Aric Davis - The Fort

Dr. Martinez gave Candy a wave as she got in the car, then saw a frowning Van Endel as she sat. “Is there a problem?”

“Not yet there isn’t,” said Van Endel. “I just want you to make sure that you follow my lead if we find this girl. If I tell you to get back in the car, or to get down, I’m not doing it to show off. If this boyfriend is even half the asshole Candy says he is, I want to make sure we’re both ready to deal with him.”

“All right. I can do that.”

They saw what had to be Bambi less than fifteen minutes later, and did the same thing as before. Dr. Martinez came first, followed by Van Endel, who had already unsnapped his holster. Bambi looked exactly as Candy had described her. She was wearing impossibly tall stiletto heels, had nearly white braids down to her backside, and was very clearly strung out on something. Had Van Endel been forced to guess, based on the lack of visible sores on her arms and legs, he would have guessed cocaine.

“Can I have a word, Bambi?” Dr. Martinez asked. “I need to know if you’ve seen a friend of mine.”

“Get the fuck away from me,” said Bambi. “I’m trying to work, bitch. Go talk about Jesus to somebody who gives a shit.” She turned quickly, and impressively, considering the footwear, but Dr. Martinez circled ahead of her. Van Endel kept pace, his hand in his jacket, his fingers on the butt of the Glock 17 he carried. Van Endel had taken shit for his dismissal of the typical wheel gun most cops carried, at least at first. Once the other officers had seen what he could do with it on the range, though, a number of them had switched to the Austrian semiauto.

“I just need a second,” Dr. Martinez assured Bambi. “I have money. All you need to do is answer a couple of questions for me. Five minutes, tops, OK?”

“Or I could run you in for solicitation,” said Van Endel, appearing behind Dr. Martinez with his badge out. “I’d rather just have you answer a couple of questions, though, OK? Nobody has to go to jail. We talk, and then we leave and you go back to what you do.” The girl’s eyes twitched to the left, where Van Endel had noticed an alley when he parked. He spun, getting his body between whatever was coming and Martinez, and his pistol free of the holster.

Van Endel ducked under the blow from the baseball bat and shoved Dr. Martinez aside, nearly toppling her. The man swinging it was obviously doped out of his mind. His eyes were dull and sunken, and he bore the ghastly pallor and racist tattoos of a neo-Nazi junkie who didn’t like the outdoors too much. Van Endel punched him in the stomach with a left, doubling the skinhead up, and then brought the Glock down on his head, easing up a bit at the last second. Nonetheless, Van Endel pushed the barrel into the idiot’s head plenty hard, dropping him to his knees. “Stay down on the ground,” he barked, and the man did. Van Endel knelt on him, pushing his knee hard into the junkie’s back, then cuffed him. “You stay there, got it, asshole?” The man grunted, and Van Endel stood before reholstering the pistol. It had taken only a few seconds.

“Make her talk,” Van Endel said to Dr. Martinez. “Ask nicely if you have to, but make clear that if she doesn’t soon, I’m making a call.”

“You heard him, honey,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi. “Can we have a conversation?”

The girl gave a look to the now-docile man on the ground, the one who probably forced her out here, kept her on drugs, and told her he loved her after the occasional beating. “I can try,” said Bambi. “Not like I have a choice.”

“You’re right,” said Dr. Martinez. “You don’t, so we may as well get started. Word is you might have seen some folks who didn’t fit the neighborhood all that well a couple days ago.” She held up the picture of Molly. “Is this one of them?”

“I saw some kids, sure,” said Bambi. “But I never got much of a look at them, and I don’t really know what they were up to. Not for sure, anyways. I mean, you hear things, but—”

“Let’s see what you got on your person, playboy,” Van Endel said, kneeling next to the boyfriend/pimp. He rifled through one front pocket and then the other, careful to avoid the old junkie trick of a vertical needle above the stash, point up. The second pocket revealed a couple of small and mostly empty baggies, with traces of a white dust, Van Endel figured either cocaine or speed. “Now we’ve got a problem. Either you tell your girlfriend to start spitting out the truth, or we’re going downtown. Don’t let the suit fool you—I’ve walked a beat, and I know the look a junkie gets when he thinks he might get a spot in a cage.”

“Just fucking tell him!” screamed the idiot on the ground, and had he not been yelling exactly what Van Endel wanted to hear, he might’ve received a kick to the ribs.

“Your call,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi.

“All right, fine,” she said. “But I already pretty much told you everything. Some suburb kids were out fucking around. I don’t know for sure what they were doing—”

“I love a good rumor,” said Dr. Martinez. “Spill it, Bambi. Everything you heard. My friend and I are very good bullshit detectors.”

“OK,” said Bambi. “I heard there were some kids going around scamming johns. I couldn’t tell you for sure what they were doing, but what I heard was that there were some chicks that might have been working, but might not have been, really. Like, they were acting like hookers but were setting up guys to get robbed. I can’t prove any of it, and I won’t testify or anything. This is just all stuff I heard. Can’t believe half what you hear. Everybody’s been talking and talking, with all these girls turning up killed. And then this other girl goes missing.”

Van Endel was a little surprised. “You heard about our high school girl? Our missing Molly?” He held up Molly’s picture again.

Bambi gave him a look. “Molly who? I don’t know any Molly high school girl. I’m talking about Shelly. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Shelly who?”

“I don’t know Shelly who, I just know she’s my friend and she disappeared that night. Shelly’s her real name, but she goes by Angel. She went missing, but nobody knows anything but that they saw her get in a green car. You know what that means.”

“I do,” said Van Endel. “I know all about that. What did she look like?”

“A little like the girl in your picture, only not as pretty.” She laughed. “The streets are rough, you know? She was short, way shorter than me—”

“About five three, dark hair, one hundred twenty pounds or so?”

Bambi shrugged. “That’s Shelly, but that’s a lot of girls. Why, though? You find her? Did someone hurt her? Did he hurt her?”

Van Endel shook his head. “We haven’t found Shelly, no. Or at least she better hope we haven’t.”

“One last question,” said Dr. Martinez to Bambi. “Sorry if it seems like an odd one. Do you know if Shelly keeps condoms on her, or does she go bareback?”

“No one sane goes bareback,” said Bambi flatly. She spared a look to the man on the ground. It wasn’t kind, but he didn’t see it. “You have to be careful. It’s not the 1970s, now that AIDS is around everywhere. Shelly keeps rubbers in a little black wallet in her back pocket, like, all the time. She gets the big ones, with foil. Johns like that. I’ve got mine right here in my purse, the same kind.” She smiled sadly. “These are gold-foil wrapped, supposed to be for big dicks. Far as I can tell, they fit little dicks the same way.”

45

Tim sat in the driveway, watching the fireworks with his mom, dad, and Becca. They could see the ones from the high school and the ball field well enough, and the alternating blasts of the two were a nice reminder that even with everything else going on, some things could still be normal. Despite his raging issues with them, Tim was happy to see his parents sitting together closely and with clasped hands. After all, it was far better than the alternative.