Where The Devil Won't Go: A Lucas Peyroux Novel (26 page)

“You need to get checked out at the
hospital, but it’s just a suggestion.” I back up a step with my hands up in
surrender.

“I’m alright.”

“The place you sent us to was cleaned
out. No party. Sort of like they were tipped off.”

“I didn’t do it. She didn’t answer my
call. That was it.”

Tara’s voice called out from behind.
“Lucas, got a minute?”

I gave Tabitha a lingering pause, then
turned to put some distance between us. “What’s up?”

“Looks like Ray came in and shot at Cozy,
who escaped through the bathroom window.”

“That’s Tabitha’s story.”

“There are bullet holes leading to and
into the bathroom. Someone left out the window.”

“I still believe she’s protecting her.
Ms. Wheelhouse’s demeanor wasn’t that of someone who was attacked. Her body
language was too relaxed.

“What say we let Tabitha go for now?”

I nodded. “Sure, whether it’s Cozy or
Ray, she’s going to lead us to one of them.”

Tabitha climbed out of the squad when she
saw my approach. She asked, “How much longer?”

“I’ll send the responding officer over to
take your statement and then you’ll be free to leave. Sorry about officer
Harvin. He tends to be a little overenthusiastic.”

“I’m fine. And you’ll find Cozy? You need
to find her before Ray does.”

“Their pictures are being distributed. We
won’t stop until we find her.” I yawned on purpose. “We’ll dispatch several
officers to stake out their home addresses and then we’ll start fresh in the
morning. God, this has been a long day.”

“I just want this all to be over with.”
Tabitha sat back down in the back seat.

“You’ll be out of here within minutes.
We’ll contact you tomorrow if we hear anything.”

“Thank you, detective.”

Chapter 38

The backseat of the cab reminded Cozy of
the strip club, despite being spotless. Perhaps knowing what sticky, disgusting
substances had to be cleaned off her seat on a daily basis kept her from
touching anything.

The black cab driver spoke with an accent
she guessed to be African. “This is a strange request to be taken to the
Container Terminal at this hour.”

“Is it?”

“You meeting someone? That is not a place
for a pretty, young woman such as yourself.” His eyes saw her in the rearview
mirror.

“I’m good.”

“Men are not to be trusted in the dead of
night. You do not want to hear how many girls from my village were taken by
force – by men making their own rules.”

“Sorry, but I’ll be fine.”
 

But, would she be? The cab pulled to a
stop. Cozy stepped onto the dark, isolated parking lot of Apex Industries. She
could wait for the right opportunity, she supposed. If Senator Folsom admitted
to the party hosts that he blabbed, then they should be getting the girls out
of here tonight.

No cars were in the lot, but they could
be parked in the warehouse for all she knew.

Tabby didn’t want her to kill innocents,
but who in the flesh trade really was? The problem was that she didn’t know the
top dog. If nothing happened tonight, then she would live another day to find
that out. However, if things got going, she would have to play it to the end. There
were girls being sold through this dock and this was probably where Haley had
been killed.

She squeezed between the
gap
of the padlocked chain link fence. The property floodlights
exposed the
cranes,
forklifts and general walking
routes marked with yellow lines, which were protected by guard rails and squat,
thick poles sticking out of the cement. Everything left in the elements was
unsecured, but having a guard making rounds wouldn’t be unheard of. No sign of movement
yet.

The nearest structure was a warehouse
stretching two stories with APEX written in giant bold letters across one wall.
She saw no windows save one by an entrance door that sat to the right of four
huge openings made for semi trucks and forklifts. She surveyed the area one
last time before approaching the normal-sized door, feeling more exposed than
she ever did on stage. The solid knob turned left and right, but wouldn’t move
a millimeter due to the deadbolt.

There was a lot of land to cover, but the
reserved parking spots up front told her that this building was the main hub of
activity for the business, so she doubted if the girls were kept inside.
Instead, she hugged the outside wall of the warehouse until reaching the far
end where barrels and palates were stacked, but still no place for entry. The
corner floodlight illuminated where the foundation ended and a gravel road
began, leading far off into the darkness. Squinting, she could make out a
distant light pole over a smaller, fenced in structure a couple hundred yards
away.
That isolated location made more
sense
.

Cozy ran with little pebbles collecting
in her shoes, until coming to a gate at the end of the road. She easily scaled
the eight-foot fence and was more comfortable to be hidden in the shadows. The
rusting warehouse was about the size of a supermarket with one large set of
chained double doors and a single entry door and no windows. She turned the
knob and the door opened with a cracking noise, causing a spike in adrenaline. If
anyone was inside, they’d heard her.

“Hello?” Her voice choked.

Without an answer, she felt against the
wall for a light switch, finding a fuse box with a large lever on the side. Turn
on the lights? What the hell was she thinking? She progressed forward in the
darkness. The aroma of cleaning products filled the air, reminding her of the
cleanup with Titus.

Within moments, she could see from the
illumination through the skylight that the warehouse was empty and immaculately
clean. Firstly, why would there be a locked fence for a completely empty
warehouse and secondly, why wouldn’t this empty warehouse be covered with dust
and cobwebs?

Instead of crossing through the middle,
Cozy walked the perimeter, coming to an area near the rear with assorted items
neatly organized including stacked buckets, several empty garbage cans and a
coiled-up water hose leaking into the nearby drain.

She almost stepped onto a stained
mattress. There were maybe twenty of them lying next to each other. Next to them
were corresponding iron half-loops set in concrete that was a different pour
from the rest of the foundation. They were big enough to hold shackles and the
fresh grooves in the loops indicate they had been used often. Haley could have
been here. Folsom had told her about loading the women into a cargo container.
Perhaps that’s where they had been moved. Her shoulders hurt from the tension.
Ray had nothing on the rage she felt.

Once outside in the dark humidity, she
kept to the shadows on her way to the cargo containers stacked on several acres
next to the Mississippi River. There was no way to find the right container
from the hundreds stacked on the land before her. Letters of the alphabet
signified the rows. Further into the depths of these containers, she found the
naming convention progressed into three digit numbers and then something in her
memory clicked. She pulled out a folded piece of paper that had been sitting
loose in Ray’s safe. It had a list with the same numbering system with one row
highlighted in yellow. She squinted to make it out, continuing on until finding
the specified row on the paper: column D, row 240, container CGR10345.

The corrugated blue metal box sat alone,
not on top of or under any other container. Still, it was disguised among the others
of different colors and a titanic pad lock prevented her from entry. Muffled voices
pulled her ear to the container, however she found they weren’t coming from
within the box.
Guards
?

Men approached from some yards away, two
at minimum, talking casually. Cozy ran tiptoe to the opposite side of the
container and waited as the men drew near. They stopped, speaking in a language
she guessed to be Russian. The men laughed, one of them tapping on the metal
wall. Dressed in plain clothes carrying machine guns, these were unlike any
security guards Cozy had ever seen.

She didn’t feel herself tilting backwards
until it was too late. Her back thumped against the container, and she tried to
catch herself in an effort not to make noise. She failed. The voices on the
other side of the container grew loud in alarm. Cozy could feel them rounding
the corner, so she flung herself into the adjoining row of containers, hoping
to get lost in the maze of redundancy.

The men had split up; she could hear
distinct pursuit to her left and right. With her switchblade in hand, she
tracked one of the men’s clumsy movements parallel to her until he came into
view. His annoyed expression and casual demeanor meant he wasn’t hopeful of
finding anything, probably thinking it an animal that had made the noise. He
dropped his automatic weapon to his side and that show of carelessness would be
his downfall.

Cozy sprang onto his back, driving her
blade into his throat and twisting it with torque. A gurgled moan fizzled to a
wheeze before he fell onto his side as blood shot from his neck like a
fountain. These guys better be human traffickers.
They have to be
.

She collected his gun. It felt weighty in
her hands, more than she expected. She slipped between containers once again to
wait for his partner. Eternal moments later, shuffling feet ran past to the
dead body. She could hear his frantic calls into the radio, which would be good
to get the boss on the scene. Just when the man finished speaking, he spun
around, expecting an attack. What he received was a hail of bullets in his
chest causing his arms to jerk out like a new dance move.
 

Cozy picked up the radio from his feet
and clicked the button. “Who is this? Give me a name, coward.” No answer. “Get
down here, fucker.” She released the button waiting for a response that never
came.

However, another voice spoke from behind.
“You took out two of my men.”

“Ray.” A blunt kick to her stomach sent
her reeling, losing her weapon before turning onto her back. He hovered with
the devil in his eyes.

His head popped back with a quick
chuckle. “I never liked that guy.”

Her muscles froze while the butt of the
rifle came at her, seemingly in slow motion. She felt the wallop on her face, causing
a flash of light before she could even raise her hand. Yet, it hadn’t hurt. Her
body operated on its own accord, rolling onto her side to reach for the gun,
but Ray kicked it out of her reach. When she tried to stand, he put his heel in
her stomach. Why was there no pain?

He bent over her face. “Hard for me to
believe a little nothing such as yourself caused all this havoc. We’re having
to move the girls out tonight because of you.”

“Cops are coming,” she moaned.

“Shut up. At first, I planned on paying
you back, but then I realized, you’ve walked into a much grander form of
retribution.” He glanced at the cargo container. “Due to the time and place, I
won’t have that chance to hear you begging me to take your life. But, it
greatly pleases me that you will suffer a fate more horrible than death, the
slow torture of your soul.”

She spit at his feet and the last thing
Cozy remembered was his fist flying at her head and she still didn’t feel a
thing.

#

Her eyes opened to blackness, only
slivers of dull illumination allowed for any perspective.
Ah, there was the pain
. At first she thought sweat had rolled down
her nose, but she touched her forehead and felt the mushy gash. The smell of
urine and defecation hung stagnant in the air. Cozy’s head ached as she pushed
herself into a sitting positing, immediately feeling the skin of another
person.

“Who’s that?”

No one spoke, but she could hear
breathing and movement, like being in a pit of snakes. Cozy held her hand out,
feeling for what might be a leg. “Who are you? Are you okay?”

This person was lying down, either asleep
or unconscious. Ray had put her in the container. These were the girls to be
shipped out. How long had they been waiting in that warehouse? Days? Weeks?

“Is anybody there?”

“Ssh. No talk,” an accented whisper said,
“They hear you,
they
take food and water away… Beat
us.”

“What’s your name?”

Silence.

The racket of heavy equipment and motors
grew near. Something smashed against the container where a few of the girls
offered an abbreviated moan. The buzz of machinery through the metal meant they
were being moved. Cozy stood and banged on the walls, screaming to be let out.
None of the others joined in, having already been broken, drugged or just
resigned to their fate.

“The police are on their way,” she
screamed again, pressing her forehead against the wall.

When the container started floating, she
knew it had been lifted. Vertigo forced her back into a sitting position, and
she closed her eyes to focus on not passing out. Her entire face felt swollen.

If she left this port, there would be no
saving her from a life of horror, being sold to the highest bidder, spending
her remaining youth doped up in a distant land, turning tricks until she was
used up and thrown away. Or maybe she’d be the personal whore of an oil tycoon,
a sheik, passing her around to his rich friends at parties.

Oh,
shit
.