“How small?”
She sniffed and wiped her nose. Her shakes were intensifying. A sheen of perspiration was beginning to gleam on her brow. “I . . . I don’t know. I . . . was not well. Throwing up. Passing out. I remember little. Just blur. There were nineteen of us got off ship. Only ten put on smaller boat.”
“Where did the other nine go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe truck.”
Maddocks cleared his throat. “How long were you on the smaller boat?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know.”
“What do you remember next?”
“Waking up in place with four rooms. There was small kitchen and bathroom, but door to outside was locked. Windows had bars up high. We have nice food now. Fish. Vegetables. Fruit. Water. A woman would bring.”
“Can you describe this woman? What nationality?”
“She old. Maybe eighty. She was all dressed in black. When I ask her question, she say in Russian that they will cut my tongue out if I talk. Like they told us in Prague they would do if we ever speak to anyone about men who brought us there. In Prague there was woman with no tongue.”
A tightness clamped Maddocks’s throat. It came with a thin spear of red-hot anger.
“What could you see through the windows of this house?”
“Big trees. Lots of trees. Like forest. Through the trees, water.”
“Anything else? Sounds? Traffic, airplanes?”
“Very quiet. No traffic noise. Sometimes small plane up high. And engines sometimes, like from boats. One time helicopter.”
“Did you see anyone else in this place, apart from the old woman?”
Now her whole body began to shake.
“Only one man. He come when it is dark a few times. He very big. He wear hood, and he make lights dim. He say he come to test all the merchandise. Very rough. Not young, but very strong. Powerful. He barely say two words.”
“Accent? Language?”
“English. American accent, like you.”
“He got naked apart from the hood?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, nodded.
“Was he circumcised?”
She glanced at the interpreter, who translated in Russian.
Sophia shook her head. “He wear protection.”
“Was there anything else distinctive about his body?”
“Here—” She touched the side of her neck and slipped into Russian.
“Tattoo,” said the translator. “Like a crab. Same as the one she saw on the fishing vessel from Vladivostok. Same as a man in Prague. But she says he kept the room dim whenever he visited. His hood looked like an executioner’s hood, black with a slit for his eyes. She glimpsed the crab only when his hood slipped a little during a sex act.”
Adrenaline spiked through Maddocks. Calmly, he said, “Sophia, would you be able to describe this crab tattoo to a sketch artist?”
She nodded. Maddocks reached into his pocket for his phone. He called Holgersen.
“Can you bring in a sketch artist, stat?” he said as soon as Holgersen picked up. “Get Cass Hansen if you can. I’ve used her before—she’s good. And she lives two minutes away from the hospital.”
He killed the call and turned back to Sophia.
“What happened next?”
“Madame Vee, she come on a plane.”
“How long were you in this place before she arrived?”
“I don’t know. Maybe three or four weeks. Madame Vee come with Zina.”
So Camus had lied about not going to the holding location. They could use this.
“They make us stand naked and turn us around. They talk in French. They pick six of us. We were put on small plane, seaplane. We landed in harbor and were taken by small boat to Amanda Rose.”
“When the seaplane took off from this holding place, what did you see from the air?”
She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears. “Nothing. They used blindfolds.”
“Did you see the pilot?”
She shook her head.
“How long did this flight take, Sophia?”
“Maybe hour?” She lifted her shoulders. “Or two—I scared. I don’t know.”
“Did you ever leave the Amanda Rose after you first boarded the yacht?”
“No. They lock us inside cabins. Keep us apart from the other girls. Only when police come and raid the boat and took us did we leave Amanda Rose.” She wiped her eyes, but tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
The victim services woman leaned forward. “Detective Maddocks, I think we might have had enough for today.”
He nodded. “Just one more question, Sophia. The other girls who are here with you at the hospital now, where are their homes, what are their names?”
“No name.” She shook her head wildly. “No give name, I promised, no names.”
“Okay, okay. Can you tell me where they came from?”
Her brow furrowed into tight wrinkles. She looked terrified.
“Please,” he said softly. “It will help.”
She stared at him for what seemed like a full minute, then slowly said, “Two from Syria. They were taken from refugee camp in Greece. They were promised passage to Germany, jobs. One from Austria—she Turkish. Other two from Russia, like me. Other parts Russia.”
Maddocks’s jaw tightened. A knock sounded on the door. The counselor got up to open it. It was Hansen, a sketch artist the MVPD used regularly.
“Thank you, Sophia. Thank you very much. You’ve been a tremendous help.” Maddocks came to his feet and went to Hansen at the door.
“I came as soon as I could,” Cass Hansen said quietly, looking flushed from her rush over. “Detective Holgersen said it was urgent.”
Maddocks lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “We need an image of the tattoos Sophia saw on several men. Seems like the same tattoo on all of them. And if she can describe anything more about the men, especially the big guy who wore a hood when he assaulted them sexually.”
Hansen nodded. “I’ll try,” she said softly.
Maddocks closed the door behind Hansen, his pulse pounding. This was it—the breakthrough they needed. Sophia Tarasov would provide more down the road; he was certain of it. She might get the other girls to talk, too.
CHAPTER 17
From the warmth of his car, through the rain-streaked windows, a man watches the entrance of the medical building that hunkers dark and wet under the low cloud and rain. Leafless deciduous branches outside the hospital walls wag gnarly fingers in the wind.
As the two detectives exit the building, he sits up sharply in the driver’s seat. For a few days now he’s been tracking the lead detective, who was in the news in connection with the takedown of the Bacchanalian Club aboard the Amanda Rose. The papers and TV stations claimed several young women from the boat had been taken into MVPD custody. He knows from his boss they’re barcode merchandise. But he didn’t know where they’d been taken. Until now.