Authors: Owen Laukkanen
BILLINGS, MONTANA.
Stevens and Windermere sat in an unmarked FBI Tahoe, staring out at a grungy brick building a block from the railroad yards as their driver, a local field agent named Fast, worked the Billings PD for backup.
The building was unremarkable, a little box with no ornamentation, blacked-out windows, and a solid-steel door. There was a black E-series cargo van parked in the alley alongside the place, a black hole in the shadows as the last light of day slipped away. The Blue Room, the place was called, and if their information was correct, this was where Irina Milosovici’s traffickers had sold their last group of women.
Windermere shivered. “Men,” she said. “Bring a girl to a place like this and the last thing she’s thinking about is getting her rocks off. But a guy will chase tail anywhere, I guess.”
“Hey now,” Stevens said.
“Present company excluded, of course,” Windermere said. “You’re a paragon of virtue, Stevens. The last decent man.”
Stevens looked out at the building. “Tell that to my daughter,” he said.
> > >
THEY’D ARRIVED IN BILLINGS
that morning. Met Agent Fast in the airport parking lot, spent the first half of the day visiting strip clubs and massage parlors and combing for leads. It wasn’t until Fast suggested lunch, though, that they’d caught their break—a pretty young waitress who overheard the conversation, caught Windermere telling Fast she wasn’t really interested in visiting any more strip clubs.
“I mean, naked girls are nice and all,” Windermere was saying, “but we’re not looking for lap dances right now. This is sex trafficking. We want girls who aren’t exactly happy to find themselves in Billings, scenic though it may be.”
“You want the Blue Room,” the waitress said. She was a younger woman, pretty, a shy smile on her face. Amy, her name tag said. “At least that’s what I hear.”
Windermere slid a chair out beside Fast. “Set those plates down a minute, Amy,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat.”
Amy hesitated. Then she sat. Then, blushing bright red, she told them what she knew.
“I only heard about this from my boyfriend,” she said, looking around at Stevens and Windermere and Fast. “And it’s not like he, you know, goes there. He just knows about it from some guys at work.”
“No problem,” Windermere said. “Just tell us what you know about this place. The Blue Room, you said. It’s a bar?”
Amy shook her head. “It’s not, like, anything, I don’t think. That’s not even its real name. They just call it the Blue Room because it’s a blue room where they keep the girls.”
“The girls,” Stevens said. “Dancers?”
“Hookers,” Amy said. “At least that’s what Erik—my boyfriend—heard from his buddy. I guess it’s like a brothel or something, five or six girls in a house somewhere, and none of them speak any English.”
“Sounds like our spot,” said Windermere. “So where is this place?”
Amy shrugged. “It’s not like Erik told me everything. Anyway, he never went there.”
“But his buddy did,” Windermere said. “What did you say his name was?”
Amy went red. Looked around the diner. “Oh, darn it.”
AMY’S BOYFRIEND’S BUDDY
was a guy named Collins, a new father with an old pickup truck. Stevens and Windermere met him on his front stoop, convinced him he’d be better off talking right now, informal, rather than causing a scene in front of his young wife.
“It was just the one time,” he said after bumming a smoke from Fast. “I mean, I knew it was stupid, but a couple guys said the place was cool. Said, like, you could get whatever you wanted there.
Whatever
you wanted, and the price was all right. I mean, I dunno, I got curious.”
“With your wife being tied up with the baby and all,” Windermere said. “I bet she didn’t have much time left over to pay attention to you, huh?”
Collins winced. “I knew it was stupid,” he said. “Look, what’s the big deal, anyway? They bring in the FBI to investigate prostitution now?”
“Prostitution? No. Sex trafficking? You bet.”
“Oh, shit.” Collins looked back at the door. “Nobody told me those girls were—you’re saying—”
“Reason why the price was all right,” Windermere said. “Those girls weren’t seeing a dime. So why don’t you tell us all you can about the Blue Room?” She looked him in the eye. “Start with where we can find it.”
NOW STEVENS AND WINDERMERE
waited outside the Blue Room. Fifteen minutes passed. The backup arrived, two squad cars with Billings PD markings.
“Tell them to wait somewhere inconspicuous,” Stevens told Fast. “Out of sight. And make sure they’re ready to move when we need them.”
Fast relayed the message. “Let’s wait this thing out a little longer,” Windermere said. “See if anybody wants action tonight.”
They waited. The cruisers drifted away, and darkness settled around them. A long freight train rumbled out of town. Windermere stared out the window, her breathing so slow and steady she almost sounded asleep. Then she straightened. “First contestant.”
A pair of headlights up the block, idling toward the railroad yard and the parked Tahoe. The headlights ran a stop sign a street away, slowed outside the brick building and stayed there, in the middle of the road, an old Pontiac Bonneville, a boat of a car. The driver didn’t move behind the wheel, just sat in place for a minute or two.
“Go on,”
Windermere whispered.
“Get in there and get you a girl, cowboy
.
”
The driver let off the brake and the Bonneville idled to the curb and parked. The driver was a man, medium height, his face hidden by darkness. He walked around the car and up the sidewalk to the brick building and the plain steel door. Glanced back at the Bonneville once and then knocked.
The door swung open. There was nothing behind it but shadows. No bad guys. No girls. Just darkness, tinged a faint hint of blue.
“Looks like a blue room to me,” Windermere said, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s check it out.”
> > >
THEY CROSSED THE STREET
to the grungy brick building and the featureless steel door. Beside the door were two blacked-out windows. On the second floor, three more.
Windermere rapped on the door and listened to the sound reverberate. She’d worked a murder at an underground poker game a couple years back. It went down in a warehouse complex, a nondescript little building with a roll-up door and a steel door like this. There was a security camera up top, to keep out the riffraff, though it hadn’t done its job that night. This place didn’t have a security camera. But nobody was coming to answer the door.
She knocked again. Waited. No answer. “You want to watch the door while I check around back?” she asked Stevens.
Stevens looked across the front of the building, then back at Fast. Windermere snorted. “You afraid a girl can’t go into the shadows by herself?” she said. “You check the back, then. Assuming you’re not afraid of the dark.”
“Terrified.” Stevens walked down to the sidewalk and started toward the alley. Then he stopped. “Carla,” he said, staring up at the building. “Come here.”
Something in his voice made Windermere tense. She followed him to the sidewalk, followed his gaze to the three windows on the building’s second floor.
Two of the windows were completely blacked out. The third showed a slim triangle of light in the bottom corner, a sheet turned back. From inside the triangle, a woman’s face peered out. A girl, more like it. Her face was mostly shadow, but where the light hit, she looked gaunt. Bruised. Hollow-eyed.
The girl met Windermere’s eye, and Windermere felt a sudden anger well up in her chest. “Come on,” she told Stevens, reaching for her Glock. “Let’s go see who’s running this shithole.”
WINDERMERE HURRIED BACK UP
to the Blue Room’s door as Stevens ran for the Tahoe to rouse Fast. She drew her Glock, her heart already racing, and pounded on the steel door.
“FBI
.
Open this door.”
She wondered what she would do if the bastards didn’t want to come out. Wondered if she could restrain herself. A girl’s face in a window was hardly probable cause, and the waitress’s boyfriend’s buddy’s testimony wasn’t enough for a search warrant. But she couldn’t walk away now, not after seeing that girl’s face.
She beat on the door again, still mulling her options, when someone inside rendered the whole debate moot. With a shotgun. There was a
BOOM
like thunder and a front window exploded. Windermere dove to the ground, looked back and saw Stevens stagger backward, and for a brief, horrible moment, she thought he’d been hit. Then he pulled himself upright, yelled something to Fast, and bolted for the building.
Somewhere nearby, sirens spooled up. Engines roared. The cruisers flew down the block and screamed to a stop in front of the building. The shotgun boomed again, blowing out the other window. Inside, women screamed. More glass shattered. Stevens was crouched beside the first window, his gun drawn. The windows yawned open, their light alien blue. This was the Blue Room, all right. This was someone’s last stand.
Windermere shouted back to the Billings PD uniforms, told them to contain the building from the back. Was about to call out to Stevens when the steel door flew open. Windermere swung at it with her Glock, nearly blew a hole through a terrified blond girl in a cheap negligee as she came booking out the doorway for the sidewalk. Windermere lowered her gun, caught the girl. Ducked her head and dragged her, screaming, to Fast.
“Watch
her, goddamn it,”
she told the Billings agent. “And call for more backup.”
The doorway loomed now, wide open. More women’s screams from inside. There was no time to wait. Windermere ran for the doorway, heard Stevens fall in step behind.
> > >
STEVENS FOLLOWED WINDERMERE
into the building, his heart pounding. Inside, the Blue Room was chaos: overturned threadbare furniture, dim blue light and gun smoke, panic and pornographic posters and a maddening soundtrack of heavy rock music. Nobody in sight.
Ahead of Stevens, Windermere took up a Weaver stance and crept into the room, her back to the wall, her Glock aimed at a doorway marked by gauzy curtains, and the stairway that led to the upper floor of the brothel. The screaming was coming from upstairs.
Windermere motioned at the row of curtains. Covered the doorway as Stevens circled around. At her signal, he pulled the curtain aside and ducked back, ready for the shotgun.
Nothing.
The curtain opened onto a slim corridor. A couple doorways facing toward the street, another blacked-out window at the end, this one intact. Both doors opened inward; both were open. Stevens checked the first room, found a tiny bedroom just large enough for a single bed and a makeup table. A rack of skimpy costumes in a tiny closet. The window was blown out, revealing the street and the cruisers beyond. There was nobody inside.
Stevens covered Windermere as she checked the second room. Identical, and just as empty. The rock music throbbed somewhere overhead. They crept back out to the Blue Room’s antechamber.
Footsteps on the staircase, fast and urgent. Stevens swung around with his sidearm, found another terrified woman running for the exit. The shotgun boomed down from behind her, obliterating a lamp and a poster of the ’98 Playmate of the Year. More footsteps now, heavier—work boots on wooden stairs. The guy made it halfway down before he noticed Stevens and Windermere. He was a big guy, middle-aged, a red beard. He swore and swung the shotgun around, and Stevens shot him without thinking, reflexive. The guy gasped, dropped the shotgun. Tumbled down the stairs and landed in a heap at the bottom.
The whole room seemed to pause. The shooter didn’t move. Stevens trained his Glock on him as Windermere crossed to the guy, kicked the shotgun away. Looked up the stairwell and then back at Stevens. “Nice shooting, partner,” she said. “That guy would have splattered us.”
Stevens leaned against the wall. Tried to catch his breath. “Gotta be more of them.”
“You wanna check the second floor?”
“Sure,” he said.
She looked him over. “You okay?”
Before he could answer, another scream from upstairs. This one more urgent, a desperate plea. Stevens started up the stairs. “Let’s go.”
They hurried up the staircase, as stealthily as they could. Stevens led this time, made the top of the stairs and swung around, getting his bearings.
Another long corridor. More doorways. Red light up here, and more awful rock music, more X-rated posters on the walls. The lingering scent of sex and sweat and marijuana smoke. The first door was open. The screams came from inside.
Stevens crept across the hall to the doorway. There was a girl in the room, he saw, the same one they’d seen from the street. She was young, sixteen or seventeen, no more than a child, her face bruised and tearstained, her skin pale. She wore pigtails and heavy makeup and a child’s white underwear. There was a man with her, his back to Stevens. He struggled with her, swearing, fighting to hold on to her.
The girl screamed again. Tore away. The man slapped her and something triggered in Stevens, and he was inside the room before he realized it had happened, crossing the floor toward the man and the girl, his blood like a bass beat in his ears. The girl saw him coming, betrayed him with wide eyes, and the man spun around, raising a pistol.
It happened in milliseconds. The man reached for the girl with his free hand, wrapped his meaty forearm around her neck, and pulled her closer. Brought his pistol to aim with the other hand. Stevens locked eyes with the girl, froze for just a moment. Just long enough for the bastard to get a shot off.
Then Stevens shot back. Windermere, too. The guy dropped the girl and went staggering backward. Hit the wall and slumped down to the floor as the girl crawled away, sobbing. Windermere rushed the shooter, kicked his pistol away, as Stevens reached for the girl.
He wanted to comfort her, tell her she was safe now. Knew he should get her out of the building to safety, knew there might be more gunmen. He couldn’t move, though. Couldn’t breathe. Felt like he’d been kicked square in the chest. He brought his hand to his shirt, felt the torn fabric. Tried to exhale and coughed instead, violent. Windermere looked back at him. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, shit.”
Stevens made a face. “Goddamn it, Carla,” he said. “I think the bastard shot me.”