She stopped at the northern point and looked out at the Space Needle and the lights of downtown across Elliott Bay. The wind whipped her hair around, and she tied it back in a ponytail, then zipped up the fleece and just stood there, watching the silent passage of the Bainbridge Island ferry, the slow-moving lines of distant traffic, feeling cocooned by the wind. The city looked so peaceful from here, so clean. You’d never know the vile sewer underneath.
She had saved a baby girl raped so many times by her father the child’s rectum was prolapsed. Rescued an elderly woman kept in a dungeon, chained in her own filth, her legs infested with maggots, imprisoned by the son who was cashing her Social Security checks. And caught the Montlake rapist, of course. The system had worked for that one. But every time she thought about the way he had used his victims’ love for each other to control and further torment them, she couldn’t help wishing the system had failed, so that she could have gotten justice for those women another way.
She had taken psych courses at SJSU, and knew that protecting others, avenging them, was sublimation. If she’d been raised Catholic, she might have understood the behavior as atonement instead. Either way, she couldn’t save Nason, and would spend her life trying to make up for that failure by saving others in Nason’s place.
She really did help people, she knew that, and when it happened, it was just . . . magic. And when helping wasn’t possible . . . when a repeat rapist slipped through the system . . . sublimation took the form of her hobby. And it wasn’t just sublimation. She also understood that her high-risk activities, even her decision to become a cop, were ways of proving to herself over and over that she wasn’t a victim anymore, and never would be again.
It was interesting how much insight you could have into your own pathologies, and how little impact the insight would have on your underlying needs.
Or on your behavior.
At times, though, none of it mattered. At times, all the sublimation and atonement in the world weren’t enough. And the only thing that might help would be to know what had happened to Nason. Just to know. Just to know. Nothing more than that. Just to know.
Facing Tyler, she realized, the culmination of a decade and a half of anxiety and desperate hope, had overwhelmed her defenses, and made all the horror and loss immediate again. And now, looking out at the city, she felt so . . . empty. Alone. So fucking bereft.
She shivered against the wind and watched the lights and let her grief have its way. After a while, she was able to think clearly again.
Four kids. Not three. And two of them sisters.
Why such a specific cargo? She thought back to her conversation with AUSA Velez, and how he had explained the way trafficking worked—wholesale down to retail. So had Skull Face sent them all off to market just hoping buyers would turn up?
No, that didn’t make sense. Skull Face was using a gang with no experience moving people, only with drugs. Why would he do that, unless he had a designated buyer somewhere in the vicinity? A buyer who wanted, who had ordered, something specific, forcing Skull Face to turn to Weed Tyler and his gang despite their lack of relevant experience?
Or maybe . . . it was because of their lack of experience?
She made a mental note to log in to the FBI’s crime database, to see if she could cross-reference the name Kana. It was a long shot, but worth a try.
So someone had, what, bought them all? Ordered them, the way you would order a pizza?
She imagined it. Get me a Guatemalan housemaid. Get me a Chinese busboy. Get me a little Thai girl to rape.
No. Not just a little girl. Two sisters.
Where had that thought come from? Maybe from the way the Montlake rapist had used his victims’ love for each other to manipulate and control them. The way Skull Face had done the same to Livia with Nason.
The way Mr. Lone had done.
Was that why she had found herself thinking about the Montlake case? Was her unconscious trying to tell her something?
She shook her head. It didn’t make sense. How could Mr. Lone have arranged it? All the way from Thailand? It was a coincidence. A sick, evil man sees a powerless little girl, and takes advantage of his good luck. A crime of opportunity, not of planning.
His brother. Ezra Lone. The senator.
It was still too far-fetched. She didn’t believe it. But . . .
Assume both brothers are that sick. And assume they have the connections to pull off something like what you’re imagining.
Okay, but there were still too many pieces that didn’t fit. Like the fact that there had been other girls in the container from Thailand. Why had Skull Face and his men left the rest of them alone? Why had they been interested only in Livia and Nason, the sisters? If Livia and Nason were some kind of special shipment, wouldn’t Skull Face and the others have abused someone else?
She remembered the way Skull Face had looked at her, when despite her own fierce hunger she had given her food to Nason.
Could that have been it? Was that the sick kink he couldn’t resist? The opportunity to control a little girl by manipulating the girl’s love for her own sister?
And then the opportunity to rip away even that small victory, by violating the sister anyway?