Maddocks, Holgersen, and the Crown lawyer had driven up the Saanich Peninsula to the old Wilkinson Road jail—a max-security facility that housed both offenders who had been sentenced and those on remand. Lippmann had proposed a deal in exchange for his client being transferred to another facility and for ameliorated charges. The carrot being dangled in front of the MVPD and Crown counsel was information on the identity of the barcode girls.
It could be the breakthrough they needed to help track the suspects who’d trafficked the girls. This kind of sex trafficking usually involved some level of organized crime and international criminal cooperation. The barcode tattoos themselves indicated a level of coordinated criminal structure and ownership branding.
Maddocks regarded the aquiline features of the seven-foot-tall transgender prisoner across from him. The inmate’s hair was cropped military-short and dyed silver. Maddocks had recently learned via Lippmann that the prisoner self-identified as female. It wasn’t easy for Maddocks to suddenly think of this abuser, captor, and trafficker of young women as a “she.” But he was working on it. Her skin was a strange ashen tone, her eyes almost colorless. She wore prison garb—bright-red pants, red sweatshirt with VIRECC, BC CORRECTIONS emblazoned across the back. She sat eerily still, no emotion evident in her features. Fresh purple contusions and swelling marred her left cheek. Stitches tracked across her left temple. Ligature marks ringed her neck. Ironic, Maddocks thought, given how one of her sex workers had died during a breath-play act gone wrong.
Before entering the room, Lippmann and the prosecuting counsel had hammered out the plea bargain details and interview terms acceptable to both Lippmann and the Crown.
Maddocks pressed the RECORD button, activating the camera and voice recorder. “Interview commencing with inmate known as Zina. Location, Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre. Time, 4:45 p.m., Wednesday, January three.” He held Zina’s gaze.
“For the record, can the inmate please state legal name?”
“Zaedeen Camus,” she said clearly, eyes unblinking.
Maddocks’s pulse quickened. They now had a name they could run.
“Nationality?”
“I’m from Algiers. My mother was Algerian. My father is a French national. I hold a French passport. My permanent residence is in Paris.”
Which explained her accent.
“And you call yourself Zina?” Maddocks said.
“I find the name more feminine. I prefer to identify as a female. I’m currently undergoing hormone therapy. Surgery will follow.”
Which sliced to the heart of the matter—the reason they were here. During the chaos of the Amanda Rose takedown, it had not been made clear to arresting officers that Zina, who was born with male characteristics, self-identified as female. She’d been incarcerated with the general male population at VIRECC. Sexually assaulted and badly beaten on her first night, she was now being kept in solitary for her own protection. Lippmann had filed various complaints, among them one with the human rights commission. And he’d demanded transfer to an exclusively female pretrial facility. However, safety concerns remained over the current regulations around transgender inmates and Zina’s potential transfer into a female population. Given Zina’s alleged involvement in possible kidnapping, sexual assault, trafficking, torturing, drugging, brainwashing, and forcibly confining underage females aboard the Amanda Rose, she was not going to get an easy ride in any prison population. But it was why their inmate was prepared to talk now.
“Where are your identity documents, your passport?” Maddocks said. “They weren’t found aboard the Amanda Rose.”
Zaedeen Camus glanced at her lawyer. Lippmann gave a small nod.
“Madame Vee instructed me to bag my documents along with hers and to seal the bag, weight it down, and cast it overboard.”
“When did she instruct you to do this?”
“As the SWAT teams swarmed the vessel.”
“How did you cast them overboard?” said Maddocks. “Out of the window? Of her office?”
“Correct, out of the porthole in her office.”
“Describe the bag.”
“A sealable dry bag. Black. Watertight. A small orange logo on the side.”
“How big?”
“Holds five liters.”
“Why overboard?”
“Madame Vee felt that silence and anonymity was the safest policy if we were to undergo interrogation. She also wanted the documents protected in the event we might be able to retrieve them with a diver later.”
“Anything else in the bag aside from identification documents for you and Madame Vee?”
Her eyes flickered. Lippmann moved his hand over his notepad—a sign.
“Yes.”
“What else was in the bag?”
“Some other papers—only things pertaining to our personal identification.”
Maddocks made note of this and of the bag’s description. They needed to get police divers down below the Amanda Rose.
“And what is the legal name and nationality of Madame Vee?” Maddocks said, after having eased round to the big question.
Zaedeen Camus stiffened—the first overt sign of stress in the prisoner. Maddocks held her gaze. And yes, in her flat-colored eyes he could read the stirrings of fear. The female pimp still wielded power over Zina, possibly over her other employees, too. So far the mysterious madam in her sixties had given police nothing. And neither her prints nor Camus’s were in the system. Nailing down her identity would be a quantum step forward.
“Go ahead,” Lippmann urged quietly.
“Her name is Veronique Sabbonnier,” Camus said.
“Nationality?”
“Also French.”
“Where did you meet Veronique Sabbonnier?” Maddocks said.
She swallowed. “We met in Paris. She frequented a hotel where I was the manager.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe five years ago.”
“Was Veronique Sabbonnier working as a pimp at this time?”
Lippmann cleared his throat and said, “That question is outside the parameters of our interview agreement.”
Maddocks met the lawyer’s dark eyes, allowed a beat of silence, then redirected. “When did you first begin working for Sabbonnier?”
“I encountered her again two years ago at a hotel in Marseilles to which I had been transferred. She had docked with the Amanda Rose in a local port. She spent four months in Marseilles. I got to know her well during this period, and she invited me aboard the yacht and then offered me a job with her club.”
“The Bacchanalian Club?”
“Yes. I sailed with the Amanda Rose at the end of what Madame Vee referred to as her Marseilles season.”
“In what capacity did Sabbonnier hire you?”
Camus glanced at her lawyer. Another curt nod from Lippmann.
“Personal assistant. Bouncer for the Bacchanalian Club.”
“Which was operating as a high-end sex club?”
Silence.
Maddocks opted for a side swipe. “Did Sabbonnier ask you to dispose of Faith Hocking’s body after Hocking died during a sex act aboard the Amanda Rose?”