The Avenger (11 page)

Bill placed the money on the dresser before she asked for it, letting her see there was more than the negotiated fee. "I might get a little ... rowdy," he said, watching her face carefully, gauging if she'd be game or not. "Are you good with that?"

He thought he saw a gleam in her eyes. It was always easier when the women liked it. Frigid bitch Olivia always whined if he got rough.

"Sure, honey. I'm into anything you want." She glanced at the bills on the dresser. "I'm Goldie. What's your name?"

Bill barked out a harsh laugh at the irony. "Not necessary." He shoved her down on the bed.

"You're payin' for my time whether it's a little or a lot."

He was sure the prostitute had put up with much worse, but when Bill finished with her, ugly bruises dotted her upper arms and thighs, and finger marks showed angry and red at her neck. Standing naked by the dresser and counting the bills, she seemed not to notice or care.

She glanced over at him as he slipped on his shorts. "That was a wild ride, sweetie. Come see me again when you're up for more. I'm usually at the same corner." A tiny fleck of blood appeared on the woman's bottom lip. She casually licked the drop from her mouth, and he wondered who it belonged to – her or him. She liked it, he thought.

As he staggered back to his car, he thought he'd feel better, but the rage continued to build as he drank. Olivia liked it rough, too, although she always pretended otherwise. Complained he was hurting her. The bitch never let him do the things a normal man expected. He thought of making her sorry she'd ever crossed him and smiled in the dark motel room, clutching his bottle of Jackie D.

#

"Get him on the goddamn phone!" the Judge roared.

Higgins jumped so high Warren would've thought he'd have a heart attack if he hadn't known the little man was fit as a fiddle.

"Sir, the motel where he was registered checked him out and he's not answering his cell or Prima phones."

The Judge forcibly lowered his voice. "Myron, we pay you a great deal of money to see that things run efficiently around here." He watched as Higgins bobbed his head up and down like a yo-yo. "Good, now do what you're paid to do and track him down."

"Yes sir, I'll try the Prima phone again."

Calmer now, Warren sat back in his chair and swiveled to look out the window. "Did you get the Phenobarbital compound mailed off?"

"Yes sir, Agent Holt signed for it the day he checked out of the motel."

"That's good," the Judge murmured. Chewing on his unlit cigar, he stared out the window and wondered where the hell Jack had gone. "One more thing, get Dr. Davis up here. I need to talk to him ASAP. In person."

"Certainly, sir," Higgins said softly and closed the door with a soft click.

The Judge had spent the seventies training soldiers in 'Nam and then more years as a district court judge. Years of appellate court decisions based on laws that set guilty men free had disillusioned him and propelled him toward an organization like Invictus. He'd personally recruited every agent in his stable, and Jackson Holt was the best he'd ever seen. The Judge had known from the start that Jack's stellar performance came from far more than Dr. Davis' designer medications.

He pushed himself out of the soft leather chair, rolling the cigar around on his tongue. Opening the top drawer of his filing cabinet, he pulled out a key taped to the metal bottom. He opened the door to the only closet in the room and reached on the top shelf for a heavy duty, steel enforced metal container about the size of a boot box. He fitted the key in the lock and carefully removed the contents – several inch-wide portfolios.

Placing the stack on his desk, he pressed the call button on his phone. "Heard from Davis?"

"He's on his way from Washington, sir. He should be here within the hour."

"Good," he grunted and opened the first file.

The top page listed vital statistics: Jackson Samuel Holt. DOB: 10-12-74, El Paso, Texas. Parents: Samuel J. Holt and Roxanne Rivers. Juvenile Record: Sealed.

He'd decided to let Jack keep his birth name and date. Social altered, of course. The boy had no family, foster parents wouldn't look for him, and as for friends – well, there hadn't been many. Who could've imagined at the time that the Morse girl would have any future part to play in his new life? The Judge was beginning to suspect he'd underestimated her.

He paused to stare across the room at a blank wall. His wife nagged him to put a picture there, something with flowers, but he'd resisted. He liked the blank canvas to write his thoughts on.

Right now those thoughts whipped him back to a day when hair still fringed his head and he could see the toes of his shoes over his gut. When he was a vital man and Jackson Holt was a frightened boy. He painted the boy's shaking frame on the wall, quivering under the glare of the lights while a medic stitched up his arm.
An arm that'd miraculously already begun to heal.
Jack shook, but by God, the boy never made a sound while the fellow made tiny, perfect stitches along his bicep.

Afterward, Warren had helped him off the stretcher in the back of the van. "You can get a few things from your house," he'd told the boy, "but don't talk about any of this." He stared up into the dark, questioning eyes and admired the healthy breadth of the boy's shoulders, the latent strength in his arms and knew he'd found someone special.

"We took care of Roger." He'd squeezed the boy's arm in warning and promise. "And we'll take care of you, too."

For the next two hours, Warren poured over the documents surrounding the life and ostensible death of Jackson Holt. He knew them by heart, but he searched anyway. The clinical trials from Dr. Davis' research were included in the dossier, along with the adverse reactions. Jack had always been an anomaly. He didn't really need the meds for enhancement as much as for control of his abilities.

Walking to the window again, the Judge looked out at the trees, the scurrying people who shoved their way around the edges of Roosevelt Park. If people were privy to half the secrets he knew, they'd do a lot more than quicken their pace. Evil walked among them. No need to conjure up some kind of biblical devil to plague mankind. Men were malevolent enough on their own account. The new breed of soldier trained by Invictus was a pre-emptive solution to combat the evil running rampant among them. But Jack was different from all the other agents. And now he was in trouble. Warren knew that as surely as he sucked on this cancer-causing stick.

Their golden boy had gotten himself into some kind of mess. He should've reported in again. Yep, this favorite son was ass deep in some kind of serious trouble.

Chapter Thirteen

Olivia’s patience was running thin. Since eleven this morning the newly-formed Dead Language Killer Task Force had been assembled around the conference table in an incident room in the county courthouse. She thought uneasily of the stack of papers she’d left ungraded on her desk and the lesson prep left undone.

In addition to Jack and Slater, a pretty young Latina woman, whom Ben introduced as Assistant District Attorney Isabella Torres, joined them. She glanced at her watch every few minutes as though she’d rather be somewhere else. After they finished their initial assessments, Jack outlined the basics of the case and the roles each of them would take. "I’d like to keep the task force small for the time being, just the four of us."

Olivia watched Jack gesture with those long fingers. He’d been a handsome boy, but he’d become a compelling man with hair like heavy black silk, burnished complexion, and dark eyes that glistened like obsidian. She couldn’t tell if the hitch around her ribs was from memory or from gazing at him now. He’d grown into assurance and command, she realized, the mantle of leadership resting comfortably on his wide shoulders.

"We’ll add team members later on for the grunt work," Jack continued.

Slater nodded and ADA Torres lifted her shoulders negligently. When introduced to Olivia, the woman had seemed friendly enough, but preoccupied. She was a small woman, like Olivia, but in a graceful, long-limbed way.

Finally Torres cleared her throat and spoke up. "I want it known for the record that I'm opposed to discontinuing the Vargas assignment. I’m close to getting him on the assault charges." She threw a defiant look at Jack. "I don't want to lose the momentum."

Uneasy silence followed while Olivia wondered how they were supposed to work together with all the land mines lying around.

"Maybe you can do both," Jack suggested in friendly compromise that surprised Olivia. "We’ll start with the notes and Olivia’s expertise while you continue on the Vargas case."

Isabella looked relieved as she gathered up her materials and stuffed them in her briefcase."Okay, then, that’s settled."

After the ADA left, Slater took a deep breath and said grudgingly, "Thanks for letting Isabella work the other case. Barrington won't make it easy for her."

"What’s the deal there?"

"Diego Vargas?"

"I've heard of him," Olivia said as she rose and swung her purse over her shoulder. "He's a city councilman in Sacramento."

Slater nodded. "They're looking at him for campaign fraud at the loud insistence of the Latino community, interestingly enough."

"Why's that Bigler County's problem?" Jack asked.

"Several months ago, Vargas’ wife Magdalena walked into my office and asked for confidential police protection."

Olivia felt a sliver of apprehension as she remembered her ex-husband's late-night visit. "Why didn’t she go to the local police?"

Slater shook his head. "Said her husband's influence was too deep and she couldn't be sure which officers were in his pocket. Claimed her husband’s been mentally and physically abusing her for years. Came to me off the record because she went to school with an old law school friend of mine."

Jack spread his palms. "Still, it’s domestic abuse."

"Magdalena contends that Vargas is heavily involved with local gangs and is a major player in drug running, prostitution, and gambling from Stockton to the Nevada and Oregon borders."

Jack understood. "Ah."

"I convinced her to talk to Isabella Torres. Magdalena issued a large number of allegations against her husband, but few provable facts."

"But Torres believes her," Jack prompted.

"Isabella wrangled a voluntary meet with Vargas, thinks she can rattle his cage."

"Voluntary? That doesn’t sound like a guilty man."

Slater shrugged. "Internal affairs is running a parallel investigation on the money sources, so he probably thinks he’s safe on the assault."

"Still, isn't that a waste of your resources?"

"Magdalena insists Vargas is a violent psychopath, so Isabella's following that lead." Slater paused. "She has a particular hatred for men like Diego Vargas."

Jack had liked the efficient young ADA and figured she owed him a favor now. "I’d like to watch her work," he mused. "Maybe I’ll sit in on her interview with the Councilman."

Slater lifted his brows. "Yeah, that’ll work."

"I'm sure she can be persuaded." As Olivia made her way to the door, Jack closed his briefcase, and followed her.

"There's more," Slater said to their backs. "Earlier this year, the Maidu City PD contacted me about someone targeting young prostitutes in that area."

Jack turned back. "Maidu?"

"College town near San Francisco. Anyway, they initially thought the women were being attacked by college frat boys as part of an initiation prank, but had no physical evidence."

"But Mrs. Vargas implicated her husband in the attacks," Jack guessed, seeing where Slater was going.

"Magdalena might not be a reliable source, but Isabella believes her." Slater ran a large hand over his shadowed jaw. "The fact is that three prostitutes were raped and brutally beaten, and although they're looking at a serial rapist, I thought of your boy."

Jack shook his head. "Not likely."

Slater glanced at Olivia before continuing. "All three girls were beaten pretty bad after the attacks. They survived, but one won't walk again, another's in a coma, and one lost her sight."

"My UNSUB didn't rape any of his victims and he wasn't gender specific. One of the victims was a man. Plus, he keeps a low profile. I doubt your Diego Vargas is my suspect."

"At least one weapon in the rape beatings was the metal end of a golf club," Slater pressed.

Olivia stepped around Jack toward Slater, understanding on her face. "You think there's a connection to my student Keisha."

Jack doubted multiple assaults on hookers were related to his Dead Language Killer, but he could follow the lead while the deputies did the knock and talks. "How far away is this Maidu?"

"Not far, about a three-hour drive."

A day, he thought, that's all it'd take to check it out. And two of his victims
had
been beaten to death by some kind of club. He studied Olivia's face for a moment. She would want to come along, he guessed, determined as she was to find her student's killer. "We could make a day trip," he offered, clearly addressing her. "Might be worth the trip."

Slater frowned, but remained silent.

Olivia looked surprised. "Maybe."

Suddenly the day seemed a little brighter and Jack refused to wonder why.

#

Before going home, Olivia swung by the university to pick up a set of essays. The campus was quiet and the quad lights cast dim shadows as a few students hurried home from late classes. Crossing the campus to the faculty parking lot, Olivia pressed the remote unlock button on her car, preoccupied with Jack's strange suggestion that they travel to Maidu together.

The faint sound of footsteps startled her and she whirled around, bumping against the car door. Ted Burrows loomed behind her. "Ted, what are you doing here so late?" she blurted out.

"I could ask the same thing of you, Teach."

"Excuse me?" Olivia frequently found Ted amusing, sometimes irritating, but never threatening. Now she wondered if she'd underestimated the graduate student.

"Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you. I stayed to finish up some research for Randy's class."