The Janes Read online

  “Prints?”

  Otero nodded. “Partial from the wheel, didn’t bring anything up on past offenders.”

  He moved the mouse over the screen and closed the photo.

  “Would you like to see the second girl?”

  “Sure.”

  He double-clicked, and another photo came up: it was the second girl in a ditch outside, wearing boy shorts and a white tank top with a flowering patch of blood on the side where she’d been stabbed. Dusted in dirt, bare feet.

  “A trucker spotted her in a ditch near Brawley and called 911. This was yesterday morning.”

  “Assuming the trucker checks out,” said Vega.

  Otero nodded.

  “We can trace his route to where he started in West Texas. Plenty of alibis,” he said, with a quick sigh. “Not much to say about the second girl besides what Mia already told you. Similar stab wound pattern.”

  Otero closed the files, and Vega took that as a sign to return to her side of the desk.

  He smiled politely with just a dash of something fake in it, and Vega felt like there was something he wasn’t saying. She didn’t necessarily mind. There were things she wasn’t saying either.

  Finally he spoke.

  “Do you have any questions for me?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Vega. “What was in the second girl’s hand?”

  If Otero was caught off guard, he did well in hiding it, just barely tilting his head so his chin pointed in another direction.

  “Not sure what you mean,” he said.

  “Her right hand,” said Vega, holding up her right hand to demonstrate. “Looked like it was starting to close in rigor. Either trying to make a fist or holding something. I doubt she’d try to defend herself with her fists—not many women do. They use”—Vega opened her hand wide again—“nails. So I’m guessing she was holding something.”

  Otero nodded almost imperceptibly, then pushed his chair back from the desk.

  “Would you like to see our evidence room, Miss Vega?”

  “Sure.”

  She followed him out a side door, down a flight of stairs. They came to a vestibule with an armored door next to a transaction window, an officer standing on the other side. The officer passed a tablet to Otero, who typed in a number and passed it back. There was a tissue box of latex gloves on the ledge below the window. Otero took four gloves and handed two to Vega.

  The officer reached down and pressed a button, and the door buzzed. Otero pushed through.

  It was a clean evidence room, blue archive boxes on shelves, at least ten aisles. There were two long steel tables with folding chairs at the front of the room.

  “I’ll be honest,” said Otero, walking toward the stacks. “That wasn’t the question I’d thought you’d ask.”

  He grabbed a box from a shelf on the aisle closest to them. Most recent toward the front, thought Vega. He placed the box on the table between them, and they stared at each other for a minute.

  Otero smiled and said, “I thought you’d ask why you’re here.”

  Vega leaned on the table, pulled herself a little closer to the box, and kept the stare.

  “Why am I here, Commander?”

  Now the smile went away, and he avoided her eyes, suddenly sad and almost nervous. But perhaps that was just the appropriate expression for the work he did all day.

  He opened the box and began to remove the transparent evidence bags, one by one. Each was labeled with a six-digit number and the date, 08-21. Two of them appeared to contain boy shorts and a white tank top.

  “You are right, of course,” said Otero. “The second girl was holding something.”

  He picked out the last bag, which had a scrap of paper inside, no bigger than the palm of the second girl’s hand, Vega thought. Otero opened the bag and reached inside, pinched the scrap with two fingers and pulled it out slowly.

  He handed it to Vega and said, “As you see, it answers both questions.”

  Vega read it a couple of times, examined the shapes of the black letters blurred by sweat, smeared by dirt and blood, and it all made so much sense.

  * * *

  —

  Otero and Vega sat across from each other, again, at a table in a large conference room on the third floor. The room was bright, another wall-wide window on one side exposing another blue sky. Vega felt like she was in a Silicon Valley start-up instead of a police department.

  “Any minute,” said Otero, glancing at his phone. Small jittery shake of the head.

  They sat a few more minutes in silence. Vega did have more questions but got the impression that Otero couldn’t say much more. So they waited.

  Soon the door opened, and the two men they were waiting for came in. Vega stood slowly and looked at them down and up. One was tall, broad-shouldered, blondish. His hair looked wet with a sculpted little wave in front.

  The other was shorter, not fat but fuller in the face, with small eyes, brown hair that was a little too long and absolutely not sculpted in any way. They both looked about forty.

  “Christian Boyce, DEA,” said the blond one. “This is my partner, Mike Mackey.”

  “Alice Vega.”

  She shook their hands, and they walked around to the opposite side of the table and sat on either side of Otero.

  “Commander Otero’s briefed you on what we know about the Jane Does?” said Boyce.

  Vega nodded.

  “There was something on 48 Hours last week, an anniversary, where-are-they-now piece about kidnapped kids,” he continued. “There was a segment on about the boy in the tank, what was his name?”

  Vega didn’t respond right away, and Otero said quickly, “Ethan Moreno.”

  “Right,” said Boyce. “We think the second Jane sees the show, gets stabbed, knows she’s going to die, and writes your name down. Questions,” he said, touching a finger on his right hand with his left as he listed them. “Are the Janes foreign-born or domestic? Was the first Jane killed in the vehicle where she was found or just dumped there? Are there more? If they’re being trafficked for prostitution, are they also being used as mules?”

  On that last question, Boyce paused and linked his index fingers around each other. He looked to Vega for a response.

  Vega looked back at him, waited.

  “Nothing found in organs or cavities of either girl, as far as narcotics go,” added Otero.

  Though he addressed Vega, she had the feeling he was correcting Boyce indirectly.

  “Labial and vaginal lacerations, right?” interjected Mackey, his voice a little nasal.

  Vega nodded.

  “And IUDs in the uteruses of both girls,” he added.

  Vega glanced at Otero, who looked away from her, his gaze falling on his phone. What did people do before phones when they wanted to avoid confrontation? Vega thought. Must have been a lot of clean fingernails in the world.

  “So,” Boyce said, not acknowledging that his partner had spoken. “Here is where you fit in.”

  Then he smiled, flashing straight white teeth. Vega pictured him with an enamel strip across the top row.

  “We could use your help. We have a significant tunnel problem in this part of the state, as I’m sure you’re aware. Three this year alone. Difficult to know how long they’d been operational, but we estimate about a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of meth, cocaine, and marijuana coming through per week, per tunnel. With an overwhelming degree of certainty we can say it’s either Eduardo Montalvo or the Perez cartel. We’ve got DEA, FBI, police,” he said, tilting his head toward Otero. “All of us working to contain this. You understand?”

  He nodded at her, his eyes a little too big and glassy, the way he looked in his pressed shirt and sleeveless fleece vest a little too much like a dad trying to get Princess to brush her teeth nice and good. Just a d
ash of patronizing.

  “I think so,” said Vega. She folded her hands and leaned forward. “So, to clarify, if the girl had written down Bugs Bunny instead of me, you’d be looking to hire him?”

  Otero looked up from his phone. Boyce turned a little pink in the cheeks. That’s the shitty part about looking like a Ken doll, thought Vega. Can’t hide any color in the creamy skin. Vega thought she saw Mackey repress a grin.

  “You’re more than qualified for this type of work, Miss Vega,” said Mackey quietly.

  “Sure,” she said. “You know about me, right? I don’t do a lot of charity.”

  “I think you’ll find the compensation adequate,” said Boyce. “You’d be a consultant for the DEA, but we need to keep it quiet, keep out the media. You’ll report to Commander Otero, and he’ll report to Mackey, who’ll report to me.”

  “We’ll share findings,” added Mackey.

  “Right, share findings,” said Boyce.

  Vega restrained a smirk and said, “Are you paying me by personal check?”

  “Cash, actually,” said Boyce.

  “Huh,” said Vega. “You going to tell me how much it is or do we have to pass a chit back and forth?”

  Boyce appeared to take a short breath in and hold it.

  “Ten K for two weeks,” he said. “Then we evaluate and decide how to move forward.”

  They stared at each other a minute. Vega rapped her knuckles twice on the table softly and said, “No thanks.”

  “Sorry?” said Boyce.

  “No thanks,” said Vega, louder now, standing.

  Boyce and Mackey both stood up too, then Otero. Boyce was too polished to stammer, but Vega thought she saw him flinch a little in the eyes. Mackey licked his lips.

  “How much then, Miss Vega?” Boyce said quickly. “How much is acceptable?”

  “It’s not the money,” said Vega. “It goes without saying I’ll keep everything we’ve discussed confidential. Pleasure to meet you all.”

  She turned and left the room, took the stairs down at an efficient pace. The stairwell spit her out in the big room on the ground floor, and she took a last look around at the panoramic windows, then went through the door leading to the lobby, then out the front doors.

  She could feel the heat in the air even though the sun wasn’t directly on her. It was hot where she lived too, up north, but it was far more aggressive here; the air had a weight she could feel, pressing on her chest. She put her sunglasses on and walked down the paved path toward the parking lot.

  Vega was halfway to her car when she heard someone behind her. Between five and ten feet, she thought. Rushing, not running, steps on the ground hitting almost at the same intervals as her own.

  She reached her car and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket, opened up her map app and let it load. The steps behind her stopped. Between four and five feet behind her, she guessed. She did not turn around.

  “Forget something, Commander?”

  Otero didn’t say anything at first. She turned to face him. He scratched the back of his head and squinted.

  “I get it,” he said. “Why you might not want to take this job.”

  “Yeah?” said Vega, leaning against her car. “Why I might not want to take a cash payment under the table from the DEA for busting a sex trafficking ring?”

  Otero nodded.

  “Then?” she said, barely shrugging.

  “Then,” he said with a sigh. “There are things I can’t tell you. What I can tell you is that Mackey wants to get it taken care of. Since we have no weeping mothers coming forward, no missing persons reported fitting the description of the Janes, it hasn’t been difficult to keep it quiet.”

  Otero paused. Something dark crossed his face and put a frantic twitch in his eyes.

  “I’ve followed your career,” he said. “Ethan Moreno, Christy Poloñez, the Brandt sisters.”

  Vega felt ice on the back of her neck at the mention of the Brandts, which was the way it had been for some time. If Otero hadn’t kept talking, she might have corkscrewed down and landed right back in the woods in northeastern Pennsylvania, living through those long, cold minutes again.

  “Jane Two,” he continued. “I think she knew she was going to die and wanted to find you so that you could help the others.”

  Vega was glad for her sunglasses. Otero took a step closer, and Vega didn’t move a thing.

  “I think you could make this right.”

  Vega held her breath when he said that. It hit her in a certain way.

  “I can loan you one of my detectives. All my contacts here and in Imperial,” Otero continued, sensing that she was listening close. “I’m tied up on the tunnels like everyone else, but I’ll help you any way I can.”

  Vega took off her sunglasses.

  “Is Boyce paying out of pocket?” she asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” said Otero, firm and polite.

  “Right,” said Vega. “Tell him I’ll do it if we start with twenty, not ten. Your detective can do research? Stitch up loose threads.”

  “Sure.”

  Vega got into her car and started the engine, the door still open.

  “Can I tell them you’re in?” Otero said, leaning on the door.

  Vega pulled her belt on.

  “The money, the resources, your contacts, all the photos and reports,” she said. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  Otero seemed humbled, his eyes soft. Unusually grateful, thought Vega. As if this was a personal favor to him. Maybe he just took his job that seriously.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Vega nodded at him, then at the door, implying he should stop leaning on it. He backed away, and she shut it, powered the window down.

  “One more thing,” she said. “I need to bring in someone else. He can keep quiet. I’ll pay him.”

  “I have to clear it with Boyce,” said Otero.

  “Deal’s off without my guy,” Vega said, shifting to reverse. “So clear away.”

  She pulled out of the space, then the lot, didn’t look at Otero anymore, kept her window rolled down and felt the hot wind hit her skin. She was thirsty as hell but didn’t want to stop. She had an unusually good feeling; it was like suddenly finding the exact thing you wanted in a store where you’d been a million times.

  4

  the temperature on cap’s dashboard read 84, but the high dew point was the real killer, the thickness in the air. Everything was sticking—his shirt to his back, pant legs to thighs, drops of sweat on his scalp threading through his hair.

  But once the car cooled from the AC, he had an urge to turn it back off and open all the windows. The air was still hot and still wet, but he suddenly wanted to feel all of it, let his skin get slick as a tropical plant leaf. So he did, stuck his head out the window like a dog and even opened his mouth to feel the condensation bud on his tongue.

  Then his phone buzzed.

  “Ralz cell,” announced the Bluetooth lady.

  Cap squinted at the name on the screen, thought what reason could Detective Brad Ralz have to call him. They’d parted ways after the Brandt case with a mutual respect they’d never fostered as colleagues at the police department, but Cap wouldn’t call what they had a friendship, exactly. Must have been a misdial. He let it ring out, drop to voice mail.

  He tilted his head again toward the window. He thought about Vera and her offer and tried to make sense of what he was feeling, his tepid response. ALLERGIC TO SUCCESS blinked an off-ramp motel sign in his head. He wasn’t sure where he heard that; it sounded like something Jules might have said in one of her more passive-aggressive moments, or a book title by a celebrity shrink.

  But he wasn’t, he hadn’t been—the last sixteen months he had embraced the work and the respect and the money. No bad reaction to
any of it, no rash, no itchy eyes. Then what, he thought.

  Again, the phone buzzed.

  Again, the Bluetooth lady: “Ralz cell.”

  “Goddammit,” Cap muttered.

  He tapped the Call Answer button on the screen.

  “Ralz,” he said loudly. “Stop calling me.”

  “Cap, that you?”

  “Yeah?” Cap said, confused. He had been sure the phone had been in Ralz’s pocket. “Uh, how’re you doing?”

  “Okay. You going to be home soon?”

  “Yeah, about five minutes away. What’s going on, Ralz?”

  “It can wait five minutes. See you then.”

  “What? Where?” said Cap, but Ralz had hung up.

  “Call Ralz cell,” Cap said to the Bluetooth lady.

  It rang once, then straight to voice mail. Cap had a bad feeling, shook his head. He let up on the brake and sped up a little. Slowed when he took the corner to his block, and as he got closer to his house, he knew he wasn’t imagining what he was seeing in his driveway, but still the picture didn’t make sense.

  It was definitely Brad Ralz, leaning on his car, and the person he was talking to was definitely Cap’s daughter, Nell, in front of the permanently loaned hatchback from Jules’s parents. She stood in what Cap considered a standard teenager pose, arms crossed, the knee of one leg bent to the side, slightly bored expression. When she saw Cap approaching, though, she stood up straight.

  Cap felt a surge of panic but talked himself down quickly. She’s right in front of you, safe, breathing, uninjured. Cap parked across the street from his house and stepped out. Ralz lifted his hand in a wave.

  “Hi,” said Cap, crossing the street. “What’s happening?”

  He shook Ralz’s hand and kept his eyes on Nell, who looked away.

  “That roundabout off Highway 30,” Ralz began. “I noticed this car taking it a little quick, so I tailed. Then down Lowell I had to go forty to keep up, so I pulled her over.”

  Cap felt his heart rate spike and took an aggressive breath through his nose. He stared at Nell while Ralz continued.

  “I didn’t recognize her at first,” said Ralz. “Then I saw her name on the license.”