Painted Skins

by Matt Hilton

  ‘So you didn’t get to ring nine-one-one, huh?’ he whispered. ‘Too bad.’

  He dropped the phone and it clattered by her face.

  Feebly she reached for it, but in the next instant it was buried beneath his foot as he stamped it into tinkling components.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘If he has touched her, I’m going to kill the bastard,’ Cal Hopewell announced. He was sitting directly behind the driver’s seat, with a gun taken from Maxwell Carter’s office at Bar-Lesque aimed at Trojak’s lower spine.

  Trojak felt his scalp creep over his skull, his injuries itching as the poorly knitted flesh crinkled. ‘Considering what you have in mind, I’d have thought Randall might be your new best friend.’

  ‘Don’t associate me with the likes of that ugly piece of crap,’ Hopewell warned. He raised the muzzle of the gun and pressed it to the back of Trojak’s neck. ‘Don’t forget: I can get by without a driver now if it comes to it.’

  Hopewell had forced cooperation from Trojak at the end of his gun, pressing him into service to drive him to the trailer park near Amherst after realizing the importance of the documents Trojak had filched from Tess Grey’s house. For Trojak the three hours’ journey had felt like an eternity. Twice already Hopewell had come close to pulling the trigger. It was only because they were driving at speed that he hadn’t, but now they were parked in the entrance to a water-treatment works. Having gotten eyes on the Mustang, Hopewell didn’t need him any longer: the promise of a bullet was no longer a mere threat.

  Trojak’s only hope of survival was to keep Hopewell talking, reminding him that – partly – they were in this together, even if their reasons were at polar opposites.

  ‘I don’t get you, Cal. Why go to all this trouble to get your hands on Jazz? Going after her like this, it only ensures that her story gets out.’

  ‘Not if I shut her up.’

  ‘But others know what happened. Max, Daryl, her grandmother, even your own father.’

  ‘I’m happy to shut them up too. I’m pretty certain the detective has figured it out too, but I’ve enough bullets to include her,’ Hopewell tapped the gun on the back of Trojak’s head. ‘You know what happened too.’

  Sadly, Hopewell’s statement was true. He’d only learned sketchy details from Bruin, but Hopewell had regaled Trojak with the tale in all its sordid detail on the drive over.

  ‘Jasmine ran away,’ Trojak reminded him. ‘You ask me, she had no intention of telling anyone what happened. If you’d left well and good alone, she’d have stayed hidden, and you and the others would’ve been safe. But now?’

  ‘She only ran because someone told her I was getting out of prison. I wonder who that was?’ He screwed the barrel into the back of Trojak’s skull, forcing his head down. ‘I know now it wasn’t Daryl or Maxwell; who else was in their little inner circle, Johnny?’

  Trojak didn’t answer.

  The pressure went from the back of his head, but the gun was still an immediate threat. He straightened marginally.

  ‘You do understand that Daryl is using you the way he has me for years,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not stupid. Of course he is, but what he doesn’t realize is that after I finish with Jasmine, I’m going back for him. Who will be using who then?’

  ‘You’re confident you’ll make it back to him?’

  ‘Nobody has stopped me yet.’

  Trojak thought about Po Villere. He thought about Tess Grey. He thought about himself.

  ‘What about this Randall character?’

  ‘He sounds like a mommy’s boy to me,’ Hopewell sneered. ‘You know why he has to snatch girls, right? He’s too fucking ugly to attract one and knows it. Bet you he puts a bag over his head when he screws them.’

  ‘If Tess Grey’s deduction is to be trusted, he’s been at this for some time. He might be good at what he does.’

  ‘You admire her, huh? The detective?’

  Trojak shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing against her.’

  ‘Bet you wish your body was. Tell the truth, Johnny, if you could get in her pants you would. I got close the other day, wouldn’t mind another go.’

  ‘I’m not into that kind of dirty talk,’ Trojak said.

  ‘You always were a prude. That’s why you weren’t invited to the party that night. We knew you’d make a fuss.’

  Trojak nodded. He would have. It was Daryl and his seedy pal, Maxwell Carter, who’d coaxed Jasmine, a young impressionable girl with a bit of a wild streak, into Calvin Hopewell’s bedroom. Gave her alcohol, and set her up for Cal to have his way with her. Daryl had always intended going second on her, Max third, but Jasmine – even drunk – had resisted. The younger boys had helped hold her down while Cal attempted to take her virginity. She’d fought, and Cal had resorted to threatening her with a knife. Still unbowed, she’d required further warning and Cal had found that he was enjoying the fight more than the sex, especially after drawing first blood.

  ‘I’d have taken that knife from you and put it in your eye,’ Trojak assured him.

  Hopewell laughed at him. ‘Maybe we’re not so unalike, eh?’

  ‘We’re a gulf apart, Cal.’

  ‘That time you followed me, and spotted me burning my car, I could have killed you then. I didn’t realize it was you until after, but I didn’t feel bad about hurting you, and I won’t now. Maybe I should’ve kept smashing your stupid head in, saved myself the trouble later.’

  ‘We’re all wise in hindsight.’

  Hopewell laughed again, but this time without humour.

  ‘Are you saying you want to stick a knife in my eye now, Johnny?’

  ‘Do you want to put a bullet through mine?’

  Neither man spoke.

  Finally it was Trojak who broke the prickly quiet. ‘So your daddy made everything go away, huh? Paid off Margaret Norris to keep Jasmine quiet. Paid off Daryl and Max, too.’

  ‘Max didn’t get a brown cent. Daryl more than his fair share. How’d you think he got started in business?’

  ‘I knew it wasn’t through an honest day’s labour.’

  ‘He’s been blackmailing my father for years. He isn’t afraid of being named in an attempted rape case, not when he can argue he was just a stupid boy who was drunk and being manipulated by me. Fucker would probably earn some sympathy instead of punishment. No, what Daryl fears is the story going public, because then he’ll have nothing left to lever more cash out of my dad.’

  ‘Whatever happens now, the story will come out. You’ve been lucky ’til now, Cal. The police haven’t been looking for you as a rape suspect, only for the violent assaults you’ve made on Max and me, and your aborted attack on Tess Grey. You’re not going to get away with this.’

  ‘I know that. But that’s why I want some fun before they get me. You’ve heard the expression “you may as well be hung for stealing a sheep as for a lamb”, right?’

  ‘That’s what all this is about? You want to finish what you started with Jazz?’

  ‘You’ve never done time, have you, Johnny? When you’re locked in a cell twenty-three hours a day you get a lot of thinking time. I’d had my way with a few women by then, but they were conquests, not fantasy any more. I thought about them occasionally, but most of my time was spent dreaming about my first victim; the one that got away.’ He snorted. ‘If I’m going back to prison, I’m going to take some pleasant memories of Jasmine back inside with me.’

  ‘You do know she might already be dead? They found another of Randall’s victims; Jazz could also be in a shallow grave out there somewhere.’

  ‘If that’s the case, Randall will suffer. Jasmine’s mine, she was always mine, and if he’s harmed her I’ll peel off his ugly face and feed it back to him.’

  ‘Cal, you do know how crazy you sound, right?’

  ‘All a matter of opinion, Johnny.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. To me women are to be protected, not to be used and abused.’

  ‘That’s why you�
�ve been treated as a doormat all your life, Johnny. Look at your face, all scratched up. I bet your wife did that to you: if you’d showed her the back of your hand years ago, she’d have known her place.’

  ‘But that would make me just like you, Cal, and I’m sorry to say but you’re everything I hate. A man who hurts women and children is the lowest of the low.’

  ‘Like I give a fuck what you think about me?’ Hopewell jabbed the gun under Trojak’s left ear. ‘All you need think about is that there’s a bullet with your name on it if you insult me again.’

  ‘I was stating fact.’

  ‘I don’t hurt children,’ Hopewell growled.

  ‘Jasmine was a child when you first hurt her.’

  ‘She was old enough,’ Hopewell snapped. ‘Haven’t you heard, Johnny, if they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to breed.’

  Trojak didn’t respond, except to slide shut his eyes in disgust.

  ‘Hey! Hey goddamnit!’ Hopewell shoved his shoulder. ‘Get with it, Johnny. They’re on the move.’

  As Trojak stirred, he spotted Po Villere’s Mustang come roaring from the trailer park. It barely paused as it met the junction, and turned to speed away from them, kicking up a spray of gritty water from a dip in the road.

  ‘Where are they off to in such a hurry?’ Hopewell demanded. ‘After them, Johnny, and don’t spare the horses.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Only moments earlier, Tess was running for the car before she had fully absorbed what she was looking at, her cellphone held before her like an Olympic relay baton.

  ‘I’ve got a hit!’ she announced as Po jumped out to throw forward his seat so she could get in.

  ‘A hit? What?’ Po glanced over at the old site manager, who was frowning back at him, equally perplexed.

  ‘Get in, Po,’ Tess hollered before she was fully in. ‘Get moving!’

  ‘Where?’ Po demanded as he jumped back inside, and fired up the engine.

  ‘Wait up. I’m looking now. But get us out of here!’

  Po spun the car around, spraying dirt as the back wheels clipped the verge near the old man’s feet. He jumped back, exclaiming loudly, his unlit cigarette flying from between his lips.

  ‘Good job he’s got good ears, him,’ Pinky announced with a laugh. ‘You almost took off his toes!’

  Neither Tess nor Po paid him any mind, Tess working frantically on her phone while Po took the serpentine, rutted track with the skill of a seasoned rally driver.

  ‘Left, left, left,’ Tess barked from the back seat as they reached the exit and met the road. She watched for traffic on Po’s behalf. The sewage-treatment plant was slightly to their right, and there was a car parked in its entrance, but the road was clear. ‘Go, go, go,’ she hollered, slapping a hand on the back of Po’s seat.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Pinky now wondered as the Mustang powered forward, giving sound to the unspoken question on Po’s creased face.

  ‘I got an alert through on my phone. From the programs I’ve been running? One of them just got a ping from Jasmine Reed’s cell!’

  ‘Where from?’ Po asked, as he concentrated on covering ground. There was no turn off in sight, so he merely hit the gas, aiming for the near horizon.

  Tess scrabbled about in the back, bringing her iPad to life. ‘I’m bringing up a map, can’t see for shit on my phone. But her cell made a brief connection out by Quabbin Reservoir.’

  ‘Where the other girl was found?’

  ‘No. A lot further north.’ Tess flicked and swiped the screen on her tablet. She had her phone, her tablet and even her iMac back home synchronized on the same network. ‘Got it, now just hold on and I’ll …’ She enlarged the map. A red cursor blinked but the area looked featureless, woodland and scrub on the western shore of the man-made lake. Finding Jasmine in that trackless area would take for ever. She switched to a satellite view, zoomed in on a series of rooftops, indistinct beneath the forest canopy. ‘I can see a derelict factory or something. Stay on this road, Po. We’re about ten minutes away.’

  Po gave the engine more fuel. ‘Make that eight minutes,’ he said.

  Tess shoved the iPad into Pinky’s hands. ‘Make yourself useful, Pinky. Tell Po when he needs to make a turn.’

  ‘Eh, uh, yeah,’ Pinky said staring at the screen, ‘I would, but where the hell are we now?’

  Tess almost clambered into the front to tap on the screen. ‘Right there,’ she said, indicating their position on the road. ‘You got it?’

  ‘I got it.’

  Tess called Emma Clancy.

  ‘Emma, I haven’t time to explain, but I need something from you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You said you were going to talk with the lead investigator on Carrie Mae Borger’s case? Can you give me his name and cell number?’

  ‘It’s not a he, it’s a she: Detective Karen Ratcliffe.’ Emma scratched around a few seconds, each of them ticking down like the doomsday clock in Tess’s mind. ‘I’ve got the number right here.’

  She read it out, and Tess repeated it to her.

  ‘Right, thanks, Emma.’

  ‘Tess, what’s going on?’

  ‘Sorry. No time. Gotta go!’ She ended the call and punched in the number for the lead detective on the Homicide investigative team at Belchertown PD.

  Po hit a hump in the road and the car sailed. Bouncing around on the bench seat, she fought to keep her phone next to her ear.

  ‘Detective Ratcliffe,’ a female voice announced.

  ‘Hello, Detective Ratcliffe, my name is Teresa Grey, I work for Emma Clancy in Portland, Maine. I believe you’ve already spoken to my boss?’ Tess realized she was rattling out her words, and made a conscious effort to slow down.

  ‘Hello. Yes. This is Tess, right? Mrs Clancy told me I should expect you to call.’

  ‘She sent you my report on the other missing persons?’

  ‘The missing girls? Yes. I have to admit that the coincidences between their disappearances were remarkable but …’

  ‘I think I’ve found another of them,’ Tess announced, though she’d no real proof. All she had was evidence that Jasmine’s phone had been briefly switched on and off again – that didn’t say Jasmine was present. She could have been murdered weeks ago, her phone could have changed hands a half-dozen times. Who knew? Except why the hell would it have been turned on at such a remote location? She was certain it was where the abducted girls were being kept. The abandoned factory sat firmly within the wedge of countryside between the two interstates from which some of the girls had gone missing. ‘We’ve had a hit on one of the missing women’s cellphones, from an abandoned plant north-east of Amherst, up near the reservoir.’

  ‘It could mean anything,’ Ratcliffe cautioned her.

  ‘But it needs checking out.’

  ‘Where are you, Tess? You aren’t calling from Portland, are you?’

  ‘I’m north of Amherst, on my way to the location now.’

  Ratcliffe hissed a curse. ‘Stop. Stop now, Tess.’

  ‘Sorry, Detective, but I can’t do that. I made her grandmother a promise I’d bring Jasmine Reed home. If this is the only opportunity I get …’

  ‘Stand down,’ Ratcliffe warned her. ‘I’ll have a patrol dispatched to the scene. Do not interfere.’

  ‘One patrol car isn’t enough,’ Tess replied. ‘Send everyone you’ve got. I called you out of professional courtesy, Detective. But if you aren’t going to take this seriously, then someone has to.’

  ‘I am taking it seriously, goddamnit, but I need more proof before I mobilize my department.’

  ‘You’ve studied the files, studied the girls. They’re all similar-looking. They all have tattoos and scars. OK. Now check out Jesse Randall on your sex offenders’ register. Tattooed. Scarred. And living right here near Amherst. I just bet he knows about that old factory and is there right now. With those missing girls.’ Again Tess realized she was rattling out her words, but she no longer cared
. Ratcliffe would send back up, or she wouldn’t. Tess had done her bit to keep the cops in the loop, and it would have to do. She ended the call, just as Pinky waved frantically at an upcoming hairpin bend.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Po reassured him, and barely slowed as he drifted the muscle car around the tight bend. Ahead was a straight stretch of road that paralleled a stream. The hills on either side were rounded, only sparsely dotted with vegetation, but to the front and to the right, Tess made out a dark band she assumed was the woodland in which the abandoned factory was located.

  ‘We’ve somebody following us,’ Po announced after flicking a look in his mirrors.

  Tess twisted round, peering out the tiny window, and coming out of that last bend she spotted another car. The driver wasn’t as accomplished as Po and almost lost control of the vehicle. Tess’s first thought was that it was an unmarked cop car, one they’d sped past and who was now giving chase. But it wasn’t displaying lights or sirens.

  ‘They aren’t gaining on us,’ she said.

  ‘And they won’t,’ Po responded, and flattened the gas pedal to the boards.

  The muscle car rocketed on, bouncing over the small humps in the road, as Po pushed it for the distant forest.

  Behind them the car dwindled, and was hidden from sight by the intervening contours of the land.

  Another few minutes later, Tess had disregarded their tail as the Mustang followed a number of switchbacks down a hillside. Trees filled the broad valley below, and beyond them was the vast expanse of water that was Quabbin Reservoir. Pinky passed back the iPad to her and she directed Po along the edge of the woodland.

  ‘Watch for service trails. I’m not sure this place is still in use, but there’s still bound to be a noticeable road in.’ She zoomed the map out so she could keep track on their location in relation to the factory. ‘OK. We can’t be far away now. Slow down, Po. There. There!’ She was now viewing the road ahead over Po’s shoulder. There was a definite gap between the trees, and as Po began to brake she spotted an old mesh-link fence on which were hung faded old signs. She couldn’t make out much of what they said, expect for one that warned of danger, and prohibited entry. Po took the turning and a chain-link gate out in one manoeuvre, blasting the gates wide and leaving one hanging on a broken hinge. He kept the car moving at speed, though nowhere as fast as earlier, because the road was narrow and in severe disrepair. Tess again checked the satellite imagery on her tablet. The red cursor blinked, beckoning them to find it. ‘We’re about a quarter-mile out,’ she told Po, ‘maybe you should take things a little easier. If Randall’s here we don’t want to warn him we’re coming.’