Cheese Wrestling: A Lt. Jack Daniels/Chief Cole Clayton Thriller (5 page)

Clayton looked at the house, then at me, then said, “All right.” He lifted up from the seat and reached for his wallet, pulling it out and opening the top fold to look at the money inside. There wasn’t much. He peeked behind the credit cards in the middle flap and then stuck one of his fingers way down inside it, tugging and turning the wallet until he came out with a folded hundred dollar bill.

“I keep it there for emergencies,” he said.

He moved to get out of the car and I said, “Want to clue me in?”

He left without replying. I watched him hurry down to the end of the street and stand on the corner, hands stuffed in his pockets, checking in every direction like he was waiting for a ride. A pair of headlights shined on him as a large older-model Buick came up the block and he held his hands in the air and started waving them, flagging the person down.

The car stopped and Clayton said something to the driver. The driver said something back, and Clayton held up the hundred dollar bill. The driver waved for him to come over and handed him his cellphone. Clayton took the phone, spoke very rapidly into it, saying something specific over and over. I could only make out his tone and emphatic hand movements, but then he hung up the phone and handed it back to the driver, then started up the street back to my car.

He got in and pulled the door shut behind him and I said, “And that was…?”

“Is your police radio on?” he said.

I nodded.

“Get ready to go.”

I looked back at the radio and the dispatcher’s voice crackled through the speaker, as if on cue.
“Any units in the area of Ukrainian Village, be advised we have the report of a female screaming someone is keeping her hostage in one of the residences. Caller hung up before we could get more information.”

I shook my head as the dispatcher gave the address of the house we were looking at, and I turned to Clayton and whispered, “You crazy son of a bitch. You paid him a hundred bucks to borrow his cell phone and call 911, and now we have probable cause. And here I was thinking you were Andy Griffith.”

“You don’t have to come,” he said. “We can wait for a patrol car.”

I picked up the radio mic, “This is Daniels. I’m in the area. I’ll check it out.”

“Received,”
the dispatcher said.

“Too late to turn back now,” I said.

Clayton watched me with a mixture of disappointment and admiration. “They don’t make them like you back home, Jacqueline. That is for sure.”

We dropped our badges across our chests and drew our guns, crouching as we advanced on the house, trying to avoid the illuminated halo on the sidewalks from the streetlights.

“These houses all have basement doors, accessible from the rear,” I said. “But if they’re keeping people down there, it’s likely reinforced. We’d be better off going in from the front.”

Clayton nodded and we moved around the front of the house and made our way slowly up to the front door. He took the point and I stacked up behind him, keeping my gun aimed at the living room windows as I checked and re-checked the upstairs bedrooms for any signs of movement.

Clayton knocked rapidly several times and said, “Police department, open up!”

There was no answer.

“Knock again,” I said.

He did, and still no answer, and no sign of movement or sound from within. Clayton looked back at me and said, “This is your town. Your call.”

We’d come this far, I told myself. I took a deep breath. “I think I heard something inside.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Might have been someone calling for help, I think. If not, it won’t be the first time the city has bought someone a new front door. Let’s go.”

Clayton reared back and slammed against the door hard with such force the wooden frame and lock exploded inwards, and the two of us spilled into the living room, guns drawn as we called out, “Police, nobody move!” in unison.

No response.

I pulled out a small flashlight from my back pocket and checked the living room. Video game and movie discs tossed everywhere. Empty beer and liquor bottles stuffed with cigarette butts. Piles of cigarettes ashes on plates strewn on every table, nightstand and shelf in the room. There were a few old couches and plastic lawn chairs surrounding a gigantic television. Whoever lived here, it wasn’t some old lady.

Clayton kept his gun trained on the stairs leading up to the second floor, and said, “Somebody’s got to hold the stairs and somebody’s got to check the kitchen and the basement. Tell you what, stay here and I’ll go have a look.”

I had no great desire to go down into the basement and deal with God knows what, but it was one of those situations where the man I was working with instinctively assumed I would rather do the easy job. I suppose it was born of some deep-rooted chivalrous instinct. No good cop was gonna stand aside and let a lady get spiders in her hair if he could help it. That’s the reason I pushed past him and said, “If you’re afraid of the dark, just say so, Cole.”

He smiled and said, “Holler if you need anything.”

It was so dark anyone could have come down the steps with a shotgun and blasted him before he knew they were there, but I needed my flashlight too much to hand it over to him. Before I could say anything Clayton reached for the barrel of his handgun and flicked a switch, casting a blue cone of light on the steps that was bright enough to see with and dim enough to not raise suspicions. I looked at the light assembly mounted to his gun and said, “Pretty fancy.”

“It helps when you’re the guy who decides what to spend the budget on,” he said. “Not bad for Mayberry, eh?”

I inched past him and braced against the corner of the open doorway leading into the kitchen. I did a quick-peek, snapping my face and gun into the kitchen for a millisecond before I yanked back. I hadn’t seen anything. I bent down a little and did it again, going in low enough that if someone was expecting me to pop back in at the same spot, the bullet would fly over my head and I’d punch two rounds in their chest.

Still nothing.

I wound my way into the kitchen slowly, cutting the pie as I moved sideways, keeping my gun ahead of me, ready to fire at the first thing I saw. All I saw were more bottles. More cigarettes. Jesus, these people were doing their part to keep cancer researchers employed.

The basement door was at the back of the kitchen, behind a set of mismatched chairs and a poker table covered with dirty paper plates and plastic cups. I kicked aside the trash blocking the basement door and took a deep breath before opening it. The boiler hummed noisily and the warped wooden stairs sunk in as I descended. There were cobwebs everywhere. Nobody had been down the steps in a while. I took the steps slowly, checking the corners, making sure I got eyes on any crevice deep enough for someone to hide in.

I checked the boiler and the hot water heater and under the slop sink and around the sides of the washer and dryer. Nothing. On a whim I opened the dryer and looked in. Any doubts I had about this being the right house vanished and I turned and raced back up the steps.

COLE CLAYTON

D
aniels burst into the kitchen and hurried to get behind Clayton, putting her hand on his shoulder and saying, “I think your intel from the Poops was good.”

“Why?” he said.

“They’ve got a photography studio in the basement. Lighting, backdrops, whole rack of sleazy underwear in a bunch of different sizes. My guess, they’re making the girls pose for pictures to send to potential buyers.”

“This floor is empty. That leaves upstairs.”

Clayton turned the blue light of his gun on the uppermost step and they moved in unison up the staircase, both of their guns trained on the hallway above as they crested the landing, searching for threats. They crept quietly on the worn carpet, Jack taking the left side of the hall, aiming her weapon on the first closed door on her side as Clayton said, “Open door on the right.”

He turned with his gun into the doorway and said, “Bathroom. It’s clear. Filthy, but clear.”

They were about to move toward her door when it opened softly. Clayton’s gun light framed the doorway in dark blue as a young woman with a face as old as Methuselah and the physique of a starving twelve-year old stopped at the sight of them. The large circles under her eyes were black in that light as she stood there blinking at them. The skin around her mouth was stretched into a tight grimace as she said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Jack whispered.

“You here to see Sergei?”

Jack and Clayton looked at one another and then Jack said, “Yeah. Is there anybody else?”

“Not tonight,” the girl said. “They come by in the afternoon. You got any dope?”

“We’re on our way to get it,” Clayton said.

“Come see me when you do,” she said, pushing back from the doorway to shuffle through a field of debris as she headed back into the room. “I’m almost out and I’ll be hurting by tomorrow. I’ll take care of you, whatever you need for it.”

She navigated around several mattresses spread out across the floor, more girls sprawled on top of them. The room was crammed with four bare mattresses and the girl dropped down onto one of them, searching on the floor in the dark for something.

“Where is it? Son of a bitch, I just had it,” the girl hissed, getting frustrated. Jack flicked on her flashlight and shined it in the girl’s direction. The girl muttered thanks as she came up with a half-filled syringe and said, “Thanks. Sergei makes me share mine with the other girls. It’s such bullshit.”

She jabbed the syringe into the crook of her left arm and depressed the stopper, sending the remaining liquid inside the needle’s barrel into her vein.

Clayton’s light shone around the rest of the room and stopped on the metal wires of a large dog cage placed at the far corner of the room. There was one next to it as well. Inside each, naked and curled up in the grip of heroin dreams, were two girls.

“Jesus,” Jack said.

He didn’t move to help them, and neither did Jack, though he could see the anger and revulsion on her face. They’d free them after they cleared the house.

Two doors to go.

Clayton took the first one, pushing the door open with one hand while keeping his gun in front of him, Jack positioned close behind him, watching the remainder of the hallway.

Clayton went into the room a few feet, stopped and backed out into the hallway.

“Two more,” he said. “In cages.”

“Is one Alice?”

Cole nodded. “Hard to tell, but I think so. Even if it isn’t, these are someone’s daughters.”

Jack posted up on the left side of the last bedroom door and whispered, “Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in breaking a kidnapping ring that ties into the international slave trade?”

Clayton smiled at her as he raised his gun and took the other side, getting himself ready. “No paperwork for me. This is an away game. I get to have all the fun and you get to clean up all the mess.”

“Remind me to come visit your town someday.”

He smiled and nodded and said, “On three?”

Jack took a deep breath, then said, “Wait. What’s cheese wrestling?”

He looked at her and said, “What?”

“Cheese wrestling. You mentioned it earlier.”

“Jesus, right now?” Clayton said.

“I have to know.”

“It’s when the bikers want to get into the club, they have to stuff their asses full of Cheese Whiz. Then they wrestle naked. The first guy to stick his finger up the other one’s ass and scoop it out and… um… eat it, wins.”

Jack’s face remained stiff and still. “They call that a win?”

“You asked.”

“You shouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place. That’s not an image I’m going to easily forget.”

“I apologize.”

“How badly do you want to get into a gang in order to do that?”

“Can we get past the cheese wrestling?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get past the cheese wrestling. What went through the mind of the guy who thought that up? Was he bored on a Thursday night, saw some canned cheese, and said,
you know what I feel like doing with my buddies right now
?”

“I’ll ask Poop and Property of Poop when I see them at the arraignment.”

“If you get an answer, don’t tell me.”

“Promise.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

They counted down to three in unison, taking deep breaths before finishing the count. Then both of them leaned back and kicked the door open as hard as they could. Loud shouts of “Police, don’t move!!” and “Police, hands in the air, scumbag!” and more orders followed, until they realized the man lying on the bed in the middle of the room was snoring too loudly to hear them. His round, hairy belly rose and fell with each snore, his arms and legs sticking out from under the thin blanket covering him.

Jack calmly walked around the side of the bed and put the barrel of her gun against the man’s forehead and said, “Hey, Sergei.”

No response.

“Probably had a long day,” Cole said. “Human trafficking can really exhaust a fellow.”

Jack tapped his skull with the gun’s frame, using it like a doorknocker. “Hey, Sergei! Wake up!”