Ben turned. Johnny Hoolihan was letting himself in through the gate. How long had the guy been there?
The two men stared at each other for a moment that stretched, then Ben released Daryl Johnson, turned, and stalked away. Hoolihan’s pimpmobile, his sheriff’s auction Cadillac, was parked on the street behind Ben’s car. Ben looked at the Cadillac with new appreciation. He’d just talked to Hoolihan two hours ago, giving him the news about Mazie and asking him to trace the plates on the bike. Hoolihan had gotten back to him fifteen minutes later, giving him Daryl Johnson’s name and address. Then the guy had driven all the way from Quail Hollow, making the three-hour drive in less than ninety minutes. Impressive, Ben grudgingly admitted, even with a Kojak light mounted on the dashboard.
Hoolihan emerged from Daryl Johnson’s backyard, walked over, and leaned against his car. Neither of them spoke for a moment, then Hoolihan said, “Good job being the bad cop.”
“You heard what he told me?”
“The whole thing.” Hoolihan cracked a smile. “Didn’t want to walk in before you’d gotten some answers. If I knocked him around, I’d be looking at a lawsuit. But you being a civilian—well, you can squeeze him until he squeals and if he sues you, that’s your problem.”
“So where does this put us?”
Hoolihan’s grin faded. “Here’s how I see it. Mr. Barbecue here isn’t involved. He picked Shayla Connelly up the night she escaped from the Skulls. He probably demanded sexual services and she bolted. I don’t know where she stayed for the next few days, but I think she showed up on Mazie’s doorstep last night. The gang tracked her down there and took both girls, probably in that truck the neighbor woman saw.”
Ben took a deep breath. He had to know. “Do you think they’re still alive?”
“No guarantee.” Hoolihan rubbed his eyes with his palms. “But these gangs are big on ritual. I don’t think they’ll just shoot Shayla right away. They’ll want to make an event out of it, wait until night, get their whole tribe together, then stage a trial or ceremony or something. But that’s just a guess.”
“This gang—it’s from around Quail Hollow, isn’t it? So that’s where they’ll—”
“Possibly. But they could be anywhere in the state. They have connections in Illinois, too. We’ve got every law enforcement official in three states on this, we’ve got roadblocks set up, we’re putting the thumbscrews to our informers, we’re checking out biker bars—every damn thing we can think of. I’m driving back home as soon as I give Milwaukee PD my report on Shayla and this Johnson character. Oh, and this being a probable kidnapping—the FBI is coming in on it, too.
When Ben drove back to Mazie’s apartment, he discovered that the police had sealed it off and weren’t letting anyone in. None of the cops was friendly. Ben found himself shunted aside, told like a naughty child to stay out of the way. Fuming, he headed back to his car, brushing past Magenta, a worried-looking Juju, and Lester Pfister, who was noodling with his smartphone.
Juju caught his arm. “What happened, Ben? Did you find the guy who owned the bike?”
Ben briefly explained what he’d learned from Daryl Johnson—that the person in Mazie’s apartment last night had probably been Shayla Connelly, witness to a gang murder.
“I feel so helpless,” Juju said. “I want to do something, but I don’t know what.”
“Here’s what I’m doing,” Ben said. “Driving to Coulee County, prying up every floorboard, scouring every biker bar—”
“Excuse me, Ben,” said Lester, setting a hand on his shoulder. “But that would be counterproductive. It would take you hours to drive there, and then you could only hope to cover a small fraction of the area. I’ve been doing some research on this motorcycle gang. Not that I’m an expert or anything, I mean I’ve never even been on a motorcycle or—”
Juju bugged out her eyes. “Get on with it, Lester.”
“Right, sorry. This gang was originated by a man named Reuben ‘Papa’ Yatt. He’s eighty-one years old now, with a criminal record as long as your arm. Extortion, assault and battery, arson, and probably murder. He’s also a drug kingpin, with the most extensive operation in the Midwest.”
“Does any of this have a point?” Ben grumped.
“The point,” Lester said, adjusting his glasses, “is that this man is sitting on millions of dollars in drug money. He uses the money to buy legitimate businesses and property, mostly under false names—relatives or trusted associates. This is just my hypothesis, but I think he had Mazie and Shayla taken to one of those properties he owns. What we need to do is pinpoint which one. Then we can move.”
Looking embarrassed, Lester explained his plan, which would require computers, a printer, and a strong Wi-Fi signal.
“We can work in my back room,” Magenta said. “It’s got everything.”
Ben walked away without a word. He wasn’t going to sit around playing with a computer, not when Mazie’s life was in danger. He got in his car and took off, not knowing where he was going, barely seeing the street in front of him, feeling as though all the skin in his body had been flayed away and every nerve was shrieking in pain. He craved the pain. He wanted to pound on something until he broke his hands.
Why don’t you use your brain for a change, Labeck? He heard Mazie’s voice so clearly, she could have been sitting in his lap. Mazie would be using her brain, no doubt about that. She’d be using every ounce of her cunning to get herself and the girl out. She’d bat her eyelashes and fib and sniff out her enemies’ weak points. When life gives you rubber bands, make bungee cords, that was her motto. She was smart and sneaky and a lot tougher than she looked. If anyone could escape her captors, it was Mazie Maguire.
Okay, baby—I’ll use my brains. What I’ve got left of them.
At his apartment he snatched up his laptop, then drove back to Magenta’s. Lester’s command center was up and running in Magenta’s back room, and it looked like a cross between the dressing room for a drag show and IBM headquarters. Surrounded by glittery gowns and size thirteen high heels, there were two cleared-off desks with some first-rate technology: a fast modem, powerful Wi-Fi, and an expensive, up-to-the-nanosecond computer. Lester had evidently brought his laptop along with him because he was hunched over it, typing, his fingers a blur, while Juju was using Magenta’s desktop PC.
“I thought we could start by checking properties that have turned over recently in Coulee County,” Lester said. “Say, within the last five years. We’re probably looking for a large commercial property—so take out the single-family dwellings—and we’re left with only about three hundred properties. We look at the names and see if we can find any connection to Papa Yatt.” He showed Ben and Juju how to bring up the records on their laptops.
“This is still going to take us all day,” Ben grumbled.
Lester shook his head. “Not if we cross-reference it with Terra Cognito.” He brought up a screen displaying a high-altitude image of a city. Lester zoomed in. The photo grew larger and larger, until they could see a city street in such close-up detail that the manhole covers were visible.
“Is that Brady Street?” Juju asked.
“In real time,” Lester said proudly.
“Is this like Google Earth?” Magenta asked. “Spy satellites sending photos?”
“Google Earth is last year’s technology,” Lester said. “Terra Cog is done with low-altitude drones. The Pentagon doesn’t even have this yet.”
“How much does it cost?” Ben asked.
“A bundle,” Lester said simply. “I don’t really need it for my business—I just think it’s cool. So if we find a property that might belong to the Yatts, we feed the coordinates to the drones and zoom in. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe we’ll see Mazie waving her arms.”
Ben slapped Lester on the back. “Good work, Bogie. Let’s get cracking.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The hours sludged by. With the windows open and a breeze blowing, it was chilly in the tower room. The
rain drizzled on and an early dusk fell. Mazie and Shayla huddled together for warmth, nibbling the last of their packaged peanut butter crackers, sharing them with Muffin, and drinking sparingly from the rainwater they’d collected, careful not to swallow the debris at the bottom of the paint cans.
To pass the time, Mazie told Shayla about her time in prison, the tricks of the trade she’d picked up to survive. Like how to talk your way out of a fight—but if you were forced to fight, how to pinpoint the most vulnerable spots on your opponent’s body. How to turn a pencil into a deadly weapon. How a flaming bundle of paper could also be used as a weapon. How to get your enemy in hot water without her ever realizing you were responsible. How you could startle a man into temporary immobility by flashing your breasts.
Outside the room, they heard the elevator cage rattle.
“They’re coming!” Shayla shot to her feet. “Oh, God, Mazie—I’m so scared. Plan A or Plan B?”
Mazie gave Shayla’s hand a squeeze. “Play it by ear.”
“Right,” Shayla said, her voice shaking. “Schmooze or bruise.”
The heavy bolt was thrust aside, the key rattled in the lock, the door burst open, and Brimstone stood there in the doorway, eying them as though they were dinner.
“H’lo, ladies—you bored up here all by your lonesomes?”
He turned to relock the door. Shayla looked at Mazie, who tensed. Rush him now, while he was off guard? Even with the two of them, it would be risky. He weighed more than both of them combined, and there was solid muscle beneath the fat.
Brimstone turned and weaved toward them. They’d lost their chance to bruise, Mazie realized with sinking heart. Okay, schmooze it was.
“C’mere, you two,” Brimstone ordered, drunk but, unfortunately, not drunk enough.
Mazie went into flirt mode. She moved toward Brimstone and teasingly tugged his beard. “Hey, big fellow—you’ve been partying.”
“Hell, yeah. Me and Jacky Daniels. Nothing else to do in this stinkin’ bughouse except drink. More I drink, the uglier the other dudes look.” He giggled, drew Mazie in to him, tried to plant a kiss on her lips, and ended up slobbering in her ear. “But you look real cute.”
His stink made Mazie want to gag. She had to grit her teeth against it, force herself to touch his biceps. “Ooh—I like muscles.”
He gazed at her through hooded, glazed eyes. “Pretty,” he said thickly. “Wonder if you’re this pretty with your clothes off?” He tried to grope Mazie’s breast.
“Quit hogging him!” Shayla shoved Mazie away from Brimstone. “You can’t have him all to yourself. I want me some Brimmy, too.”
“You I like,” Brimstone said, grinning at Shayla. “Young. What’re you, seventeen?”
“Sixteen,” Shayla lied, keeping just out of reach of the pillaging hands.
“Skinny. Young. That’s how I like ’em. Hardly nothing to you except them nice knockers.” He grabbed the zipper of Shayla’s hoodie in his sausagelike fingers and yanked it down, a string of drool actually dribbling from his mouth. “Always thought you was wasted on that pencil dick Ricky Lee,” he said. “Prolly wished you had a real man to love you up.”
“Oh, I did!” Shayla squealed.
“So what are we waiting for?” Brimstone began to unbuckle his belt. “Let’s get it on, sugar pants.” He turned to Mazie. “You just watch, old lady. Don’t worry—I’ll get to you.”
“I got to be in the mood,” Shayla said.
Brimstone’s face darkened. “Well, you better get there, fast.”
“I’ll get there faster with a little happy juice,” Shayla said. “It’s not fair that you had Jacky and we don’t get any.”
“Yeah, no fair!” Mazie used a kittenish tone that made her want to rinse her tongue in Lysol. “Don’t you have a little Jacky for us?”
“I’m thirsty.” Shayla gave a playful poke at the roll of fat around Brim’s middle. “I wanna get high. Hi-i-gh as the sky-y! I’m a lotta fun when I’m high!” She lost her balance, giggled, clutched at Brimstone for support. “Come on, Brimmie. Give Shayla a little Jacky.”
Walking a very fine line here, Mazie thought; cross it and this tub of blub was going to whip out his personal Jacky and that would be awful beyond imagining.
“Okeydokey, Miss Fenokee.” Brimstone gave a gurgling snort that sounded like a drain being unclogged. There was a bad moment when he slapped his pockets and Mazie was terrified that he’d brought a bottle with him.
“Shit. I gotta go back down, see if them pigs left anything. You two hotsy-totsies just wait right here.”
They traipsed behind him, all girly and coquettish as he ambled to the door, hoping they could somehow thrust past him and into the hall, but Brimstone was not yet sufficiently stewed and he immediately closed and locked the door. “When I get back,” he called from outside, “you both better be naked.” They heard him stumping across the hall, then getting into the elevator.
“Uckk—I thought I was gonna hurl,” Shayla said. “His reek!”
“Oscar-winning performance, though.”
Shayla laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Plan B?”
“I think so. Rubble-filled pail ready?”
“Check. Who’s taking Muffin?”
“Whoever is closest.”
“If this doesn’t work, Mazie, I just—well, thank you for—”
“It’ll work.” It had to.
They took a last look around the room, argued over whether to leave the red T-shirt in its signal-of-distress position, and finally decided to leave it. They barely had time to get in position before they heard the elevator returning. It stopped with a groaning thump. Brimstone’s heavy footsteps sounded outside.
They tensed, looking at each other across the room. Mazie tightened her grip on her weapon, realizing she was holding her breath. The bolt slid back, the key scraped in the lock …
And Shayla screamed. Screamed as though her intestines were being ripped out by Freddy Krueger.
“She jumped!” Shayla screamed, pointing at the wide-open window. “Mazie jumped!”
Brimstone ran to the window. Shayla kept up a shrieking, hysterical babble.
Hidden in the shadow of a radiator, Mazie leaped from her crouch, swung back with all her might, and hit Brimstone in the back of his knees with her homemade blackjack.
Panty hose were hot, expensive, and restricting, but when one pantyhose leg was pulled inside the other and it was filled with chunks of plaster, old nails, and the accumulated dirt and debris of a century, it created a lethal, two-foot-long sap. Brimstone, whose weight was all in his upper body but whose legs were like pretzel sticks, toppled over backward with an astonished grunt, flailing his arms and falling with a thump that shook the floor. Shayla was on him instantly, smashing him in the face with a gallon paint can filled with debris. Brimstone’s arms jerked up to cover his face. Mazie swung her blackjack down on his crotch. The nylon tube split, spraying shrapnel consisting of nails and plaster chunks. Howling in agony, Brimstone curled up like a shrimp. Shayla hit him in the head again with the paint can, and he went limp and silent.
Then they were flying, Muffin cradled in Mazie’s arms. Out the door. Into the hall. Mazie locked the door and slid the heavy board that acted as a safety bolt into place while Shayla wedged one of the paint containers between the elevator’s doors. With the doors unable to close, the elevator would be effectively out of service.
The fire stairs were adjacent to the elevator, access to them blocked by a rusted bed frame. Shoving it aside, they stepped cautiously into the stairwell. It was dark and cobwebbed and apparently hadn’t been used in years. The wooden steps creaked ominously and Mazie had a horrible image of them giving way, sending them plunging to their deaths.
“Where are we going?” Shayla whispered, her voice echoing eerily in the enclosed space.
“Dunno.” They’d never planned beyond getting out of the tower. The first-floor stairwell was only a few yards away from the elevator and c
ame out in the building’s central hall, which was practically Grand Central Station for the gang members, and thus to be avoided. “If we get out on the second floor, we should be able to find another set of stairs that leads outside.”
It was hard not to make noise on the stairs, which were warped by years of heat, cold, and neglect. Some steps were quiet, and some screeched like lumber being pushed through a buzz saw. They finally reached the second-floor access door and Mazie turned the knob. It wouldn’t give. Shayla tried it, too, then they both pushed on the door, but nothing happened.
Locked.
Shit.
“We can’t get out on the first floor because they’ll see us,” Mazie said. “That leaves the basement.”
Tired of being carried, Muffin struggled to get down and walk, but Mazie didn’t dare let him. “Just a little while longer,” she whispered to him, feeling his small heart beating against her chest.
They descended the last flight. The stairway ended in a steel door with no knob or handle. Shayla pushed on it and it scraped open. A foul odor whooshed out, a stench of decay, mold, and something much fouler—did the Skulls bury their victims down here? They halted. Shayla took the lighter out of her sock and flicked it on. They were in the building’s boiler room. Moving cautiously, coal fragments crunching beneath their feet, they edged around an ancient furnace with duct pipes like monstrous metal tentacles.
Beyond the boiler room was a large room that seemed to run the length of the entire building. Faint evening light sifted through barred windows, providing enough illumination to see by, and Shayla put away the lighter. The walls were damp, covered with great patches of moss and mold. Water dripped from overhead pipes, making the rough stone floor slippery. Barred cells flanked both sides of a central aisle, and most of the cells had chains dangling from the walls. Someone had written I WAS NEVER CRAZY in white chalk on one of the cell walls. The letters seemed to hang there accusingly in the dark and Mazie shivered, imagining the poor, tortured soul who’d written those words. If you weren’t insane before being locked up in here, you soon would have been.
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