by Elle Gray
“With all due respect, Congresswoman, I do not report to you. I have provided status reports to my direct superior,” I say coldly. “As for the person we are questioning, he is not a suspect in your daughter’s disappearance. He’s a bit player who very likely never met your
daughter.”
“I want to speak to him.”
“Out of the question,” I say. “You’re a civilian and have no standing to question anybody we bring into interrogation.”
“I am a Member of Congress,” she says through gritted teeth.
“But you do not work for the Bureau,” I fire back. “You are not a law enforcement officer. You have no standing to speak to people we are interrogating.”
“I don’t think that’s your call to make.”
“Fine. Take it up with Rosie,” I growl. “I suspect you will find that the bond of sorority sisters doesn’t trump FBI protocols or the law.”
“You are dangerously close to insubordination,” she seethes. “You had better watch yourself.”
A small smirk curls the corners of my mouth and I shake my head. “Again, you are not my supervisor, nor are you a Bureau agent. You are a visitor in this building,” I say. “Therefore, I cannot be insubordinate to you.”
Hedlund’s face turns purple, and she looks as if her head is going to explode. I know part of her anger stems from her worry about her daughter. I understand that, and for that reason, I know I should cut her a little slack. I know I shouldn’t be too hard on her. I can’t imagine what she must be feeling right now. It’s not easy, though. My dislike for this woman is so intense, I can’t see much of anything outside that prism of loathing.
But I know I need to try. If for no other reason than that making an enemy of Hedlund—or at least, more of an enemy—doesn’t serve any purpose. It’s only going to make things more difficult for me in the long run. Not to mention the fact that if Hedlund believes I’m keeping her out of the loop, she’ll want to get more involved with this case, which complicates everything even more.
“Listen,” I start. “Bickering with you is pointless. It serves no purpose and does nothing but waste time—time we don’t have.”
“Finally. Something we agree on,” she says, exasperation in her voice.
“So, I’m going to loop you in on where we are right now,” I tell her. “But you need to let us do our jobs, ma’am. I can’t take the time out to keep having this same silly argument with you. If you need a status report, go to Rosie. She’s looped in on everything that’s happening with the investigation. But above all else, stay out of our way and let us do our jobs.”
By all rights, I probably shouldn’t be telling her any of this at all. But I need to give her something, and hopefully telling her will get her off our backs. She stares at me through narrowed eyes for a couple of beats. Her jaw is clenched so tight, I’m sure she could bite through steel right now. But she finally gives me a firm nod.
“Fine,” she says, her voice ice cold.
“And because this is an ongoing investigation, I have to insist that you keep this to yourself. I don’t want to threaten you, but if this information gets out, I will have you charged with criminal obstruction,” I say. “Member of Congress or not, if you leak what I’m about to tell you, then I will bring a case against you.”
I don’t know if I can actually bring obstruction charges against a sitting Representative, but that won’t stop me from trying if she leaks what I’m about to tell her. If this gets out and it screws up our case, I will scream so loud they’ll be able to hear me up on Capitol Hill all the way from here in Seattle. And I won’t stop until either she suffers the consequences for blowing our case or I’m out of a job.
“Tell me you understand,” I press.
“I understand.”
I lean back in my chair and organize my thoughts. What I have to tell her isn’t going to be pleasant. I don’t know how she’s going to take it. I already have a feeling she’s not going to take it well. And all I can do is hope she holds to the terms of our little détente, stays out of our way, and lets us do our jobs.
“We believe that Selene was snatched and then trafficked,” I say.
Hedlund holds her hand to her chest and draws in a sharp breath. The look of absolute horror on her face tells me it’s even worse than she suspected. I think, deep down, she also thought that Selene had skipped out on some impromptu sabbatical.
“Trafficked?” she whispers, her voice quiet and trembling.
“It looks that way,” I say. “She’s one of twenty-two women who have gone missing over the last five years—”
Hedlund’s eyes widen, and her mouth falls open. I don’t know what she was expecting to hear when she walked in here, but this is definitely not it.
“Twenty-two women?” she asks.
I nod. “That we know of so far, yes.”
“Have any of them been found?”
I shake my head. “Not as of yet.”
Hedlund’s eyes shimmer with tears she’s struggling to keep from falling. Knowing that her daughter is just the latest in a string of abductions and trafficking victims has to be a heavy weight upon her shoulders, one I know she doesn’t know how to bear. When you’re not immersed in this world of blood and death the way we are every single day, it can be overwhelming. I think Hedlund is starting to understand that.
“A—and the man you brought in for questioning?” she asks.
“He’s only one part of this entire scheme. He’s the lowest level on their ladder,” I tell her. “He’s a homeless vet with a dope problem. An intermediary gave him Selene’s debit card—the debit cards of all these women, actually—and paid him petty cash to withdraw the funds every day until the accounts were dry or somebody flagged and deactivated the cards.”
She sniffs loudly, then pulls a lacy handkerchief from her bag and dabs at her eyes. “So, who gave him the debit cards?”
“That’s the next step in our investigation,” I tell her. “We believe if we can get to that person, he’ll give us the next person on the ladder.”
“You don’t think that person is the trafficker?”
I hadn’t stopped to give it much thought, but as I talk it out, I come around to the conclusion that Hoodie is not, in fact, the top of the food chain. I don’t think the actual trafficker would risk being caught withdrawing the cash. My thought is he would likely keep a buffer between those cards and himself. Somebody loyal. Trustworthy. Somebody who would take a bullet for him before giving him up. And the more I think about it, the more right it seems.
“No, I don’t think he is,” I tell her. “The trafficker would want to maintain a level of hierarchy to avoid detection. Operations like this are tightly-run syndicates designed to throw law enforcement off the trail. I think the man who gave Sergeant Burton the cards is just another cog in that machine.”
She shakes her head, looking green around the gills and absolutely sick to her stomach. Hedlund looks up at me, seeming to be at a loss for words, which is understandable—there really is nothing to be said when confronted with something as unequivocally evil as this.
“Just hold onto hope, Congresswoman,” I tell her. “No bodies have been found, which means she could still be out there. All of them might be. We just don’t know yet. And I can give you my assurance that we are investigating as diligently and thoroughly as we can.”
She dabs at her eyes with her handkerchief again. “What does your experience tell you, Agent Wilder?” she asks, obviously searching for some scrap of hope to hold onto. “Are girls who are trafficked ever found alive?”
I frown and look down. I don’t want to lie or give her false hope. I think that would be the cruelest thing I could do. Regardless of how much I may dislike her, I’d never do that to another human being. Besides, I think Hedlund would appreciate the truth—no matter how brutal it might be to hear it.
“To be honest, most of the girls who are trafficked are never found. And those few girls who are found are
never the same. They’re forever changed. Fundamentally speaking. They’re broken,” I tell her honestly. “But you know, maybe with enough intensive therapy, they learn to move on. But I think they’ll forever bear the scars. You don’t go through something like that without having some lasting scars.”
She takes a moment to compose herself and dabs at her eyes again. She sniffs again and settles back in her seat. The expression on her face is pinched and pained. Grief is etched into her every feature. It’s as if she’s already trying to make peace with the idea that her daughter is dead.
“Thank you, Agent Wilder,” she says, her voice trembling. “But please….bring my little girl home. I beg you.”
“We’re doing all we can, ma’am,” I tell her. “I promise you that.”
Twenty-Three
Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
The doors slide closed, and we watch Hedlund until she disappears around the corner toward the elevators. And when she’s gone, I blow out a long breath of relief and slump into the chair at the vacant workstation next to Mo’s.
“Well, that looked like a lot of fun,” Astra whistles low.
I look at her and roll my eyes. “That woman has a unique talent for getting under my skin.”
“What? You hide it so well,” Mo cracks.
I give her a small laugh as I get to my feet and step to the front of the room. Crossing my arms over my chest, I start pacing back and forth, letting my mind work.
“What did she want from you this time?” Astra asks.
“Blood. Firstborn child. Left arm. You know, the usual,” I quip.
“So, what did you have to give her to get her to jump on her broomstick and fly out of here?” she presses.
“I read her into the case,” I say. “She knows what we know.”
“Was that smart?” Mo asks.
“Probably not. But it was expedient,” I tell her. “It will hopefully keep her out of our hair for a little while. She took the information hard.”
“I actually feel a little sorry for her,” Mo says. “I can’t imagine what it would feel like to hear your child was possibly trafficked.”
“I imagine it sucks,” Rick pipes up from his station. “Really, really bad.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Mo groans.
“So, we’re trusting her to not go running to the cameras with this?” Astra questions. “Or compromise the investigation in any way?”
“I threatened her with an obstruction charge if one word of what I told her leaks,” I reply.
“Can we do that?”
I shrug. “I guess we’ll find out it if comes to it.”
“Well, if nothing else, this will be interesting theater,” Astra says.
I keep pacing as I try to think this all through. Try to come up with some other means of finding the man in the hoodie since Burton is a dead end in that regard. My mind keeps going back to the call to Tony’s Auto. To the mystery caller who turned Selene’s car over to them. Then my mind turns back to the theory I was developing in my office—that the man in the hoodie is the buffer between our trafficker and the street-level operations.
“I’m thinking the man in the hoodie—the one who gave Burton his marching orders—is the same guy who dropped Selene’s Tesla off at Tony’s Auto,” I start.
“What makes you think that?” Mo asks.
“I got to thinking about it, and I’m relatively certain the hoodie is our trafficker’s fixer. He does the dirty work like running Burton, getting rid of our victims’ cars and whatever other nasty deeds need doing,” I say. “He also provides a layer of insulation for our trafficker. Our top dog is at least one step removed from the street-level action. Hoodie keeps him safe that way.”
“So, we need to find out who that is, snatch him up, then squeeze him,” Astra says.
I nod. “Exactly.”
“And how do we find him?” Mo asks.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” I mutter.
“Rick, I really need you to find out where that burner was purchased,” I say. “Drop everything else you’re doing right now and focus on that.”
“On it, boss,” he says.
“And if the burner doesn’t pan out,” Astra starts, “what’s our plan B?”
“We don’t have one right now,” I sigh. “That’s the problem. We need to get creative and figure this out. We need to find a way to track this guy down.”
“What about Selene’s last location?” Astra asks. “Does anybody know where she was last seen before she got snatched?”
I shake my head. “We don’t even know the exact day she was taken,” I say. “It’s hard to know where to look without even that bit of intel.”
“We should still do our due diligence,” she replies. “Maybe if we can figure out the last time anybody saw her—and where—we might be able to get a bead on who snatched her.”
“You’re right. It’s a good idea,” I say. “So, we need to put together a timeline of her last movements as best as we can. I don’t know how we’ll verify it all, but we need to give it a shot.”
“I’ll get on that. I can try to piece it together from her financials,” Mo offers. “It might not be complete, but it might give us a decent general idea of her last movements. If we happen to get really lucky, there will be a receipt from the last place she went the night she got snatched.”
“That’s good, Mo. Really good,” I nod. “Excellent idea. Do that.”
“You got it, boss.”
“And what about us?” Astra asks. “What are we going to be doing?”
“We’ll get out and start pounding pavement,” I say. “We’ll go hit the school again and see what her friends say. Maybe they know where she was the night she went missing.”
Astra scoffs. “Betting it’s going to be one big dry hole,” she says. “Nobody we talked to even knew she was missing.”
I frown and nod, knowing that much is true. That’s the problem with the sort of wild-child, jet-setting lifestyle she was leading—nobody knows when you’re missing because everybody is so used to your picking up and going. If nothing else, though, maybe we can find some consensus on the last day anybody saw her. I have my doubts and reservations, but one can hope, right?
“Uh, boss?” Rick raises his hand with a note of concern in his voice.
“What is it?”
“I’ve had an open search running to see if any of the names of the missing girls pop up anywhere,” Rick explains.
“Okay and?”
“Yeah well, the name of one of the girls just popped up,” he tells me. “Stacy Burkett.”
I perk up, my curiosity piqued. It’s the first hit on any of the twenty-two missing girls we’ve had. I find myself hoping it will lead to an avalanche of the others. Hopefully alive. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve been hoping these girls all maybe moved to different cities or states and are living good, happy lives. Naïve and foolishly optimistic I know, considering what I do for a living and all I’ve seen. But sometimes, I need to hold onto that optimism and hope just to maintain my own sanity.
“And where did Stacy Burkett turn up?” I ask.
He looks at me and just from the expression on his face, I know that my optimism and willful naïveté won’t be rewarded.
“She’s at the King County ME’s office,” he says, his voice subdued.
I glance at Astra and see her frowning. She’d obviously been harboring the same naïve hopes that I had.
“Well, I guess we’re not going back to Marchmont today,” I say.
“I find myself in the weird position of suddenly wishing we were going to be spending the day with the spoiled rich kids,” she replies with a groan.
Twenty-Four
King County Medical Examiner’s Office; Seattle, WA
We step through the door and into the sterile and antiseptic-smelling lobby of the ME’s office. I’ll never get used to the smell. That stench of bleach will forever
remind me of death in all its many horrible forms. The one thing I’ve learned for sure in all my years in the Bureau is that humans have a limitless capacity for cruelty and inflicting terrible acts of violence upon one another.
We reach the receptionist’s desk, which is more of a booth, really. The counter is waist-high but then topped with inch-thick plexiglass all the way up to the ceiling. There’s a narrow pass-through for documents. We have to communicate through a two-way speaker system. It’s a testament to the times we live in, I suppose.
Astra and I step to the counter and badge the woman behind it. She’s in her mid-thirties with her dirty blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She’s got blue eyes, pale skin, and a very dry, humorless look about her.
“SSA Wilder and Special Agent Russo,” I say. “We’re here to see Rebekah Shafer.”
The woman doesn’t say a word, just turns to her computer and bangs away on the keys. She reads something off her screen then picks up her phone and speaks quietly into it before hanging up and turning back to us.
“She’ll be out in a moment,” she tells us. “You can wait in the seating area.”
The woman turns back to her computer, clearly done with us. I look at Astra and give her a grin.
“I guess we’ve been dismissed,” I say.
“Clearly, the ME’s office isn’t hiring based on personality anymore.”
I can feel the woman’s eyes burning holes into my back as we walk over to the seating area to wait. We stand to the side and I lean against the wall. An older couple is sitting in the hard plastic chairs, their expressions downcast, holding hands. The woman’s eyes are red and puffy, her face splotchy. She’s obviously been crying. It doesn’t take much of a leap of logic to guess they’re there to identify a loved one. The smile that had been on my face slips, and I have to tear my eyes away from her.
Rebekah Shafer pokes her head out of the door and waves us back. Astra and I head over, and I cast a glance back at the older woman. The man leans over and murmurs something to her. He pulls her to him and holds her. He’s staying strong for her even though his face says he wants to break down himself. I find myself wondering what having that sort of love is like. And if I’m ever going to experience it.
