Shadows May Fall (26 page)

“How so?” Dillon had an idea why but they needed to hear it from the girls.

“Because of who was at some of these parties. Big deal movie guys. Josh didn’t want that getting out or us selling stories to the tabloids. As for what switched, mostly it was demeaning.” Carly told them. “The first one we were made to wear rags like raggy cave girls.”

“Josh said it was called a Gor themed party” Jenna remembered. “I looked it up and Gor, or Gorean, is some master and slave sci-fi sex thing.”

“We were not allowed to speak, we had to sit a certain way with our heads down, some of the girls were tied up and shit. Nobody got beat or anything, but it made my skin crawl.” Carly scrubbed her arms as if recalling it made her feel dirty. “The money was really good, so I didn’t complain. But, two of the girls at that party, that were tied up and taken inside, they quit the next week.”

“Carly and I stuck it out until that last party.” Jenna looked at her friend sadly.

“The party before that one was fun, so I thought this last one was going to be too!” Carly tried to explain. “They were sleepover bits with just a few guys and us girls dressed in little girl pajamas. We had pillow fights and stuff. Those were fun. That’s why I figured this last one wasn’t going to be bad like the others. But it was way worse.”

“This last party?” Dillon pushed gently for more answers.

“Us girls got to the house before the party, while they were still setting up.” Jenna recounted events. “The owner of the house gave us our costumes and stuff, Josh told us where we were supposed to be, how we were supposed to act. It was a mixed thing, the Aladdin costumes, the Gor thing where we had to keep our heads down until a guy picked us, that’s how Josh told us to behave. A few girls acted like the dominatrix sorta deal, like they were keeping the rest of us girls in line, with whips and stuff.”

“Then Hunny Trainer showed up and acted like little miss thang.” Carly interjected again. “Josh treated her like she was Queen of the May, askin’ her what she wanted, who she wanted. She made Amanda get on all fours and bark like a dog. It was pathetic. She treated us girls like crap and was flirtin’ and teasin’ the guys.”

“There were only like six guys.” Jenna told them. “Josh was one of them. The owner of the house, his name was Mark, I think.”

“Marcus.” Carly corrected her friend. “Then two foreign dudes.”

“They weren’t really foreign!” Jenna rolled her eyes. “They weren’t Aussies, like me, or Kiwis, but kinda similar, not like Frenchies or Germans that you know they speak another language.”

“South African?” Dillon suggested.

“Yeah!” Carly shouted. “That’s what Hunny said they were, right before she smacked me for talking.”

“Hunny smacked you?” Lou was surprised.

“She liked smacking us around.” Jenna scowled. “And the men liked watching her smack us around.”

“Amanda said something about the girls drinking something at that party that made them act funny?” Dillon asked.

“Yeah, after the cops came because of the music being so loud.” Carly nodded. “Hunny passed around one of those Gor jugs and told the girls to drink but by the time she got around to us girls in the back, we saw how some of the others were trippin’. Amanda called for an Uber and we were outta there.”

“We took off out the back and ran through the alley” Jenna adjusted her shirt as she remembered. “None of us got our stuff. We left in our costumes. You shoulda seen the driver’s face when he pulled up to the corner.”

“We lied and said we were actresses and had him drop us off at my place since I was the closest.” Carly explained. “My stuff was at the club when I went to clean my locker out the next morning.”

“Mine too.” Jenna nodded. “All our stuff was, according to pablo.”

“The janitor?” Lou confirmed.

“Yeah.” Carly answered. “He told me Josh dumped all our stuff off when pablo first got there at six. He had to have come straight from the party. We left at one and things were just getting going.”

“I just finished giving that one South African prick an oil rub down when he started burning me with his stinking cigar and Hunny was walking around with that jug. I couldn’t get outta there fast enough.”

Lou and Dillon showed the two girls pictures of their six missing. Mary, Lana, Ginger, Cheryl, Tawny and Eve. They confirmed all six were at the Medina’s party and could say with certainty that they saw at least three drink from Hunny’s jug. Mary Sheehan was without a doubt one of those three, so was Eve Bloom. Jenna and Carly both said the same things about Mary that her landlady had said. She was sweet, smart and far too good to be dancing on a pole. Eve, however, kept mostly to herself and didn’t socialize with any of the other girls from the club. She came in, worked and left. The same with the parties. Eve never made a fuss or a complaint about anything though Carly said she saw Eve take stuff from the lost and found at the club on a few occasions. Carly figured she was just flat broke and needed the stuff, so she never said anything about it.

Eve Bloom was the last on Lou and Dillon’s list to interview but was an utter ghost. When they ran the name earlier, nothing came up, not even a driver’s license. Josh Rawlings was probably paying her cash under the table since there was no record of her employment at the club. They suspected Eve Bloom was a fake name and that the girl was a runaway or hiding from someone. Not one person they interviewed could tell them anything more than Jenna and Carly could. Both Dillon and Lou suspected that if Amanda Franklin hadn’t given them her name, they never would have known she existed. With that, there was also the possibility that whoever Eve Bloom really was, she had taken off and already assumed another alias.

Dillon and Lou were pretty convinced that Lady Vanessa was their killer, since Hunny was dead, but they couldn’t get a warrant on just their gut. The fact that there were two more men at Medina’s party suggested that there were two more names on their femme fatal’s hit list. They set up Carly and Jenna to meet with the same artist who had just finished with the bartender at the gentlemen’s club. The email with the sketch came in on Lou’s phone and both Carly and Jenna confirmed it was the woman that had ‘trained’ them. Lou had texted the information that Deidre Love had given them about Vanessa to her uncle Seamus since Niko, and the rest of the Aegis had their hands full. Max had brought Lou’s uncle into work for his security firm and indoctrinated him into the San-guinostri, along with her aunt and cousin. Not having to lie to them was a relief and was super handy at times like these. By the time Lou and Dillon finished their interview with the girls, Seamus had emailed several files to Lou with a load of information on Lady V.

To say that Vanessa Sturn was rich was a gross understatement. The assets her father had at the time of his death were put in trust for Vanessa and had been well managed over the years. The business holdings continued to be quite profitable, and she was taking her shareholder responsibilities very seriously since she came of age. Though many of her assets were buried under shell corporations and holding companies, there was a pretty obvious paper trail of what Vanessa had been doing with her inheritance. Her MBA in finance was proving to be handy. After Deidre Love had moved Vanessa’s mother Lily into a hospice facility, Vanessa sold her childhood home in pasadena, contents and all. She never went back. Now, Vanessa’s residence was listed as a swanky highrise downtown which meant Dillon and Lou were heading back over the hill just in time to hit rush hour.

Joe McAllister wasn’t
richer than Warren Buffet on accident.

Though the Texas billionaire had gained his initial fortune the old fashioned way, in oil, his shrewd business sense had him diversified in real estate, tech and biotech, various commodities and, of course, global shipping. It was his hand in shipping that made him an invaluable resource to Max and Niko at the moment, and Joe was all too happy to help.

Joe’s family had served as Stewards to the Sanguinostri since before his ancestors journeyed from Northern Ireland to the Americas. While his forefathers had served primarily in blue-collar roles over the years, Joe’s business sense and financial acumen played a far more valuable role. It provided cover for the intercontinental transit and global Sanguinostri infrastructure. Because of his fam-ily’s status as prominent Stewards, Joe was entitled to the option of turning, if he so wished. It was not something he needed to consider or worry about because the option was always there if or when he chose to do so. When he met Lou’s mother, however, that choice became very tricky since he decided not to share his involvement with the Sanguinostri. It was a measure of protection for her and her daughter. As time went on, telling Shevaun became more and more difficult. Especially with Lou following in her birth father’s footsteps in becoming a cop. Ultimately, the Fates intervened in the guise of Albert von Massenbach’s murder spree in Lou’s jurisdiction. Max’s reason for coming to the West Coast. Joe had no choice but to share his secret life with Shevaun and pray that she would understand. Fortunately, with Lou being indoctrinated at the same time, Shevaun not only accepted her husband’s place in the Sanguinostri world, but embraced their role. It had all worked out better than Joe could have hoped and because of his status as a Steward, the option for him to turn was extended to Shevaun, and Lou, if they so wished. It was something Shevaun and Joe were discussing more and more frequently as of late, but today that was all on the back burner. Today, Joe had converted his home office into an operations hub. He, Max, and Niko sifted through his shipping resources so that they could find the Black Blood coming in via Texas and Louisiana. Or being shipped out, if that was the case. One way or another, Joe was hell bent on finding anyone involved, and he had the people on his payroll who could help him do it.

“Our Coast Guard agents are air tight.” Joe assured Max. “I know them all personally and would stand behind them any day of the week. With your permission, I would like to read our Atlantic area agents, specifically Districts 1, 5, 7 and 8. Though I believe Finn read our District 1 people in an hour ago. I’ve already gotten calls from my primary in port of St. John asking questions.”

“I am relying on your judgment here, Joe.” Max was very pointed in his response. “You know your people best, and I need you to use your sources as you see fit to get us on a trail.”

“I know my people are solid and unwavering in their loyalty.” Joe spoke with utter conviction. “If there is anyone within reach that even smells like they could know something, my people will find them.”

“Then do what you need to do.” Max gave him the green light. “Let Niko know what you need from us to facilitate the hunt.”

Joe had insisted that Max use his desk and set up his workspace on the coffee table. Eight flat screen televisions built into one of the office walls were cycling through various reports and mapping data. Joe turned on his headset and started making calls while Niko stood looking through the data on the screens, cross-referencing that information with the data that Finn was transmitting from the port of St. John on his tablet. Max was sifting through the reports on his former agents that he had systematically removed when he first arrived in Los Angeles. Given the level of corruption, Max was certain the After Action reports would lead them to more bad Sanguinostri apples further down the food chain.

It was more than disconcerting to all three of the men that their people were not only partaking in the Black Blood but were active participants in the production and distribution. The necessity of human blood was something sacred to their people and those who volunteered to give of themselves, willingly, were honored and protected. The stereotype of a vampire was abhorrent to the San-guinostri and utter crap. Turned Sanguinostri didn’t solely rely on drinking human blood. They were ordinary in most every sense who ate, drank, slept, needed sunshine and air, had beating hearts and fully functioning physiology just like regular people. Turned San-guinostri were, however, in need of human blood on a semi-regular basis. The advanced immune systems that made them impervious to most every disease, drug or toxin needed something that only human blood could provide. Without it, a turned Sanguinostri would slowly deteriorate and eventually, over a great deal of time, decay. The enhanced physicality of turned Sanguinostri also relied on whatever magical properties the elixir of human blood could provide. It was impossible to narrow down why or how, even by today’s technological standards. Not for the lack of their trying. Whatever had happened to change the first people into what they now called ‘
turned
’ San-guinostri, the enhanced, morphed blood had a built in mechanism that self-destructed before any type analysis could be done. Despite all their efforts, they just could not create any viable condition to learn about their own blood. Regardless, just like research for any medical anomaly, they would continue to try.

“I think I have something!” Abby exclaimed as she charged into the office.

“What?” Max asked, spinning towards her in his chair.

“Well, remember the analysis we did on the bottles from the warehouse?” Abby asked as she shuffled a stack of papers she was holding.

“Yes, Abby, we remember. Just tell us what you found.” Niko insisted she get to the point.

“There are a bazillion of wine bottle manufacturers on the planet, but we were able to trace the general origin of those bottles based on their chemical composition. Much like the way we can trace dentistry based on the compounds they use. Or like car paint colors!” Abby was trying to find different analogies to explain but caught Max’s look of disapproval, so she focused on the point. “We were able to identify those bottle manufacturers, but they ship to hundreds of different distributors. Wineries and even non-wine product producers like salad dressings, sauces.. I even found a lamp manufacturer that specializes in wine themed stuff.”

“And?” Max was waiting for what exactly it was that she had found.

“Well, it took a lot of sifting and, well, frankly lying my ass off. But I found one distributor that ships to not only a bogus company in Denmark but a vacant patch of land there! So whoever has been delivering the bottles there has been totally on the take and doctoring the paperwork to indicate bullshit receivership.”