Keri Locke 03-A Trace of Vice

by Blake Pierce

  No one came upstairs but just as they were all preparing to return to the lounge room, a crackling voice came over one of the guard’s radios.

  “Informe!” ordered a loud, authoritative voice.

  “I don’t know what means,” Ray said. “But it can’t be good.”

  “That’s Mr. Holiday,” said a waifish girl with “28” written on her forehead. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen. “He’s asking for a report.”

  “We better get moving,” Keri said urgently. “It won’t be long before he sends others up to check on things. We need to be out of the building by then.”

  “Back the way we came?” Ray asked.

  “I think so,” Keri agreed. “Why don’t you go into the lounge? Those two guys won’t pay you any attention. Tase the newspaper guy first. Then go for soccer-watcher. I’ll come in after a five-count to help with him when he’s looking your way.”

  Ray nodded and walked through the door.

  “Stay here. We’ll get you in a moment,” Keri told the girls, before taking a deep breath and stepping into the lounge.

  She quickly took in the situation. The man who’d been reading the paper was slumped in his chair. The guy watching soccer was staring at the fast-approaching Ray with saucer eyes, unsure what to make of the situation. Keri rushed to him, reaching him just as he started to open his mouth.

  She and Ray got to him at the same time. She jolted him in the back as Ray got him in the shoulder. He keeled over and dropped lazily to the floor. As his body landed on the ground, they could hear more chatter on the radios in the other room.

  “I don’t think we have much time. Get the girls,” Keri said without hesitation as she hurried over to open the elevator gate. Ray brought the girls over and they all squeezed in. Keri hit the “1” button and prayed the rickety contraption could hold all their weight.

  The thing hummed to life, vibrating like a dog shaking water out of its fur. As it finally started descending, they could hear loud footsteps and shouted voices in the hall outside the lounge.

  It seemed to take forever to reach the ground. When the elevator finally stopped, they all piled out, Ray leading the way with six girls behind him. Keri brought up the rear.

  As they stepped out into the locker room, eight men—most wearing only towels or completely naked—turned to stare at them. They all looked shocked but it was only when they saw Keri, wearing the sundress uniform but with a machine gun slung over her shoulder, that they knew something was horribly wrong.

  Some scurried off to the shower area. Others rushed to their lockers. One of them, without any clothes, turned and ran out into the main hallway.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Ray said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  It didn’t take that long.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Only a moment later, two men burst through the door, machine guns raised. They looked around wildly.

  “Get back,” Keri ordered the girls as she stepped forward.

  As the six young women in sundresses dove back toward the elevator, the two Los Angeles detectives stepped forward, raised their guns, and fired at the still disoriented guards. Both men dropped instantly.

  “Keep your eye on the door,” Keri told Ray. “There’ll be more of them any second. I’ve got to move these girls out of the line of fire.”

  Ray nodded and Keri turned her attention to the group that had piled in the elevator. Glancing around, she saw a man peeking out from behind the tiled wall of a shower.

  “This way,” she ordered and the girls ran out, following her the short way to the stalls. She found one that was unoccupied and hurried them into it. She was about to pull the curtain across when Sarah grabbed her wrist.

  “I want to help,” she said more firmly than Keri expected. Suddenly the sound of gunfire erupted from the main part of the locker room.

  “Help by keeping them safe. Stay here.”

  Then she pulled the curtain across the stall and hurried back. She saw Ray pinned down behind the steam room wall. He looked to be unhurt but he couldn’t take a shot without exposing himself.

  “How many?” she mouthed to him silently.

  He held up three fingers. She held up her left hand to show five fingers of her own, then made a fist and held up one finger, then two. Ray realized she was counting down and nodded again.

  When she got to four, he fired off a few shots, not so much hoping to the hit the guards as to distract them.

  On five, Keri stepped out from behind the wall she’d been using as cover, locked onto a guard, and fired. He fell to the floor as his cohorts turned in her direction. She moved back behind the wall as a spray of bullets sent tile chunks flying by her head.

  Ray took advantage of the moment to lean out and fire at the men. Keri didn’t know the result but figured their attention would be away from her so she stepped out again to fire, only to find the remaining guards lying on the ground. Ray had gotten them both.

  Keri immediately ran to the door and locked and closed it. Then she pushed one of the guards’ bodies up against it to slow the entry of anyone else about to enter. Refusing to think about the larger meaning of what she was doing, she rolled another body on top of the first.

  Ray saw what she was doing and joined in, tossing the bodies of the remaining three guards on top of the first two so that they created a kind of human blockade.

  “Hold them off,” Keri said as grabbed one of the machine guns lying on the ground, “I’m going to give this to Sarah as a precaution. Back in a sec.”

  Ray nodded and assumed a position behind a locker to the right of the door. Keri ran back to the showers. She saw several men poking their heads out of stalls. A soon as they saw her, they darted back in.

  She pulled back the curtain to find five girls cowering at the back of the stall. Sarah was standing in front of them defiantly, holding a bottle of shampoo like a weapon.

  “I’ve got something better for you,” Keri said. “You’re only to use it as a last resort. Keep the curtain closed. If someone pulls it back and it’s not me or Ray, start firing, okay?”

  Sarah nodded. Keri gave her the twenty-second primer on how to use the weapon.

  “This is a converted AK-47 automatic rifle; simple to use. Take the safety off here. Use the sight to fire. You understand?” she asked.

  “I think so,” Sarah said uncertainly.

  “Just don’t fire until you know who you’re shooting at. And be careful. This thing has a serious kick.”

  Just then, they heard what sounded like an explosion.

  “Stay here!” Keri ordered before running back to the locker area.

  The room was smoky and it took her a second to get her bearings. After a moment, she realized what had happened. Someone had used some kind of explosive to blow the door, which was now gone. Body parts from the dead guards were strewn everywhere. The walls were covered in blood and worse.

  She looked around for Ray but couldn’t see him. She did see someone carrying a machine gun step through the smoke into the room. She waited until she was sure it was a guard before opening up on him. He fell and she heard two other voices yell in Spanish as they retreated back down the hallway.

  There was a grunt from across the room and she looked over in that direction. She peered through the smoke and saw what looked like two men struggling. As she stepped cautiously forward, the scene became clear.

  Ray was rolling around on the ground with a muscular man with short brown hair in a tight white T-shirt. She assumed it was Mr. Holiday. The explosion had caused the overhead sprinklers to go off and they were being drenched in water. Neither had a gun and neither seemed able to get the upper hand as they slipped on the slick tile floor.

  They were in such close quarters that Keri didn’t feel confident taking a shot amid all the smoke and water and general carnage. Suddenly she heard gunfire outside the room and turned, waiting for someone to burst in on her. No one did.

  She t
urned back to the fight. She was less than ten feet away now and saw that Ray had gotten the advantage. He had Holiday pressed up against a locker with his left forearm and was punching him hard with his right hand.

  Holiday tried to squirm loose to no avail. But as Ray adjusted his feet to keep his traction, one of them slipped on the wet floor and he tumbled forward to the ground. She heard a thud as his head hit the floor. He didn’t move.

  With a clear line of fire and without a second thought, Keri lifted her machine gun and pulled the trigger. It jammed.

  Holiday, oblivious to her, needed only a second to regroup. As he caught his breath, he reached down to his ankle and Keri saw him pull a knife out of a sheath attached there. He raised it high and Keri saw the four-inch blade glimmer in the lights.

  Without hesitation, she ran at him and leaped as he started to bring the knife down toward the back of Ray’s skull. He was halfway there when she landed on his back, sending him careening forward into another locker.

  She heard the knife clatter to the ground as she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. She yanked up hard under his chin and felt him grunt in pain. With her left arms squeezed tight around neck, she jabbed at his eyes repeatedly with her right thumb.

  Even as he tried to swat her arm away, she knew she made contact at least once as her nail plunged into soft tissue and she heard him cry out. She held on for dear life as he swung back and forth, trying to dislodge her from his back. And then suddenly, he stopped.

  She knew immediately that something was wrong but couldn’t figure out what it is. And then she heard him speak in a wheezy growl filled with malice.

  “I’m going to make you cry before I kill you,” he snarled.

  Without warning, he threw himself backward, falling toward the tile floor. Keri, suddenly underneath him, knew she was about to take the brunt of the collision and of his weight landing on top of her.

  She braced herself, wrapping her arms around his torso and hunching her shoulders forward so her back would hit the floor before her head did.

  She landed hard, feeling the crush of the tile under her shoulder blades and then Holiday’s body against her ribs. The air shot out of her chest and she gasped desperately. The back of her head hit the tile but not as hard as she feared. She felt Holiday start to roll off her and tried to keep a grip on him. He shook her off easily.

  She looked up through the water splashing her face from the sprinkler above and saw him slowly pulling himself to his feet. He was hunched over and breathing heavily. His right eye was in bad shape, as blood ran down from it, covering the right side of his face and dripping off his jaw.

  She remembered her gun in the holster under her sundress but knew she couldn’t get to it. She was having trouble just breathing.

  After several seconds of just standing there, staring at her with his one good eye, he spoke. His voice was surprisingly calm and quiet.

  “I know who you are. You’re the cop who saves missing children. The one who couldn’t find her own daughter. Locke, right?”

  Keri willed herself to slowly inch her right hand across her body so she could grab the emergency ankle pistol hidden under the sleeve on her left arm. But she couldn’t do it. Her body wasn’t responding. She was totally exposed, too weak and short of breath to do anything. Ray still lay unconscious, only feet away from her. Holiday continued, slightly louder and more confident now.

  “Such a sad story, your life. And now it’s about to end. I wonder, will the last thought in your head before I smash in your skull be of how your little girl is suffering the same fate as all my little whores here? Will it be of the degradation she’ll endure until it’s finally just too much and she decides to end it all? Will it be how you died a failure? Or will that last thought just be ‘ow’ as your brains turn to pulp?”

  He took a step forward and raised his knee high. His steel-toed boot rose above her head and seemed to hang there in suspended animation.

  “You’re the one who’s going to be saying ‘ow,’” said a voice from behind her.

  Holiday looked over to see who was speaking and Keri saw genuine shock on his face.

  “Number Four?” he said, his voice a mix of surprise and fear.

  Suddenly Keri heard a hail of gunfire and saw Holiday fly backward and hit the ground. She glanced over to see Sarah Caldwell, machine gun held high, walk slowly past her, carefully sidestep Ray, and stand right over her tormentor.

  Lying on his back, he tried to wriggle backward, even as blood sputtered from his lips.

  “You were going to kill me, Mr. Holiday,” Sarah said in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “You were going to wreck me. You were going to take me apart in chunks. You were going to make an example of me. But look, I’m still standing, Mr. Holiday. You didn’t break me. I’m walking out of here, head held high. And guess what? You and your fake tan and your shiny white teeth are leaving here in a body bag. How does it feel to know it was a girl who did this to you, Mr. Holiday?”

  He opened his mouth to speak but before a word came out, she sprayed him with bullets, keeping her finger on the trigger until she’d emptied the magazine. His body tensed and then slumped back down to the ground.

  The locker room became strangely quiet. The sprinklers had shut off. There was no more gunfire. Keri thought she heard voices in the distance but she couldn’t be sure as her ears were still ringing from the explosion and gunfire. She stared at Holiday’s unmoving body. Blood oozed out of him.

  Sarah dropped the gun on the ground and sat down next to Keri, a vacant look on her face. Keri was about to speak when she heard a commotion from the doorway and looked over. Sarah started to reach for the useless weapon.

  “Don’t,” Keri yelled at her. “They’re the police.”

  Four men entered the room, all carrying handguns and wearing uniforms that bore the words “Policia de Ejido Morelos.” One of them, a short man in his forties with a thick mustache and a barrel chest, stepped forward.

  “Detective Keri Locke?” he asked far more calmly than one might expect under the circumstances.

  “Yes. Chief Castillo?”

  “I am,” he said in strongly accented but meticulous English. “I am sorry we are late. My men have secured the area. May we render you assistance?”

  “You may,” she said, swallowing hard and trying to ignore the odd dizziness she suddenly felt before proceeding. “My partner over there needs to be checked out. He hit his head. This is Sarah. She needs medical attention as well. She’s been subjected to…a lot. There are five other girls hiding in a shower back there. Be careful. There are men back there too. Clients, unarmed, I think. Are the other girls okay?”

  “Yes, Detective,” Chief Castillo assured her. “We found over sixty young women in a warehouse out back. I have men with them and we are calling in medical assistance for them from both Rosarito and Tijuana.”

  Keri watched as another officer knelt down next to Ray and gently began examining him.

  “Do not worry,” Castillo said, sensing her concern. “All my men have emergency medical training. We live in a small town and wear many hats. May I examine you?”

  “Her first,” Keri said, nodding at Sarah. “I’m worried her cuts will get infected.”

  “Of course. And may I say you are exactly as my niece described you.”

  “How’s that?” Keri asked.

  “Very stubborn. Very tough. And very devoted.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” she replied lazily, her dizziness turning into full-on light-headedness. “You know, I may need to get checked out after all. I hit my head earlier and I’m feeling a little woozy. Can someone…”

  And then everything went dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Twenty-four hours later, flanked by Jamie Castillo and Manny Suarez, Keri walked into the lobby of Hospital Angeles Tijuana after checking out just hours before. Her body was one big bruise and her head still ached. But at least she was mobile.


  After spending the night there for observation, she’d been released this morning with a stern warning from the neurologist: get an MRI in Los Angeles. He was worried that so much head trauma in such a short period of time might have permanent effects.

  Lieutenant Hillman had stayed in Los Angeles to handle the remainder of the case and sent Castillo and Saurez down to help out there. They’d picked her up and taken her back to the hotel room they got so she could clean up. Jamie gave her some clothes she’d collected from her apartment.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom, Jamie was sitting on the bed.

  “Where’s Manny?” Keri asked.

  “He went downstairs to get some waters. He’ll be back in a minute.” She had an odd expression on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Keri asked her. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  “No,” Jamie answered. “I just…I was wondering…are you and Detective Sands ever going to tell each other how you feel?”

  Keri’s mouth dropped open. For one of the only times in her life she was genuinely speechless. Just then, Manny opened the door. He could tell something was off.

  “Did I come at a bad time?” he asked.

  “No,” Keri said quickly, giving Castillo a clear “keep your mouth shut” look. “It’s actually a perfect time. I’d love a water.”

  Refreshed, moderately functional, and desperate to avoid any more uncomfortable conversations, she insisted on returning to the hospital as soon as possible to check on the others. So they headed out. Manny drove and Keri made sure to sit in the front seat with him.

  “What room is Ray Sands in?” she asked politely to one of the hotel receptionists when they arrived.

  The lady looked at her skeptically. Jamie said something in Spanish to which the woman replied warmly. Castillo turned to Keri.

  “He’s on the fourth floor—room 414.”

  “Do I look that bad?” Keri asked as they walked to the elevator.