by Blake Pierce
The hallway was empty so she darted quickly to the next room and slipped through the door. It too appeared to be empty. The place was bare bones but clean with a huge shower room and towels. She noticed that it wasn’t actually a locker room in that there were no lockers.
No personal belongings allowed for these girls.
She moved toward the back where she found a shelf with stacks of white sundresses.
Is this the official uniform of the Bad Place?
She was pretty sure it was. The grotesquery of turning a brothel into a place where the women had to wear the proper attire in order to be violated made her sick to her stomach.
Fighting the urge to retch, Keri stepped over to a sink and splashed cold water on her face. There was a mirror but it was dull and gave back a warped, funhouse reflection of her.
As she stared at the strange but familiar version of herself, an idea stirred in her head. She glanced back at the shelf of dresses and checked the map she’d taken a picture of on her phone. After a moment of studying, she typed a phrase from the map into her translation app. The phrase, sala de evaluacion, came back as “evaluation room.”
Keri glanced at the time. It was 12:01. She had to make up her mind fast. It only took a second. She decided to go for it. Moments later she was wearing one of the white sundresses and her clothes were hidden in the corner of the shower room.
She picked a dress that was loose so she could keep her gun, Taser, and phone holstered around her waist. She took her small ankle backup weapon and strapped it to her upper arm. She took her hair out of the ponytail and combed it with her fingers so that it fell into her eyes and covered part of her face. It wasn’t especially impressive but there wasn’t much more she could do in terms of disguising herself.
After one last useless look in the faded mirror, she stepped out into the hall and, with her head down, walked in the direction of the evaluation room. She was barefoot and the gray linoleum floor felt chilly under her feet.
The hall was empty apart from her and she found the room quickly. The door was open and an armed guard with his back to her was standing by a desk, talking to a man seated with his head down, studying a paper in front of him.
For the briefest of seconds, she considered shooting them both on principle. The thought almost made her chuckle. But apart from the noise issue, she reminded herself that it wouldn’t help her find Sarah.
Instead she pulled out her Taser and, after taking a moment to marvel at the fact that she felt no nervousness at all, she moved. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she walked quickly toward them, using the guard to keep herself out of the seated man’s line of vision.
Being barefoot helped. She was able to cross the ten feet to the guard silently and tased him in the kidney before he knew what was happening. He started to fall backward but she pushed him the other way so that he collapsed on the desk. The other man was so shocked that he didn’t see Keri until she was on him, jabbing the Taser into the side of his neck. He slumped in his seat, conscious but incapacitated.
Keri turned her attention back to the guard, who was also conscious and moaning softly. She removed the machine gun from around his shoulder, took the plastic cuffs from his waistband, and tied his own hands behind his back before easing him to the ground and dragging him to the corner of the room. Then she tased him again, this time in the chest.
She glanced back at the man at the desk and saw that he was sloppily reaching toward his own waistband, trying futilely to grab the gun resting there. Keri stepped back toward him and zapped him in the chest. He slumped again, his arms dangling at his sides.
She took his gun out of the holster and set it on the far corner of the desk. Then she hurried over to the door, closed it, and locked it. She had been lucky no one had walked by. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was 12:06. She was supposed to meet Ray in the dining room in four minutes.
Keri returned to the desk and looked at the sheet of paper the man had been reviewing, hoping to see Sarah’s name. It wasn’t there but there were room numbers on the left side with other numbers to the right.
Keri remembered how Sergeant Henriksen had said Holiday wrote number on all the girls’ foreheads. She remembered seeing Lanie with that big “11” staring back at her. She rifled through the other papers to see if there were any that matched names to numbers but none did.
The man in the chair stirred and she looked over at him.
I don’t need a sheet of paper. I’ve got the human equivalent right here.
She grabbed his gun from the desk and took a step toward him.
“Which room is this girl in?” she demanded, holding up a photo of Sarah on her phone.
“No habla inglés,” he muttered.
“That’s too bad. Because if you can’t speak English, you’re no good to me. And since I can’t have you getting in my way…” She didn’t finish the sentence, instead just taking the safety off his gun and pressing it against his forehead.
He broke immediately.
“Okay, okay. She’s in room fifteen.”
“You know I’m going to knock you out, right?” she warned him. “And if it turns out she’s not there, I’m going to come back and shoot you in the head while you’re asleep.”
“She’s there. I swear.”
Without responding, Keri set the safety back on his gun and whacked him in the side of the head with the butt of it. He collapsed in a heap. As with the guard, she grabbed his hands and tied them behind the chair with his own plastic cuffs. Then she grabbed a few of the tissues from the box sitting on the edge of table and jammed them in his mouth. She repeated the process with the guard, who offered no resistance.
It was 12:11. She was a minute late. Poking her head out of the room, she still saw no one and began to suspect that the girls were being held on the second floor, which would explain why there were no other guards down here.
She hurried down the hall and rounded a corner. The dining room with the velvet curtain was up on the right. She scampered in with her gun raised. The room was empty. Then she heard a creak to her right and swung in that direction. She was close to pulling the trigger when she realized it was Ray, who had been crouching behind an anteroom wall that jutted out.
“I almost shot you,” she hissed.
“That would have sucked.”
“Yes—in more ways than one. Where’s the doctor?”
“He had to take a little ‘nap.’ I left him lying on a lounge chair by the hot tub in the men’s locker room with a washcloth over his face. He looks like he’s having a spa day. I’ve been hiding in one of the bathroom stalls until a few minutes ago so I wouldn’t get discovered. You have any better luck?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. I found some sort of scheduling guy and convinced him to tell me which room Sarah is in.”
“Which one?” Ray asked excitedly, louder than he meant to.
“Fifteen. And I know where that is in the house.”
She showed him the map on the phone. Room 15 was almost directly above their current location. Ray shook his head.
“Unfortunately, it looks like there’s only one way to reach it—the main stairwell in the central foyer. And that had guards at the top and the bottom of the stairwell. I saw them when I came in.”
“There has to be some other way up there,” Keri insisted. “After all, some of these perverts are really old. They can’t take the stairs.”
“You know, now that you mention it, I did see some old dude in the locker room go into what looked like a closet and never come out. Maybe it’s some kind of elevator.”
They looked at the map but it wasn’t definitive one way or the other.
“Can we get in there to check it out?” Keri asked.
“It would look awfully suspicious to anyone in there, especially with you in that sundress. What’s that all about anyway?”
Keri was about to answer when she had an idea.
“I think I know how we can get up
stairs but we’ll have to move fast.”
Five minutes later they entered the locker room. Ray was wearing the uniform of the guard Keri had knocked out in the evaluation room. He had the machine gun strapped over his shoulder and held Keri tightly by the forearm, as if she was his prisoner.
She was still wearing the sundress but now she walked with a pronounced, fake limp. She hoped no one asked questions because neither knew enough Spanish to answer convincingly.
Several men stared as they went by, but none said anything as they stepped into the closet and shut the door. Sure enough, it was small, old-fashioned, cage elevator with a pull-across gate. Ray hit “2’ and the metal contraption shook violently before climbing slowly.
When it reached the second floor, they stepped out and realized they were in a smaller lounge area. Two men sat in easy chairs. One was reading a paper while sipping a drink. The other was watching a soccer game on television. Neither gave them a second glance.
They moved to the door and Ray stuck his head out. Stepping back, he leaned down and whispered in her ear.
“There are four guards; the one at the top of the stairwell and three standing outside rooms. How do you suggest we take care of them?”
“We could shoot them all,” Keri suggested jokingly.
“That would take care of them,” Ray agreed. “But it might get the attention of the half dozen other guards I saw downstairs.”
“Okay, so no shooting then. The Taser worked pretty well for me in the evaluation room. Want to try that?”
“Sure,” Ray said. “How do we want to play it to get them close?”
“I was thinking we could go with the trick we used in the Harwood case.”
“I like the way your mind works, partner,” Ray said, smiling broadly despite their situation.
Keri noticed the guy reading the paper look up curiously.
“We better get moving,” she said. “The natives are getting restless.”
Ray nodded. They stepped out into the hallway. The two of them hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps before Keri collapsed on the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
As the guards drew closer, Keri’s body seized up and began shaking uncontrollably. Ray looked over at the other guards as if uncertain what to do.
As one of the guards knelt down to get a closer look at her, through squinted eyes she saw Ray back away, looking frightened. The guard at the top of the stairwell looked confused and asked the fast approaching Ray something in Spanish.
“Qué pasa?”
“Qué pasa?” Ray repeated back to him, getting closer.
The stairwell guard, suspicious of that response, grabbed his radio and was just about to speak when Ray tased him in the shoulder. The man’s knees buckled and Ray caught him just before he slumped to the ground. In one swift motion, he punched the guard in the face and the man went from woozy to unconsciousness.
Keri saw this and made her move. She reached up and grabbed the collar of the guard hovering over her, as if grasping desperately for help. But before he knew it, she had yanked him down. As he toppled over her, she lifted her knee and made sure it collided with the side of his head. He crumpled in a heap at her feet.
The other two guards weren’t sure if what happened was accidental or not. Their indecision was costly. Keri shot her arm out again, as if having another seizure. But this time she had the Taser in her hand and jammed it against the closer guard’s ankle. He dropped to the ground and she got him again in the neck.
The last remaining guard, now finally aware he’d been duped, raised his machine gun and started to aim it at Keri. But he hadn’t completed the motion before Ray was at his side, pressing his Taser into the guard’s shoulder and easing him to the ground before hitting him with a second jolt in the chest.
“Were we too noisy?” Keri asked as she got to her feet.
I don’t think so, but we better move quickly. We can shove them in an empty room but who knows when they’ll bring another John up? And if they see the whole floor unprotected, they’ll send out the alarm pretty fast.”
“Well there’s room twenty-two,” Keri said pointing. “Let’s get Sarah and put them all in there.”
“Agreed,” Ray said. “You ready?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
Ray smiled and slowly twisted the doorknob. It gave and the door opened easily. They could hear the strains of what sounded like the Def Leppard song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” coming from inside. He opened it more and Keri stepped in the room.
It took everything she had to stifle her horror. Sarah was indeed lying on the bed. Both her arms and legs were tied to bedposts. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Her body was covered in red welts.
A man stood above her on the bed. From the back it was hard to tell his age. But he was tall and skinny. He wore a long black cape and nothing else. In his hand was a large candle holder with a lit candle.
Keri and Ray stood frozen, unsure what to make of the situation. Then the man tipped the candleholder to the side.
“Here it comes,” he giggled as a splash of hot wax landed on Sarah’s stomach. She flinched but didn’t make a sound.
After that, it took barely a second for Ray to reach him. He rushed the man and clipped him in the back with his forearm. The man dropped the candleholder as he lost his balance and careened to the right. Somehow, as he started to fall, Ray sprinted around the side of the bed and caught him in his arms before he hit the ground.
Once he had him securely, he pinned the man against the far wall with his left hand as he repeatedly punched him in the face with his right. As he did, Keri hurried to the bed and snuffed out the candle flame before it erupted.
The man, all rubbery legs, sagged to the floor. But Ray grabbed him and physically moved him to the window, which was closed. He opened it and started to push the barely conscious guy out.
“Ray, stop!” Keri hissed, afraid he was going to ruin their plan. “A guy falling from the sky isn’t going to help us get Sarah out of here. Just knock him out and bring those other guards in the hall in here. We’ve got to hurry.”
Ray seemed to come to his senses. He gave the skinny guy one last punch. Then he gingerly placed the now-unconscious man on the ground and hurried back into the hall to collect the others.
Keri turned her attention to Sarah, who was staring at her with wide eyes.
“Is this real?” she asked. “Did you really say my name?”
Keri forced herself to ignore the girl’s battered body and focused on her eyes instead.
“I did, Sarah. My name is Keri. I’m a detective in Los Angeles. That’s my partner, Ray. Your parents reached out to us because they were worried. We’ve been looking for you since yesterday afternoon. And we’re going to get you out of here.”
Sarah started to cry but forced it down. Instead she swallowed and asked the question that had been eating at her for hours.
“What about Lanie? Is she okay?”
“She’s okay,” Keri answered as she pulled out her Swiss Army knife and began cutting the ties holding the girl’s arms in place. She didn’t mention the smeared number “4” on her forehead. “We found her at the motel where you all were being held. All the girls there are okay.”
“Did you catch Chiqy?”
“We did,” Keri assured her and nodded at Ray as he dragged another guard into the room. “That guy put him in the hospital. He’ll be going to jail from there.”
As she untied Sarah, Keri tried to give the girl’s body a once-over without being obvious. She was covered in wax burns. Otherwise, she seemed bruised but okay. They had caught her in time, she realized, in a wave of relief.
“Did you catch Mr. Holiday yet?” Sarah asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice but failing.
“Not yet. Our first priority is to get you and the other girls to safety. We’ll get Holiday but it’s not our focus right now. Do you think you can walk?”
&nb
sp; Sarah nodded and Keri helped ease her up to a sitting position. The sundress was lying neatly folded on the table next to the bed. Keri grabbed it and helped ease it over Sarah’s head.
“I might need a little help standing up,” the girl whispered, as if she was embarrassed. “I’ve been lying in that position for hours and my hands and feet are pretty numb.”
Keri forced the rage she felt rising in her gut back down. This wasn’t the time for that. Right now she needed to be a caretaker, a protector, a source of understanding and support.
“No problem,” she said, easing Sarah upright and helping support her weight as they hobbled to the door.
Ray dragged the last guard into the room and then stood up and gave Sarah a broad grin.
“Hi. I’m Ray. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi, Ray,” she replied, smiling wanly.
“We’re leaving this place,” he assured her.
“But not without the other girls, right?”
“We’ll get them too,” Keri promised. “Do you know how many are up here?”
“When they brought me up, there were five others too. But they have over twenty more they took out back to a place they call the stable. Who knows how many girls they’re keeping back there.”
“Okay, we’ll start with the girls up here,” Ray said. “They’re unguarded so there’s no better time to get them than right now. We’ll move on to the others once you all are safe. Good plan?”
“Good plan,” Keri agreed as she grabbed one of the guards’ machine guns and slung it over her shoulder, then turned her attention to Sarah. “I want you to stay in this room and peek out at the stairwell. We’ll be subduing the men in the in the other rooms. If you see anyone coming up the stairs, give a high whistle to warn us. Can you do that?”
“My mouth is pretty dry but I think so.”
“If that doesn’t work, just call out my name, got it?”
Sarah nodded. Keri and Ray moved as quickly as they could after that, quietly entering rooms, tasing unsuspecting johns and freeing the five girls also tied to bedposts. They were all in bad shape but none had been brutalized as much as Sarah. They all huddled together in a small group.
