He started in his neighborhood by the South Waterfront, a quiet, peaceful place early on Sunday morning. Most of Portland was dead that early on the weekend. His best friends were squirrels running on wires and other joggers lost in their own worlds. Some of them he nodded to. Others smiled at him – mostly women. Of course, Joseph was inclined to smile back.
He was also inclined to veer right and head across the Tilkum Crossing bridge over the Willamette River. Joseph moved into his apartment shortly after it was built, so he couldn’t remember a time when he was relegated to staying on the western side of the river. Besides, Southeast Portland, which waited on the other side, was livelier than downtown on the weekends. Cafes buzzed. Trains blasted their horns. Cyclists meandered down the streets and shoppers delighted in the cozy shops offering vintage records and fair trade goods from around the world. Joseph didn’t often take the time to peruse these places for himself, but he appreciated the energy exuding from them.
The lyrics playing in his ear were in a language he didn’t understand, but the heavy guitars and melodic drums painted an accurate picture of Portland that day. Chilly. Slightly humid with promises of rain. A dreariness threatening to settle in at any moment, even though the sun was out now. Natives lived for it. Joseph could take it or leave it. Everything was the same to him, as long as he could run.
Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia. And here he had wanted to use this time to think through the case he was no longer on but still couldn’t shake off his conscience. Instead, his brain insisted on nothing but Sylvia, the enchanting vixen who hadn’t captivated him once or twice… but three times. He could no longer deny it. He wanted her. Not only as his lover who occasionally warmed his bed and invited him into hers, but as the woman he aligned himself with in every facet of his life. Yeah, it still stung to think of Angelica and what happened between them. Joseph supposed it always would, since they had such a rich history together and went through some traumatic shit. But he could not distract himself with thoughts of Sylvia, who instantly soothed the unpleasantness in his heart by existing.
He had accepted his desire to have her. His need for her. The call to make her his girlfriend, his partner, the woman who would take a part of his heart and do with it as she willed. Scary, wasn’t it? For a man who loved hard every time he did open himself up to love, the concept of actually giving in and saying, “All right, do it, fuck me up emotionally,” took a lot of trust.
Maybe that’s why he couldn’t think of anything else. I hope she likes Mexican food more than Stella did. Shit, he was hungry.
He ended up on Division Street cutting across Milwaukee and Clinton. This area was particularly big for brunchers and shoppers, congesting the sidewalks to the point Joseph had to slow down and take a break anyway. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea to stop in one of the more popular joints in the neighborhood and get some coffee and carbs. Or coffee, since it looked like the carbs were picked clean already.
Joseph had ordered his drink and was putting his wallet away when a young woman approached the bulletin board nearby. Her shaky hand plucked a pushpin from the corkboard and stabbed it into a piece of paper.
A Missing poster.
The fuzzy Facebook profile photo of a young blond woman looked back at Joseph. MISSING, the poster said. Jan Sweeny, age 24, last scene in the Ladd’s Addition on Sep. 15th. Please notify Portland Police if you know ANYTHING!!!
The girl who put the poster up sniffed before glancing at Joseph. He politely looked away, but something about the profile nagged at him. “Your friend is missing?” he asked.
“My sister.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Have you seen her?” A voice as meek as that held no hope, but she had to ask anyway.
“No. Sorry.” Joseph took the cup of coffee deposited in front of him and briefly searched for the creamer and sugar.
The young woman soon disappeared. Joseph drank his coffee in front of the bulletin board, scanning a variety of MISSING posters both new and old. There was even a handwritten note in the middle of the array. “Many people are going missing in the area. Please be careful, and try not to travel alone.”
Something was extra unsettling about this. Had these women gone missing around the same time? It smelled of Alexander Sheen’s scheme, but these women didn’t fit the profile of at-risk, or at least not on the surface.
His phone rang, interrupting the steady stream of guitar riffs buzzing in his ear.
“Hola,” Joseph greeted his stepmother. “Como estás?”
She skipped right over the pleasantries. “Have you seen your sister since yesterday?”
Hot coffee warmed Joseph’s stomach. “Not since she left my apartment around three. Why? Did she not show up to her dorm room?” The bitterness made his stomach churn. “
“I have no idea. She called me right after she left your place and said she was going straight back to the dorms, but she never checked in again after that. I tried calling her now and I was sent to voicemail. You’re the last one who saw her. Where is she?”
Probably hungover. Joseph didn’t have the heart to tell Verónica that. “I’m sure she made it back fine. She’ll probably call you back later.”
“That spoiled girl is already ignoring me! She’s only been at college for a week, Josef!”
Was he really the one to rant to about this? “Sorry to hear that, but she’s eighteen. You gotta know how it is.”
Verónica grumbled something about how he wouldn’t truly understand, being neither a mother nor ever a teenage girl. Yeah, but I was a teenage boy partying with teenage girls. Nevertheless, Joseph stood in front of the bulletin board of MISSING posters and had a bad feeling in his stomach. It was probably the coffee.
***
His real mother called him right after he stepped foot on the South Waterfront again.
“Do you have a moment?” Genevieve asked. Her son came to a full stop in the middle of a parking lot.
“Yeah. Was out for a run. What is it?”
“Keeping my word that I would keep you updated on the case. We still don’t know the identity of the driver. We took DNA and put a rush on it, but the weekend is slowing us down.”
That was hardly news. “What else?”
“Something disturbing. Are you alone?”
As alone as a man could be in a residential parking lot on a Sunday morning. “Yeah.”
“One of the victims was conscious enough to consent to a lengthy interview at the hospital. She claims she overheard the kidnappers talking about one last big score. Whoever is in charge wants all hands on deck, so to speak. They already claimed to have tamed some tigers.”
Those posters flashed in front of Joseph’s eyes. “They’re going after low-risk targets. Fuck. They get more money if they fit certain physical profiles.”
“White skin, blond hair, young and speaks English.”
Jan Sweeny, age 24.
“Anything else?” Joseph asked.
“Doctors have put the driver in a medically induced coma, so hopefully we’ll be able to talk to him when they wake him up in a few days. No casualties so far.”
“That’s good.” Joseph entered his apartment building. “Should I come down to the station?”
“No, we’re covered for now. I’ll let you know.”
The front desk security nodded to Joseph on his way into the elevator. “All right.”
He figured he had about one minute before the elevator cut his connection to his mother. Plenty of time for her to say, “So Stanley was wondering if you would like to come for dinner again sometime soon.”
Damnit, Stanley. His mother’s boyfriend was too kind for everyone’s own good. While it was nice he was willing to be cordial with his girlfriend’s son, he had yet to fully grasp that there was a reason Genevieve and Joseph did not visit one another outside of work very often. In fact, if they didn’t work together, Joseph was willing to bet that he would only see his mother on her birthday and Thanksgiving.
&n
bsp; “Dinner is fine, if we’re not too bogged down with work.”
Genevieve chuckled. “We’ll see, huh?”
“By the way,” Joseph said before he lost the connection. “I’m sort of… seeing Sylvia now. You know. Semi-seriously.”
His mother was so quiet that he wondered if he had lost the connection. “Are you, now?” she finally said. “Interesting. Well, if we have dinner, bring her by. I’m sure Stanley would love to meet her.”
Oh, God, Women’s Studies professor Stanley? That Stanley? Oh, yeah, he’d love to talk to Sylvia about the wondrous world of sex work. If she wasn’t careful, he’d probably ask her to come into one of his classes and talk to his students. She’d probably like that, actually.
“Bye, Mom.”
“Goodbye, Jos…” The phone cut out. A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened.
Joseph’s apartment was alit with more sunlight than it had been when he left on his run ninety minutes ago. Otherwise, everything was exactly as he left it.
Even the naked woman asleep in his bed.
“Good morning.” He kissed Sylvia’s cheek as she turned over at the sound of his voice. “It’s a beautiful cold morning in Portland. You want some coffee?”
Her eyes fluttered open. Sylvia stretched her arms above her head, humming with the sounds of waking up from a fitful sleep. “Why are you dressed like that?” She pulled on the drawstring of his hood. “You should be naked with me.”
“I should?”
Their kiss was marked with sweat on his brow and morning breath in her mouth. Don’t care. Kissing my girlfriend. And yet making a pot of coffee sounded like a great idea…
“Shit!” Sylvia pushed him away without any warning. “Fuck!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
She jerked up. “I remembered the reason I came by to see you yesterday!”
Joseph sat on the edge of his bed. “You mean it wasn’t to seduce me into becoming your boyfriend? Again?”
“No!” Naked Sylvia was even more naked once she threw off all the bed covers. “It has to do with the driver of that truck!” Sylvia grabbed Joseph by the front of his sweatshirt. “He’s Agent Kline’s husband.”
Chapter 27
Joseph
After hastily getting dressed and making a phone call he never thought he would make in the coming weeks, Joseph was north of Burnside seeing how modern billionaires lived.
He was used to the grandiose display of wealth when it came to his parents. His mother’s little mansion was imposing, clean, and filled with fine, antique furniture – not to mention, it was in one of the most classically upscale parts of Portland. His father’s estate, on the other hand, had a sizable acreage landscaped to perfection. The house boasted over ten bedrooms separated into three living quarters. (The Master Suite, the children’s wing, and the live-in help’s apartments that also included the in-law suite.) Verónica decorated her house with bright, airy fixtures that brought in sunlight and made one feel like he was basking in a coastal Mexican village, no matter how cold it was.
Those were multimillionaires. Billionaires? They were on another level.
Vincent Lane lived in a converted loft that was once the warehouse for a brewery or a steel manufacture or other such thing that no longer existed in the area. Exposed brick was in, especially in Portland. Every inch, every detail was carefully selected, handcrafted, and installed. Furniture both imported from master crafters on the other side of the world and made by local craftsmen invited a guest to sit down – but not for too long. The kitchen was a dark, masculine stonework complete with custom cupboards and stainless steel appliances. The electronics, from the extensive security system that tracked Joseph’s every step and provided high-quality entertainment was state of the art, straight off the showroom floor. The man was in tech. He had a curved 70-inch 3D monitor before the internet knew about it. A beastly desktop setup commanded an entire corner of the living room with two high-tech fans blowing cool air onto the machinery. Up in the loft was more than mood lighting: even from down below Joseph could see automated closets and an electronic delivery system for goodies in the kitchen.
What made this hilarious was that the people who lived in the loft looked anything but the spoiled billionaire type.
If anything, Vincent Lane looked and acted more Portland than Joseph did – and Joseph was the native son. Vincent was a Californian who moved to Portland to set up his tech company and make his vast fortunes in a small amount of time. But instead of the expensive bespoke suits he wore the first time they met, he now wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt on top of his athletic frame. This man boxes. Joseph knew that before he saw the punching bag in an otherwise empty corner of the room.
“Can I get you anything?” Vincent asked, showing Joseph to one of the leather sectionals in the living room. This is some seriously good temperature control. Converted lofts like these were either baking in heat or freezing cold. So far Joseph was perfectly comfortable. “Coffee? Water?”
“No, thanks.” Joseph, who felt frumpy in his slacks and button-up shirt, didn’t bother to get out his notepad or phone. No notes. This is all off the record. “I don’t want to take up much more of your time than I have to.”
“No worries.” Vincent sat down across from Joseph, casually slinging one leg over the other. Hard to imagine this man would put on his three-piece suit tomorrow and head to a high-rise office downtown. “I consider you a friend, even though we don’t talk much.”
Joseph tried not to react. We only know each other because of Xavier Crow. Vincent’s girlfriend Nala was the one who gave the FBI the last piece of evidence they needed to swoop in before Joseph had the chance to finish his investigation. More like before I could finish inside Stella for the hundredth time. Or try for a third hookup with Sylvia. “What can I say, we’re busy.”
“Indeed we are.” Vincent glanced up into the loft. Joseph looked up as well, catching sight of Nala Nazarov peering over the edge of the half-wall. According to Sylvia, she had lunch with Nala the day before and was told this juicy tidbit about Agent Kline’s fiancé.
Joseph still couldn’t believe it. He wanted to hear it from the source.
“Anyway, I need to talk to you about what you’ve been doing.”
“You mean my snooping?” Vincent grinned. “This is off the record, right?”
“Of course it is. Nothing you tell me can be used in court, anyway, because knowing you your information was gained illegally.” Vincent was one of the best hackers in the Pacific Northwest, although Joseph probably wasn’t supposed to know that, friends or not. Then again, Vincent probably wanted to curate friends like Joseph. It didn’t hurt a billionaire to be good friends with an agent, let alone one who was the son of Commander Stone. Plus my father is a rich investment banker… “So what is this I hear about the identity of the truck driver?”
“I may or may not have found a peekaboo regarding the people working for Sheen. This guy’s name stuck out to me because I recognized its link to something from the newspaper. Nala found the link for me.” He motioned to his girlfriend, still eavesdropping upstairs. She stood up in full view of Joseph before beginning her descent down the stairs. “But yes, your truck driver from the crash is Brad Jacobson, the distraught fiancé of currently comatose agent Cindy Kline. I have a printout if you want to see it.”
“That won’t be necessary. I believe you.” That doesn’t make any sense, though. Why would Kline’s fiancé be driving for Sheen? Joseph hoped that DNA match came back sooner rather than later so he could discuss this with his mother. Then again, Joseph could say that he had met Brad before… while he wasn’t on a super friendly basis with Agent Kline, it wasn’t improbable that someone dropped by the station once… “What else did you find?”
“Ohhh, what didn’t I find?” Vincent leaned forward. “The group keeps meticulous records of their shipments. Of course, most of that is public record when it comes to real wild animals, but not so much when they�
�re smuggling what they call damaged goods.”
“You mean people.”
“Not once in their files do they call them by name or anything but their code words. They were careful like that. Still, it wasn’t hard to figure out what they meant. Before I got too sick to keep looking, their running total was over two hundred women and children from the Pacific Northwest. They have multiple routes. Most are taken down to Mexico first, but there were a couple who got right on a boat and went straight to Thailand. The man’s made millions of untaxable dollars. He has a small team of closely guarded individuals who do the dirty work. Sheen isn’t directly involved in any of it, of course. He keeps his hands under the faucet at all times, but one foot on somebody’s neck.”
That’s what Joseph had expected. “We had figured as much.”
“Naturally.” Nala joined her boyfriend on his couch. Vincent didn’t even look at her, but his hand went straight for her knee, a protective gesture that made Joseph pine for Sylvia.
The woman knew her cue. As soon as Joseph’s heart thumped, someone buzzed Vincent Lane’s doorbell.
“I’ll get it,” Nala said. Within thirty seconds she had brought Sylvia over, much to Joseph’s chagrin.
“I thought I told you to wait in the car,” he grumbled at her.
She didn’t think twice about sitting next to him. “You want me to wait somewhere for you? Man, you still don’t know me that well.”
Nala glanced between them. “Isn’t that the outfit you were wearing when we had lunch yesterday?”
“Had a sleepover somewhere.” Sylvia not-so-coolly stretched her arms in the air and rested one along Joseph’s shoulders. “Must’ve been my boyfriend’s place.”
Really? Was this the time?
Nala smacked Vincent on the chest. “See?” she hissed. “I told you they were boning.”
Sighing, Joseph went ahead and placed his hand on Sylvia’s knee. They were in the company of friends, right? Shit. What was that smug look on Sylvia’s face? Was she that proud to have him as her boyfriend? Suddenly this felt like a couple’s date instead of an interview.
Damaged Goods Page 31
