Cora’s glances at me are full of worry. It’s driving me fucking nuts. I’d tell her I’ve got this, but the truth is I don’t. I don’t have a fucking handle on anything right now. I don’t know how to explain any of this to her when I don’t understand any of it myself. She doesn’t get the sudden urgency and I can’t tell her. Not in a way that makes sense. Not without betraying Vera. And I’d never do that.
I have too few clues to track down. Javier Abano is a fucking ghost. If that’s even his real name. There’s no record of his birth, of him ever having lived in the San Diego area, having a California driver’s license, or doing anything else real people do. The J in the tattoos is the only real clue I have to go on. It could stand for just about anything, but from what I’ve learned about him so far, I know it’s personal. He takes the time to select and groom his high-end girls. He takes pride in his stock, acquiring only the best, most desirable girls. He marks them with a fucking inventory bar code.
How do you find a guy who seems to fly under the radar of every police and government agency?
I do an image search using key words to describe Vera’s tattoo. At first I get nothing. So I refine my search using new key words. It takes several tries and scrolling through pages of unhelpful images before I get a hit. One here, one there, one a little farther down. I mark all of the sources and start with the first one. It’s from Pinterest. I click on the image and find that it was re-pinned from another account. Following the re-pins back, I discover what I think might be the original account it was posted to. I bookmark the account and add it to the bookmark file labeled “tattoo.” Going back to the original search, I click on the next link.
It’s tedious work, but after a few hours I have some solid leads that include websites for tattoo artists and parlors, social media accounts, and blogs. Vera was number sixteen. According to the photo Marie posted, she’ll be number fifty-three. If Marie’s sudden social media blackout is anything to go on, Javier learned to clamp down on his prospects’ Internet usage. But he wasn’t as careful early on. I found four tattoos with numbers lower than Vera’s—two, seven, eleven, and fourteen. I figure he got better as he went along. If there are going to be any clues about this asshole, the early girls will likely be the ones to give them to me.
I try not to think about what happened and what is happening to these girls who are now women. I need to focus and think logically. Flying around in a blind rage punching walls won’t help them and it won’t help me find Marie. But I can’t stop thinking of Vera and what she went through. It’s why we’re looking for her sister. It’s time to have a much more detailed conversation with Vera and ask her some difficult questions. As one of the early girls, she might have useful information and not even realize it.
It’s also time to share what’s going on with Cora. I need help. There’s no one I trust more in this world than Cora. Once she knows the whole story, I know she’ll fight as hard for Marie as she did for me. I have to tell Vera my plan. It’s her story too. I send her a text, laying out some of the work I’ve done and asking her permission to confide in Cora. She doesn’t respond right away like she usually does. I don’t have to tell her time is kicking our ass and that we’re working against an unknown countdown clock. She knows all of this. It was difficult for her to share her story with me. It’s going to be torture to share it with Cora.
After twenty minutes of silence I get this text: I trust you.
Those three words pack a powerful punch. I might be the only person in the world she says them to. She’s one of two people I can say them to. I text her back and tell her that I trust her too. She responds with a kiss emoji. I set my phone down to stop myself from keeping the conversation going. There’s so much more to say, but I need to fill Cora in so we can get started sorting through the leads I found.
“I need your help,” I say to Cora as I shut our office door.
I sit on the edge of her desk and tell her about everything—Javier, the tattoo, the girls, Marie’s Tumblr posts, Vera. When I finish, Cora sits back in her chair with an amazed sort of dazed expression. She doesn’t speak for several long minutes. Finally, she gets up from her chair and puts her arms around me. It takes me a second to react. Not many people have touched me in the past six years, so unexpected physical contact still takes me by surprise. If she notices, she doesn’t let on.
She pulls back and grips me by the shoulders. “I’m so proud of you. Oh, don’t look so surprised. You’ve done amazing work on this case.”
“Thank you.”
“But this case is bigger than we’re equipped for. If the same man who kidnapped Vera has or will kidnap Marie then we need to bring in the authorities.”