Blood Moon (20 page)

Or she’s someplace far away. Hopefully not picked up by some other asswipe, to sell in another city
, Roarke thought. It happened all the time.

“What do you know about her?” he asked.

She frowned. “She showed up on the street two, three months ago. I’ve tried talking with her half a dozen times, not much luck. They’re skittish as deer, these girls. They’re all under orders not to talk to anyone but the johns. They get the shit beaten out of them if they even make eye contact with anyone else. The Romeos,” she said, and there was loathing in her voice. “They run five or six girls at a time, keep up a relationship with all of them. They know how to pick the damaged ones, and they know how to work them. Promise a house, kids.” She mimicked a man’s seductive street drawl. ‘
Just a few more months, baby, do it for me a few more months, we can make it happen
.’” She pushed her coffee away from her.

“This girl Jade is smarter than that, really. She has fire. I didn’t think he quite had her yet, but the meth is rotting her brain. I hadn’t seen her for a few days and I was thinking…” She glanced out the window. “Stupid, but I thought she might have broken away.”

“Can you describe her for me?”

Rachel looked wry. “She’s hard to miss, actually. She has body art, this whole scene on her back and arms. A dancer in fire, trees with these flaming flowers. Must have hurt like hell, I can’t even imagine. And she’s a beauty, too, at least you can see she was before the meth.” She paused, and then added, “There’s something different about her. She’s a fighter.”

Roarke felt a buzzing in his brain that he knew meant this was the right track. And if Cara had taken an interest in this girl, Jade, she wouldn’t have thought twice about eliminating the pimp.

It’s who she is. It’s what she does
.

“Ramirez’ other girls. Did you find any of them?”

She gave him a cynical look. “Did you want to talk to them?”

“I meant, were you able to get them into the house?”

Now she looked startled, and dropped her eyes. “Two of them.”

“That’s good.”

“One of them is thirteen. You know what they say, the pimps? ‘The best kids to have are the ones who’ve been had by their daddies.’”

He heard the anger in her voice, could see it in her eyes. There was her anger, and there was Cara’s anger. There was her way, and there was Cara’s way. Not so different in theory, but miles apart in practice.

She saw him evaluating her, and sighed, pushed back her hair. “It’s a long road.”

“But it’s a start,” he said.

“It is.”

Their eyes met across the table… and he had the impression of a door opening between them, of an unspoken invitation. He knew what to do next: ask her how she’d gotten into this business, where she was from originally, all those things that people say and do, the dance.

And he said none of it.

The silence continued, became thick and awkward. She broke it, finally. “So this woman, in the sketch. You think she killed Danny?”

Roarke looked away. “Probably.”

“Why?” She found his gaze again, held it, probing. “Just because he needed killing?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s… something to think about. Is Jade in danger?”

He didn’t know what she meant at first. “From the suspect?” he asked. He’d almost said, “
From Cara
?”

“Jade is a witness,” Rachel pointed out. “I want to know if you think the killer will come after her.”

“That’s not at all likely.” In fact, it struck him that Cara was in more danger from Jade, if the girl could identify her as Ramirez’ killer. She might well end up being the key to Cara’s eventual prosecution.
If we can take her alive
, a voice in his mind said. The café suddenly felt hot, stifling. The smell of coffee was starting to make him sick.

He saw that Rachel was waiting for him to explain, to say more. “Her only victims so far are adult males.” He knew he should add,
as far as we know
, but he felt a reluctance to discuss Cara with Rachel that he couldn’t have explained to himself, or didn’t want to look at.

“So this is some kind of vigilante thing?”

“We think so, yes.”

“She kills pimps?”

“Child molesters. Rapists. Sex traffickers.”

Rachel stared at him. “Seriously?” She shook her head, looked out the window at the street. “My God…”

“What?” he said suddenly. “What are you thinking? I’d like to know.”

She was silent for a moment, thinking. “Well, I’m not sorry,” she said, finally. “How do
you
feel about it?”

For some reason he told her the truth. “I don’t know. I know how I’m
supposed
to feel.”

She glanced at him. “Maybe you should order breakfast.”

“Sorry, what?” he said.

“Or lunch. I find everything tends to go better when a man’s blood sugar is stable.” She looked at him, with clear gray eyes, flushed cheeks. For a suspended second Roarke found himself considering the invitation… both of them —

And then his phone buzzed.

He checked the number. Singh. He made an apologetic gesture toward Rachel. She shook her head slightly: no apology necessary.

Roarke turned away from her toward the window, put the phone to his ear. “I’m here.”

“We’ve got a possible hit, chief.”

“A hit?”

There was a pause on the phone. “I took the liberty of searching the prison databases last night for parolees who fit our criteria for the Reaper.”

Roarke felt a jolt of exhilaration. They were moving into dangerous territory. But the fact that Singh had pursued it herself was its own kind of validation.

“Tell me,” he said, through a dry mouth. He twisted his body toward the window, away from Rachel Elliott.

“Jeffrey Martin Santos, paroled from San Quentin on seventeen October. He matches our time frame for arrest, and our time frame for release. DOB twelve-twelve sixty-six, arrested January 1988 at the age of twenty-two and charged with aggravated assault—”

“On a child?” Roarke asked before she could even finish the sentence.

“No, on an adult male. The interesting factor, though, is that the man’s twelve-year old son was there with him.”

Roarke felt his adrenaline spike again.
He’s forty-six, now, the age range fits, and so does the crime
.

“So he may have been going after the kid.”

“That is what I am thinking. And — before his arrest Santos had been institutionalized and diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. He claimed, among other things, that the government had illegally implanted a monitoring device in his brain.”

“Where was he paroled to?”

“San Jose.”

It was just an hour away.

“I’m sending his mug shot right now,” Singh said. Roarke’s phone pinged. He clicked over to the message, stared down at an image of a gaunt and hollow-cheeked man, stringy dark hair, bad skin set off by the classic toxic orange jumpsuit.

“I have a call in to his parole officer,” Singh continued. “He didn’t pick up the call, no surprise there.” Roarke knew what she meant. Considering the caseload the officers carried these days, it was a miracle any phone calls got returned within a year.

“Is there a current address?” He held his breath, praying Santos wasn’t homeless, a common condition of parolees which made them incredibly hard to track.

“It’s a halfway house his P.O. set him up in.”

Roarke felt another adrenaline spike.
Get on the freeway to San Jose… chances are we could be there before we ever get a call back
.

“I also thought you should know that SAC Reynolds has already departed. For the holiday weekend.”

Roarke had completely forgotten it was Thanksgiving tomorrow.
But with Reynolds gone
…

He spoke into the phone. “I’m at the People’s Café on Haight. Get Epps to come pick me up. We’re going down there to talk to him.” He glanced at Rachel. She was looking out the window at the street, but he was fairly certain she wasn’t missing a thing. He lowered his voice. “You need to pull Santos’ DNA profile and check it in CODIS against any unidentified DNA at any of the — cold cases.” He’d almost said “massacres.”

“Already in progress, chief,” Singh assured him. “And I will clock you and Agent Epps out. For the holiday.”

“Appreciate it. Good work.” He punched off the phone and turned back to the table. Rachel was sitting very still; from her face it was obvious she’d heard much of the conversation. Or at least, enough.

“Whatever this is, it’s a whole lot bigger than Danny Ramirez, isn’t it?” she asked softly.

He opened his mouth to give a bullshit reply, and instead found himself saying, “It is. And I’m going to have to go.”

Rachel glanced down at the sketch of Cara, and back up at Roarke.

“Be careful,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-two

“Wasn’t sure you’d be up for this,” Roarke said as he dropped into the passenger seat of the fleet car beside Epps.

Epps stared ahead through the windshield, his hands tight on the steering wheel. “Not like I could stop you. And our best shot at catching Lindstrom is surveilling you. You go, I go.”

Roarke didn’t think he wanted to press the issue.

They hit the freeway just after morning traffic and made it to San Jose in under an hour. The halfway house where Santos had been paroled was in a depressed area of the city where neighbors were less likely to ask questions about the criminal history of the residents. Roarke stared out the window beside him as Epps drove by a string of seedy apartment complexes and boarded-up buildings with the occasional vacant lot and Christian ministry and auto repair yard.

The building did not announce itself as a transitional living accommodation by any signs in the yard or above the door, but it was unmistakable nonetheless. It looked like a free-standing prison cell block: a concrete rectangle painted white with dull blue trim and blue-painted bars on the windows. The lawn was tiny and dead. A tired white bulldog was tied up to a sprinkler pipe, panting in the shadows. One side of the building had no windows at all. The other side had a caged staircase and another cage around a side door, the manager’s place.

As the agents got out of the car, Roarke looked up the street. Why he would think of Cara at a moment like this was beyond him… maybe just the knowing that she had spent almost all of her childhood in buildings as bleak as this one. Epps caught his look. He turned to give the street a glance of his own, a deliberate and faintly ironic once-over. Before they started toward the building they both did a weapons check: shoulder holster, the belted waist pouch to be sure the plastic cuffs were available in one smooth move.

The agents buzzed at the cage. A wary-looking white man with some hard years of alcohol etched on his face opened the door to look out through the cage at them.

“Federal agents,” Roarke told him, and displayed his credentials wallet, though a man like the one standing inside this doorway wouldn’t need to see it to know the Fed. “We’re here to talk to Jeffrey Santos.”

“Gone,” the manager said.

Roarke felt a cold twist of dread. “Gone as in—?”

“Gone as in he missed curfew two weeks ago and no one’s seen him since. Nobody gets no curfew violations here. One strike you’re out.”

Both agents were vibrating with tension.

Two weeks ago. Just before the Leland murders
.

“Does his parole officer know?” Roarke demanded.

“I phoned it in,” the manager said truculently. “Got no call back.”

Epps was already turned away, diving into the file Singh had prepared on Santos, punching numbers into his phone.

Roarke turned back to the manager. “Did Santos have any means of transportation?”

The man snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Miracle the guy could walk on his own. Thought for a few days he just wandered off, got lost, you know?”

“Schizophrenic?”

“At least. He was on meds, but he still had the whole word salad thing going on.” The unique speech pattern of schizophrenics, he meant.

Epps looked over at Roarke from the phone. “He’s scheduled to check in every two weeks. He missed his appointment two days ago.”

Roarke reached out for the phone and Epps handed it to him. “This is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roarke. What are you doing to find Santos?”

The voice on the other end was rough and male. “He’s a PAL. I reported him to DAPO. Their job now.”

The parole officer meant Santos had been classified as a Parolee at Large, and he’d reported him to the Division of Adult Parole Operations.

On the surface this was good news. DAPO had established four California Parole Apprehension Teams, one of which was based in San Jose. The CPAT teams were trained in fugitive apprehension, database searches, field tactics, and firearms. All fine, but the immediate issue was that DAPO didn’t know what they had with Santos.
Potentially
had.

“But he’s not on record as a sex offender,” Roarke said aloud. A sex offender would have been under the maximum level of supervision, the highest risk classification — in fact, he would have been required to wear a GPS ankle bracelet, and his disappearance would have triggered a concerted effort to find him, immediately transferred to the intelligence and field units. But Santos had only been convicted of assault on an adult.

“Hell, no,” the P.O. said on the other end, and Roarke could hear the surprise in his voice. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“Who’s your DAPO contact?” Roarke asked. He fished his own phone out of his suit coat pocket to hand to Epps. He repeated the name and number aloud as the P.O. spoke it. Epps instantly punched in the numbers.

While Epps stepped away and spoke quickly into the phone, Roarke told the P.O., “Thanks. We’ll be calling you back,” and disconnected. He turned and looked at the manager head on. The man looked wary.

“We need to see Santos’ place.”

The manager spread his hands. “There’s someone else in it already. Got a wait list ten yards long. Place’s been cleaned out.”