black again. But not before Celeste memorized Blake’s license plate.

  Chapter 9

  CELESTE BLINKED SEVERAL times when fluorescent overhead lighting needled her eyes. As the room came into focus, and she realized John was sitting next to her, and that they were at the Collie
r County Sheriff’s Office, she drew in a deep, shaky breath.

  John put an arm around her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  She’d once again witnessed a woman’s murder. “No,” she said on a sob, and glanced to the picture she still held in her hand. “I’m not okay.”

  “What happened? What did you see?”

  Ignoring her husband, she quickly jotted down Blake’s license plate number before it vanished from her memory, along with everything else Solana had showed her. When she was finished, she tore the sheet of paper from the notepad, slid it toward John, then reached for another woman’s picture.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” he asked, and looked to what she’d written. “Is this a license plate number?”

  She nodded. “Mind passing that along to Nick and Jerry?” She opened the plastic bag and pulled the next picture free. “I’m going to find out what happened to this woman.”

  The door to the room burst open as Jerry, Nick and Lola rushed inside. “Hold up,” Jerry said, snatching the paper off the table. “Before we have you pursue any more leads for us, let’s see if the ones you have here even pan out. I don’t want to waste your time or ours.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, then placed a call, telling the person on the other end to run the plate number Celeste had written down, and to also send the woman’s name over to Missing Persons to see if they had a match. After he ended the call, he passed her notes to Nick. “Celeste, can you expand on what you wrote?”

  “Actually, I’d like to know how you were speaking fluent Spanish,” John said.

  “Yes,” Lola added. “When you were…with the woman, you were talking so quickly Nick had a difficult time keeping up with the translation.”

  “Really?” Celeste asked. “What was I saying?”

  Nick shrugged. “It was weird, like you were three different people. At one point you were telling a woman how beautiful she was, and how much you’d like to be with her, if only her parents approved of you. Then you took on a different tone, and said something about needing to hurry up because the boat was ready.”