Standing beside Maddocks was Detective Kjel Holgersen, along with the girls’ victim services counselor and their psychiatrist.
“How long do you think before they might talk?” Maddocks asked the doctor as his gaze went from one teen to the next. The young females sat at a table with trays of hospital food in front of them. Only one poked listlessly at her meal using a fork. The others remained motionless, all clearly cognizant of the fact that they were being watched from behind the one-way observation glass. Under police custody, they were being housed in a ward that included beds and a living room area. It was here that they were being slowly nursed back to health and weaned off the opioids to which they’d been addicted. The MVPD had not disclosed their location to the press.
“No way of telling yet,” said the doctor. “It could be months before they speak. Possibly years, even with therapy. They’re exhibiting symptoms that include severe catatonia, or catatonic depression—they’re immobile most of the time. Have trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating and making small decisions, are fearful of sudden movements and loud sounds, show no appetite, are constantly fatigued. Just the simple act of sitting up in bed took them hours during the first few days after they were admitted.”
“No communication between them?” Maddocks said.
“Primarily nonverbal interaction has been observed, and it’s been limited to eye contact and the occasional hand gesture. One of our nursing staff did hear a whispered exchange between the dark-haired patient, the one pushing her food around, and the blonde,” the doctor said. “But it was terminated the minute they became aware of the nurse’s presence.”
“Did your nurse get a gist of the language they spoke?” Maddocks said.
The doctor shook his head. “Our nurse thinks it could have been a Slavic language.”
“Well that sure as hell is going to narrow things down,” Holgersen said quietly. The lanky detective stood uncharacteristically still at Maddocks’s side, his gaze fixated on the girls. “They’s a complete enigma. Whoda thunk the Baptist would lead us here—to some fucking international sex trafficking mystery?”
“They have no trust,” their victim services counselor added. “They’ve been tortured, drugged, psychologically abused, and are apparently terrified of communicating anything about themselves to the hospital staff or to myself, likely in fear of recrimination.”
Maddocks returned his attention to the girl poking at her tray of institution food. High, angular cheekbones. Strong nose. Wide-set almond-shaped eyes the color of coal. Her thick dark hair was scraped back into a severe ponytail. She had to be younger than his daughter, Ginny. A sick oiliness slicked through his stomach at this thought, at the memory of almost losing Ginn to the Baptist. At everything that had happened over the past month—how he’d fallen in lust and then some kind of love with his partner, Angie. How she’d disobeyed a superior officer and breached protocol in order to save both his and Ginny’s lives, how Angie might yet lose her job because of it. The fact weighed heavy on his shoulders. He also knew it was crushing Angie to be sidelined on this barcode girls investigation now. This should have been her baby, in part. Sex crimes—special victims—was her wheelhouse. And he needed a female detective with her experience on his team now.
As he regarded the dark-haired teen, a visceral image seeped through him—his dark-haired Ginny. Eighteen. Her body tightly bound in a plastic tarp, swinging by a rope strung down from a crumbling old trestle bridge in the misty darkness. Angie trying to crawl along the top of the bridge to free his daughter . . .
He rubbed his brow, forcing his focus back to the six females, effectively all Jane Does until his team could learn more.
What are your names? How were you brought into the country? Where did you originate? Where are your families, friends, homes? You must have loved ones looking for you.
Maddocks had recently been hired for the MVPD’s homicide division, where his first assignment had been to spearhead the hunt for the Baptist. He’d subsequently been asked to form a new task force designed to investigate these six barcoded survivors. To assist on his investigation, Maddocks had brought in officers from the MVPD’s sex crimes unit, counterexploitations, the drugs section, and the criminal intelligence unit. The case was expected to grow exponentially—these girls had likely entered the country through a sophisticated international human trafficking network. The passports found for them aboard the Amanda Rose had likely been forged. The documents had not been stamped or used at any Canadian point of entry, either. This made Maddocks think the passports had possibly been intended for future use as the Amanda Rose sailed with the girls out of Canadian waters and crossed into US and South American waters—a historic pattern of travel already established by the floating brothel.
Also still unknown were the identities of the Bacchanalian Club’s owner-manager-pimp and her transgender bodyguard-assistant. The pimp was a female who looked to be in her sixties. She went by the name Madame Vee. Her assistant was known only as Zina. No identity documents had been found aboard the yacht for those two.
“How much of their catatonia might be attributed to opiate withdrawal?” Maddocks asked the doc, ignoring his phone as it began to vibrate in his pocket.
“Again, hard to say,” said the psychiatrist. “Withdrawal symptoms do include anxiety, low energy, insomnia, hot-cold sweats, abdominal cramps, and vomiting, but in my assessment this is probably more a sign of prolonged trauma and abuse, both physical and mental.”
“It’s consistent with what we see in survivors of human trafficking,” the victim services counselor said. “The control tactics employed by traffickers to retain victims in exploitative situations usually include some form of social isolation, forcible confinement, the withholding of identification documents, imposing strict rules, limitation of movement, as well as physical violence and threats of violence. Many victims believe that if they do not comply with exploitation, their employers have the ability to inflict harm on family members both locally and overseas. Some are simply terrified that their families might learn they are—or have been—engaged in sex work.” She inhaled deeply. “I believe these girls were threatened with their lives and the lives of their families if they talked to authorities.”
Anger, hatred coalesced like cold jelly in Maddocks’s gut as he listened to the victim services counselor, who was also a highly respected therapist.
“Trust will obviously take time,” he said quietly.
“For them to feel safe will take even longer.”
Maddocks met the woman’s eyes. “They don’t realize they’re free yet.”
She shook her head. “They might never feel free again in their lives.”