Virtually Harmless

by P. D. Workman

  “I’m not seeing it,” she said, examining each key and trinket on Chastity’s keyring. There were a lot of them, and Micah didn’t want to miss it. It would be an easy place to hide a USB drive. But she couldn’t find a hidden compartment or removable piece on any of the trinkets. She put the keys down beside her and took out the next item.

  Eventually, there wasn’t much left but litter and a metal tampon case, with a retro cover and menstrual joke on the front that made Micah roll her eyes in embarrassment. She sifted through the litter, then checked the purse for any hidden compartments. She was beginning to suspect Chastity still had it on her person. In a piece of jewelry, maybe, though Chastity didn’t wear much jewelry. Micah had carefully checked every container of lipstick, aspirin, and everything else.

  She opened the tampon box, her face heating. She frowned, looking at the contents. She couldn’t see the USB drive, but the tampons had been removed from their protective sleeves and lay naked in their applicators. That wasn’t sanitary. She raised her eyes and looked at Chastity, who gave her a wide grin. A male guard would not clue in to the fact that they should be in wrappers. He would be too embarrassed and grossed out to examine them any further. Men always acted like tampons were dirty or contaminated, even when they were new and sterile.

  Micah took the tampon applicators apart, and found the tiny USB drive jammed inside of one.

  Marianna giggled. “What is that? Why is it in your tampon?”

  Chastity looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary. She smiled at Micah. “That’s how. It didn’t show up on the x-ray, because it’s in a metal box. And how many men do you know who would touch a tampon?”

  They both laughed. Micah held the USB drive in her hand. It was warm and solid. Her evidence was there. No matter what they did with the server. No matter if they burned down the whole EvPro building. She had the evidence.

  Raising her eyebrows at Chastity, she slipped the USB drive down the front of her hospital gown and into her bra. Not comfortable, maybe, but out of sight. When Cole and Bellows returned, they would have no idea that she had it.

  ❋

  When Cole got back to Micah’s bedside with the Jell-O, Chastity was gone. Micah could tell from Cole’s expression and the way he moved that he was on the same page as she was concerning Bellows. He could not be trusted. Maybe he was clean, but maybe he was not, but they couldn’t take the risk.

  Cole handed Micah her Jell-O with a smile. “Orange.”

  “Thanks. Orange is the best.”

  “Well, I should probably be getting on my way,” Bellows said casually, looking at the face of his phone. “I’m going to have a lot of paperwork to process tomorrow. Better get a good sleep tonight.”

  Micah nodded empathetically.

  She wished she could trust him. The way that she had felt when they were in the cabin and hiking down the mountain… she had trusted him implicitly. She had known that there was no way he could be a spy. But she just couldn’t be sure anymore. He had helped her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working with Kirk Haynes. It just meant that he didn’t want her to get killed. Or didn’t want to be killed with her. If he couldn’t deliver anything to Haynes, then they would dispose of him as well. He knew too much.

  Had he always been dirty? Or had they somehow paid him off in the midst of the investigation, directing him to go in a different direction or to give them a heads-up if he got anything that implicated Haynes? Or had they blackmailed him? Threatened his family?

  She gazed at him, and he looked back at her with a frank and open expression. If his family was under threat, he was a very good actor. She couldn’t see any fear or anger in his eyes. Greed… maybe. Maybe he had become immune to the humanity of what he was doing. He had lost touch with the side of himself that cared what had happened to Trisha and her baby. Or maybe it had never meant anything to him, and he was only in law enforcement for the thrills—those fleeting, adrenaline-powered moments when he really felt alive.

  “What is going to happen to Kirk Haynes?” she asked, watching his eyes. “Are you going to be able to arrest him?”

  “We’ll have to see how the evidence stacks up. Come and see me tomorrow, and I’ll take your statement on the kidnapping. Did you actually see his face…?”

  Should she admit it? Or would saying that she had seen his face be her death sentence? Micah struggled, unsure what to say to him.

  “She might not remember,” Cole suggested. “Memories of traumatic events are tricky.”

  “Yeah.” Micah nodded. “I don’t remember if I saw his face… or if I was just thinking about him, and thought it was him… it would have been dark. I might not have gotten a very good look.”

  “Well. Come by anyway and we’ll get your written statement. And I’ll do my reports, of course. I’ll give EvPro a call and make sure that they have the DNA evidence and composite. Even though… it was compromised by your handling of it.”

  “But when you arrest him, you can still prove he’s Sweetie’s father.” Micah swallowed, unnerved by the fleeting, furtive look that crossed Bellows’s face. “Do you know where the baby is? What family she’s with?”

  Bellows chewed on his lip. “She’s safe,” he said flatly. “He’s not going to find her.”

  Micah looked at him searchingly. Was he telling the truth, or was that a lie? Would Bellows keep Sweetie safe?

  She nodded slowly. He would, she thought, keep Sweetie safe. He would protect an innocent baby. The baby hadn’t deliberately gotten into the middle of an investigation. She hadn’t poked around like Micah had, carefully gathering together the clues that would compromise Kirk Haynes. She might have provided the evidence that pointed to Haynes’s guilt, but it hadn’t been intentional.

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Bellows was gone. Micah slurped her Jell-O like a little kid, ridiculously entertained by the wiggly solid that quickly dissolved into a liquid. Even though she knew it was not good for her, she deserved one little treat after the day she’d had.

  Cole patted Micah’s shoulder. “You and I need to talk.”

  “I already know.”

  “I don’t think he’s safe.”

  Micah nodded. “I don’t either.” She shook her head. “I feel terrible, not trusting him. He saved my life out there today.”

  “And you saved his. You don’t owe him anything.”

  “No… I just wish… We got along together; I wanted him to be a good guy.”

  Cole nodded his understanding. Marianna looked in the direction of the doors, catching up with them. “What? Deputy Bellows? You think he can’t be trusted? But that’s ridiculous. He’s a cop!”

  “Cops can be… corrupted,” Cole told her. “Neither of us likes the fact, but we can’t ignore it. I don’t want Micah to be in any worse danger.”

  “I don’t either,” Marianna agreed immediately. “Really, though? He seemed like such a nice man!”

  Micah and Cole both nodded, and Marianna sighed.

  “He seemed like such a nice man. I really was hoping…”

  Micah shook her head. “Even if he wasn’t dirty, he is still married.”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter to people these days.”

  Micah closed her eyes. “Now, I need to sleep.”

  ❋

  Micah wasn’t sure how long she had slept, but it was mid-morning before she awoke and was ready to do anything. Cole had told her to text him when she needed a ride, and he would drive her over to the sheriff’s department. Micah thought she could have driven herself, but her car was at home, so she consented to his picking her up and going with her.

  They ran a few errands first, such as stopping at a corner store to buy a pay-as-you-go phone. As soon as she had the new phone, Micah called Wes Watley. She explained the recent developments.

  “You could have let me know what was going on before this,” Wes pointed out. “I did ask you to let me know if you found anything
out about the baby.”

  “Uh… yeah, I should have given you a couple more updates,” Micah admitted.

  “You should have called me when you identified the perp.”

  “I know… but things happened so fast. I called Deputy Bellows, but I couldn’t get through to him, and then before I could do anything else, they bricked and jammed my phone, and then… took me and left me in this cabin.”

  “Go over it one more time for me. Start to finish. What you know and what you only suspect.”

  Cole and Micah were already at the police station, and they sat in the car while Micah described the evidence, kidnapping, and escape to Wes one more time.

  “Are you safe?” Wes asked.

  “I’m at the police station.”

  “The police station where you don’t know who is on the side of good and who is not?”

  “Well… yes.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “I don’t want them to know that I’m suspicious, so I have to behave like I’m not.”

  “Walking into something like that yourself is not safe and I’m too far away to get to you. I’ll make some calls to my contacts, but I don’t know how long it will take to get someone to you, or how long it will take to develop enough evidence against Haynes or this cop to make an arrest. Building organized crime cases can take years.”

  “My dad is with me.”

  “Your dad.”

  “He’s a retired cop, Wes.”

  “Oh.” There was a new note in Wes’s voice. “I don’t think you ever told me your father was in law enforcement.”

  “I might not have.”

  “And he’s okay with you going in there?”

  “He’ll make sure nothing happens to me. We’re just going to go along with Bellows and pretend that we don’t suspect anything.”

  “Okay. Well, keep me updated. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Let me know when you’re safely out of there. I’ll work it from my end.”

  ❋

  Micah and Cole walked into the sheriff’s office and did their best to pretend not to be suspicions of Bellows. Micah spent a long time writing out her statement, trying to include everything relevant and make sure that her account was perfect.

  But she did not include her suspicions of Frank Bellows or the fact that she had seen Haynes’s face. It seemed like a good idea to keep those things to herself for the moment.

  Bellows grimly informed her that the files at EvPro had been wiped, so there was no way for them to know now whether the initial analysis and Micah’s identification of Kirk Haynes were correct. And with the shape that Micah was in, the pain and trauma of the attack, she might have been experiencing some kind of PTSD or dissociative state when she had identified him. As she had always told him, a composite was not enough for an identification. They needed more: a direct DNA match and proper evidence.

  Micah didn’t look at her father. She didn’t look into Bellows’s eyes, but down at the table, trying to keep her emotions under control. He would expect her to be devastated. To doubt herself. He didn’t know that she still had copies of the information they had tried so hard to delete.

  They took a couple of breaks throughout the day. Micah needed coffee and lunch and time to go over her statement and make sure it was all in order.

  Bellows got a text on his phone that made him frown, and he excused himself from the room.

  Micah expected him to come back pretty quickly, but he did not. Maybe there was another case that something had come up on. She looked at Cole.

  “You look pretty tired. About ready to go home?” he suggested.

  Micah nodded. “Yeah, pretty soon. I think we’ve done about all that we can here.”

  The door opened, and a female cop Micah hadn’t met before stood there, looking uncertain.

  “Is everything okay?” Cole asked, standing.

  She opened her mouth to answer, and then they could hear the yelling. Frank Bellows was living up to his name, shouting angrily and protesting his treatment.

  “I’m afraid… there have been some unexpected developments.”

  “Is that Frank?” Micah asked.

  “Well… yes.”

  “What’s going on? What happened?”

  The cop’s hand was on the doorframe. She looked back over her shoulder anxiously, not sure what to tell them. “Well… there seem to be some FBI agents who… would like to talk to him.”

  Cole rubbed his upper lip, masking a smile. While the woman’s consternation was amusing, Micah felt sorry for her. And for Frank Bellows, even though he had brought it on himself. She felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She no longer had to worry about what she was going to do or whether she was right or wrong. The FBI would take care of it.

  There were voices in the hall, and the female cop moved aside for a man in a suit to enter. He looked at Micah, then looked down at his phone. “Miss Miller?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Micah nodded.

  The suit shot the woman cop a look that told her to stay out of the way, then stepped into the room and closed the door. “You’re not officially part of this investigation, so I was never here. Your friend Deputy Bellows was already under investigation by our team, so when it came to light today that he was trying to get the name of the family that your Baby Sweetgrass Doe is being fostered by, we decided it was time to move in.”

  There was a lump in Micah’s throat at the thought of Bellows giving that information to Kirk Haynes. She swallowed hard and shook her head.

  “Thank you. You already knew…?”

  “Some of these investigations can take years to develop, ma’am. It’s hard to stay back when you know people are being victimized, in order to be able to lay charges against more of the players and to hopefully bring down the whole organization instead of just one or two small fish. But that’s part of our job.”

  “I guess. Yes. Do you know… are you investigating Kirk Haynes and this sex trafficking ring, or just the sheriff’s department?”

  “Sorry, I can’t give you details on that. But you may want to stay away from the EvPro office for a couple of days and keep an eye on the news.”

  Micah still felt like she needed to sleep for a couple more days, so that wouldn’t be a problem. She was relieved that he anticipated things happening that quickly.

  “He kidnapped me. He beat me up. I’ll testify against him, if that will help.”

  The FBI agent looked down at the paper in front of her. “Is that your written statement?”

  “Yes… but I left some things out. I’ll need to spend a few more minutes on it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a USB drive. Not the original Chastity had smuggled out, but one of a pack of twelve identical copies which she and Cole had scattered across a number of locations, just in case. “And I have this. It includes the DNA evidence that proves he’s Sweetie’s father and the man who attacked me. And I did a composite sketch of his face before I figured out who he was.”

  “Sweetie?” the agent repeated.

  “The Sweetgrass Hills baby. That’s what we’ve all been calling her.”

  He smiled and picked up the USB drive from the table. “I imagine Haynes wasn’t too happy about you drawing him.”

  “No. Not very,” Micah agreed dryly.

  “This will be very helpful, thank you.” He slid it into his pocket. “And I’m supposed to tell you hello from ‘an old friend.’”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Micah put away her purse and straightened the things on her desk that the cleaners had moved so that everything was square and lined up the way she liked it.

  When she opened her email, she noticed a message in the private email that she had set up. She opened the message from a sender she had never heard of before and saw that it was empty except for a video attachment.

  Even though she’d kept that address private, shared with only a few close
friends or colleagues, she scanned the attachment with her antivirus program before opening it, just in case. When she double-clicked the video, it opened up and filled her screen.

  It was a police interview room. Stark and white with a few pieces of furniture and that was it. A blond girl was centered in the frame. Her interviewer was across the wobbly table from her, not in the picture.

  The girl was young, probably about eighteen, but she looked unnaturally aged and tired. Her blond hair was dry and matted. There were lines on her face that shouldn’t be on any eighteen-year-old’s face. She stared off into the distance, not looking at the camera or her interrogator. Her tone was flat and emotionless.

  “He liked Trish. He liked ’em young and pregnant—paid good money to be exclusive. But once the baby came… they always disappeared. They told me I had to help him. Do whatever he wanted. And I always did.”

  “What did he ask you to do?”

  “He wanted me to help get rid of the baby. We’d go up in the mountains, and I’d get rid of the baby and he’d get rid of Trish.”

  “What did he want you to do with the baby? Just leave her up there?”

  “No. I was supposed to kill it. Like he did Trish. Hide the body so no one would find it.” There was a long pause. The man didn’t say anything. The girl scratched at the table, then investigated her fingernails. Her face was blank. She swallowed a couple of times and cleared her throat. “Trish knew what was going to happen. She’d heard about the others. It had happened before.”

  Another long pause.

  “She begged me to protect the baby. She loved it. Said it was the only real family she’d ever had, and she wanted so bad to be its mom forever. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen.”