Hughes handed him a piece of paper with the US government stamp on it.
‘This is a federal search warrant giving us legal permission and right to search storage unit number 325 in this establishment,’ she said calmly but in a very authoritative voice. ‘Would you be so kind as to open it for us?’
The kid looked at the warrant, read a few lines, pulled a face as if it were written in Latin, and hesitated for a second. ‘I. . I think I need to call my boss for this.’
‘What’s your name, kid?’ Decker asked.
‘Billy.’
Billy was about five-foot-eight with short blond hair, which was spiked at places with styling gel. He had a three-day-old stubble and a couple of earrings in each ear.
‘OK, Billy, you can call whoever you like, but we don’t really have time to wait.’ He nodded at the warrant. ‘As Federal Marshal Hughes has explained, that piece of paper, which has been signed by a US federal judge, gives us the legal right to look inside unit 325, with or without your cooperation. Neither you nor we need your boss’s permission to do so. That’s all the permission we need right there. If you don’t open the door for us, unfortunately for you, we’re just going to have to bust it open, using any means necessary.’
‘And we won’t be legally responsible for any damage caused,’ Figueroa added. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Billy had started to look very uncomfortable. His cellphone beeped on the counter, announcing a new incoming text message, but he didn’t even glance at it.
‘That copy of the warrant stays with you,’ Decker added. ‘So you can show it to your boss, your lawyer, or whoever you please. That guarantees that you’re not breaking the law, or company rules, or doing anything you shouldn’t be doing.’ He paused and checked his watch. ‘We’re on a pretty tight schedule here, Billy. So what’s it going to be? Are you going to let us into the unit, or are we busting it open? You’ve got to make a choice.’
‘You guys aren’t punking me, are you?’ Billy asked, his stare moving to the glass window behind both agents, as if he was trying to spot a candid camera somewhere.
‘This is official, Billy,’ Hughes replied, her tone telling Billy that that was no joke.
‘You guys really FBI?’ Billy now sounded a little thrilled.
‘We really are,’ Decker replied.
‘Look, I’d like to help,’ Billy said. ‘I can let you into the building. No problem. But I can’t open the door to unit 325 because it’s padlocked. None of our doors has an actual key locking mechanism, just a very thick sliding bolt. Our customers can buy a padlock from us.’ He quickly indicated a display just behind him with several padlocks in all different sizes. ‘Or bring their own, but they’re not required to supply us with an extra key, so none do. Once a unit is rented out, we don’t have access to it anymore. It’s a completely private affair.’
Figueroa nodded, and thought about it for a moment. ‘OK. Can you give us the details of that account?’
‘Sure.’ Billy started typing something into the computer behind the reception desk. ‘Here we go,’ he said after just a few seconds. ‘The unit is one of our medium, special ones — ten feet by ten feet.’
‘Special?’ Decker asked.
‘Yeah,’ Billy said. ‘It’s one of our units that’s fitted with a power socket.’
‘OK.’
‘It was rented out eight months ago, on the fourth of January, to a Mr Liam Shaw,’ Billy continued reading from his screen. ‘He paid for it a whole year in advance. . cash.’
‘No surprise there,’ Decker said.
‘The unit is located on Corridor F,’ Billy added. ‘I can take you there now if you like.’
‘Let’s go,’ Figueroa and Decker said at the same time.
Thirty-Six
Until they had some sort of confirmation that Lucien was telling the truth about the self-storage unit in Seattle, no one saw any point in moving forward with the interviews. Director Adrian Kennedy told Hunter and Taylor that Washington FBI agents, armed with a federal search warrant, had already been sent to verify the veracity of Lucien’s statements, and they should have an answer in the next sixty minutes or less.
Taylor was sitting alone inside one of the conference rooms on sublevel three of the BSU building, staring at the untouched cup of coffee on the table in front of her, when Hunter opened the door and stepped inside.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
For a moment it seemed like Hunter’s question hadn’t reached her, then she slowly turned and looked up at him.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
An awkward few silent seconds followed.
‘You did well down there,’ Hunter said in a non-patronizing or condescending tone.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Taylor replied with a sarcastic nod. ‘Except for starting out with the wrong first question, you mean.’
‘No,’ Hunter told her, taking a seat across the table from her. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, you see. No matter what first question you came up with, Courtney, Lucien would’ve thrown it back at you and tried to discredit you, tried to make you feel inferior, tried to shake your confidence and make you believe you’re not good enough, because he wants to get under your skin. And he knows he’s good at it. In college he used to bully professors that way.’
Taylor kept her eyes on Hunter.
‘He wants to get under my skin too, but he knows me a little better than he does you, or at least he did, so right now he’ll want to test the water with you to see how you respond, and he’s going to keep on pushing harder and harder, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Let him push,’ Taylor replied firmly.
‘Just remember that to Lucien this is like a game, Courtney. . his game, because he knows he has the upper hand. Right now, there’s only one thing we can do.’
Taylor looked back at Hunter. ‘We play the game,’ she said.
Hunter shook his head. ‘Not the game, we play his game. We give him what he wants. Make him believe he’s winning.’
Adrian Kennedy pushed the conference-room door open and peeked inside. ‘Ah, here you are.’ He was carrying a blue dossier with him.
‘Anything from Seattle yet?’ Hunter asked.
‘Not yet,’ Kennedy responded. ‘We’re still waiting, but it doesn’t look like Lucien was lying about the identities of the women found in his trunk.’ He flipped open the dossier. ‘Megan Lowe, twenty-eight years old. Born December 16 in Lewistown, Montana. She left Lewistown when she was sixteen, six months after her mother allowed her then boyfriend to move into their house.’ Kennedy instinctively nodded at Hunter. ‘She first moved to Los Angeles, where she spent the next six years. All indicates that she was indeed a street-working girl. After LA, Megan moved to Seattle. Line of work seemed to have stayed the same.’ He turned a page on the report he was reading. ‘Kate Barker, twenty-six years old. Born May 11 in Seattle, Washington. She left home when she was seventeen and moved in with a boyfriend, who at the time was an “aspiring musician”. Not confirmed, but it seems like the boyfriend was the one who first got Kate to prostitute herself.’
‘Money for drugs?’ Taylor asked.
Kennedy shrugged. ‘Probably. The abduction dates Lucien gave us, July second for Megan and July fourth for Kate, will be hard to confirm, as neither of them were ever reported missing.’
That wasn’t surprising. Prostitutes account for the third-largest number of unsolved murders in the USA, just behind gang and drug-related killings. Every day thousands of street-working girls in America are raped, beaten up, robbed or abducted. They aren’t targeted because of how attractive they look, or because they carry cash with them. They are targeted because they are easily accessible and extremely vulnerable, but most of all because they are anonymous. The vast majority of street-working girls live alone, or share with other working girls. They don’t normally have a partner for obvious reasons. Many of them are runaways with little or no links to their families anymore. They live lonely lives, with very few friends. Statistically, only two in every ten street workers that go missing are ever reported to missing persons.