Forgive Me (20 page)

Angie held a breath, waiting for the image to display on her phone. And there she was.

The older version of Jane Doe had fuller lips than the original photograph. Her eyes were round and wide, but a bit more deeply set, which perhaps was why her smile still seemed a little sad. The forensic artists gave her dark brunette hair and made it long and layered. The face shape they selected was more oval than the young girl’s and the nose had grown prominently.

Angie got a sense this girl was from some distinct ethnicity.
Italian,
she thought. The darker complexion seemed to go with her darker hair. She had flawless skin, which was nice to imagine, but probably inaccurate.

She was, however, very pretty, heads-turning pretty. And if anybody did give her a look, they would see a beautiful woman with one perfectly formed ear.

Angie could not take her eyes off the image. This girl was connected to some secret part of her mother’s life.

Angie called Mike again. “Did you look at the rendering?”

“Of course,” Mike said. “How could I not? Beautiful girl.”

“It’s driving me crazy not knowing.”

“NCMEC will send it around. They’re going to see about running it through the FBI’s face recognition database.”

“That would be wonderful.”

“We’re going to get an answer, Ange. It’s just going to take time.”

“Between that picture from New York City in 1988 to this one, I can’t stop wondering about our girl’s journey. What do you think her name is?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“Just tell me the first name that comes to you.”

“That seems a bit silly, don’t you think?”

“Humor me.”

“Um, all right. How about—Angie?”

“Ha-ha. Very funny,” she said without a laugh.

“Well, that’s the first name that came to me.”

“Do it for real.”

“Okay, okay. Um—Stella.”

“Stella? Really. That’s about as WASPY as it gets. Did you even look at the picture? This girl is Italian, or Greek, or something. I’m thinking Lydia or Carissa.”

“Where the hell did you get those names from?”

“Greek girls I went to middle school with.”

“Hey, hold off on naming that girl a second. You see what I see?”

Angie peered out the windshield at a thin man in a bowling shirt with a fedora hat on his head, strolling down the street with two white guys in business suits close on his heels. Street lamps illuminated details in their faces and bodies. These three didn’t look like bosom buddies to Angie. Fedora Hat made no eye contact and initiated no conversation with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum as he escorted them down the same alley that had swallowed Markovich.

This wasn’t Angie’s first rodeo. She had a pretty good sense what might be going on inside that apartment building.

“If those three are pals, I’m the Pope,” Mike said.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“You thought if those three are pals, I’m the Pope? What are the chances of that?”

“Mike, please. Not now.”

“What do we do?” he asked.

“Do? We watch and wait. See if Nadine comes out.”

“What about trying to get inside that building?”

“What about we might get shot.”

“Good point. Police?”

“Not until I see Nadine. If this place is what I think it is, these guys could have a direct line to someone on the force.”

“Ah, the Thin Blue Discount.”

“I’ve seen it before. If this is some sort of brothel, and we’re too hasty, Markovich could make the girls disappear in a heartbeat. No, this is a wait and see game.”

“Katie’s got the kids, and my next rental gig isn’t until the weekend. I’m all yours until then.”

“Good. ’Cause this might take awhile. Nothing like a wet wipe shower to make a girl feel beautiful.”

“Hey, I don’t care how badly you stink, Ange. You’ll always be beautiful to me.”

Angie made a smile Mike couldn’t see. “You sure do know how to charm ’em. I’ll give you that, Mike Webb.”

An hour passed and nothing happened. Fedora Hat and Markovich hadn’t reappeared. Neither had the two Tweedles in business suits.

Angie was getting restless. She called Mike. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“I need to learn how to aim better when peeing into a travel mug.”

“TMI, Mike. TMI.”

“What does stretch really mean?”

Angie knew that Mike knew what she was really about to do. “I’ll be careful.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No, you watch the front of the apartment in case Nadine comes out.”

“You know what I’ve watched? A lot of cop shows, that’s what. And the partner-separating thing is never a good idea. You know what else? Forget cop shows. You might as well have a red shirt on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a
Star Trek
thing, from the original series. The Red Shirts always get killed. It’s kind of a running joke throughout the series.”

Angie frowned. “A, I’m not laughing. B, I’m a lot younger than you and I’ve never watched any old
Star Trek
episodes, sorry to offend your inner geek again. And C, I’m just going to do some poking around. I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s what every Red Shirt says.”

CHAPTER 25

E
xhibit D: Excerpts from the journal of Nadine Jessup, pages 39-43

Here’s what I know about this life of mine. It’s big business. There’s no supply and demand problem. None at all. I learned about supply and demand in my economics class. It’s funny to think about economics while I’m here, doing this, this effed-up life of mine. School seems like something that happened to me a million years ago. This journal is my classroom now. It’s where I can be Nadine again. You can learn by observation. Mrs. Lockard taught me that in eighth grade science. So I’m observing myself, learning about me. But deep down I know Nadine is dead. Jessie Barlow took her place and went from being a future starlet to a present day slut. Harsh words, but I am what I am. I do what I do. I screw guys for money. I don’t think this business (yeah, it is what it is) could exist without the Internet. The guys answer ads in places like Craigslist and Backpage and there are ways to make sure they aren’t cops. I don’t know what Buggy, Casper, and Ricardo do to make certain, but the only cops I’ve seen here are paying customers.

You can’t let yourself go. You can’t get fat, or too ugly, or too sick. That’s what happened to Jade. Sure she was a little on the heavy side, but not fat, not by a long shot. She was older than us, too. A lot older I think. Maybe her metabolism slowed down or something. Whatever. They cut her food rations anyway. She seemed so weak all the time. Once she fainted in front of me. I begged Ricardo to give her more to eat and he slapped me hard across the face, pinned me to the floor, and put his knees on my chest. I felt like my ribs were going to snap. He told me never to speak to him like that again. I don’t tell him what to do, he tells me, he tells me, HE TELLS ME!! And then he gave me one more slap just to make sure I got the message. Jade got even sicker after that. She was hungry all the time. But when they finally started feeding her again, she started to purge. Imagine that. They gave her an eating disorder. Nobody would sleep with her anymore because she was so weak and her breath stank. They tried to fix it. Tried to get her to eat and stop purging. They put her in the hole, thinking that would do it. Scare her into compliance. It got so hot down there she passed out. I saw them drag her body out. She was limp and drooling, shaking like she was having a seizure or something. They dragged her to another room. I heard Casper call her worthless. I heard Ricardo tell Buggy to deal with it.

I never saw Jade again.

I now know something I didn’t know before. Stephen Macan isn’t Stephen Macan. He’s an asshole and a liar. It was all a lie. Everything, and that includes Ricardo. Without her being there, Tasha described in perfect detail everything about my first encounter with Stephen Macan. She knew he asked me about a scarf for his daughter, and that he got a phone call from his wife while I was talking to him. Tasha told me he’s done it before. That’s his thing and it was Ricardo who made the call after Stephen signaled him and not his wife. The scarf and the phony wife were made up to make me feel more comfortable. It was all a ploy. I wouldn’t have fallen for a puppy in the back of a van or somebody offering me candy, but I sure fell for that.

Tasha told me Stephen’s real name is Ivan Markovich. He’s a Russian and his nickname is Stinger. We’re his business. He uses guys from the neighborhood, guys like Ricardo, Casper, and Buggy to run his operation. A bunch of Russians coming in and out of this building would attract the wrong kind of attention, Tasha said. I asked Tasha why they call him Stinger and she said, “Isn’t it obvious?” Then I laughed because his nickname suddenly made perfect sense to me. Nothing in my life had ever stung as hard as Ivan Markovich.

I get drugs to numb the pain—weed, booze (booze counts as a drug), cigarettes (those count too) and Oxy (that’s my favorite. Hell, it’s everyone’s favorite). The high is almost indescribable. It’s like you’re in agony every moment of the day and then suddenly no more pain. The drug wears off and then pain comes back, but multiplied, way more intense than before. It’s not a normal kind of physical pain. It’s more like the pain of wanting the drug so badly it physically hurts. It’s like the drug woke up a pain that was always inside me. It was a pain I could feel only when I wasn’t high. I wanted the Oxy to make it go away. Does that make sense? I’m desperate for it and they know it.

It sure makes it easier to do what they want me to do. Rat follows maze, rat pushes lever, rat gets reward. Rat doesn’t follow maze, rat gets shocked, rat disappears like Jade. Me? I stay out of the hole because I follow the maze. I do everything I’m told. Since Jade vanished I’ve seen a few other girls go down into the hole for one violation or another. All I know is I don’t want to go back in the hole ever again. When they come out, the girls are always different. They don’t talk as much. They stop looking you in the eyes. They become invisible. That’s what the hole does to you. It makes you disappear. But I don’t need the hole to become invisible. I just have to go outside where nobody looks at me. Maybe that’s because they’re afraid of Buggy and Casper who are always my escorts.

One time we were walking to the drug store. We needed female stuff and they wanted a female to figure out what to buy. I saw a cop on our way to the store. He was about fifty, sixty feet away from us. I was thinking about breaking away from Buggy, screaming to the cop to help me when I felt something sharp poke me in the side. I might have been invisible, but that knife pressing against my back was as real as anything.

They don’t let me out much anymore. That’s fine. It’s hard being outside. I see people on the street and they look so happy, couples and whatever, just people living their lives. One time I saw a girl about my age walking with her parents. She looked at me and I swear it was the first time I felt noticed out there. Our eyes locked for a long time. What was a girl like me doing with those two creepy men? I could tell she was trying to figure it out. Make sense of us. Good luck with that! If I can’t make sense of us, what chance did she have?

Girls Like Me by Nadine Jessup

There were girls like me chained inside a home somewhere in Cleveland.

Held against their will by a sick man.

I saw them on the news before I became one of them.

I judged them. I admit it now. I judged them.

I said, Why didn’t you break a window?

Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you scream?

Because my voice was gone, I know the girls would say.

Because my strength was gone.

Because my courage was gone.

Because my soul was gone.

Almost everything about me was gone.

Almost.

One thing remained.

One thing.

It was hope.

My hope wasn’t gone.

It never left me.

It was the blanket covering me at night as I slept.

Hope is what keeps me breathing.

CHAPTER 26

A
ngie slipped on a dark frontrunner jacket, a wind- and water-resistant piece of athletic wear she favored, and made sure she had three things with her before leaving the relative safety of her car—her car keys (right jacket pocket), her pepper spray (left jacket pocket), and her TASER C2 (in a side holster hidden by the jacket). She loaded it with one live cartridge that had a range of fifteen feet. The law didn’t require a special license, but she’d made sure she had proper training on how to use the weapon. She’d bought it three years ago for self-defense purposes only, and thankfully had never made a discharge.

Tonight she hoped to continue that streak.

Angie stretched her stiff, aching legs, scanned the area, and saw nothing troublesome. She turned and gave Mike a big thumbs-up, then gestured toward the alley. No way to see if Mike could see her, so she called him. “I’m going down that alley.”

“Yeah, I figured that’s what pointing to the alley meant,” Mike said. “Keep that phone on. If there’s trouble, call the cops.”