Vanish

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Do we get to ask questions?” Jane asked. “Or will this be a one-way interrogation?”

  “I wish we could answer all your questions. But we have an active investigation to protect,” said Glasser. “It’s no reflection on you. We’ve done background checks on you and Agent Dean. You’ve both distinguished yourselves as fine law enforcement officers.”

  “Yet you don’t trust us.”

  Glasser shot her a look as steely as the color of her hair. “We can’t afford to trust anyone. Not on a matter this sensitive. Agent Barsanti and I have tried our best to keep our work quiet, but every move we make has been tracked. Our computers have been quietly accessed, my office was broken into, and I’m not sure my phone is secure. Someone is tunneling into our investigation.” She set down her coffee cup. “Now I need to know what you’re doing here, and why you went to that house.”

  “Probably for the same reason you had it under surveillance.”

  “You know what happened there.”

  “We’ve seen Detective Wardlaw’s files.”

  “You’re a long way from home. What’s your interest in the Ashburn case?”

  “Why don’t you answer a question for us first,” said Jane. “Why is the Justice Department so interested in the deaths of five prostitutes?”

  Glasser was silent, her expression unreadable. Calmly she took a sip from her coffee cup, as though the question had not even been asked of her. Jane could not help but feel a stab of admiration for this woman, who had yet to show even a glimpse of vulnerability. Clearly Glasser was the one in command here.

  “You’re aware that the victims’ identities have never been established,” said Glasser.

  “Yes.”

  “We believe they were undocumented aliens. We’re trying to find out how they got into the country. Who brought them in, and which routes they took to penetrate our borders.”

  “Are you going to tell us this is all about national security?” Jane could not keep the skepticism out of her voice.

  “That’s only part of it. Ever since September eleventh, Americans just assume that we’ve tightened our borders, that we’ve clamped down on illegal immigration. That’s hardly the case. The illicit traffic moving between Mexico and the US is still as busy as a major highway. We have miles and miles of unmonitored coastline. A Canadian border that’s scarcely patrolled. And human smugglers know all the routes, all the tricks. Shipping in girls is easy. And once they’ve brought them here, it’s not hard to put them to work.” Glasser set her cup on the coffee table. She leaned forward, her eyes like polished ebony. “Do you know how many involuntary sex workers we have in this country? Our so-called civilized country? At least fifty thousand. I’m not talking about prostitutes. These are slaves, serving against their will. Thousands of girls brought into the US where they simply vanish. They become invisible women. Yet they’re all around us, in big cities, small towns. Hidden in brothels, locked into apartments. And few people know they even exist.”

  Jane remembered the bars on the windows, and thought of the isolation of that house. No wonder it had made her think of a prison; that’s exactly what it was.

  “These girls are terrified of cooperating with authorities. The consequences, if they’re caught by their pimps, is too horrible. And even if the girls do escape, and they do make it back to their home countries, they can still be tracked down there. They’re better off dead.” She paused. “You saw the autopsy report on victim number five. The older one.”

  Jane swallowed. “Yes.”

  “What happened to her was a very clear message. Fuck with us, and you end up like this. We don’t know what she did to make them angry, what line she stepped over. Maybe she pocketed money that wasn’t hers. Maybe she was doing business on the side. Clearly, she was the matron of that house, in a position of authority, but it didn’t save her. Whatever she did wrong, she paid for it. And the girls paid with her.”

  “So your investigation isn’t about terrorism at all,” said Gabriel.

  “What would terrorism have to do with this?” Barsanti asked.

  “Undocumented aliens coming in from eastern Europe. The possibility of a Chechen connection.”

  “These women were brought into the country purely for commerce, and not for any other reason.”

  Glasser frowned at Gabriel. “Who mentioned terrorism to you?”

  “Senator Conway did. As well as the deputy director of National Intelligence.”

  “David Silver?”

  “He flew up to Boston in response to the hostage crisis. That’s what they believed they were dealing with at the time. A Chechen terrorist threat.”

  Glasser snorted. “David Silver is fixated on terrorists, Agent Dean. He sees them under every bridge and overpass.”

  “He said the concern went all the way to the top. That’s why Director Wynne sent him.”

  “That’s what the DNI is paid to think about. It’s how he justifies his existence. For these people, it’s all terrorism, all the time.”

  “Senator Conway seemed concerned about it as well.”

  “You trust the senator?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  Barsanti said, “You’ve had dealings with Conway, haven’t you?”

  “Senator Conway’s on the intelligence committee. We met a number of times, about my work in Bosnia. The war crimes investigations.”

  “But how well do you actually know him, Agent Dean?”

  “You’re implying that I don’t.”

  “He’s been a senator for three terms,” said Glasser. “To last that long, you have to make a lot of deals, a lot of compromises along the way. Be careful whom you trust. That’s all we’re saying. We learned that lesson a long time ago.”

  “So terrorism isn’t what concerns you here,” said Jane.

  “My concern is fifty thousand vanished women. It’s about slavery within our borders. It’s about human beings abused and exploited by clients who only care about getting a good fuck.” She paused and took a deep breath. “That’s what this is all about,” she finished quietly.

  “This sounds like a personal crusade for you.”

  Glasser nodded. “It has been for almost four years.”

  “Then why didn’t you save those women in Ashburn? You must have known what was going on in that house.”

  Glasser said nothing; she didn’t have to. Her stricken look confirmed what Jane had already guessed.

  Jane looked at Barsanti. “That’s why you showed up at the crime scene so quickly. Practically at the same time the police did. You already knew what was going on there. You must have.”

  “We’d gotten the tip only a few days before,” said Barsanti.

  “And you didn’t immediately step in? You didn’t rescue those women?”

  “We had no listening devices in place yet. No way to monitor what was really happening inside.”

  “Yet you knew it was a brothel. You knew they were trapped in there.”

  “There was more at stake than you realize,” said Glasser. “Far more than just those five women. We had a larger investigation to protect, and if we stepped in too early, we would have blown our chances of secrecy.”

  “And now five women are dead.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Glasser’s anguished response startled them all. Abruptly, she rose to her feet and paced over to the window, where she stood gazing out at the city lights. “Do you know what the worst export our country ever sent to Russia was? The one thing we gave them that I wish to God had never been made? That movie, Pretty Woman. You know, the one with Julia Roberts. The prostitute as Cinderella. In Russia, they love that movie. The girls see it and think: If I go to America, I’ll meet Richard Gere. He’ll marry me, I’ll be rich, and I’ll live happily ever after. So even if the girl’s suspicious, even if she’s not sure a legitimate job’s really waiting for her in the US, she figures she’ll only have to turn a few tricks, and then Richard Gere will show up to rescue her. So the gir
l gets put on a flight, say, to Mexico City. From there, she travels by boat to San Diego. Or the traffickers drive her through a busy border crossing, and if she’s blond and speaks English, she’ll get waved right through. Or sometimes, they’ll just walk her across. She thinks she’s coming to live the life of Pretty Woman. Instead, she’s bought and sold like a side of beef.” Glasser turned and looked at Jane. “Do you know what a nice-looking girl can earn for a pimp?”

  Jane shook her head.

  “Thirty thousand dollars a week. A week.” Glasser’s gaze turned back to the window. “There aren’t any mansions with Richard Gere waiting to marry you. You end up locked in a house or apartment, supervised by the real monsters in the business. The people who train you, enforce discipline, crush your spirit. Other women.”

  “Jane Doe number five,” said Gabriel.

  Glasser nodded. “The house mother. So to speak.”

  “Killed by the same people she worked for?” said Jane.

  “When you swim with sharks, you’re bound to get bitten.”

  Or, in this case, have your hands crushed, the bones pulverized, thought Jane. Punishment for some trespass, some betrayal.

  “Five women died in that house,” said Glasser. “But there are fifty thousand other lost souls out there, trapped in the land of the free. Abused by men who just want sex and don’t give a damn if the whore is sobbing. Men who never spare a thought for the human being they just used. Maybe the man goes home to the wife and kids, plays the good husband. But days or weeks later, he’s back at the brothel, to fuck some girl who may be his daughter’s age. And it never occurs to him, every morning when he looks in the mirror, that he’s staring at a monster.” Glasser’s voice had dropped to a tight whisper. She took a deep breath, and rubbed the back of her neck, as though massaging away the rage.

  “Who was Olena?” Jane asked.

  “Her full name? We’ll probably never know it.”

  Jane looked at Barsanti. “You followed her all the way to Boston, and you never even knew her name?”

  “But we knew something else about her,” said Barsanti. “We knew she was a witness. She was in that house, in Ashburn.”

  This is it, thought Jane. The link between Ashburn and Boston. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Fingerprints. The crime scene unit collected literally dozens of unidentified prints in that house. Prints that didn’t match any of the victims. Some of them may have been left by male clients. But one set of unidentifieds matched Olena’s.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Gabriel. “Boston PD immediately requested an AFIS search on Olena’s prints. They got back absolutely no matches. Yet you’re telling me her prints were found at a crime scene in January? Why didn’t AFIS gives us that information?”

  Glasser and Barsanti glanced at each other. An uneasy look that only too clearly answered Gabriel’s question.

  “You kept her prints out of AFIS,” said Gabriel. “That was information Boston PD could have used.”

  “Other parties could have used it as well,” said Barsanti.

  “Who the hell are these others you talk about?” cut in Jane. “I was the one trapped in the hospital with that woman. I was the one with a gun to my head. Did you ever give a damn about the hostages?”

  “Of course we did,” said Glasser. “But we wanted everyone out of there alive. Including Olena.”

  “Especially Olena,” said Jane. “Since she was your witness.”

  Glasser nodded. “She saw what happened in Ashburn. That’s why those two men showed up in her hospital room.”

  “Who sent them?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You have the fingerprints on the man she shot. Who was he?”

  “We don’t know that, either. If he was ex-military, the Pentagon isn’t telling us.”

  “You’re with Justice. And you can’t get access to that information?”

  Glasser crossed toward Jane and sat down in a chair, looking at her. “Now you understand the hurdles we’re facing. Agent Barsanti and I have had to handle this quietly and discreetly. We’ve stayed under the radar, because they were looking for her, too. We were hoping to find her first. And we came so close. From Baltimore to Connecticut to Boston, Agent Barsanti has been just one step behind her.”

  “How were you able to track her?” asked Gabriel.

  “For a while it was easy. We just followed the trail left by Joseph Roke’s credit card. His ATM withdrawals.”

  Barsanti said, “I kept reaching out to him. Voice mails on his cell phone. I even left a message with an old aunt of his in Pennsylvania. Finally Roke called me back, and I tried to talk him into coming in. But he wouldn’t trust me. Then he shot that policeman in New Haven, and we lost track of them entirely. That’s when I think they split up.”

  “How did you know they were traveling together?”

  “The night of the Ashburn slayings,” said Glasser, “Joseph Roke bought gas at a nearby service station. He used his credit card, then asked the clerk if the station had a tow truck, because he’d picked up two women on the road who needed help with their car.”

  There was a silence. Gabriel and Jane looked at each other.

  “Two women?” said Jane.

  Glasser nodded. “The station’s security camera caught a view of Roke’s car while it was parked at the pump. Through the windshield, you can see there’s a woman sitting in the front seat. It’s Olena. That’s the night their lives intersected, the night Joseph Roke got involved. The minute he invited those women into his car, into his life, he was a marked man. Five hours after that stop at the service station, his house went up in flames. That’s when he surely realized he’d picked up a whole hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “And the second woman? You said he picked up two women on the road.”

  “We don’t know anything about her. Only that she was still traveling with them as far as New Haven. That was two months ago.”

  “You’re talking about the cruiser video. The shooting of that police officer.”

  “On the video, you can see a head pop up from Roke’s backseat. Just the back of the head—we’ve never seen her face. Which leaves us with almost no information on her at all. Just a few strands of red hair left on the seat. For all we know, she’s dead.”

  “But if she’s alive,” said Barsanti, “then she’s our last witness. The only one left who saw what happened in Ashburn.”

  Jane said, softly: “I can tell you her name.”

  Glasser frowned at her. “What?”

  “That’s the dream.” Jane looked at Gabriel. “That’s what Olena says to me.”

  “She’s been having a nightmare,” said Gabriel. “About the takedown.”

  “And what happens in the dream?” Glasser asked, her gaze riveted on Jane.

  Jane swallowed. “I hear men pounding on the door, breaking into the room. And she leans over me. To tell me something.”

  “Olena does?”

  “Yes. She says: ‘Mila knows.’ That’s all she tells me. ‘Mila knows.’ ”

  Glasser stared at her. “Mila knows? Present tense?” She looked at Barsanti. “Our witness is still alive.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  “I’m surprised you’re here, Dr. Isles,” said Peter Lukas. “Since I haven’t been able to reach you on the phone.” He gave her a quick handshake, a greeting that was justifiably cool and businesslike; Maura had not been returning his calls. He led her through the Boston Tribune lobby to the security desk, where the guard handed Maura an orange visitor’s badge.

  “You’ll have to return that when you leave, ma’am,” the guard said.

  “And you’d better,” added Lukas, “or this man will hunt you down like a dog.”

  “Warning noted,” said Maura, clipping the badge to her blouse. “You have better security here than the Pentagon.”

  “You have any idea how many people a newspaper pisses off every day?” He pressed the elevator call button and glanced at her u
nsmiling face. “Uh-oh. I think you must be one of them. Is that why you haven’t called me back?”

  “A number of people were unhappy with that column you wrote about me.”

  “Unhappy with you or with me?”

  “With me.”

  “Did I misquote you? Misrepresent you?”

  She hesitated. Admitted, “No.”

  “Then why are you annoyed with me? Because you clearly are.”

  She looked at him. “I spoke too frankly with you. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, I enjoyed interviewing a woman who speaks frankly,” he said. “It was a nice change.”

  “Do you know how many calls I got? About my theory of Christ’s resurrection?”

  “Oh. That.”

  “From as far away as Florida. People upset by my blasphemy.”

  “You only spoke your mind.”

  “When you have a public job like mine, it’s sometimes a dangerous thing to do.”

  “It goes with the territory, Dr. Isles. You’re a public figure, and if you say something interesting, it gets into print. At least you had something interesting to say, unlike most people I interview.”

  The elevator door opened, and they stepped in. Alone together, she was acutely aware that he was watching her. That he was standing uncomfortably close.

  “So why have you been calling me?” she asked. “Are you trying to get me into more trouble?”

  “I wanted to know about the autopsies on Joe and Olena. You never released a report.”

  “I never completed the postmortem. The bodies were transferred to the FBI labs.”

  “But your office did have temporary custody. I can’t believe you’d just let bodies sit in your cold room without performing some kind of examination. It wouldn’t be in your character.”

  “What, exactly, is my character?” She looked at him.

  “Curious. Exacting.” He smiled. “Tenacious.”