Chapter 5 Lee #4
“Look, I’m just trying to understand what the situation was, son.
Was the kid a victim, or one of the perps?
Was he there voluntarily? Maybe what happened to him was just a little lover’s quarrel.
That hotel is known for hosting a lot of ‘escorts’,” Jarreau said, making little air quotes around the words as he spoke.
“Maybe he’s just a hooker who’s into pain,” he said shrugging.
“Maybe he wanted it… Maybe he liked it,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at me and leering salaciously.
“He didn’t like it, asshole,” I snarled through gritted teeth, anger boiling inside me at his suggestion. “And he sure as fuck didn’t want to be there. They’d tied him to the fucking bed!” I bit out.
Memories of Mason’s bruised and bleeding body, his broken arm, the small whimpers he made as I worked on his wounds was making me see red. I realized, suddenly, I was on my feet and had taken a menacing step toward the detective.
Jarreau looked up at me, unperturbed by my rage. The leer had left his face quickly, replaced by a thoughtful expression.
“Really? I didn’t see that detail in the report, either,” he said, writing in the small notebook.
“Humph. And ‘they’ implies more than one person. We really need to get on these beat cops to be more thorough. Is there anything else that might have been left out of the ‘official’ report, Lee?” he asked, looking up at me expectantly.
Fuck. The anger drained out of me as quickly as it had arrived, and I sat back down in defeat. Fine.
“I didn’t know,” I began, my head in my hands as shame washed over me. “I thought he was older. I thought… I thought he was there willingly. The website was… convincing,” I said. “They posted pictures. Dates. Times. He looked a lot older in them.” My voice trailed off.
“‘They’?” the detective prompted, not looking up at me.
“Two men. He was… terrified of them. Ricky is the one I… um, the one who’s dead,” I amended. No need to just walk right into the jail cell, I guessed. “He called the other one Dreyven. He’s… the one who got away,” I growled, striking my aching leg with a clenched fist. “I was too goddamn slow.”
I winced at my stupidity, on multiple occasions now, and rubbed the aching spot on my leg, then gave the detective the best description I could of Dreyven.
“He was five foot ten, maybe? Two hundred fifty pounds. Long, stringy black hair, shoulder length. Might have some American Indian or Polynesian in his background, maybe? I knew a guy in the service with similar eyes,” I said.
“Service, eh?” Jarreau asked, gesturing to my cane. “Is that how you got that? I noticed your dog tags.”
I nodded, tapping my tags self-consciously.
I’d worn them for so long, I didn’t even think about them anymore.
I sat there for a few more minutes wondering how long it was going to take me to find a lawyer in Milwaukee, and how the hell I was going to explain all this to my parents.
I gave Jarreau the website address that had led me to Mason, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be much help. The addresses changed almost daily.
Jarreau spent a few more minutes writing in his notebook before speaking. I was pretty sure his next words were going to be my Miranda rights, so you could imagine my shock when he continued.
“Whoever shot Ricky Taylor did this city a public service,” Jarreau said, reading from his notes.
He looked up, catching the surprise on my face, and said wryly, “The fucker was suspected in a string of rapes, kidnappings, two murders in Milwaukee alone, as well as wanted for questioning in an ongoing investigation into human trafficking. My investigation.”
My face must have shown my surprise, as Jarreau continued.
“Unfortunately, decisions about prosecution aren’t up to me, Lee. I’m sure that the person who shot Taylor has his, or her, reasons for not coming forward.”
I sat there dumbfounded as he continued to write notes.
He reached into his pocket, and despite his words, part of me expected him to pull out handcuffs, but all he did was hand me a card that had his name and number printed on it.
The back had the words “Confidential Informant Line” with a toll-free number, and the word “harem” printed in italics. I looked up at him in question.
“Someone in my office has a fuckin’ twisted sense of humor with the code words.
I’m determined to make sure these assholes are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, Lee.
If you ever need anything, if he ever needs anything…
” he said, nodding his head at Mason, “Call this line. Leave your name, and the code on the back. I will move heaven and hell to help, if I can. We really do serve and protect.”
I gave him a stiff nod and stuffed the card in my pocket. I stood and leaned hard on my cane as I made my way to the hallway.
“Oh, Lee,” he called after me, “We found these odd markings on the floor outside the motel. Strange round marks… like the shooter had been using something to help them walk… something like a cane, maybe?”
His eyes held mine and my breath stuck in my throat.
“Whoever that was might want to make sure they cleaned the blood off the bottom of their cane,” he said.
I swallowed, hard, and nodded jerkily again, then got the hell out of there. I passed Tira Graham on the way back to Mason’s room but managed to duck inside another room until she’d gone by.
I knew I had to leave Mason to his own life, now, but at least I was confident that he had someone to care for him, someone to watch over him. I had a strange certainty in my gut that he was going to be okay.
After that, of course, I’d never answered another one of those ads. No matter how willing they might seem, there would always be the specter of someone like Dreyven or Ricky in their lives.
I was still haunted by the thought of the other men I’d paid for sex.
I wondered if they were all right, or if they, too, had someone hurting them.
I worried that I'd missed the signs before, or simply not wanted to see that I was putting their lives at risk for a few moments of sexual satisfaction.
For a while, the guilt had consumed me. I’d resolved to find some way to make it up to them and to help other victims, but I didn’t know exactly how. So I started to do some research.
I found out that victims of human trafficking were often held captive by more than just visible chains.
They generally had no money, no means of transportation, no way to escape the life, even if they found the courage to try.
They might be addicted to drugs or alcohol or have their own mental health issues that could be keeping them from seeking help.
Slowly, over the weeks and months that followed, I began developing a loose network of friends and acquaintances—Uber and Lyft drivers, private drivers, chauffeurs, truckers, anyone who was willing and able to work together to get victims of human trafficking to safety.
I finally found a good use for the money Mack had left me. I was actually considering creating a non-profit foundation to support victims of human trafficking, but I didn’t know shit about public relations, marketing or anything like that, so I was limited in my scale and reach.
My contributions to date were small, a couple of hundred bucks here or there to buy gas, a hotel room, clothes, whatever someone needed to help escape the life.
Occasionally, I got taken advantage of, and only found out after the fact, but the way I figured, if even one of the people I thought I was helping made it out of the life, then it was worth every penny.
It may not have changed the world for everyone, but it changed the world for the ones I was able to help.
I’d kept track of Mason for a while via the internet. I tracked him for a few months, long enough to know that he was recovering and safe. Once he turned eighteen, though, all record of him vanished.
I figured he had moved, changed his name, or gone into some kind of witness protection program. I could have investigated further, hired a private detective, something like that, but I decided he didn’t owe me anything. Hell, I actually owed him.
So I left Mason Malone to his own life, until he had waltzed back into mine as “Mason Cameron”, and turned it upside down.
Shit. I needed to figure out what I was doing.
I got Mason into the house and tucked into bed.
It had been a bit of a struggle to get him out of the Jeep and inside, but I’d managed it with only a few choice words.
One heart-stopping moment had made me freeze.
I’d been supporting most of his weight as I struggled to get my house key in the door lock, when he’d stumbled and accidentally brushed up against me, and my traitorous dick had responded.
I bit back a groan at the heavy weight of him against my body, but forced myself to focus on getting him into my bed. Into the bed, I corrected myself. Fuck.
When I got him to the bedroom, he’d collapsed onto the bed and was out almost immediately. I shut the bedroom door behind me, and brought the rest of the luggage in.
I puttered around in my game room for a while, keeping a cautious ear out in case Mason woke in the middle of the night.
I tried sleeping on the couch – which was actually as comfortable as my bed, but no dice.
Sometime around 3 a.m. I gave up the fight and wandered into the living room.
Outside, the night was inky black, the light on the front porch the only illumination.
I grabbed some books from the coffee table and stepped outside, quietly shutting the door behind me.
I really didn’t want to frighten Mason by waking him in the middle of the night in a strange place.
The thought of him being frightened sent my heart racing.
I reasoned to myself that he had dealt with enough fear in his life, I didn’t want to add to it.
I took a seat in one of the old wooden rocking chairs on the front porch, and just listened for a while. The sound of crickets and locusts hummed through the night. I could hear the occasional owl and the flap of bat wings.
The state frowned on broad usage of insecticides this close to the park, so I'd built a couple of bat houses for the side of the cabin. I didn’t know that they really made a measurable difference in the mosquito population, but I liked seeing them fly across the moon when it was full.
This far away from city lights, the stars were like handfuls of glitter scattered against black velvet.
I decided to try reading in the vague hope of growing tired.
I looked at the books I'd grabbed and either the universe was fucking with me yet again, or my subconscious was working overtime, because I’d grabbed a copy of Mason’s most recent graphic novel.
The twins had lent it to me when they’d signed him for the event, but I’d never gotten around to reading it.
I figured this gave me the perfect chance to get to know a little bit more about the man Mason had become, so I settled in to read by the porch light. I’d assumed it would be a fast read: most comics were entertaining, but not necessarily thought provoking. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This book was not light reading. The storyline dealt with some pretty dark events affecting the main characters, and I couldn’t help but see Mason had included some autobiographical moments in the story.
The last few pages of his novel made my throat constrict.
It was fairly accurate to what I knew of Mason’s life, with a touch of fantasy added.
Instead of being attacked by his pimp, the main character had been attacked by a vicious group of mercenaries looking for treasure.
Instead of recovering for weeks in a hospital, wounds were healed by magic potions.
I read and re-read pages, trying to figure out just how much of the other parts of each was autobiographical and how much was fiction.
But it was the final pages of the last book that threw me for a loop. The eponymous “Dark Angel” showed up, with a cane in one hand, and a mystic gun in the other.