Fatal Escape, page 15
Butler still denied that he’d sent anyone to hurt Tatiana or her son. He was a little more forthcoming though, since he’d struck a deal with the State’s Attorney’s office. Now he was willing to admit that he was her “handler.” He rejected the pimp label.
“Why would I destroy a valuable asset?” he said again. “If I’d known she was about to run, I would’ve stopped her, but I wouldn’t kill her. That’s just plain bad business.”
“But you did search her car. How did you know about it?”
For the first time, his eyes darted away briefly. Then they came back to my face, and a slow smile spread across his. “I’m not giving away all my secrets. Let’s just say, I got word that night from a member of my staff that a car was on the bridge and it might be hers.”
“So you searched it why? To make sure there was nothing in it that would lead back to you?”
“Exactly.”
“And to see if you could figure out where the boy was.” I made it a statement, not a question, but he shook his head.
“For all I knew, she’d taken the boy with her, had drowned him too.” He shrugged. “Besides, he’s got no value to me. He was only leverage to keep her under control.”
“You took her ID from the car.” Again, a statement.
“Nope. Wasn’t any in there.” His eyes did not flicker at all this time. Either he was telling the truth, or he was being more careful now about what his body language revealed. “My associate and I dumped the glove box, searched the trunk, then wiped down everything we’d touched.”
No doubt they’d arrived in the associate’s car and said car had brand new tires on it.
“You didn’t take anything at all?”
The slightest flicker of his eyes. “Nope.”
Pirolnik had said he’d given Tatiana money that night. My guess was Butler had found it in the car and helped himself.
But I doubted I could prove it, and it wasn’t all that important now, except maybe to Pirolnik. My mind flashed to his grief-stricken face. No, the money wasn’t important to him either.
“You didn’t see anything under the driver’s seat?” I asked.
“A shoe, but it didn’t connect her to me so I left it there.”
“What time were you there, at the car?”
“Around five, a little before dawn.”
I slid the mug shot of Juarez across the table. “You sure you don’t know this guy?”
He glanced at it, shook his head. “Who is he?”
“He’s been running around beating on people, trying to find the boy. He went after Gabriel Pirolnik, for one.”
Butler’s eyes widened some. “Now, that I would never order. Mr. Pirolnik is a valued client.”
I resisted the urge to point out that he wasn’t likely to get any repeat business from Gabe, now that Tatiana was gone.
“I don’t suppose you ordered a hit on this guy,” I tapped the photo, “to keep him from beating up any more of your clients?”
“He’s dead?” Now the wide eyes were feigned. But that didn’t mean Butler was behind the guy’s death.
“Yeah, he’s dead. You have anybody on your staff whose weapon of choice is a sap?”
Butler frowned. “A blackjack? Don’t know anybody who uses them these days. You have to get too up close and personal with them.”
I nodded. Yet another reason cops stopped using them. The new batons were extendable. You could knock a perp’s knees out from under him from far enough away he likely wouldn’t be able to slug you.
“So, where have you stashed your women in Starling?” I asked, now willing to get confrontive if necessary.
“Not part of the deal. I’m giving up those above me, but I must remain loyal to my staff.”
I snorted. “More like you’re thinking you can pick up where you left off when you get out of prison.”
“Oh no, Chief.” He gave me a mock serious look. “I’ve learned the error of my ways.”
Sure you have.
“You said the boy has no value to you. You weren’t renting him out to the highest bidder?”
Butler’s eyes flashed and he came partway out of his chair.
“Down!” I said.
He sank back again, still glaring at me. “I don’t exploit children.”
“Except as leverage.” I rose. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Butler.”
He visibly pulled himself together. “Always a pleasure, Chief Anderson.” He gave me a smarmy smile.
I responded with a curt nod and left the room, wishing I had time to stop home for a shower to wash his slime away.
Once outside, Barnes said, “You really think he’ll try to revive his operation when he gets out? How long is he going to be in prison?”
“Not long enough, thanks to his plea deal. And he probably has plans to continue to operate everything from the inside.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You think he could pull that off?”
“Hell no,” I said as we reached my car, “because we’re not going to let him.”
Back at 3MB, Cruthers had good news. “Collins definitely has a lead on Alejandro’s dad. One of the rich guys that lives in the state of Nuevo Léon in Mexico—he used to have a wife and son. But no one has seen them in two years.”
“And I take it Nuevo Léon is near where we think Tatiana crossed the Rio Grande,” I said.
Cruthers nodded. “There are a couple of favorite spots to cross in that state, where the river is normally shallow anyway. And two years ago, that area had a drought so the river was really low. I know a guy on the force there. I was gonna call him, ask what he knows and see if he can make some discreet inquiries.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What if he’s on this rich guy’s payroll?”
Cruthers frowned. “Not all Mexican police are crooked. I think he’s one of the good guys. Met him through a training conference on Zoom, during the pandemic lockdown. Chief Black was willing to spring for it because there were no travel expenses.”
He grunted. “They did that dumb break-us-up-into-groups thing. Someone else in our group implied that he must be corrupt if he was in Mexico. He got pretty offended. Good thing we were online or they might’ve come to blows. He and I lingered in the chat room afterwards and exchanged contact info. We’ve stayed in touch.”
“Okay,” I said, “by all means, see what he can find out, but ask him to be discreet. I don’t want to show our hand yet.”
“You got it, Chief.”
As Cruthers left my office, I spotted Bill Walker entering the bullpen. I stepped out of my office and greeted the janitor. “You’re here a bit early, aren’t you?” His shift didn’t start until ten p.m.
He gave me a shy smile. “I just got done with my morning classes, figured I’d stop by and check in before I go home and get some sleep. Make sure you’re happy with everything.” Walker was an ex-con and reformed wife beater, now studying to be a social worker and divorce mediator, specializing in domestic violence cases.
“You got a minute?” I asked. “I’d like to pick your brain about something. Oh, and yes, I am quite happy with your work.” The premises were always spotless when I came in each morning, even though they rarely stayed that way, especially around the coffee station.
“Sure.” He followed me into my office.
“Close the door and have a seat.” I gestured toward the comfy visitor’s chair. “How’s school going?”
“It’s going great. I graduate this coming spring.”
“Excellent. I want an invite to the graduation.”
He grinned, flashing straight, white teeth that must’ve cost his parents a fortune.
“Tell me something,” I said. “How likely is it that the wife of a rich man would risk everything, including her son’s safety, to get away from a batterer?”
He gave me a wry look. “As you know from my own history, domestic violence cuts across all socio-economic strata.”
“Oh, I know that from my own life,” I said. “My father was a college professor, but he still beat my mother.” I didn’t usually reveal that history to people, but I wanted to shift the dynamics of our relationship some, from head honcho and lowly janitor to professional colleagues. I was hoping I’d be able to continue to pick his brain in the future.
I had Kate Huntington, my therapist friend up in Maryland, but it never hurt to have two psychological consultants.
“Sorry to hear that, Chief.” And I suspected he meant it.
I gave him a nod. “Getting back to my question…”
“A lot of factors play into whether the woman stays or leaves,” he said. “How long were they together?”
“At least three years. They had a son who was two at the time she left.”
“Does this guy have power as well as wealth?”
“Probably.” I paused. “Keep all this to yourself, please. It’s about a current case.”
“The woman on the bridge?”
“Yes. She’s from Mexico. I suspect in that country, rich pretty much equals powerful.”
Walker nodded. “And she may have been from a poorer background, might’ve married him more to get out of poverty than because she loved him.”
“Even if he’s abusive?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But she likely didn’t know that about him beforehand. Abusers are usually quite charming at first. They sweep the woman off her feet, lavish her with gifts and attention, tell her what she wants to hear. It’s only after she’s fallen for him—the hook is set, so to speak—that she starts to get an inkling of how controlling and abusive he is.”
“It’s mostly about control, isn’t it?”
“For many batterers, yes. They almost always come from abusive backgrounds themselves, as I did. They felt out of control as kids so now they have to have complete control over their families. They’re trying to recapture the sense of power they lost when they were helpless kids who couldn’t stop the abuse.”
“Even if they themselves weren’t abused, just saw their mothers being beaten?’
“Yes. They were powerless to protect her. All those things come together, plus they are full of frustrated rage that they couldn’t express as a kid. Bad role model, suppressed anger, control and power issues, and often a buried sense of insecurity as well, maybe even a poor opinion of women because his mother never fought back. He takes all that out on his woman, who’s too lovestruck and/or afraid to leave him.”
“Buried insecurities?”
“Growing up in that kind of environment doesn’t exactly promote self-assurance and a sense of well-being.”
My chest and stomach tightened. I was pretty sure I covered up my reaction, but that had hit a little too close to home. I tucked those thoughts away for later contemplation.
“These guys may accumulate power and money,” Walker was saying, “and learn to look self-confident on the surface. But underneath, they’re still a needy little boy.”
I nodded. “So, getting back to this case. Why would our victim put herself and the child at risk by crossing the Rio Grande, to trade in the life of a rich woman for that of an illegal immigrant?”
“I’d say she was pretty terrified,” Walker said. “Either the abuse had gotten so bad she was sure he would kill her one day, or he’d started beating the child…” He trailed off, dropped his gaze to his hands in his lap. “Although that doesn’t always make women leave, even then.”
I knew that it hadn’t in his case. His father had abused both him and his mother.
He shook his head, then jerked it up, his gaze meeting mine. “Or another scenario, the batterer wants a divorce and threatens to use his wealth and power to take the kid away from her.”
“Aha,” I said. “That’s a good possibility in this case.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bradley came into my office, looking pleased with himself. He closed the door. “Checking out those tire tracks has paid off.”
“Good,” I said. “I was afraid that would turn out to be a wild goose chase.”
He sat down in front of my desk and leaned forward. “Twenty-six of the new tire owners have criminal records beyond traffic tickets and such. Dulles and Collins dug deeper into their backgrounds, and the tenth person they checked out turns out to be… Drumroll please.” He used his index fingers like drumsticks on the edge of my desk. “Butler’s son. Name’s Jerome Porter.”
My heart rate kicked up. “Oh, yeah?”
Bradley grinned. “Yeah. He’s twenty-two, so a product of Butler’s misspent youth. Butler is listed as the father on the kid’s birth certificate and the mother, one Tessie Porter, apparently doesn’t exist, at least not in the State of Florida.”
“An alias, for a prostitute maybe?”
“That’s what I’m thinking, especially since…wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. The address on Jerome’s driver’s license is an abandoned building. But he gave a different address to the company that issued the credit card he used to buy the tires. It’s a somewhat rundown house in not the best neighborhood, but it’s owned by a company located in the Cayman Islands.”
“Doesn’t sound like the kind of property investors would buy.”
“They might, to renovate and flip it, but the company’s owned the house for thirty-four years. And they’ve owned another house a few blocks away for twenty-seven years.”
I stared at him, my entire body clenching as the implications sank in. “These bastards have been doing this for decades!”
“Yup. My guess is that if we could dig far enough into the Cayman company, we’d find that it originally belonged to Butler’s father. He inherited the family business.”
“Have we got enough for warrants?” I asked.
“Not yet, but Cruthers and Collins are discreetly canvassing the neighborhoods, seeing what they can find out about the comings and goings of those houses’ residents. We should have enough to take to a judge soon.”
“Good.” I picked up my phone and hit the button for my private line.
After Dot Wilder’s assistant put me through, we exchanged greetings. Then I asked, “You have any reason why we shouldn’t raid our local houses of ill repute tonight?”
A beat of silence. “Um, yes,” Dot said. “We have one more player we haven’t tracked down yet. Someone who apparently keeps in the shadows. He wasn’t at that breakfast meeting.”
“You know who it is?”
“No, but my team is working on it. We’re afraid if we don’t get him, he may take over the whole operation, move the women to new locations and we’ll be close to back to where we started.”
“Why would our raiding these houses matter?” I asked.
A pause, the sound of air being blown out. “We think this person operates out of Starling. Your raid might spook them, and they’ll disappear.”
“Only to pop back up later.” I paused. “Waiting presents a problem. My people are already spread thin. Now I’ll need to keep surveillance on these locations, to make sure they don’t try to move the women elsewhere.”
“I can lend you a couple of people,” Dot said.
“Who?” My tone was a bit sharper than I’d intended. Wellbourne had said Grant was on leave, but…
Wilder chuckled softly. “Not Grant. Wellbourne and another agent.”
“Okay. How long do you need? I’d rather not wait more than another day.”
“We might be able to nail this person down by then. Look, I’d like to tell you more, but not over the phone. I’m tied up the rest of today, but can you meet me for lunch tomorrow?”
We arranged to meet for an early lunch at a diner halfway between our offices.
“I take it we’re waiting,” Bradley said, as I disconnected.
I frowned, not happy about it. “Yeah.”
I filled him in. “Keep all that under your hat, by the way.”
“You thinking this in-the-shadows person could be a cop?” Bradley asked. “Maybe one of ours?”
I nodded, my stomach churning at the thought.
His mouth flattened into a grim line. “This not being able to trust our own people really sucks.”
I blew out a sigh. “Yes, it does.”
Who could I trust to surveil the houses where we thought Butler’s women were being held? That was a very good question indeed.
I trusted Cruthers almost as much as I did Bradley. And since Collins had helped locate the houses… I assigned the two of them to one house for the three-to-eleven shift.
For the night shift, I split up the FDLE agents and partnered each with a uniform.
And Bradley and I took the three-to-eleven stint at the other house.
Bradley had the back. He’d changed out of his sartorial splendor into baggy sweats and a hoodie. Dirt rubbed into his face and on his hands completed his transformation into homeless dude. Currently, he was rooting through trash cans in the back alley, with an earbud and a tiny microphone tucked inside the hood.
Barnes had been pissed that she wasn’t in on the action. I’d pointed out that surveillance was more about inaction—boring as grass growing most of the time. Grumbling, she’d followed orders and gone home to catch some sleep before her own graveyard stint as Pirolnik’s bodyguard.
“I’ll stop by your place and check on Pipsqueak,” she’d said.
I’d forgotten all about the cat, again. I chose to ignore the slight warmth in my chest at the memory of the kitten waking me up from my nightmare last night.
Once I’d positioned my car partway down the block but still within sight of the two-story clapboard house, I called Sam. I had mixed emotions about having to cancel on him. Ever since that kiss…
After I’d delivered the bad news, Sam sighed dramatically. “Relationships when one is in law enforcement are hard enough, but with two LEO schedules…Don’t know how this is gonna work, Chief Anderson.”
My throat tightened. Is he breaking up with me? I hadn’t yet admitted to myself that there was anything to break up.
“What do you mean?”
A low chuckle. “Relax, Judith. I’m teasing.”
“Not funny.”
