Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
A kid slid open one of the bus windows and leaned out. “Hey, Dar, you coming or what?”
He waved at the guy. “Hey, I gotta go,” he said. “But give me a call here at the center if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Darius. You’ve been very helpful.”
With a nod, he walked quickly to the waiting bus, jogging up the short set of steps as Lennon turned to Ambrose. “Anthony Cruz and Cherish,” she said to him.
“It’s a good start,” he said. “Are you up for a walk along Geary?”
She glanced at her watch. “It’s only three p.m. Do you think the working girls are out?” And on Thanksgiving? Wouldn’t most of the johns be at home with their families, eating turkey and pumpkin pie?
He shrugged. “Maybe one or two. Let’s go find out.”
They crossed the street and turned toward the car, parked halfway down the block. “The club he mentioned, the Cellar. That sounds like a real nightmare.” To Lennon, it sounded like an entire horror movie could take place in a joint like that. Meanwhile, others thought of it as their workplace. She resisted a shudder and tried her best not to see the face of the dead—pregnant—woman she’d just learned was named Cherish. Lennon wondered if she had even been of legal drinking age.
She wasn’t surprised the cops had stopped making busts there, however—just like the prostitutes that walked the streets, you could arrest people engaging in consensual sex work, but they’d just be out in an hour or two and right back at it. It’d likely be decriminalized soon anyway, and cops knew it. No one was willing to put their neck on the line in any sense for something that wasn’t treated as a crime by the courts anymore. What was the point?
They got in the car, and both reached for their seat belts. Lennon glanced at Ambrose. “He said you can get whatever you want in the back rooms. Do I even want to consider what that means?” she asked.
“You know you don’t.”
She conceded what he’d said with a nod before clicking her belt into place and then turning toward him. “Answer me this. If there are places like the Cellar, why would people need to break in to an abandoned motel without electricity? Why not just go in some back room set up for anything-goes trysts?”
He gave a small shrug. “Looking for even more privacy, an assurance that no one would interrupt?”
Or hear screams and respond. Only . . . in a place such as the Cellar, wouldn’t screams be expected?
She let out a small grunt of agreement as she pictured the three dead bodies from the last crime scene, blood puddled around them. “What’s weird is that both Myrna Watts and Darius Finchem remarked on what a sweet guy Anthony Cruz was, despite his obvious problems. Doesn’t seem like the way a guy who was looking to fulfill a pedo fantasy would be described.” A gentle soul. Wasn’t that what Myrna had called him?
“You don’t always know people,” Ambrose said. “Drugs warp people, and predators hide in plain sight.”
“I guess. But those two don’t seem like people who would be easily fooled. How could you be, working in a neighborhood like this?”
“You’re also assuming it was the male in the scenario fulfilling the pedo fantasy. Maybe it was one of the women.”
Lennon chewed on the inside of her cheek. Sadly true. She’d been thinking statistically, but making assumptions like that was a mistake in a murder investigation. “Any thoughts on the so-called miracle treatment Anthony Cruz mentioned to Myrna Watts?”
Ambrose shrugged. “Like she said, those looking for lifelines will grab for anything. The government funds a drug trial involving human subjects, people like Anthony Cruz are the first ones they go to.”
“Those who need money and have a sketchy sense of body sovereignty?”
He nodded, his expression morose. “Yeah. Or it could have been hope based on nothing. Who knows what he was referring to.” Ambrose gave her one last troubled look before he turned toward the window so she could no longer see his face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Seventeen Years Ago
Patient Number 0022
Jett reached into his pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes, attempting to tap one into his hand before realizing the pack was empty. “Mother fuck.”
Some dude had dropped the almost-full pack last night coming out of a bar, and Jett had been just a few steps behind him. He’d scooped it up, and the guy had been none the wiser.
A lucky son of a bitch. That was him.
Something rose in his chest that might have been laughter, except that most times, he had a hard time telling a laugh from a scream. He swallowed whatever it was down, not trusting his body to know the difference.
He’d seen an old homeless woman shrieking with laughter at a bus stop a few months before. People around her had looked terrified, giving her a wide berth as they walked by on the sidewalk. After a few minutes, her laughter had morphed into sobs and then wails, even though a smile still stretched across her cracked lips. Jett had watched her, feeling nothing except a vague understanding.