Bringing All the Bad, стр. 6
“The last of the girls is being released from the hospital today. The last two actually. Both are going to good places. I’ll work that.” Turning to Paul, Mel said, “It would help if you could run down all the leads we got from the other interviews. Try to track backward from the snippets we got on locations and dates to see if we can narrow down where those girls came from.”
He gave her a suspicious look, like he knew what she was doing. Mel put on her best ‘good partner’ face and said, “I’m serious. You know how I get on the phone.”
It was true, and he knew it. Giving her a rueful smile, he nodded and said, “I’ll cover it.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought the Captain looked a little relieved. He may have put on the brass and moved away from field work, but he knew Paul too. More importantly, he knew when he saw one of his detectives creeping toward the edge. He knew when they should step down from the roof and get under shelter for a while.
Changing subjects, he said, “We’ve still got nothing more than the name Papa for the next level up in this chain. Keep working that too.”
That might sound enigmatic, but Mel knew what he was saying. This particular ring wasn’t working in isolation. From the complex communications setup to the dark web pages to the careful travel route they had taken, it was obvious that this was a well-run operation. It was equally obvious that six of the nine men arrested as sellers were muscle, meant to keep control over the clients as well as the girls. None of them were savvy enough for this level of sophistication. That RV group was a branch, a mere franchise off a much larger operation.
During all the interviews so far, the girls had only been able to provide the name Papa. That was what they were instructed to call the well-dressed man who met them sometimes when they rolled into a new location. He was also the man who took girls away sometimes and brought them new ones.
Papa was the man they really needed to find.
Mel only nodded at the Captain’s directive. Of course, she would try, but she would do it as each girl was ready. That would take time for a lot of them. They were fragile, more fragile now than they’d been when they were rescued. Before rescue, they’d had to be strong to survive. Now, they were out of their familiar depths and that took a toll.
Standing, Mel accepted one of the files from the Captain, and said, “I’m off to the hospital. I’ll check in later, hopefully with something more.”
One Green Flash
The girl called Baby was waiting, her hands folded neatly in her lap. When Mel opened the door she was perched on the chair in the hospital room like she was sitting in church. She met Mel’s eyes without hesitation, another thing that made her stand out. Most of the girls didn’t do that so easily. They avoided direct eye contact.
“Hi again. I hope you weren’t waiting too long. I’m here to give you a ride. I’m Melody, remember? You can call me Mel.”
Baby nodded, stood, then stooped slightly to pick up her plastic bag of donated clothes and personal items. It was a prim move, her knees bent, legs pressed together. It was almost old fashioned, reminding Mel of the way women stooped to pick up things in old movies. Mel’s jaw tightened at the rustle of plastic when Baby twisted the bag’s top to make the package smaller. She should have gotten them backpacks or something. This looked too much like a prisoner leaving jail.
“They tell me I’m going to a group home. Is that right?”
She didn’t speak like a kid. Her words were well articulated, like she had been given a good education at some point. And by good, Mel didn’t think of public schools either. Since corporate interests had weaseled in and turned most public schools into warehouses for the children of the poor, the only good education was a private one. Baby talked like she’d gone to one of those, a place where small things like diction had their own classroom time.
Also, Baby wasn’t local. It was there in her voice, something about the vowels that said Northeast, but not local. Given that Mel was one of the few people in this city who was also a multi-generation native, she’d heard every accent there was to find here. Baby’s wasn’t native.
If anything, it reminded Mel of the intimidatingly wealthy people who summered in Newport. Mel had spent her fair share of summers there as a kid. It was just one more thing about Baby that didn’t fit with the rest of the girls. Still, it was a clue, however slight. Even just figuring out where Baby came from might help the police locate her family or at least, find her name.
While no one had pointed to her as the caller, and she hadn’t admitted it yet, several girls had confirmed that Baby was brought by the man named Papa to the RV camp only two days before the raid. That made Baby doubly important. She was the likely caller and she knew the operation, which shouldn’t be the case if she was newly abducted. She’d also had the most recent known contact with the mysterious Papa. She might have more information. No, Baby definitely knew more than she had shared to this point.
It was going to be really difficult to get that information from her, though. Mel knew that already. She was tight-lipped. Baby kept her own counsel. The social worker had simply said that Baby had grown a shell, a hard shell that kept her safe.
Mel didn’t agree with that assessment. This wasn’t a shell. It wasn’t a thin walled thing that could be cracked with the right tap at the right