The Harry Starke Series: Books 1-3: The Harry Starke Series Boxset Read online

  When we left the Sorbonne it was a little after five o’clock. The car? I hoped it hadn’t been touched. I took the expandable baton from my jacket pocket, flipped it open, squeezed the mirror into position on the tip, and walked slowly around the car, looking at the underside. Amanda watched, and she wasn’t smiling. I felt so damned stupid, especially when I saw a kid, no more than six years old, also watching me. I’m turning into a goddamn clown. De Luca would be absolutely delighted if he could see me.

  Exasperated, I looked at Amanda. “Move over there, away from the car.”

  She did as she was told, her face white. I grabbed the mirror, collapsed the baton, unlocked the car, threw both onto the rear seat, sat down heavily, punched the starter, got back out of the car, and looked around: no explosion, no ticking bomb, nothing. Screw you, Sal. That was the last time. I’m gonna fix you, if it kills me.... Hah!

  Then I had another thought. I walked around to the passenger side, dropped into that seat, and got out again. Still no big bang. Screw you, De Luca.

  I beckoned Amanda, held the door for her, told her I needed several stiff drinks and by six o’clock we were in the bar at the club. We had a few drinks, dinner, and then headed home to Lakeshore and enjoyed an uneventful evening, thank God.

  But it wasn’t all wine and roses. I was still mulling over all that Benny and Laura had said. I had De Luca on my mind, too. If he was up to what I thought he was, he wasn’t going to allow me to screw it up for him. I had to stop that son of a bitch, and soon. But much worse than that, as I lay beside Amanda listening to her gentle breathing, I was haunted by the image of Brinique Williams. I still had no clue what had happened to her, or why, but I sure as hell was going to find out. And there was one more thing floating around in my head, Amanda. It had been five days since she’d moved in with me, and... well, I was beginning to like it. Damn it.

  Chapter 23

  At nine-fifteen the following morning, Wednesday, two days before Christmas, I was at my desk with a cup of Dark Italian Roast when Doc Sheddon called. He’d run the dental records. We didn’t need to wait for a DNA match with her parents; the girl from Hill House was, indeed, Brinique Williams. It was no surprise, just heartbreaking.

  Now we had to find out what the hell had happened to her.

  I sat at my desk, the photos of the girl spread out in front of me. No she wasn’t beautiful, but I thought that one day she might have been. She was pretty, and slim, but still too young to have developed into womanhood. Bastard. How the hell could you do it? How could you bring yourself to kill this poor kid?

  For what must have been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, I sat there, staring at the five photographs. I’ll get him, I silently promised her, and when I.... The thought was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  “Yeah. Come on in.”

  The door opened, and Kate stuck her head in. “You ready to go?” She was armed with warrants for both the Draycotts and the Dickersons.

  “Not quite. Come on in. Take a seat. You want coffee?”

  “No, Harry. I have Lonnie waiting in the car, and I have six uniforms waiting at the Draycotts’. We need to go. By the way, it might be a good idea if Tim came with us. You never know what we might run into. Can we do that?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Give me a minute. Let me get dressed.” I buzzed Tim, told him to grab his gear, and then I put on my golf jacket, checked the rig and the nine under my left arm, and then climbed into my heavy coat.

  Five minutes later, Tim and I were in the rear of the unmarked, and Lonnie was up front in the passenger seat. We were heading for the Clermont Foundation on East Brainerd Road.

  They were not expecting us. Kate and I had learned early on in our law enforcement careers that the element of surprise is a mighty tool when carrying out a search warrant.

  We pulled up outside the front of the building, the two cruisers in line behind us. I’d never been on the receiving end of such a visit, but I had a feeling it must be extremely intimidating.

  Together, the four of us walked in through the front door, into the reception area. We were followed by two uniforms. The girl behind the desk smiled brightly up at us, until Kate informed her of the purpose of our visit. She picked up the phone and pushed a button.

  “The police are here, Dr. Draycott. They have a search warrant.... Yes, I’ll tell them.” She put the phone down, looked up at us, her face serious.

  “Doctor Draycott will be with you momentarily. If you would like to take a seat....”

  “That’s not how it works, I’m afraid,” Kate said. “This warrant gives us free access to—”

  The door behind the reception desk opened and Doctor Ellen walked through. She wasn’t happy... ah, that would be putting it mildly. She was pissed.

  “Mr. Starke. What are you doing here? Who are you and what do you want?” she said to Kate.

  “I’m Lieutenant Catherine Gazzara, Major Crimes Unit. I have a warrant for your files. I need your records for the years 2004 and 2005, including the period of transition, when you took over from the Dickersons.”

  “Just a minute, I need to call my husband.” She took phone from her lab coat pocket and punched in a text message.

  “Now, Dr. Draycott. I need to see them now.” Kate started forward toward the rear door.

  “Wait!” It was almost a shout. “I’ll take you.”

  And she did. We were met at the door of the room where the records were kept by Dr. Sam Draycott, and he was boiling.

  “What the hell is the meaning of this? You can’t come barging in here going through private patient records. It’s unheard of.”

  “I don’t want to see your medical records, Doctor,” Kate said. “What I do want see are the personnel records of the young girls who found refuge here. I also want the personnel records of the staff you employed from 2004 through 2005, full time, part time, and volunteer. All of them, including those of the nine missing children. I will also need any files for missing males.”

  He looked at his wife. He obviously didn’t know what to do. She shrugged.

  “No medical records, Lieutenant,” she said. “I will not allow you to see any of those. I can, however, show you the listings of the girls in residence at Hill House from when we took over. As you know, we took over from the Dickersons. There were twenty-two girls here then, and four boys. Seven of the girls went with him and so did two of the boys; the other fifteen stayed with us. We would have taken them all, but.... Well, the others wanted to go, so we let them.”

  She opened the door and stood aside for us to enter. The room was barely furnished, just a large table around which were spaced a half-dozen chairs, and a single row of filing cabinets along the back wall. There were also two computer monitors on the table.

  “Everything was computerized just after we moved into this new building, but we still have the old hard copies. Which do you prefer?”

  “Tim, you take the computer,” I said. “Kate and I will take the hard copies.”

  Tim nodded, sat down, and started hammering the keys.

  “How does he know what he’s looking for?” Sam Draycott asked.

  “Oh, he knows,” I said. “He’ll find stuff you didn’t know you had.”

  The two Draycotts looked at each other. Sam looked even more worried than he had before.

  It seemed only minutes before Tim looked around and asked where the towers were located.

  “Towers?” Sam Draycott asked.

  “The computers; the big boxes,” Tim said.

  “Oh those. They’re in here.” He opened the door to what once must have been a walk-in closet. The two towers were side-by-side on a shelf.

  Tim nodded, inserted a thumb drive into one of them, went back to the table, hit the keyboard a couple of times, then turned and said, “All done,” as he retrieved the thumb drive.

  Kate and I were still on the first of the hard copies.

  Tim took the one I was holding and flipped through it. “You don’t need those. I a
lready have them... and a whole lot more,” he whispered.

  I looked at Kate; she looked at Tim. “You sure?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. I got it.”

  “Fine!” I said. “Go wait for us in the car. We’ll be a few more minutes.”

  I waited until he’d left and then said to Kate, “I think it would be a good idea to take all of the relevant hard copies with us. There aren’t a whole lot of them. Maybe fifty or sixty files. What do you think?”

  She agreed, gave Lonnie instructions to remove and box the files, signed a receipt, and handed it to Ellen Draycott. The woman snatched it out of her hand, looked at it, and handed it her husband. She seemed about to say something, but she changed her mind, snapped her mouth shut, and glared at us.

  Kate ignored the look and asked the Draycotts to sit. They did, but reluctantly. Kate and I sat down opposite them. Lonnie finished packing the records into two cardboard file boxes and stood with his back to the wall, his hands in his pockets.

  “I have a few questions to ask of you both,” Kate said, “if you don’t mind.”

  “There’s nothing more we can tell you,” Ellen Draycott said. “2005 was a long time ago, almost eleven years, and we were just at the beginning of our mission then. We know nothing about the poor girl.”

  “It’s not just the girl,” Kate said. “We found a second body, a young man, or boy, in the drains. Nasty.”

  They looked at one another; both had gone two shades paler.

  “Before we get into specifics,” Kate said. “I need to know more about the transition from Dickerson to you. It appears to have taken place over a period of three months...” she looked at her iPad, “from June through August. Tell me about it.”

  “What’s to tell?” Ellen Draycott said. “Dickerson lost his lease, and we took it over. There was, as you said, a transition period. We had the lease from June 13, but we couldn’t make the move immediately. Dickerson filled the gap. I was here by myself for the last two weeks of June. Until my husband was able to join me in mid-August, the Dickersons and I ran things at Hill House together. They left the first week in September, as I recall.”

  “I asked you this earlier, but let’s do it one more time,” Kate said. “What about the girls? How many were there, and what happened to them?”

  “And I told you. There were twenty-two girls. We kept all but the seven who insisted on going with the Dickersons. You’ll find that information noted in their files: those who stayed, and those who didn’t. Oh, and if you’re interested, we brought five of our own rescues to the house: three girls and two boys.”

  “Tell me what you know about Brinique Williams,” I said, watching them both carefully. She didn’t flinch. Him, I wasn’t sure; tiny flicker of an eyelid, maybe? Maybe it was nothing.

  “Who?” he said.

  “Brinique Williams. She would have been almost seventeen back in August 2005 when you took over Hill House.”

  “Was she... was she the girl who... died?” he asked.

  “She was,” Kate said.

  They were both shaking their heads.

  “Maybe this will jog your memories,” I said, reaching inside my coat pocket for the envelope. I placed a five by seven print of the girl on the table in front of them; I could have sworn Doctor Sam drew in a breath when he looked at it. Other than that, they were still, perhaps too still.

  “I’ve never seen her before,” Doctor Ellen said. “She certainly wasn’t one of ours. Perhaps you should talk to the Dickersons.” With that, she rose and walked out of the room.

  “I... don’t know her either,” Sam Draycott said. “I... I have to go, too. I have much to do in time for the holiday. Please excuse me. If you don’t mind. I have things to do.” He rose from his seat and was about to follow his wife out of the room.

  “One more thing before you go, Doctor,” I said.

  He slowly sat down again, his hands on the edge of the table.

  “Does the name Ricky or Richard Jessell mean anything to you?” Again, there was the slightest twitch of his left eyelid.

  He didn’t hesitate. He shook his head, then said, “No. I don’t know that name at all. Now, if you don’t mind. I have things to do.” Again, he rose from the table. This time we let him go.

  I got up and followed him out. Kate and Lonnie followed me, Lonnie toting the file box. Tim was already inside the unmarked, waiting for us.

  “So what do you think?” Kate said, as she pushed the starter.

  “I’m liking Sam Draycott less and less,” I said. “He gave the impression that he wanted to be helpful, but I think he was stonewalling. Did you notice how uncomfortable he was, especially when I showed him the photo and asked him about the boy? I think he was hiding something. Whether it has anything to do with the dead girl, I don’t know. Hell, they could be hiding any number of things: embezzlement, Medicare fraud, you name it. I think he’s a man of secrets. I also think she’s the driving force, wears the pants. What do you think?”

  “Yeah, I noticed the look on his face. He’s good, but not quite good enough. As to Ellen Draycott, I don’t like her, not one little bit. Harry, I need a favor.”

  “Sure, if I can.”

  “I want to use Tim for a couple of days, at the PD. Would you be okay with that?”

  I looked at Tim; he grinned, nodded.

  “Well, sure, but why not at my office?”

  “I need the computer files, and those we removed from the Dickersons, searched inside the PD, under strict supervision, likewise the hard copies. If there’s anything in them, I don’t want the evidence tainted.”

  “Makes sense, but—”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she interrupted. “You’ll have access to everything through Tim. He can make copies. I’ll have copies of the hard files made and sent to your office as soon as possible. I know you want to go through them yourself.”

  I nodded, somewhat bewildered.

  “Okay, we all ready to head on over to Cherry Street?”

  Chapter 24

  We arrived at Cherry Street in a convoy, Kate’s unmarked followed by the two cruisers. As before, both the side and rear doors were securely locked. Lonnie banged on the side door and we waited.

  The door opened a crack, and Lonnie pushed it wide open, knocking the young girl sideways. I stepped forward and led the way along the corridor to the stairs.

  “What’s behind these doors, I wonder,” Kate said, as we passed by them, three on either side. This time I noticed the security cameras, two in the corridor and one at the top of the stairs.

  We were met by India Dickerson. I had to admit, she looked a whole lot better than she did the first time I met her. She was wearing a tight red turtleneck sweater and form-fitting black leather skirt.

  “You again,” she said. “Who are all these people?”

  Kate didn’t give me a chance to answer. She stepped forward, warrants in hand, and said, “I’m Lieutenant Gazzara, Chattanooga Police. I have a warrant to search your files. Please take me to them.”

  India looked down at the papers in Kate’s hand, then up at her, then at me. She seemed about to say something, thought better of it, turned and walked to the desk. She picked up the phone, punched a button, and said, “The police are here, with a warrant. Get out here. Now!”

  She put the phone down and turned to face us. “What’s all this about? We told you, Mr. Starke, that we know nothing about the body you found. What are you looking for?”

  Again, it was Kate who answered, “We need to see your personnel files, and those of the girls who were in your care, for the years 2004 through 2005, and I’d like you to take me to them now.”

  “What’s going on?” Billy Dickerson said. His face was red, he was angry and he was flanked by Darius Willett and an even bigger man I knew to be Mickey, the Mouse, Donavan. He was a scary-looking critter, big, heavy, greasy dreads and a beard; he looked like a damned terrorist.

  “Lonnie,” I said. “These two will both be armed. You
might want to take care of that.”

  “Yeah, we talked about that.” He took a step forward, his hand out toward Willett.

  “Give!” he said.

  Willett looked at Dickerson, who nodded, then reluctantly handed over the .45 Colt M1911.

  “Now you,” Lonnie said to Donavan.

  The man reached behind his back, brought forth a .40 Glock 22, and handed it to Lonnie. Lonnie unloaded the clips from both weapons, cleared the chambers, and emptied the clips, then he placed them on the desk.

  “You guys have permits for those?” he asked.

  They both nodded, slowly. Willett’s eyes were narrow slits, his mouth a thin tight line.

  “I need to see ‘em, now.”

  They pulled billfolds from jeans pockets and handed the permits to Lonnie. He checked them carefully, eyes back and forth from face to permit. Finally he nodded and handed them back.

  All the while Lonnie was so engaged, I was half listening to the conversation Kate was having with the Dickersons. I missed most of what was said, but tuned in just as India was trying to convince us that no computer records for those years existed, only paper files, and even those were sparse.

  I was inclined to believe her. I had an idea that these two were not the most meticulous record keepers, but more than that, I figured the last thing they would do if they were into prostitution would be to keep incriminating records. Still, you never know.

  “Tim,” I said. “See what you can find.”

  “May I take a look at your computers, please?” Tim asked India.

  “Forget the please,” I said. “Just do it.”

  He grinned and walked around the desk to the keyboard.

  “Now, show me the files,” Kate said, in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.