Kitchens were expensive, and he estimated that the one in the video had cost $100,000 or more to build. Were the women in an abandoned hotel, or an empty school? He didn’t know the answer, but he did know this: the size of the kitchen indicated that it was a large facility, which he guessed had extensive sleeping quarters for the women, and probably their captors.
To keep such a facility going cost money. Money to pay the rent, the taxes, the power, and the grocery bill. It was an expensive proposition, and he wondered where the funds were coming from.
Not Dexter Hudson. Dexter was fresh out of prison, and was alternating between living in the back room of a strip club and shacking up with Echo. The rest of Dexter’s gang was also recently released from prison, and didn’t have the means to support such an enterprise. Which meant someone else was funding it.
He thought he knew who that was, but needed to be certain. He climbed out of his car and laid the shotgun on his seat. Going to the door to Echo’s room, he rapped gently. He saw the lights come on through the window, and the door cracked an inch.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I need to ask you a question.”
Her eyes were half-closed, and her hair was a sleepy mess.
“Sure,” she said.
“You said that other dancers at the club have disappeared. When did they disappear? Was this in the past few weeks, months, or years?”
“Last couple of years,” she said.
“You’re sure about this.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. The private jet will be here in a few hours. Go back to sleep.”
She closed the door, and he got back into his vehicle. Echo had answered his question and solved the riddle. Dancers at Echo’s club had been disappearing long before Dexter and his fellow ex-cons had gotten released from prison, and he had to believe that the Outlaws motorcycle gang was behind it. The Outlaws had the financial means to fund such an operation, and were also the types of soulless individuals who would kidnap women and later sell them into slavery. The kitchen he’d seen in the YouTube video was part of their operation, and Dexter was using it to house his victims.
It was a joint operation between the bikers and Dexter’s gang of ex-cons.
The door to the front office opened, and Richmond came outside. In his hand was a steaming Styrofoam cup. Lancaster lowered his window.
“I thought you might need this,” the night manager said.
It was coffee, strong and black. He took a sip and smiled.
“You have no idea how good that tastes,” he said.
Part Three
Whoever Fights Monsters
Chapter 25
The noise was short and persistent. Three long buzzes, then silence, followed by three more long buzzes. It came over and over again, refusing to die.
Daniels pulled a pillow over her head, and tried to block the noise out. She was exhausted, and had crashed on the bed in her room at the Marriott still fully dressed. Sleep had come instantly, and her thoughts had drifted far, far away.
Then the noise had started. It was still pitch dark, and she’d refused to fully awaken, but had forced herself back to sleep. She wasn’t like Jon, who could run on five cylinders without sleep for days at a time. Her body needed rest; without it, she was nothing more than a zombie.
The noise didn’t care. It invaded her dreams, first posing as a yellow jacket banging against a screen door, and then as a dentist’s drill bit. She was allergic to bee stings and hated going to the dentist, and the dreams had felt like punishment.
At six a.m. she caved, and opened her eyes. Her hotel room was dark, the blinds tightly shut, the digital clock’s face the room’s only light. The sound was gone, and she tried to gather her thoughts, and figure out where it had come from. It wasn’t a fire alarm, nor was it emanating from her laptop. What the hell.
She heard it again. This time, it was accompanied by vibration. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she shifted her head on her pillow. Her cell phone was doing a little dance on the night table. She’d muted the volume, but not the vibrator. Someone had been texting her, and when she hadn’t responded, had kept at it. This was the sound that had plagued her all night.
She fumbled to turn on the bedside light. The only messages that were delivered at night were bad ones. Something horrible had happened while she’d been sleeping, and she could only guess what it was.
She wasn’t ready to deal with bad news just yet, and fixed a pot of coffee in the machine supplied by the hotel. While it brewed, she stood in front of the bathroom sink, brushed her teeth, and then ran a wet washcloth over her face, the water good and cold. Only when she felt connected to the real world did she sit down on the bed, and sip the scalding brew.
The coffee brought her around. When the cup was empty, she picked up her cell phone and had a look. She’d gotten sixteen text messages during the night. No wonder she’d had such a hard time sleeping.
She punched the “Message” icon with her finger, and entered the area where the messages were displayed. They’d all come from her boss, J. T.
“Jesus Christ,” she said aloud.
She started with the first message, which had come in right after she’d gone to bed. J. T. was asking if she’d seen the news, and for her to call him right away. J. T. had always been good about respecting her privacy, and she guessed that something truly horrific had taken place last night.
She scrolled through the rest of the texts. The messages were similar to the first, with J. T. asking her to call immediately.
This had disaster written all over it. It would have helped if J. T. had sent her a link to the news story that had prompted his first message, instead of leaving her in the dark. She had no idea what she was stepping into, and that was never good.
She pulled up the blinds, and let the early-morning sunlight wash over her. It gave her strength, and she pulled up her boss’s private number and placed the call while staring at the parking lot. It rang four times before being patched into voice mail.
“This is Special Agent Joseph Hacker with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the prerecorded message said. “I’m away from the phone at the moment. Leave a brief message along with your phone number, and I’ll return your call upon my return.”
A long beep filled her ear.
“J. T., this is Beth. I was asleep when your text messages came in. I didn’t see the news, and don’t know what’s going on. Call me when you can.”
She ended the call. The room had a workstation on which her laptop sat. She got on the internet and searched the different news sites, hoping to find the story that J. T. was referring to. Plenty of things had happened since she’d gone to bed, with most of the stories posted in the last hour. She read through them, but found nothing relative.
She shut down her laptop in disgust. That was the maddening thing about the internet. A hot story might be replaced by another story so quickly that the original one became lost and forgotten. The old expression, here today, gone tomorrow, was no longer relevant. Now it was here today, gone in a second.
She placed another call to her boss’s private number. It was not like J. T. not to immediately call back. The prerecorded message played. The beep that followed was longer than the previous one, which meant that J. T. hadn’t picked up her message.
She hung up.
She poured herself more coffee. When you were in law enforcement, there was nothing worse than being in the dark, especially when working a case. She needed to find out what was going on, quickly.