Outside the Broeder police station, it was a typical early August morning in eastern Pennsylvania, with temperatures and humidity in the eighties and rising. Inside, the faulty air-conditioning system pumped a steady warm breeze into the small room. Evan stood behind the glass for several minutes, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck and watching what was happening on the other side to get a feel for the way things were going with Perry Jelinik. Apparently, they were going okay.
Jelinik sat in a high-backed plastic chair in the Broeder PD interrogation room, his hands folded on the tabletop, his head down. Every once in a while, he’d look up at the clock, but he pointedly avoided making eye contact with the Broeder detective who was leaning against the wall, his arms folded, a look of disgust on his face.
Evan rapped on the door with his knuckles, then let himself in.
“Detective Carr, good to see you,” he said as he stepped into the room.
Carr nodded without smiling. He clearly was not happy with the way things were playing out.
“So what’s going on here?” Evan asked Carr.
“Here we have Perry Jelinik, who we picked up at three this morning selling coke out of the back of his station wagon,” Carr said without expression.
“Who was he trying to sell to?”
“Detective Olensky.”
“Not smart, Perry.” Evan shook his head. “Not smart at all.”
Perry wisely said nothing.
“So, where’s your lawyer?” Evan asked.
“I only got one call,” Jelinik told him, “and that was to you.”
“Really? I’m flattered.” Evan sat on the edge of the table.
“I figured you were a better bet. Last time, my lawyer didn’t do such a great job keeping me out of jail.”
“Maybe it’s time to get another lawyer.”
“Maybe it’s time for you and me to talk.” Jelinik addressed Evan, then turned to look pointedly at Detective Carr.
Carr raised both hands in front of him, as a gesture of surrender, and walked backward to the door.
“He’s all yours,” he told Evan as he left the room. “Chief Mercer said to let you do your thing.”
“You and Mercer must be tight,” Jelinik said.
“We know each other.” Evan wasn’t about to share the news that his sister, Amanda, and Sean Mercer had recently become engaged. “Lucky for you he believes in professional courtesy.”
“Yeah. Lucky for me.”
“So let’s cut to the chase, Jelinik. What do you have-or think you have-that’s good enough to serve as a Get Out of Jail Free card?”
Jelinik lowered his voice. “I got an address. The one you’re looking for. That whorehouse in Carleton.”
Evan stared at him without reaction. Carleton was a small middle-class town a few miles away, and might have been one of the last places Evan would have looked.
“Maybe it’s old news.”
Jelinik just smirked and said, “Do we have a deal?”
“What exactly do you want?”
“I want out of here.”
“No can do, Perry.” Evan shook his head. “You’re looking at a mandatory sentence.”
“We both know you got pull with the D.A.” Perry sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, his smile replaced with thinly disguised impatience.
“No one has that much pull, Perry.” Evan slid off the side of the table and started toward the door. “I could maybe help get your sentence reduced, but I can’t make it go away.”
“How much?” Jelinik asked as Evan opened the door to leave.
“Depends on how good the information is and what kind of mood the D.A. is in when I talk to him.”
“The information is good.” Jelinik was less cocky now, but still confident.
Evan turned and gestured for Jelinik to continue.
“You’re gonna do the best you can for me, you promise? You give me your word?”
“I give you my word, I will do the best I can for you.”
“The house is on Lone Duck Road, just past where it goes into a Y with Franklin, you know where I mean? There’s that small lake there, the one with all the geese around it?”
“I know it, sure.” Every kid who’d grown up in Avon County had, at one time or another, swum in that lake in the summer or skated on it in the winter. Evan had almost drowned in that lake as an eight-year-old when he fell through the ice. He knew it well.
“About a quarter mile down the road, past the lake, on the opposite side, is a driveway. It’s one of those half-circle things, goes in on one side, comes out on the other.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Jelinik nodded.
“And you know this because…?”
“Because I was there, man.” He paused, then shook his head. “No, no, not for that. Those girls out there don’t even speak English. Well, no more than they have to, to do their jobs, if you get my drift. At least, that’s what I heard. I was only there to tow a car; this was back when I was working for Stock’s, you know the repair place? I drove their tow truck.”
“Whose car needed to be towed?”
“The lady who was in charge, I guess she was. Older lady, maybe fifty or so. Short dark red hair, kind of on the skinny side.”
“What was her name, you remember?”
“Dotty something. I didn’t need to know her name, I only needed to tow her car. Calvin might know, though. He owns the shop.”
“You still work there?” Evan glanced in the mirror but was unsure if anyone was there on the other side, listening.
“No, man, I got canned about six months ago.”
“How long ago was it that you towed this woman’s car?”
“About that long. I didn’t work there for long, maybe a couple of weeks, that’s all.”
Evan took a sip of his coffee, then made a face.
“Shit, it’s cold. How’s the coffee here, Perry?”
“Not too bad. It’s still early, so it hasn’t had time to solidify in the bottom of the pot.”
“I’m going to see if I can get a refill. You okay there?”
“I’d rather have a soda. It’s hotter’n shit in here.”
“I’ll be right back.” Evan ducked out into the hall.
“You see Carr?” he asked the officer at the door.
“He’s in there.” The officer pointed to the next door.
“You get that, Carr?” Evan went into the room. Through the mirrored wall he could see Jelinik staring up at the ceiling, one knee bouncing nervously.
“Got it. House right past the lake.”
“Would you call Chief Benson over in Carleton and ask him to send someone out to Stock’s Auto Repair and see if they can get a name and address for this woman? We’re going to need the exact address for the warrant, and we’re going to need to check the tax records to find out who owns the property. My guess is that it doesn’t belong to the woman who’s running it.”
“I’m on my way.” Carr left the room without glancing at Evan.
Must have been something I said, Evan thought, catching the door that Carr had allowed to swing back. He went into the break room, dumped the coffee in the sink, and dug in his pocket for change. He dropped the coins into the soda machine and hit the Pepsi button, then repeated the process. After both cans had dropped, he returned to the interrogation room.
He set the cans on the table and Jelinik took his, clutching the can with both hands as if to cool them.
“So, let’s go back to the house where you picked up the car that day. You said the girls there don’t speak English. How’d you know that?”
“Oh, Stock’s kid told me. He goes out there once in a while, spends a little time, drops a little cash.”
“Which one of Stock’s kids?”
“Chuck, the oldest one. He’s about twenty-five or so.”
“He work at the shop?”
“Him? Nah, he wouldn’t work there. He went to college, he’s some kind of insurance guy. He just stops in to see his old man once in a while, and this one time, he was talking about this place.”
“What else did he say about the girls, other than that they don’t speak English? He say what language they spoke?”
“Spanish.” Jelinik nodded readily. “Said he took Spanish in school, so he had no problem talking to ’em.”
“He say anything else about the girls?”
“Just that some of them were young. Like, real young.”
“You know anyone else who might have frequented that house?”
“No. But Chuck might.”
“I’ll be sure to ask him. Thanks, Perry. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Wait a minute. You’re just going to leave me here? I thought we had a deal…” Jelinik began to whine.
“I told you I would speak with Chief Mercer and with the D.A. I made no promises other than that I would do my best to get the best deal I could for you. I won’t go back on my word.” Evan walked toward the door. “But we both know that under the circumstances, there’s no way you can just walk out of here right now. Give me a little time to talk to some people, see what I can do. But in the meantime, you’re a guest here in Broeder, and there’s nothing I can do about that, so I suggest you make yourself comfortable. Take a nap, Perry. Watch a little daytime TV.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Jelinik muttered as Evan closed the door behind him.
Once he’d entered the hall, Evan’s stride lengthened and he headed for the lobby, his cell phone in his hand.
“Beth, Evan Crosby. I need to talk to Sheridan… no, no, I’ll hold…”
By noon, Evan had the name of the person to whom the property on Lone Duck Road was registered, though he doubted that he’d be face-to-face with Lawrence Bridger anytime soon. A warrant for the search of the premises was obtained, but by the time the county detectives, along with several officers from the Carleton police force, arrived, the house was empty.
“They can’t be gone for more than a day,” Evan observed. “The Sunday paper and the one from today are the only ones on the front porch. Damn.”
He kicked the newel post.
“I can’t believe we got this close…”
“What do you suppose tipped them off?” asked Bob Benson, Carleton’s chief of police.
“Who the hell knows?” Evan grumbled. “Guess we need to get the crime-scene techs out here. Let’s go over the place, basement to attic. Fingerprints, fluids, whatever we can find.”
“You want to call in the county people?” Benson suggested. “They’re faster and there are more of them.”
Evan called Sheridan for the fifth time that day and told him what they’d found-an empty house-and asked that he send out the best techs he had on staff.
“I want Carlin Schroeder and Mark Schultz,” Evan told him.
“You got ’em,” Sheridan replied without hesitation. “And I’ll call Jeffrey Coogan down there in the lab and let him know this gets priority or I’m going to recommend a career change for him. Let’s get every iota of evidence from that house. Let’s find these bastards and nail them.”
“Amen.” Evan paused, then added, “I have to tell you I’m feeling real uneasy about the timing.”
“You mean the fact that they folded their tents just when you’re starting to ask questions on the street…?”
“Yeah.”
“Who knew you were asking?”
“Every john in the county who’d been busted more than once over the past two years.”
“So someone tipped off someone over the past few days.”
“Jesus, I just started making my calls on Saturday. How could anyone have moved that fast?”
Bob Benson walked around the side of the house, waving to Evan excitedly.
“Looks like Benson’s men found something,” Evan said as he walked toward the back of the property.
“Go check it out. Just keep me in the loop, Crosby,” Sheridan told him. “I’ll get the techs you asked for and send them out ASAP. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for Lawrence Bridger and any other properties he might own, and I’ll have someone track down Chuck Stock and see what he can tell us about the place.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.” Evan closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.
“What have you got?” he called to Benson.
“There’s a small shed out back; the door’s padlocked; but we got it open,” Benson told him. “Lucky for us, someone had the presence of mind to include ‘any and all outbuildings’ on the warrant. Anyway, there’s a mess in there. My officers thought it was paint at first, but it sure looks like blood. All over the walls, the floor… even on the ceiling.”
Two officers stood silently outside the wooden shed that was set at the very back edge of the property, where it backed up to dense woods. They stepped aside as Evan and their chief approached, and held the door open for the two men to enter.
The shed was no more than twelve feet wide and fifteen feet long. Rusted garden tools lay in a forgotten heap against a back wall. There was a metal folding chair near the door, and dirty blankets were piled in the middle of the floor. One small window on each wall was covered with dark paper, and in the August heat, the room was claustrophobically still. Benson waved away a yellow jacket and pointed to the wall.
“Check out the spatter,” he said to Evan. “Odd patterns, don’t you think?”
Evan knelt near the door and studied the way the blood had hit the back wall.
“Lot of blood to have come from one person,” he noted. “The D.A. is sending the county CSI team over, including our two best techs. Let’s see what they find. First, let’s get a confirmation from them that this is, in fact, blood.”
Ordinarily, Evan wasn’t one to speculate, but his gut told him whose blood they would find mingled in the harsh abstract work that adorned the dark walls of the shed. The thought of what had happened to those young girls-his girls-in this room made his hands shake with rage.
His phone rang, and he was grateful for the excuse to back out of the airless enclosure. He stood under a half-dead maple in the backyard and listened to the news. When the call was complete, he hung up and motioned to Chief Benson.
“The D.A.’s office has located another house registered to Lawrence Bridger.”
“Nearby?”
“Between here and Reading.”
“That one vacant, too?”
“No.” Evan smiled for the first time since he’d arrived on the scene. “No, that one is a busy place, apparently. The sheriff has had it under surveillance for several hours. Whoever lives there has had a lot of visitors this afternoon. All of them men.”
“Well, fancy that.”
Still smiling, Evan headed toward his car.
“Hey, Detective, aren’t you going to wait for the lab people?” Benson called after him.
“Nope. I don’t need to be standing around watching them swab the stains and dust for prints. It’s going to take them hours-maybe days-to process this place. You give me a call if anything comes up, but for now, I need to be down in Oakmont. The sheriff is waiting on a warrant, and I want to be there when it arrives. I intend to be the first person to speak with the lady of the house…”
“Dorothea Rush.” Evan looked from the woman to her driver’s license and back again. “That your real name?”
She nodded sullenly.
“I want my lawyer.”
“There’s the phone.” He pointed to it. “But you haven’t been arrested yet; you’re aware of that, right?”
She nodded again, this time warily.
“Then why did they bring me down here to the police station?” she asked.
“We just need to ask you a few questions. Look, Dotty… is that what people call you, Dotty?”
“My friends do.” She stared at him straight on.
“Well, maybe by the time this is over, you’ll consider me a friend.”
She scowled, and he amended his statement to, “Okay, maybe not a friend, but I may be in a position to help you.”
“Help me how?” That got her attention.
“Look, we know you don’t own that house, we know you don’t bring the girls in, we know your only role is in running the day-to-day. Keep the riffraff out, keep the girls clean, that sort of thing, am I right?”
“Sure.” She nodded without meeting his eyes. “That’s pretty much it.”
“So you have to know that you’re not the person we want. We want the person who owns the house.”
“I don’t even know who that is.”
“You live in a house, but don’t know who owns it?”
She shook her head. “I never met him.”
“What did you do with the”-Evan searched for the word-“proceeds?”
“Someone comes by on Mondays and Thursdays. I hand over what we took in since the last pickup. On Mondays, he pays me. On Thursdays, he pays the house.”
“Pays the house…?”
“Expenses for the girls. Doctor’s visits, prescriptions, that sort of thing.”
“How often do the girls see a doctor?”
“Only if they’re sick.”
“When was the last time someone was sick enough to call a doctor?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Who does the food shopping?”
“I do. Online. I order through a website once a week, the stuff is delivered to the house.”
“You pay with cash?”
“Credit card.”
“Credit card?” Evan frowned. “Yours?”
“No, Orlando’s.”
“Who’s Orlando?”
“He’s the one who picks up the money.”
“His name is on the card?”
Dotty nodded.
“Where’s the card now?”
She opened her handbag, took out her wallet, and handed over the card.
“Orlando Ortiz. This his real name?” Evan studied the card.
“How would I know?”
“Good point.” Evan tapped the card against the palm of his hand. “I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared into the hall, where he met Dan Conroy, one of the county assistant D.A.s. He handed over the card without a word, and Conroy, grinning from ear to ear, took it happily.
“Let’s see where this little gem leads us. You’ll be the first to know,” Conroy promised Evan.
“Okay, so, does Orlando Ortiz own this house, you think?” Evan asked Dotty when he returned to the room.
“I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t know where he lives or who he works for, if that’s his real name or not. For all I know, his real name is John Smith.”
“Who hired you?”
“Orlando.”
“How did that happen? You saw an ad in the classifieds for a madam and thought you’d apply?”
“He came to me. I used to work someplace else. He offered me a job, said someone was starting up a new house, they wanted someone with experience to run it. Said I’d be paid well if I ran a tight ship and I asked no questions. I figured what the hell.”
“When did they move you out of the house in Carleton?”
“Sunday.” Her eyes flickered nervously.
“How’d that come about? You lose your lease?”
“He-Orlando-came by early in the morning and told me that everyone was moving out in the afternoon. They were sending trucks and they’d be taking us to another house.”
“You didn’t think that was odd?”
“I thought maybe the house was sold. I was paid to not ask questions. I didn’t ask.”
“Did you ask questions when those three young girls disappeared about a month ago?”
“They didn’t disappear. They were moved.”
“Moved? Moved where?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged again, a flip of her shoulders, but the movement appeared overly casual.
“Because you don’t ask questions.”
“Right.”
“Even when you see their pictures on the front page of your morning newspaper, after they turned up dead?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Her face flushed crimson, and she averted her eyes.
Evan turned to leave, then stopped near the door and turned back. “Who watches out for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who’s your security?”
She studied her nails for a long time, and Evan knew she was trying to decide which side in the drama that was about to play out would most benefit her. Finally, she said, “There were a couple of cops who came by at night. I don’t know their names, and I don’t know what police department they were from, so don’t ask me. I don’t know. But it was just the two of them, every time.”
“They were in uniform?”
“No.”
“How do you know they were cops?”
“Orlando told me.”
“What else did he tell you about them?”
“Only that the boss bought them to keep the peace and to protect his interests.”
“Would you recognize them? These cops?”
“Maybe. Maybe not…” She met his gaze head-on.
Evan knew the look: Depends. What’s in it for me?
Disgusted, he left the room, determined to find the rogue cops, with or without Dotty’s help.