The action is about to heat up, Charity is gathering the final clues. I know I say this every post, but thanks for the feedback, it’s giving me great insight.
Chapter 40
Val was waiting for me when I got back.
“Feeling relaxed?” She kept her eyes on the screen of my laptop.
“Yep, thanks for asking.” My home looked even more depressing after the color and vibrancy of Jake’s. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t stand this. We can go for dinner on Robson.”
“Is Jake joining us, or did you wear him out?” She typed something in the Google search bar. “I thought you might stay over.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t just leave you here. He’s going out of town.” I stood behind her to see what she was surfing.
She closed the browser.
“What were you searching?”
“Nothing.” She emptied the cache. “Let’s go. I feel like sushi.”
I picked up my purse. Clearing the cache meant I wouldn’t be able to look in the history to see where she’d been surfing. “Am I going to find all kinds of spyware on my computer?”
“Nope.” She stood at the open door waiting for me. “Come on. I’m hungry.”
“No.” I was getting suspicious. “Were you looking for some information on the gang?”
“A bit.” She leaned against the door with her arms crossed. “I didn’t find much. You probably found it already.”
“What did you find?” I could feel ice fill my stomach. If she started to investigate on her own, I was sure I would be looking for another missing girl.
“That there’s nothing to find on the Internet.” She shrugged. “Come on.”
“So, what else were you looking at?”
“Why’s Jake leaving?”
It looked like she was willing to avoid answering forever. I decided to let it go, for now. “He got a part in a movie.”
“What about that show he was on?” She asked, standing on the gangway.
“His character dies. It happens.” I locked the door.
“Yeah, it happens when Jag Chen gets involved.”
While we were at dinner, I my phone rang. The first call was from the furniture company confirming delivery sometime between eight and noon tomorrow. “Great,” I said to Val. “I guess we’ll be stuck inside for the morning.”
“Don’t sweat it.” She picked fries off my plate. “These are great, I’m glad the sushi place was full. Anyway, at least you’ll have furniture. We can try to contact those people from your files if they don’t call back.”
“Shit, I haven’t called them yet. I’ll do it now.” I wiped my fingers on the napkin and picked up my cell phone. I pulled the list of numbers from my pocket.
I decided to start with Lu. I was worried about her, it wasn’t normal for her to be out of contact this long. I pressed the speed dial for her home number, it got through the first ring, and then the call waiting beep happened.
I pressed the talk button, “Hey,” I answered with my all-purpose greeting.
“Hey, yourself,” Lu’s voice came back like she was in a tunnel or something. The relief I felt made me realize how worried I’d been.
“Where are you,” I realized I was shouting, as if she couldn’t hear me because I had difficulty making out her voice against the background noise. “Why haven’t you been picking up your messages?”
“Who is it?” Val’s question drowned out Lu’s response. I shook my head at her hoping she would realize I needed to listen. “What?”
“I said, I’ve been busy and you didn’t say it was urgent.”
“I thought someone had done something to you.”
“Oh, come on it hasn’t been that long. We talked what, a day ago. What’s the deal?”
“It’s been almost two days. I got broken into and I…”
“You got broken into. Why didn’t you call?”
“I did. Never mind. Look, can you get somewhere quieter or with better reception?” I lowered my voice because I noticed the glares of people at other tables.
Val mouthed “Lu,” and raised her eyebrow. I nodded.
“No, I can’t. I’m at a cocktail reception for the mayor.” Lu shouted back. “I’m not actually on the phone while he’s making his speech, I’m in the hall. I didn’t want this information to wait. Can you talk?”
“Okay, go ahead,” I pulled the pad of paper from my bag. If she’d stepped out of the presentation to call me, it was guaranteed to be good.
“Hang on, I’ll go a bit further down the hall, it will be quieter there.” She lowered her voice as the background noise dropped off. “I called in some favors in the last couple of days. One of them got back to me with a time when the next shipment will arrive.”
“Shipment of women?”
“What is she saying?” Val asked. I frowned and shook my head at her.
“Yeah, what did you think?” Lu said.
“Great, when and where? We can get the police on site and they can arrest everyone.” I held my pen poised and ready to record the vital information.
“No!” It sounded like an order, like sit! “You need to know that I’m not a hundred percent sure about this person. It’s a friend of a friend of an acquaintance kind of thing. If it’s not legit you’ll lose any credibility you have with the police.”
Damn, that sounded too good to be true. “Okay, don’t worry we’ll go to plan B.” Like I knew what plan B was.
“What plan B?” Val asked. I tried to shush her. It was hard to focus on Lu.
“I didn’t know we had a plan B.”
She knows me too well. “What about an anonymous tip?”
“It won’t hold up in court, and Jag will assume it’s you. God knows what he’ll do if he thinks you dragged him into court and he gets off.”
I could hear her tapping her fingers on the back of the phone. Gotta love the girl, looks like a hip Asian ice queen but fidgets up a storm when she’s distracted.
“Give me the details and I’ll think of something.” I said with way more confidence than I felt.
“Okay, in two days at ten pm. They’ll deliver a container of people to a warehouse held in the name of Y. Su Holdings. Charity, be careful.” Her voice dropped to the point where I couldn’t hear her. I guess the hallway of a hotel during a political event wasn’t the most sensible place to be passing on information of a sensitive nature.
“I will. Go back to your party.” I folded the phone shut.
“What did she say?” Val looked ready to jump across the table. I gave her a quick rundown of the news.
“Okay, we have to go look.” She pushed her plate away.
“Slow down. We have two days. I need to get some information first, like the address of the warehouse. Let me leave some messages.”
Chapter 41
The next morning, my house started the transformation from an empty shell into a home, again. The furniture and electronics arrived almost at the same time. It meant that the new TV and assorted add-ons had to be put out of the way until the entertainment stand was put up.
“Bedroom,” I said and pointed upstairs when presented with a box that stated night table. Val was trying to shove boxes out of the way of the bigger pieces while the burly guy with the tats on his neck and arms hefted the new sofa bed with the help of the equally burly and pierced woman.
My cell buzzed in my pocket and I stepped out to the finger dock to answer it.
“Hey, Guy.” It was my biker contact. Last night I had left messages for Leigh, Guy, and an old contact who worked on the docks. So far Guy was the only one to call back.
“What did you need?” His social skills were limited when it came to small talk.
“I’m working on a story about the crime level in the areas around the docks.”
“What do you think I can help you with? I can’t talk to you for long, it’s not considered cool to talk to the press, you know.”
Yes, I knew. Guy had helped me with a case involving lost merchandise, in return I’d steered his niece away from a few bad choices. “Do you know anything about a warehouse owned by Y. Su. Holdings?” I put I breathed in the sea air and felt the cobwebs clear from my lungs and head.
“There are lots of warehouses there.”
I noticed an otter floating on her back a few feet away from me. I tried not to believe she was sizing up my newly repaired floats as a mid morning snack. “I don’t care about the other warehouses. Can you tell me about the Y. Su one?”
No,” he snapped. “At least nothing I can give you. Stay away from it. They are dangerous.”
“What, too dangerous for you?” I was half joking. The Angels were serious bad asses, if they thought Jag’s gang was dangerous then I should probably think twice about what I was doing.
“No, at least now right now. We’re working with them. I don’t know how much of a choice we had, but I don’t like it when I have to deal with them. You should back off.”
“I know all about no choices.” I waited but he didn’t respond. I was going to have to ask outright. “I have no choice about finding this place. Can you tell me where the warehouse it?”
“Look, you took care of Annie, so I’m going to keep you safe. No.”
“Fine, I’ll find out some other way. Tell Annie, hi from me.”
“Wait.”
I wasn’t feeling good about it, but guilt usually worked.
“You’ll get into more trouble digging around for that company, or driving around looking. It’s on Pandora and Victoria. There’s a sign on the building, Sun Imports.” He hung up.
Chapter 42
The next morning, we did some shopping for tools of the trade: black tee shirt, black jeans, black socks, black runners, red underwear, a voice recorder and a new memory card for my camera. I decided not to rely on the all-purpose PDA. More equipment equaled more confidence in the quality in my mind. The last thing I needed was to have grainy pictures and fuzzy voice recordings if I needed to convince the police of anything.
We didn’t have the details worked out for the big take-down but I figured that would happen after we looked the place over and saw how I could get in
“Do you think Emma will be there?” Val kept her eyes on the streets we drove past.
“I don’t know. I hope so. If she is, I get her out.” I really did hope Emma was there, if she wasn’t I didn’t have a clue where to look next.
It didn’t take us long to get to Pandora and Victoria but it was dark when I turned left off Hastings. The darkness would make it easier to skulk around, but harder to blend in because very few people hung out in this neighborhood after the streetlights came on. I was glad Val was with me. This was not an area I wanted to be in alone at night.
I drove around the block first to make sure I knew which building was the warehouse I needed then I parked next to a closed store on Hastings and Victoria. We walked the block downhill to Pandora and checked out the building. It looked innocent enough. Well, it looked like a warehouse and wasn’t lit with a big sign saying evil done here.
The sense of silence was so deep here that the sound of the rain dripping off the broken gutter of the warehouse roof was like applause. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie and the ax murderer was about to jump me. My shoulders twitched with the creepiness.
“I need you to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”
“There’s no one here.” She swept her arm around. “Let me come with you.”
“I won’t be long. If anyone comes…”
“Should I whistle?”
“Yes, then get back to the car.”
She sighed and leaned against the side of the end building in the row of warehouses.
I walked around the building to get an idea of what entry points were available. The only door was in the front and it was solid, no gaps, and no wiggle room. There was a broken window on the second floor that might be useful. And, a big blue dumpster underneath that would get me in what looked like arms reach of the sill. I didn’t think there was much chance anyone would fix the window overnight so it was my first choice.
I checked and Val was still standing where I left her. I started toward her and stubbed my foot on an uneven chunk of pavement. The city maintenance team hadn’t been on this side of Hastings for years. The majority of the buildings were warehouses, like the one I had to break into. Of the others, some had retail sales areas but it was that industrial style, no frills and concrete floors. There were no lights in the buildings and a few of the streetlights were burned out.
I returned to Val. “Do you know who usually works these streets? It’s kind of deserted. I don’t know if that’s normal.”
“It’s too early. Right now, the clients are with their families. Business around here is lunchtime and after dinner.” She shrugged and headed for the car.
I felt in need of comfort food. “Speaking of dinner, let’s walk up to Hastings and grab a pizza.”
As we got closer to the buzz and hustle of Hastings Street, I started to feel less bleak about what I was going to do. We found a bright restaurant and sat at a window table. There was a family of what looked like three generations sitting near the kitchen. They were passing food back and forth, laughing and yelling. I just wanted to pull my chair up and join them.
“When you find Emma, what will happen?” Val played with the ice in her soda.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, will the police want to charge her with being a hooker?”
I didn’t answer until the waitress had dropped our pizza and plates and left. “I don’t think so. I think Leigh will be more interested in getting information on Jag than charging you or Emma with solicitation.”
“It will be dangerous to talk about them.” She cut the pizza apart and took a slice.
“Unless we catch them in the act, someone will have to talk.” I cut a slice for myself. “It will take guts.”
“Emma has guts to spare.” She chewed the pizza.
“Really, you never talk about her. She’s just a missing person to me.”
“I like to think about the future. The past is done.” Her words sounded practiced. I was sure she’d heard that somewhere and hung onto it to help put aside her present.
“Okay, but if you don’t think Emma will be too afraid to talk, it will still be dangerous. I can’t guarantee Jag and Peter will be off the streets.”
“She won’t be too afraid. She’s really strong.”
“Good.” I tried to sound like I believed her.
“No, I am serious.” Val picked cheese strings from the second slice of pizza on her plate. “She was on the wrestling team at school.”
“Really, that’s cool. I’ve never met a female wrestler before.”
“Yeah.” Val seemed to forget her reluctance to talk as she warmed up to her subject. “She kicked some ass in the competitions, too. She had tons of medals and stuff. She looked after me and my friends too. When you get her away from them, were going to leave the streets.”
“She sounds like a great big sister. What do you think you’ll do?”
“Yeah, no one messed with us when she was around. I got some ideas about what we’ll do.” Val wiped her mouth on a napkin and looked around. “I gotta pee. Back in a minute.”
It must be nice to be so young and willing to believe things will get better. I hoped we would find Emma and she’d be in good shape. The last thing Val needed was to have her last connection to her childhood taken away.
