Chapter One

PeeJay

 

"What would you do, if you knew that you could get away with anything?"

 

He was a good looking man, except for the sardonic curl corrupting his infectious smile, and an arrogant attitude that belied his current situation. He radiated good humor, as though he were inviting me to join him in some cosmic joke; an aggressive amiability that caused him to seize my hand in both of his and pump it vigorously the first time we met.

Peter John Rawlings ('Call me PeeJay') was once a respected County Commissioner in Springdale County, a position that carried more power and influence than his modest job title might suggest. At the time of this interview, he was an inmate in a Federal Correctional institution. He had bargained to reduce his penalty by becoming a cooperating witness for the prosecution, but he would still be serving a sentence that for a man of his age could last the rest of his life.

"Suppose that you know the fix is in", he said. "The law protects you. Most of the county cops are on the payroll. The rest know enough to look the other way. The local mob gets a percentage. You have bought and paid for judges who always see things your way, a blindfolded media, a business community that is courting your favors, bankers and accountants who have been cleaning money since the Columbian Cartel was born, and mental health professionals that will write up any reports or recommendations you ask for in exchange for generous subsidies and no oversight. The ignorant herd is content as long as taxes are low enough. Anyway, they are too busy with their own lives to ask a lot of questions about the way things get done down at City Hall.

The system was already in place when I was still a schoolboy. I just got sucked up in it. I couldn't have changed anything if I wanted to, and I had no reason to want to"

He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach, a man at ease with his life choices.

"So- suppose that you could do anything and get away with it. What would you do? Most folks would just laugh at the question. 'Rob a bank' they would probably say. Hell! We were the bank, or close enough. We could bribe or blackmail anyone, disappear somebody if they got out of line. Price was no object.

When you can lay hands on all the money you need, reward your friends, punish your enemies, and control everyone else -what's next?"

That evil smirk returned as I raised an eyebrow to prompt him.

"Sex!"' he said. Sex with any woman that catches your eye, whether she is willing or not, and I can tell you that it's a lot more fun if she's not. I'm talking sex as nasty and vile as you can imagine, in a place of total privacy and security. Let the victims scream for help. No one will hear it, and no rescue will arrive. Enjoy their begging and bargaining. They can't offer anything you haven't already taken."

I tried to hide my shudder of revulsion.

He shrugged. "You're horrified. Most men are, or pretend to be, but then some of them start thinking, remembering that one woman they really wanted and never had a chance with, the one who rejected their gifts with a laugh and humiliated them in front of their friends. Some of the most unassuming men can turn into monsters when the opportunity is presented."

"But you couldn't just snatch women off the street at random!", I protested.

"Of course not. A system was in place. We had to be discreet. Referrals came in all of the time, from the very same guard dogs that the sheep have come to trust the most; prosecuting attorneys, mental health professionals, non-profit charities, family counselors, the clergy. They all knew what we were looking for; young, good looking women who had few close attachments. There are plenty of them around now. Broken families are epidemic. The social contract is null and void. Churches are empty and the cults are recruiting. Everyone is feeling isolated and seeking a higher truth, or at least a believable fantasy. It's a target rich environment for us predators.

We had international connections too. One rural county couldn't fill either supply or demand. The rest of the world today provides plenty of both. All of those Eastern European satellites that were cast adrift when the Soviet Union collapsed, for example. The finest women in the world come from there. Most of them are tall and fair haired. They had already been preconditioned to submission by generations of tyranny; so they were in desperate poverty and eager to start a new life in the West. After a little training, they were prime stock. We lured them in with false promises, and smuggled them across borders with faked papers. They were a little pricey, but we made a fortune on them in the end.

Asian girls are in great demand too, and hardly missed back in their own countries. The Middle East- hell! They have been in the game for centuries already. Wherever there is trouble- war, famine, or flood; there are displaced people looking for a way out. How many of the foreign "relief" workers that pour in after a disaster are secretly there to hunt? Are you getting the picture?"

I did get the picture, it was horrible to imagine and hard to deny. Predators seek out the weak and helpless, the softest prey.

"So what was your part in all of this?"

He shrugged. "Mostly just connecting the right people. You might call me a human resources officer." He winked. "Sometimes I would get a call from a friend at a State social services agency telling me about a hot little number that needed to escape from an abusive husband who didn't believe in restraining orders. I would promise to hide her where she would never be found. Any mention of "witness protection" around the County building was always good for a laugh. Cops would call me when they picked up hookers with no ID who couldn't or wouldn't contact any next of kin. There were doctors and nurses in mental care facilities who called me whenever they noticed some gal had been admitted just because the family got tired of her bullshit and wanted her locked up. It was amazing how seldom the families tried to visit, and how relieved they were to hear that she was still in no condition to receive visitors."

"How did your wife feel about your activities?" I was hoping to catch him off guard with this line of questioning, if only to wipe that smug grin off of his face. It only partially worked, transforming the grin into a sneer.

"Clueless bitch!", he snorted "She fell for the con along with everybody else. As long as there was a Beemer in the garage and the right people were calling with weekend invitations, she had no reason to question or complain. Nothing came out until I was arrested, not so much as a rumor. I suppose she may have suspected that I was having an affair. I did work late often. Anyway- it's ex-wife now. Her lawyer brought me the divorce papers to sign in jail."

"So you had to lie to her every day. That must have been a strain."

"I lied to everybody, all of the time. It was like having a secret identity. I was a pillar of the community by day. I had a membership at the golf club, belonged to the right civic organizations, worked for charities.

When the business day was over, it was playtime. I would leave my office and get into the private elevator, the one for authorized personnel only, the one that went all the way to the bottom. You needed a retinal scan to open the door. Maybe two dozen people had access, but they often escorted guests.

I'm not telling you anything that didn't come out at the trials, of course. I lost it all, job, wife, all those sweet kickbacks and secret bank accounts. Once I knew the game was up, I plea bargained."

"Was it worth it?, I asked, "Losing everything?"

His face darkened finally. "Damned prosecutor promised to take care of me! I named names, sold out old friends. Now here I sit. I don't deserve this after all of my cooperation. They call me a monster. All I did was what any man would do under the circumstances. If it wasn't me, it would just be somebody else doing my job. The other cons won't even talk to me here, and Bubba down the hall is thinking about collecting that price on my head. I was screwed! I guess that's the sort of thanks I get for making a deal with the devil. They say he breaks his toys when he has finished playing with them."

 

Chapter Two

Nancy

"I remember staring down at the tiled floor, at the wet drops gathering there, a mixture of sweat, saliva, semen, mucus, and tears. By then, I was no longer troubled by the likelihood that I would be forced to clean that slowly growing puddle with my tongue before I was returned to my cage."

 

Her face was youthful, but her startling blue eyes were ancient. She had the wise, haunted gaze that military veterans call 'the thousand yard stare'. She had already seen many evil things in her short life. Her hands were in constant motion during the interview, massaging her shoulders, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the fingertips of the other, caressing her knees with damp palms. I recognized this activity as self-petting behavior. It was a way to calm herself in a time of stress.

I made small talk at first, to put her at ease. I complimented her hair, which was thick and healthy, a shade of blonde that was nearly white. "Most people think that I bleach it, but it's natural." She smiled thinly and shrugged. "Viking DNA, I guess."

Despite my repeated assurances that I would reveal neither her true name nor current whereabouts, she had been wary about speaking to me at all. I had contacted her through a private security firm after my background had been thoroughly investigated. They had advised me that the local police also kept an eye out for any unusual activity near her residence, and I would likely be asked to identify myself and explain my business to them before approaching her home.

I was stopped, and I was careful and polite as I produced my credentials.

She is certain that the dragnet which swept up thousands of people involved in the worldwide human trafficking trade failed to purge the network from existence, and the members who remain will be seeking revenge on the ones who betrayed them. It would be comforting for us to believe that her fear was mere paranoia, a learned helplessness inspired by the horrors of her own experience. I can offer no such reassurance to either her or my readers. The best that I can do is to take measures to prevent accidentally betraying her trust in me.

She was accompanied by two large dogs when she answered the door. They were obviously well trained, and stood silent and watchful until she signaled to them that I could safely be allowed to enter. I had already noticed the security camera aimed at the front steps. The loose fitting clothing she wore gave me reason to believe that she had a pistol concealed on her person. She was taking no chances.

She offered me a comfortable chair and a cup of tea. She washed a prescription medication down with her own tea before seating herself on the sofa across from me with a brief apology.

"For my nerves," she said, indicating the pill bottle. "It's hard for me to talk about this.

I blame myself for the things that happened to me," she began, fixing her gaze on the window behind me, as though her story was written there. "I forgot how important friends and family can be to us. My therapist told me that people who burn bridges don't even have a life preserver left to hold on to when they try to swim home.

It all began when I started going out with Brad. He was a cocky kid in a bad garage band that expected to make it big someday. When we are young, we think that life is a movie, and we are the stars. I was going to be their lead singer" She set her cup on the table beside her and curled herself into a ball on the sofa, hugging her knees, a petite young woman, fine featured, barefoot in jeans and a sweatshirt.

Mom hated him from the start, and predicted that I would come to a bad end. Parents- what do they know? I did what many young girls do in such a situation. As soon as I was eighteen, I packed my bags and headed out on the road with the band. We aimed for California, of course. The plan was to pick up gigs along the way and sing for our supper. It didn't take long for things to fall apart. We were forced to coexist every day in cheap motels. We auditioned and were repeatedly rejected as we waited for our first big break. The guys who had better lives to live back East drifted away, and soon there was just Brad and me arguing with each other and blaming everyone else.

Finally, the morning came when I woke up alone in a strange town. Brad had left me a note and the car keys at least; before he took his guitar and his suitcase, along with most of our remaining money, and boarded a bus.

Going back home was not an option. I couldn't face Mom's smug look as she saw me walking through the door broke and rejected. The promised land still beckoned in the West. I believed that an intelligent, good looking woman with a great singing voice could go far there.

I couldn't afford to spend another night in a motel. There aren't too many ways that a girl with no job experience can make her way in the world, and I wasn't desperate enough to try the obvious one. I thought about selling blood, but I'm scared of needles, and I have been told THC lingers in the bloodstream and shows up on the pre-test. So I sang acapella on street corners and passed the cup until I had enough cash to buy a little food and fill my gas tank before I continued on alone."

She sipped her tea and shuddered. "That's when things really started to go bad."

My first instinct was to give her hand a reassuring squeeze before she continued, but as I leaned toward her she drew back against the couch, maintaining a safe distance between us. I leaned back as well, neutralizing the awkward moment by reaching for my own tea instead.

"I drove all day, stopping only to fill my gas tank and pick up some food for the trip. When night closed in, I found a roadside picnic area, parked well off of the road, and locked myself in in for the evening. I dined on cheese and crackers, washed down with fruit drink, and made a bed out of my spare clothing in the back seat. Just before I fell asleep, I noticed the glimmer of moonlight reflecting from the ring on my hand. It had been left to me by my Grandmother. It was gold, I realized, perhaps as much as half an ounce. If all else failed, I could pawn it for enough money to finish my journey. It would have betrayed her memory though.

A hard rapping on the window beside me brought me awake with a start. It was a policeman, shining his flashlight on me and over the rest of the car's interior. Swallowing my panic, I rolled the window down.

"You can't sleep here, Miss,' he said. 'It isn't safe."

His voice was soft. He didn't seem much older than I was. It reassured me.

"I'm sorry,' I said, 'I just needed to rest a bit. I'll move on."

I was hoping he would give me a few words of caution and send me on my way. Then I could find a less exposed place to park farther down the road until morning.

"I'll need to see some Identification,' he said.

I dug out my driver's license and handed it to him.

"You're a long way from home,' he observed.

"I'm on a trip to the coast."

"You are too old to be a runaway. Were all the motels full?"

Rather than have him pry all of the details out in pieces, I decided to tell him the whole story, dressed up just enough so he wouldn't think I was a complete derelict.

"Maybe, you should just swallow your pride and go home,' he suggested.

I had a funny feeling about that bit of advice, as though he was trying to warn me of some danger and give me a last chance to avoid it.

"Maybe someday,' I said. 'I'm not ready to do that now."

He sighed and handed me back my license. 'I can't let you stay out here. If you come back to the station with me, I can put you up in one of the empty cells."

"Am I being arrested?' The alarm bells were starting to ring in my head.

His laugh seemed a bit forced. 'Nothing like that, I'll leave the cell door open. It ain't the Ritz, but it's warm and dry."

He reached through the open window to unlock my car door and open it for me. A light rain began to fall, pocking on the roof of the car.

"I can't leave my car out here.' I protested

"I'll have it towed in for you,' he said 'We'll put it in the impound lot and you can pick it up in the morning. ' He winked at me ' No charge."

I took a minute to gather up my stuff and roll up the window before I got out and stood shivering in the rain. He led the way to his cruiser. I started to open the back door of the patrol car.

"Sit up front with me,' he said. 'The back seat is for prisoners.'

He grinned down at me as he opened the front door. 'Just don't play with my siren."

While I was stowing my gear on the back seat, He opened the trunk to get something.

"I have a thermos of hot chocolate here,' He said. 'It will warm you up."

It would have been rude to reject the cup he offered me, steaming hot, the steel cap from the thermos bottle. I set it on the dash to cool a bit as we settled in and fastened our seat belts, then cradled it carefully in my hands to prevent spilling as he pulled out onto the highway.

He reached in front of me for the radio and spoke into the microphone. 'Unit seven coming in, code six niner.'

I couldn't make out the reply that crackled back an acknowledgement.

The rain was falling harder now. I watched the windshield wipers tick tock back and forth as I sipped and yawned.

"There is a lever beside you,' he said. 'You can recline the seat if you like."

I adjusted my seat and took another sip.

"It's nice,' he said. 'All that cold rain outside, and here we are, safe and warm inside. It sort of makes you sleepy, doesn't it? Get comfy. We will be driving for a while.'