Page 29 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

TWENTY-FIVE

HAWKE

"What do you mean, you can't give me that information?" I slammed my hands down on the counter, but it did nothing to goad the police officer behind the damn thing into some sort of action other than refusal. "That's bullshit and you know it."

"What I know," the burly man said with a look at me down the bridge of his nose, "is that you've got ten seconds to get the hell out of my precinct before I forcibly remove you from it."

If this shitheel pig thought for five seconds that he could bully me into submission, he had another thing coming. I wasn't the type to just roll over and play good boy for someone just because they waved a badge around and made threats they couldn't back up.

I was a member of the Guild. He ought to know what that badge on my shoulder meant?—

Then again, I wasn't in Port Wylde anymore. No, I drove half the day to get back to where Trinity and Keehn came from, to pester and prod the local precinct that he worked at before he disappeared, hopefully into giving me information on whatever case he had worked on last.

His disappearance could be related to it. It was vital information.

And according to the laws of this fucking place, I, as a citizen, was entitled to information.

"One," the bloated fucker behind the counter spat at me, his brows furrowed in what he thought was a threatening manner. "Two."

"Ten, motherfucker, come and get me."

I dodged his long arms with ease, slipping right past him to pop a little USB drive into the side of his computer. Once that was secure, I let him herd me out of the bullpen, throwing my hands in the air before I pretended to bow out and leave like he asked.

Little did he know, I didn't need his help anymore.

Back at the car, laptop in hand, around the corner from that stupid hicktown police station, it took me about ten seconds to break down their firewall.

And another ten to search their database and find Keehn's name all over files that were scattered everywhere.

"What the actual fuck?"

There was no way. Not a chance in hell. This wasn't real.

Keehn's name was not only listed as the presiding and investigating officer, but there were files where he was listed as witness, some with informant, and one with victim beside his name. That one had to be when the McCoys filed their missing persons report. Or the station.

But the others were confusing.

At first glance, this all looked like small-town shit—a breaking and entering, an accidental shooting, a few domestics, a missing person, one or two speeding tickets, and a reckless driving and public intox. Nothing seriously out of place for someone who'd been on the force for a while.

Wait.

Missing persons report.

But this wasn't Keehn's missing persons report. This was one he filed, regarding a Kimberly Dawn Hashfeld. Sixteen, blonde, involved in sports, she was a star athlete at the local high school until she disappeared one day, and never came home from a shopping trip with her friends.

I dug deeper to see if Keehn had left any digital notes on the case, and came up with nothing.

Damn.

Leave it up to Tank to take all his notes physically. If he had steno notepads, those could be in his personal effects, or in the trash, or in the evidence lockers, or hell, in some sort of fucking storage unit far, far away from here.

I'd have to call Mistwood and have him pull strings from afar. I needed to find out if this case had anything to do with his disappearance.

It was the last one his name was attached to before his own file was opened.

An hour later, I had an alias, a purpose, and an excuse.

And the lady at the evidence lockup here was giving me an appreciative eye as I flashed a fake badge and told her I was here on orders from Port Wylde PD to pick up some evidence from a cold case that pertained to a case my partner and I were working.

"Here you are, sweetie," she said softly, batting her eyelashes at me like there was a chance I'd take her out of here and far away to the big city. "You sure this one's all you need?"

"Ah, yeah, partner and I are looking into a string of cases that Detective McCoy had his hands on before he left this office." I scratched the back of my neck as she opened the box and worked her way through the checklist attached to the side.

Her lips turned down in a frown. "Huh. That's strange." She shuffled through the box again, and my heart sank.

Something that was supposed to be in there wasn't. I'd bet money on it.

"Something wrong?" I played stupid. Never wanna seem too smart when you're in unfamiliar territory. Playing dumb saved my life on more than one occasion.

"Ah, the DNA sample we got from her parents is missing. As is a high school ID. They're on the checklist, but nobody's signed them out, and they're not in this box."

My suspicions grew. "Any chance they might've been misplaced?" I knew the answer was no, but I had to ask.

"Not on my watch." Her look was harsh and unfriendly now, and I realized I'd overstepped.

In Port Wylde, there were shifts, several men assigned to the job of guarding evidence.

Here, there was likely one woman, and this was her dragon's lair of shit.

"Nothing leaves here without my knowing, and without a signature. "

Clearly, that wasn't the case.

"Was there ever a time around the time this was checked in that you might've been sick? Or took a vacation?—"

"Now, you listen here, young man. I don't do anything, I don't go anywhere, and I'm healthy as a horse. The last person to put hands on this box was your Detective McCoy, and unless he snuck it out while I was signing, which I highly doubt, then they should be here."

Or they were never there to begin with.

"Well, I appreciate your help," I said, stuffing my hand in the box to pull out the steno pad. "This is actually all I need from this box. Where do you want me to sign?"

A few minutes later, she'd also hooked me up with a list of cases Keehn had examined evidence for, running back a year before this one. After tapping back into my computer, the pattern was clear.

Keehn had been working cold cases. Not just any cold cases, either.

They were all missing persons. The victims were all young girls and women in their early twenties, athletic build, stunning looks. The same kind of girls that had been going missing in Khula City and Port Wylde for years now, too.

The kind that get trafficked.

I spent the next hour thumbing through his damn journal of chicken scratch, trying to find something helpful. Another hour after that taking notes.

I felt like that guy in the meme with the whiteboard behind him who looked like he'd been up for 48 hours straight, his hair sticking out in all directions, red string going from one pin to the next to show the connections.

It's all connected.

Aint't that the truth.

The missing girl was picked up, presumably, in the same time frame as the girl befoer her—midday, when she should have been with friends.

She'd been snatched, and her purse abandoned in a nearby drainage ditch for two locals to come across while dredging the drains at the end of the road.

Her trail dried up so quick it was like it was invisible, and nobody knew or saw or heard anything.

Except for one guy who'd claimed he saw her get into a nondescript white van with plates from out of town.

Not helpful.

What was helpful were the notes in the back of this notepad, the ones Keehn clearly wrote in a hurry, his script ending short and in a different color than the rest of his notes. It was written in red, like he'd grabbed the first thing he could find to write with.

It was case file numbers. Ten of them. And with each one I looked up, the truth slid together, the path he'd taken, and it all started to make sense.

Whoever had been responsible for Keehn's ID and badge ending up on a vagrant dead in an alleyway was dangerous. And they were covering up something big. Something that could very well be related to what the hell we were looking into even now.

It stank of a trafficking ring's target acquisition patterns.

Which meant that Keehn, even if he hadn't known it, was searching for the same people we were. And they'd likely killed him for it.

The thought was sobering.

Why hadn't he reached out? Why had he struck out on his own? Was he afraid of letting someone know because he knew what he was doing was dangerous? Did he suspect they'd come for him when he got too close to the truth?

What had his motivation even been? Was it his bleeding heart? His inability to look past someone's sob story and worry about himself?

He'd never been good at keeping his nose on his face, even as a soldier. Always off helping some local or trying to please his superiors. Going above and beyond the call of duty. The perfect little soldier. Perfect fucking Keehn.

Always there to lend a helping hand. A kind smile. Whatever he could do. The shirt off his fucking back.

Too caring. Too trusting. Too free with his help. And it most likely led to his downfall.

The last entry on his list was missing two numbers at the end, almost like he'd run out of time while jotting it down, which was interesting. Some digging through the local precinct's files led me to a case open in Khula City, with names I recognized on the victim lines.

Girls we'd personally served justice for when their families found them dead in the Dread River.

Anna Ying. Destiny Michaels. Two girls fresh at college, with families far, far away who couldn't help them. Who disappeared on the same night.

Mistwood and his lackeys pulled them out of the gator-infested waters half-eaten just weeks after they'd gone missing.

Needle and ligature marks all over them.

Some girls didn't make the cut when it came to these trafficking operations.

Most times, they drugged them into compliance and then trained them to obey.

Sometimes the girls couldn't handle the drugs.

Other times, they fought back and were killed for their troubles.

And occasionally, they ran off and were dragged back to the trap houses where the scum of the earth held them hostage.

Those girls got it the worst when they finally got culled from the herd. Problem girls weren't resold. They weren't repurposed. A girl who wouldn't listen was a liability. They were tortured, abused, raped, and offed, and sometimes more.

Sometimes, there wasn't anything left for the families to claim or identify.

I called Mistwood one more time, hoping he could make sense of this missing file number and get me a lead I could use.

"What the hell do you want this time, Ghoul?" His voice was curt, sharp, and ragged. Either he was on the job, chasing someone, or running from someone. Or fucking someone, in which case, it'd be my boss, most likely.

They had an on-again, off-again thing going on that she didn't think anyone knew about. But one thing I was good at was uncovering secrets and staying in the shadows while I did it.

"I need you to look into a case for me and get me everything you can on it."

His end of the line went dead, so I called him back. Twice, because the first time, he hit the fuck you button on me.

"Listen here, you jackfuck," I spat when he picked up on the third ring, not even giving him a chance to speak. "If you value your life, you'll do what the fuck I need you to, or you won't be breathing well when I get back to town."

They had a saying in organized religion. What the lord giveth, the lord can taketh away. Well, just call me god, because we gave him his cushy life, and we could damn sure take it back.

He'd best remember who the fuck he was messing with.

"Text me the details, and what you need. I'm kinda busy right now." More panting, followed by a moan.

Definitely fucking St. Clair.

"Right, yeah, get your nut, I suppose, then get to work." I laughed, the menacing kind that made me appear so dangerous to people who'd never met me before, or who didn't know the man behind the mask. "And tell my boss's pussy I said hello."

I hung up on him before he could start to cuss me out.