Grave Danger (A Maddie Graves Mystery Book 12)

by Lily Harper Hart

  “Coffee, a glass of water, and tomato juice,” Maddie replied, offering up a sweet smile for the waitress. The woman didn’t look any happier with Maddie’s response so Maddie quickly turned serious. “Thank you.” She waited until the waitress disappeared to retrieve their drinks and focused on Dwight. “Of course we want to see Sage. I’m worried about you, though. How late were you out?”

  “It wasn’t that I was out all that late,” Dwight replied, rubbing the tender spot between his eyebrows. “It’s simply that I was up early because apparently Big Wally decided to cut a deal when he realized he wouldn’t be walking free and clear.”

  Nick straightened. “Really? That’s good news. Why didn’t you call us?”

  “Because it happened before six and I didn’t want to wake you. Not everyone needs to go without sleep. Although … you guys look like you had a good enough night. I’m glad to see that. I was a little worried.”

  “We’re absolutely fine,” Maddie said.

  Dwight didn’t look convinced and turned to Nick. “Really?”

  “She had a few bad dreams but nothing compared to what I thought she would have,” Nick answered. “Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been. After we left you, though, we took a trip to the hospital so she could drop off ice cream to the girls there and then we ran into a few of her old co-workers.”

  “Let me guess, Iris and Sandy?”

  Nick nodded. “They seemed nice enough. In fact, I was kind of glad to meet them because I always pictured Maddie having no one to talk to while she was down here and it made me sad. She clearly had those two women. They kind of remind me of Christy in a weird way.”

  “Huh.” Maddie tilted her head to the side. “I never really thought about that, but you’re right. They are like Christy. Maybe I have a type when it comes to friends.”

  Nick chuckled. “Since we were friends before we got together, that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.”

  “You’re different. You’re in a classification all your own.”

  “That’s what all the women say,” Nick teased, squeezing her hand. “I’m a god amongst men.”

  The waitress picked that moment to return with their beverages, cocking an eyebrow at Nick’s statement before taking their breakfast orders and hurrying away. Nick watched her go, chagrined.

  “I’m not on top of my game today,” he said after a beat. “That woman is probably licking my toast.”

  “Probably,” Dwight agreed. “Tell me about your visit to the hospital. How were the girls?”

  “Quiet and overwhelmed,” Maddie replied. “The hospital staff was gentle and tried to put them at ease, but I can tell a lot of them are terrified. They didn’t utter a single word.”

  “Yeah, well, I know why that is.” Dwight shifted on his chair. “Some of them are here illegally. In fact, almost all of them are illegals.”

  “As in illegal aliens?” Maddie knit her eyebrows. “I don’t understand why that’s important.”

  “They don’t want to talk because they’ll be deported,” Nick explained. “Most of them took a chance on a better life only to be saddled with debts they’ll never be able to pay off by predatory forces. Then they were sold to a slug like Wally and forced into prostitution, probably being told the only way to settle their debts was by selling themselves.”

  Maddie felt sick to her stomach. “Then what?”

  “Then nothing,” Dwight answered. “They work until they can’t work any longer or they age out to a point where none of the clients want them and then they’re either cut loose – which is like a death sentence – or killed to cover up the operation.”

  All the color drained from Maddie’s face. “I don’t understand, though. That’s the sort of thing we hear about happening in other countries. How could that be happening here without anyone knowing?”

  “You would be surprised at the number of things happening here that are downright despicable,” Dwight replied. “Remember when I mentioned the proximity to the bridge and human trafficking yesterday?”

  “Vaguely. I wasn’t paying that much attention because it made me sad.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what we’re dealing with here,” Dwight said. “Big Wally wasn’t talkative at first, but once his attorney realized there was no getting out of this situation, he basically ordered Wally to make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” Nick asked. “What did you give him?”

  “More than I would have liked but less than he wanted,” Dwight answered. “He wanted to walk away free and clear. As it is, the prosecutor is going to recommend five years.”

  “Five years!” Maddie almost blew her stack and her voice was shrill enough to draw attention from several nearby tables. “You can’t be serious. Two of those girls in the trailer were dead.”

  “I know.” Dwight awkwardly patted her hand in an attempt to calm her. “Don’t get all worked up here, Maddie. I have no control over the prosecutor’s office.”

  “But it’s not fair,” Maddie persisted. “Those girls are dead.”

  “They are.” Dwight looked pained. “They’re also Hispanic and not from this country. The prosecutor wasn’t moved by their plight because they were here illegally.”

  “Oh, well, that is … .” Maddie had no words to express her fury.

  “Love, we can’t force the prosecutor to do what we want,” Nick said quietly. “Even in Blackstone Bay the prosecutor basically does what he wants without any oversight. We’ve been lucky because he wants to appear tough on crime, but Dwight is in a different position here and he’s doing the best he can.”

  “I’m not blaming Dwight.”

  “It kind of seems that you are.”

  “Oh, well, that’s not what I meant.” Maddie forced herself to relax, although only marginally. “I just don’t understand how you can let that animal walk free after only five years. He’s ruined lives, and that’s only the girls we know about. Do you really think he doesn’t have girls stashed elsewhere?”

  “I understand your concern, Maddie, but we can only do what we can do and Wally has information on people who are worse than him,” Dwight said. “We had to weigh the worth of Wally’s information against his punishment. If we can save other girls, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Mollified, Maddie rubbed her cheek. “Okay. I guess that makes sense. What did he tell you?”

  “Well, it was like pulling teeth,” Dwight said, leaning back in his chair and extending his long legs as he sipped his coffee. “At first he denied knowledge of the girls being in the truck and tried to blame it on the people who work for him.

  “I explained that wasn’t going to work because he always boasted how he oversaw everything and that meant he was really lying and in charge of nothing if we were to believe his new story,” he continued. “I told him that information would probably be welcomed by the men he’d be serving time with and he changed his tune rather quickly.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Nick said. “He needs to be a big man to survive prison, but he can’t play the victim game with you if he starts boasting now. He’s in a tough spot.”

  “I hope someone whacks him over the head with his stupid Crocs while he’s in prison,” Maddie muttered, annoyed.

  Nick cracked a smile. “You really need to form an opinion, love. This waffling thing you’re doing is ridiculous.”

  Maddie ignored the jab. “So what did he give you?”

  “Well, he gave us a rundown of the operation,” Dwight replied. “It’s big. It’s real big, in fact. It runs between New York to Detroit to Chicago. It’s an entire train of human trafficking.”

  “And it’s all for sex?” Maddie asked.

  “Not exactly.” Dwight dragged a restless hand through his hair. “So, basically what happens is that runners pick up women from the streets. We’re talking recent border crossers – which almost always happens in the south because no one from the north wants to bother – and at-risk kids in big cities.


  “They’re not just taking girls either,” he continued. “I should clarify that. They’re taking boys for various manual labor jobs and to work as future runners.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say ‘runners,’” Maddie said.

  “Runners basically do a little bit of everything,” Nick supplied. “They’re like assistants in weird ways. Sometimes they’re in charge of repossessing cars when clients don’t pay back gambling debts. Other times they do physical harm to get money from people who have secured loans and aren’t paying them back.”

  “Like knee breakers?”

  Nick nodded. “Exactly. Runners also serve as drivers when things need to be transported. A lot of the time it’s drugs. That way if they’re caught they only know the person ahead of them in the leader line and no one can touch the big dog.”

  “And Wally is the big dog?”

  “I think we thought that Wally was the big dog,” Dwight clarified. “We didn’t know he had ties to bigger cities. I guess it’s fair to say that Wally is the big dog in Detroit. He’s on the second tier down from the biggest dogs, though, and apparently they jump from city to city.”

  “Is there one here in Detroit?” Nick asked.

  “If you believe Wally there is,” Dwight answered. “The thing is, we’re in trouble when it comes to tracking this guy down. We’ve heard of him – whispers mostly – but he’s pretty much a ghost.”

  “So you’ve heard of him but never tied him to Wally?” Maddie pressed. “How does that work?”

  “Because no one has ever seen this guy,” Dwight explained. “I’m not joking or exaggerating. Plenty of people have been picked up and tried to bargain deals of some sort and they often give the same name. El Capitan. We have no face or business address to associate with that name, though.”

  “He must be Hispanic,” Nick argued. “I mean … the name is Spanish.”

  “That’s the prevailing theory, but we have no way to prove that and if we lock ourselves into that assumption we might miss something big,” Dwight said. “What if it’s merely a smart man who wants someone to believe we’re dealing with a Hispanic individual?”

  “Good point,” Nick conceded. “So what do we know about this specific operation?”

  “Wally says that the girls come to him from Chicago and he’s supposed to sort through them,” Dwight said. “The women who he thinks can fetch more money – the ones who have a bit of education and show an ability to learn – are moved to New York. Those who only have street value for drugs and prostitution are kept here and sometimes ferried over the bridge.”

  “And what happens on the other side of the bridge?” Maddie asked.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Dwight wished he had better answers, but he couldn’t give what he didn’t have. “According to Wally other things happen in Canada and he doesn’t have any information about what they’re doing over there. I’m not sure I believe him, but he was adamant all the same.”

  “So what about the bodies?” Maddie asked the obvious question. “How do they play into this?”

  “Wally swears up and down that he has nothing to do with the bodies. He thinks that someone wanted to take over his turf and planted the bodies there to take him down. If that’s true, it would be an ingenious way to do it. I mean … look how fast he’s been taken out of commission.”

  “You don’t seem as if you believe that,” Nick pointed out. “How come?”

  “Because those women were all killed in the same way and it doesn’t feel like trafficking to me,” Dwight replied. “It feels like a serial killer. Now, I’m not saying that a serial killer couldn’t be a runner or vice versa. I can’t quite wrap my head around those bodies belonging to one of Wally’s cohorts, though.”

  “How come?” Maddie challenged.

  “Because there’s no money in dead women,” Dwight replied. “Remember what I told you. These are businessmen. If they thought for a second they had a serial killer working for them they would handle it. Twenty women going missing in six months’ time is something that would definitely send up an alert.”

  “But you said that the women are killed if they can no longer perform,” Maddie argued. “How do we know that’s not what’s going on here?”

  “I would be open to that suggestion if we only had one or two bodies,” Dwight answered. “We have twenty, though. We also have more missing women. Some of the bodies belong to low-risk victims, which is something that the runners and Wally would never entangle themselves in because they don’t want to make a mistake and take the wrong girl. If they did, that could mean huge news headlines.

  “I mean, think about Natalee Holloway,” he continued. “Now, granted, that was in Aruba and there were extenuating circumstances with that case, but what happens if we have a Natalee Holloway, Elizabeth Smart, or Jaycee Dugard situation here? That means a lot of attention on a small area and that is not what these guys want.”

  “I think I understand,” Maddie mused, frustration evident on her pretty features. “You’re basically saying you don’t think Wally can lead us to a specific killer.”

  “I’m not entirely ruling it out,” Dwight corrected. “I would be a lax detective to do that. I don’t think I believe Wally had anything to do with the dead girls, though.”

  “So what do you want us to do?” Nick asked. “You clearly aren’t getting the answers you want so you need Maddie to provide more.”

  “I want Maddie to do what she does best,” Dwight replied. “I want her to feel things out on her own and follow her gut instincts. I need her to do it in a low-key fashion, though. I need her to be safe.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Nick noted. “I won’t let anything bad happen to her.”

  “I’ve never doubted that, son.” Dwight offered up a weak smile. “Right now it feels as if we have two different cases. Those cases could eventually overlap, but we have to chase them as if they’re separate.”

  “I understand.” And, because she did, Maddie was more resolved than ever. “We’ll walk around later and see if we can come up some leads. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Above all else, I want you to be safe,” Dwight cautioned. “Don’t put yourself at risk to get answers. Be careful. Be smart. Be safe. Those are your three biggest priorities.”

  “We’ll do all of that,” Maddie promised. “We’ll find answers, too. I can’t live with it if we don’t.”

  That was exactly what Nick was afraid she would say.

  10

  Ten

  With little to go on but the initial location, Maddie and Nick pointed themselves in that direction. Nick insisted Maddie head upstairs and change into muted colors and pull her hair back into a hat before leaving, though, and Maddie didn’t bother to hide her agitation given his overbearing attitude as they walked down the street thirty minutes later.

  “I think you’re being ridiculous.”

  Nick expected her to put up a fight – if the roles were reversed and she was trying to tell him what to wear and how to act, there would definitely be an argument, after all – so he forced himself to remain calm. “I know you do. I’m sorry about that.”

  The apology wasn’t enough to placate Maddie. “You forget that I spent six years of my life here.”

  “Oh, I could never forget that.”

  “I know the area,” Maddie persisted. “I know how to talk to people on the streets. I talked to plenty of them when I worked at the hospital.”

  “I think this situation is a little bit different, Mad.” Nick held out his arm to stop Maddie on the street corner as a light changed and traffic barreled past them. “You talked to people after they were injured. They were vulnerable. The people out here are going to be on the offensive. They want to make you feel vulnerable.”

  “Why do you think that?” Maddie was legitimately curious. “I would think the people out here would be happy to know that Wally is in jail and he’s going to stay there for a bit. That
makes the neighborhoods safer for them.”

  Nick bit back a sigh. She was so earnest at times it was grating. Usually he liked it – especially when they were in Blackstone Bay and the worst thing she had to worry about was how snarky Christy was going to be on any given day – but in a situation like this Nick felt Maddie’s naiveté was a detriment.

  “Yes, but now there will be a power vacuum and someone will try to fill it,” Nick explained. “Wally was bad. No one would ever say otherwise. There’s no way for the people who live here to know if the person who comes in next is going to be worse, though. That’s going to be a big worry going forward.”

  “But … maybe no one will come in.”

  This time Nick couldn’t swallow his sigh. “You’re so sweet and cute that I can’t stand it.” He leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth before they started walking again. “That’s not the way the world works, though, Mad. Someone is going to come into this neighborhood and take over. It’s simply the nature of the beast.”

  “Well, then I prefer a different beast.”

  Maddie and Nick held hands as they crossed the street, slowing their pace when they saw a group of police officers littering the lot. They had it completely shut off from anyone who might want to jump the fence, although their attention was on what looked to be an empty truck rather than the onlookers.

  “There is another truck here,” Maddie noted. “I wonder why.”

  “They’re probably scouring it for evidence before transporting it to the impound lot,” Nick said. “I’m guessing it belongs to Wally, too, so they had to search it. I think Dwight would’ve told us if more people were found, so it was probably empty. I doubt it will be here much longer either way.”

  “Still, it seems weird to me.”

  “Yeah, well … where do you want to go first?” Nick wasn’t keen on spending the afternoon downtown, especially since they were out in the open and he worried that news had spread about Maddie’s involvement in the arrest. That’s why he insisted on the hat. He was hopeful it would hide her flaxen hair, which would be a dead giveaway to those in the know.