“Wait. Do you think it’s a real grave or not?”
“No idea,” said Hugo, reaching for his phone. “I’ll let Upton and his men figure that out.” He was through in a matter of seconds. “Clive, Hugo here. Did your guys search the graveyard before clearing out?”
“Of course,” Upton said. “Why?”
“They didn’t mention finding a new grave about fifty yards from Harper’s body?”
“No,” Upton said slowly. “Unless there was another body in it, I’m not sure I would expect them to. It’s a graveyard, after all.”
“Yeah, it is. But this one looks unusual.”
“How?”
“For one thing, it’s covered with a tarp, which may be something they do here to keep out the rain. But the tarp itself was covered with grass and leaves, as if to hide it.”
“People don’t like looking at fresh graves, Hugo.”
“They don’t. But this one wasn’t finished. Just a couple of feet deep. It just feels wrong.”
“Well, it’s easy enough to check on. I’ll have someone call Reverend Kinnison and see if the cemetery is expecting any new occupants. She can probably put me in touch with whoever digs graves and I can see if he dug yours. Where is it exactly?”
Hugo explained its location as best he could while Upton grunted on the other end of the phone, presumably taking notes.
“Got it,” said Upton when Hugo had finished. “So what are you doing over there exactly?”
“Nothing in particular. Just trying to figure out what’s next.”
“Well, my boss thinks that what’s next is you heading back to London and leaving this investigation to us.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. As she put it, the guy you were chasing is dead so there’s no longer anything you can do for him. If this is suicide, which is what she suspects, then we’ll handle the inquest. If it’s murder, then the guy who killed him is, presumably, alive and hiding, and we’re the ones who should be chasing him.”
“So you think suicide?”
“I don’t know what to think, and neither does she. How about you?”
“I didn’t think it likely for Ginny Ferro,” Hugo said. “But Harper, I don’t know. He was pretty devastated by her death and has been acting crazy ever since. I think it’s a possibility.”
“Assuming no jurisdictional disputes, we’ll do the autopsy this morning. That may tell us something.”
“I doubt it,” Hugo said. “We already know the cause of death. Make sure they run a tox panel — he could have been on something to make him act weird.”
“We will. I’ll call you when I hear from the coroner’s office. What are your plans?”
“I’m not sure.” Hugo looked at Merlyn. “I suspect I’m going shopping.”
“Shopping? What for?”
“I have a party to go to,” Hugo said. “And absolutely nothing to wear.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On a sweltering Chicago evening, back in August of 1999, Hugo donned a cropped leather jacket and glittery leather pants, glued a pointy black beard to his chin, and walked out of a motel with a hooker on each arm, swaggering like the pimp he was meant to be.
He’d set up in a nightclub, knocking back fake whisky and thinking very hard about his first wife, Ellie, who wouldn’t have minded the girls gyrating around him, would even have found it funny. He’d never thought of himself as uptight, but as his companions, the youngest and freshest agents out of the academy, strutted their stuff around the club and as the target of the investigation brought him a succession of beautiful, half-naked, and apparently very eager-to-please women, he found himself shocked at the variety of sexual delicacies he was being offered. He was supposed to try them for himself, then broker deals between the Chicago guys and some flesh dealers in Las Vegas, keeping the stream of women constant and ever-changing. To keep the customers happy, the cash flowing, and the girls disoriented. He’d refused to sample the merchandise, though, telling his seller that he wanted something younger, fresher. And when something younger and fresher appeared by his side, he’d tried not to strangle the man who sat across the table, grinning like a chimpanzee, licking his lips as though the teenage girl was a steak to be devoured. No, Hugo had played it cool and touched the little girl’s chin, looked into her heavily painted eyes, and recognized the fear hiding behind her smile.
“She doesn’t speak English,” the man had said. “Which makes it better, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Where from?” Hugo asked him.
“Eastern Europe somewhere, does it matter?”
“No. But you only have one?”
“Shit no. We get them in batches of two and three. How many you want?” The man leaned forward, earnest now. “I gotta tell you, they are expensive. This one’s a virgin, most of the little ones are.” They called them “little ones” instead of “young ones,” Hugo had noticed. He wondered why — it wasn’t as if these men had a conscience. “You want three, four?” the man was asking.
“I don’t care. Whatever I pay you, I charge my clients double,” Hugo told the chimpanzee. “Give me as many as you’ve got.”
“Tomorrow morning,” the ape said. “I can bring you nine. Nine virgins. Sounds almost biblical, doesn’t it?”
Hugo took the twelve-year-old, named Masha, with him that night, making the ape happy and trusting, handing her over to a bureau translator who introduced her to a counselor and a safe bed in the motel in South Chicago where the team had staged. She slept two doors down from Hugo, who felt good having her that close, that protected.
They took down the ape in the morning outside the motel, and Masha watched from inside, nose pressed to the second-floor window, she wept silently as her friends and little sister were led from the van into the care of the federal government.
The trafficker had stopped grinning pretty quickly and had done his best to spill his guts to save his own hide, but Hugo and his colleagues knew whom they were after, and all the snitching in the world hadn’t kept that bastard from the pen. A very long time in the pen, if Hugo remembered correctly.
He thought about this operation, made a point of remembering the ape’s evil face and the wretched feeling those young girls gave him, because it had been his last undercover operation, and because it was so different from this one. And remembering the girls he’d helped rescue back then made this undercover excursion a little less … humiliating.
Merlyn took him to Stevenage, a drab and concrete town, leading him to a quiet row of unkempt stores that sold the kinds of books and magazines he’d not sought since he was a teenager. He was relieved, slightly, when she led him into the newest, and largest, halfway down the row. He was less relieved when she showed him the racks of clothing he’d be required to choose from in order to be let into the party.
“They have an eighty percent rule,” she said. “You have to be in eighty percent leather.”
“And you?”
“Same rule. Which means you’ll be buying for me, too.” She winked. “You’ll be able to expense this, right? So no worries.”
“Able to, sure. Whether I’ll dare to is another matter.”
As if choosing wasn’t bad enough, she made him try on everything, though he wouldn’t let her look. He rejected the chaps-and-thong outfit, advocated by Merlyn, and went with the leather pants and a matching vest, though unfortunately they had only the tasseled version in his size.
“Your cowboy boots match perfectly,” she said. “Who’d have thought it?”
She then left him by the “toys” and disappeared into the ladies’ dressing room with an armful of clothes to try. When she reappeared in her own clothes and he asked what she’d be wearing, she gave him a “wait and see” look.
Hugo decided not to return to the pub, instead renting a room at a motel on the southeast side of Letchworth, nearest Weston. They ate at an Indian restaurant in town, a late buffet lunch that was probably quite good an hour or two earlier. There were two other tables still eating, both foursomes of men and women in work clothes, and as they sat opposite each other in a booth, Merlyn thanked him for the meal.