Truth & Lies: A Queen City Justice Novel (26 page)

Oh, right, he’d already told him that. “Do you know what kind?”

The kid shook his head.

“Do you remember if it had two doors or four doors?”

He cocked his head to the side. And then a lightbulb went on over his head. “It had four!”

“Thanks, kid.”

He started to shut the door when something occurred to him. “Hey, kid. Swap you a ten for that fiver.”

He looked suspicious. “Why?”

“We need to find out who that guy was.” He grabbed his badge hooked to his jacket hanging on the coat tree. He whipped it open for the kid’s perusal. “I’m a police officer, and I think he has a friend of mine. Maybe your money will have fingerprints on it.”

“You mean like on TV?”

Deck nodded.

“The guy had big black gloves on, but yeah. I’ll take a ten.” He grinned, looking like an urchin with a missing front tooth.

The kid dug the money out of his pocket. “Only touch the corner, if you can,” Deck said, trying not to sound like he was yelling at him.

The kid grabbed it by the corner and handed it over.

It was possibly the oldest five-dollar bill Deck had ever seen. It had probably been through countless washers and had the lint of a thousand pockets clinging to its ratty sides. That thing would hold fingerprints almost as well as a puddle of water.

Damn.

Deck dropped the CD on the small table by the front door and dug his wallet out. In it, he only found a twenty. “Today’s your lucky day,” he said snapping the crisp new bill.

“Wow. Thanks.”

He exchanged his twenty for the beat-up five. “What’s your name?”

“Tommy Johnson.”

The kid lived three houses down. He’d know where to find him if he had any more questions. “Thanks, Tommy. Go on home. And no more talking to strangers, even if they give you money.
Especially
if they give you money.”

Tommy scampered off, and Deck shut the door. He picked up the CD from the table—again holding it by the corners, taking it directly to his laptop sitting on the island in the kitchen. Holding the disk by the edges, he scanned the surface in the light from a variety of angles. It had a mirror finish on both sides. Not a single fingerprint.

Damn. That would have been too easy.
He fired up the disk, and a video file started playing automatically.

Deck felt his hands start to shake when he saw Dana, dressed in sleazy clothes on the floor against a concrete block wall. It all looked too familiar. He’d seen the Anka Pierovich video, and he knew at that moment Dana hadn’t been taken by some random stranger.

But at least she’d been alive, and she was without any obvious wounds. That was something.

He heard her words, but he didn’t pay much attention. He was too focused on the fear on her face. He’d watched the short video three times before he noticed her hands. It was subtle—the way she was moving them—but since she didn’t normally fidget, it struck him as odd.
Holy crap. She’s
signing
.

She was brilliant. He had no idea what she was saying, but he’d bet it was important. He dove for the phone to call Sherwood. Maybe she had signed something that would help them find her.

Chapter Eighteen

Saturday, December 13—3:00 p.m.

Cincinnati FBI Field Office, Kenwood Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

“Boss, you’ve got to hear this!” Kier MacQuaid stood in his doorway, looking like he might burst with his information.

“Tell me you’ve got good news,” Andrew said, his mind shooting off in twenty-seven directions at once. He couldn’t take any more bad news. His plate was full, between a kidnapped agent—who, if Deck Murphy was right, was currently in the hands of a psychopathic killer—another secretary who’d quit—
don’t think about that right now, Sherwood
—and the director and mayor calling every ten minutes.

“This definitely qualifies as a solid lead.” Before Andrew could prompt him to get to the point, he launched into the details.

“You know the lady who runs the laundry…?”

What was it with this kid and the laundry?

“Did Emilie figure out who owned it?”

“Not yet. However, yesterday they got a new batch from our friend John Giordano. When she was cleaning out the pockets, she found a receipt safety pinned in the pocket of one of the women’s pair of yoga pants.”

MacQuaid was too excited for Andrew to discount the evidence, so he held on to his patience and waited for him to get on with the info dump. “Want to guess what was written on the receipt?”

Andrew tried not to appear hostile. “What?”

“A message from Anka Pierovich.” To say that MacQuaid looked smug was an understatement in the extreme.

“What does it say?”

He slid a piece of paper across the desk. It had the FBI standard fax header in the upper margin, with a medium-gray shaded area in the center which looked like a receipt and clearly read
Help! I am Anka Pierovich and I am captive. Call police!
in imprecise block letters.

“I want everything you and the rest of the team can get on John Giordano, including his presence in our interview room within the next hour.”

“You got it, boss. Emilie is already digging.”

“Good job. Next time you have a hunch, I won’t give you as much shit about it.”

MacQuaid grinned before scurrying back to the war room.

Andrew followed at a slightly slower pace.

He addressed the group. “I got off the phone with Capt. Heisler, the CPD Investigations Bureau Commander, just before MacQuaid gave me his good news. Heisler’s offered up whatever resources we need, so let’s not be afraid to use them.” The conference table looked like the aftermath of a hurricane. Photos, file folders, and papers competed for space with a couple of laptops, coffee cups, and Falcon, who was perched on the end of the table.

Emilie piped up. “I started doing cross-references on all those embedded companies that John Giordano works for, and I found one that owns a piece of property. It’s different from the street address on his driver’s license.”

“Get Heisler to send one of his guys to check it out.”

“Wait. Before we send a car, let’s see where it is.” Emilie’s fingers flew over the keyboard, so quickly they were almost a blur.

“Well, we can send them, but I doubt it’s going to do any good.” She flipped her laptop around to show an image of a vacant lot. “Gotta love Google Maps.”

“So where are we, then?” he asked.

“Back to square one, unless we can locate Giordano.”



Saturday, December 13—Time Unknown

Location Unknown

After finishing their video, Mr. Psycho left, only to return a couple of moments later, shoving a young woman into the room with curt instructions. “Get her ready. You have less than two hours.” He turned to Dana. “Don’t cause any problems.” He backed out, slamming the door shut.

“You’re Anka Pierovich,” Dana said in Croatian. The woman had lost weight since her passport photo had been taken and since she’d made the video. Her collarbones stood out in sharp relief, visible with the low neckline of her blouse. Her stomach was also visible and Dana noted a crisscross pattern of red, barely healed scars across her belly.

“How do you know me?” she asked, a trembling hand to her throat.

“We’ve been looking for you.”

“Who? Who are you?”

Dana explained, watching Anka’s expression get more and more hopeful.

“You got my note?” Anka asked.

“What note?”

Her face fell. She explained her heroic effort to get a note to the police through the laundry.

“That’s brilliant. Good thinking. As far as I’ve heard, they haven’t received your note yet. But hopefully they will.” Dana explained what she’d done with the video. She told her about how they’d analyzed the video she’d made for Donald Monroe.

“I was so afraid. And that was before I knew what kind of monster he was,” Anka said.

“So you’ve been held here for months?”

Anka nodded.

“Has he ever taken you out of here?”

She shook her head. “Every few weeks, a new girl comes. He calls me his wife and calls them my playmates.” She shuddered as if just the idea made her ill. “Then we have ‘playtime’ where he makes us dress up”—she gestured between them—“like this.”

“Have you ever refused?”

She nodded, and tears came to rest on her lower lashes. “The other guy forced me into the shower.”

“Tell me about the other guy.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What does he look like? Does he have a name? Why is he doing Mr. Psycho’s bidding?”

“Tall. Thick. Dark hair that’s just starting to go silver. Maybe Italian or Greek.”

Guido.
“John Giordano,” Dana said. “He’s associated with Dream Come True, but we don’t know how.”

Anka shrugged.

“Do you know why he helps him out?”

Anka shook her head. “I think my ‘husband’ has something on him. But I could tell he doesn’t really want to do it.”

“So what happens during playtime?” Dana needed to know what to expect. Hopefully they could find a way to overpower him.

“He ties me up and makes me watch while he rapes and kills my ‘playmate.’” Tears fell from her eyes. “The things he does to them. It’s so awful.” She sniffed. “I am torn between hoping they die quickly for their own sakes and hoping they’ll last forever so he never gets to me.” Her sniffles became sobs, and she turned her head away and put her hands over her face.

Dana put a comforting hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

“And then he rapes and cuts me, but never as bad as he cuts them. It’s like he’s saving me for the next time.”

Oh, God. The horrors this woman had endured.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Dana assured her, not quite believing her own words.

“How? There isn’t a single thing we could use to defend ourselves.”

“What do you have in your bag of tricks?” Dana asked, indicating the toiletry bag Anka had brought in with her.
Please let her have something more than what’s in my bathroom.

“Cheap makeup.”

“Show me.”

There was indeed a fair amount of eye makeup in dark colors, bright red lipsticks and dark blushes. She had couple of shadow brushes, but they were very delicate with flimsy handles. The blush brush was the one that came in the blush compact. Nothing with a handle that could be broken and used as a shank.

She did, however, have one of those durable emery boards that was about three inches long and three-quarter inches wide, with foam padding between the two layers. And that was more than enough.

Dana scrambled to her feet, raced into the bathroom, and pulled the toothbrush from the drawer.

“I have an idea…”



Saturday, December 13—3:30 p.m.

Cincinnati FBI Field Office, Kenwood Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

Deck cooled his heels in the lobby of the Federal Building, waiting for someone from Dana’s office to come and get him. He’d pace, but his leg was barely supporting him, so instead he burned nervous energy willing whoever security had called to hurry.

A short blonde woman stepped off the elevator and came straight for him. “Detective Murphy?”

Deck nodded, already limping toward the elevators.

“I’m Special Agent Emilie Presley. The team is waiting for you.”

They stepped back into the elevator, and she hit the button for the ninth floor. “How are you holding up?” she asked.

No one knew that he and Dana were involved, so it seemed an odd question. He didn’t want to do anything to cast any aspersions on Dana’s professionalism, so blurting out that the thought of the woman he might love in the hands of a psychopath was making him lose his own sanity probably wasn’t in anyone’s best interests.

“Let’s just find her, okay?” he said, horrified to hear his voice break.

She patted his arm. “The team is doing everything in their power. Don’t worry. The rest of them look just as shook up as you do. I thought Doc—” She swallowed, and a blush climbed up her neck. She started again. It barely occurred to him to wonder what that was all about. “Agent Johnson was going to burst a blood vessel when he found out she was missing. Trust me, Dana is their absolute first priority.”

He nodded.

The elevator dinged as it reached the ninth floor. They exited, hung a Louie and then stepped into a nearly deserted bull pen.

“Where is everyone?”

“They’re working in the conference room.” She pointed down a hall. “Follow me.”

“Murphy,” Sherwood greeted him when they entered the room, which crackled with barely harnessed energy. He recognized a few of the agents from when they’d come to the house earlier.

“Thanks for bringing the CD down.”

“Like I said on the phone, there weren’t any fingerprints on the disk. The ones on the case almost certainly belong to the eight-year-old who was paid to hand it over, but I brought it at any rate.”

He pulled two items from the thigh pocket of his cargo pants, then handed the CD in his own case to Sherwood, and the original, protected in a sealed evidence bag to Emilie.

“MacQuaid—where’s Thompson, and where are we on the deaf interpreter?”

“He went down to the lobby to meet her.”

“Murphy, work with Thompson when he gets back to find out what Dana was trying to tell us.” He turned to his admin. “Get Murphy anything he needs,” he said, turning on his heel. He spun back when he reached the door. “We’ll find her. I have some calls to make. Interrupt me if you find out anything.”

“Detective, can I get you anything? Coffee or water or soda?”

“I’m good.” All he needed was a chair. And more ice packs. “Actually, Agent Presley. Could I trouble you for some ice?”

“It’s Emilie,” she told him. “And sure. You just want a cup?”

He collapsed in one of the chairs at the conference room table, pulled his pant leg up, and put his leg on a bare spot on the edge. “As much as you can get.”

Fuck. No wonder it hurts so bad.

From his loosely tied boot up to his knee, his leg was swollen to the point that the skin stretched shiny and red over his shin.