Buckley would take care of his little brother, even if it meant hiring people to change his diaper and feed him through a straw. And the woman needed to be found and punished appropriately. In Buckley’s mind, there was no other possible outcome.
He left the hospital, climbed into a rented Mercedes, and drove back over to the motel. He was a man who was usually driven places, but he had come here alone. This was family business. When others needed to be called in, he would call them in. First, he had to do some more digging.
And a thought had occurred to him.
Beth, the woman at the motel’s front desk, seemed pleased to see him again.
“Have they caught her yet? I gave a description.”
“Unfortunately, no. But when I was here last time I noted the camera out front. Is it functioning?”
“Oh, damn, I forgot about that. Yes, it is. The cops didn’t even ask about that.”
“May I see the film?”
She showed him to a back room and had him sit in front of a computer. A few moments later scenes appeared on the screen, and Beth sped up the video until she got to a certain point. However, there were numerous blurry and totally blacked-out segments.
“That’s her car,” she said in a triumphant tone, hitting a key to return the video to normal speed. “The gray Civic.”
Buckley took out his phone and keyed in the license plate number and then took several photos of the car. “But where is the woman? If you have the car, you should have her as well on the security footage.”
“It’s this lousy system,” whined Beth. “It jumps around and doesn’t film everything. And the camera is really old and half the time doesn’t even work.” She ran it back and then played it forward again. “You see there, and there? Where it’s all blurry and gray? That was probably when she came and went to the office. This is the only good shot of the car. But at least we got that.”
He thanked the woman with a hundred-dollar bill.
“I hope you get her,” said Beth, eagerly taking the money. “She’s a real bitch.”
“And the woman with Ken whom you mentioned earlier?”
“Rosa? Yeah, the bitch drove her out of here. Said she was taking her somewhere safe.”
“Do you have a picture of Rosa? I hope we don’t have to rely on security footage again.”
“We don’t. I have it on my phone.”
Buckley looked intrigued. “And why is that, I wonder?”
Beth looked embarrassed. “One day she . . . she had on a dress I liked. I was thinking of getting one, so I . . . I took her picture.”
He looked over her frumpy clothes and pudgy frame. “I see.”
She showed him the photo, and he took a picture of it with his phone.
“Very lovely woman,” said Buckley. “Thank you.”
“Are you going to try to find her?”
“Yes, I want to let her know about Ken’s condition.”
“I doubt she cares.”
“I will do so anyway. Any ideas where she might be?”
“Like I said, the big gal mentioned she was taking her someplace safe. Now, there’s a women’s shelter in town. You might want to try there. It’s on Everson near Fuller Street.”
“Thank you again.”
He got back into the car, and texted the images of the license plate to an associate and asked him to run down information on it. Then Buckley drove off to look for Rosa.
He had a great many other things of importance on his plate right now. But he had set all of them aside for this. His family, granted, wasn’t much. Yet it was still his family. And in Buckley’s world, family could not remain unavenged. After his father’s death, his whole life philosophy had revolved around one concept: You can never turn the other cheek. So Ken’s attacker had to be found and beaten badly enough to be hospitalized.
In Buckley’s world it was as simple as that.
CHAPTER
25
BETH’S INFORMATION PROVED TO BE SPOT-ON. However, Buckley hadn’t been able to enter the women’s shelter and directly talk with Rosa due to their visitor safety protocols.
He sat in his car for several hours and watched women come and go from the shelter. Finally, his patience was rewarded when Rosa walked out, turned left, and entered a café a block down from the shelter. He got out and followed her in. She had taken a table at the back, and he walked over and introduced himself.
She looked frightened when he told her that he was Ken’s older brother.
“I’m not supposed to be talking to anybody like you. They said I could come here for a few minutes just to stretch my legs, but I have to go right back. They know where I am and if I’m not back—”
He interrupted her to say disarmingly, “Please, I wish you nothing but the best. I know my brother is an idiot and dangerous. He always has been. He’s been getting into trouble for so long I have given up on him. I really have. But he called me and told me what happened and I came in to see him. I was close by, you see.”
“He called you, so he’s okay then?” she said nervously.
“He was beaten up pretty badly but, yes, he’s okay. He, of course, disclaimed all responsibility, but I know better and I talked to the people at the motel. They were very clear that he was at fault and that the young woman who came to your aid was quite the heroine.”
“She was. She saved my life probably.”
“May I sit down?”
She hesitated for a moment, but then looked at the crowded café and probably decided it was safe enough.
“Okay, sure.”
Buckley sat across from her. “I have made it very clear to Ken that if he ever comes near you again, you will press charges and have him sent to jail for a long time.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. “And you’d be okay with that?”
“Ken belongs in jail.”
“How did you even know where I was?”
“The woman at the motel mentioned this women’s shelter. It was a shot in the dark, but, quite by luck, as you were coming out, I was pulling up in my car.”
“But how did you know what I looked like?”
“Again, the woman at the motel described you in detail. She said you were quite lovely, and she was right.”
Rosa looked down and a smile crept across her lips. “Thank you.”
Buckley ran his eye over the woman and quickly summed her up, having known dozens just like her. Sexy and she knew it, feisty, not well-educated, capable of being physically dominated, and also susceptible to just the right sort of talk, encouragement, and flattery, but with a red line that could not be crossed. He marveled at how his obtuse, one-dimensional brother had managed it with her. Probably through brute strength, which only worked for a time with women. Then the woman either wised up and fled or pissed off the man enough to where her death followed.
Or his.
The waitress came over and they ordered coffees. Buckley waited until they were delivered to start speaking again. “I do have a question. Ken is not subtle or complex. His anger issues are quite apparent. With that in mind, why were you even with him?”
Rosa shrugged. “He was different, in the beginning. He was nice and treated me nice. Then he changed. Like overnight. I was going to leave him. Nobody deserves to be treated like that. I gave him lots of chances.”