by T. J. Jones
"His place, with Sam? How long ago was this?"
"One year, one month, and a week, but who's counting." She laughed, relaxing and really smiled. She fell back into her chair and sighing loudly. "I've never told that to anyone besides Susy, it feels good to get it out."
Her sister picked up the story. "Once she got back, Davey set her up with this place and gave her money to help her get going. I came out here to help her at first, then I went to work for Davey, trying to do whatever I could to help. Sometimes I delivered money for him. He'd been doing it for a while, burning the candle at both ends, trying to get as many kids out as he could. That's the man Davey Templeton was Slater. Great guy, like I said before."
I fought tears. "You have no idea how much I needed to hear that."
"Sandy's story isn't unique. There's an underground slave trade going on all the time, all over the world. Women, kids, girls and boys sold like livestock to the highest bidder."
"But what about this Whitey guy? Could he be the same person that Davey knew?"
"Diablo Blanco? I don't know. Davey had bruises, all the time. That's why I asked you if he was with someone the day we first met. He told me he had a blood disease, poor clotting or something. Maybe the HIV, maybe someone hitting him, I don't know. Why would you think he was with the same guy that took Sandy?"
"Davey was involved with someone like that years ago." I decided not to say more. "So, his roommate Sam, he knows about all this? I talked to him, but he's a pretty good actor, I never had a clue."
"Did you meet his girlfriend, Dedra? Davey pulled her out of a brothel in Singapore two years ago. There were things Davey kept to himself. Sam didn't know everything that was going on, but he knew enough that he was willing to help fund what Davey was doing. Now with Davey gone, the whole network has kind of fallen apart and he's scared shitless, so of course he doesn't know who to trust. These people have a lot of power and a long reach. That's why it's hopeless going to the cops, it's global. They've been talking about it at the UN for years, but people in this country refuse to acknowledge it could happen. Most people can't even imagine that it's real and they don't want to believe it."
"What about Gleason, he didn't strike me as a nice guy."
"He's more likely to be part of the problem. Over the years, a lot of these kids have come through the Agencies doors. That's why Davey asked me to start working there, to keep an eye on Andy and talk to some of the girls at the other branches, try to figure out how the Talent Agency figures in and who knew what. There's a connection, but nothing I can prove yet."
"Holy Shit. I don't know what else to say. More than anything else, more than ever, I want to find the bastard that killed Davey. It sounds like he turned into kind of a hero. You too Sandy, to come through everything you did and survive, it took a lot of courage."
"I didn't have a choice, I was just trying to stay alive." We stood and she walked with us to the door. "I still worry that someday they'll find me, so maybe I'm not that brave."
"What about my partner, can I tell your story to her?" Sandy looked stricken, but her sister nodded to her.
"If Slater trusts her, so can we, alright?"
Susy drove me back to my pickup and we talked on the way.
"You don't think they would come after her after all this time, do you?" I asked.
"Doubtful, they got what they wanted from her, they'll just go a find a younger girl or boy to brutalize. I think that's why Davey was so careful that they never told any of them where they had been. If they went to the US consulate or even the UN and started raising hell, trying to name names, who knows who'd end up dead? Don't think for a moment they would hesitate to kill people over this. Davey was taking a hell of a chance every time he rescued one of those kids and I think he finally paid the price."
"Is what you're doing safe? You start digging around, they might come after you."
She hugged me quickly. "I can take care of myself. He was a good friend, and I really miss him. Helping girls like Sandy will be my way of paying him back."
"Thank you again, knowing what Davey was doing really helps me. I was about ready to give up on humanity in general."
"Don't do that Slater, Maggie will never marry you if you do that."
I laughed as I walked over to my truck and unlocked it. "We're not really engaged you know, that was just part of the cover story."
She grinned back at me as she put her car in gear. "Maybe, or maybe just not yet."
I watched her drive away. Dedra. She had said Sam's girlfriend's name was Dedra.
She was the third girl on Davey's list.
Chapter Twelve
Maggie wasn't thrilled to hear that I had met with Susy by myself, but she was happy that David Templeton wasn't quite the guy both of us were starting to think he was. Or maybe that was just me.
"I told you Slater, I knew there had to be more to the story. People are basically good if you give them a chance."
"Right, Mary Poppins. Don't forget about all the slimy dirtbags that are abusing these kids to start with, and don't forget that Davey might have been involved with some of it, at least early on. Back in the day, he conned Rosie Cabello into thinking she could trust him."
"I don't think he did that willingly."
"I agree, I think this Whitey guy had some sort of a hold on him. This is starting to look worse than I ever thought Maggie, really dangerous. I think I should keep digging, but maybe for now you should take a break."
"You sexist ass! Davey was my friend too. Oh, I'm a poor little girl, and I should just run home and hide under my bed so the bad men don't get me! Fat chance of that happening, how can you…"
I threw up a hand, giving up. "Alright! I shouldn't have even suggested it. But neither one of us is bulletproof, and somebody already tried to run me over and knocked me in the head. We both need to be more careful, is all I'm saying. Don't forget what Davey told Angie the last time he was home, that you should move away from Point Road, that it isn't a safe place."
"Turned out he was right, it's where he died. He flies all over the world, all these dangerous locations, lives in Miami, which isn't known for being safe, then he ends up dead in his own backyard. What does that tell you?"
"That we should be looking around here?"
"Somebody we probably know, someone who knew about the barn. It always comes back to that. Even if they killed him somewhere else, they took him out there to make it look like suicide. They knew where he lived and knew that barn was out there. Like I said before, not some complete stranger, and not some Sheik that caught him interfering with his whore-mongering. It was someone from here."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Does this?" She slid aside the light sweatshirt she was wearing and I could see the outline of the shoulder holster and the small Glock thru her top.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact it does. I'll have mine in a couple days, then we're going to the range and start practicing."
"I've been there already, but you can probably show me a thing or two." She grinned at me. "I'm talking about shooting."
"Didn't think you were flirting, but good to know it crossed your mind."
"Not a hint Slater, you'll know when that happens."
***
I spent the next couple of days filling out forms and mailing checks, clerical things that we all have to deal with. It was starting to look like I was going to be a licensed Private Investigator and Contractor in the state of Florida. As far as I could tell, there was no reason I couldn’t be both. The State might doubt my sanity, but they were still likely to cash my checks.
My plane needed some minor attention. A storm had blown through and tossed a couple of limbs down, smashing one of the exposed lights on the tail section. I spent a couple hours fixing the light, cleaning, and wondering how much bikers knew about airplanes.
It sounded like the trip north was going to happen, which didn't please me. Maybe it was part of the business, getting in the midd
le of complicated domestic situations, but there was a reason cops didn't like doing it. When you injected yourself into any kind of disagreement between family members you were asking for trouble. The irony of that thought had occurred to me, considering my relationship with Maggie and her sister.
But they were known elements, not some undoubtedly spoiled wild-child that had a thing for Harley's and men twice her age. I didn't have the details, but it seemed likely that if there was a bike rally, there might be more than a few bikers at the Thatcher's cabin, which amounted to a free campsite. Jasmine had said a few bikers. That probably meant something different to a seventeen-year old than it did to her grandmother. It was like having a few friends over for a party after school but forgetting to tell your parents you were buying a keg. It was possible we'd find a small gathering, but much more likely we'd drop into a Sturgis-like setting of drunken mayhem and more alcohol and testosterone than we could possibly handle. Trying to take a young girl out of that mess wouldn't be easy and it might be dangerous.
But she was a young girl, that was the thing. Granted, she wasn't a fifteen-year old that had been drugged and dragged halfway around the world while she was unconscious, but she was still too young to be straddling a Harley or the middle-aged dirtball that was driving it. As an Investigator, was it my job to even make those moral judgements, or should I just do what the client asked me to do, take my twenty-five hundred bucks and move on to the next case?
Bottom line, it wasn't the upcoming case that had me going in circles second guessing everything I was doing, it was the case I was already working on. Davey Templeton had almost certainly died at the hands of someone from the area, someone who knew about the horse barn.
I pondered all the reasons someone might have for killing Davey. I thought he might have taken the three million dollars he had in the bank from someone he shouldn't have, got caught and paid the price. That was one theory.
Then there was Rosalyn and her over protective boyfriend. Odds are Manny and his compadres would have been more than willing to extract their revenge on Davey if someone hadn't beat them to it. But if they had killed him, only a few hungry gators out in the 'Glades would have known about it. There would have been no pretense of suicide. Still remotely possible, another theory.
Davey's Dad had come and gone as a suspect. Three million dollars wasn't motive enough to kill your own son, even if he wasn't Captain of the football team or quite what you expected him to be. There may have been something going on between them that I didn't know about, some horrible truth as yet undiscovered. Still, probably the least likely of the possibilities I had laid out in my head.
Then there was the Diablo. Davey had somehow gotten himself hooked up with the mysterious Whitey, or Diablo Blanco, if they were the same person. It seemed, perhaps for a while, he had been party to the horrors the man was perpetrating. I had to set that aside for now, not think about the how and why of that and concentrate on the good things he had been doing in the last couple years.
It seemed like more than a coincidence that Davey's onetime abuser matched the description of the man who had kidnapped Sandy Foster. Perhaps that was Davey's introduction into the world of child abduction. I had to think that it was that knowledge that got him killed, that the Diablo learned what he was up to and killed him because of it. That seemed like the most likely theory.
Sandy had said that even in some God forsaken child prison in the Middle East, there were rich Americans. It's all about the money, that's what Davey had said. The degradations of a teenage whore house out in the desert somewhere were directly connected to the obscene amounts of money trading hands between assorted men with too much power. It was hard to imagine men sick enough, who felt self-entitled enough, that they would rape a child. Just because they could.
The idea sickened me. It sickened me more that I had one other theory, a new suspect to add to the list. There was one person I knew who ran in the circles of obscenely wealthy, self-entitled men; a man who lived on Point Road, who knew all about the horse barn, and was no fan of Davey Templeton. He was a man bereft of common decency according to Stacey Lane, and a man who seemed to be trying to block my investigation. It wasn't something I even wanted to consider, the least acceptable of all my theories, yet some of the pieces fit. Could Davey's killer be my new partner's father, Frank Jeffries?
***
"You need to make us an appointment with this Maryanne Thatcher." The date of the bike rally was getting close, and my red-headed partner was eager.
"Slater, I have everything we need, GPS coordinates, Google map of the airstrip and all the property nearby, even a picture of the girl." She handed me a photo of a young blond girl with pigtails.
"When was this picture taken? She looks ten years old here, of course she was cute and innocent back then. By now she's probably covered with Python tattoos, has a stud in her tongue, and spiked blue hair."
"I happen to think blue hair is sexy. I talked to Maryanne, everything is set, Partner."
"Partner? Well Partner, I'm not risking my airplane or my ass until I've talked to Grandma and she's convinced me we aren't going to have to kidnap little Miss Patty Hearst here at gunpoint in order to get her away from her Biker-daddy. Call her, please!"
***
As Davey and I had observed from our bicycle trips up and down the five mile stretch of road, most of the residents of Point Road were rich. In the vernacular of a thirteen-year old, the Thatcher's were stinky rich, obscenely so. In fact, they had gone beyond obscenely so by a few hundred million dollars. With tongue firmly planted in my cheek I referred to them as pornographically rich as the iron gates parted and we drove down the tree lined lane toward the big house. Not surprisingly, my partner didn't appreciate the pun.
"If Maryanne had a son in the business instead of a daughter you wouldn't say a word about it."
"Right, I'm sure Ron Jeremy's Mom is proud as hell."
"That guy really needs to lose some weight."
"And that's your only problem with Ron Jeremy?"
"It's a case Slater. The Thatchers made their money in oil. Even Divine's money is peanuts compared to Maryanne's holdings in the Dakotas."
"Oil trumps porn. Get it?" She rolled her eyes, but I was pretty sure I'd won that round.
Whatever the origin of the Thatcher's fortune, there was no denying it had to be considerable. Much like the Templeton's, the Thatcher's drive was at least a quarter mile long. Unlike the old plantation, there was no rock wall. The drive was lined with shrubs, all exactly the same height, all trimmed exactly the same way, all in groups of three, all of the groups spaced evenly. I looked out at the field on my side and saw that inside the shrub line was a white fence, and inside the fence were half a dozen well groomed, well fed horses.
It was an idyllic scene, the green grass, the white fence, the horses; like one of those paint by number sets you do while discovering you have absolutely no artistic abilities. The horses seemed excited by our presence and trotted along on the other side of the fence, keeping pace with the car. Every few seconds the painting changed, rearranging itself when the shrubs blocked our view. First there were six horses, then four, then two, then one. One horse, standing all alone as we neared the big house. The tall animal ran out of pasture but stood in the nearest corner of the fencing, poking its head over the top railing, staring at us intently.
It looked sad to me. I wondered if that had been Jasmine's horse and it followed each time a car came down the driveway hoping it was the blue-haired wild child come home to saddle up and go for a ride. Beyond the white fence and the horses, there was a bright red barn with white trim. A shiny new John Deere stood just inside and a farm hand was loading hay into the small wagon behind it.
We pulled up to the big house, following the circle of the cobblestone driveway to a front porch that was flanked by two enormous white pillars. I thought about how Angela would have looked right at home on that front porch, drinking a mint julip and waving a fan at her
face while she complained to Mammy about the heat and waited for gentleman callers.
"Slater! Did you doze off?" Maggie dragged me back to reality.
"Just a minute." I jumped out of the car quickly. "I'll be right back."
She stood there watching me as I trotted down to the fence. Who in their right mind would leave a place like this, ride on a Harley with a smelly biker when you could relive a scene from National Velvet anytime you wanted? Funny, how easy it is to imagine someone else's dream, or what you think it ought to be. The reality is never as great.
The horse flipped its head as I walked up to the fence and reached out. "Hey, watch it! That's mare's mean as hell." I jerked my hand back just in time as the glue factory reject took a vicious swipe, trying to tear my finger off. A middle aged, brown farmhand walked up laughing. "I swear, old Dolly likes the taste of people. Never seen a horse that ornery."
I glared at the animal. "I felt sorry for her, I thought she was lonely. Stupid horse."
The man shrugged. "Probably is lonely. These horses are just for show mostly, for rich folks to look at. They have a trainer that comes over twice a week and they behave for her, and they love my son, but that one would bite me too if I let her."
The horse reached across the fence, trying for a piece of my shoulder and the brown man grabbed her nose and gave it a little twist. The mare jumped back, spun around and ran off across the pasture, then dropped and started rolling in the grass.
"See? She's laughing at us. I didn't hurt her, she just has to know who's boss. I'm no horse wrangler, but I know that much."
"What do you do, when you're not being a horse wrangler?"
"Carpentry most of the time. Anything for a buck, like they say. I'm just helping out my kid today, filling in."
"Really? I'm looking for a carpenter, maybe pretty soon. Do you have a card?"
