Chapter Seven #2
I didn't even know who these people were associated with.
I didn't know their code. I didn't know if they were the types with morals.
Of sorts. The kind who might kidnap to make a point, but wouldn't hurt the women.
Or if they were the worse sort, the more common sort, the ones who would take the opportunity to do whatever they wanted to the women they had in their custody.
My stomach twisted, bile rising up my throat at the idea.
It was useless to drive around.
If I wanted to find her, I had to find Harry.
If I wanted to find Harry, I needed to go back to his place, look for anything I might have overlooked before.
Records, receipts.
I had to pore over them, find if there was any direction in particular he went in. For vacations. Or, more likely, hideaways from his problems.
Harry's place was what you might think a guy who spent his life shirking his responsibilities, spitting on his family legacy, and likely never getting laid —ever— looked like.
It was small and sparse, the living room dominated by a hideous faux leather lounge chair flanked at one side with a rickety table, the other with a giant Igloo cooler.
Because he was too lazy to get up to get another drink when he ran out.
The TV was respectably large, if a few years old.
The kitchen had a pile of takeaway napkins instead of dish rags or paper towels.
The bedroom had a queen bed, mismatching sheets and blankets twisted and smelling of unwashed flesh.
There was nothing soft, nothing to warm the place up. No air fresheners to make it smell less like armpits, feet, and unwashed clothes.
There was nothing in the living or kitchen, sending me into the only real room left, tearing through is closet, his dressers, feeling for possible stashes under his floorboards.
It was only then, when I was leaning down to put my ear to a board to tap on it that I saw it.
A small black box like one sneakers had come in at one time, pressed all the way up toward the head of the bed, in the middle of it, out of sight unless you were at the exact angle that I was.
Yanking the bed from the wall, I reached for it with hands that maybe weren't as steady as they should have been, denoting my personal connection to the case, something that—ordinarily—I would have said made me the worst possible person to handle the case.
But right then, feeling the need to find her coursing through my veins, I knew there was no one better for the job than me.
Throwing off the lid, I found what I had been looking for. Receipts. Scribbled notes.
And something that made it all fall into place.
Everything.
Why the store was starting to crumble.
Why he was missing so much that Savea had to work as much as she did.
Why men were beating him.
Why he was running.
A simple casino token.
Harry was a gambler.
I flipped the token back over, seeing the name printed there.
Sands.
And in this part of the country, that meant one thing.
Pennsylvania.
Bethlehem, to be exact.
And because if you knew one gambler, you knew them all, I knew that was exactly where I could find him. Trying to win back the money he needed to pay off his debtors. Trying to use his vice to pay his dues, sure he was one hand, one deal away from fortune.
Shoving the box away, I tore back through his house, jumping in my car, trying to mentally prepare myself for an hour and a half ride, trying to focus on the case, not let my mind wander back.
To what might be happening to her.
To what she must be thinking.
To if she blamed me for it.
Shaking my head, knowing it wasn't going to help if I let myself go there, I put my phone on speaker, called Nixon, demanded updates from his end.
Lloyd had been persuaded to put a BOLO out even though there was no solid evidence of her being kidnapped, no eye witness, just a little speck of dried blood on the coffee table and a ringing alarm to go by.
Relieved that there were going to do something, not just sit on their hands until she was technically missing—a full twenty-four hours from now—I pushed past the speed limit on my way out of state, rage pulsating off every nerve ending, making me feel hot, itchy, impatient every time I had to slow, every time there was a delay.
I got to the parking lot of Sands an hour and forty minutes later, not bothering to go into the trunk to grab a gun, a weapon of any kind.
I didn't need it.
I was pissed enough to beat what I needed out of him with my bare hands.
I had never been violent. Things needed to happen sometimes in life, in my line of work. Violence transpired. But it was never something I enjoyed, something I instigated. I just reacted, handled myself, subdued the person I needed to, brought them to the proper authorities to handle.
I didn't exact justice.
That wasn't my job.
Except this time, it was.
Because this time, it was Savea.
Sands was about what you expect from a casino, everything in reds and greens and neon that looked exciting at night, but garish in the daytime even though there was no natural light to speak of inside, no clocks, no nothing to let you know what time of day it was, how much of your life, of your soul you lost at those tables or at the machines.
Inside, the slots were set up in a sort of circle pattern that backed up to the live dealer tables.
It was sparse, but not empty. Which was somewhat sad given the time of day.
Sure, maybe some of these people were here on a vacation for a special occasion. But if I was a betting man—and I wasn’t—I would put my money on most of them being like Harry—people who simply couldn't stay away.
Ignoring the slots—and the small group of people scattered around sitting at them- I made my way toward the back.
I doubted Harry was a slots guy.
Serious addictions like his had to be spoke of games he felt like he could win if he was just smart enough, just lucky enough, despite everything and everyone telling you that there was almost no beating the dealer, that the odds were stacked unfairly against you the moment you walked in the door, that the house, sooner or later, always wins.
Blackjack.
Craps.
Poker.
It was pathetic, really, how predictable he was in the end, how predictable all people were most of the time.
Because all it took was one sweep of the tables to find him sitting there next to a white-haired man in a nice suit, looking like a businessman just skipping out of the office for a quick hand or two and some lunch before heading back.
Harry's shoulders slumped, making his skinny frame look positively gaunt, his black shirt wrinkled, turned half gray with one-too-many washings.
His scruff was rough, heavy, eyes swollen, sunken, his stack of chips pointing to a losing streak.
I couldn't cause a scene.
No matter my reason—and kidnapping of an innocent woman was certainly a good one, all things said—casino security was notoriously strict, no-nonsense. They didn't want to hear your excuses or your sob story. If you started shit, you were out on your ass. Case closed.
And I couldn't be getting kicked out.
I needed Harry to come with me. As close to willingly as possible. At least until we were outside the front doors. And then, well, all bets were off.
I moved over to the slots, pretending to be playing, keeping an eye, occasionally shooting off a text to Nixon, getting one from Rush who said he had taken care of the shop, that he would be heading back after he picked up some lettuce, carrots, and apples, head back later to give all the animals who could have some a snack, wait for the parrot people to show up to claim their pet.
A little relieved by that—knowing Savea would worry herself sick about it, yes, even in a life-or-death situation, I tucked my phone away as I caught movement from the corner of my eye, seeing Harry stand, slipping what was left of his chips—something that seemed like two-hundred bucks tops—into his pocket, shoulders slumped forward, defeated.
Not enough, of course.
He would want to show up later, try again, maybe gain some false confidence by winning a hand or two.
Want.
He would want to do that.
But I didn't give a shit what he wanted.
Shaking my head at the machine like I had sunk as much into it as I was willing to, playing it up for the hundreds of cameras I knew were catching my image right about then, I got up, following Harry outside at an inconspicuous distance, not surprised to find he wasn't staying at the hotel above the casino, knowing the rooms went for over a hundred even on weeknights, and that Harry didn't have that kind of money.
He was likely staying in some roach-infested place off the highway where only truckers and men cheating on their wives with pros would ever use.
He wouldn't make it back there, of course.
This was something he learned once he had turned off down a quiet side street, completely unaware of my presence despite gaining on him steadily as we moved.
My hand reached out, snagging the back of his shirt.
The anger, it seemed, had not cooled simply thanks to the passing of time.
It was as hot now, as raging as it had been the moment I knew Savea had been taken.
And this shithead was the reason for that.
So I didn't just grab him, drag him with me.
No.
I did something that—had you asked me hours before if I was capable of, I would have never said yes.
I dragged him backward, pulling away his balance, hearing the intake of his breath before I shoved him forward, slamming his head against the side of an unyielding brick building.
The crack was a sickening sound that only managed to fill me with a perverse satisfaction.
"Augh," Harry grunted
To his credit, of which he had shamefully little, he didn't scream, beg, cry. Many men would, men who ordinarily didn't think they were capable of such things. Violence, true, unexpected, street violence could show you just how cowardly you truly were.
As it turned out, Harry was made of stronger stuff than I had given him credit for.