Kingston Kidnappings (What Happens In Vegas Book 3)

by Matt Lincoln

  “No,” Mr. Green replied. “The man who came the first time was young. He looked like a college student, which was why we believed him. We never saw him again after that first visit. It was always different, much older men. My wife thought it was strange, and she wanted to back out, but I…” the man trailed off and hung his head in guilt. “I told her she was irrational. I insisted we go through with the arrangement.”

  “Was there anything peculiar about any of the men who came to your home?” Patel asked. “Anything that might help us identify them?”

  “They just seemed like normal men,” Mr. Green shrugged. “I never noticed anything that strange.”

  “Their accents,” Mrs. Green suddenly interjected. “They weren’t from Jamaica. I never thought about it until just now when you mentioned it, but they all spoke with a Bermudian accent. My grandmother used to speak that way.”

  I could see Patel tense up at the mention of Bermuda.

  “Thank you,” she smiled. “You’ve both been very helpful. The police might have some questions for you, but aside from that, you won’t be bothered again.” She turned and left the house, and I followed after her awkwardly. I hadn’t actually said much during the interview with the parents. They seemed comfortable with her, and I didn’t want to mess that up by interfering. I was also admittedly still a little shaken from my run-in with the thugs from earlier.

  “We should head to the police station,” she sighed.

  “It’s two in the morning,” I responded as I glanced down at my phone to check the time.

  “Right,” she shook her head distractedly. “Let’s head back to the hotel then. I want to get out of here. We can head to the police station first thing in the morning.”

  “Alright,” I nodded, falling into step with her as she took off at a brisk pace. I could tell there was something on her mind, and I had a suspicion it had to do with the fact that the traffickers were possibly based out of Bermuda. If I remembered correctly, that was where her parents were currently living.

  She led the way out of the neighborhood and back toward the center of Kingston, where our hotel was. As we walked, I thought about the events of the night. I felt satisfied that we’d managed to catch one of the suspects but disappointed that one had managed to get away. I also felt both excitement and trepidation about the prospect of traveling to Bermuda and getting one step closer to finding the trafficking group. It was a lot to process this late at night, and I was eager to get to the hotel and get some rest before the next day began.

  25

  Charlie

  The next day I woke up feeling groggy. It had been nearly three in the morning by the time we made it back to the hotel. We hadn’t wanted to push off the interrogation too late in the day, so we’d decided to get to the police station at ten the next morning. It was now nine, which meant I’d gotten less than six hours of sleep, and it was evident by the stinging in my eyes and the faint throbbing in the back of my head.

  I’d just need to chug some coffee before setting out. I hated working when I felt this drowsy, but I’d just have to suck it up. One of the suspects had escaped, which meant that we had to move even more quickly now. It was highly likely that he’d report what had happened to his superiors, which meant that we’d lost the element of surprise. Now that they knew we were onto them, we couldn’t afford to waste any time.

  I walked into the bathroom to check the wound on my side. It was shallow, more of a scratch than a puncture. It might have been wise to get some stitches, but for now, I’d make do with some gauze and bandages. The bleeding had stopped, and it didn’t hurt that badly, anyway.

  Half an hour later, I was dressed and had tossed back two full cups of coffee. My headache had completely subsided by then, and I felt much more alert. I left the room and headed across the hall to Patel’s. The door opened just as I was about to knock, and she jumped when she looked up and saw me standing there.

  “You scared me,” she sighed. “I wasn’t expecting you to be standing there.”

  “Sorry,” I responded. “I was just about to ask if you were ready to set out.”

  “I am,” she nodded as she turned around to close the door behind her. “Let’s go.”

  We took a taxi to the police station, which I was secretly grateful for. Though I understood why we’d chosen not to drive into Trenchtown the previous night, the walk back to our hotel had been long and tiring, especially after the events of the evening. We’d discussed renting a car for the remainder of our stay in Jamaica, but since we’d most likely have to travel to Bermuda soon, it didn’t seem like a practical idea.

  It was the same police station we’d interrogated Aaron Brown in earlier, a large two-story building painted blue and white. Once we were inside, I decided to take the lead in speaking to the police officers. Though I’d let Patel do most of the talking last night, so far, the cops had been more hostile toward her than the average citizens we’d encountered had been.

  “Hello,” I called as we approached the front desk. “Agent Hills and Agent Patel with MBLIS. We’re here to interrogate a suspect that was detained late last night in the vicinity of Trenchtown.”

  “Of course,” the man replied. “Someone will be here to help you in a moment.”

  I stepped away from the desk to wait. Like in the airport, the inside of the police station was actually stuffier than the air outside. Large metal fans spun overhead, but I doubted they were doing much more than just circulating the hot air around without actually cooling it. I rolled my shoulders uncomfortably. The heat was causing my clothes to stick to my skin, and I hated the damp feeling.

  “Hello, are you the federal agents?” a police officer in a dark uniform asked as he walked up to us. I couldn’t imagine how awful he must feel in that heavy uniform.

  “We are,” I answered. “Is the suspect ready?”

  “Yes,” the officer replied slowly, tossing Patel a disparaging look. She was wearing a similar outfit to the one she wore yesterday. It wasn’t revealing and honestly made perfect sense to wear in a tropical climate.

  “The suspect?” I prompted again, a little more angrily than I’d intended to.

  “Right this way,” the man nodded as he turned to lead us further into the station. “His name is Leroy Jackson. Thirty-seven years old. He works as a mechanic. He has a few prior charges for drug dealing and petty assault.”

  “Has he said anything about what happened last night?” I asked as we made it to the interrogation room.

  “We have not spoken with him,” the officer answered. “After he was discharged from the hospital, he was brought straight here. We decided it was best to wait until you showed up.”

  “Alright,” I nodded as we stepped into the room. It was bisected by a two-way mirror. Inside I could see the suspect from the night before. He was wearing a set of gray prison clothes, but I could see some bandages peeking out from beneath the collar of his shirt.

  “Shall we both go in?” Patel asked as she looked at Jackson through the glass. “Do what we did last time? It certainly seemed to intimidate Brown.”

  “I don’t know,” I hesitated as I analyzed Jackson’s behavior.

  Brown had been visibly nervous and fidgety. I’d known going in that intimidation would be the best way to get him to break. Jackson, on the other hand, showed no sign of fear. It didn’t seem like he was faking it, either. I was pretty good at figuring out when a suspect was just putting on a show of being brave, but Jackson didn’t look like that. His eyes were cold and unfeeling, and his posture was completely relaxed. It didn’t seem like he was worried about the position he was in at all.

  “What are you thinking?” Patel asked.

  “I don’t know if ganging up on him will work,” I replied. “Nothing in his body language suggests that he’s scared about being arrested or interrogated. I might need to speak with him for a while to figure out the best way to approach him.”

  “Do you think that’ll go better if you’re on your ow
n?” she asked. She didn’t sound like she was offended at the thought of being excluded, just curious about what I was thinking.

  “Yes,” I answered. “If we’re both in there, he might try to work us against each other. It’ll be hard for me to get a feel for him if he’s constantly switching his attention between the two of us.”

  “I understand,” she nodded. “I’ll wait here then. If I notice anything about his behavior, I’ll call you out so we can discuss it. For now, I’ll just observe.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I took a deep breath before walking through the door beside the two-way mirror.

  The suspect looked up at me as I entered but otherwise didn’t tense up or show any sign of fear. On the contrary, he threw me a cocky smile as I took a seat in front of him.

  “Hey,” he smiled cheerfully. “Where’s that pretty lady that shot me? I want to talk to her. Is she still around?”

  I was glad we’d chosen to have Patel watch from the other side of the glass while I conducted the interrogation.

  “She’s still around,” I confirmed. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak with her. You’ll have to settle for talking to me.”

  “Man,” Jackson whined. “Who wants to talk to some ugly guy like you? Nah, I want to talk to that pretty lady. Go back and bring her here instead.”

  His dismissive attitude and relaxed posture were actually extremely grating. This man wasn’t taking what he’d done seriously at all.

  “Can you tell me what you were doing in that house last night, Jackson?” I asked. I didn’t really expect him to answer, but his behavior and reaction to my question might give me a hint as to how to approach him.

  “Man, I already told you,” he scoffed, sounding slightly angrier now. “I don’t want to talk to you. Get out of my face, okay?”

  “Why do you want to talk to her so badly?” I asked.

  “She owes me,” Jackson growled. “She just gonna shoot a man and then walk away? Nah, man, you tell her to come in here and talk to me herself.”

  I was about to retort when I heard a knock against the glass. I shot Jackson a glare before standing up and leaving the room.

  “Let me talk to him,” Patel urged as I closed the door behind me.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You don’t think he’s just going to spend the entire time being a creep?”

  “Maybe,” Patel nodded. “But it might get us some answers faster. We don’t know how many more children are still out there, and we need to move as quickly as possible.”

  “Alright,” I agreed.

  Part of me wanted to offer to go in with her, but I felt that might be a little insulting to her. She was a capable federal agent, and if she felt that she could handle the suspect, I should respect that. I’d still be on alert, though, just in case Jackson tried anything.

  Jackson’s eyes lit up as Patel stepped into the room. I crossed my arms over my chest and watched through the two-way mirror as she took the seat across the table from him.

  “Hey, there’s the pretty lady,” Jackson crooned, once again resuming his relaxed posture.

  “Agent Patel,” she corrected. “You said you wanted to speak to me, so speak.”

  “Slow down, baby,” Jackson cooed as he leaned across the table toward her. “What’s your rush?”

  “My rush,” she stated calmly, “is due to the fact that your comrades are off kidnapping children in an attempt to sell them off to the highest bidder. How about we talk about that?”

  Jackson just scoffed and rolled his eyes. I clenched my fist reflexively, but to her credit, Patel didn’t seem affected by the suspect’s nonchalant attitude.

  “What do you want me to say?” he asked.

  “How about the location of your base?” Patel suggested. “Or the name of your organization’s leader?”

  “What’s in it for me if I talk?” Jackson asked, roving his gaze over Patel’s form lewdly.

  “What do you want?” she asked, clasping her hands together on the table and leaning toward him.

  “I bet I can think of something,” Jackson sneered.

  I uncrossed my arms and made to move toward the door. I wasn’t interested in watching any more of this clown’s antics. Before I could take a step, though, a large, dark shadow rushed past me and pushed the door open.

  The police officer who had escorted us to the interrogation room had suddenly barged in. Patel jumped out of her seat in surprise as the cop marched up to Jackson.

  “Answer her question,” the officer yelled as he struck Jackson across the face with the back of his hand. I flinched in shock at what I was seeing. Patel, too, seemed to be frozen in surprise. The officer hit the suspect three more times before he finally gave in.

  “Okay, okay!” Jackson yelled, hunching in on himself in an attempt to escape the officer’s blows.

  “Are you finished acting like a fool?” the officer asked menacingly, raising his hand up above his head.

  “Yes,” Jackson practically squeaked.

  The officer lowered his arm and stalked back out of the interrogation room. I stared at him as he took a seat beside me, completely bewildered by what I’d just seen.

  “What?” he shrugged. “You said there were children in danger, right? That idiot was just playing around, relaxing like he was in his own home. He needed a lesson to remind him who’s really in charge here.”

  I felt goosebumps rise along my arms at how indifferent the man seemed after having just beaten a suspect into a confession. I looked back into the room. Patel seemed to have regained her composure and was once again seated calmly in front of Jackson.

  “Now then,” she began. “Let’s try again. Tell me what you know about the head of this organization.”

  “His name is Usain Davis,” Jackson replied meekly as he rubbed his cheek where the officer had hit him. “That’s what we know him as, anyway. There are a few others who call the shots, but he’s the one at the top.”

  “The police will get the names of the others later,” Patel nodded. “For now, tell me what else you know about Davis.”

  “I don’t know,” Jackson retorted angrily, all traces of his earlier relaxed attitude gone. “He’s the boss. We do what he tells us to, and we get paid.”

  “Do you know where he is right now?” Patel asked.

  “Yeah,” Jackson grumbled. “Bermuda. That’s where the group’s headquarters is.”

  If the news affected Patel in any way, she didn’t show it.

  “Are all the members of your organization from Bermuda?” she asked calmly.

  “Most of us,” Jackson nodded. “Davis decided to take the kids from Jamaica in case the cops got wise to us. Don’t cause trouble where you sleep, you know? It would have been too obvious if we were snatching kids from Bermuda, so we did it over here. And it worked, right? You feds came straight to Jamaica.” Jackson smirked, but the smile slipped off his face as he glanced up at the two-way mirror. He couldn’t see us, but he could probably guess that the cop who’d just beaten him was probably standing on the other side.

  “Do you know exactly where in Bermuda he is?” Patel asked.

  “Yeah,” Jackson responded. “This fancy hotel in Port of Spain, right on the coast. The Blue Crown, I think it’s called.”

  “Okay,” Patel muttered as she quickly typed the name into a memo on her phone. “What about the man who was with you last night?”

  “That was Ethan,” Jackson replied. “Ethan Williams. He’s just a grunt worker like me.”

  “Do you know where he would have gone?” Patel asked.

  “Probably straight to warn Davis,” Jackson smiled tauntingly. “You’d better hurry.”

  Patel stood up without another word and briskly left the room. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get out of there. Between the vile comments he’d made and the sudden, unexpected beating that the cop had doled out, it had been a stressful interrogation.

  “We need to call W
allace,” she declared as she exited the room. “We’ll have him arrange a flight for us so we can leave for Bermuda right away.”

  “You don’t think he was lying?” I asked.

  “No,” Patel shook her head as she walked down the hall toward the entrance of the police station. “He didn’t seem like it. Especially after that beating the officer gave him.”

  “Yeah, what exactly was that?” I asked as I followed her through the front doors of the station and onto the street. “After he was finished, he just sat down like nothing was wrong, and you just continued the investigation. Not that my heart was bleeding for that creep, but something like that would have led to an internal investigation back home.”

  “Well, we’re not at home,” Patel huffed as she fanned herself with the collar of her shirt. “And while I wouldn’t say that such practices are the norm here, it’s not exactly unheard of. I told you before that corruption runs rampant among law enforcement here. Even though it’s technically illegal, it’s highly doubtful that he’ll face any repercussions for attacking him like that. In the end, we got the information we needed. That’s what we should focus on.”

  I reflected on that while Patel pulled her phone out of her pocket to call Wallace. I felt conflicted about what had just happened. On the one hand, and I would never admit this out loud, I felt that Jackson had deserved what had happened to him. He was a child kidnapper. So what if he got a little roughed up if it meant we could save the kids? On the other hand, I knew that what had happened was wrong. It was basically vigilantism. Laws were put in place for a reason, and we couldn’t just allow police officers to beat suspects up for the sake of extracting a confession. There had admittedly been times when I’d been tempted to attack a suspect, but I’d always controlled myself because I knew that just wasn’t how our legal system worked. As a federal agent, I couldn’t allow myself to give in to my primal instincts and lash out just because I was angry.

  I looked over to the setting sun as I waited for Patel to finish speaking with Wallace. She was a few steps away, and I could only catch some of what she was saying. The breeze was cool and pleasant, and I allowed myself to just close my eyes and enjoy it for a few minutes.