“You think a neighboring building?” LaMoia asked.
“Or maybe a CCTV. You check that out while I put up with these security guys.”
LaMoia was twenty yards away when he called back enthusiastically. “We’re close, Sarge.”
Boldt held up his hand to his ear indicating he wanted LaMoia to call him.
Security guys could really drag things out.
Cynthia Storm had been working Health and Human Services for Public Safety for two years. It was a long way up from Social Services, where she’d had to deal with teenage miscreants of every variety. Since the publication of a series of teenage vampire books, and a movie, Seattle had played host to a flood of teenage runaways. A city that typically saw far more than its fair share of vagrant minors, the number had nearly doubled in the past eighteen months, and as far as anyone could tell the only common denominator was that the vampire series had been set in the Pacific Northwest. Portland had seen a large increase, as well. Cynthia was more than happy not to have that on her watch; give her the meter maids and the men in uniform any day. But she hadn’t been promoted to the badges yet. She still mostly dealt with the service staff-all of whom had to be vetted to work Public Safety, and their absences had to be accounted for.
Today, she was chasing down Jasmina Vladavich, a Bosnian housecleaner who’d failed to show to work for two days, had not answered her phone and, as it turned out, had not been seen by her cousin, the woman she’d listed as her emergency contact. Jasmina had a good track record with the department, but was rumored by the cousin to be in the early stages of pregnancy. She was unmarried and distraught about it. Cynthia and her supervisor had decided Jasmina worthy of a house call, to make sure that the baby had not led to prenatal depression or illness.
She rang the bell. It was an apartment complex twenty minutes south of the city, near SEATAC, a neighborhood known for strip joints, drugs and borderline import/export businesses. Laundry hung from wires on half balconies attempting to dry in a climate that dictated otherwise. The sound of televisions competed. Jasmina didn’t answer the bell-no surprise there-but Cynthia used her credentials to talk the super into having a look. The elevator had not worked for three years, she was told. She trudged up five flights, down a hall marked with graffiti and was let into 514.
“Jasmina?” she called out. The super waited at the door. “Hello?”
She heard the groan. It came faintly from the back, barely heard over an episode of In Living Color playing next door. “Stay there!” she told the super, who looked ready to bolt.
“Hello?” She followed the soft groans into a back bedroom where a woman was hog-tied and lying on her belly. She’d soiled herself, and her face was streaked with tears and mucus. A nylon knee sock had been used to gag her. She was wearing only underwear and a bra, and there were raw bruise marks-she’d been rocking on her legs, rolling around the room.
“Call 911!” she hollered. “We need an ambulance right now!”
She approached the woman cautiously. Jasmina looked a little wild around the eyes. “I’m going to help you, okay?”
Jasmina nodded.
“I’m going to remove the gag and the ropes. Jasmina? Do you hear me?”
But the woman had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Cynthia got the gag off and Jasmina sucked for air and came back awake.
“Baby…” the woman moaned.
“We’ll get you the hospital! Who did this to you, Jasmina? The father of the baby?”
“No. Was my card,” the woman moaned. “My card.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right.” She was talking nonsense, Cynthia realized.
“Man…took my card. My ID card.” With her hand free now, she touched the plastic ID card that Cynthia had fastened to her own belt. “Public Safety card.”
Cynthia didn’t care about any work card. Her concerns were dehydration, malnutrition and the condition of the baby inside this woman. “We’ve called an ambulance,” she reminded.
“Why this for stupid card?” Jasmina groaned. She shook as she began to cry.
Why indeed? Cynthia now thought as she focused more on what she was being told. She reached out, somewhat reluctantly because of the filth, and cradled the crying woman in her arms.
Why indeed?
Daphne had been briefed over the phone by an energetic Lou Boldt she had not known for the past three years. When he locked onto a case he not only possessed, but emitted a contagious energy, a force field of curiosity, optimism and bizarre self-confidence that she found utterly intoxicating and physically stimulating. She responded to his passion bodily, so privately that were her condition ever known to others it would have proved embarrassing. Her skin prickling, she stepped around the yellow Wet Floor cone and entered the women’s washroom to relieve her bladder and check her makeup. She feared her chest was likely flushed, along with her face.
A cleaner was doing the sinks. She had a large brown trash canister behind her and appeared to be emptying the trash containers of used hand towels.
Bothered by an earring that hadn’t sat right all day, she un-hooked it from her ear.
“Okay if I…?” she asked the cleaner, motioning to the stall.
“Mmm.” The woman nodded back at her.
Daphne took two steps and felt a shock of electricity so powerful she could neither scream nor move. Her mind flashed unconscious, but only for a split second.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she coughed out softly, the pain so intense, so immobilizing and overpowering. She wanted desperately to blink; her eyes stung. But instead her eyelids fluttered, partially open, as if the juice were still flowing through her. She gasped for air.
The woman picked her up then, and Daphne understood from the strength and the way the person cradled her, that this wasn’t a woman after all. It was a man in drag.
It was the man Boldt had just described to her.
She was his captive.
He folded her into the trash can and then began stuffing newsprint and damp paper towels on top of her. The next blast from the stun stick connected with her neck. Again she passed out. When she came awake, the trash canister was moving-rolling across a hard floor. A stone floor.
Public Safety.
The guy-it had to be a guy-was taking her out of the building.
She tried to raise her voice, to say something-anything. Tried to call out but either her lungs or vocal cords were in full disconnect. Her brain told them to shout. They did nothing. Her body had disowned her.
An elevator grunted and jerked-it could only be a service elevator by how poorly it was operating.
Her heart beat so strongly in her chest she feared it might stop beating altogether. Surely no heart could take such abuse. It was as if all the adrenaline summoned by the thousands of volts of electricity had concentrated into the center of her chest and was now looking for a way out.
She moved her mouth to say the word help but nothing came out.
A dark purple cloud loomed at the crown of her head, a massive headache like an avalanche awaiting release. It shifted like Jell-O, an amorphous orb of unconsciousness. Now a black goo as thick as tar pitch.
It flowed down toward her ears, as well as into the vacant space behind her forehead where her sinuses should have been. But nothing was right. It was only this oozing purplish black wave of silence that descended.
Then, it owned her, and she was no more.
“Where’s Matthews?” LaMoia asked Bobbie Gaynes, a detective who’d worked his squad for the past few years. “She was supposed to pull together the squad and get the Command Center ready for us.”
“No clue,” answered Gaynes, returning to what she considered a stupid report. She was a terrible typist, and her own limitations frustrated her. Seeing Boldt in the office, she rolled her chair away from her terminal and leapt out of the chair, and just stopped herself short of hugging the lieutenant-turned-sergeant. “Welcome back…Sarge!”