Rushin' Death, page 24
Rather than returning the way she had come, she decided to walk around the side of the hotel. She didn’t want to have to deal with any more sympathy. She was quickly rediscovering that sympathy was the hardest response for her to handle without getting all tied up in her own emotions. She had learned that after Amanda’s death, but had forgotten some of the lessons she had learned after Amanda’s passing. She could be stoic in the face of loss, concentrate on the practical, smile through her sadness and focus on the other person’s needs. But dealing with genuine sympathy was something altogether different. Anger, apathy, disdain—she could deal with those. But someone who truly felt for her and wanted to share the moment with her… a whole different story. And she didn’t need it. Not yet. She didn’t know what had happened to Walter and, until she did, she wasn’t going to put up with any sympathetic smiles.
A brisk walk around the side of the hotel brought her into the parking lot. Not a paid lot, and there did not appear to be any assigned stalls, so Walter might have parked anywhere and it would be easy for his vehicle to stay in the same place and be overlooked for an extended length of time. She started walking up and down the aisles, trying to remember what his car had looked like when he had come to visit her.
Eventually, she found a black Lexus like the one Walter had driven to her house. Zachary would have had a better idea, but Kenzie wasn’t about to call him and ask if he remembered what Walter had driven when he had come to visit Kenzie. That would lead to questions and eventually to Kenzie having to explain that Walter was missing. Zachary would probably check himself out the minute he heard it, and Kenzie needed him to stay in the hospital until he was properly stabilized and his doctor believed he was ready to reengage with his life on the outside. As well as he was doing, he wasn’t there yet, and Kenzie didn’t want to say or do anything that might affect his progress.
Was there any way to be sure whether the car was Walter’s or just a lookalike? Kenzie walked around it, alert to any clue that would indicate that it was her father’s car or that it was definitely not his.
There was a small sticker with a QR code on it in the corner of the windshield. The graphic in the center of the QR code looked like the capitol building. It could be some kind of parking authorization for the capitol. It would make sense for him to have something like that. She looked in through the windows of the car. But Walter had always been very neat and tidy with his personal possessions, and there was little in the car to indicate who owned it. The console tray was empty and clean. There were no special cups in the cupholders or even old coffee cups from Starbucks or another favorite coffee shop. Walter had always preferred little mom-and-pop shops to the big chains. This was funny, considering how often he worked with big chains, lobbying for or against their interests, depending on who was paying him. He wouldn’t lobby for something he outright disagreed with but, if he did not already have a position or it was not solid, he could often be persuaded to take a particular stance. That was what men like him did.
Kenzie put down the suitcase, which was getting heavier the longer he stood there. She rested the carry-on on top of the suitcase, considering her options. She should probably call Campbell to check the license plate of the car and see whether it was, in fact, Walter’s car. There was no point in worrying over it if it was not.
The question would be easily answered if the car had been left unlocked or if she had Walter’s keys. She tried the door handle but, as she had expected, it was not unlocked. Walter didn’t generally leave his car unlocked, even though many people in small-town Vermont did. Walter had always been more careful with his property than that. “If you won’t take care of your property,” he told a younger MacKenzie, “you don’t deserve to own it.”
Kenzie opened the side pocket of the carry-on bag and felt for a key. She didn’t expect to find one. He would have taken it with him, on the key ring in his pocket. And he didn’t believe in keeping a spare key in a magnetic box stuck inside the wheel well or anywhere else on the vehicle. Like leaving his doors unlocked, that was asking for trouble.
The side pocket was empty. But the bag had a lot of pockets. Kenzie opened each of them to search inside. Her fingers encountered something hard and thin, and Kenzie pulled back her fingers, then advanced, snagging a set of keys and pulling them out.
Walter did, apparently, keep another set of keys in case he were to lock his usual key ring in the car. It made sense to keep it in his travel bag. Otherwise, he would have to pay for a locksmith or towing service to come to him. Kenzie flicked through the various keys. One looked like a car door key, so Kenzie took a deep breath and thrust it into the lock. With her luck, it would be for a totally different car, and it would get jammed in there or would set off an alarm because the car thought someone was trying to break in. Car manufacturers used all kinds of tricks now to try to nullify threats.
But the key slid in easily and, when Kenzie gave it a twist, the door lock popped up, and there was not even an alert to indicate she had unlocked the car without first disarming the burglar alarm.
Kenzie opened the door, again prepared for the klaxon of a burglar alarm, but the car was silent, as if it had been sitting there waiting for her. She slid into the driver’s seat and looked around. She had no idea what she was looking for. There was no note indicating what Walter’s plans had been. No map with locations circled on it. The car was almost as clean as a fresh rental, with all traces of the previous renter removed and extra detailing done to be sure that everything was sanitized. Kenzie checked under the sun visors for any papers or directions. She opened the glove box but found nothing except the car manual and a pair of sunglasses. She opened the various hatches in the center console and found spare change and a small box of breath mints. She opened the box and smelled the mints, and visions of her father bending over her to kiss her goodnight flooded her mind. She put them back where she had found them. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Nothing at all wrong. She checked under the seats, hoping that something had fallen to the floor and been missed. She even got out of the car and ran the driver’s seat as far forward and as far back as she could, but there was nothing there but another dime, wedged under the seat leg so tightly that she could not pry it out. Which was probably why it was still there. Walter hadn’t been able to get it out either. There was nothing else under the seats. She forced her hand down the crack of the back seat and didn’t find anything hidden there. No cell phone or secret notebook with an emergency message scribbled there for her attention.
If she had been on a TV show, there would have been something in the car that would have led her to what she was supposed to do next. What was wrong with the world that those important clues didn’t actually pop up in real life and she was still left without a clue as to what to do next? Kenzie popped the trunk and didn’t find anything but an emergency kit with a first aid pouch and road flares in it. And a spare tire under the carpet. No hidden USB drive. No blood, hairs, or shred of clothing indicated that the trunk had ever been used for anything but luggage and boxes of research files.
Kenzie locked everything back up and leaned against the car as she left a message for Campbell about its location, asking him if he wanted to send some forensic techs to examine it or if she should get it towed. Where she was going to tow it to, she wasn’t sure. Her own house? She couldn’t tow it all the way to Walter’s. Zachary’s car was normally parked in front of her house, and Kenzie’s convertible was in the garage, but there was still space for one more car in front of the house without angering the neighbors by encroaching on their spaces.
She hung up again and headed back toward her car.
There were a couple of young women walking along the sidewalk in front of the hotel, and Kenzie wasn’t paying any attention to them until she realized that they weren’t speaking English to each other. It wasn’t Spanish, either. She didn’t know the language, but it certainly sounded like Russian or another Eastern European language. Kenzie stopped and looked at the women. Was there any chance they knew Maksim or one of the other men who had died? Even if they were all Russian, there was no guarantee that any one Russian in Vermont would know another.
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What is it?” One of the women demanded, noticing Kenzie’s stare. “What do you want?”
“Is that Russian?” Kenzie asked, smiling as disarmingly as she could. “It sounds so beautiful.”
The woman looked at her suspiciously, but at least did not seem to be angry. Maybe the comment about the language being beautiful had helped.
“It is none of your business,” the other young woman said in a harsh tone. “We are having a private conversation.”
“Yes, of course. I just thought… I thought I recognized it. A friend of mine is Russian…”
“There are many Russians,” the woman snapped.
“Yes, of course. It seems like there are more of you in Vermont all the time,” Kenzie gushed. “I am running into you everywhere.”
“We do not know you.” The woman motioned to Kenzie’s luggage. “Go home. Put your things away and have a nap. Maybe then you will not be so curious.”
They turned away from her.
Kenzie had stopped walking, and it was curiously difficult to get going again. She looked at the two women. Another connection to the Russian community. Kenzie couldn’t just let it go, even if she was wrong. She couldn’t let any lead slip by her. Who knew where Walter was and what they might know about him, if she just asked?
“I’m here looking for my father,” Kenzie said, swallowing hard. “He was staying here, and then he disappeared. A friend might have been staying with him. His name was Maksim.”
Both girls turned to face Kenzie. “What?” the first demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you know Maksim?”
She waved this question away. “There are many Maksims. Very popular name.”
“In Russia, maybe. Not here in Vermont.”
The second woman shook her head. “We do not know any Maksim. Do not know who it is you are looking for. You have to find him yourself.”
Kenzie had classified them as young women in her mind when she first saw them walking down the street. But looking at them as they answered her questions, she grew anxious. Young women in their twenties? No. Despite their long legs and the sophisticated makeup they wore, they couldn’t have been older than sixteen. They were model-thin, a look that was even more popular in Russia than in North America and Western Europe. They looked both too young and too old and jaded.
She wasn’t sure what to say to them.
“Hey… are the two of you working?”
They looked at each other and didn’t answer.
“I help to run a foundation, and I could help you to get off the streets if you want out. You might think that there is no way out, that you have to do this, but I could help you.”
“Go away,” the taller of the two told her. “We do not need any help.”
“Is this what you thought was going to happen when they brought you here from Russia? I’m sure this isn’t the life that they promised you. I’d like to help. I could get you into homes, back to school, job training. A lot of organizations are willing to help with situations like this.”
“I said we do not need you,” the girl insisted again, her voice sharp.
The younger girl looked less certain. Maybe Kenzie’s words were getting through to her. She hoped she could convince the girls that she could help and that they didn’t have to prostitute themselves to pay back the people who had smuggled them into the country, or that she could get them away if they were being held against their wills. But she knew how hard it was to get teens out of the life. She and Zachary had already had some experience with that. Traffickers had a lot of ways to keep girls under their thumbs even when the police or someone else offered them a way out. Loyalty to boyfriends, addiction, money and clothes, physical violence, threats to their loved ones, and, in some cases, actual shackles. Just because the girls didn’t look like they were being held against their wills, that didn’t mean they weren’t. Or that they knew they had any other choice.
“There are ways that you could be safe,” Kenzie tried once more. “I can help you. I know people who can help. I have helped get girls out of situations like this before.” That was a bit of a stretch, but what were they going to do, ask for references from satisfied customers?
The taller girl called her names in Russian, short guttural sounds under her breath. Kenzie didn’t need to understand Russian to know what she was saying.
They both turned their backs to Kenzie.
There wasn’t anything else she could say or do. Getting those two girls—and however many more the organization was trafficking—away from the organization would take a lot more time and effort than Kenzie had. It would take many man hours on a task force somewhere to identify all of the players in the trafficking ring and to assemble enough evidence to bust them, with serious enough charges that they would not be on the street again the next day. Even if they managed to break the ring that had turned out the two girls, chances were that once they were freed, they would end up in the stable of another trafficker. It was not an easy life for them to break away from, even with all of the professional help Kenzie could connect them to.
“There are people who can help,” Kenzie said to their backs, keeping her voice low in case someone was nearby watching and listening to the conversation. “If you want out, you can reach me through the Medical Examiner’s Office. Or call 9-1-1 and the police will help get you away so that you can get the help you need.”
One of them looked back at Kenzie over her shoulder, sneering. “The police! Police are worse than the family.”
Maybe Kenzie should have remembered how corrupt the police force in Russia was rumored to be. She had always assumed that the stories were exaggerations, borrowed from TV movies about spycraft in Russia. But if the oligarchs were as powerful as Campbell suggested, then what was to stop them from buying the local police force? Police officers too needed to eat and feed their families. They were just as poor and starving as anyone else in Russia, unless they aligned themselves with the right factions.
“Not here,” she assured the girls. “Maybe in Russia the police are corrupt, but they are not the same here. They will help you. They will make sure that these men can’t touch you.”
The taller girl shook her head adamantly. “Police here too. You think I am blind? You think I don’t see anything? Don’t hear anything? You are dangerous because you talk like this and have no idea what could happen.” She looked at the younger girl beside her, scowling fiercely. “She has no idea what the family would do if you tried to get out. I know. You don’t listen to her. You listen to me.”
The other girl nodded, adopting a thousand-yard stare toward the traffic driving past the hotel. All of those people who just drove by as if they didn’t know the girls were in trouble. With so many people ignoring the danger they were in, the terrible ordeals they had to go through while being trafficked by the Russians, how could they believe that anyone would be willing to help them? Or would be able to do anything for them if they accepted her offer of help. Kenzie wasn’t even sure she believed it herself. With Zachary’s experiences trying to help Madison and Luke, she knew how hard it was to keep the teens away from the men who would track them down and bring them back, even if they tried to escape.
53
Discouraged, Kenzie knew it was time to head for home. She could talk to Campbell about the girls and make sure that they were aware that the Russians were trafficking them out of the hotel. He could at least pass it on to the appropriate task force, and maybe someone else would be able to make contact with the girls or start building a case so that they would be able to get them out sometime down the line.
She walked back toward her car much more slowly than she had walked around the side of the hotel to get to the parking lot Walter’s car was parked in. She’d had a purpose then, a mission, and she’d shut everything else out—tunnel vision. Walking toward the front of the hotel again, she was aware of things she hadn’t been before. It had been snowing steadily from the time Kenzie had arrived at the hotel, and there was a man shoveling snow from the main walkways, his movements slow and deliberate. Kenzie watched his progress. At first glance, she had thought him an old man from the way that he moved. He had on a hat with flaps over the ears and a bulky coat so that she couldn’t see much of his face or build. But he threw a couple of glances in her direction that suggested he was nervous about her being so close to him, which made her stop and take more conscious note of him. His facial features were narrow and sharp. His eye sockets were deep and there were hollows in his cheeks. The pant legs that hung below his coat were very narrow. She was reminded of the homeless man she had autopsied. Wasting away. Starving even while he performed physical labor, obvious from the muscles he had developed even with no fat visible on his body. She glanced at his face again, taking it in small bits. Hollow-cheeked because he was an old man or because he was malnourished? Were the deep eye sockets natural? Or the result of dehydration?
She walked up to him, carrying Walter’s suitcases. “Excuse me, can you help me?”
His eyes turned toward her and he didn’t say anything.
“I’m all turned around. Which street is this?” She pointed toward High Street.
His eyes turned toward the street, and he shook his head. “Sorry, no English.”
He had that same accent. That same Russian accent she had heard from the women, from the voice on the phone, from Maksim.
“Do you work here?” Kenzie motioned to the hotel. She knew it was a ridiculous question. Why would someone who did not work for the hotel be clearing their sidewalk? But she just wanted to keep him talking. To get more information about him.
