The Girls On Poppy Drive: A Detective London McKenna Novel

by Alex Gates

  The dealer ducked between two clapboard houses and skidded into a second brick alleyway. Didn’t fool me. I pulled my phone from the pocket and shouted at Ben.

  “Heading for a red brick house, red stone porch off Butler Street! Suspect in a dark wool jacket, denim pants, Pirate ball cap. Early twenties. He’s a quick son of a bitch.”

  Ben shouted something, but I ignored him and pocketed the phone. The man slipped again on the stairs, shouting as he approached the house. His fists pounded against the oak door, and he rattled the frame until he shouldered his way through the entry.

  I rounded the stairs just as the door nearly slammed in my face. What I lacked in speed, I made up for in cane. I jammed the metal into the doorframe and prevented the door from closing. It nearly cracked in two on the shaft.

  The man shouted, twisting away as I pounced him, pinning him on the hard concrete between the doorway and porch.

  He struggled under me, cursing an ungentlemanly profanity when I requested that he remain still. A quick twist of his arm didn’t endear me to him, but he went still long enough for me to pat his pockets for weapons.

  “I didn’t do anything!” He kicked, unsuccessfully, and nearly earned a second wrench of his arm. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Detective London McKenna, Pittsburgh Police. Why were you running?”

  “Jesus Christ.” His voice rose, a terrified, unmanly squeal. He shouted further into the house. “It’s the cops!”

  I dug my knee into his back as I cuffed him. The house didn’t seem big, and no lights were on in the living room. I peeked through the entry way. They’d decorated with more Amazon boxes and cigarette butts than furniture. No tables. No couches, just two cloth folding chairs stacked in the corner. A staircase led to a dim second floor, but a door to a bright basement opened in the hallway.

  He’d run inside here for help.

  Who did he think would protect him?

  “What’s your name?” I didn’t bother grabbing his ID. “Name!”

  “S—Sam.”

  “Anyone else in the house, Sam?”

  “My…yeah…a friend.”

  The realization terrified him. His eyes glistened with tears, and the struggling ceased as soon as the cuffs clicked over his wrists.

  “Aw shit…” He whined hard enough to cough. “Shit, shit, shit. I don’t wanna go to jail. Don’t take me to jail.”

  “Depends on how useful you are to me,” I said. “Eddie Kirwin…where is he? Did you already deal to him today?”

  Sam coughed again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Wrong answer.

  I stood, avoiding his legs so I wouldn’t get kicked. Sam rightfully panicked when I pulled my gun, but the weapon wasn’t pointing at him. I aimed at whatever had crashed deep in the basement.

  “Where the hell is Eddie Kirwin?” I asked again. “He meets you here every Friday to get his drugs. Did you already deal with him today? Did he contact you?”

  “What drugs?” Sam flipped over, his words broken in sobs. “I don’t…I’m not a drug dealer! I’m not! I swear!”

  Almost believable. “I know Eddie meets with you once a week. Don’t play games. You’ll lose.”

  “I won’t! I’m not! In my pocket! Front pocket!” Sam unsuccessfully gyrated his hip into the air. “Reach in! That’s what I give Eddie.”

  I regretted pursuing him on foot when my latex gloves were in the car. Sam wiggled and brandished his side, but a little nob stuck out of his pocket. I pinched it between my thumb and index finger.

  “A flash drive?” I frowned.

  “It’s for Eddie. I give ‘em to Eddie.”

  Couldn’t grind it up, snort it, or inject it. Seemed worthless for a drug user.

  …But exceedingly useful to a sex-offender who needed court approval to use the internet.

  I gritted my teeth. “What’s on it?”

  “Don’t you need a warrant—”

  Oh, he wasn’t making any friends that way.

  I caught sight of the equipment blinking from behind the kitchen door. A row of green, blue, and yellow LEDs flashed and flickered. Wires dangled, leaving a trail from the bathroom into the kitchen. Server in the tub? I stepped closer, avoiding the basement. My drawn gun threatened only a dock of computers and laptops set up in an array.

  So, he was a comp-sci guy? Something told me he wasn’t repairing the systems, and whatever he’d loaded onto the flash drive for Eddie wasn’t a pirated copy of Game of Thrones.

  The car pulled up outside. Ben parked sideways, leapt out of the vehicle, and rushed inside, skipping most of the porch steps.

  Simms needed a bit longer. I nodded for him and Ben, gesturing to the basement.

  “Someone’s down there,” I said. “Hasn’t identified himself or come up yet.”

  Ben pulled his weapon, but it shocked me that Simms even had a gun. Too much of a temptation for him during the day, and oh-so-easy to clean a little too close to his temple at night. They broached the stairs, shouting from the top for the person below to stay where he was. They descended with heavy steps.

  Sam hid his face in a carpet that might have been white back in the eighties. He sniffled.

  “She wanted it this way,” he whispered. “She did. I promise.”

  Oh, I didn’t like the sound of that. His words twisted a new panic at the base of my spine.

  “Who wanted…what?” I asked.

  “She thought it’d be kinky. Knew she was strung out, but that’s what they like, right? None of the fake shit. They can tell when it’s faked. They want the real stuff.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “McKenna!” Ben shouted from the basement. “We got a body!”

  Ben’s career advancement came at the expense of a lot of people giving their lives. His time in homicide offered him a unique perspective on death—enough that he expected to round a corner and face a corpse.

  The thought still terrified me.

  “Jesus Christ.” Simms swore as he hauled his bulk back to the living room. He vomited in the corner.

  Forensics never liked that.

  He gripped the carpet. “Jesus…what the hell…”

  “McKenna!” Ben shouted again. “Get down here.”

  Nothing good waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. Sam gazed at me with mudpit brown eyes. He twisted, pleaded with me.

  “She wanted it.”

  My heart pounded, crashing harder against my ribcage than during the foot chase. “Simms, keep an eye on Sam.”

  I edged to the stairs. The lights illuminated too much to be normal basement fluorescents. The first steps down revealed the truth.

  This wasn’t a cellar.

  It was a studio.

  Industrial lights circled around a crudely constructed platform. They’d spent the money, but they hadn’t learned the proper technique to light the stage. A massive computer set up spanned the desk opposite the impromptu stage. Three monitors fed in a data from a…

  Video source?

  I searched the corners of the basement. The glint hidden within the drywall betrayed the camera’s locations. They aimed at the stage, positioned in the walls above, below, and directly in front of me.

  What the hell was happening here?

  Ben knelt on the ground, cuffing a naked man who seemed quite upset with his given predicament. Not that I blamed him. Hopefully a cold studio explained his…lack of confidence. Ben didn’t spare him, slamming the cuffs too tight over his wrists. He glanced at me, his voice low.

  “He tried to hide her.”

  “Hide…who?”

  I turned and nearly crashed onto the stairs.

  The woman was dead.

  She’d been hogtied with a variety of ropes, chains, and implements hooked into her, on her, and through her. Needles pierced places I didn’t know could be pierced. None of the fresh bruises and welts compared to the discoloration staining her breasts—a rotten concord grape of a color creat
ed by cutting off the circulation with a heavy band of rope.

  Her body was awkwardly tensed and bent backwards. I doubted she’d been the one to tie her arms to her ankles. She was naked for a reason, but her co-star wasn’t smart enough to use a condom. DNA wouldn’t be an issue.

  But the murder…

  I stared at the cameras, the lights, the computer.

  And my own bewildered expression stared at me. The central monitor jittered with a flurry of frantic chats.

  She the next show?

  Slice up the pig!

  Bet she’s a screamer.

  My stomach turned.

  They could see me.

  “Jesus, Ben,” I hissed. “They’re livestreaming.”

  Ben wasn’t gentle with his perp. He ground a knee between his shoulders and got him to talk a lot quicker that I’d worked over Sam.

  “What the hell is this?” Ben asked. “You got three seconds. Two. One…”

  “Snuff!” The man was older than Sam. Wrinkled and thin with track marks matching the dead woman’s. “She’s a whore. Wanted to go. Figured she’d get off before she went.”

  Didn’t look like a good time. The heroin would have helped some, but unless she’d OD’ed before he finished, she probably saw the end coming.

  So did a hundred or more other people. They’d watched a woman get brutally tortured, raped, and murdered over the internet.

  And no one did anything to help.

  They wanted it to happen.

  I spun to the computer, finding the program controlling the feed. Could I close it? The IT guys would bitch. I muted it and flipped the cameras away from us.

  “We gotta call the coroner and homicide,” I said.

  “I’ll get him something to wear.” His knee ground a little harder. “Not that he deserves it.”

  “The kid upstairs knows Eddie.” I nudged the man on the ground, accidentally stepping on one of his fingers. He didn’t recoil. The drugs surging through his system made him enjoy the pain. “You know Eddie Kirwin?”

  The man hummed, staring only at the naked body he’d desecrated. “She’s still warm. I’m losing money, people love that shit. Gotta get back on and go again.”

  And that’d give me nightmares for a week. “Eddie Kirwin. You know him?”

  “He’s a freak.”

  Ben snorted. “And you just murdered a woman.”

  “Gave her a good fucking too.”

  Hopefully the cameras didn’t catch his forehead smacking the ground. He groaned, but he respected Ben a bit more.

  “He likes his little girls,” he said. “Says he wants custom shoots. We don’t make the stuff—just play middleman. Find the stuff he likes on the dark web and get him a fresh assortment of photos every week. He pays us good for the old shit and pays better for the new stuff. The younger the slit, the more it’s worth.”

  I swallowed the bile.

  Eddie was covering his tracks. He’d played by the rules. No internet in his home.

  But outside?

  He could pay people with better technology, better systems, and better security to get the pornography for him.

  And to upload the videos he’d made.

  His parole officer would never know. The ISP would never see him on any dangerous sites.

  It was brilliant.

  And sick.

  “I’ll survey the rest of the house,” I said. “See what else we got in this freak show.”

  My stomach heaved, but I had more control than Simms. Besides, the helplessness was worse than nausea. I’d been too late to save the woman downstairs.

  And that would plague me for weeks.

  Sam still wept into the carpet, but Simms stood outside, gripping the porch with white knuckles.

  “Sergeant, I’m gonna check the rest of the premises.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Sergeant?”

  Nothing. He stared into the street.

  “George.”

  I crossed to the door. Simms turned before I got close, batting my hand away from his arm. His eyes lined red, and tears streaked across his cheeks.

  “I can’t do this,” he muttered.

  “Do what?”

  He clutched his chest. I feared he’d had a heart attack, but the motion ripped at the badge in his front pocket. He tossed it away. “I can’t live like this. Can’t keep seeing shit like this. Can’t watch while they torture those girls. I’m done. I quit.”

  “You…quit?”

  He dared to look at me. “And you should too.”

  A quiet, icy thread of rage stitched through my mind. I didn’t raise my voice. Didn’t disrespect him with a profanity.

  But he deserved none of my restraint.

  “You goddamned coward.” The word stung. He didn’t deny it. “How can you quit on those girls?”

  Simms shrugged. “I have to.”

  “They need you!”

  “No one can save them now.”

  “All the more reason to try harder!”

  He walked away from me.

  I ground my teeth, hoping they wouldn’t shatter and fracture the rest of me as well. I ripped at his arm and forced him to look at me. He refused to hold my gaze.

  That was fine.

  His sort of scum didn’t deserve dignity.

  “What do you want me to do, London?” He practically slumped to the ground. “Tell me.”

  “Everything you can!”

  “I’ve done everything. It’s over.”

  The thought terrified me.

  Enraged me.

  Spiraled me into a darkness I’d hidden away for ten years.

  “I know what it feels like to be helpless and alone.” The whisper wasn’t mine—it belonged to a younger London, a frightened and desperate London. The girl I’d left in that dark and terrible basement after everyone assumed I was dead. “I know what it feels like when people give up. I will not allow anyone to ever let those girls feel that hopeless.”

  “You want to help them?” Simms asked. “You want to fight that endless stream of pedophiles and perverts and demons who want nothing more than to watch that monster destroy those kids?”

  He dared to walk away from me.

  I let him go. I had no idea what’d I’d do if he stayed point-blank in my face. He returned to the car, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. He didn’t light it, and the tobacco crushed through the paper as his hands trembled.

  “You want the case, McKenna?” he asked. “It’s yours. But believe me, listen to me. The instant you decide to save those girls? That’s the moment your life ends.”

  5

  What is it about you, my dear?

  You’re always getting in trouble.

  -Him

  I silenced the department with four simple words.

  “I want the case.”

  My cubicle was cluttered with more people than files. Ben knew better than to take my chair, but he helped himself to the side of the desk. He sat on the edge with his arms crossed, more haggard than encouraged.

  Our homicide team had surveyed the damage at the scene, but once the body was untangled and the producers of the snuff show dragged away to a cell less accommodating than their homemade dungeon, Detectives Lucas Riley and Joey Falconi crowded my desk to swap stories with their old homicide buddy.

  It didn’t surprise me how well Bennett Chase mixed with the homicide crew. What shocked me was how reluctant any of the men were to take the Poppy Drive Case.

  “You were right.” Ben pulled a twenty from his wallet and handed it to Falconi. “You said she was goddamned crazy.”

  Riley agreed. “Starting to think you got some sort of fetish for this dark shit, McKenna.”

  I frowned. “Starting to think I’m the only one who can take care of this shit. I don’t see anyone else stepping up.”

  “Leave it to Simms,” Riley said. “He’s walked off this case a dozen times in the past seven years. He’ll come back.”

  All that strength
and not an ounce of courage. Riley had lost his jacket somewhere between the station and the gym, but the packed muscle on his arms, chest, and abs must have kept him warm. With a finalized divorce and a renewed gym membership, Riley seemed to have it all—except the grey hair that had once dotted his temples. Nothing a little dye couldn’t hide. He must have started dating again.

  Ben didn’t believe him. “Ain’t no way Simms is coming back. He’s done. Good reason too. Either of you ever cover a snuff film?”

  Falconi ended his call with a frantic promise to bring two pints of Ben and Jerry’s home with him. He collapsed in a spare chair and stole the hand sanitizer off my desk. This case had half-emptied the container. None of us felt clean after walking through that stage.

  “I never thought snuff films were real.” Falconi slathered the sanitizer up his arms too. “Now my wife’s gonna get ideas. Next time I forget the diapers, she’ll flay my ass on tape for all the mommies on her blog to watch.”

  “They might like that.” Riley shrugged. “Get them a little maternity action.”

  Falconi had run out of coffee and thus patience. A refill was the only motivation to move him from the chair, and he groaned as he rose to his feet. “All these freaks out there in the world. How am I supposed to bring another kid into this shit show?”

  Ben laughed. “You could stop knocking up your wife.”

  Easier said than done. With an older daughter, two sets of twins, and another baby on the way, Joey Falconi was either a living advertisement for Trojan Condoms or a pillar of Roman Catholic values.

  “London, listen to me,” Falconi said. “The only shit you should be dealing with is the kind you find in a chubby baby’s diaper. Keep your head down, do your regular work load, and just get married like a normal person.”

  “Barefoot and pregnant in the Missing Persons department?” The horror. “Not for me.”

  “And Poppy Drive is?” Ben asked. “Come on, London. No one wants this case.”

  “I do.”

  Riley found two things endlessly amusing—stashing pepperoni, beef jerky, and other sorts of cured meats into my vegetarian lunches, and Ben’s constant frustrations with me.

  “Ben, you got some terrible luck,” he said. “First a transfer, then you get the only partner in the station willing to commit suicide over a cold case.”