Two seconds ago, I’d been making jokes. Now I was feeling overwhelmed, and if I had to guess, I’d say I was feeling a lot of the same emotions Nana had that day on the Mall before she found Blake and me, safe and sound.
I was scared and I was desperate, most likely because I was exhausted from fighting back all the worst-case scenarios in my head. More than anything, I wanted our family to be back together, the way it was supposed to be, the way it had always been.
But I doubted it was going to happen, and I couldn’t really face that yet, or maybe ever.
Stay with us, Nana.
Chapter 73
THE NEXT MORNING started early, too early for most of the other detectives on the case. I had a list of names from the diaries in Nicholson’s safe-deposit box, and Sampson had confirmed current addresses for twenty-two escorts who’d worked the club in Virginia at one time or another.
Starting at eight, I sent out five teams of two uniformed officers each, to pull in as many from the list of escorts as we could find.
Presumably these were night birds we were going after. First thing in the morning seemed like a good bet. I wanted to talk to as many of them as possible, before any cross talk could start mucking things up and making this investigation even trickier than it was already.
Sampson also called in a favor from our friend Mary Ann Pontano in the Prostitution Enforcement Unit. She arranged for us to use the office they shared with Narcotics on Third Street, and Mary Ann would also be sitting in for at least some of the interviews. I wanted a white female face on our side of the table, to go against the mostly white female prostitutes.
By ten o’clock, we had an impressive fifteen of the twenty-two names accounted for.
I spread them out into every conference room, interview space, cubicle, and hallway available, and I don’t think I made any new friends in Narcotics that morning. Too bad. I didn’t much care that I might be inconveniencing somebody.
The place was a total zoo, including the four extra officers I kept around to make sure nobody walked out on us. The rest of the team I sent back out to look for the escorts who hadn’t turned up. The possibility that some of them might never be found was something I’d have to worry about later.
The interviews started slowly. None of these very pretty women trusted us, and I couldn’t blame them much for that. We didn’t hold back on details of Caroline’s murder, or the possibility of others. I wanted the young women to realize the kind of danger they’d been in, working for Nicholson, working for anyone in the escort business. Anything to get them to talk to us.
A few of the women quickly admitted to recognizing Caroline’s picture. She’d gone by the name Nicole when she was at the club, which wasn’t often from the sound of it. She was “nice.” She was “quiet.” In other words, they told me nothing I could use to find her murderer.
Instead of lunch, I took a walk around the block to clear my head, but it didn’t help much. Was I wasting my time here? Were we asking the wrong questions? Or should we just let the escorts go and try to salvage the afternoon for something else?
This was the classic problem for me: I never knew when to stop, because stopping always felt like quitting. And I wasn’t ready for that yet. For one thing, I still vividly remembered Caroline’s “remains.” I feared there were several others who’d died the same horrible way.
I was on my way back up Third Street, feeling no better than before, when my phone rang. Mary Ann Pontano’s name was on the ID.
“I’m outside,” I answered. “Trying to clear my head—if that’s possible. Taking a walk.”
“Only place I didn’t look,” she said. “You should get back in here and talk to this girl Lauren again.”
I started walking faster. “Red hair, shearling coat?”
“That’s the one, Alex. Seems like her memory’s warming up. She’s got a few interesting things to say about one of the missing girls, Katherine Tennancour.”
Chapter 74
JUST LIKE EVERY other escort we’d pulled in today, Lauren Inslee was slender, well endowed, and absolutely gorgeous. She was a former model in New York and Miami, a graduate of Florida State University, an escort for men with a taste for perky cheerleader types. Nicholson obviously had a variety of tastes to satisfy, but his general aesthetic was “expensive.”
“Katherine’s dead, isn’t she?” That was the first thing Lauren asked when I sat down with her. “Nobody will tell me anything. You want us to talk, but you people won’t say a word about what happened.”
“That’s because we don’t know, Lauren. That’s why we’re talking to you.”
“Okay, but what do you think? I don’t mean to be morbid. I just want to know. She was a friend of mine, another Florida girl. She was going to be a lawyer. She’d been accepted at Stetson, which is a really good school.”
Lauren played with a paper napkin the whole time she spoke, tearing it into tiny pieces. A slice of the pizza we’d brought in sat untouched on a plate next to the torn shreds of napkin. I believed that all she wanted to hear was the truth. So I decided to give it to her.
“The police report says there’s no indication that she packed a bag at her apartment. Given the amount of time it’s been—yes, there’s a good chance she’s not coming back.”
“Oh, God.” The girl turned away, fighting tears, hugging herself tightly.
It was getting more depressing in here by the second. We were in one of the larger interview rooms, with graffiti burning right through the latest paint job on the walls and scorch marks on the floor from years of cigarette butts.