Fatal Secrets (9 page)

Noel Marchand concluded a particularly lucrative deal in Brazil over his secure cell phone, and rewarded himself with an after-lunch shot of fifteen-year-old Scotch whisky he’d brought with him. Laphroaig. He’d imported
it from Glasgow, one of the finest, richest-flavored Scotches he’d tasted.

He brought the glass to his lips, sipped, reveling in the warmth that brought his taste buds to life. At home, he’d enjoy having one of his in-house women take his cock in her mouth while he listened to classical music from the early Baroque era, especially Monteverdi and Buxtehude. But he’d have to make do with a sip or two—and no blow job—because there was much work to be done.

His phone rang and he answered without identifying himself. “What?”

“We have a problem.”

It was one of his local men. “I don’t like problems.”

“We went to retrieve the used merchandise. It’s not there.”

“Did you check the morgue?” A problem, but not fatal.

“She’s at the hospital.”

Noel slammed down the phone. He crossed his suite and threw open the door to Tobias’s bedroom. Mr. Ling sat at the desk with his laptop computer. There was no one else who could control Noel’s brother, and Ling was an expensive babysitter. “She’s not dead,” Noel said through clenched teeth.

He unsheathed his knife, staring at his brother. Tobias smiled sweetly at Noel, then turned back to the ridiculous cartoons he watched most of the day. He didn’t notice Noel’s rage or the knife, or how close Noel was to slitting his throat right then. Since the day he was born, Tobias had been Noel’s fucking albatross. Noel had finally broken out on his own when he was twenty, only
to be once again shackled to the lunatic after their father died.

“Mr. Marchand,” Ling said quietly. “There’s a better way.”

Ling was right. “We still have a major problem,” Noel said.

“I’ll get our best people on it.”

“I want the bitch dead before she opens her fucking mouth.”

Sonia arrived at Sutter Hospital on F Street and found the criminalist packing up her equipment. “Simone Charles?”

The young woman turned, looked Sonia up and down. “Agent Knight.”

“Sonia.”

Simone said, “I’m done. There’s nothing more I can do for her except run the rapist’s DNA through the system.”

“He left sperm?”

“Plenty. Normally I don’t assume we have anything from the rapist, but I’m pretty confident that our perp left enough evidence in and on her body.”

“Didn’t you say she was found in the river? Wouldn’t that contaminate DNA?”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t completely submerged nor was she in the water for long. I recovered enough uncontaminated sperm, as well as skin and hair under her nails, that I think I’m going to get a solid report. It’s like the guy is either stupid or wants to be caught.”

“Or both,” Sonia said, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“If this is a typical rape, I don’t see how the tattoos play in. My perps are usually better about disposing of
their victims. They also don’t kill them until they become too much trouble. They make their money with living, breathing women.”

“Maybe the tats have nothing to do with trafficking. I called because the memo stuck with me over the years, and when I saw the stars, I just knew.”

“I appreciate it,” Sonia said. “Is she conscious?”

“After I spoke with you on the phone, she came to briefly. She panicked, which isn’t surprising, then had a seizure. The doctors got her stabilized and gave her something to calm her down, but she’s unconcious again.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No. She can’t talk. The doctor says she has a crushed larynx, she’ll be lucky to ever speak again. They’re going to take X-rays and tests.”

Sonia’s skin crawled. “Her larynx was crushed?”

“My best guess is that the bastard strangled her while he was getting off. The doctor is being very protective, jumped down my throat when he found out I called you. He understands we need to talk to her as soon as possible for a description of her attacker, but it’s obvious she underwent a major trauma. She might not remember any useful details. He doesn’t want her under any unnecessary stress.”

“Who’s the detective in charge?”

“Homicide detective John Black. We were initially told the victim was deceased, so until we got here we didn’t know she was still fighting for her life. John’s good. He’s keeping the case.”

“Great.” Sonia glanced at the closed door and said, “You need a guard on her.”

“Don’t know if I can do that,” Simone said. “You can talk to John. He’s still at the scene.”

“She’s in danger. If they find out she survived, they’ll come after her.”

“Maybe you’d better clue me in on the situation.”

The truth was, Sonia didn’t know what she was dealing with.

“How old is she?”

“Minor. Fifteen or sixteen.”

The right age. “Can I take a look at her?”

“And then you’ll tell me what’s going on?”

“Yes. You need to know what to look for, and I’ll want to talk to Detective Black as well.”

“The memo is about human trafficking. Is that what the tattoos mean?” Simone asked.

“Branding the victim with a tattoo or burn mark is becoming more commonplace. Some of the more high-tech organizations use GPS chips to track their victims, but the permanent markings are for ownership, and GPS is used to ensure their total compliance. Even if the victims are unsupervised for a time, GPS keeps them from escaping. They implant the chips usually in the shoulder or back of the neck.” Sonia hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. “We need to X-ray the victim immediately. I might be able to find it on an external exam, but if it’s been a while it might be harder to locate.”

Simone’s jaw clenched with indignant anger. “I’ll get the doctor.”

A male voice interrupted, “No one can talk to my patient right now.”

Sonia turned and faced the man in a white coat who came out of the victim’s room. His full head of close-cropped
silver hair suggested senior citizen, but his face was smooth and youthful. He was closer to forty than sixty, and wore silver-rimmed glasses over blue eyes that defied Sonia to take a step toward his patient.

“Dr.”—she looked at the name embroidered on his white coat—“Miller, I’m Agent Sonia Knight with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I don’t need to talk to her now, but I do need to see her injuries and the tattoo on her arm. And—”

He interrupted. “Ms. Charles has already photo graphed what you need. You can get it from her.”

Sonia appreciated a doctor who protected his patients, but she was not the threat. “Doctor, your patient is in grave danger. We need a guard on this door.”

“I’ll notify security.”

“No. I mean a real cop, twenty-four/seven, at no time can she be left unwatched. If she’s who I think she is, some very bad people will do anything to make sure she can’t talk.”

“She may never talk again. Her larynx is crushed. She’s lucky to be alive.”

Lucky
. The girl would be lucky if she could forget for five minutes what had happened to her this morning, and the days, weeks, and months leading up to this brutal attack.

“I’m not leaving here until an armed guard is standing outside her door. It can be ICE, it can be Sac P.D., it can even be the FBI, I don’t give a damn, all I want is that girl to be safe.” Sonia pushed aside her windbreaker revealing her gun and badge, and crossed her arms, putting her back to the door. “And I need to inspect her body immediately. She may have a GPS tracking device
embedded under her skin, which means the person who did this to her already knows where she is.”

Dr. Miller partly relented. “I’ll put hospital security on alert and have someone at her door until the police arrive.”

“We may need to move her. If she has a—”

He shook his head. “She’s in no condition to be moved. If you are certain she’s in danger, fine. Bring in an officer and we’ll make it work.”

Not good enough, but Sonia needed to confirm the microchip before she pushed to move a critically injured victim to another facility. “I also need the names of the nurses and orderlies who are assigned to this room. They need to be cleared, and then only those who are cleared will be allowed into the room, with an officer present.”

“Isn’t this overkill?”

Sonia had lost too many witnesses to the cutthroat brutality of traffickers. “Hell no. I don’t know if it’ll be enough. Under no circumstances is she to be identified as Jane Doe.”

“We already—”

“Change it—now. Call her, um, Simone, what’s your middle name?”

“Ann. Why?”

“Call her Ann Charles. Change every record in the system. They’ll find a way to get in and search for Jane Does. They will be looking for her, they’ve already started.” Of that, Sonia was certain. She hoped it wasn’t too late to thwart them, or at least stall them.

It was obvious that Dr. Miller was finally taking her seriously. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Doctor,” Sonia asked, “what are her chances?”

“That she regained consciousness, even momentarily, is a good sign, but … there’s extensive damage. She needs surgery, but right now surgery is too dangerous. If it wasn’t summer, she would have died of hypothermia. Even in this heat, her body temperature was far too low. I don’t know the extent of all her injuries. She’s going for a CAT scan in thirty minutes.”

“Do you have a portable X-ray available?” Sonia asked. “We need to know what we’re up against.”

“I’ll have it brought down. Give me a few minutes.” He walked briskly down the hall, pulling a nurse along with him.

Sonia turned to Simone. “Can you get someone from Sac P.D. down here before that?”

“I’ll do my best.” Simone picked up her phone.

Sonia said, “Turn around and man the door. Be alert.”

Sonia slipped into “Ann Charles’s” room before Simone could stop her.

She let the door close.

“You can’t be in here.”

Sonia faced a seasoned nurse who was monitoring several humming, beeping machines while writing on a chart. The victim was the only patient in the 4-bed ICU room. “I’m Agent Sonia Knight with Immigration. Dr. Miller said I could see the patient.” She showed the nurse her badge.

The nurse shook her head. “I doubt that. He allowed the police department to collect evidence, but the patient is in—”

None of the staff’s efforts to protect Ann would matter if her attacker tracked her to Sutter Hospital. These people were ruthless; they would kill anyone who got in
their way. While most of the brutal violence associated with trafficking occurred outside U.S. borders, there had been a marked increase over the last few years of “unsolved” murders that ICE believed were a by-product of the more-than-$23-billion-and-growing human trafficking business.

“Five minutes,” she told the nurse as she approached the victim.

The nurse called security and stood sentry at the foot of the bed. “Don’t touch her,” the nurse growled, but made no move to throw Sonia out.

The victim had clearly not been meant to survive. Her skin was bruised, a bandage covered half her head, and numerous cuts had been cleaned, interspersed with bandages over the deeper injuries. Amazingly, her beautiful face was unmarked except for a couple of minor scratches. But her throat was dark purple with a bruise pattern that clearly outlined fingers.

Previous victims flashed through Sonia’s mind. She’d seen similar marks before. In southern Mexico she was part of an international task force that uncovered an unmarked grave of more than a dozen women, all killed at different times. The most recent victim in the grave had been dead for less than forty-eight hours and bore similar violent bruising that covered her entire neck.

Though the task force had thoroughly investigated the murders, they’d never had a suspect. DNA was collected, but it didn’t match any known individual in CODIS. Mexico and other countries had their own CODIS systems, but their data was less complete than in the United States and Europe. Still, it was worth sending the DNA samples Simone collected to all countries in the western hemisphere that had the capability to run
them against their files. The chances Ann’s rapist and the Southern Mexico killer were one and the same were slim, but because human trafficking was involved the odds increased slightly.

Sonia’s rage bubbled as she pictured the brute who had caused such pain and trauma to an innocent girl. She had to find the bastard and stop him. But even then, Ann’s safety was at risk. If she had been a captive, they wouldn’t let her live to tell her story or finger any of them. Sonia had to know what she was dealing with.

“Ann” was in a deep, drug-induced sleep, on breathing equipment and an IV. Her neck was bruised, in a partial brace, and Sonia didn’t dare feel around for the chip and risk further injury. She’d have to wait for the X-ray.

Traffickers inserted GPS chips when they planned to keep the victims alive and working, either in hard labor or prostitution. The implants, even when they didn’t function properly, kept them in line, because everyone believed they would be found even if they escaped. Some victims had cut out the microchips, but it wasn’t easy or safe. The back of the neck was a quick and easy incision with the least chance of infection, but the device was almost impossible to remove without assistance.

Sonia felt the nurse watching her closely, but she had no choice. She reached out quickly and pushed up the sleeve of Ann’s gown to see the tattoo.

The four stars were so familiar Sonia almost felt that she knew the girl. Of course she didn’t, not personally, only girls like her. She could have ended up like Ann. She also could have ended up dead. That she’d been one of the few to escape before suffering such physical and emotional trauma brought on mixed emotions. Relief
and joy, guilt and sorrow. Knowing there were others not as lucky as she’d been. Others like Ann. Like Izzy …

The nurse grabbed her arm. “Detective, you need to leave right now. You think you can come in here and manhandle my patient?” she said in a loud whisper. “Do you know what this girl has been through?”