Lullaby for the Nameless (30 page)

Where had Nolan worked before, when he’d handled the report on the missing girl that was part of their case? She pulled her notebook out of the glove box and flipped through the pages.

Penticton.

Ashlyn started skimming every file to see if Nolan had originally handled it. She was halfway through, and a glance at the clock told her she’d spent a few hours going over what she had so far. None of the girls had lived in Penticton or been reported missing there, and none of the officers who opened the files she’d looked over so far connected to their investigation.

How could she narrow it down?

Ashlyn picked up her phone and started to dial. When the voice mail answered she hung up without leaving a message.

She flipped through the folders again and skimmed the contents one file at a time. When she reached the file labeled KAITLIN COLLINS it clicked into place. As soon as she saw the name in the file, she went back to the top and read it line by line.

Kaitlin had been reported missing from a small town in the interior Ashlyn vaguely recognized. Her date of birth made her…

Fifteen years old.

Ashlyn continued to skim the file. It read like many of the others, the tale of a small-town girl who’d disappeared without much evidence of where she’d gone or why. As she skimmed the folder, she realized that there wasn’t one single thing that readily stood out to make the file any different than the ones officially connected to the investigation, or the ones locked in Nolan’s desk. She slowed down and covered the information line by line until she found it.

Reported missing by Craig Nolan. Brother.

“I found something interesting in these files, Steve.”

“Ashlyn—”

“She’s still missing?”

Steve hesitated. “What does the file say?”

“Look, these files have been missing for weeks. If there was an update for any of them, it wouldn’t be in here because Nolan’s had them locked in his desk.”

“Then how did you get them?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

“Ashlyn, is this what it’s come to? Sneaking around, going through people’s desks? Why didn’t you go to Craig?”

“I—” She glanced around, suddenly aware that her volume had increased while they’d been talking, then leaned back for a second and closed her eyes. “I know you trust him, but there are things he’s hiding. Things that, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with his sister.”

“At some point you’ll have to decide who to trust, Ashlyn.”

She opened her eyes and looked in the rearview mirror as the hum of a truck engine faded. The occupant of the truck got out and shut the door, his empty hands raised as he approached her car.

“I’ve almost worked that out,” she told Steve. “I have to go.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

Ashlyn flipped the phone shut, opened the car door and got out. “Dare I ask?”

“You used your cell phone.”

“Does anyone on this team work within the law?”

Tain glanced at the bag on the front passenger seat of her car. “Not anymore.”

She almost smiled.

“Can we talk?” he asked her.

“Drive. It’s safer.”

For him or for her? She was beginning to wonder, but didn’t argue. She got in the car and it only took a moment to stuff the files back in the bag and put it in the backseat. As she backed out of the parking spot she glanced at Tain. “You have fifteen minutes to persuade me this is worth my time.”

“In that case, I’d better start talking now.”

That was when he realized there must be marks on her hands, wounds that were reopened before they could properly mend. For Jenny the gloves weren’t about fashion. They were about function.

He sat back as the waitress approached their table and slid two plates of food and two glasses of orange juice in front of them. Jenny always picked the booth in the very back, where she could curl into the corner and keep an eye on everything around her. They were in a roadside diner not far off the highway, but far enough off to not be a truck stop. It was the kind of place that had clung to its faded green and dusky white décor not out of nostalgia but because of budgetary restraints. The uniforms the staff wore were so faded Tain wouldn’t have been surprised if they were hand-me-downs from the original staff. He’d met Jenny on the outskirts of Nighthawk Crossing and driven more than a hundred kilometers from her hometown, to a place she’d never been to, and still she glanced around the restaurant as she wolfed down the eggs and toast, keeping watch for any familiar faces.

“Okay, look. You need to go, just like normal. Do whatever they ask you to do. You’ll be arrested along with them.”

“I don’t know if I can do it this time.”

“If you aren’t there it’ll look suspicious. They’ll start wondering if someone talked to the cops, and if you’re the only one missing they’ll know it was you.”

She sat still for a moment, then reached for the orange juice. “What about the other thing?”

“The girls?”

“Yeah.”

“You told me about the ones they smuggle across the border, in both directions. Runaways recruited for prostitution. Once we get these guys we’ll try to track down all the victims.”

Tain hesitated. “There are girls who’ve gone missing around those times. You mean they aren’t part of this other thing?”

She fidgeted with the empty orange juice glass and shrugged her right shoulder. “How many did I give you days for?”

“Nine. Is that how many there are?”

Jenny shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve never seen them all together.”

“But you have seen them?”

Jenny’s wide eyes searched the room before she looked at Tain again. “Once. Some of them.”

“But you said—”

“Look, I overheard them talkin’. Sayin’ these ones weren’t for the other stuff. There’s a cellar at the inn and it connects with tunnels, over across the street to where the inn staff used to stay. That’s where my room is, part of the cellar. I saw two of them there once. The girl they’d had for a while, she wasn’t too skinny, not like the ones they use for the other stuff. She was out to here.” She made an arc with her hand that indicated a swollen belly.

Pregnant.

“The other one, they’d just gotten her. She was tied up. They always kept them tied at first.”

As far as he could tell, Bobby and Eddie were pretty small-time criminals who’d stumbled upon an easy trade. Eddie was a trucker and didn’t get much hassle at the border because he lived on the Reserve. Bobby’s family had owned the shipping company for years, and they’d been plying one form of illegal trade or another for as long as Blind Creek Shipping Co. had been in business.

There were reasons he didn’t want to work on Reserves.

“Where are they keeping them?”

Jenny took another glance around as she reached for the fork and twirled it in her fingers. “I don’t know. The pregnant one, I’d seen her when she first came, when she was tied up and skinny. Eddie stays at the staff house.”

“What about Bobby?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes, sure. But not all the time.”

Why keep a group of missing girls at an inn downtown? Tain understood that the same person who ran the shipping company owned the inn, but it still didn’t make much sense. There were too many risks…

He looked up. Jenny was watching him. Light never danced in her eyes. She looked like she’d lived a lifetime and a half already, instead of just the meager handful of years she’d spent in the Interior.

Since their first meeting, he’d done some checking. Her mother was a known prostitute. She’d forced Jenny into the trade as soon as she developed, but Jenny had left the house to live in a small shack, working odd jobs and stealing what she couldn’t afford to survive.

It was no surprise she’d ended up working for Hobbs. She was small and wiry and had the ability to get into a lot of tight spots, and she was already a thief. Despite her appearance at the moment, she had the looks to survive by moving from one bad relationship to another if she needed to. The odd time Tain had seen her when she’d been cleaned up he’d hardly recognized her.

“And they’re all involved with this? Bobby? Eddie? Kurdy?”

“You think Eddie didn’t want him to see the girls.”

“Not those ones. Kurdy, he’s got a thing for young girls.”

Tain had heard. “But you figure Bobby knows.”

Jenny shrugged. “Eddie does whatever Bobby tells him to. It’s always been that way, since they were kids. Thing is, seeing Eddie go at Kurdy like that, that was scary. Eddie was the kind of kid who tried to be cool but wasn’t, you know what I mean?” Her eyes had a faraway look for a moment. “I used to think he was a nerd, a real loser, but he coulda been real sweet. If it weren’t for Bobby. He wasn’t mean the way Bobby was.”

“Any chance you can find out more? Where they’re keeping them?”

She shrugged again. “I-I don’t know. I’ve only seen a few of them.”

“But the dates?”

“Eddie’d get real funny when they had one of the girls there. I guess ’cos I work with the other ones sometimes, they weren’t worried about me. Probably just didn’t want Kurdy touchin’ them, you know? But Eddie’d get edgy. I just kinda knew when they had a girl there.”

The waitress returned with the bill, and Tain reached for his wallet. As he put the money on the table, he looked at Jenny, still sneaking glances around the room, unable to let her guard down long enough to eat a simple breakfast.

“If it’s too much for you, Jenny, we can pull you out now.”

“What do you mean?”

“But those girls…”

Tain looked her straight in the eye. “Jenny, you’ve done a brave thing. The crimes on Reserves are a huge problem, and we want to do anything we can to stop the drug trade. What you’ve told me should be enough to put a major trafficker out of business permanently. You deserve a second chance.”

The hard lines on her face softened and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “But you said yourself, if I’m not there, they’ll work it out.”

Tain nodded.

“So I need to be there for at least a few more days.”

“Okay. But then we’ll talk about a new home, job training. Maybe college.”

Jenny offered him a wry smile. “Sometimes, you just gotta accept that not everyone’s meant for an easy life.”

He was tempted to say few were, but kept the comment to himself. “I know you’ve been trying to help us put a stop to this for a while now, and we’ve let you down. You never did say why you decided to talk. What was it, Jenny?”

She stood and paused a moment, then reached down and patted her stomach, then started walking toward the door. As Tain got up and followed her out, he wondered if Jenny would be strong enough to make a fresh start, strong enough to make a better life for herself and her child, or if she’d find herself caught in the cycle of prostitution and poverty that she’d been raised in forever.