Keri Locke 03-A Trace of Vice

by Blake Pierce

  Keri felt her blood quicken and forced herself not to react. She was leading this operation and she needed to keep a clear head. She took a few deep breaths to regroup.

  Just then, the door to the motel office opened and a man walked out. Before the door closed, Keri saw two men inside. One of them appeared to be Chiqy.

  The man who’d left the office walked up the stairs to the second floor and stepped mostly out of view behind an exterior wall. Keri could still see part of his lower leg. She waited a moment before realizing that he had taken up a guard position.

  “Hold a moment,” she told everyone. “I see an exterior guard.”

  She looked across the walkway to the same spot at the other end of the motel. In the shadows she saw another man positioned in the opposite location. And then she saw a third, barely visible just below him on the first floor.

  She moved slightly to the left and sure enough, a fourth man was positioned next to the wall behind the office, unmoving, hidden to anyone not looking directly at him. They had all four corners of the motel covered.

  Suddenly that fourth man made a motion with his arm. It took a second for Keri to realize he was speaking into a radio. After a second, the man walked to one of the rooms, unlocked it, and stepped inside.

  “Be advised,” she whispered to everyone on the line, “I count six men: four guards positioned at the corners of the building on the first and second floors; and at least two more in the office, including one who appears to be Chiqy.”

  A moment later, another man, dressed in khakis, a sweater and jacket, stepped outside. He looked to be in his early thirties with thin strawberry blond hair and a pale complexion. The guard poked his head out the door and the two of them spoke briefly. Then the guard shut the door and the blond man walked away. He was headed in her direction.

  “Sergeant,” Keri said. “I think we’re going to have to move a bit earlier than expected. “I’ve got a john headed in my direction. If he sees me, he may warn the others.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Sergeant, did you hear me?”

  At that point, an unfamiliar voice came on the line.

  “Detective Locke, this is Captain Roy Granger of Inglewood PD. I’ve been monitoring the line from the station. Did you just say this case involves Ernesto ‘Chiqy’ Ramirez?”

  “Yes, Captain. We believe these girls were taken as part of a sex-trafficking ring he runs.”

  “I’m well aware of who he is, Detective,” Captain Granger replied curtly, “But I wasn’t aware that this operation involved him. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have authorized my men to take a front-line role.”

  “What are you talking about?” Keri asked, shifting position behind the bush as the blond john got closer. The pain in her knees from hitting the parking ramp concrete was really bothering her. The guy was less than fifty yards away now.

  “We believe that Ramirez was responsible for the death of two of our undercover officers last year. I’ve expressly forbidden direct engagement with him without a SWAT unit involved.”

  Keri wanted to scream into the speaker for this guy to get with the program. But she knew that wouldn’t do any good, especially with the john getting closer. He was less than thirty yards away from her now.

  He pulled out his key and hit a button on it. A car beeped nearby and Keri turned to see it was a Black Lexus only fifteen feet to her left. The john would surely see her as he walked by.

  “I’m terribly sorry for the loss of your men, Captain. But please,” she pleaded quietly, “we are in the middle of this thing. There are as many as two dozen girls in danger right now. We can’t take these guys out without your help. Your men are in position. Let’s do this thing.”

  There was another long pause. The john was less than ten yards from her now.

  “Hold, Captain,” she heard Ray whisper. “The john is approaching Detective Locke’s location. He’ll hear your response. Radio silence for now.”

  The john was almost on her now. Keri knew the bush wouldn’t hide her any longer. She had to act. As he stepped next her hiding spot, he glanced to the left just as she leapt up and smashed the left side of his jaw shut with the padding of her open right palm.

  His knees buckled and he stumbled backward, sinking to his knees. Just as he was gathering his senses and opening his mouth to shout, Keri dove at him, slamming her left forearm into his temple as she rolled over him.

  Keri turned back to face him, ready to clock him again if needed. But it wasn’t. He was lying spread-eagle on the grass, unconscious. She quickly grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him behind the bush, where she resumed her pained crouching position.

  “You still there, Captain?” she panted.

  “Yes Detective. Is everything okay? Did you secure that john?”

  “He’s secure,” she answered, as she rolled him onto his stomach and cuffed his right wrist behind his body to his left ankle. “But everything is not okay. We need to breach that motel now. And we need your help to do it.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective Locke. I just can’t authorize that. If you wait twenty to thirty minutes, I can have a SWAT team on scene. We can proceed at that point.”

  “How many of these girls are going to be brutalized in the next twenty to thirty minutes, Captain? Besides, these guys move fast. They could decide to up and leave any minute. Then what do we do, try to take them out when they’re holding the girls? And this john beside me could wake up again soon. What am I going to do, keep knocking him out every five minutes until your team gets here? We’ve got the advantage now. Let’s use it!”

  She waited, hoping he’d been persuaded.

  “Sergeant Henriksen,” she heard the captain say, “pull your men out. Retreat to a safe distance until SWAT arrives. I’ll give you an ETA as soon as I have one. I’m sorry, Detective.”

  Keri looked at the two Inglewood officers standing on the corner. They seemed at a loss as to what to do. Then Henriksen came on the line.

  “All officers return to mobile headquarters immediately. We’re on standby until further notice.”

  Keri saw one of the officers on the corner shake his head in disgust as he dropped his cigarette to the sidewalk and angrily stubbed it out with his shoe. He and his partner turned and headed back to the church.

  Keri thought she heard a noise from the motel and turned her head. Sure enough, it was coming from one of the rooms. And the sound was distinct. It was a girl crying out in pain.

  “Jesus,” she heard Ray mutter under his breath.

  “What are we going to do?” Castillo asked, clearly horrified.

  Keri felt rage flash through her veins. She knew it was the wrong answer, but she couldn’t stop herself from giving it.

  “We’re going in.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Keri stood up from her hiding spot behind the bush and headed toward the motel, unzipping her jacket as she walked. She noticed that the soreness in her battered knees had subsided a bit, overwhelmed by the endorphin rush she felt as the motel got closer. The cries of agony she’d heard earlier from one of the rooms were intermittent now but clearly not over.

  “Can you guys hear me?” she asked Ray and Castillo as she weaved back and forth, making sure to stay out of the glare of the few working lights in the parking lot.

  “Yep,” Ray assured her. “We’re coming. “

  She glanced to her right and saw both of them scurrying quickly along the fence in the same direction as her.

  “How are we handling this?” Castillo asked quietly.

  “Detective Locke,” came the urgent voice of Sergeant Henriksen over the radio, “please stand down. My men are no longer onsite. You do not have the tactical advantage. Wait for our SWAT unit to arrive and provide support.”

  “Thanks for the input, Sergeant. I don’t know what your policy is in Inglewood. But we generally don’t ignore the screams of teenage girls being raped. So unless you plan to help out, I’d appreciate it if you maintai
ned radio silence so the rest of us can do our jobs without distraction.”

  She knew it was harsh. Henriksen obviously didn’t want to stand down and had only done so on orders. But at this moment, she didn’t really care. He didn’t respond.

  “Castillo, here’s your answer. Let’s stick with Tasers for as long as possible. The new models we were issued last month give the same jolt up close as they do with the electrode darts and they don’t require an immediate recharge. Just hit skin and your subject should be incapacitated. We don’t know what these guys will do if they hear gunfire. And we don’t know if any of those johns in the rooms are armed. Let’s try to take them down quietly if possible.”

  “Roger that,” Ray said. “We have a sightline on the guard outside the motel office. If Castillo distracts him, I should be able to tase him from behind. Stay close to the guard at the opposite end of the ground floor, Keri. If he sees what’s happening, he’ll react. So be ready to take him down. We can deal with the upstairs guys after that.”

  “Sounds good,” Keri said. “But be careful. I don’t know how thin those office walls are. You don’t want to tip off Chiqy.”

  “Understood,” Ray said. “We’re almost to the guard. I’m going quiet now.”

  Keri wanted to move closer but worried that the guard Ray and Castillo were about to take down would see her from his vantage point. The guard on her end couldn’t see her from his angle but she was still at least fifteen feet from him. It would be hard to get close enough to disable him in time if he saw anything across the way.

  She glanced up at the guards on the second level. Neither was looking out at the parking lot. In fact, one of them was peeking through a window at the events transpiring in the room closest to him. The other guy was watching the first, clearly annoyed that his cohort was violating sex-trafficking guard protocol.

  Ray and Castillo disappeared from sight. Keri stood in her spot, her Taser in hand. She watched the corner near the office closely for any movement.

  And then it happened. She heard a slight electrical surge, like a mosquito flying into a zapper on a hot summer night. A moment later the guard near the office appeared briefly as he slumped forward. Keri thought he might fall, ruining everything. But Ray managed to catch him before he hit the ground. That was Keri’s cue.

  She sprinted to the corner where she knew her guard stood, even if she could only see his shadow against the wall. As she got close, she saw his arm come into view. He was raising a radio to his mouth. He must have seen what had happened and was about to warn the others.

  His thumb was about to press down the “speak” button when she reached him, jabbing the Taser hard against his right forearm. He dropped the radio, which Keri managed to snag just before it dropped on the floor.

  He let out a low moan as he slumped back against the wall. Keri zapped him again and he slid to the ground, unmoving. She turned and quickly scanned the second floor, unsure if the noise her guard made had been loud enough to alert the others.

  She didn’t hear or see anything unusual, which she took as a good sign. Looking across the way, she saw Ray and Castillo giving her the thumbs-up. They whispered something to each other and Ray shook his head no. Castillo patted him on shoulder and smiled. Keri knew that body language. The young officer was ignoring him.

  Sure enough, a second later, Castillo had grabbed onto the metal railing of the stairwell and started climbing up with a speed and agility that shocked Keri.

  Was this girl a gymnast in an earlier life?

  It occurred to Keri that she’d never really spent enough time with the rookie to find out. Hopefully she’d have the chance to remedy that.

  She peeked out from her position and saw that the second-floor guard Castillo was headed for still had his eyes on the guard above Keri, who must still have been peeping. She decided to carefully make her way up the stairs to offer support.

  She glanced at Ray, who was glaring at her and mouthing “no.” Like Castillo, she ignored him. She was halfway up the stairwell when all hell broke loose at once.

  First, a voice, almost certainly Chiqy’s came over the guards’ radios.

  “Report.”

  That made the guard above Keri look guiltily across the way at his second-floor partner. Unfortunately, he did so just as Castillo was climbing over the top rung of the stairwell railing. His eyes widened and he lifted his arm to point.

  The other guard saw something was wrong and turned around just in time to get tased in the chest by Castillo, who was now on the second floor.

  “Report, I said!” the voice shouted again as Castillo’s guard flopped back heavily on the walkway.

  Keri saw the indecisive look on the peeping Tom guard’s face. He was deciding whether to answer the radio or deal with Castillo. A moment later, he made his choice and so did Keri. He reached into his back pocket for his gun. As he did, Keri went for hers as well.

  “Jamie, take cover,” Keri hissed into her microphone, even though she knew there was nowhere for Castillo to go.

  The guard was raising his weapon to fire when Keri shot him in the right side. The force spun his body to the right. Keri fired again for good measure, nailing him square in the chest. He crumpled to the ground.

  “Shots fired! Shots fired!” she heard Sergeant Henriksen yell over the radio. “All teams converge.”

  A second later someone burst out of the office below. It wasn’t Chiqy but another man. He was holding a machine gun. The first thing he saw was Keri, standing halfway up the stairwell at the opposite end of the motel. He raised his gun to fire.

  Keri turned to make a mad dash for the upper floor, where she hoped to use the walkway for protection. But she knew even before the first step that she’d never make it. It was too far.

  And then she heard a single shot. Looking down, she saw that Ray had fired at the man from his position behind the office.

  The man was still holding the gun but was leaning against the office wall. It looked like he’d been hit in the leg.

  “Get upstairs, Keri!” Ray yelled.

  She realized that the man with the gun below was pointing it in her direction again. She immediately turned and darted up the stairs, diving onto the walkway as she heard the sound of an automatic weapon firing below here. She could feel thudding as the bullets slammed into the bottom of the walkway only inches below her body. In the distance she began to hear sirens.

  “All teams close in now!” she heard Henriksen shout.

  Suddenly a door behind her opened. Keri turned, about to pull the trigger when she realized it was a john, wearing only boxers and socks.

  “Get back inside and lie flat on the ground!” she screamed at him. His eyes wide with terror, he slammed the door shut.

  She spun around on the floor to prepare to return fire at the machine gun guard when she noticed the guard Castillo had tased was getting up. Because she’d zapped him over the clothes, the stun must not have been as effective. Castillo was oblivious, her eyes focused on the action below. From her angle, she couldn’t see the guard with the machine gun at all and was leaning out carefully to try to get a better view.

  “Jamie!” Keri shouted just as the guard reached her. Castillo didn’t have time to raise her weapon as he pushed her over the railing. Keri saw her drop her gun so she would have both hands free as she flipped over the railing. She tried to grip the top bar but her fingers slipped and she fell to the second, where she held on by her fingertips.

  As she tried to get a better grip, the guard who’d pushed her picked up her gun. Keri didn’t wait to see what he would do next and fired twice into his back. He stumbled forward and toppled over the very railing Castillo was clinging to. Keri didn’t see him land but she heard the thud.

  Castillo managed to hook her left arm over the bar and lock it there while she tried to pull herself up with her right hand. Keri started to crawl toward her when a new fusillade of bullets sprayed in her direction.

  She realized that if she m
oved any further, the guard below would have a clean shot at her. She could see flashing lights now, streaming in from all directions. They were almost to the parking lot entrance.

  “I’m okay,” Jamie shouted. “Stay where you are.”

  Keri didn’t really have a choice. She looked down to see that they were in a stalemate. She couldn’t go anywhere, much less to help Castillo, who was dangling by her arm. The guard with the machine gun was stuck where he was due to his leg injury. But he was also protected from both her and Ray by the office wall.

  Then it hit her. There was one person who wasn’t accounted for.

  “Ray?” she shouted.

  “I’m here,” came his voice from somewhere below. He sounded desperately worried. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. But Ray—there’s one more guy. Remember, Chiqy’s still in the offi—”

  At that moment, she heard what sounded like a massive smashing sound followed by grunting.

  “Ray!” she screamed. Unable to see anything, she shimmied backward until she had a sightline on the hallway below. It took her a second to process what she was seeing. It looked like Chiqy had somehow jumped through the interior hall-facing office window and landed on Ray. They were rolling around on the ground, each trying to get the upper hand. Neither man seemed to have a weapon in his hands.

  It wasn’t going well for Ray. He was one of the most physically imposing men Keri had ever met. But Chiqy had a good seventy pounds on him and he’d clearly learned how to use it to his benefit. He had somehow managed to get on top of Ray, straddling him, with his arms around her partner’s throat, squeezing.

  She scurried forward to try to take a shot when the machine gun guard fired on her again, forcing her backward. She couldn’t get any closer without risking getting hit and she couldn’t get an angle to fire on Chiqy from where she was. Then she heard Ray start to gasp.