River of Glass (29 page)

“Did you find her?” he said.

“I did.”

“This was a gift. A gesture of good faith. You leave us alone, and we let this one live. If not . . . we know where she lives.”

“I get it.”

“This is the one you care about. You know it. I know it.
They
know it. Do we have a deal?”

I thought of Khanh, bound and gagged, maybe worse, hoping I would come for her, wondering if I would even try. My fists clenched, but I shook away the image and said, “We have a deal.”

B
Y THE
time Ashleigh’s parents arrived, she’d been settled in a private room. She gave my hand a final squeeze, and I slipped out as her mother slid onto the bed and wrapped Ash in her arms. Her father stood back, hands in his pockets, eyes red and a muscle in his jaw throbbing as if he couldn’t decide whether to cry or hug his daughter or hit someone. I gave his shoulder a pat, then drove home through the deluge, where Jay met me at the door, bleary-eyed, holding up a sheet of paper. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

“James Decker,” he said. He rattled off a phone number and address.

“Decker? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ve been tracking this son of a bitch through twenty different countries.”

“James Decker. That’s our Good Samaritan.”

39

J
ames Decker, thirty-two, brown/brown, married, two daughters. Both in elementary school. The thought made me angry all over again. He owned two cars and a boat, and he made a good income as a marketing director for a company that turned out to be a shell.

Malone had called me a cowboy, but I was not a stupid cowboy. I called her as soon as I’d finished the background check. The call went straight to voice mail, so I left a message and called the precinct, where I spent fifteen minutes listening to elevator music, the calming influence of which was lost on me.

Finally, my phone buzzed, and Malone’s breathless voice came on the other line. “I can’t talk right now. We’ve got this bastard. He took down two more of our guys, the son of a bitch, but we’ve got him pinned down in a shed a couple of miles outside town. He’s got hostages. I’ll get to you as soon as I can, I swear.”

Frank’s phone went to voice mail too. I said I’d call him later and told him to give Patrice my love. Then I called Mean Billy. He picked up, and I said, “Remember that time you said I ought to pay you double for boring?”

“How could I forget? You got some other boring thing for me to do?”

“It isn’t boring. But it’s not exactly legal.”

“How not-exactly-legal is it?”

I thought of my conversation with Khanh:

That’s called kidnapping, and we try to avoid it, unless we want to go to prison.

“I’m about to cross a line.”

J
AMES DECKER,
our Not-so-Good Samaritan, worked out of an office that didn’t exist for a company made of thin air. His car wasn’t in the garage, but the Miata was. While Mean Billy stood behind me looking like a constipated grizzly, I held up my license and knocked on the door. An attractive brunette in a red jogging suit answered. “May I help you?”

I waggled the license. “Could you tell me where Mr. Decker is, please? It’s important.”

“He isn’t in. What’s this about?”

“It’s better if we talk to him directly. It’s . . . of a personal nature.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Have you been tested for STDs lately?”

“Of course not. We’ve been married for eleven years.” She crossed her arms across her breasts. “I’m not going to stand out here in the rain and talk about this.”

“I’m not trying to alarm you. I’m just trying to find Mr. Decker, make sure he gets everything checked out. And you too, of course. Assuming you and he are still . . .”

A red spot bloomed in the center of each cheek. “I don’t know who you are or who’s been telling you these lies, but I assure you, that’s all they are. Lies.”

“Our sources are very good, Mrs. Decker. The young lady doesn’t want trouble, just a modest settlement.”

Her shoulders stiffened, then slumped. “I guess maybe you should come inside.”

She closed the door behind us, and while we dripped on her carpet, she crossed her arms again and said, “Okay, what’s going on?”

“A young woman has accused your husband of certain . . . indiscretions. She says she has a venereal disease she could only have gotten from him. If you could just tell me how to reach your husband, I’m sure we can get this all straightened out.”

“He just left for the office.”

I handed her a notepad, and after a brief hesitation, she scribbled an address.

I said, “It’s better if you don’t let him know we’re coming. Makes his responses more authentic. If he knows ahead of time, I can’t say anything in my report about how he seemed genuinely surprised. Harder for me to testify that he’s telling the truth. You know, for the settlement.”

“Of course.”

She was muttering to herself when she closed the door behind us, and I thought, not without satisfaction, that even if Decker survived the day, he might not survive the night.

Back in the Silverado, Billy gave a dry chuckle and said, “That was just plum cruel.”

“It’s better than he deserves.”

“Was that the part where we crossed the line?”

“No, that part comes next.”

The address Mrs. Decker had given us was for a swanky office building in Belle Meade, a short drive from their house.

Billy said, “Tell me again why we’re doing this.”

“Because the police are tied up with the Executioner, and Sun is probably going to kill Khanh. If he hasn’t already.”

“Because she isn’t marketable?”

“That, and she’s been a pain in their collective ass.”

“They could sell her for domestic service.”

“Let’s hope they think of that.”

We took the stairs to Decker’s office, our damp footsteps muffled on the plush carpet. Good acoustics, I noted. Sturdy walls. Lots of soft surfaces to absorb sound. The people who worked here liked their privacy, which was just as well for us. I was looking forward to a little privacy myself.

I pushed open his office door and said, “Hello, James.”

He was sitting behind a big polished desk with a state-of-the-art computer on it. He pushed his glasses up with his middle finger and said, “You again? I already told you—”

“A pack of lies. So let’s start over, Decker. Let’s start with a dead girl in a dumpster. Or maybe we should start with Karlo Savitch and Harold Sun.”

His hand moved toward the edge of his desk. Panic button underneath, I guessed. Or maybe a pistol. I pulled the Glock and pointed it at his head. “Hands on the desk.”

Sweat beaded on his upper lip. “I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Billy walked around the desk and pulled the chair, with Decker in it, to the middle of the room. Safely away from the panic button. “Lie number one,” Billy said. “Can I shoot him now?”

“Not yet.”

A dark stain appeared at Decker’s crotch, and the air grew sharp with the smell of ammonia. “I have money,” he said. “Lots of money. Just tell me what you want.”

“The truth,” I said.

“I told the police the truth,” he said. “I was nowhere near when that girl died. I even let them take samples from my car carpet.”

“Because you’d already replaced it. That’s the only thing that makes sense. And your buddy who alibied you? One of the guys from your website?”

His tongue flicked across his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What website?”

“I’ll pull it up for you. Billy, cover him?”

“Sure thing.” Billy gave Decker a cheerful smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He leaned forward, and rain dripped from his beard and onto Decker’s forehead.

I went around the desk and pulled up the site. Tapped in the password Jay had given me. The color leeched from Decker’s face as I turned the screen toward him and read the text aloud. I said, “This is your work, right? You’re the . . . You’re the procurer?”

“No, no. I . . .”

Billy said, “He’s told so many lies, I can’t even count ’em. Can I shoot him
now
?”

“
Not yet
.” I turned back to Decker. “Tell me about the dead girl. And you’d better tell the truth, because my friend is very good at knowing when people are lying.”

Decker’s voice cracked. “I told you before, I don’t know anything about that girl.”

“You dropped her off at an office near Vanderbilt, and right after you dropped her, Karlo Savitch killed her.”

“No, I—”

Billy raised his pistol, and Decker stopped short and clapped his hands over his mouth. Billy said, “Try again.”

“Okay, okay.” Decker wiped tears from his cheeks with his palms and sat up straighter, apparently determined—finally—to die like a man. “She escaped. Nobody ever did that before, but there was a storm, and it knocked out some of the sensors, and also, a tree fell so that, if she could get across the moat, she could climb up it, get over the wall.”

I looked at Billy and back at Decker. “The moat? Like with alligators and a drawbridge? That kind of moat?”

“The name’s a joke. It’s not water. It’s glass. Twenty feet of broken glass, all the way around the walls, so even if they get away from the holding cells—” At the look on Billy’s face, Decker squeaked and rushed through it. “If they get away, they can’t get across the glass. Please, I’ll tell you what I know. Only, I can’t go to jail.”

Billy thumped him on the head. “Pray you live long enough to worry about jail.”

I thought of the dead girl, shards of glass in her feet. “You keep them barefoot.”

Decker’s gaze swung from Billy to me. He gave a nervous titter. “Karlo says . . . said . . . it’s the best way.”

“Karlo was in charge?”

“No, Karlo was a beast. His expertise is . . . was . . . torture. Psychological, physical . . . he keeps, I mean kept, the goods in line.”

“The goods?” Billy snarled.

“The women. I mean the women!”

I said, “So Karlo is the punisher, and you’re the procurer.”

“No! Sun’s the procurer. I’m just the marketing guy. I just find the customers.”

“Big cog in a nasty machine,” I said. “Without customers, there’s no business.”

He swallowed hard. “We just provide a service. If we didn’t do it, somebody else would. And, like Sun says, we give them food, a place to stay, better than they’d get at home.”

“Better than this?” I took Tuyet’s picture out of my pocket and shoved it in his face. “Look at her face, how happy she looks. Is she ever going to laugh like this again? You fucking—”

I turned away so I wouldn’t shoot him. Waited for my voice to steady. “So the girl escaped. What was her name?”

Head down, he whispered, “I don’t know.”

“Let’s call her Li. Li’s a good name. Li walked barefoot across twenty feet of glass because she had it so much better than she did at home. And then she climbed over a wall—”

“More glass,” he whispered. “Embedded in the top layer. Works like razor wire, only it doesn’t freak out the neighbors.”

“Climbed over a glass-covered wall and walked . . . how far?”

“I don’t know exactly, seven miles, maybe more.”

“Why did she get in the car with you?”

“I don’t have much to do with the goo—, I mean the girls. She wasn’t my . . . my fantasy type, so I wouldn’t have . . .”

“But you worked there.”

“Not with the girls.”

“So she didn’t recognize you, and you were able to get her in the car.”

“Normally, they wouldn’t. It’s part of Karlo’s training, like at first, they’ll ask some guy for help, and he comes across all sincere and like he’s going to get her out, but then it turns out he’s in on it. It’s like a test, and if they fail, Karlo gets to . . . has to . . . punish them. By the time it’s over, they think everybody’s in on it. They wouldn’t go with you if you were the Pope himself.”

“But she did.”

“All my life, I was able to sell things. Sandra, she’s my wife, says I could sell wool to a sheep.”

Billy said, “You sold her on getting into your car.”

“She—”

“Call her by her name,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s Li.”

“Um . . . Li kept saying an address over and over. It was kind of near my house, and I couldn’t take her back to the compound, because Sandra expected me at home, so I called Sun, and he said go ahead and take her there, but drive her around a little first. Maybe fifteen minutes.”