by Tom Barber
‘Where’ve you been, Theresa?’ Shepherd asked as she joined them.
‘You guys all vanished from Santiago’s before I could join you,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been talking with my people and trying to get a fix on April Evans. But I just got a call saying you rescued her from an attack?’
Shepherd nodded, indicating towards the Conference Room. ‘Arch did. And she’s in there.’
‘Is she OK?’ Palmer asked, stepping forward and looking at the young woman.
‘She’s fine. Just a little shaken up.’
‘I spoke to our office in New Jersey. Apparently Goya and Santiago run a high-class escort service on the Upper West and East Sides. Including Leann, there were twelve women on their payroll last month.’
Shepherd nodded. ‘Correct.’
‘With Leann and April accounted for, that leaves ten to find. If Nina Lister and her two friends went after April, they might try to do the same to the other girls. We need to focus on them; bring all ten in and get them under protection right now. ’
Shepherd glanced at Archer then motioned to the empty Conference Room next door to the one they were using as a base.
‘Follow me,’ he told her. ‘We need to talk. Arch, join us.’
Looking at him curiously, Palmer followed Shepherd into the room.
Taking a last look down at Isabel staring up at him from the detective pool below, Archer gave her another small wave then joined the other two.
At the East-side warehouse, the two killers were just finishing packing their back-up van with canisters of their lye solution, the cuts to their faces cleaned and butterfly-stitched.
Loading up the last can, the larger of the two men closed the door and then withdrew his cell, looking at the details he’d just been sent by their inside man. Beside him his partner drew his silenced FN.45 and racked a round, tucking it in the back of his waistband and pulling his jacket down to conceal it.
‘Ready?’ he asked his partner.
He nodded. ‘Let’s do it.’
With that, the two men opened their van and jumped inside, slamming the doors and firing the engine. Right then, they might not have been able to get to April Evans or the remaining Prizraki hiding out inside their club in Little Odessa.
But they sure as hell could get to Detective Alice Vargas.
THIRTY TWO
It took Shepherd five minutes to explain the situation to Palmer, who was visibly shocked when he told her about the missing girls and even more so when he came to the attempted hits on their families.
‘So who the hell were those gunmen?’ she asked. ‘You think they work with Lister and her two friends?’
‘We don’t know,’ Archer said, standing beside the pair.
Palmer’s attention shifted from the suspects to Archer himself, noting the cut under his eye and his mud-spattered jeans. ‘By the way, I thought you were suspended.’
‘I am. But after everything that’s happened today, I think I’m entitled to stick around for a bit.’
She smiled. ‘So do I. I think its bullshit what they did to you.’
She offered her hand.
‘We were never introduced; I’m Theresa Palmer; I work with the Polaris Project.’
After hesitating for a moment, Archer shook it. ‘Sam Archer. What exactly is Polaris?’
‘A national organisation which combats human trafficking and slavery; we help victims forced into work or sexual acts against their will. Cases like Leann’s often happen in clutches so I requested to be brought to the 114th as an advisor.’
She sighed.
‘Judging by what you told me, I failed completely. I was too late. Lister and her crew got to them.’
‘Right now nothing is confirmed until we hear from CSU,’ Shepherd said.
‘That’s just a formality though, right? And after what you said April saw at her apartment building? Two figures in white overalls apparently waiting for her?’
Her voice trailed off. Shepherd and Archer didn’t reply.
‘If you guys had had this case from the get go, these women could still be alive.’
‘We pushed for it,’ Shepherd said. ‘You saw us try. But Homicide wouldn’t budge.’
‘Yeah, but I can understand that though. If something happened on your turf, would you just pass over the investigation?’
Shepherd paused, then shook his head, conceding her point. ‘No. I guess I wouldn’t.’
‘And they’re gonna be pissed when they find out about all this. It took them four weeks to nail the wrong suspects. You guys are on the investigation for a few hours and you find the two real perps in Leann’s murder. Then you discover a previously unknown team killed the two of them and now, potentially ten more homicides on top of Goya and Santiago. Which would have been eleven if Archer hadn’t made it to April in time.’
‘You were working with the team over at the 114th,’ Shepherd said. ‘You saw the case get closed.’
‘I did.’
‘Were you satisfied with that? That Valdez and Carvalho did it?’
‘It all matched up; they had motive, no alibi and were found with the murder weapon. Homicide said probability was high and Royston ordered them to wrap it up. From what I heard, he’d been getting a lot of calls ordering him to focus on the case because of Detective Vargas getting hurt. There was a lot of attention on that. You can understand why he was happy to have closure.’
‘And Leann Casey,’ Archer said. ‘Alice was shot but Leann was killed.’
‘She wasn’t exactly the focus, if you catch my drift. That’s why I demanded to be involved from the get go, to make sure she got as much attention as Detective Vargas and wasn’t side-lined. They didn’t want to bring me in at first; we always have to fight to be included to make sure girls like Leann get a fair shake. Otherwise she’d be forgotten.’
‘She wouldn’t have been,’ Shepherd said.
‘Be real, Sergeant. That’s your compassion speaking, not your common sense. I’ve done this job for two years; I’ve worked with different police departments in New York State and all over New Jersey. And the one thing I’ve learned is that dead girls from the sex trade rank somewhere between overdosed junkies and missing dogs on the police give-a-shit scale.’
‘That’s not always the case.’
‘How many times did April contact the cops before someone helped her?’ Palmer asked. ‘Shit, did she even bother, knowing what the outcome would be?’
The two men didn’t answer.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pissed at you, I’m pissed at Royston,’ Palmer continued. ‘The team at Homicide were too. He settled for something that looked very possible, but instead of making one hundred percent sure he ordered his team to move on. Because of that, ten more girls are most likely dead. And you know the sad part; they’ll be forgotten in a matter of days.’
There was a pause. Archer and Shepherd remained silent.
‘So what’s the next step?’ Palmer asked. ‘Finding what happened to these women?’
‘That’s step one,’ Shepherd said. ‘Step two is we find out who the hell these men were who came after our families.’
‘And number three is we track down Lister’s two friends,’ Archer said. ‘And we do it before they give anyone else a bath.’
Like any city hospital, St Luke’s in Midtown Manhattan was a busy facility with a constant flow of doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, the sick and the injured through the building. However, the hospital had also seen two new additions of late, a couple of NYPD officers working on rotation stationed outside Detective Vargas’ room on the private 14th floor.
The two night-shift guys had taken up their posts at 5pm; they’d been doing the same stint for over a month now and had to admit it was a pretty good gig, ordered to sit outside the room and prevent anyone other than the medical team from entering unless they could prove they were authorised. The two officers were both in their early thirties and had earned their stripes, which was why they’d b
een assigned what was seen by their colleagues as a cushy role and not given to some rookies out of the Academy.
However, as was natural with any human attention span, the monotony of sitting outside the room hour upon hour had caught up with them and their concentration levels had waned over the weeks. That Sunday night, one was sitting in a chair reading a magazine whilst the other munched on some sunflower seeds, spitting the kernels into a trash can beside him as he leant against the wall. Medical staff and the occasional cleaner moved past the two officers, all of whom had become familiar to the two men over the last four and a half weeks, light-hearted banter often exchanged.
The guy sitting down suddenly chuckled as he leant back in his chair, scanning the advice column of the woman’s magazine he’d found abandoned on the seat.
‘Ten signs that your man may be cheating,’ he read aloud. ‘You ready for some of these?’
His partner shook his head, looking down the corridor. ‘You know what’ll happen if you get caught reading that shit?’
Before the man could respond, they were distracted by the sight of a doctor who suddenly appeared from around the corner. He had a cut across his temple, blood leaking from the wound, and looked flustered.
‘You OK, Doc?’ the seated officer asked, sitting up straight, the magazine in his hands instantly forgotten.
‘Not really. I could use some help.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘We’ve got a drunk guy causing trouble downstairs on 13. He just assaulted me and two of my staff. Security’s over in the other wing. I’d really appreciate some assistance.’
The two cops glanced at each other.
‘He’s a big guy and he’s out of control,’ the doctor added.
‘I’ll stay,’ one cop said, looking at his partner who’d been reading the magazine. ‘You got this?’
The other man nodded, rising and putting the gossip mag on the chair, following the doctor who turned and headed back the way he’d come, dabbing at the cut across his eyebrow.
‘Thanks, Officer. We’ll take the stairs. It’s quicker.’
‘So what’ll happen to April?’ Archer asked Palmer, still in the Conference Room. ‘She’s free now Goya and Santiago are gone.’
‘If I don’t help her out, she’ll be housed for thirty days at Covenant. Then she’ll probably be back on the street.’
‘Just like that?’
She nodded. ‘That’s what usually happens; and things are better than they used to be.’
‘But that’s it?’ Archer repeated. ‘If your organisation doesn’t help, after a month she’s tossed back out on the street?’
‘That’s it.’
‘It’s bullshit.’
‘That’s why I’m here. It’s what my organisation specialises in; pimps like Goya and Santiago are a dying breed. The Internet’s changed the way many of these girls work; it means they don’t have pimps controlling them and they decide who they want as customers. They don’t share any of the profits with anyone and charge whatever they want.’
‘But no-one knows who they’re meeting with, or where,’ Archer said.
She nodded. ‘Not only are they made more vulnerable, they’re also prime targets for all the whack-jobs out there. Before, pimps were there to make sure their girls came back in one piece.’
‘April said she and Leann were about to get out,’ Archer said. ‘Start fresh somewhere else.’
‘And take a look at what happened. Another prostitute dead. The only reason her death got the attention it did is because two cops got shot at the scene at the same time and don’t try to pretend that’s not the case. You know I’m right.’
The two men stayed silent. However, in the quiet Marquez suddenly appeared at the doorway.
‘Sir?’
Shepherd turned.
‘Breakthrough. Ethan just pulled IDs on Lister’s two friends.’
Arriving at the stairwell, the doctor pushed down the bar and held the door for the cop.
‘Right this way,’ he said.
As the cop passed him and started to walk down the stairs, he noticed the door to a large maintenance closet on their right was partially open, something catching his eye.
‘Hold up, doc,’ he said.
‘What’s wrong?’
Not replying, the officer pulled his weapon, easing the door back.
On the floor was the body of a man in a shirt and trousers, a doctor he recognised from his weeks at the hospital.
He’d been shot in the head.
Before the cop could reach for his radio, the man in the doctor’s coat behind him had already drawn his silenced pistol, putting a bullet through the back of the officer’s head, the weapon coughing and blood spattering over the wall beyond the officer as he took the round.
The policeman’s body hit the floor; the guy in the doctor’s coat then dragged him into the closet, dumping him on top of the body of the man already there.
Tucking the pistol back into the rear of his waistband, the killer closed the door, then turned and walked back up the half-flight of stairs towards 14.
One down; one to go.
The remaining officer had his back to Vargas’ door when he saw the doctor reappear, his partner nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened, doc?’ he asked. ‘Where’s Cornell?’
‘There was a problem,’ the doctor replied, walking towards him.
‘What is it?’
Stopping, the doctor suddenly grabbed the cop’s shoulder, jabbing a silenced weapon into his stomach, pushing it hard into the man’s gut.
‘Your partner died,’ he whispered. ‘And don’t even think about it.’
The cop’s hand paused, an inch from his sidearm. As the officer stared at him, the doctor pushed him back towards the door to the room.
‘Open it, Hudson,’ he ordered quietly, looking at the policeman’s tag on his chest.
With no choice, the cop obeyed, turning as far as the man would allow him and opening the door.
‘You pull that trigger, you’re finished,’ Hudson told him. ‘You realise that?’
‘It’s not me who’s finished,’ the man in the coat said with a grin, pushing the cop into Detective Vargas’ room and aiming the silenced FN.45 at the officer’s head.
THIRTY THREE
Re-entering Conference Room 4, Shepherd, Marquez and Archer joined Ethan and April closely followed by Hendricks, Shepherd having whistled at him from the walkway. He shut the door behind him and stood beside Palmer, who was standing just to the right of the door.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
As he spoke, a mug-shot appeared on the main screen. Archer immediately recognised the guy as the larger of the two. He had jet black hair, brown eyes and stubble, the photo taken a few years ago when he was younger. He looked sullen and a tough son of a bitch.
‘Found them in the California Department of Corrections database,’ Ethan said. ‘This one is Nicolas Dean Henderson. Twenty six years old, six foot five, two hundred and twenty five pounds. Parents unknown, attended high school in Pittsburgh, was arrested in San Diego for weapons charges. Served a year in Lompoc.’
‘From Pittsburgh,’ Archer said. ‘Like Lister.’
‘And arrested in San Diego like her too,’ Marquez noted.
‘SDPD currently have a warrant out for his arrest for skipping parole,’ Ethan continued.
‘How old?’ Hendricks asked.
‘Six years.’
‘What about the other guy?’ Shepherd asked.
The screen changed to the slighter man, the one who’d almost shot Archer in the head when he broke into the restroom. Physically he was much smaller than Henderson but Archer knew he possessed a wiry strength that made up for his lack of stature. He was all sinew and aggression, the veins on his neck pronounced, his head closely shaved, his eyes angry as he held the placard for the mug-shot.
‘Sebastian Tully; twenty four years old. Went to the same high school as Henderson in Pi
ttsburgh, DOB and parents unknown. Five ten, a hundred and sixty five pounds. Got busted with his friend for possession of unlicensed firearms in Cali and did a stretch too.’
‘What about since?’ Shepherd said.
‘Suspect in a homicide but the case is still ongoing. San Diego too.’
‘And it’s six years old,’ Shepherd said, looking at the screen. ‘That long?’
Ethan nodded. ‘They’ve been keeping a low profile.’
‘Why the hell did they go from Pittsburgh to San Diego?’ Palmer asked. ‘People like this tend to stay in places they know. And why’d they come back east?’
‘Whatever the reason, they must have left a trail,’ Marquez said. ‘They’d need money and these two don’t strike me as the nine to five type. No easy legal way to fund a three thousand mile trip without some kind of illegal activity.’
‘Maybe they just got lucky and were never caught,’ Archer said.
‘Ethan, run a check on the National Crime Info Centre,’ Shepherd said, nodding in agreement with his two detectives.
‘What for, sir?’
‘Traces of lye at national crime-scenes in the last six years. These sons of bitches must have left something in their wake. That body disposal method is so slick I’m thinking they must have had some practice.’
As Ethan set to work, Palmer pulled her cell phone. ‘I’ll run them through our system too. See if our people in California have anything on these guys.’
As she stepped outside, Hendricks went to follow but then the phone on the desk rang, grabbing everyone’s attention.
‘Shepherd,’ the Sergeant said, answering.
‘Sergeant, its Barton with CSU. I’ve got some bad news I’m afraid.’
‘Go on.’
‘We’ve checked out six of those addresses Sergeant Hendricks gave us. We’ve swabbed the tubs and that lye solution is showing up at each one so far.’
