Slade was silent again.
“Only, that wasn’t that,” Kane said to prime the pump.
Slade shook his head.
“No, it wasn’t. A couple of days later, this old guy with a beard and earring comes in here with a videotape under his arm. Says his name is John Wesley Harding and he wants to welcome me to the community. Says the videotape is a gift. ‘It’s only a copy,’ he says, ‘but I thought you’d want to see it. In fact, I think you should watch it right now.’
“By now, I’ve already got an idea what’s coming. So I bring the tape upstairs here and put it into the VCR, and there we are, the three of us, doing what comes naturally.
“The old guy has followed me upstairs, so I don’t have to go far to get my hands around his neck. ‘What are you showing this to me for?’ I ask him. ‘There’s no law against consenting adults doing what they want.’
“The old guy kind of cackles and says, ‘Consenting adults? That Tracy there, she’s a working girl. And the other one? She’s married. You don’t want your bosses to see this, especially when you think about the story that can be told around this tape.’
“So I let go of the old bastard and start thinking, and the more thinking I do, the worse it gets. ‘What do you want from me?’ I ask.
“ ‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘except for you to remember that I’m providing a necessary service over at the roadhouse and it would be a shame to disrupt it.’ ”
Slade unfolded his hands and held them up, looking at them like he’d never seen them before.
“Of course, that wasn’t all,” Kane said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Slade said. “I figured the odds were good it wouldn’t be. So I didn’t intervene in the whorehouse part of the operation, but I kept a close eye on it.”
“Close enough that you knew Faith had joined it?” Kane asked.
The trooper nodded and dropped his hands.
“Yeah,” he said, “so I pulled her over one day on the highway and we had a little talk. She made it clear to me that she was older than sixteen, which is the age of consent in this state, and that she was a volunteer. Needed the money for college, she said. Told me there were no drugs involved or anything else. She just laid it all out, as calm and cool as could be.
“I couldn’t see any reason to intervene, especially with the original of that tape in the background.”
“What did you do with your copy?” Kane asked.
Slade gave him a startled look.
“Destroyed it, of course,” he said. “Why would I leave something like that lying around?”
Slade stopped again. Kane just waited. He’d tell the rest of it on his own.
“Then the girl disappeared,” the trooper said. “I heard her father and the others were looking for her, and her dad came to see me. After he left, I went looking for Big John. I found him in the roadhouse office with Little John and braced him about her.
“ ‘She was just fine when she left work Friday evening,’ he told me. ‘Maybe she just decided to take off and make a movie.’ Then he laughed and gave me a look. I got the point. I went through the motions of looking for her, but with no evidence of foul play I was happy to soft-pedal the whole thing.”
Slade stopped then and took a couple of deep breaths.
“If anything happened to her because I dragged my feet,” he said.
Kane stood up, walked over, and kicked the trooper’s desk. Then he started pacing.
“You should have locked the old bastard up right after he showed you the tape, then gotten on the telephone,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Your bosses were young once, so if they thought you had any real cop in you they’d have helped you survive this. No matter what we tell the public, we’re not a band of God’s angels, and we all know it.”
He paced some more.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You and I are going to question the boy and his brother and fill in the blanks about Faith as best we can. Then we’re going after Big John. When we find his stash of tapes, a couple of them are going to disappear. There’s no need Charlie Simms’s widow should have to see the one, and you’ll be rid of the other. With any luck, your bosses will never know.”
“What about the women?”
“I’ll find them and have a word, and the next time you are deciding whether to do something stupid, you’ll remember that I know all about this.”
He walked over and put his hand on Slade’s shoulder.
“There are several ways this won’t work out that well,” he said, “but we’ll take it one step at a time and hope. Now get upstairs and try to get some sleep. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
21
But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playest the harlot because of
thine renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on everyone that passed by.
EZEKIEL 16:15
KANE SAT IN HIS PICKUP OUTSIDE THE REGIONAL HIGH school, watching students arrive. They came in beat-up pickups and dented Suburbans and minivans that had seen better days, their lights stabbing Kane in the eyes as they bounced past. Most of the vehicles rattled off again after depositing a kid or two. The kids walked into the building with that draggy, oh-God-it’s-Monday step. I wouldn’t be a teacher for all the money in the world, Kane thought.
He had the defroster on high to keep the windshield clear. The warm air washed across his face, but left his feet freezing. He could have waited inside, if he’d had the nerve to go up against Miss Wisp again.
Slade had argued hard to be with him, but Kane hadn’t budged.
“If you’re there, he’s got rights and lawyers and all that,” he said.
“If I’m not and he resists, it’s kidnapping,” Slade countered.
“Yeah, and his word against mine,” Kane said.
Slade gave in and went off to check on a burglary report up the highway. Sam and Harry returned to the mine for more questioning.
“They’re going to be pissed when they find out we’ve been holding out on them,” Slade had said.
“Better pissed than jammed up in a situation where they have to phony up a report or turn in a fellow cop,” Kane had replied, and again Slade had followed his lead.
A new Honda with tinted windows pulled up and the driver got out. It was Johnny Starship.
Kane put his coffee cup into a holder, levered his door open, and slid out into the cold. He walked toward the young man, who was just straightening up from spreading an old quilt over the Honda’s hood to keep the heat in.
“Hello there, Johnny,” he called. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
For a moment, it looked like the young man was going to rabbit, but there was really no place for him to run. Kane reached him and put a gloved hand on the his arm. When Johnny tried to pull away, he jerked the young man toward him and put his other hand on his neck. Ignoring his “What the fuck” and “You’re hurting me,” he marched him to the pickup, opened the driver’s door, shoved him in and over, and climbed back behind the wheel.
“Don’t even think about running away,” Kane said, turning toward the young man. “I’ll catch you and cuff you if I have to.”
“I’m not telling you nothing,” Johnny Starship said. “And if you try to make me, I’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.”
Kane reached over, grabbed Johnny by the shoulders, and shook him.
“This isn’t some movie,” he said. “This is serious. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Faith Wright.”
“I’m not,” the young man said, “and I’m reporting you for assault.”
Kane shook his head.
“And you about to graduate from high school,” he said, scorn in his voice. “You figure the troopers are going to do anything based on the word of a kid whose father is the local whoremaster? Guess again.”
“What do you mean?” the young man said, doubt in his voice.
“What I mean is this. I know your father is running whores over at the roadhouse. The troopers know that, too. I also know that Faith was working for him in the afternoons, taking on all comers for a hundred dollars an hour or whatever.”
“Shut up!” Johnny cried. He squeezed his eyes closed, put his gloved hands over his ears, and rocked from side to side. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Kane waited until the fit subsided, then reached over and pulled Johnny Starship’s hands off his ears.
“That isn’t going to make anything go away,” he said. “You can’t hide from the things you do or the things other people do. Believe me. I know. So it’s time to act your age now. Tell me, how did Faith get started whoring?”
The young man grimaced at the word and shook his head.
“I don’t want to talk about this. You can’t make me. I won’t.”
Kane put an arm on his shoulder.
“I can make you, and you will,” he said. “What, are you trying to protect your family?”
The young man’s eyes snapped up and locked on Kane’s. There was murder in them.
“Family,” he said, “I don’t care anything about family. My mother took off, my father is a mean, evil son of a bitch, and my half brother doesn’t have the balls to stand up to him. I’m just waiting until I’m eighteen, and then I’m going so far away nobody will ever be able to find me.”
“Then why don’t you want to talk? Is it Faith?”
“I don’t want to think about Faith, either. I thought she was good. I thought she was my friend. But she just used me to get to my father.”
He shook all over like a dog trying to shed water.
“Just leave me alone,” he said. “Just leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry, Johnny,” Kane said softly, “I can’t do that. But if you tell me what you know, and you weren’t part of whatever has happened to Faith, I’ll let you go.”
“What do you mean, what’s happened to Faith? Has something happened to her?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I was a policeman for a lot of years, and most of the girls who were doing what Faith is doing and disappeared didn’t leave voluntarily.”
The young man hung his head and sat there silently for a few minutes.
“I’ve got to find her,” Kane said, “and you can help me. If you have any feelings for her at all, you’ll talk.”
“She’s okay,” he said. “I know she’s okay. Faith can take care of herself.”
“It’s not time for that now, Johnny,” Kane said. “It’s not time to be a little kid and think that if you wish for something hard enough it will come true. It’s time to be a grown-up now. You know that.”
The young man was silent again, and when he began to speak his words came out in a monotone.
“Faith came to our school last year. Nobody knew what to make of her, an Angel coming to school with all the stoners and nerds and jocks. A few of the guys put the moves on her. Who could blame them? She’s a total babe. Because of who my dad is, I steered clear of her, but she was hard not to notice. After the first couple of months, the excitement died down and she fit right in.
“Then, second semester, we started hanging out and talking and stuff. She seemed to be totally real and not all I’m-queen-of-the-world, the way pretty girls usually are. We talked about our families and what we were going to do when we got out of this hole.”
“She’s planning on leaving Rejoice?” Kane asked.
“She’s
so
planning to leave,” Johnny said. “There is something there she is totally pissed at. She talked about going away to some good college and living in what she called ‘the world.’ She would do good at it, too. She’s smart. Me, I’m not. I’m going to the Army or someplace, anyplace out of here.
“Anyway, we got to be friends, sort of. I was kind of scheming on her, but she said she wasn’t down with boy-girl stuff. I was bummed, but I really liked her, so we just kept hanging out.
“Then, when we came back for our senior year, I was complaining about my dad and, like, out of the blue she said she wanted to meet him. I was like, what for? But she kept after me, so I took her around to the roadhouse, to the office there. My dad wasn’t there but my brother was, and she shook his hand and said she had something private she wanted to talk to him about. So he tells me to go get something in the café there and I wait around and like half an hour later she comes out all smiles.
“I’m thinking this is pretty weird. I ask her what they were talking about, but she blows me off.”
The young man stopped and shook his head.
“Then, a couple of days later, my brother tells me that he wants to see Faith. I ask him what for, and he says she’s going to work for him. Doing what? I say. Waitressing, he says.
“I’m like, yeah, right, waitressing. I know what that means. So I ask Faith what’s going on. ‘I’m going to work for your father as a sex worker,’ she says, like it’s just any old job. ‘I need the money and I want to see what it’s like.’ ”
Johnny Starship was silent for a minute or two, then resumed.
“I couldn’t believe it. She was beautiful and smart. She didn’t have to be some skanky whore.”
He was silent again. Then the monotone.
“When I turned sixteen, my father had one of the women at the roadhouse show me the ropes. He said it would make a man out of me. It was okay at first. The woman kind of liked me, said I was cute, so we kept seeing each other for a while. Only in the roadhouse, in bed. I thought it was great, the sex, but this woman, she had such a negative view of life, of other people, on account of what she did, it totally bummed me out. One day she just up and left, and I actually felt relieved.
“I said to Faith, ‘What are you doing? Having sex for money could ruin your life, your outlook on life.’ And she gave me the saddest smile and said, ‘I’m already ruined.’ But I didn’t give up. I told her she could get some disease, something bad. But she said she would take precautions. That’s what she said, ‘precautions.’
“I said I’d tell her father, and she just laughed.
“Then she said, ‘I need you to drive me from school to the roadhouse and back.’ She had it all worked out. She’d leave her Jeep at school, and I’d drive her in the Honda—she’d be laying in the back so people wouldn’t see her. She’d go in through the door in the warm storage shed, turn her tricks or whatever, and then I’d take her back to school.