Hold Still (14 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

October 27th

“Nice work in there,” Kevin
said as they got into the car. “You owe me some Nicorette.”

Jocelyn laughed, but Kevin feigned seriousness. “I’m not kidding. That shit is expensive.”

“How about a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee?”

He clapped his hands together. “Now you’re talking. So did Hardigan ID Warner and Donovan?”

“Sure did,” Jocelyn confirmed.

“Well, that was easy,” Kevin said. He reached forward and toggled the radio dial until he found the oldies station. “So here’s what I don’t get. Neither Warner nor Donovan bothered to hide their identities. They didn’t wear masks or disguises. I mean if you’re going to kidnap and rape a woman, wouldn’t you try to be a little stealthy about it?”

“They didn’t think it would come to that,” Jocelyn said.

“They didn’t think they’d get caught? They drop their vics off at the fucking hospital.”

“No,” Jocelyn said. “They didn’t think any of their victims would report it—or press charges if it came to that. Alicia ran. Anita didn’t talk at first.”

She glanced at Kevin just in time to see his face tighten as the realization dawned on him. “Because they’re doing it to hookers.”

“Right.”

“Why not just kill them? Why leave them alive?”

Jocelyn shrugged. “A murder charge carries a heavy sentence. Heavier than rape. Plus they can always say they paid for it and have the charges thrown out—like you said, they’re targeting hookers.”

“So there could be a lot more victims out there.”

“Could be.”

“But wait, what about the white guy? Why does he wear a mask?”

“Because whoever he is, he’s got a lot more to lose than Warner and Donovan.”

The nearest Dunkin’ Donuts was on West Lancaster Avenue. Jocelyn wanted to go through the drive-through, but Kevin insisted on going inside to see the donut selection. Jocelyn thought of Olivia and how she loved Munchkins, especially the chocolate ones. She had even learned to identify the Dunkin’ Donuts sign, so that whenever they drove past one, she went nuts. Sometimes Jocelyn had to consciously avoid the place while they were driving around. The thought of Olivia brought a smile to her face, which quickly faded at the sound of a man’s raised voice inside the store.

A familiar tall, sandy-haired man about Jocelyn’s age stood by the counter yelling and gesticulating wildly at an iced drink on the counter. The woman behind the counter stared at him with a wilting look. “This is coffee,” the man said. “Coffee! I asked for tea. Tea. This tastes like shit. It’s disgusting. I stood right here and ordered tea and you gave me coffee. Coffee that tastes like shit, no less. What is wrong with you? I’m the only one in here, I ordered one thing, and you can’t get it right?”

“Excuse me, sir,” Kevin said, but the man kept going as if Kevin hadn’t spoken.

“Are you deaf or are you just that fucking stupid?”

Kevin stepped between the man and the counter. “Hey, man,” he said. “Relax. I’m sure this nice lady will be happy to get you some tea.”

The woman took the offending coffee and disappeared. The irate man turned to Kevin, disdain curling his upper lip. “Mind your own fucking business.”

“All right,” Jocelyn said, stepping toward the man. “That’s enough. Sir, step outside please.”

The man turned toward her, disdain morphing into shock, the angry lines of his face slackening as he registered her authoritative tone. Then his belligerence returned. “Who the—”

Jocelyn cut him off. “Who the fuck am I? I’m the fucking police, and you’re the fucking douche bag who’s going to step outside. Now.”

In a single fluid movement, she flashed her credentials in his face and took his elbow, guiding him outside to the parking lot. She gave him a little push as they stepped outside, and he stumbled down the three steps, barely maintaining his balance. For a moment, he seemed dazed. “Rush?” he said as he studied her face beneath the faded glow of the parking lot lights.

“Detective Rush, yes. Now, unless you want to be charged with harassment and terroristic threats, you’ll get into your vehicle and move on, and I would strongly suggest you not patronizing this business ever again.”

He smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket and turned to face her. He peered into her face. Then he stuck out a hand, palm upturned. “Let me see your badge again.”

“Sir—”

“James,” he said haughtily. “James Evans.”

Jocelyn froze. Ice seemed to flow through her veins, spreading rapidly throughout her body. She swallowed. Her hand went to her holster.

“What?” she croaked.

She wouldn’t recognize them of course—not by sight. She had no memory of that time period. It had been years since she’d studied their photos in her high school yearbook, and by now they would look differently. It had been eighteen years. They would have grown and changed, and, like James Evans, they might not be easily recognizable.

“James Evans,” he repeated. “I went to high school with a couple of Rush girls. Which one are you?”

Quickly regaining her composure, Jocelyn pushed him along toward the only other car in the parking lot, a Porsche. “I’m the one who is telling you to leave. Right now.”

He ignored her. “A police officer, huh? That doesn’t surprise me. You put my family through hell.”

A sound like thunder rushed in her ears. Her vision narrowed to the area directly in front of her, and Evans filled up her entire field of vision. She unsnapped her holster. “Excuse me?” she said incredulously, her voice raising an octave.

He narrowed his eyes as he studied her. Then, “Your sister, though—what’s her name? Karen? Cameron? We had a great time together, her and I. Kinky stuff, though.”

Then the barrel of her Glock was pressing into the skin under his chin. Jocelyn crowded him, pinning him against the Porsche, the length of her body pressed against his, her hand steady.

“What the fuck?” Evans cried, throwing his hands up in the air.

“I don’t think you want to go there with me, you piece of shit.”

“Are you crazy?” he asked, eyes frantically darting around, searching for rescue.

Jocelyn dug the barrel of the gun into his skin, making an imprint of the barrel in the soft underbelly of his chin. “I don’t know, am I? Keep talking and we’ll find out.”

She heard Kevin’s voice from behind her and his feet jogging toward her. “Rush! Jesus Christ.”

He pulled her away from Evans, pushing the barrel of her gun toward the ground. Evans opened his mouth to speak, but Kevin said, “Do yourself a favor, and get the fuck out of here like we told you in the first place.”

Evans’s hands trembled as he pulled his keys from his jacket pocket. He clicked the key fob to unlock the car and got in. With a pale, frightened glance at Jocelyn, he tore out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

Kevin shook his head. “Put that away,” he said. “Get in the goddamn car.”

Jocelyn stared after Evans’s car, gun at her side as the thundering in her head receded. Kevin stood by the car. She was barely aware of the cherry-red hue that had risen to his cheeks. A vein throbbed on the side of his forehead. Finally, he slapped the roof. “Jesus Christ, Rush. Right now. Get in the fucking car!”

Silently, Jocelyn got in and pulled away. Although his breathing sounded slightly labored, Kevin didn’t speak for almost five full minutes. That’s how Jocelyn knew he was really angry with her. She chanced a look at him. His face was still flushed from collar to roots. Once they crossed the Green Lane Bridge back into Philadelphia, Kevin spoke. “What’s with you lately, Rush? You’re totally out of control. I should be reporting you right now. You’re already on thin ice. We’re not even supposed to be out here. This isn’t even our goddamn case.”

“I know,” Jocelyn said tightly.

“What if that guy files a complaint against you?”

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. He was one of the guys who raped Camille when we were teenagers.”

Kevin lost some of his bluster. He looked away from her and let a few seconds pass. “Oh,” he said, followed by a short pause. “Still, Rush. You can’t go pulling your gun on civilians—scummy or not. Are you trying to lose your job or what?”

“You know I’m not. I have a child now.”

“Then what is your problem?”

Jocelyn swallowed, trying to think of a reply that would pacify him. Finally, she said, “I don’t know.”

Kevin shook his head and sighed, his breath a loud huff. “That guy is a piece of shit, no doubt, but reaming out the clerk at Dunkin’ Donuts is not a crime. You can’t go waving your gun around at every entitled prick you see—even if you know about the skeletons in their closets. You’re not a rookie, for fuck’s sake. You’re better than this.”

“I know,” Jocelyn said.

“Get your shit together, Rush. I don’t want to have to report you. Ever.” He reached a hand toward the empty cup holder in the center console. “Son of a bitch.”

Jocelyn glanced at him. “What is it?”

“After all that, I still didn’t get my coffee.”

TWENTY-SIX

October 30th

The next three nights, they
caught two shootings, two stabbings, and a robbery. Two of those nights, Jocelyn didn’t pick Olivia up from Martina’s house until three a.m. Olivia slept through the transfer, and having had a good night’s sleep, woke promptly at seven each morning. By the fourth night, Jocelyn felt like the walking dead. Kevin was off, and she thanked the great, unknowable Universe that it was a slow night. The next day was Halloween, and she wanted to be awake and alert enough to have a good day with Olivia. Even though she was still too young to really understand trick-or-treating, she loved to dress up. Jocelyn had planned to take her to a few trusted neighbors’ houses. She couldn’t wait to see Olivia all decked out in the Disney princess costume she had chosen.

She put her head down on her desk and tried to doze, drifting fitfully in and out of sleep. Fragments of a disturbing dream involving Olivia dressed as a princess and being kidnapped afflicted her, waking her with a start every few minutes.

Chen appeared at her side. He set a Styrofoam cup of coffee next to her head. “Sometimes the sleep just isn’t worth it,” he said.

Jocelyn lifted her head and stared at him, bleary-eyed, until he smiled and said, “Nightmares. I get ’em too.”

Smoothing the hair away from her face with her good hand, she rubbed her eyes before curling a hand around the coffee cup. Inhaling its scent, she lifted the plastic lid to see if Chen had put cream and sugar in it. He had. She sipped it gingerly and nodded her thanks. She tried to catch up on the large stack of paperwork ever present on her desk, but her mind kept going back to Anita Grant and Alicia Hardigan. She had left four messages for Caleb Vaughn. He had called her back once, but she had been on the street and missed his call.

Jocelyn looked around at the mostly empty desks. She fished her car keys from the mess on her desk and grabbed the coffee cup. “Chen, call me on my cell if all hell breaks loose.”

Chen waved without taking his eyes off his computer screen.

She drove to Second and Westmoreland where the SVU had its offices. It was a five-story unmarked brick building nestled among dilapidated row houses. They sagged, cracks like spider veins in their exterior walls. On the other side, running parallel to Westmoreland, was new construction. Sparkling new apartment buildings and high-rise complexes rose out of the dirt and decay looking so clean and new; it hurt Jocelyn’s eyes just to look at them. She wondered how long it would be before they too were pulled down into the muck.

All over the city there were efforts to revitalize crime-ridden neighborhoods and beautify them. In some neighborhoods, revitalization took, and the houses were bought up by doctors, lawyers, and college professors who wanted the quintessential urban experience without actually getting shot when they left the house. Crime went down in those neighborhoods, at least for a time. The houses were rehabbed by their new owners and small businesses flourished. It became trendy to go there and even trendier to live there. In other neighborhoods, crime was too much a way of life, too deeply ingrained, to ever lift the stain.

Mercifully, SVU had a parking lot. The city had been working for years to have their facility moved and integrated with the Department of Human Services Abuse Investigations Division, the Philadelphia Children’s Alliance, and prosecutors from the district attorney’s office. The city wanted all these agencies in one central location, which made sense to Jocelyn. Unfortunately for them, no neighborhood in the city wanted the Sex Crimes Division in their midst. Drug dealers, murderers, and prostitutes were A-OK but not sex crimes victims and investigators. Jocelyn thought she had read that they’d finally closed the deal on a new location, but it had taken years and it would be years before SVU actually moved into their shiny new facility.

At the front desk, she flashed her credentials and said she was there to see Caleb Vaughn about a case.

“He’s on the street,” the disinterested desk sergeant said without even looking at Jocelyn. The woman continued working on her crossword puzzle.

“I didn’t know they let psychics work the front desk,” Jocelyn said. “Must save you a lot of phone calls.”

The woman looked up at her, one eyebrow raised, the corner of her mouth dimpled in a scathing smirk. “Excuse me?”

Jocelyn matched the raised eyebrow and pointed to the phone on her desk. “How about you call up there and find out if Vaughn is here or not.”

Jocelyn expected resistance, but instead the woman picked up the phone and dialed. She kept her eyes on Jocelyn as she spoke into the receiver. “Is Vaughn there? Yeah. Someone down here to see him. Yeah. Northwest. Okay.”

She hung up. “He’ll be right down,” she said, resuming her crossword puzzle.

“Right down” turned out to be a half hour. Jocelyn was ten
seconds from storming past the reception desk when a tall man with
thick, wavy brown hair appeared. He looked to be in his forties. Small lines appeared at the corners of his brown eyes as he surveyed the room. His gaze settled on Jocelyn, and in that split second, she felt a jolt, like a spark of electricity. She heard Anita’s voice in the back of her mind:
too pretty to talk to.
Jocelyn swallowed. Vaughn walked over to her and extended a hand. “Caleb Vaughn.”

Jocelyn, who had been ready to read him the riot act five seconds earlier, took his hand and stared at him blankly. Up close, she could see laugh lines around his mouth as well. His eyes were dark, flinty, and kind at the same time. He didn’t look like a cop. He looked like a high school English teacher—a really hot one. He reminded her of the kind of man who actually got better looking as he aged. A bit of George Clooney mixed with Patrick Dempsey’s hair. Yet, he was unkempt—his tie was loosened, the first two buttons of his wrinkled white dress shirt undone. There was a small tear in his shirt to the left of his tie.

“Divorced,” she blurted.

Caleb’s hand was still in hers. He didn’t let go but gave her a quizzical look and laughed warmly. “No,” he said. “Never married but single. You?”

Jocelyn wished she could hide the blush that rose to her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She cleared her throat. “Same.” Glancing down at their locked hands, she was glad he didn’t comment on her splint. She didn’t feel like answering questions about it.

They realized at the same time that the handshake had gone on entirely too long. Caleb released her hand. From the corner of her eye, she saw the desk sergeant shake her head. Caleb kept smiling at her. “Now that I know your marital status, how about your name?”

She fumbled in her pocket and produced her credentials. “Rush. Jocelyn Rush. I’m with Northwest Detectives. I worked on the Grant case. I’ve left you about six messages.”

He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it further as he gazed down at her police ID. “Yeah, the Grant case. I called you about that. Sorry about the phone tag. I’ve been on the street.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He handed her credentials back to her. “What can I do for you?”

The words
come home with me
flew through her mind. Luckily, they didn’t come out of her mouth. “I spoke with Alicia Hardigan. She had some interesting information. I wanted to touch base with you because I think we might just be scratching the surface on this one.”

“You found Hardigan, huh? Okay,” he said. “You like coffee?”

“What? Yeah, I—”

“Wait here,” he said and left her standing there openmouthed. The desk sergeant looked up over her crossword and shook her head again. Blushing for the second time in five minutes, Jocelyn turned away from the woman. This time, she didn’t have to wait long for him.

Again, he smiled at her warmly, his dark eyes glinting. Over one arm he carried a suit jacket. In his hand, two slim files. “You can drive,” he said as he ushered her out of the building.

The diner he directed her to was only five minutes away. It was small, cozy, and mostly empty. One of those neighborhood places run out of a converted corner row house that only the locals dared enter. One waitress sat behind the register engrossed in a paperback novel while another worked the only two tables with customers. Caleb chose a booth in the corner, out of earshot of the other diners. When the waitress came over, he ordered two coffees and two pieces of key lime pie.

“You’ve got to try their key lime pie,” he said. “It’s unbelievable and also one of the only edible things on their menu. Oh, you’re not allergic, are you?”

She shook her head and stared at him, dumbfounded. He wasn’t acting like a cop. She’d inserted herself into his investigation, and he wasn’t giving her one ounce of shit. Instead, he was buying her pie. He was too pretty to talk to and he was buying her pie. She tried to tamp down the uncharacteristic thrill spiraling up from her center and focus on the reason she had come—the investigation. “No, I’m not allergic.”

He winked at her. “Good. You’ll love it. I promise.”

Caleb’s cell phone rang. He looked at it and shot her an apologetic glance. “I have to take this,” he said. “It’s my son.”

“Your son?”

He held up one finger, signaling for a minute, and answered. The call lasted about thirty seconds and seemed to have to do with a lost set of keys. Caleb ended the call and flashed her a grin. “I was twenty-two,” he explained. “We broke up before he was three. She married someone else and moved to North Carolina when he was eleven. Brian stayed with me. He just started at Temple University. You have kids?”

Still taking him in, Jocelyn said. “Yeah. Olivia. She’s three.”

“You and her dad . . .”

Jocelyn waved a hand dismissively. “She was my sister’s—my niece—but my sister couldn’t care for her, so I adopted her.”

The waitress brought their coffee. “Pie will be up in a minute,” she said.

Jocelyn couldn’t help but notice they prepared their coffee exactly the same way—two level spoons of sugar and three creams.

“So, we found six prepaid cell phones in Larry Warner’s home, all of which had been used to call only two other prepaid cell phones in the last seven months. None of the numbers can be traced to a person. We ran all the numbers in both his and Donovan’s real cell phones, but none of their contacts fit the description of the third man.”

“What about the computer? Did you get his computer?”

The corner of his mouth dimpled. He shook his head. “We got it, but it was completely useless. I mean we can connect him to Grant via the e-mails, but that’s all we got. Doesn’t help us with the remaining suspect. So, tell me about Alicia Hardigan.” He sipped his coffee with a hissing sound and a grimace. Jocelyn stirred her own coffee idly while she recapped her interview with Hardigan and told him about the Michael Kors watch Anita had remembered.

When she finished, he slid the two manila files he’d brought with him across the table to Jocelyn. “You’re right. What you said earlier—we are just scratching the surface. That one,” he said as she opened the one on the top, “was the first one. Happened about four years ago. Her name was Raeann Church. She’d been working in Atlantic City for about three years. She was approached by a black male in his late forties in a blue, late-model Ford for sex. They agreed on the services and the price. He drove about three blocks and picked up another black male, big guy. Never said a word. The big guy crowded her, kept her from getting out of the car. They drove for hours, she said, until she didn’t recognize where she was. They ended up here, of course.”

“Let me guess,” Jocelyn said as she thumbed through the file. “They took her to an abandoned house. There was a white male there wearing a ski mask. He nailed her to the floor, tried to have intercourse with her, and couldn’t get it up. He told the other two to have sex with her while he watched. The next day, the driver pulled the nails out and dumped her off at the hospital.”

There was a police report, a few interview logs, a victim statement, and photos of Raeann Church. She was white and thin—too thin—the way Camille had looked when Jocelyn had last seen her. She had a large nose that had obviously been broken a few times and small sunken eyes. She might have been attractive if the street hadn’t turned her into a ghostly pale stick figure. She had greasy brown hair and sallow skin. There were photos of her hands, but only the left one bore the mark of a nail.

“Close,” Caleb said. “They took her to a motel in the Northeast—”

“Do you have security footage?”

Caleb sipped his coffee again and frowned. “Not the kind of motel that has security cameras, if you know what I mean. The white guy was there. He tried to have intercourse with her but couldn’t—so yeah, he told the other two to do it. Then the white guy gets the idea to nail her to the floor. Raeann doesn’t know where the tools came from, but they left her with the skinny one for a while and came back with a hammer and nails. They got one nail through her left hand. She screamed her head off, and the owner of the motel threw them out. The driver dropped her off a few blocks from Frankford Torresdale Hospital.”

“Sounds like their first time,” Jocelyn said.

The waitress returned with two pieces of key lime pie. Jocelyn took a bite. It melted in her mouth. Before she had taken her second bite, Caleb was halfway through his. She moaned softly. “This is incredible,” she said and meant it. She knew she’d be craving it later, long after she’d gone back to her own Division.

“I know,” Caleb agreed. “It’s bizarre, isn’t it? This little diner no one even knows about and they’ve got the best key lime pie you ever had.”

Jocelyn laughed and tapped an index finger on Caleb’s notes. “This doesn’t say anything about the white guy wearing a ski mask.”

“Because he wasn’t.”

Pages flew across the table as Jocelyn searched frantically for composite sketches. “Where are the composites?”

Caleb grimaced. “Do you know how much it costs to use a sketch artist? Back then we were only allowed to bring them in on serial offenders and crimes against kids.”

Jocelyn’s fork clanged against her plate as she dropped it. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she said, but she knew exactly what Caleb was talking about. Like anything else, police departments were run on money, and their budgets only went so far. There had been plenty of cases in her career that she would have loved to bring in forensic help, but she couldn’t because of budget constraints. Real police work was about as far from the television shows depicting CSI as you could possibly imagine.