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When I hung up, I decided I'd done what I could at the moment. I kept expecting to hear something from Lenny and Cal at the warehouse, but so far nothing. If nothing more concrete came up before tonight, I'd go back to the Calico Club and see if I could learn anything else there.
Mid-afternoon the messenger from the senator arrived with the copies of John's files on prostitution. I was surprised when he delivered two file boxes crammed full of paperwork. When I began looking through them, I understood. These files went back five years. I opened the most recent one just to see where he'd left off and found a whole report on the fire at the Domino Club. He'd figured out pretty close to the truth of what had happened, but if he knew I was involved, it didn't say so in the file. I spent the rest of the day reading everything he'd gathered up to the time he disappeared and was just about to lock the files in my safe and get dressed for a visit to the Calico Club when Cassie called. She'd trailed her mark to an abandoned tenement in North Phoenix. The building had been shut for almost a year. She thought this could be what I'd been waiting for and told me she'd keep watch until I arrived. I took a second to climb into my black work clothes before speeding across town.
This time of night traffic wasn't too bad, but it still took me almost thirty minutes to get to the area. I hated driving through this part of town. A lot of the buildings were empty and in every stage of disrepair from recently vacated to nearly falling down. The construction hadn't been great to start with, so it was a real mess. The businesses still open were only those necessary for existence, and the people living in the decrepit apartments usually made ends meet by stealing, dealing drugs, or living on welfare, sometimes all three. The building I was looking for was on a corner and was one of two still standing on the block. The other one was also empty, and maybe four lots separated the two. I was driving my unobtrusive souped-up Ford SUV again, but it was way too new to last long in this neighborhood. I looked around for somewhere to hide it before I went to find Cassie. About a block down and across the street I spotted an empty house with a carport. The weeds, dead shrubs, and shadows kept it pretty well hidden, giving me hope that I could park in there and the car would go undiscovered at least until daylight. I had to laugh when I pulled in, because already using half the space was Cassie's Ford Taurus. It was nearly as bland-looking as my SUV, but I had reason to know it could probably outrun anything on the road. It seemed like we thought much alike, even though under normal circumstances our reasons for wanting to hide were quite different.
I hugged the shadows as I worked my way to the back of the target building, where I found Cassie, also dressed in black, lurking up next to a mostly-dead hedge running down the side of the building. She was as close to the back door of the apartment building as the hedge allowed. She spotted me about the same time I'd figured out her position. When I got close enough, she said, “I know they're in there, but something is off, because I haven't heard a single sound since a few minutes after they went in, and there hasn't been any sign of light anywhere. They couldn't have left without me seeing them, because there are only three doors, and I can see them all from here.”
Using the same quiet voice she'd used, I said, “That does seem strange. I guess the only way I'm going to find out what's going on in there is to go inside. Listen, I really appreciate the help. I owe you a favor, so call me when you need me.”
“Oh no, you aren't getting rid of me so easily. Perez is a friend of mine too. We even did the dating thing for a time, so if he's in there, I intend to see he gets out. This is no time to pull your lone wolf act with me, because you know me well enough by now to realize I can help.”
“Okay, okay, I see your point. I know we don't have any idea where they are in the building, but do we at least know how many people are in there?”
“I know Miller only had one guy with him, but there isn't any way to know how many people were already in the building before they arrived. He had a gun in his belt. I don't know what his buddy was carrying, but he was a huge guy, and looked like he could take on an army by himself.”
“If John is a prisoner in there, we can assume there are at least two guys watching him, so a minimum of four bad guys to deal with. You sure you still want to ride this pony?”
She gave me a sour look and ignored my comment. Her reaction was what I expected, but I'd wanted to give her one last chance to back out, even though I knew she wouldn't. She said, “There's another door over there on the side of the building. It's probably the least obtrusive way to enter.”
She started working her way down the hedge with me close on her heels. The door wasn't locked and nearly fell off its hinges when she pulled it open. I winced at the squeal as I went in first, crouched low and expecting gunfire any minute. Cassie joined me, and we spent a full minute standing still, listening for any sound to help orient us. It was black as pitch in there. The neighborhood didn't boast many streetlights, and what little light did filter through the dirty windows didn't help. I risked turning on a small flashlight to keep either of us from tripping over anything and breaking our necks. The light revealed a scuffed, faded linoleum floor littered with trash, and I forced myself not to think about the filth we were going to have to wade through. Without even trying, I spotted a couple of needles. I tried to stop looking and refused to let my mind identify even worse filth.
The building was two stories tall, and I pointed up and started for the stairs. I wanted to check the top floor first and work my way down. Cassie tapped me on the shoulder and motioned that she'd check out this floor. I noticed she was wearing black gloves similar to my own. The look on her face made it clear how she felt about the filth we'd be wading through. I shrugged and continued to the stairs. Each step creaked and groaned loud enough to wake the dead, and I couldn't believe no one appeared to check out the noise. It couldn’t be helped, as there was no way to move silently. Even when I got to the second floor, I could hear Cassie walking around below me. When I glanced down, I could see a faint light. Evidently, she had a flashlight of her own. I had my gun out and ready as I began moving around the second floor. There were nearly a dozen doors, but they were all standing open. The dust was an inch deep everywhere and didn't seem to be disturbed by footprints. I looked into each room anyway and found no sign that anyone had been here in a long time. Here and there the floor sagged and seemed about to give way, which was probably why the people looking for a place to shoot-up or do a drug deal had left their trash downstairs and not up here. There was nothing of interest anywhere I checked, so I made my way back downstairs.
Cassie met me at the bottom and motioned for me to follow her. She led the way to the back section of the building and into a small trashed apartment, stopping in what little remained of the kitchen. The place looked like it had been empty a long time. She pointed to the floor where there was a rectangular section with an attached rope that was obviously used to lift up an access door. There was no way to spot footprints downstairs because of the debris, but here the worst of the litter had been swept away and there were scuff marks in the remaining dust. This seemed like the obvious answer to how Larry and his pal had disappeared without ever leaving the building.
I pulled Cassie back to what I thought would be a safe distance to have a quiet chat. Once we were far enough away, I said, “We're going to have to go down there blind with no idea what will be waiting at the bottom. I'll go first and turn on the flashlight as soon as I get off the stairs. If anyone makes a move, you should be able to see them when the light comes on. Feel free to shoot them if it looks like they plan on killing me.”
She gave me an evil grin, and we moved back into the kitchen. It took both of us to lift the door. When we had it open all the way, we stood still and listened. After a minute or so of complete silence, I started feeling my way down in the dark. When I stepped onto what felt like solid floor, I snapped on my light and was relieved that in the complete darkness it did a fair job of lighting the place up. I'd expected to find a secret room, but instead I was facing the opening to a tunnel. I groaned mentally when a huge spider scuttled away from my foot, took a couple of steps forward to make room for Cassie, and almost gagged when I encountered the spider's web face first. I backed up, wiped my face, and walked around what was left of the web. If our targets were holed up wherever this tunnel ended, they were stupidly confident of their safety, because they hadn't left anyone here to guard this entrance. In spite of the fresh spiderweb, I thought we were on the right track, because the marks in the dust made it clear that more than one person had been down there recently.
I started down the narrow tunnel with Wainright practically walking on my heels. Evidently, she hadn't liked the thought of spiderwebs any better than I did, because we both had our flashlights on and we were checking the air in front of us rather than the floor. The tunnel was mostly dirt, with a little concrete smeared on here and there that didn’t prevent the constant rain of fine dust falling from the ceiling from coating our black clothes brown. I was beginning to obsess on how much I'd hate to be buried alive when a dim light came into view further down the tunnel. At almost the same instant we both switched off our flashlights, and I crept forward more slowly and what I hoped was silently.
The further we moved forward, the closer the light got, but we couldn't see anything else. I kept going until I reached the end of the tunnel, where it became clear why we weren't seeing anything but light. The tunnel exit was around five feet above the floor below. Lying down and peering over the edge, I could see a large room. Cassie lay down beside me, and we took a few minutes to survey the scene. She surprised me by letting a small gasp escape when she saw John chained to the back wall of the room. I knew how she felt because, from the look of him, it didn't seem possible he was still alive. I held my breath for a bit, waiting to see if anyone had heard the sound, and was relieved when it seemed to go unnoticed.
Besides John, there were four men sitting at a table in the middle of the room. They were having some kind of discussion, but although we could hear the sound of their voices, we couldn't make out the words from this distance. I recognized Larry and the big bruiser Cassie had described, but the other two were strangers. It was tempting to shoot them where they sat, but I couldn't quite bring myself to commit wholesale slaughter, even though I was sure they deserved nothing better. Pulling the knife from my boot sheath with my left hand and holding the gun steady with my right, I whispered, “I'll take the right side of the table” and jumped the distance from the tunnel to the floor. The jump wasn't as bad as I'd feared, and I landed on my feet. All four men heard the noise and immediately produced guns as they whirled in my direction. Now they were fair game—now it was a matter of self-defense. I threw the knife left-handed at Larry aiming for his chest, but it caught him in the throat. Before he'd hit the ground, I shot the man standing next to him. My bullet caught him in the shoulder, but he didn’t go down and his reaction time was faster than I'd expected. He managed to get off a shot before I could fire again, and pellets of sand hit my face at the same time that I saw the dirt fly up a few inches in front of me.
The aim of my second shot was better, and I caught him dead center in the chest. I’d heard gunfire, but I hadn't paid any attention to the two on the other side of the table. They weren't my problem, but when I recovered enough to look around, Cassie was standing over them checking to be sure they were dead. I knew my two were dead, and I was already walking toward John as I said, “Cell phones aren't going to work down here. If you'll go back up and call an ambulance, I'll see if I can get John down. They'll need a guide to show them how to find us when they arrive.”
She didn't take time to say anything as she sprinted for the tunnel. I wasn't sure she could jump high enough to reach the opening, but she took a running approach and dived through. As she slid through the hole, I saw blood soaking the left leg of her pants. One of the two she’d taken down must have managed to do some damage first. I had no way to know how badly she was injured, but I trusted her to know what she could or couldn’t do.
When I reached John, I realized his feet were a few inches off the ground and he was hanging by his wrists that were chained to the wall. I wished I could kill the bastards all over again. Both his arms were a bloody mess. His left was obviously broken with pieces of bone showing whitish through the blood. I immediately checked and discovered he was still alive, but his breathing was erratic and shallow and there was a pool of blood on the ground beneath his feet way too large to be healthy. He was barefoot and all the toenails were gone from his left foot, leaving his toes looking like bloody stumps. I saw all this at a glance, while at the same time realizing I wasn't going to be able to get him down without a key to the manacles. I chose Larry as the one most likely to have the key. He'd fallen face forward, so I rolled him over to check his pockets. The stench was horrible since both his bladder and bowels had voided as he died, but I forced myself not to puke as I reached into his pants pocket. At least I'd guessed right, because I found the key in the first pocket I checked. Placing myself in front of John in order to let him down as easily as possible I unlocked his broken wrist first, braced his weight, and then unlocked the right arm. His dead weight almost knocked me to my knees, but somehow, I managed to stay upright as I lowered him as gently as possible to the ground.
I grabbed a bottle of water off the table and carefully washed his face with the tail of my T- shirt. There was a nasty cut over his left eye and his mouth was swollen, but otherwise his face was unmarked. It was the only part of his body that was. They must have been beating him daily, because some of the bruises were already changing color. All the time I was checking him over for injuries on the outside, I was terrified of what all the punishment had done internally. I kept talking to him, hoping some part of his mind would register that he was safe now. After about ten minutes, I heard a siren in the distance and hoped it was the ambulance. At that moment, John opened his eyes and mumbled, “I due you'd ome,” through his battered and swollen lips. He immediately fell back into unconsciousness, and I checked for a pulse, scared to death he'd died. He was still breathing, but there was a wheezing sound in each breath, and I thought it sounded like a broken rib might have punctured his lung. I tried not to imagine the amount of pain he'd endured since his capture.
I wanted to scream, cry, or kill something, but all that would have to wait, because I could tell help was getting close. I checked on John one last time, gave the room a quick-but-thorough search, and went back out of the tunnel. Outside, I found a safe spot behind a hedge across the street where I waited and watched the ambulance arrive. It barely came to a stop before two men in white coats, carrying a stretcher and a small ladder, raced toward the house. Cassie was waiting on the porch. She must have been thorough when she called since they knew to bring a ladder. She was amazing, and now I heard her arguing with one of the men because he wanted to treat her leg immediately. She refused and led them inside. It was a long twenty minutes before they came out of the house with John on a stretcher and loaded both him and Cassie in the back of the ambulance.
I walked out onto the sidewalk and watched the ambulance pull away. As I stood there, two locals, probably drug dealers, walked toward me. I was filthy from the dust that had fallen on us the whole time we were underground, and I was covered with gore from handling John. I don't know if my condition explained their actions or something they saw in my face, but the two hoods crossed to the other side of the street and hurried on their way. Tonight, I was sure they'd made a wise choice.
I couldn't move two vehicles by myself, and in my present state there weren't too many people I could bear to call for help. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed the number of the one person I knew wouldn't ask any questions until I was ready to talk.
Kit showed up twenty minutes later, and he and his driver picked me up a block away from the scene at a convenience market where I'd told him I'd be. I was waiting outside, afraid I'd scare the clerk to death if she saw me. The police had arrived just as the ambulance pulled away and had been crawling all over the place ever since. I wanted nothing to do with them, and I knew they wouldn't find anything in the hidden room to tell them who had orchestrated John's brutal kidnapping, or for that matter his rescue. I knew this because that had been the main reason for my earlier search. During that search I'd found Hector Dalton's business card in Larry's shirt pocket. I hadn’t left it for the police to find because I intended to take care of Hector myself.
Kit took one look at me and sent his driver home. We walked back to the house whose carport hid the cars, taking the long way around the block and approaching the house from the direction away from the crime scene. It was a simple matter to hotwire Cassie's car. Most of the cops were so busy inside that we didn't receive any special attention as we drove by in front of the crime scene. The almost new nondescript vehicles didn't even raise an eyebrow. It was still dark but early morning, and a few other people were on the streets. We blended right in. Kit knew I wanted to drop Cassie's car off first, and he drove straight to her house with no problem. He must have used the car's GPS, since I knew he'd never been there before. Once he'd parked her car, he walked to the driver's side of my SUV and indicated I should move over because he planned to drive. By the time we reached my place, we still hadn't exchanged a single word except when he'd first arrived and asked me if I'd been hurt.
Once we were inside, I made straight for the shower. The clothes I was wearing would go in the garbage. I had plenty of black outfits, and I never wanted to see this one again. I stood and scrubbed under the hot water for a long time, and eventually I felt capable of washing my hair, twice. Wrapped in a white terrycloth robe, the complete opposite of the sheer wrap I'd been wearing the last time Kit had seen me in a robe, I sat down next to him on the couch and lay my head on his shoulder. Still without saying a word, he put his arm around me. I don't know how long we sat there before I was ready, but at some point, I realized I needed to talk.
Hesitant to trust my voice, I said, “John is at St. Mary's hospital. He was alive when the ambulance picked him up, but if they kept him alive until they got him there, it couldn't have been easy.”
He didn't ask any questions, just pulled out his cell phone and called the hospital. When he explained he was from the district attorney's office, they told him what he wanted to know. When he hung up, he said, “He's still alive! The nurse told me he's in surgery, but the doctors are optimistic, even with all the blood loss.”
“Thanks. If you'd seen him, you'd understand why I wasn't sure if he got there alive.”
I never tried to explain myself or my actions to Kit, and this time was no exception. I described the building, the tunnel, and the horrible torture room. I told him about John's condition when we'd found him, and I told him the kidnappers were dead. I didn't ever say Cassie and I were there, but he wasn't an idiot and of course he knew. He would never ask for any information I didn't volunteer. We both followed that rule, and at least in my case, it was because I knew that too much information would ruin our relationship. There wasn't any way the cops, except maybe John, depending on what he remembered, would know I'd been anywhere near the rescue. I knew Cassie wouldn't tell them, and I wondered how she would explain her involvement to the police. I'd either find out from the news or Kit would eventually tell me.
Kit held me for a long time that night and we talked about a lot of things, but after my short explanation we didn't bring up the subject of the night's events again. We eventually went to bed, but instead of our normal wild release of pent-up passion, tonight we made love. Kit was gentle and caring and I could feel it in every touch. I responded in kind. This kind of foreplay was unusual for us, and I found it both exciting and healing. We were exhausted and wrapped in an aura of peace when we eventually fell asleep. I slept until ten the next morning and, thankfully, my sleep was a dreamless sleep. As always, when I woke Kit was gone.
As I drank my morning coffee, I carefully and deliberately reviewed the previous night's events. I could view them more objectively now, and I wanted to learn as much as possible from what I'd seen and heard. I had enough proof to satisfy myself that Hector Dalton was one of the main people behind the kidnapping. I already knew he was connected to Larry Miller, and the business card in Larry's pocket was confirmation. I didn't know what information John knew that had them all so worried, and I hadn't positively connected the mayor's son or discovered who else was at the top of the prostitution chain. Now that John was free, these were the things I planned to work out next. The serial killer would have to wait a little longer, but I didn't think he would murder random targets, at least not until he'd killed the last two people on his list. It would take him a little time to locate them, so I felt safe putting him on the back burner, but I hadn't forgotten him.