LITMIR.BIZ

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opened the envelope and saw Vince’s card clipped to two sheets of paper, the top one in his jagged handwriting.

       Hey Buddy – Meet H. Belafonte, your official departmental liaison on the Sandoval case. She’s all I could scratch up on short notice and I picked her because she knew the vic personally. I cleared this with the Chief – at least I shoved it under his nose while he was screaming at everyone. The head of Investigative signed off as well, so you’re clear to proceed and I’ll lend a hand whenever possible. This place has gone nuts.

      The second sheet of paper was typed:

      This document authorizes Of. H. Belafonte to serve as official contact between the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Florida Center of Law Enforcement in duties relative to Case 2015/6 –HD 1297-B.

      Below that was a hastily scribbled signature, the line tailing off the paper, like the signer was running while signing. Even the top brass at MDPD were in sprint mode due to Menendez.

      “You know what this stuff says?” I asked Belafonte. “The notes?”

      A prim nod. “We’re to work together on the Kylie Sandoval murder.”

      I stared at the face; handsome but expressionless. “How long have you been with the force, Officer Belafonte?”

      A frown. “Long enough.”

      “I’m talking about measured quantity, as in time.”

      She stared evenly without speaking.

      “Well?”

      “You asked, so I’m thinking.” Five more mute seconds passed. “One hundred and sixty-seven days. I’m counting days on duty but not counting today yet. Tomorrow will of course make one hundred and—”

      I held up a hand to cut her off, barely resisting banging my head on my desk. Instead of working with the typical seasoned investigator, I’d be dragging around a uniformed newbie a half-step above writing traffic citations.

      “We’re done here,” I said, standing.

      That put expression on the stone face. “You’re bloody dismissing me?” she said, eyes wide. “Just like that?”

      “I’m dismissing nothing,” I said, giving her a come-hither jerk of my head. “We’re adjourning to the coffee shop in the atrium. I need a triple espresso. Or maybe a shot of whiskey.”

      We reconvened below, where I ordered my coffee, Belafonte a tea, declining to allow me to pay for her tinted water.

      “That’s not a typical Miami accent,” I noted. “At least not in MDPD.”

      “My childhood was in Bermuda. It’s a British territory.”

      “Oddly enough, I knew that.”

      “I’ve met people who think it’s one of the fifty states, along with Puerto Rico and Nova Scotia.”

      I started to laugh, then realized she wasn’t making a joke, just transferring data. “I lived in Hamilton,” she continued, “the capital, until I was twenty-one, when my father and I moved to Miami.”

      “Why here?” I said. “Both to the US and Miami?”

      “Shouldn’t we be discussing the Sandoval case?” she said.

      So much for get-acquainted talk. “You knew her, I take it?”

      “I work out of South Division and arrested Kylie twice for prostitution. And nearly a third time but, but …”

      She paused with tea in mid-air and set it back on the table, her eyes serious, as if looking inside her head and not liking the pictures there. Belafonte swallowed hard and turned away. I realized I’d seen a glisten of tear in the expressionless eyes.

      “Take your time,” I said.

      “The third time I arrived as a john propositioned her, an obese businessman who stank of gin and sweat and had greasy hair and vomit on his lapels. When I told the arsehole to bugger off he gave me a big smirk like Big deal, copper, I’ll go find another one. I cuffed Kylie to a pipe, followed Mr Businesspuke around the corner. I let him get in his car and turn the key and busted him for drunken driving.”

      “And then took Kylie to the lockup.”

      “Actually, I took Kylie to an all-night diner and bought her a meal.” She paused. “My shift was over, of course.”

      “I don’t care about your timecard, Belafonte. But why the kindness, may I ask?”

      She looked out the window a long moment. “The john was a disgusting lump of ugliness, like some hideous disease taken human form. I then realized how these girls … don’t simply sell their bodies. They have to pretend to like these scumbags. I was new to that world and wanted to understand how they did it time and again, night after night.”

      “Drugs,” I said. “It shows their power.”

      Belafonte nodded. “At first Kylie played the hardcore working girl, every third word a curse. But subsequently, as I was driving her back to her cheap flat, I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. Kylie broke down like a, like a … little girl dressed in hooker clothes. I realized many of them are little girls in hooker clothes. Childhood doesn’t end when they go on the street, it gets packed away under layers of numbness. But sometimes it breaks out. And there’s nothing before you but a terrified little girl.”

      It was beginning to seem Belafonte wasn’t quite the robot she’d initially appeared. “You befriended her, right?”

      A sigh. “I tried to get her into therapy, but the free clinics are booked for months. I brought her home with me, told her to stay until she got herself together.”

      “How long did it last?”

      “Three days. Kylie had had something broken inside her, Detective. I don’t know what happened, but someone or something had torn everything from her, every bit of self-worth. Kylie lived with a horrific hurt buried inside her and I pray she didn’t die in pain.”

      I fished the investigative reports from my briefcase and reluctantly handed them over. My day was about to reach its low point.

       7

      Teresa Mailey opened her eyes. Or had she? The dark with her eyes open was darker than the dark behind her eyelids. Her head ached and she felt her stomach tumble and pushed herself up from what felt like a hard dirt floor, a wave of dizziness too much for her stomach to handle and she vomited between her hands.

      What happened?

      Pictures began to return to her head: Working until four and walking out to her car. As she departed the lot she noticed the road seemed darker on the right. She stopped and discovered a shattered headlamp, a thoughtless shopper had backed into her car. She’d headed to her mother’s trailer court to pick up Bobby, winding down the road from the main highway, darker than usual, like the streetlights had all burned out at once. She’d reached the final turn to find a tree branch in the center of the road and crept to the ragged limb, sighing. Teresa had gotten out, road dust blowing into the beams of her headlamps and dragged it to the side of the road. Until … until …

      Footsteps somewhere in the dark.

      “Hello?” she had called in the enveloping darkness. “Is someone there?”

      Until hands like steel covered her mouth and tape covered her screams and a cloth bag fell over her head.

      And now she was here, wherever here was, stinking with a smell of burned meat and motor oil, lightless, as black as death. She could feel flies lighting on her bare arms.

      “Please … who’s there?” Teresa called out, her mouth so dry the words came out as a rasp. “What do you want?”

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