37
ANSON
I found Paul and Ruddy hovering around a small television in the cramped guard shack in the parking lot outside the Market. The brown minivan we’d stolen back at the hospital was long gone, and I had yet to meet the man named Paco who apparently disposed of it.
Ruddy’s red braids were tied up in a ponytail at the back of his head.
The silver nose hoop was gone, and I was thankful for that.
I had a hard time talking to him without staring at it.
He had one hand in a bag of chips, while the other was working the controls on the parking lot’s video recorder.
When he saw me, he gave me a crooked grin. “Ah, there’s Twill’s boyfriend.”
“Twill’s . . .” I stammered. “I’m not her boyfriend.”
From the stool beside him, Paul rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Romeo. The two of you got the whole place talking with your sneaking off and whatnot.”
Ruddy nodded. “It’s the whatnots that get you. I hear she’s good at whatnots.”
I’d spent enough time with Paul to know when he was trying to get a rise out of me, and this clicked as one of those times. He’d managed to rope in Ruddy, too. I wasn’t about to take the bait, so I pointed at the television and changed the subject. “What did you find?”
Paul held the palm of his hand out to Ruddy. “I told you he’d go with denial. Pay up.”
Ruddy scooped some chips from the bag and dropped them in Paul’s hand. “Twill is a stone-cold smoking hot babe with skills. Wouldn’t catch me hiding, I’d own that, but whatever.”
“True dat,” Paul said.
Paul had never said “true dat” in his entire life. Ruddy was rubbing off on him.
“What did you find?” I repeated, a little firmer this time.
“Okay,” Ruddy said. “All business. I get it.” He twisted back around to the television, pressed rewind on the recorder, and watched the timestamp in the bottom right.
When it reached whatever he was searching for, he clicked the stop button.
“Before I show you this, there are a few things you need to know. One VHS tape holds about thirty-two hours of footage. When it reaches the end, it rewinds and records over whatever was already on there.”
I didn’t have to do the math to know that was a problem. Andy had been missing for several days before his body turned up—well over thirty-two hours. “So even if he was taken from that corner, the footage is gone.”
“Yeah. I’m guessing you and your new girlfriend got your thief on about a day too late.”
My stomach sank. “So we’ve got nothing.”
The grin returned to Ruddy’s face. “Oh, you got something. Just not the something you expected.”
As Ruddy clicked play, Paul tapped out a drumroll with his index fingers on the shelf at his side.
The television monitor lit up with a clear shot of the street and sidewalk. It caught some of the homeless camp underneath the dry cleaner’s awning, but not all. I could make out the corner of Andy’s tent, but not the flap leading inside.
“Watch the street,” Paul instructed.
I leaned in closer. The timestamp read 1:38 in the morning.
There was some traffic, but not much. The sidewalk appeared to be deserted, then someone walked across the frame.
A girl, maybe sixteen. She wore a white button-down shirt, a jean skirt, and black heels.
Her shirt was tied at the bottom, revealing her bare midriff.
She crossed from one side of the camera’s view to the other and vanished from the sidewalk.
A moment later, she was back, walking in the opposite direction.
I was still very new to this world, but I recognized a working girl.
“Any idea who she is?”
Ruddy tapped pause. “I know all the girls who work through the Quick and I’ve never seen her.
I’m guessing she’s new in town. She’s far too pretty to be walking the streets.
She should be with one of the escort services.
The fact that she is walking the streets tells me she hasn’t been here long enough to learn the players. ” He pressed play again.
“Here we go,” Paul said softly.
A moment later, a black SUV pulled to a stop at the edge of the sidewalk.
The vehicle’s hazard lights started to flash.
An average-sized man got out of the driver’s side door on the far side of the SUV and came around to the back.
He was wearing a dark baseball cap, darker sweatshirt, and jeans.
The cap was pulled low, blocking views of his face.
His hair was tucked under; I couldn’t even make out the color.
This guy knew how to hide. He opened the SUV’s back door, reached inside, and pulled out a large bundle.
It took me a moment to realize it was a sleeping bag, and judging by the size and apparent weight of it, someone was inside.
He positioned the heavy bundle on his shoulder, walked it across the sidewalk, and set it down in the homeless encampment, right outside the flap to Andy’s tent.
“Holy . . .” The word slipped from my lips, but I cut it off before I uttered what wanted to come out next—the kind of word Father would scold me for using.
Ruddy paused the tape again. “Crazy, right?”
My heart was racing. “Twill and I stepped right over that sleeping bag when we went to search Andy’s tent. We could tell someone was in it, but I just assumed they were sleeping.”
“I don’t think they’re sleeping,” Paul said. “That looked a lot like dead weight.”
I suppose whoever was in the bag could have been drugged, but thinking back on it, I didn’t notice any movement. No sounds. If there had been life in that bag, I didn’t notice it. We were watching someone dump a body.
“There’s more,” Ruddy said, clicking play again.
What happened next happened quickly. The man returned to the back of the SUV and stood there for a second.
The girl returned. She walked up to him, and he said something to her.
She nodded and pointed in the opposite direction down the street, like she was giving him directions to something or someplace.
The man’s hand shot out, grabbed her by the back of the head, and slammed her hard against the frame of the SUV.
Before she could collapse, he had his arms around her, and in one fluid motion, she was in the back of the SUV.
He closed the door, quickly went around to the driver’s side, and got in. A second later, the SUV sped away.
Ruddy clicked stop.
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah,” Paul echoed. “Because of the angle, you can’t see the license plate. We think it’s a Toyota Highlander. Oh, and I made this.”
Paul handed me a sketch of the girl.
It was damn good.
“I was thinking we could show that around the Quick. Maybe someone knows who she is.”
“Good idea.” I pocketed the drawing. “That reminds me. Do you think you can draw Van Man? Maybe we can figure out who he is, too.”
“One step ahead of you, bro.” He plucked a sketchpad from the shelf at his side and began flipping back through the pages.
Although he’d just started the pad when we arrived at the Quick, he already had several dozen new images for his comic, The Misadventures of Maybelle Markel.
He thumbed by those and found a nearly perfect likeness of Van Man.
“I drew it yesterday. I planned to show it to Stash.” He tore the page out and handed it to me.
“Probably better you or Vincent give it to him. I don’t think he likes me much. ”
“Why not?”
Paul’s face flushed red. “There was a coed bathroom incident.”
Ruddy suppressed a smile. “Apparently, Paul spent an unusual amount of time in the showers yesterday and a couple of the girls lodged complaints.”
“I’m a clean, hygienic person. I make no apologies for the amount of time necessary to remain in such a state.”
“You’re a pervert who got caught getting your perv on.” Ruddy clicked eject on the recorder and handed me the tape. “You need to give this to Stash, too.”