Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (27 page)

Chapter 54

D
own at the station, the girl gave up her story to the female detective Escobar had brought in to question her. Her name was Carmen. She was fifteen and she was far from home.

Unlike Becca, she had a home to go back to. Her aunt had reported her missing from Phoenix two weeks ago. The pimp from the motel was not her abductor; apparently she’d been sold to him upon arrival in California and was being held in the motel and “seasoned”: one of the pimp’s prostitutes was with her twenty-four hours a day, including while johns came in to have sex with her.

When Escobar had shown up at the motel, he’d looked at Roarke and Epps through narrowed eyes, but he’d made the arrests and taken the pimp and the john and the older woman away.

Another three down.

But in this case they had no idea if anyone would be prosecuted. It was up to Monterey County now.

The agents drove the rig back to the impound lot and picked up their fleet car. Roarke took the first shift driving and headed for the 101 North.

They were both silent, dazed by the roller coaster, the adrenaline rush of a bust, combined with the downer feeling that they’d been had, lured away from the real action into a dead end.

At least Carmen was going home. If she wanted to go.

Roarke knew he should be glad for it. Instead he had a crushing feeling of failure.

Molina’s voice suddenly spoke in his head
. “You tell me your way is working, Agent Roarke, and I will call you the liar you are.”

He had the overpowering sense she was right.

He stared out the windshield at the road, the slash of headlights through the fog, and more questions swirled through his head.

Was all that what Cara had wanted them here for?

The chances of finding the sex worker who would point them to the motel, where they would see the john transacting business with the pimp . . . no one could have set that up. It felt too random.

“It’s good,” Epps said abruptly from the seat beside him, as if sensing his thought.

Roarke looked at him.

“S’all that counts. She’s out. Becca’s out, too. It got done.”

“Yeah,” Roarke said, and all he felt was despair. Epps studied him in the dark of the car.

“Is this because of Cara? You feel like you didn’t get it right?”

That’s exactly what it is. Nothing was solved. It’s a drop in the bucket. Not even a drop.

He gripped the steering wheel, struggling with his feelings, and finally spoke. “I feel like we could’ve gone into just about any motel along I-5 and had a good chance of finding the same thing. I think I could throw a rock right now and just about hit someone up to the same damn thing. I think that’s where we’re at.”

“Maybe that
is
the message,” Epps said.

Roarke looked at him . . . then flinched as his phone buzzed on his hip. He picked up to Singh’s voice, taut with tension.

“Chief, there is some kind of event in progress.”

Roarke handed Epps the phone and repeated, “Action going down,” and pulled the car over to park on the shoulder.

Epps hit the speaker button on the phone so they both could hear and asked Singh, “This in the Tenderloin?” Roarke held his breath, thinking of Mills and Jones.

Singh’s voice answered.
“Not the Tenderloin. International Boulevard. I have been monitoring the Redlight forums. I am copying some posts to your emails.”

Epps grabbed for his iPad and a moment later passed the tablet to Roarke.

The top subject thread on the forum was:

Weird shit going down Inty/19th

“Nineteenth. That’s the peak of the stroll,” Epps muttered.

The first post read:

TRACKSTER:
Some bsw is freaking the fuck out on Inty and 19th. Hoe just ran out on the corner screaming her brains out.

“Are Mills and Jones over there?” Roarke demanded.

“On their way. I am on dispatch with Oakland PD—” Singh said something he couldn’t hear, and then came back on the line. “Dead body found in the driver’s seat of a late-model Lexus SUV, in an alley just below International and Nineteenth Avenue . . .” Her voice cut out again.

Epps hit the dashboard with his fist. “Fuck, it’s Cara. She brought us down here so she could hit up there. Goddamn it.” His face was stormy in the dark.

Singh’s voice came back on the line. “Male, early thirties, gunshot to head . . . Wait.”

Gunshot to the head?
Not Cara, then?

Now Epps looked as confused as Roarke felt.

Singh returned to the call. “I have just heard again from Oakland PD. There is a second dead body in a Mazda CX5 parked off International on Twenty-Third Street. Male, thirties, passenger door open, condoms on passenger seat.”

Four blocks from the first.

“Cause of death?” Roarke asked tightly.

“His throat is cut.”

Roarke and Epps turned to each other in the dark of the car.

“Another pair,”
Roarke muttered. The one in the Mazda with the condoms, obviously cruising; the other in a luxury SUV, favorite of pimps.

“A pimp and a john,” Epps said.

“But the pimp . . . Gunshot to the head?”

The agents stared at each other as the fog from the fields rolled around the car, nearly drowning the headlights.

And Epps finally said it. “Who the hell are we dealing with now?”

DAY EIGHT

Chapter 55

R
oarke jarred awake to find himself in a postapocalyptic landscape of barred-up liquor stores and run-down motels, auto repair shops, Latin grocery stores and Mexican food dives. And botanicas
.
Every few blocks, another botanica
.

In the driver’s seat beside him, Epps cruised the dismal track of International Boulevard, gravel-eyed from the long night and the two-hour drive from Salinas through mind-numbing fog. Roarke had taken the wheel the first hour so Epps could grab a nap, then they’d switched.

Roarke looked out the passenger window. Shiny aluminum trailers were parked in almost every street-corner parking lot, with groups of workingmen lined up to get breakfast. In one lot, a news van was parked beside a taco truck. A blond reporter in a tailored crimson suit interviewed the men huddled at the counter, a splash of bloodred in all the grayness. The vultures descending, now that the action was over.

Another pimp and john dead.

And no worries about whether those two will ever be prosecuted. They’re out of commission for good. Done.

There was an appeal to that idea that suddenly terrified Roarke.

He turned sharply to face forward again and looked out the windshield at the strip. While the Tenderloin was a grid of short blocks built on hills, the gray blocks of International seemed to go on forever in one endless line. “How long is this thing?” he said aloud.

“A hundred blocks straight just from Oaktown to San Leandro,” said Epps. “That’s what makes it so damn hard to patrol. You stake out twenty blocks and the pimps just move the girls forty blocks down.”

In his half-conscious state, Roarke heard Molina’s voice again.
“You tell me your way is working, Agent Roarke, and I will call you the liar you are.”

He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

By the time they arrived at the alley off Nineteenth Street, they were too late to see the bodies in situ.
The coroner’s van had already taken them away. But the crime scenes remained, taped off in the gray dawn. Both men killed in their cars. Two new wrinkles: the little piles of offerings left beside each car . . .

And the incontrovertible fact that one of their killers was now using a gun.

“Two men are dead after a bloody rampage last night on Oakland’s infamous International Boulevard.”

In the conference room, Roarke, Epps, Jones, and Mills watched the screen as the blond reporter Roarke had seen beside the taco truck spoke into the camera, her blue eyes wide and dramatically serious.

Singh stood at the podium, playing the news broadcast on the TV monitor suspended from the conference room wall. The remains of an enormous breakfast lay on a side table: Mexican pastries and carne asada and breakfast tamales.

On the screen, the camera panned across the grim block behind the reporter.

“International is known as a prostitute stroll, glamorized in rap songs like ‘Pimp of the Year,’ ‘Rules of the Game,’ and ‘Pimpology.’ The reality is much bleaker. On Inty, pimps routinely sell girls as young as twelve years old, dooming these children to a life of violence, exploitation, and abuse. Oakland police declined to speculate who is responsible for the murders. But residents of the neighborhood have their own theories.”

The camera focused on a makeshift shrine on a street corner. Roarke stared up at a three-foot-tall idol positioned on the sidewalk, the familiar skeletal figure, with offerings piled up at its feet, spreading out on the sidewalk in a ten-foot radius: flowers, candles, cigarettes, candy, bottles of tequila.

The reporter continued in voice-over. “The statue you are looking at is known as Santa Muerte:
Lady Death. These shrines are appearing on street corners up and down the five mile ‘Track’ of International Boulevard. Shrines to an unconsecrated saint that the Catholic Church has refused to acknowledge. The people you are about to hear from would not show themselves on camera for fear of retaliation by the pimps and gangs who control this strip of Oakland. But these residents are speaking out nonetheless.”

The camera cut to the silhouette of a hefty woman who spoke from the shadows in a thick Hispanic accent. “For years our children are living with these criminals selling their drugs and these young girls. The police do nothing. Now we ask the saint’s help.”

Next was a man in shadow, speaking in low Spanish, with voice-over translation creating an eerie bilingual echo to his words. “They are offerings of thanks to the saint,
la Santa Muerte.
The police have tried, but the gangs are too powerful.
La Santísima
guards the neighborhood now. The people give prayers for her continued protection.”

The reporter came back on screen. “We’ll have more on the Santa Muerte Murders after the break.”

Roarke felt a chill at the phrase. He had always disliked the media’s habit of nicknaming notorious killers, but this was more than simple irritation. This was a whole different kind of trouble.

Singh paused the news video. “These interviews continue in the same vein.”

Epps was on his feet, shaking his head in disbelief. “Two murders in their ’hood and they’re offering ‘prayers for continued
protection
’?”

Mills tossed a half-eaten samosa onto his plate and shoved it away. “The ‘Santa Muerte Murders.’ So now we got some specter to deal with, too? Tell me this is a bad dream.”

Roarke knew exactly what he meant.

Singh turned to the two new whiteboards standing in front of the previous ones. “I have compiled photos of the scene. The crime scene videos are loaded for display on the monitor, as well.”

The agents moved over to stand in front of the boards, studying the shots, fixated on the one glaring addition to the mix: the corpse slumped in the front seat of the SUV with the remains of his head splattered on the windshield.

Jones said it first. “So who’s using a gun now, Lindstrom or Jade?”

They all felt the dissonance of it.

“These killings are different from the previous ones in several aspects,” Singh said. “Before we make assumptions, I must also submit this.” She stepped back to the computer control and hit a button. A website appeared on the screen. “This blog post went up online at five a.m.”

And the War Begins

Roarke looked up at the screen as
Singh scrolled through the article. “The article is the first instance I have been able to pinpoint of calling the killings the Santa Muerte Murders. That is how the news stations picked up the phrase. And the blog author has been constantly updating the blog with links to other news articles and broadcasts about the Santa Muerte connection: the shrines on Inty, the interviews with residents.”

She scrolled to the bottom of the blog article and highlighted the last sentence.

Santa Muerte is out there. And she is pissed.

“Fanning the flames,” Epps said.

Singh nodded to him. “The blog author has written about both the Salinas murders and the Inty murders and is making an issue of the paired kills, linking them to the murders in the Tenderloin. Again, the article specifically points out that the killer is striking at abusers from both sides, pimps and mongers. No one guilty is safe.”

“So she’s spelled out a blueprint for further killing,” Roarke said. Then he thought of the arrests at the motel the previous night.
A pimp and a john. Probably back out on the street already.

“Not she.
They
,” Singh said. The team looked at her. “This is a different blogger.”

Roarke’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I thought you said she was using different IP numbers and rerouting—”

“She is. And this blog author also calls herself Bitch. But the styling of this article is different. I ran it through a text analysis program to compare with the other blogs. It is a different writer entirely.”

Roarke felt a shock as he tried to process it. Singh added, “Also this blog was originally posted less than a half hour after the Inty kills were called in. She is getting insider information.”

Mills moved agitatedly. “Or she did it, you mean.”

“She, or another of the group,” Singh answered.

Epps looked ready to explode. “Hold up. These cybergroups. They break laws, they go beyond the pale, but there’s no record of anyone doing any killing.”

“We also know she’s been monitoring the Street Action forums. She could’ve found out that way,” Mills pointed out.

“All of these things are true,” Singh acknowledged. “But I have been monitoring the number of shares and retweets of Santa Muerte images. Hundreds of thousands. That number is growing every hour.”

Roarke stared at her. “You’re saying our suspect pool just got bigger.”

“I am saying our suspect pool is enormous,” Singh answered gravely. “It is safe to say that millions of people are now aware of this ‘call to action.’”

Viral murder
, Snyder had called it.

Roarke was feeling the raggedness of no sleep and no discernible progress. He could sense that his agent was trying to express something more than the charts would indicate, but he was too near exhaustion to follow. “What are you getting at, Singh?”

She actually avoided his eyes. “There is a purpose to this. I think we have underestimated the scope . . .” She paused, considering her words. “These articles are raising the circumstances to a meta level. Metaphors are powerful. There is a manifestation going on. It is taking on an energy of its own.”

Epps looked agitated, and there was a warning note in his voice. “We don’t need to go mystical on this. We need to focus on facts. The blog articles started
after
the first kill, DeShawn Butler. And the real anomaly is that someone used a gun on that pimp on Inty. And left the offerings.” His eyes were fixed on the photo of the second scene. “A lot of Inty is Hispanic neighborhoods. Whoever did it, it was smart business, planting that stuff.”

Singh was silent for the slightest moment, then spoke. “Agreed,” she said. Roarke was aware that he had been on edge waiting for her response. “The offerings both activate superstition and make a larger political point.”

“Doesn’t sound like Jade to me,” Epps said, looking to Roarke.

Roarke knew his agent was waiting for a sign from him. He nodded. “I’d like to get a closer look at those offerings.” He felt the room relax around him. They were back on track, on the same page.

“They are upstairs in the lab,” Singh told them. “Lam and Stotlemyre are processing them.”