Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

“You’re trying to make me nervous,” the girl said at last, her tone sulky, faintly accusing.

“Are you high, Delilah Rose?”

“No!”

“Police said they found you with meth.”

“I don’t do drugs! Ever. I was just holding the bag for a friend. How was I supposed to know it was meth?”

“Do you drink?”

“Sometimes-but not tonight.”

“I see. And what were you doing tonight?”

“Hell”-now the attitude was coming out-“I wasn’t doing nothin ’ tonight. Just visited a club for a little dancing. Then catching MARTA to fly home. Since when is needing public transport a crime?”

Kimberly merely eyed Delilah’s outfit. Underneath a navy blue jacket that was too thin for this time of year, the girl was a walking advertisement for spandex. Short, shiny skirt the color of eggplant. Jet-black halter top, so tight her breasts spilled out the sides. Then there were the four-inch stiletto heels.

Kimberly caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a spiderweb, inked around the girl’s navel, before Delilah self-consciously tugged her shirt down. A second tattoo peeked out from the back of the girl’s neck, a spider climbing into the girl’s hair.

“Who did the work?” Kimberly asked, pointing to Delilah’s neck.

“Don’t remember.”

“Nice web on your stomach. What’s the ring in your navel? A spider for the web? Clever.”

The girl didn’t say anything. Just stuck out her chin belligerently.

Kimberly gave her another minute, then decided she’d had enough. She started straightening up, grabbing her mini-recorder, the spiral notebook, the first pen.

“What the fuck?” Delilah cried.

“Excuse me?” Kimberly asked calmly, sticking the mini-recorder back in her pocket.

“Where the hell are you going? You haven’t even asked me any questions yet. What kind of FBI agent are you?”

Kimberly shrugged. “You said you weren’t doing anything. You claim the drugs aren’t yours. So okay. You’re the Virgin Mary, and I’m going back to bed.”

Kimberly reached for her second pen. The girl grabbed her wrist. For a skinny, malnourished thing, Delilah Rose was strong. Kimberly understood that kind of strength. It was called desperation.

Very slowly, Kimberly met the girl’s overbright gaze. “I don’t know you. We’ve never met. Meaning you’re no informant of mine, and as far as I’m concerned, Sandy Springs can do with you whatever they’d like. Now let go of my wrist, or you will regret it very fast.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’ve been here six minutes. You’ve had nothing to say.”

“I don’t want Sergeant Nimrod listening.” The girl had let go of Kimberly’s wrist. Now her gaze flickered to the one-way mirror.

“Sergeant Trevor isn’t your concern. I am your concern, and you’ve still not given me any reason to stay.” Kimberly picked up the pen, tucking it away.

“He’ll kill me.”

“Sergeant Trevor?”

“No, no. The man…I don’t know his name. I mean, not his real name. He calls himself Mr. Dinchara. The other girls, we call him Spideyman.”

“Mr. Dinchara?”

“You know, arachnid. It’s a…what do you call it? An anagram.”

“Oh please.” Kimberly couldn’t help herself. She eyed the girl’s getup again, arching a brow skeptically.

“He’s different.”

“Uh-huh.” Kimberly was already pushing back her chair, rising out of the hard plastic.

“He doesn’t pay for sex. At least not in the beginning.” Delilah’s voice was growing more urgent. “Spideyman pays girls money to, like, play with his pets. You know, ten bucks if you’ll touch the tarantula. Thirty if you’ll let it crawl up your arm. Freaky kind of stuff like that.”

“Play with his pets?”

“Oh, the venom from a tarantula isn’t strong enough to harm you, you know.” Delilah actually sounded earnest. “They’re really very shy and like…fragile. You have to handle ’ em gently. Otherwise, you can hurt them.”

Kimberly didn’t talk anymore, mostly because she couldn’t think of anything to say.

Delilah, on the other hand, was finally on a roll: “So at first, you know, the things he wanted involved his pets. But then he didn’t want his spiders just walking across your arm. He wanted to watch them walking across other areas. And, well, that got him pretty turned on. So then he wanted other activities, and yeah, maybe it’s a little different and not all the girls were into it, but then again, he paid pretty good.”

“What’s pretty good?”

“Hundred for a hand job, one fifty for oral. Two if you’d let the spider watch.”

“Watch?”

“From inside its cage, of course. I mean, you can’t just have a tarantula wandering about when you’re not paying attention. You might squish it.”

“Exactly what I feared,” Kimberly murmured. Just when you thought you’d heard it all, some pervert pushed the boundaries yet again. “Okay, so you and Dinchara have a little thing going on.” Kimberly eyed the girl’s tattoos again. “I gotta be honest. Sounds like you two are a good fit, and as you said, he pays well. So why are you here?”

Delilah looked away. The chatty spell had ended, they had returned to the land of silence. “Something went wrong,” the girl mumbled at last.

“No kidding. Come on, night’s not getting any younger. Why did you ask to see me?”

The girl’s lips trembled. “Because of Ginny. Ginny Jones. She went away with him. And nobody’s seen her since.”

Kimberly took a seat. She got out her notebook and pen, turned on the mini-recorder. The girl eyed the machine nervously, but didn’t protest.

“I want protection,” she blurted out.

“You want protection? Like what?”

“A…a safe house. Police protection. Whatever it is you see on TV.”

“Delilah, that’s TV. In the real world, it doesn’t work like that. You gotta pay to play.”

“Pay to play? What’s that mean?”

Kimberly was serious. “That means you have to provide real information on a real crime. Something specific and detailed. If I can corroborate it, then we can talk options.”

“How specific?”

“Let’s start with a name. Ginny Jones. Real or alias?”

“Virginia,” the girl whispered. “Her real name was Virginia Jones, but everyone called her Ginny. She was nice. Not into drugs, some of the stuff you see. Just…I don’t know. Something had happened somewhere.” The girl smiled wanly. “Doesn’t it always?”

“When did you last see her?”

“Three months ago. A Wednesday. Maybe a Thursday. I’m not sure anymore. She’d gone with the guy before. She’s, umm, she’s the one who told me about him. You know, when she saw my tats. Said there might be this guy, kind of freaky, but by the looks of things, nothing I couldn’t handle, and hey, the money’s good-”

“So Ginny knew Dinchara?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, okay.”

“And she was okay with the eight-legged audience?”

Delilah shrugged. “Ginny said the spiders didn’t bother her. She used to tell me she wasn’t afraid of anything. At least not anymore.”

“So when did you last see her?”

“While back.”

“Delilah.”

“Ummm, several months ago, maybe one-thirty in the morning. Dinchara came by in his SUV.”

“Describe it.”

“Black. Silver trim. Fancy. A Toyota, I think, but a souped-up version. You know they sometimes upgrade them? This one has the fancier rims, the leather seats. Limited Edition.”

“License plate?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said immediately.

Kimberly took a moment to study her again. The answer was too quick, especially in this day and age, when the hookers also watched CSI and understood the value of information. “Was it a Georgia plate?”