CHAPTER TWELVE
2287 Words
CHAPTER TWELVE
The shift supervisor’s office at Port Jersey was a white trailer on cinder blocks—likely so it could be easily moved by crane if need be, Reid thought. The man with the white hard hat led the way up three wooden stairs and pushed the door open, closing it again behind them. It was not at all lost on him that the supervisor twisted the locking mechanism in the knob.
Reid had agreed to come with him under the pretense of coffee and a few phone calls, but those were far from his mind at the moment. This man knew something, and Reid was going to find out what it was.
“How do you take it?” the supervisor asked. He crossed the short span to a narrow table set up with a coffee machine, paper cups, and powdered creamer.
“Black is fine. Thanks.” Reid quickly surveyed the office from end to end. There were two desks, one on each side, and four chairs. The whole trailer was about forty feet long, twelve feet wide. There was a small bathroom and another point of egress at the rear—undoubtedly locked as well—and the primary entrance was to Reid’s back.
Not ideal, he thought, but private enough for questioning.
“Here you go.” The supervisor set two paper cups on the steel desk nearer to them and then took a seat in a gray swivel chair behind it. “I’m very sorry you have to go through this. Hell of a thing, I imagine. How long did you say since your girls have gone missing, Mr.…?”
“Townsend,” Reid told him. “But you can call me Frank.” He took a seat in the metal chair across the desk and sipped the coffee. It was lukewarm and tasted awful.
“Well, Frank, I’m Bill,” the supervisor replied warmly. “You wanna… talk about it at all?”
“They were taken yesterday from their home in New York,” Reid lied.
“And what makes you think they ended up here?” Bill asked.
Reid shrugged one shoulder. “Just a hunch.”
“A hunch,” Bill repeated, folding his hands on the desk. “There wasn’t like a, uh, tip? Or some kind of evidence?”
He’s fishing, Reid thought. He was asking questions to see just how much Reid knew, trying hard to sound blasé.
“No tips,” he told Bill. “No evidence. I just thought that this would be a likely place to take them out of the country.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. It didn’t look like he was quite buying it. “Did you, uh, tell the police about this hunch of yours?”
“No. I didn’t think they’d believe me.”
“I see.” Bill took a cell phone out of his pocket and typed out a message. “Sorry, just replying to a text from the wife. So, Mr. Townsend, nobody knows you’re here?”
“Besides the guys I talked to outside? No.” A text from the wife. Sure.
Bill stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “Well. Like I said, I’m sorry this happened, but I’m afraid we just can’t help you. Now, if you felt inclined to get the police involved, we’d be happy to show them whatever they want to see. They could open every container, search every boat. But you have my word, they’re not going to find any girls.”
Reid nodded. At least that answered one question—Maria had been right. The girls were already gone from this place. He kept his voice as calm and even as he could as he said, “I understand. I don’t think police intervention will be necessary.” He reached into his jacket and took out the folded photo of them. “But just in case, this is them here.” He turned the picture.
Bill tried. He tried very hard not to show a reaction, and very nearly succeeded. But Kent Steele was a trained CIA agent with years of field and interrogation experience. He saw the tiny twitch of Bill’s eyebrows as his eyes impulsively widened slightly. He saw the irrepressible dilation of his pupils—a sure sign of deception.
“I’ll certainly keep an eye out,” Bill promised.
“Thank you.” Reid folded the photo again. “Do you have kids, Bill?”
The supervisor shook his head. “Nope. Just never happened for us.”
“But you know them.”
Bill blinked at Reid, a confused but polite smile on his lips. “Sorry?”
Reid tucked the photo back into his jacket, and at the same time his hand found the grip of his Glock 22. He pulled it out, not aiming, but showing it. “You know them,” he said again.
“Whoa, whoa…” Bill said uneasily as he started to rise.
“Stay seated,” Reid commanded as he pointed the Glock. Bill sank again into his chair, eyes wide and afraid. “You’ve seen them, these two girls. I can tell.”
“No, never, I swear it…”
“Outside, you said none of your boats go to Dubrovnik. I didn’t mention Dubrovnik.”
“What?” Bill’s face contorted into a frown. “Well, s-sure you did…”
“I didn’t.” He racked the slide on the Glock to put a round in the chamber. “Tell me what you know, Bill.”
The supervisor gulped and placed his hands flat on the desk in front of him. “Listen, Frank, pal, we can talk. Okay? But not with a gun in my face.”
“I find it helps people be honest.”
“Yeah, okay, but think about this,” Bill implored. “You fire that thing in here and there are thirty guys out there that are going to hear it. They’ll all come running. Most of them are good guys, innocent guys, family men. You going to shoot them? You got enough bullets for that? Because if not, you’re still the one holding the gun, and they will kick your damn skull in.”
Reid nodded slowly. “You’ve got a good point, Bill.” He holstered the Glock. “That’s not the way to go about this.”
“Right,” Bill agreed with a sigh of relief. “Let’s just talk, and—”
Reid lurched forward suddenly, reaching across the desk and grabbing Bill by two handfuls of collar. He hefted the man up, out of his chair, and yanked him clear over the desk. Coffee spilled to the floor and paperwork flew as he brought the hapless supervisor crashing to the floor.
Before Bill could recover, let alone shout for help, Reid pressed his knee into the man’s throat, cutting off not only his ability to speak but his air supply as well.
He leaned over, close to the supervisor’s face. “Listen to me, Bill, and listen well.” He spoke quickly, his voice edged with a growl. “Those two girls in that picture are my children. My daughters. My family. My life. They mean everything to me. You mean nothing to me. I would just as soon leave you bleeding out on this floor if it means getting even one step closer to them. If you think help is coming, you’re wrong. I’ve got two guns, twenty-seven rounds, and two hands, and I’m pretty confident that I can get through you and anyone else that wants to try to stand in my way.”
Bill’s face turned dark red, his circulation cut off, as a wet choking sound escaped his lips. But Reid did not relent. Not yet.
“There is nothing I won’t do to get to them. And trust me, I’ve done some pretty horrible things. You know something. I think you saw them. When I let my knee off your throat, you’re going to tell me everything. You’re not going to shout for help or try to draw attention, because then it will be even worse for you. Case in point.”
Reid grabbed Bill’s right hand and, without hesitation, without thinking twice, turned the man’s index finger sideways. It broke easily with a dull thock, like snapping a chicken bone, sticking out at a ninety-degree angle from the rest of his hand.
Bill tried to scream, but with Reid’s knee firmly on his neck all he could do was gag as his face turned purple.
Reid relieved the pressure, only a bit, just enough so that Bill could suck in some air. The man’s mouth gasped open like a fish, and when he exhaled it came out as a moan of pain. “You… you son of a b***h…” he wheezed.
They never learn the first time. “Let me tell you something, Bill,” Reid hissed, leaning down close to Bill’s face. “In every interrogation, bar none, it always seems that the subject thinks they’re going to be the nut that doesn’t crack. But they all crack eventually.” Reid pressed his knee down again, and then he broke Bill’s pinky finger.
The supervisor clenched his eyes shut tightly as his mouth yawned in a silent scream.
“You’ve got eight more, Bill. I’m a patient man, but I don’t have much time.”
He let up slightly and Bill whimpered, spittle dripping from his puffy, purple lips. “They were here,” he said hoarsely. He retched and then said, “They were here, this morning. Around four. On a boat…”
“The man who was with them,” Reid said, “he was American, right? Green eyes? Dark hair?” He had to confirm that it was Rais. At least then maybe he and Maria could convince the agency of the truth. “Answer me, Bill.”
“One of them was…”
“One of them?” Reid frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“The others were… the Slavs…” Bill panted.
“The Slavs? Who are the Slavs?”
“I don’t know… who they are. Slovak, or m-maybe Czech. They have a b-boat, a small one, with con… containers. They’re empty. All except one or, or two.”
Panic seized Reid’s chest like a heart attack. In nearly a whisper he asked, “What’s in the containers, Bill?”
A sob escaped the supervisor’s throat. “God help me…”
“He’s not here, Bill. I am.” Reid grabbed an unbroken finger and gripped it tightly. “What’s in the containers?!”
“…P-people.”
“Children?”
Bill sniffled. “Girls. Always girls.”
Reid’s face slackened like a stroke. Eastern European men had taken his little girls away, across the ocean, and this man—this monster—helped them. The ball of rage in his chest exploded and he forgot himself again. He pressed on Bill’s throat with a knee almost hard enough to crush the man’s windpipe and grabbed his middle finger.
“You let traffickers…”
He snapped the finger.
“…take my children?”
He broke another.
“For what? For money, Bill?”
He gripped the supervisor’s thumb and jerked it back until it touched his forearm. The bone popped and muscle tore. Already the mangled hand was swollen to nearly double its normal size. Blue-black contusions stained the skin at the break points.
Bill’s eyes were wide enough to fall out of his head, bloodshot and unblinking. But he could not make a sound, not with Reid’s knee on his throat.
Just kill him. It would be easy. Just don’t move for another thirty seconds and he’ll be dead. He deserves nothing less.
No. I can’t. Not yet.
He eased off of Bill’s throat and the man sucked in a rattling breath. Every exhalation came with a hoarse moan. “Hnngh… hnngh… hnngh…”
“Where did they go?” Reid positioned himself so that Bill was forced to look in his eyes. “You knew about Dubrovnik, but you said none of your ships go there. So where did they go? Bill, where did they take my daughters?”
“They…” His words were little more than croaking whimpers. “They’ll kill me.”
“Maybe so. But I won’t. I’ll leave you alive. I’m going to break the rest of your fingers, Bill. And if I still don’t have the information I want, I’ll break your arms and legs. But I’ll leave you alive to live with what you’ve done. To look down at your own mangled, disfigured limbs and be reminded of what you really are.” He grabbed Bill’s other hand to demonstrate that he was not bluffing—and he wasn’t. “Where did they go?”
“N-north.” The supervisor sobbed again, which caught in his throat as a cough. “There’s a, an island, just off the—ack—coast of Nova Scotia. Th-there’s a depot there…”
“A cargo depot?” Reid asked impatiently. “And they do the same thing you do? They look the other way for these men? Take money while they abduct girls? Young women?”
Bill squeezed his eyes shut, tears streaming down his face as he nodded.
Nova Scotia. It wouldn’t make sense, going north just to go east; that would take much longer than eight days. Unless…
“At this cargo depot, they get put on a plane.” Reid worked the thought out aloud. “Is that it? They leave here on a boat, get on a plane, and go to Dubrovnik?”
Bill nodded again, his breaths coming jagged and rasping.
Reid let himself fall backward and sat on the floor, rubbing his face. It’s no more than nine to ten hours from here to Nova Scotia by boat. They left at four in the morning. It’s past nine at night.
His girls were on a plane, right at that moment, headed to Croatia. Maria’s plans of using the Coast Guard, the CIA, flying out by chopper… none of that would work. Not now.
“One more question, Bill, and then we’re done here. The American man with the green eyes—did he go with them? Or did he stay here?”
“He…” Bill choked and retched once. “He left. G-got on the boat. Hnnggh… left his car here.”
Reid sighed in dismay. Rais had taken his girls to Croatia with the intention that Reid would follow—leave the safety of the United States, leave what he knew, leave behind the police and jurisdiction.
Because he knows I will. He knows I’ll follow.
He wanted very much to kill the man laid out on the floor before him, his face purple, capillaries burst in his eyes. It would be easy; there was a letter opener on the desk. A slip of its tip into the femoral artery of his thigh and Bill the supervisor would bleed out on the trailer floor in less than a minute. It would be too easy.
He wanted this man to suffer, to live with what he had done. He took Bill’s wallet from his pocket and pulled out his driver’s license. “I’m keeping this,” Reid told him. “You can try to run, try to hide, but you’re going to be caught. You’re going to be arrested for what you’ve done here. You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison—and guys like you, they tend not to fare so well.”
Bill could only whimper.
Suddenly the locked doorknob of the trailer jiggled. Reid looked up sharply as someone banged a heavy fist on the other side.
“Bill!” A deep male voice. “Bill, you okay in there?”
Reid rose and parted the blinds over one of the small windows, only slightly—but still enough to see that no fewer than a dozen dockworkers were gathered directly outside the office.
The text. The message Bill sent, allegedly to his wife; he must have warned his guys.
“Open up or we’ll knock this door down!” threatened another voice.
Bill weakly lifted his head and tried to call out for help, but his voice was little more than a hoarse croak. Reid examined his options; he could try the rear door, but he had no doubt there were people there too. Instead he drew his gun.
A moment later the door burst inward, the lock breaking easily with a dozen large, angry men waiting on the other side.
- Writer
