Keri Locke 03-A Trace of Vice

by Blake Pierce

“He must have decided to make an example of him after his brother gave up Chiqy’s warehouse location,” Keri said.

  “So he just dumps the guy in a pit in the middle of the Mexican desert?” Ray said. “That’s cold, even for this piece of crap.”

  “Dean,” Keri said, turning her attention back to the broken creature before her, “what did Holiday do with Sarah Caldwell and the other girls? Where did he take them?”

  “Had them…hosed down. Left… in vans. All went… in different… directions. All decoys but…one.”

  “Do you know where the real van with the girls was going?” Keri asked.

  “Bad Place.”

  “Where is that?” Ray demanded.

  “Bad…Place…” His voice was a weak, raspy whisper now.

  Ray looked frustrated and was about to try again when Keri noticed something she’d overlooked before. The left side of Dean’s abdomen wasn’t just bloody. It was actively bleeding. She looked closer and saw what appeared to be a bullet hole. Glancing into the pit where he’d been lying on his side, she saw that a sizable pool of blood had formed.

  She pointed it out to Ray and shook her head. Even if there was a hospital right next door, she doubted they could save him. He had lost too much blood. She was surprised he’d lasted this long.

  She slumped down on the ground beside him, out of ideas. She wasn’t sure if she should try to press Dean a little more in his remaining moments or if she should just sit with him and offer some soothing words. He was a bastard. But he was dying a death she wouldn’t wish on almost anyone.

  She noticed his body seize up and thought he was about to go. But then she realized he was girding himself to say something else. He parted his lips and she leaned in close.

  “Hurry,” he murmured quietly. “Holiday… hates her. She …fought…back. Said… he’s going to…break her. Then kill her…today.”

  Dean took a gulp and Keri thought he was going to say more but he didn’t. It took her a second to realize he was dead.

  *

  Sarah sat on the small twin bed in the room to which she’d been assigned. She wasn’t restrained in any way. But a man with a machine gun stood at the door, facing her, his expression blank.

  She looked down at herself and couldn’t believe that she was clean, having showered and been ordered into a white sundress. Less than hour ago, she’d been naked save for a blanket and sneakers, covered in cow feces in the undercarriage of a truck.

  But things had moved quickly after the police cars backed off. The truck had pulled off the road and she and the other girls were yanked out and forced into a shed. They were ordered to strip down.

  Sarah had tried to keep her sneakers on but they hadn’t allowed it. She hadn’t realized that she’d been clinging to the hope that someone might find her through those shoes until they were gone. It seemed like any hope was tossed away when they were.

  Holiday’s guards had ordered them all out of the shed, hosed them down, and shoved them all in a van far too small for so many of them. As the van pulled out, she thought she saw a battered-looking Dean Chisolm being pulled out of the trunk of a sedan.

  The van had traveled for about a half hour before arriving at what looked to be a charming hacienda. That is, if one ignored the concrete walls topped by barbed wire and the armed guards wandering the grounds.

  The van drove around the back and the girls were shuttled into the house through a side entrance that led directly into a locker room. They were ordered to shower and wash their hair before finding a sundress that fit snugly from among the hundreds folded on the shelves against the wall.

  Sarah did as she was told. After she was clothed she was escorted down a long hallway. She could hear crying from behind some of the doors, screaming from behind others and from one room with a metal door, she heard a strange metallic sound she couldn’t identify. Even in her diminished state, it sent a shiver up her spine.

  The guard brought her to a room where a man sat at a desk with a pen and sheet of paper. He looked at the number on her forehead and matched it with a room number. Then he pulled out a black marking pen and traced over the slightly faded number on her head once again. Before she left, the man gave her a nasty smile and spoke for the first time.

  “Mr. Holiday has something special planned for you.” Then he turned to the guard and said something in Spanish that she thought sounded like “room fifteen.”

  She turned out to be right. The guard walked her to room 15, pointed at the bed, and retreated to his spot by the door. That’s how things had remained since. That is, until the door opened and Mr. Holiday walked in.

  “Hello, Number Four,” he said, smiling broadly to expose his gleaming white teeth. His lips curled unnaturally, as if smiling was a conscious, unfamiliar act for him. He had changed. Instead of a track suit, he had on slacks and a way-too-tight white T-shirt meant to show off his bulging muscles.

  He nodded for the guard to step outside. When the door closed, he grabbed the one small wooden chair in the corner of the room and brought it over so he could sit right in front of her.

  “First of all,” he said as he settled in to the chair, “I wanted you to know that you look lovely in that dress. No one would have any idea what atrocities have been perpetrated on your body based on how unsullied you look right now.”

  Sarah stared back at him, refusing to avert her eyes. He looked annoyed for a second but quickly got over it.

  “Unfortunately, this is the last time you’ll feel so clean. In a moment, I’m going to walk you through the rest of the day in great detail, so there aren’t any surprises. But up front, sort of the headline, if you will, is this. You have been disobedient. And the other girls know about it. So I have to make an example of you. That means that before the sun sets, you’ll be dead.”

  He watched her closely for any reaction. What he said registered in her brain, but Sarah was so tired and sore and hopeless that couldn’t muster anything approaching fear. He was clearly expecting a response, but getting none, he continued.

  “But I won’t kill you before you’ve been wrecked in every way a young girl can be. I’ve got a cavalcade of fellas coming your way. And you’ll be awake and drug-free for every second of it. And when they’ve finished with you, I’ll end you. But I’ll be doing it bit by bit, taking you apart in chunks with my favorite long knife. And I’m going to record the whole thing to show to any other recalcitrant gals. How does that sound?”

  She swallowed hard with what little saliva she had left and when she was confident she could speak, she answered him.

  “It sounds like a ’roided out sadist is scared of a teenage girl,” she said calmly, her eyes blazing.

  If this is it, I’m not going out meekly. I’ll fight, even if I only have words for weapons, until I have nothing left.

  Mr. Holiday’s nostrils flared and she could tell she’d hit a nerve. This time it took him several seconds to regain his placid demeanor. When he was sure he could keep his voice level, he spoke again. The acid in his voice was palpable.

  “Let me tell you about a few of the gentleman callers who will be visiting you shortly.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Keri sat quietly in the passenger seat of Ray’s car, trying to keep Dean Chisolm’s brutalized face and his last words out of her head. He had said that Mr. Holiday was going to kill Sarah today.

  Keri had always felt like they were on a ticking clock to save the girl from a life of degradation. But it turned out that they were literally in a race to save her life.

  They were back on Mexico 1, headed southeast in the same direction the big rig had been going before it reached the shed. With nothing to go on, it just made sense to keep going along the same route.

  They had left Dean’s body in the shed’s shallow pit. They didn’t have time to bury him and neither was inclined to do it anyway. They couldn’t call the local authorities for fear someone might tip off Holiday. They’d have to wait until this was over to retrieve h
im.

  As they drove in silence, scanning the horizon for a van or anything else to go on, Keri’s phone rang. It was Jamie Castillo. Keri picked up immediately.

  “What have you got for me, Jamie?” she asked hopefully.

  “Good news, I think,” the officer replied. “I just got off the phone with my uncle. He’s never heard of anyone named Holiday or the Bad Place. But he has heard rumors about something called el Malas Vacaciones, which translates as the Bad Vacation.”

  “I don’t get it,” Keri said.

  “He says it’s sort of a sarcastic joke because el Malas Vacaciones is supposedly a posh estate called Hacienda de Los Angeles that caters exclusively to wealthy clientele. No one knows exactly what goes on there besides horseback riding, drinking top-shelf tequila, and smoking Cuban cigars.”

  “It sounds pretty tame to me,” Ray said, “at least on the surface.”

  “It does,” Castillo agreed. “There’s never been any illegality discovered there. But my uncle suspects that the owner pays off the Rosarito cops not to ask questions.”

  “Who’s the owner?” Keri asked.

  “Officially it’s a local rancher. But my uncle thinks he has unofficial American backing.”

  Ray looked at Keri skeptically but she was more hopeful.

  “It’s a lot of innuendo,” she admitted. “But it does fit the profile. And the name seems like a strange composite of the terms we’ve been hearing. Where is this place, Jamie?”

  “It’s in an unincorporated area off Highway 1. I’m texting you the address now.”

  Keri plugged it into her GPS.

  “That’s less than ten minutes from here,” Keri exclaimed. “In fact, the exit is only a few miles up the road.”

  “Can your uncle provide backup, Jamie?” Ray asked.

  “He can. But it might be a while. There are only four officers on duty today and two are working a speed trap south of town. He’s calling in the whole force—eight men—and then they’ll meet you at el Malas Vacaciones. He estimated it would take about an hour to get there. His name is Chief Carlo Castillo.”

  “I appreciate his support,” Keri said. “But I don’t think we have that kind of time. We learned that Holiday is planning to kill Sarah Caldwell today. I don’t know if that’s right now, in an hour, or at midnight. Regardless, I’m not willing to wait to find out.”

  “You’re not thinking of going in there alone?” Castillo asked incredulously.

  “I’m not alone,” Keri said, glancing over at Ray, who was pulling off the highway onto the dusty road that supposedly led to their destination. “I’m with my partner.”

  *

  Twenty-five minutes later, at 11:52 a.m., a respected Rosarito physician named Paolo Moreno drove his Lexus onto the Hacienda de Los Angeles, the official name for el Malas Vacaciones.

  Sitting next to him in the passenger seat with a well-hidden gun pointed at his abdomen was Detective Ray Sands. In the trunk, curled up under both a reflective windshield visor and a windbreaker, was Detective Keri Locke.

  “I told you already,” the nervous Dr. Moreno said for the third time, “they are only expecting me. They will be suspicious that I have a passenger.”

  “And like I told you,” Ray growled, “it’s your job to convince them I’m your buddy from LA down for a good time on a Saturday. If they don’t buy it, you pay the price.”

  Keri could hear them through backseat and hoped her partner was especially convincing. After all, it was out of her hands now.

  She’d done her part a few minutes earlier by pretending to be a damsel in distress, having engine trouble on the side of the road. When Moreno got out to help, Ray had snuck out from behind the car with his gun pulled.

  After getting in the trunk and covering herself, and doing her best to ignore her throbbing knees and unrelenting headache, Keri listened on the drive over as Ray explained what they needed from the doctor: “Get us in, don’t cause suspicion.”

  He had protested to them that he was only there to have a drink with friends but seemed to know that he was in an impossible situation. After a few minutes he’d given up denying the purpose of his visit and focused on pleading that the plan wasn’t going to work. As they pulled up to the guard house, Ray gave him a little jab with the gun as a friendly reminder as to what was at stake.

  The guard offered a friendly greeting and Dr. Moreno responded in kind. Clearly, he was a regular. Through a tiny crack between the trunk and the backseat, Keri could partially see the guard lean down and eye Ray suspiciously.

  “What’s up?” her partner said to him casually.

  “This is my old friend from Los Angeles, Raymond,” Moreno said in English. “He’s staying at the beach for the day and I promised to show him a good time.”

  The guard asked something in Spanish that Keri couldn’t understand.

  “I know it’s last second,” Moreno replied, again in English. He obviously wanted Ray to know he wasn’t secretly ratting him out. “But he leaves tonight and I didn’t want him to miss out.”

  The guard was quiet for a moment, then said something else Keri couldn’t understand. She pointed her weapon at the door of the trunk in case they checked it and she had to act quickly.

  “He’s okay with that,” Dr. Moreno said reassuringly. “Any available girl will be more than acceptable.”

  The guard grunted and waved them through.

  “What did he say?” Ray asked.

  “He said all the quality girls have appointments. You’ll have to get one from the dregs.”

  “Lovely,” Ray said disgustedly before snapping back into focused mode. “Find a parking spot as close to the rear entrance as you can and back in so no one can see my partner getting out.”

  After a minute the car stopped and Ray called out to her from the front.

  “Keri, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “I’m going to pop the trunk before we get out. There’s a rear service entrance thirty yards to the left of the car. I don’t see any guards back here but keep your eyes peeled. Wait sixty seconds after we leave so I can text you any additional intel.”

  “They’ll take your phone once we enter the main building,” Moreno warned him.

  “Good to know,” Ray said, then shouted back to Keri. “So I’ll text you anything important before then. After that, I’m shutting down the phone so they can’t access it. I have the time as eleven fifty-five a.m. Let’s say we both do recon and aim for a twelve ten p.m. meet-up. Sound good?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Keri said. Then she had a thought. “Hey, Dr. Moreno, where’s a good, out-of-the-way place for us find each other?”

  Moreno was silent for a moment and she could almost hear him thinking.

  “There’s a small dining room on the first floor, just off the middle of the main hallway. It’s secluded and it’s only used in the evenings. At this hour there shouldn’t be anyone there. You can identify it by a red velvet curtain at the door.”

  “Of course you can,” Ray said sarcastically. “You good with that, Keri?”

  “Yup,” she answered. “See you in fifteen.”

  The trunk latch popped and two doors closed. She heard footsteps crunching away on gravel as she silently counted to sixty. Ray didn’t text during that time, which she considered a good sign that there was nothing pressing to share.

  Keri put her own phone on silent and slowly pushed the trunk door open a few inches. The whoosh of cold air that rushed in was bracing and made her already prominent goose bumps even more pronounced.

  She eased slowly out of the trunk and crouched down behind the car so she could get the lay of the land. The estate was huge, with multiple smaller building encircling the larger main house. A five-foot-high adobe wall surrounded the entire complex as far as she could see.

  There were no guards in sight but she knew they had to be around. Maybe they didn’t do perimeter sweeps or maybe they were just overconfident because the Ro
sarito cops were on the take. Either way, they were armed and Keri didn’t want to run into them.

  She saw the rear entrance Ray had been referencing. There appeared be a delivery truck in front of it and the door was propped open. Zipping up her jacket to fight the bitter chill in the midday air, she scurried from car to car until she was close enough to make a move for the door.

  As she was about to move she saw a shadow in front of her and crouched back down. Looking up, she saw a guard on the roof with a machine gun dangling from a shoulder strap. He was facing her direction, but looking in the distance beyond the wall. After about ten seconds he turned his back and disappeared from view.

  She wasn’t sure when he would return but she didn’t have time to wait and see. Her watch read 11:58. She was supposed to meet Ray in twelve minutes.

  It’s now or never.

  She took a deep breath, trying to allow her body to shed some of its anxiety. Then she stepped out from behind the protection of the car and started across the exposed area between her and the building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  With her gun stuffed in her jacket pocket and her fingers gripped around it, Keri casually ambled the last ten feet to the door, waiting for the sound of a shouted warning or a gunshot. None came. She stifled the powerful urge to run. If someone was watching, she didn’t want to look suspicious.

  After what felt like forever, she stepped through the open door. She sighed in relief, then looked around. She appeared to be in the kitchen, which was large and tricked out. It looked like it was intended for a full-service restaurant. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for any sign of movement.

  Seeing nothing, she moved quickly over to what looked like a small map of the facility on the wall, complete with room numbers. Everything was in Spanish but she got the gist. One room in particular got her attention: Vestuario – Mujeres. She’d been in enough gyms to know that meant the women’s locker room. It was as good a place as any to start and it happened to be right next door. She snapped a quick photo of the map with her phone and peeked through the kitchen door.