The Fort (22 page)

“I need to ask you some questions, Candy,” said Dr. Martinez, taking the picture of Molly from Van Endel and slipping back in front of him. She handed the photo to the working girl. “This girl’s named Molly Peterson, and she’s been missing for almost five days. The detective and I are trying to find her. Can you help us?”

“Probably not,” said Candy. “She don’t look like no girl that would be down here. She look like she still in school. She could make some money, though. She’s pretty enough.”

“All right,” said Dr. Martinez. “We felt like this was kind of a long shot to come down here, but it was nice to see—”

“Hold on,” said Van Endel. A thought had struck deep as an ice pick into his brain. “Have you heard of anything weird happening down here with any high school kids? Not the usual things, like being assholes and throwing garbage around, but just sort of being around?”

“Actually, yeah,” said Candy. She paused, and Dr. Martinez made a ten-dollar bill disappear in Candy’s hand. “Yeah, now that
I remember it, another girl workin’ these streets, Bambi, told me she saw a shitload of teenagers out here fuckin’ around a few days ago. Not like fuckin’ with the girls or johns or nothin’, just fuckin’ around and shit. You know, like kids.”

“Where does Bambi work usually?” Van Endel asked, trying to mask the elation in his voice.
We might actually be getting somewhere, so relax, don’t blow it.

“She usually over by Cherry, like a block back that way,” said Candy, then held her hands up. “But I ain’t helping you find her. I gots to make money, and I don’t need to be seen with no police. No offense, Dr. Martinez.”

“None taken, Candy,” said Dr. Martinez with a smile. “Before we let you get back to work, can you tell us what Bambi looks like, how she usually dresses?”

“I’ll tell you how she look, but you don’t need to worry about how she dress. You’ll know her as soon as you see her. She pretty as hell, even for a pale-ass white girl. She tall, almost six foot, and she wears them heels that’ll break your leg if you ain’t careful. She got long, almost white hair, and she keeps it in braids.”

“All right,” said Dr. Martinez, slipping Candy another ten-dollar bill. “Thank you for your help.”

“Shit, Doc, thanks. You know, since you being so cool and all, even if you travel with bad company, watch out for Bambi’s man. I don’t know if he’s all pimp or just a guy who rents his lady, but he’s a mean son of a bitch. Shit, if he didn’t mark her up so bad, she’d make more money.”

Dr. Martinez gave Candy a wave as she got in the car, then saw a frowning Van Endel as she sat. “Is there a problem?”

“Not yet there isn’t,” said Van Endel. “I just want you to make sure that you follow my lead if we find this girl. If I tell you to get back in the car, or to get down, I’m not doing it to show off. If this boyfriend is even half the asshole Candy says he is, I want to make sure we’re both ready to deal with him.”

“All right. I can do that.”

They saw what had to be Bambi less than fifteen minutes later, and did the same thing as before. Dr. Martinez came first, followed by Van Endel, who had already unsnapped his holster. Bambi looked exactly as Candy had described her. She was wearing impossibly tall stiletto heels, had nearly white braids down to her backside, and was very clearly strung out on something. Had Van Endel been forced to guess, based on the lack of visible sores on her arms and legs, he would have guessed cocaine.

“Can I have a word, Bambi?” Dr. Martinez asked. “I need to know if you’ve seen a friend of mine.”

“Get the fuck away from me,” said Bambi. “I’m trying to work, bitch. Go talk about Jesus to somebody who gives a shit.” She turned quickly, and impressively, considering the footwear, but Dr. Martinez circled ahead of her. Van Endel kept pace, his hand in his jacket, his fingers on the butt of the Glock 17 he carried. Van Endel had taken shit for his dismissal of the typical wheel gun most cops carried, at least at first. Once the other officers had seen what he could do with it on the range, though, a number of them had switched to the Austrian semiauto.

“I just need a second,” Dr. Martinez assured Bambi. “I have money. All you need to do is answer a couple of questions for me. Five minutes, tops, OK?”

“Or I could run you in for solicitation,” said Van Endel, appearing behind Dr. Martinez with his badge out. “I’d rather just have you answer a couple of questions, though, OK? Nobody has to go to jail. We talk, and then we leave and you go back to what you do.” The girl’s eyes twitched to the left, where Van Endel had noticed an alley when he parked. He spun, getting his body between whatever was coming and Martinez, and his pistol free of the holster.

Van Endel ducked under the blow from the baseball bat and shoved Dr. Martinez aside, nearly toppling her. The man swinging it was obviously doped out of his mind. His eyes were dull and sunken, and he bore the ghastly pallor and racist tattoos of
a neo-Nazi junkie who didn’t like the outdoors too much. Van Endel punched him in the stomach with a left, doubling the skinhead up, and then brought the Glock down on his head, easing up a bit at the last second. Nonetheless, Van Endel pushed the barrel into the idiot’s head plenty hard, dropping him to his knees. “Stay down on the ground,” he barked, and the man did. Van Endel knelt on him, pushing his knee hard into the junkie’s back, then cuffed him. “You stay there, got it, asshole?” The man grunted, and Van Endel stood before reholstering the pistol. It had taken only a few seconds.

“Make her talk,” Van Endel said to Dr. Martinez. “Ask nicely if you have to, but make clear that if she doesn’t soon, I’m making a call.”

“You heard him, honey,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi. “Can we have a conversation?”

The girl gave a look to the now-docile man on the ground, the one who probably forced her out here, kept her on drugs, and told her he loved her after the occasional beating. “I can try,” said Bambi. “Not like I have a choice.”

“You’re right,” said Dr. Martinez. “You don’t, so we may as well get started. Word is you might have seen some folks who didn’t fit the neighborhood all that well a couple days ago.” She held up the picture of Molly. “Is this one of them?”

“I saw some kids, sure,” said Bambi. “But I never got much of a look at them, and I don’t really know what they were up to. Not for sure, anyways. I mean, you hear things, but—”

“Let’s see what you got on your person, playboy,” Van Endel said, kneeling next to the boyfriend/pimp. He rifled through one front pocket and then the other, careful to avoid the old junkie trick of a vertical needle above the stash, point up. The second pocket revealed a couple of small and mostly empty baggies, with traces of a white dust, Van Endel figured either cocaine or speed. “Now we’ve got a problem. Either you tell your girlfriend to start spitting out the truth, or we’re going downtown. Don’t let the suit
fool you—I’ve walked a beat, and I know the look a junkie gets when he thinks he might get a spot in a cage.”

“Just fucking tell him!” screamed the idiot on the ground, and had he not been yelling exactly what Van Endel wanted to hear, he might’ve received a kick to the ribs.

“Your call,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi.

“All right, fine,” she said. “But I already pretty much told you everything. Some suburb kids were out fucking around. I don’t know for sure what they were doing—”

“I love a good rumor,” said Dr. Martinez. “Spill it, Bambi. Everything you heard. My friend and I are very good bullshit detectors.”

“OK,” said Bambi. “I heard there were some kids going around scamming johns. I couldn’t tell you for sure what they were doing, but what I heard was that there were some chicks that might have been working, but might not have been, really. Like, they were acting like hookers but were setting up guys to get robbed. I can’t prove any of it, and I won’t testify or anything. This is just all stuff I heard. Can’t believe half what you hear. Everybody’s been talking and talking, with all these girls turning up killed. And then this other girl goes missing.”

Van Endel was a little surprised. “You heard about our high school girl? Our missing Molly?” He held up Molly’s picture again.

Bambi gave him a look. “Molly who? I don’t know any Molly high school girl. I’m talking about Shelly. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Shelly who?”

“I don’t know Shelly who, I just know she’s my friend and she disappeared that night. Shelly’s her real name, but she goes by Angel. She went missing, but nobody knows anything but that they saw her get in a green car. You know what
that
means.”

“I do,” said Van Endel. “I know all about that. What did she look like?”

“A little like the girl in your picture, only not as pretty.” She laughed. “The streets are rough, you know? She was short, way shorter than me—”

“About five three, dark hair, one hundred twenty pounds or so?”

Bambi shrugged. “That’s Shelly, but that’s a lot of girls. Why, though? You find her? Did someone hurt her? Did he hurt her?”

Van Endel shook his head. “We haven’t found Shelly, no. Or at least she better hope we haven’t.”

“One last question,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi. “Sorry if it seems like an odd one. Do you know if Shelly keeps condoms on her, or does she go bareback?”

“No one sane goes bareback,” said Bambi flatly. She spared a look to the man on the ground. It wasn’t kind, but he didn’t see it. “You have to be careful. It’s not the 1970s, now that AIDS is around everywhere. Shelly keeps rubbers in a little black wallet in her back pocket, like, all the time. She gets the big ones, with foil. Johns like that. I’ve got mine right here in my purse, the same kind.” She smiled sadly. “These are gold-foil wrapped, supposed to be for big dicks. Far as I can tell, they fit little dicks the same way.”

45

Tim sat in the driveway, watching the fireworks with his mom, dad, and Becca. They could see the ones from the high school and the ball field well enough, and the alternating blasts of the two were a nice reminder that even with everything else going on, some things could still be normal. Despite his raging issues with them, Tim was happy to see his parents sitting together closely and with clasped hands. After all, it was far better than the alternative.

There was nothing too exciting about being outside under the stars and the explosions, but it had been such an odd week that to have something happening that felt so normal was almost a treat. He and Becca had had a brief interval of privacy when their parents were both outside looking at the hole where the patio was to be laid, but she hadn’t mentioned the phone call from earlier again. In fact, she’d acted as though he wasn’t in the room with her. Tim had the feeling that Becca really just wanted the whole thing to go away, that maybe for her Molly’s being gone was just how things were now. He didn’t like thinking that of his sister. Her coldness had always felt to him like more of a symptom of being a teenager than like an actual part of her personality, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Becca should have wanted to know what else they’d discovered. She should have wondered about how he and his friends were still talking while under house arrest. She didn’t appear to care, though, and Tim was pretty sure that all she really gave a crap about was her life being normal again, as if that were even possible. Everything was spiraling further and further out of control, or at least that was how it felt to Tim, and as much as he wanted to just have everything go back to normal, he knew that looking for a green Dodge Dart was far more important. He couldn’t wait for the fireworks to stop so that they could all go to bed and he could see his friends again.

Finally, the explosions from the professional barrages reached a crescendo, first at the ball field, and then at the school. Smaller, private fireworks were still being launched, of course, but Tim knew what the big ones’ being done really meant. Sure enough, his dad said, “All right, gang, let’s head on in. Show’s over.” Tim hid the smile on his face. He couldn’t wait to be free again, a ghost with only one purpose, loose in the night.

Tim went through the motions of brushing his teeth and washing his face, then walked to his bedroom. When he walked in, he was startled to see his dad waiting on him. “Is everything OK?” Tim asked, utterly sure that his dad had somehow discovered his nocturnal missions.

“Everything’s fine,” said Stan, waving a hand to Tim’s bed. Tim sat where he’d been directed, and his dad did too. “I need to ask you something,” said Stan. “I’d like to think I can expect you to tell me the truth, but if you don’t, it’s going to be on you, OK?”

“All right,” said Tim. “I’m not going to lie to you.”

Stan sighed and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Were you telling that cop the truth?”

“Yes,” said Tim. “We told him the truth about everything. But we’ve been over this. Why are you asking me again? Am I just going to get in trouble for it all over?”

“I’m asking because I’ve been feeling like a real asshole. And despite how you might feel about our little situation, I don’t actually enjoy coming off like that to you.”

Stan took a breath, then said, “I know you never met my dad, but you didn’t miss out on much. He drank too much, hit my mom, hit me, spent his whole life not trusting anyone and not liking anything. The whole reason I wanted kids in the first place was to prove to myself that I didn’t need to be like him, that I could break that ugly pattern. I always felt like I was doing an OK job of that until this week. Between the crap your sister pulled and what happened with you at the police station…It’s all been a little much.

“But what I keep going back to was you looking so shocked when that detective didn’t believe you. The look on your face, as well as the way I reacted. At the time, I thought that you looked shocked that you got caught, but now I’m not so sure. I think maybe you were shocked that they said they’d found the body, and that you were telling the truth, or at least what you thought was the truth, the whole time. I’m going to talk to your mom about it tonight, and depending on what she says, maybe we can figure out a reduced sentence.”

Tim nodded. “Dad, here’s the thing. You know me. Why would I make up a lie like that? It wouldn’t do me any good, and I’d get caught for sure. Plus, it would mess up the cops when they were trying to do their jobs. It’s not like I have some crazy history of making up ridiculous lies.”