Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00 (15 page)

Right at that moment, a second figure
walked out of the bathroom at the end of the hall and rushed at me. I slammed
my backpack at his head. It only dazed him, so I kicked him in the groin with
my boot. He doubled over.

Hearing us, the first guy bolted out
of the room. “Don’t waste time on her,” he ordered. “Let’s go!” Then he raced
down the hall without bothering me.

The second guy regained his
composure, but he was pissed. He ran head first toward me, hitting me in the
gut and knocked the wind out of me as he tackled me to the ground. His elbow
popped me across the nose. Blood gushed out. He went to hit me again, when the
other guy came back into the hall, and yelled, “I said, let’s go! We’ve got
company.”

The guy on top of me leaned over and
hissed in my ear. “Stay out of it McSwain, or you’ll also wind up in an alley.”
Then, he tore out after his partner.

The pain on my face was immediate. A
throbbing headache was sure to follow. I tried to pull myself up and sat
against the wall. It took a while, before I accepted they weren’t coming back.
I pushed myself up on two legs; then hurried into the bathroom. I looked at my
image in the mirror. Yikes.

My face was already starting to
swell. The skin under my eyes was turning a bluish color, and the throbbing
pain was getting worse by the minute. I didn’t have time for that right now. I
rummaged through the linen closet and snatched a wash cloth, wet it and
attempted to stop the blood. At the same time, I searched under the toilet for
a cracked tile.

It took me a while, but I finally
found it down by the toilet valve. I kicked on the tile until it came free.
Sure enough, there was a gaping hole behind it. A small box was tucked inside.
I pulled it out, and tucked it under my arm for safe-keeping. A towel hung on a
hook above the sink. I snatched it and headed out to the freezer; then emptied
the ice tray into it. I sat down on a chair, and covered my nose with the towel
to keep the swelling at a minimum. After a few seconds, I attempted to view the
contents of the box.

There were four more photos, and a
DVD. Two of the photos were from the same party, like the others. The last two
got me scared, and then angry. In one, there was a room with several bunks,
almost like a dorm, except it was dark and there was nothing on the walls. The
room was sterile. The final photograph showed the three young women from the
earlier photo, but there was also a young man. All four of them looked sad, and
desperate.

What the heck was going on?

I MUST have passed out in the chair,
because the next thing I knew, Sutter Beach P.D. had the building surrounded.
Carter led a team into the apartment with their guns drawn. When they spotted
me, Carter yelled into the radio. “Stand down. She’s in here.”

“How did you know I was here?” I
managed to mumble through the pain.

Carter sat down next to me and glared
at me. “We got an anonymous call. When I heard the address, I noticed it was
the same one we were at earlier with the crime scene techs. This was Tamara’s
apartment.”

“An anonymous call?” I couldn’t help but
wonder, who. I made an attempt to sit up, and checked the time on my phone.
“Wow, is it that late?”

The other officers walked through the
apartment, making sure the perps were gone.

“All clear,” one of them said a few
minutes later.

“Can’t I leave you alone for a
minute?” Carter said, trying to put a little levity into the situation. He
examined my face. He clenched his jaw; grabbed the cloth out of my hand and
went to the freezer to add more ice. “Are you trying to get killed? Because,
let me tell you, you’re taking some crazy chances.”

I peered at him, hoping to garner
some sympathy.

He sat back down, and exhaled. “What
happened?” He looked around the ransacked apartment.

“I found out this was Tamara’s
apartment, so I came to check it out. When I got here, there were two men
ransacking the place. They got the better of me.”

“Did you get a look at them?”

“They were male, about six-feet-tall,
physically fit, wearing all black and ski-masks.” I rubbed my temples. I was
going to have a killer headache.

“I guess the fact that the crime
scene tape was on the door, didn’t stop you, or the perps?”Carter got on the
horn and ordered an officer to tape off the perimeter, and instructed the Ident
tech to dust it for prints. He didn’t expect to get any. Then he barked out
orders to scour the building and neighborhood for any witnesses. “Got any ideas
of what these guys were looking for?” Carter said.

“Yeah, I have a real good idea!”

He looked at me with interest. He
could hear the anger in my voice. “We did a thorough check of this place, and
didn’t find anything.”

I said, “Guess you have to know where
to look. I need to check something out; then I can give you what I’ve got. I’m
not sure where it all leads. But, I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty
messy.”

“Doesn’t get much messier than
murder, Syd.”

I forced myself up. “Yeah, but how
many victims?” He had no idea what I meant, and I didn’t want to get into it,
just yet. But, the wheels were churning in my head.

“You don’t seriously think I’m
letting you leave here on your own?”

“It’s okay. I’m going to Cody’s.
He’ll keep me out of trouble.” I wanted Cody to work on the photographs and
bring them into focus.

“Syd, I’m serious,” he argued. “Do
not make me hall your butt in and lock you in a jail for your own safety.”

“I am serious. I’m, going to straight
to Cody’s. If I go home, I’ll make him go with me.”

He eyeballed me. “Cody’s, and that’s
it.”

“Trust me,” I said.

He didn’t trust me. When I walked out
the door, he instructed another officer to follow me, and placed a call to Cody
at the same time.

CODY HAD the basement in Jaden’s
house set up like a small movie studio. Photographs of Jaden in his hockey
gear, and action scenes, filmed and edited by Cody, covered the walls. A home entertainment
system with a big-screen TV and video equipment sat in the corner with two
leather recliners in front.

When I walked down the steps, Cody
and Jaden were sitting in front of a desktop computer, editing film footage for
the new McSwain & Beck teaser.

Jaden looked at me filled with
concern. “Syd, what the heck…?”

“Looks like you forgot to duck,” Cody
joked, trying to make light of it, but clenched his fists at the same time.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

“Rough day?”

“I’ve had better,” I said.

“Seriously, Syd, are you okay?” Jaden
said.

“I will be,” I said, and I squeezed
his arm to reassure him. “But I need some help.”

I handed him the envelopes. “Cody, I
need you to enlarge the photos inside, and see if you can bring the images into
focus.”

He opened the envelopes and gave them
a quick look. He frowned. “What’s the time frame?”

I just stared at him.

“No problem. I live for deadlines.”
He saved the document he was working on, and pulled up another software program.
“Let’s see what this baby can do.”

“Mind if I use the DVD player?”

“Anything I might be interested in
seeing?” Cody said sarcastically.

“I’ll let you know, you whacko.”

“Let me help, Syd,” Jaden said, and
he walked over to set up the entertainment system.

I sat down in one of the recliners,
while he slipped the DVD into the machine and reached for the remote. He pushed
play and sat down in the second recliner.

Several exotic resort-style images
flashed onto the screen like a flip-book, only the title was in Spanish: P
uerta Del Diablo
.
“What does it mean?” I said.

“It looks like a travel brochure,”
Jaden said. “Does it have something to do with your case?”

“I don’t know?”

Jaden was just about to hit the stop
button, when a room appeared on the screen - the same room from the photo. It
had no windows, and there were several bunks. Only this time, the bunks weren’t
empty. The young women and male from the photos were sitting on the edge of the
bunks, except there was something else that was strange.

“What the heck…” I said, shocked by
what I was seeing. “Jaden, did you see that? Play it again.”

Jaden stopped the DVD, hit rewind and
pushed play again.

“WTF!” Jaden blurted out. He saw the
same thing I did. “Syd, what the heck’s going on?”

The young women and man were being
held captive. Each one of them had a chain secured around an ankle, which was
attached to one of the bunks. Jaden was about to hit the stop button again,
when we saw the shadow of a figure, and a male voice echoed on the screen.

“Now, you belong to The Privileged
Ones,” he went on to say. “You will not go back to the life you had. We will
feed you, clothe you, and give you a better life. We will train you, and turn
you into the perfect specimens, commodities that will make you profitable. In return,
you will work to repay the fees, until it is time…”

“Until it is time…?” Jaden said.
“Time for what…?”

I bolted out of the chair, and walked
into the bathroom to put cold water on my face. I replayed the last two days in
my head. Summer walking into the firehouse, surveillance of David Klein, what
happened to Tamara, and now these photos with victims chained to bunks, only
who knew where. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

SEVERAL MINUTES later, I joined Jaden
and Cody at the computer. Cody was standing over the photographs, viewing them
through a magnifying glass, making sounds I couldn’t decipher. He looked up.
“You okay?”

“I think so.”

He resumed his attention to the
photos. There are some pretty interesting players in these photos.”

“Really? Who do you see?” Did Cody
know the same faces I did, or were there others? He motioned me over to his
side. He held the magnifying glass over the images. “I’m sure you know the guys
that work for the city, but you see these guys here in the center?”

I looked at the men he pointed out.
“Cops,” I said. One of them was the cop I referred to as Skater, the one that
showed up in the Camaro. If Tamara knew some of the men were cops that would
explain why she didn’t seek their help. She didn’t trust them.

Cody nodded. “And these guys, here,”
he said, and he pointed out the guys from the Hummer. “They peg me as the mob,
or maybe a cartel.”

“Their license plate is from Mexico.”

Cody motioned toward their images. “Check
out their shoes, their clothing, and the bulge on their hip. They’re carrying
guns.”

“The mob, or a cartel,” I said to
myself. “They were strutting into The Devil’s Door like they were straight off
a film set. Okay, so what have we got here, then?”

I took the magnifying glass and
pointed out Aaron Grant. “This is the son of the employer of Tamara Marquez,
the girl that was murdered. So, how does a rich kid from Sutter Beach, fit in
with a vice cop, guys who work for the city, and the mob or a cartel,
allegedly?”

Cody shrugged. “From these photos,
all you know is that they’re all together at some party.”

“Yeah, only somebody is chaining
victims and calling themselves The Privileged Ones. Unfortunately, he didn’t
show his face on the video.”

We got quiet, and all you could hear
were the cars going back and forth outside on the street. Cody did a little
more work on the photos, while Jaden and I viewed them with the magnifying
glass.

“Oh wow!” I zeroed in on another face
I recognized, and it just blew the whole thing wide open for me. I held the
magnifying glass over an image. “This guy here is David Klein. It’s the case
I’m working on, now.”

“No way,” Cody said, suddenly
suspicious. “He’s the brother of the model?”

“Yep.”

Jaden cackled sarcastically. “Can you
spell conspiracy?”

Cody snorted. “Yeah. A model comes in
out of the blue, says her step-brother is stealing from her. You tail him to a
private club. Tamara Marquez calls you. She winds up dead, but she had a
photograph of the guy who you tailed to the club.”

My head was starting to spin. “Yes.
These cases are related!”

“I thought there was something iffy
about that model coming in out of the blue,” Cody said, and if he could he
would give himself a pat on the back. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Yeah, but what is the connection
between David Klein and Aaron Grant?”