HELLO BEAUTIFUL

Rating: NC17  for violence, murder, gunplay, adult themes. For safety’s sake, this will apply to ALL chapters. There will be no smut in this fic. There will be references, but references only, to rape, murder, mutilation in places

Copyright © December 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx

Ch 10

“I figured you might have recognized him.”

Holloways’ voice fit. He didn’t seem out of place in the morgue the way a lot of people might. I certainly looked out of place, dressed as I was. Peters had eyed me carefully and left his hand on my shoulder when he greeted me, but was otherwise silent. He had called me because of the nature of the injuries; in a lot of ways they were similar to what had happened to the women. Someone had wanted to send a message, that much was clear, but to whom.

“I had thought it might have shaken something loose. Didn’t think anything would happen this quick though. He’s one of the guys that spotted me in the bar.” I took a quick glance under the sheet, after first glancing at Peters for approval.

It was horrible, but nowhere near as bad as what had happened to the women. Maybe it was just that he was a guy but it didn’t affect me anywhere near on the same level as the women had. For all I knew, this dirtbag could have been one of those responsible for the women, or he probably wouldn’t be here now. It made it easier to look at him. “I wanted to piss someone off enough to make a run at me. Rattle the cages a little.”

“I would say that has been a success. South Pacific?” It didn’t sound like a question when Holloway said it, but I knew it was anyway.

“Yeah, I waited around afterwards to see who’d come after me. This guy came out a few minutes after I left, looking around for me.” I guess getting killed and dumped was the price he paid for not finding me. I looked up as the door to the autopsy room clicked shut; Peters had left us to talk quietly for a few minutes. “Looks like their organization might be developing a few cracks.”

“If you continue to show up like that, it’ll deepen.” Holloway wasn’t big on political correctness and lit up a cigarette as we talked. “He’s probably pretty low level though.”

I nodded and stood up, dropping the sheet. “I thought so too.” I didn’t want to tell him everything, and definitely wasn’t about to give up my source, but this was probably going to get big in a hurry. Holloway radiated cold intelligence from the other side of the table. “I did a little looking into Carl, the bartender, and Rodriguez.”

Holloway didn’t ask where I had gone looking for it; he just stood silently and waited. “Carl is tied in through a meth rap; the lawyer that got him off is also the trailer park and bar’s lawyer.” I stabbed my finger down at the man that lay on the slab. “Probably tied in much the same way. If we get at that lawyer, we might get at the rest of the men involved.”

I continued, “Rodriguez is most likely an alias, and while I think he controls the trailer park and the bar, I don’t know how much else he controls. That lawyer tells me that this is more than just a local enterprise.” I had no proof yet about Rodriguez, but I knew that I would soon enough. I didn’t want to know about who Hernandez would send, and Hernandez would never tell me but I knew that it would be done. I would show up for a meal and he would present it nonchalantly, as though it were nothing. I wouldn’t ask questions and he wouldn’t answer them if I did.

“If any of those women came from across state or international lines, it becomes a matter for the feds.” Holloway wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t planned on it going there. The FBI would be involved at some point. He eyed me carefully, to measure the effect it had.

Interagency rivalry. We had the cops, the DEA and then the FBI. This wasn’t my case; it wasn’t in any way a DEA case anyway. Holloway didn’t have this case either. Neither of us had the ability to deal with this past the immediate area anyway. “If it’s a lot bigger than just here, and it would have to be with the number of women involved, then maybe it’s the FBI we’ll need.”

I had just spoken blasphemy, and the words echoed in the sterile room. There were no recriminations from Holloway, just that cold gaze that could break a man. “It will take time. Maybe as much as two or three days, before the feds get involved, Alvarez.”

Holloway didn’t take his eyes off me as he spoke, as he willed me to get what else he was saying. That I would only have a few short days to do whatever I needed to do before the FBI showed up. All bets would be off after that. He was giving me at most three days grace. “And you, Holloway?”

“I’ll keep the cops off your back. Not that there’s a great deal of interest here, given who is being killed. Nobody sees these women.” It was the only emotion I ever saw in him, a flicker of sorrow that was gone as soon as it had appeared. “Come outside with me.”

I followed Holloway out through the rear doors of the morgue; curious about what he had thought was so serious that he didn’t want to talk about it inside. He lit up again when we stood beneath an overhang out in the back alley. “I took a look through criminal databases across the southern states. This isn’t the first, or the only, place this has happened.”

I nodded; that didn’t really surprise me. The women had come from too far away for it to be purely a local matter. It was the lawyer that clinched it for me. Nobody gets lawyered up for such a small operation. Unless it wasn’t a small operation. It was my turn to wait for Holloway to finish.

“Obviously you’re aware of the drug corridor.” Holloway didn’t need to explain. There were a few start points, but it generally ran from Miami across the southern states into LA. There was also the Juarez Corridor, right across from El Paso.

All sorts of contraband took those routes and I was starting to see where Holloway was going with this. Human smuggling made huge profits for coyotes across the border. If they were smuggling women, using the existing drug corridors and their stop points along the way, the profits could be astronomical. “They’re smuggling women.”

Holloway’s voice got colder, something I wouldn’t have thought possible, as he continued. “There would be a lot of women that would end up talking about it. When they were eventually freed after paying their debt, of course. How many women have been killed now?”

I knew that Holloway didn’t need to ask, he knew as well as I did. He most likely knew about other murders all across the country that wouldn’t have sparked official interest. These women didn’t have families that would look for them, which made them so vulnerable. “They’re killing them, rather than release them.”

“After making them work off their price in the first place. They work so long in one place and then they’re taken to the next place; never staying long enough to befriend anyone, so no one will miss them.” Holloway gave me another hard look before he stubbed out his cigarette and continued. “Your partner got close to one of those women. Watch yourself.”

Holloway made to turn and leave. “Where can I find you, Holloway?”

“I’ll be watching out for you, Alvarez.” Holloway disappeared around the corner as though he had never been there at all.

The women were moved around every once in a while, before they got close to anyone. Danno had known her well enough to know her real name, and write it carefully on the back of a photo, along with her alias. He didn’t call her Amy either. I wondered if he looked for her. Or if whoever had her had hidden her somewhere else until he went away.

It sickened and enraged me that the women were used like that, to be killed in the end after working off a debt that would never be honored. As sick as it made me, I closed my eyes and thought of the state of their bodies when they were found. It disgusted me to think of the word merchandise, but that’s what these women were, to men like that. It would be a ‘waste’ to damage something they considered property, unless they would make a lot more money that way.

I had thought, like a lot of people, that it was a myth. I think I was about to be proven wrong. Someone was making snuff films, and that meant a LOT of money.