Cut Too Deep (43 page)

“And you?”

“I’d prefer something else entirely.”

Miller turned and walked toward the living room.

“Me too,” Don admitted under his breath as he followed Miller.

Hadley hugged Don and thanked him for coming. She was a ball of nerves about what he needed to tell them. When everyone sat, Don laid out the timeline that led up to Duwatski’s disappearance.

She let him finish, and then said, “Just tell me what you found in his house, please.”

Don grimaced and rubbed his hands together like he was washing them. His chest tightened. He didn’t want to be the messenger in her case. It was too personal. He inhaled a deep breath. “I have to warn both of you, the news is going to be upsetting.”

Hadley felt nauseous, thinking about the photographs of her he presumably found. The images in her head were disturbing enough. Knowing someone else had seen them was humiliating, but Hadley had to do this.

Remembering the photographs of Hadley with her former guardian made the detectives stomach churn. They clearly depicted an aggressive and nonconsensual attack. In some of them, Hadley was so bruised, he had to turn away. It was the photos and videos in which Hadley was unaware of that fueled a deep seeded anger in Don McAllister. In those moments, Duwatski was a lucky man, for if he were in custody, Don may have killed the piece of shit with his own hands. The man had kept the photos and videos as a trinket of his brutal conquest. Now they were the evidence that would help secure his lifelong incarceration.

“Tell me, Don,” Hadley pleaded.

The detective cleared his throat. “We found the photographs he had of you.”

Telling Hadley was more difficult that Don thought it would be.

“And,” Hadley pushed.

“Did you ever spend time with Duwatski as a child?”

“No, not that I remember. I knew who he was and we’d met, but the first time we ever held a conversation was when I went to see him about ballet lessons. Why?”

His eyebrows drew together as he remembered the photos of her much younger than sixteen. She wasn’t much older in them than she was the day he found her.

“Do you remember who you stayed with immediately after we found you?”

She shook her head. “I went to a hospital after and then a receiving home. I have little recollection of the first family I was with, other than the house was run down and there were no other children. What is it? You’re scaring me.”

“We found photos of you from fifteen until much older, but we also found a set of you with Duwatski when you were younger, and they were just as graphic.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “That can’t be. I never interacted with him before.”

“Is it possible the photos were altered?” Miller asked hopeful.

“No. We analyzed them. They’re real.”

Hadley fought to stay composed. She tried hard to remember, but the months following her parents’ death were a blur. She felt numb.

“I don’t recall ever being with him, but I was heavily medicated at the time. For at least a few months after, the shrink they sent me to stuffed pills down my throat to help me cope, because it was easier than getting me to talk about what I’d been through. My hair fell out, and my skin itched all the time. After a while, I refused to take them. Do you think…he…?”

Don nodded somberly.

“It is you in the photos. I’m positive. According to your records, the family you were with during the time the photos were taken was recommended by Duwatski. They were Russian and lived in your neighborhood. We looked into them, but their identities were fakes. We have no way to find them.”

“They were probably the same couple that claimed to be your aunt and uncle,” Miller suggested.

“That is what I assumed also,” Don agreed. “You were removed from the home after a social worker visited. There are notes in your record that the home wasn’t conducive for children, but nothing specific.”

Hadley couldn’t grasp onto a single memory of Duwatski before the first time she went to see him, and she didn’t want to. The ones she did have were tough enough to live with. Knowing he assaulted her at such a young age was difficult, but not remembering somehow softened the blow. She thought about the time frame and asked, “How do you know exactly when the photos were taken?”

Don sighed. “They were in baggies, time stamped, with coordinating receipts from the hotel he took you to. The sick fuck took the time to organize them all chronologically.”

The anger poured out of Miller strongly enough for her to feel. Hadley glanced up at him. His jaw ticked, but his eyes were warm when he looked at her. “I’m sorry,” Miller whispered, then turned eyes on the detective. “What else?”

What else? God, could there be more?

“Each bag also contained a video tape.”

Hadley gasped and buried her face in her hands. Her abuser didn’t deserve her tears, but they came anyway.

“The psycho filmed it?”  Miller growled.

“Yes. The only positive there, is he can’t deny it. The tapes clearly show the act wasn’t consensual, although in a lot of them, Hadley doesn’t fight back.”

The one where Duwatski not only raped Hadley, but beat her to a pulp was the one that Don McAllister would never recover from. It would also be the one to hang her former guardian.

“You watched them?”

Hadley lifted her head. Tears mixed with mascara and streamed down her cheeks. Miller rubbed her back, sitting quietly. If he moved, he would leave the condo and not return until Duwatski was dealt with the Lorino way.

“I’m sorry. I took the lead on this one,” Don answered her. “It was part of the investigation.”

“Was there anything else?” Her question was so weak, the detective wasn’t sure how he could answer her. “Oh, God there is?”

“Our research team investigated the footage.” He paused. “It’s available for sale on various X-rated sites. The District Attorney filed a motion to have them removed immediately, but I don’t know how long it will take.”

“Can you get the information to me?” Miller asked. “My people can get it down a hell of a lot quicker.”

Don nodded.

Hadley stood up and ran to the bathroom. Miller decided to give her a minute before he went after her.

She sank to the floor and clutched her stomach. Hadley was devastated. As the reality that strange men paid to watch her be raped, to satisfy their kinky fetishes set in, so did her resolve. She was done being abused. She was done crying. She was more determined than ever to fight back and to make that sick, twisted man answer for his crimes.

Tall, confident, and tear free, Hadley returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa.

“I want him found.”

“He will be,” Miller assured her through a small but proud smile. His girl was too strong to be broken.

“It won’t be long, I assure you,” Don added.

“The pictures and videos obviously led to the child pornography charges, but you added human trafficking. Did you find evidence he purchased me?”

It would be the one discovery truly capable of crippling her, but it would come out in the press, and Don preferred Hadley hear it from him.

“We found a wire receipt in his things for seventy-thousand dollars.”

“To Vasilievich?” Miller inquired.

Don ran his coarse hands over his eyes and rubbed them hard before looking at Hadley protectively. “No, I’m afraid not,”

“Who then, tell me? Hadley pleaded.

Don hesitated. “You’re father.”

It damn near killed him to say it.

The words spun around in her head but refused to settle anywhere that made logical sense.

“No! That can’t be right! The drive implied I was sold buy a human trafficking ring. You’re wrong!”

When Miller tried to hold Hadley, she shook him off.

“I’m so sorry, honey. Believe me. I wish I was wrong. I wanted to be. The men the drive belonged to only brokered the arrangement, and then took a cut. We found another receipt for a wire transfer to an untraceable accountholder in Russia in the amount of five-thousand dollars. Duwatski made notes on it, identifying it sickly enough as a finder’s fee. You’re father owed fifty grand to Vasilievich.” Don paused and looked at Miller. “I assume he owed the remainder to another crime family.”

Hadley asked Miller, “How much did he owe Vito?”

“Twenty-thousand.”

The math was accurate.

“Duwatski had your state folder in his things. I spent half a night looking through it, hoping I was wrong. I found the bank statement from the month your father died. There were only a couple of transactions, including a wire deposit for seventy-thousand dollars, and a wire out to an account in Russia for fifty-thousand, presumably to pay Vasilievich. Of course, we can’t prove Vasilievich received it. The ending balance was a little over twenty-thousand, which I assume would have went to the Lorinos.”

Miller asked more questions, and Don answered, only Hadley heard neither of them. Her throat burned as she swallowed back chunks of vomit. How little her father thought of her hit her with unrelenting force. The room felt tiny, like she was trapped in a box, but regardless of how hard she pushed, the walls wouldn’t give. They weren’t cardboard. They were concrete, and they were going to crush her. Her heavy heart sat in her stomach, barley beating and aching for understanding. Growing up thinking her father never loved her had been difficult to understand. To learn she meant absolutely nothing to him was impossible to wrap her brain around. He gave her life, yet he also took it. He’d been so indebted, so desperate, and so selfish that he was willing to turn her over to a man whose intentions were abominable. Her father had to have known what Duwatski would do to her. Understanding how a father could do something like that to his child was unfathomable, but then again, Vitale Rosanov had never been a real father.

Hadley rushed into Miller’s bedroom and searched through her bag in the closet for the pills Dr. LeClair prescribed. She swallowed two pills, dry and tasted the bitterness as they slid down her throat. The prescription read to take one pill every six hours. She sought escape from reality and figured two would knock her out for a while without hurting her. She curled up on the bed, clutching her pillow, too numb to cry anymore. She anticipated many possibilities before Don had arrived, including the probability there could be video, but never had she expected to be so thoroughly blindsided, devastated.

She considered for a moment what would have happened to her if her father hadn’t come home late to an angry wife.

What would have happened if he hadn’t ended up dead?

Would he have driven me to Harold Duwatski’s house and handed me over to him like a fucking pizza delivery?

Would my former guardian have shown up at our home and ripped me from my mother’s arms?

How would he have explained it to my mother?

Did my mother know?

The questions kept coming until eventually her mind and body succumbed to the effects of the medication. When Hadley could no longer force her eyes open, she gave up the fight and fell asleep.

Just before noon, Miller sat in the chair in his bedroom watching his love sleep. After Detective McAllister had left, he found Hadley on his bed. He covered her with a blanket and made plans to help her move forward.

He talked with his cousin Paul and told him Hadley would not be in for a couple of days. Thankfully, Otto wasn’t using his place in the Catskills for one of his many summer fly fishing weekends. Miller planned to take Hadley up to the lake house to escape the city and the memories it held. Only Otto and detective McAllister would know where they were. He went as far as to pack her things for her and hoped she would be okay with it.

After the information disclosed to them, Miller honestly had no idea what to expect when Hadley woke up. His worst fears were seeing the meek lamb from the elevator all those months ago, that the previous night may have been an irreparable set back in their relationship.

His final phone call of the morning had been to a prominent victim’s rights attorney. Sophia Harper had a vicious reputation, and when Duwatski surfaced, Hadley would need a pit bull to deal with his counsel, as well as the press. After negotiating the retainer, Sophia agreed to take Hadley’s case.

Miller hoped a couple of days away alone together would help, and that Duwatski would be caught before they returned home. Now that his uncle had joined the search, he was fairly certain that would happen.

As for Hadley’s father, he’d already met his fate. Although it was immoral, and perhaps offensive, Miller took deep satisfaction in being the one to put him down, like the rabid animal he was. Beating her mother was deplorable, but what he planned for Hadley made Vitale Rosanov the lowest form of life. He’d never been worthy of fatherhood. Miller would not feel an ounce of remorse for stabbing the man in the throat. He deserved far worse.

Hadley woke moaning and slightly disoriented. She rubbed her eyes. The blurry vision in the chair watching her startled her and she screamed. Miller was at her side instantly. He sat on the bed.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“God, Miller. You scared me. What were you doing?”