“So, what’s going on? Do you have new information to share?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’ve got something that could be a possible lead.”
“Alright. As always, you’ve got my attention. Let’s hear it.”
“Well, I decided to do a little digging into some of the other missing girl files. I wanted to see if there was anything connecting them or maybe just a clue that might be able to help us. I found this one case. It was a young girl, she was fifteen. She disappeared under similar circumstances at the beginning of the year and just reappeared a few weeks before Jordan supposedly went missing. I don’t know if her disappearance is connected to Jordan’s or not, but I thought it might be worth speaking to her. You wouldn’t have time to meet me over there later today, would you?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I would. What time are you meeting her?”
“Eleven. Over at her place.”
“Yeah, text me the address and I’ll be there.”
24
“Where’s Al?” asked Frankie when I stepped out of my vehicle at a small house in a run-down neighborhood.
“His sciatica is bothering him,” I said. “He decided to stay home.” I walked towards Frankie and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “You’re sure a sight for sore eyes.”
She laughed and patted my back as I hugged her. “What’s the matter, Danny? You sound tired.”
I tipped my head backwards so I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face. “I am tired. I haven’t been sleeping well. There’s a lot I need to fill you in on, regarding Jordan Lambert’s disappearance.”
Frankie pulled away and looked up at me. “Danny! You were supposed to be keeping me in the loop.”
“I just told you there’s a lot I need to tell you! I’m going to keep you in the loop. I just haven’t had time. Al and I have been following leads all over the island. Trust me, it’s a full-time job.”
“Plus you have a full-time job. How’s Artie feel about you doing all this running around?”
I lifted a shoulder. “No worries. I have employees who can handle the day-to-day stuff. And I check in all the time. I just came from my office, in fact. Senior citizens don’t get into a whole lot of trouble over there. Except for the occasional spat over beach loungers, it’s pretty slow.”
Frankie shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at me. “Okay, so should we discuss what you know about Jordan before we go interview this girl?”
“It’s okay. I’ll fill you in after. Are we ready?”
She nodded and began to walk up the front sidewalk. “Yeah. Her name is Heaven Abraham. She’s fifteen. Her parents reported her missing in January. She came back about two weeks before Jordan went missing.”
“Did she say where she was all that time?”
“Her file says she was with her boyfriend, but she wouldn’t tell the cops his name or where they’d been. But that’s all I know.” She turned, put one hand on her uniformed hip, and knocked on the front door.
We could hear lots of noises inside the house. A baby crying. The TV blaring loudly. People shouting. It took a second series of knocks on the door before a haggard-looking grey-haired woman appeared. “Mrs. Abraham?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Officer Cruz. We spoke on the phone earlier? I’m here to speak with Heaven.”
The woman nodded. “You can wait right here. I’ll go get her.”
“Thank you.”
Frankie and I stared at the door. Thoughts about Jordan and the case jumbled through my head, and I suddenly wished that I’d taken the time to go over all of the details with Frankie ahead of time. Maybe then we could’ve worked through them together and she would’ve been able to help me ask all the right questions. Now, I kind of felt on my own.
The door opened and a young girl with long, straight black hair that went down to her stomach looked back at us. She was thin, almost to the point of being gaunt. Her eyes looked dark and haunted, and she stared ahead at us like she was afraid.
“Heaven?” Frankie asked kindly.
Heaven’s head bobbed.
“Heaven, I’m Officer Cruz. This is my friend Danny. He’s kind of like a detective.” She looked over at me and gave me a wink.
“It’s nice to meet you Heaven,” I said, reaching out to shake her hand.
She looked at my hand but looked too afraid to take it.
Pulling my hand back, I smiled at her. “That’s alright.” I gestured towards a porch swing. “How about we sit?”
She nodded and walked over to the swing. I let Frankie take the seat next to her, and I sat across from them on the porch’s short railing.
I glanced at the door. “Is your mom going to join us?”
Heaven’s eyes widened, and her head shook rapidly. “No,” she whispered. “I didn’t want her to.”
“That’s okay,” said Frankie, giving the girl a reassuring smile. “Heaven, the reason we are here today is actually because of another case that we’re working on.”
Heaven looked interested then and slightly less afraid, like she knew she wasn’t in trouble.
Frankie nodded and continued. “There’s this other girl that disappeared kind of like you did. No word to her family or friends for quite a while.”
Heaven stared at Frankie, wide-eyed.
“You told the police when you came back home that you were with your boyfriend. Is that where you really were, Heaven?” asked Frankie.
Heaven’s head kind of bobbed slowly, but it was obvious she wasn’t fully committed to that answer.
“Where did you and your boyfriend hide for all that time?” asked Frankie.
Heaven shrugged.
“Was it on the island?”
The girl nodded.
“Was it at your boyfriend’s house?”
Heaven shrugged again.
“You know, we’re really worried that something bad is happening to this other girl,” I said. “I bet your parents were really worried about you when you were gone.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I promised this other girl’s family that I would help find her and try and keep her safe.”
Heaven looked up at me. For a brief moment, it almost looked like she wanted to talk, but then she pressed her lips together between her teeth.
So I decided to continue. “This other girl. She got involved in something she might’ve regretted. Do you ever regret leaving your family?”
Heaven nodded.
“Yeah. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you wanted them to. This girl that we’re looking for, things didn’t work out the way she thought they were going to either. She met some people that didn’t exactly do what they’d promised her.”
I heard Heaven’s breath catch in the back of her throat.
“You know, anything you tell us, we’ll keep to ourselves,” I said. “We’ll only use it to help find this other girl.”
“He’s right,” added Frankie, holding up her hands. “I’m not here trying to get you in trouble or anything. I’m just here to figure out if maybe you and this other girl were involved in some of the same things. So we can bring her home.”
Frankie and I were both quiet then. We wanted to give Heaven a turn to speak. The girl swallowed hard. “He wasn’t actually my boyfriend,” she whispered.
Frankie’s eyes darted up to look at me for just a split second. Then she looked at Heaven again. “Oh, who was he?”
“He was kind of my boss,” she whispered.
“Were you being paid while you were gone?” I asked her.
She looked up at me, a little surprised, and nodded.
“This other girl that disappeared, she was being paid too,” I divulged.
Frankie glanced over at me but kept her cool.
“They told her she could be a model,” I added.
The girl’s eyes grew really large then. “M-me too.”
“Did you get to do any modeling while you were away f
rom your family?”
Her eyes swung down to the porch and her head shook. “Huh-uh.”
“Is that why you came home?” asked Frankie.
She lifted a shoulder. “Sorta.”
“You didn’t like what they were paying you to do?” I asked calmly.
Her head bobbed and tears began to roll down her cheeks. She bit her bottom lip.
Frankie put her arm over the girl’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We just want to help this other girl, but we don’t know where she is.”
“I don’t know where it is either,” she whispered.
“Well, how did you get there?” asked Frankie, lowering her brows in confusion.
“In a limo?” I asked knowingly.
Heaven nodded. “And the windows were blacked out.”
“Were you at the same place the whole time you were gone?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Then you probably know a lot about the house. About the people you met. Maybe even some of their names?” I asked.
Heaven sucked in her breath and clamped her mouth shut tightly. Her head shook as if she was suddenly scared again.
I held a hand out calmly. “It’s okay, I already know some of the stuff. I know they told you they’d hurt you if you ever told anyone about where you’d been or went to the cops.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “They really wanted me to stay. They threatened me.”
I lowered my brows. “Then how were you able to get home?”
“The butler,” she said quietly. “He liked me. We were kind of friends, and he knew I wanted to go home to my family. And one day when the boss was gone, he put me in the limo and dropped me off downtown. I took a bus home with some of the money I’d earned.”
“You’ve been home all this time and they haven’t come after you,” I said quietly.
Tears fell down her cheeks again. “I don’t sleep very well anymore.”
“You’re scared they’ll come and get you?”
She nodded.
“Then help us, Heaven. Other girls shouldn’t have to go through what you went through,” said Frankie.
“I can’t. They said they’d find me if I talked to the cops.”
“They’re never going to know we were here,” said Frankie. “I swear to you.”
“Please, Heaven. Just tell us about this house they took you to.”
She was quiet for several long moments, no doubt contemplating what she felt comfortable sharing. “It was on the beach,” she whispered.
“Was it a big house?”
Her head went up and down, her eyes wide.
“A really big house, huh?”
“Yeah. He had a butler and a limo. It was big.”
“Were there more girls there than just you?”
“Yes. Some girls stayed there. But some of the older girls came and went. They had their own cars and their own bedrooms,” she said. “They got the cars from the boss for doing a good job and being trustworthy. That’s what he said. He said if I stayed long enough and became trustworthy enough, I’d get my own car too someday. And he said he’d help me go to college when I graduated from high school.”
“Wow. That all sounds nice.”
She shrugged as her eyes welled up again. “I just couldn’t keep doing what I was doing,” she whispered. “It all felt so wrong. I wasn’t raised like that. I just got started because I thought I could earn money doing modeling. I thought the other stuff wouldn’t be as bad as it was. But eventually I realized that it would take years to be a model. If I could ever be one at all.”
“Smart girl,” said Frankie, patting the girl’s hair gently.
Heaven looked up at her then. A police officer had just called her a smart girl. I could tell that it made her feel good.
“If you could only tell us anything about the people that kept you—”
“The butler’s name was Fernando. He was really nice to me.”
“Did he ever—participate in—”
Heaven was quick to shut that notion down. “No. Never. He was nice to all of us.”
“Do you know his last name?”
“No,” she whispered.
“How about his boss’s name?”
She swallowed hard. I could tell she knew it. Whether or not she wanted to tell was a different story.
“Please, Heaven,” said Frankie. “You might be saving other girls from what you went through.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” she said quietly with a little shrug. “They fed us well, and we got to swim in his pool and go to the beach when he wasn’t having parties.”
“What happened when he was having parties?”
“Then we had to work,” she said. “We each had our own room. And they’d bring in different guys, for—uh, massages. At least, that was always how it started.”
“But they wanted you to do more?” asked Frankie.
She bit her lip and nodded. She couldn’t look either of us in the eyes.
“Did you know or recognize any of the men they brought in?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Were they always different?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes they were different. Sometimes it was someone I remembered.”
As we talked, a little girl of about five stuck her pigtailed head out the door.
“Go inside, Josie,” snapped Heaven.
“Whatcha doing?” asked the little girl.
“None of your business. Go inside.” When the little girl didn’t budge from her place, Heaven lifted her brows. “I’ll call Mom out here.”
Josie sighed. “Oh, fine.” She wiggled her fingers at Frankie and me, giggled and ran back inside, slamming the door behind her.
“Your little sister?” asked Frankie.
Heaven nodded.
“Look, Heaven. Guys like the man you dealt with need to get taken off of this island. Think about it. Whoever he is, if he’s still doing business in a couple of years when Josie’s your age and he gets his claws into her, how would you feel about her doing what you did?” I asked.
Her eyes filled with tears again.
“Do you want that to happen?”
She shook her head and tears rolled down her cheeks. “No.”
“Then you have to help us take this guy off the streets.”
She was quiet.
“What’s his name, Heaven?” asked Frankie. “All we want is a name.”
Another few seconds passed. Finally, Heaven closed her eyes and sighed. Then she opened them and looked at me. “Harvey. His name was Harvey.”
25
“Miss me already, Danny?”
I chuckled into the phone and put on my turn signal. “All the time, Frankie.”
She laughed too. “So what’s up? Think of some other important detail you forgot to share with me?”
I was driving away from the park where Frankie and I had gone after interviewing Heaven. I’d shared as much of the pertinent details of the case as I felt comfortable sharing. Of course, I’d left out the parts about sneaking into Kip Dalton’s house and embarrassing myself at Steve Dillon’s Automart. Some things were better left on closed lips, even if it meant not being able to show her the picture I’d taken.
“No, nothing else to share. I’m just jazzed about the fact that we have a name now. I wish we had a last name to go with it.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to be patient. I told you. As soon as I get back to the station, I’ll work on it.”
“I know. I just wanted to thank you for continuing to dig on Jordan’s case. And I really appreciate you letting me in on that interview with Heaven. She really blew this whole case wide open.”
“Yeah, well,” she said with a sigh, “I had no idea about the underage prostitution ring going on on the island. So you blew that wide open for me, too.”
I smiled. It felt good being able to share some information with Frankie, instead of it only being the other way around. “Good. How’s the saying go? I rub your back,
you rub mine?”
Her hearty laugh warmed my heart. “It’s I scratch your back, you scratch mine, Danny.”
“Meh. I’d prefer to rub yours. Maybe we could throw in some massage oil and a few drinks.” The thought of a topless Francesca Cruz lying on my bed awaiting a body rub-down made my pulse accelerate.
“Umm, how exactly did we veer this far off topic?” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Are we off topic?”
“We are.”
“What was the topic again?”
“The case we’re working on? Jordan Lambert ring a bell?”
I chuckled. “Right. Anyway, I just wanted to call and thank you for everything.”
“Oh. That’s sweet of you. Well, you’re welcome. We work well together.”
“I completely agree. And I’ll call you if I get any new information. You’ll do the same?”
“I will.”
“Great. Hopefully we’ll talk soon, then.”
“Sounds good. Bye, Danny.”
She hung up before I could even tell her goodbye, but I didn’t care. Something about spending the afternoon with Frankie Cruz had buoyed my spirits. It was exactly what I’d needed. I didn’t know if it was the new information we’d gotten, including the name Heaven had given us, or if it was simply getting to sit across a picnic table from the woman at the park for an hour. Regardless, I was flying high when I happened to glance in my rearview mirror and saw flashing lights behind me.
I glanced down at my speedometer. I was under the speed limit, an odd habit of mine—when I was tired or lost in thought, my feet seemed to have helium balloons tied to it. I pulled to the side of the road, thinking the lights must have been for someone else. But when the squad car pulled over to the shoulder with me, I groaned.
Shit.
I wondered if I had a light out or something. Though that seemed unlikely, considering I was driving a new vehicle. Maybe it was because I only had dealer plates or something. As I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket to retrieve my license, I shot a glance in my rearview mirror. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw none other than Sergeant Gibson.
My head fell back against the headrest. “Ugh,” I groaned. “Fuck.” Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed as if the man had had it in for me since I came to the island.
Drunk Driving Page 15
