Bowditch got right to it without preamble. “Everything you’ve got on your barcode case to date, we need it. And we’d like you to give us an overview now.”
Flint nodded to Maddocks, who pulled up his computer file and hit a key, bringing the smart screen to life. The group listened in taut silence as he gave them a bare-bones briefing on their investigation. Rain ticked against the windows as wind gusted wickedly around the outside corners and crevices of the concrete building. The distant sound of a foghorn reached them. Another storm front was closing in.
Maddocks pointed at the row of mug shots displayed across the screen. “These are the six barcoded females who were forcibly confined aboard the Amanda Rose.” All were thin. Haunted looking. All dark-haired, save for the one blonde. Below their faces were images of their respective barcode tattoos.
“Sophia Tarasov.” Maddocks pointed to the first image. “Killed last night around 1:00 a.m. COD as yet unknown. Postmortem pending. Her tongue was excised. Originally from Novgorod. The only one who has given us a statement so far. According to Tarasov, the girls were threatened with having their tongues cut out if they spoke.”
Eden and Bowditch exchanged a fast glance, tension evident in their bodies.
Maddocks hit another laptop key, and a large map filled the screen. “From Tarasov’s statement, this is a possible route taken by the six barcoded victims into the country.” With his finger, Maddocks drew a line across the smart screen between Prague and Vladivostok, which lay just above the North Korean border. “From Vladivostok, twenty young women were transported in a crab fishing vessel. Somewhere in international waters they were transferred to a cargo ship flying the South Korean flag.” He moved his finger across the map, drawing a line down to South Korea. “Tarasov said one of the women died at sea, leaving nineteen. They docked in what she thought could have been a city in South Korea, possibly Pusan. She believed they were then taken to China and then across the Pacific”—he drew a long line over the ocean—“to the Port of Vancouver here on the North American coast.” He paused.
“One helluva trip,” muttered Holgersen.
Maddocks said, “Detective Holgersen has noted that this journey coincides with traditional Russian king crab import routes—both legal and illegal harvests from the Russian far east. It’s an industry that has traditionally been dominated by organized crime—the so-called crab Mafia—which has deep roots in Russian government organizations.” He hit another key, and the image of the pale-blue crab tattoo filled the screen.
“Tarasov described this tattoo to a forensic artist. It matches the tattoo used as an insignia by a subsect of the crab Mafia. Tarasov witnessed identical ink on one of her male captors in Prague, on one of the crab fisherman out of Vladivostok, and on her captor-pimp in what we think is a remote BC coastal location where nine of the girls trafficked from Vladivostok were held for maybe a month. From this holding location, it appears six of the nine girls were sold—or hired out—to Veronique Sabbonnier, owner-manager of the Bacchanalian Club brothel, which she ran aboard the Amanda Rose. Sabbonnier brought the six barcoded women here, to Victoria.”
The female officer—Eden—jotted a note on the pad in front of her. Bowditch typed a text on his phone and sent it. Maddocks waited for the cop to finish texting. Bowditch looked up, his features studiously benign, but Maddocks could read sharpened interest—excitement even—in the eyes of both officers.
Eden cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Did Tarasov say how they got from the Port of Vancouver to this remote coastal location?”
Maddocks inhaled deeply. He glanced at Holgersen, then Flint, and then he skirted the question. “We got a statement—as part of a plea bargain—from Sabbonnier’s assistant, Zaedeen Camus. Camus, who self-identifies as female, said the Russian traffickers were collaborating with Hells Angels members entrenched as longshoremen at the Port of Vancouver. The Hells Angels members facilitated the girls’ removal from the cargo container, and they apparently initiated transport of the girls from the dock to this remote coastal location.”
Both Eden and Bowditch stiffened. They exchanged a hot, quick glance. “We’ll need to interview Camus ourselves,” she said. “And as agreed, we’ll need all written statements, recorded interviews, logged evidence, everything. We’ll take possession of the remaining barcoded women, and—”
“Camus is being transferred to a Lower Mainland pretrial facility,” Flint said. “The information she has given to date is part of a plea bargain that includes the transfer.” He paused. “The legal arrangement with her counsel is in connection with local crimes that we’re prosecuting locally.”
“We can handle it all from here,” Bowditch said, starting to push his chair back.
“Your task force—what is the scope?” Maddocks said, leaning forward and pressing his knuckles onto the table. His eyes lanced Bowditch’s and then Eden’s. “What is the purview of this?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to share this information without the necessary security clearance,” Bowditch said. “It’s a highly sensitive interagency operation involving international and national agencies as well as specialized local units. It’s drawn under one umbrella several investigations that have been years in the making, and it includes deep-cover detail that cannot be compromised, for the safety of our UC officers.”
Maddocks bristled, tension building hot and low in his belly as the image of Sophia Tarasov’s body washed back into his mind. Tarasov’s image morphed suddenly into his memory of Ginny trussed up in that polyethylene tarp, bloodied and swinging by a rope hung from the trestle bridge. He recalled the mutilated bodies of Faith Hocking and Gracie Drummond on O’Hagan’s autopsy table. Both young women, Victoria locals, had worked as prostitutes through the Bacchanalian Club, where they’d come to the deadly attention of the Baptist—a man who was harbored by Veronique Sabbonnier and Zaedeen Camus. Those two had made the Baptist’s crimes possible.
Sometimes, Maddocks thought as he met the gazes of the two veteran officers, it wasn’t just bad guys who hurt young girls, it was bureaucracy. Pride. Territorialism. Because if he let this out of MVPD hands now, there was no doubt in his mind that Gracie Drummond’s and Faith Hocking’s families would not see justice done at a local level. The local johns involved with the Bacchanalian Club and the strangulation death of Faith Hocking would not be prosecuted. These two cops had bigger fish to fry. The MVPD case to which Maddocks and his colleagues had given so many hours of their lives, to which Angie might have sacrificed her career, which had almost cost the life of his daughter, would end up mere collateral damage, swept under the rug in some plea deal.