Incarnate Read online

  “She just does the recruiting,” the redhead said.

  “Right,” Zack added. “For the . . . artistic videos that you shoot.” Zack took a deep breath and went back at them. “Do any of you know who that gentleman was?”

  “Albert,” the third girl said. She had been silent until now, hiding under a huge fringe of green-dyed bangs, hugging herself with skinny arms. “Albert Sullivan.”

  “You know him?” Zack said.

  “He lives in the neighborhood where I grew up,” the girl mumbled. “All us kids used to be afraid of him.”

  “Afraid of him? Why?”

  “He was mean.” The girl looked like she was on the verge of tears. “He used to yell at us if we rode our bikes down the sidewalk. We called him Peg Leg . . . like a pirate?”

  “Did he ever . . . ?”

  “He didn’t try anything with us,” the girl said quickly. “It’s not that. I just didn’t want him to recognize me, you know?”

  Zack figured he did know. These girls were young and inexperienced enough to be caught on the fine line between innocence and dangerous exploitation, but they weren’t bad kids. He felt a fresh rush of anger at Isabel Wilcox for involving them in this, but he forced himself to reserve his judgment for when he got to the source, the man responsible for setting up the whole ugly enterprise.

  Zack turned his attention back to the girls. “So, let me guess,” he sighed. “You three used to go to JCC, right? Met Izzi there?”

  “How did you know?” the blonde asked.

  “Shut up, Destiny,” the redhead said. “You don’t have to tell him anything.”

  “Come on, ladies, all I’m doing today is trying to find Izzi Wilcox. I’m not arresting any of you. But anything you can tell me about her could help. Like, for instance, how did she get you down here? Did she offer you drugs? Coerce you by force? Blackmail?”

  The redhead blinked slowly and regarded him as if he was stupid. “Uh, no, all she did was offer us money. Five-hundred-dollar bonus up front.”

  “I used to make ten dollars an hour working as a babysitter,” Destiny said. “I couldn’t pay my rent on that. I didn’t want to ask my parents for help again.”

  “Izzi was nice.” The girl with green bangs sighed. “She did my nails once.”

  “We used to talk about classes sometimes. We were both marketing majors,” Destiny said.

  “Sometimes she brought muffins.”

  Zack asked them a few more questions about the operation, Isabel, who was in charge, but the girls didn’t seem to know anything else useful. Apparently Izzi had just set up schedules for them, and they showed up, did what Tim told them to do, and got paid—simple as that. He made a point of getting their names and numbers in case he needed to follow up, and gave them all his card. “Please let me know if you think of anything at all that could help us find her, okay? And I don’t need to tell you that I don’t want to find you back down here, right?”

  Three heads bobbed in affirmation.

  “And look, I’m going to be . . . following up with Tim. There’s a limit to my generosity. If you’re smart, you’ll forget you ever came here. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” Destiny said. “Thanks.” Zack caught sight of a tear silently sliding down her fresh-scrubbed face, and quickly looked away.

  * * *

  AFTER THE GIRLS BEAT a hasty exit, Zack called for backup to process the basement and collect the evidence they’d need to lock up Olsen, and to see whether there was anything on file about Albert Sullivan. Evelyn called back almost immediately with the unsurprising news that Sullivan had quite a few complaints on record, charges that never stuck . . . plenty of people accusing him of lewd or suspicious behavior, but never anything that would hold up. Unfortunately, there were no known personal connections between the old man and Isabel Wilcox, although she and her boyfriend, Brad, were apparently Albert’s supplier for all things pornographic.

  As far as solving Izzi’s murder, Albert Sullivan was most likely a dead end.

  The evidence techs arrived on scene, and Zack was on his way up the stairs when his phone rang. He stopped mid-flight and squinted at the screen. Holt.

  “Where are you?” Holt demanded almost before Zack could get in a hello. “I need you to meet me at the Hascalls’.”

  “What’s going on?” Zack said, instantly on alert.

  “Might be nothing. Got a couple of calls from neighbors who saw Scarlett wandering around on the street this morning. One old lady said she looked like she was in a daze, like she’d been out all night.”

  “Old lady, huh,” Zack said. The problem with some of the elderly citizens who called in was that their reports were often unreliable, details conjured from their fears and poor vision rather than reality.

  “Yeah, I know. But we had another report that she walked right in front of a car, nearly got herself killed—and that caller said she was wearing a hot-pink sweatshirt. Just like the girl the witnesses saw breaking into Brad Chaplin’s place.”

  “Hang on,” Zack said. “What break-in? I’ve been down in a basement for the last hour.”

  Holt quickly filled him in. “Chaplin’s apartment got broken into last night. He came in this morning to file a complaint. He says it was Scarlett Hascall.”

  Zack’s mind raced, trying to process this new information. As far as he knew, there was no established connection between Chaplin and Scarlett. “How does he know her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. He says she came at him. Smashed up some stuff, tried to beat the crap out of him, then just took off. I’m about three minutes away from the Hascall place—how fast can you get there?”

  “Gimme ten,” Zack said and hung up, sprinting up the rest of the stairs.

  He made it in eight. He could see Holt’s flashers going from two blocks away; he spotted the motley collection of lookie-loos in front of the house seconds later. He tapped the siren to get the crowd to move back so he could park behind Holt’s SUV, but the oglers quickly closed in again.

  “Step back, step back,” he yelled as he jogged for the front door. Someone grabbed his arm, and he instinctively spun into a ready stance, one arm blocking any potential attack, the other on his gun, when he recognized Brad Chaplin.

  “She’s gonna run,” Brad yelled, apparently undaunted by the fact that Zack was poised to draw his weapon. “You need to lock her up!”

  The front door flew open and Scarlett came tearing out, hair flying, too-long sleeves flapping over her wrists. Zack shot out a hand and grabbed a fistful of pink sweatshirt; the girl tripped over her own feet and went down like a bag of bricks.

  Holt came lumbering out of the house, his face flushed, Peter Hascall on his heels.

  “I told you,” Brad Chaplin said disgustedly. “Told the chief, too, but he wouldn’t get off his fat ass and do anything about it.”

  “Watch your mouth, boy,” Holt said. “One more outburst from you and you can spend the rest of the day as a guest of the town, scrubbing out the bathrooms with a toothbrush.”

  Zack stifled a grin, having suffered the same threat from Holt during his own teenage years. He bent down and offered Scarlett a hand, holding tightly so she couldn’t wrestle out of his grip. “Convince me you’re not going to run again, or I’m putting the cuffs on you.”

  “Whatever,” Scarlett mumbled. It looked like only her pride was injured, but Zack didn’t miss the way she tried to evade the gawking neighbors by edging behind him.

  “Tell you what, how about we talk inside,” he suggested, doing his best to ignore his feelings of sympathy and concern for the scrawny teen, who looked more mortified than dangerous.

  “Haven’t you bothered us enough for one day?” Peter Hascall asked angrily. He was breathing as heavily as Holt, but from fear and anger. “If you want to pick on someone, how about that thug standing on my lawn?”

  Brad cursed under his breath and kicked at the matted grass, as another cruiser rolled up to the house, and two m
ore officers got out. Holt motioned to them to deal with the onlookers, and within moments the crowd had dispersed, leaving just Brad and the Hascalls.

  “Take her inside,” Holt told Peter. “We’ll be in momentarily. Scarlett, we’re not finished here, you understand me?”

  “She isn’t—” Peter began.

  “Enough, Peter,” Holt said firmly. “Come on, now. You know I’m right—let us do this by the books, and if everything Scarlett says checks out, she doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

  Hascall didn’t look convinced, and he gave Brad a murderous look before ushering his daughter into the house.

  “I told you we’d handle this,” Holt said, folding his arms over his chest. “So I’d like to know exactly what business you’ve got coming over here.”

  “That crazy bitch tried to kill me!” Brad said, his voice taking on a distinctly whiny tone.

  “So you said, already. Head home, and we’ll call you if we need you.”

  “I’m not leaving until I’m sure you’re going to arrest her,” Brad sputtered.

  “I think you’re under the mistaken impression that your opinion matters,” Zack said, stepping between Chaplin and the chief. “If you behave, you can wait on the other side of the street like everyone else. Otherwise . . .” He let his words hang.

  Brad wavered for a moment before giving up and trudging away from the house.

  “Thanks,” Holt said. “That one’s like a gnat. Annoying, but almost impossible to smack down.”

  “So what’s Scarlett’s story?”

  Holt shrugged. “She isn’t exactly denying that she left the house this morning, but now she’s claiming she doesn’t remember any of it. Tell you what—how about you give it a try with her? Maybe you can get her to open up.”

  Zack led the way into the house. The scent of coffee and cinnamon wafted in from the kitchen, where Scarlett was huddled on a kitchen chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, rocking rhythmically with her eyes closed as her father made a fresh pot of coffee. Zack sat down cautiously across from her while Holt retreated to lean against the kitchen counter.

  “Scarlett,” Zack said softly, not wanting to spook her.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she gazed up at him with eyes wide with fear. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “What’s happening to me. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” She buried her face in her hands, and Zack wondered if she was playing him. If so, she was a hell of an actor. Her thin frame trembled with the force of her sobs.

  “What do you think is happening to you, Scarlett?”

  “I don’t know!” she said in a strangled voice. She looked at him through a tangle of overgrown hair. “It’s like—it’s like something has taken over my mind. And not just my mind, but . . . I mean, if I’m doing things I can’t remember all the time, it’s like it has control of my body, too, you know?”

  Zack shook his head, resisting the pull of sympathy for the distraught girl. Something wasn’t right here.

  “She was asleep at eleven last night,” Hascall said tensely. “In her bed.”

  Zack registered the fear and exhaustion in the man’s eyes. He was clearly worried about his daughter. Worried enough to lie to give her an alibi?

  “Pete, I hate to do this now, but I gotta ask you some questions.” Holt clapped a meaty hand to the other man’s shoulder. “Do you know why Scarlett would go over to Brad Chaplin’s? She busted up his place pretty bad, plus he’s saying she attacked him—though it doesn’t appear she did all that much damage.”

  Hascall stared into his coffee cup. “No,” he said after a moment. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  Holt clucked sympathetically but left his hand where it was. “We have multiple witnesses saying they saw a girl of her description in his neighborhood in the early hours of the morning.”

  Hascall shook his head, his face drained of color. “She . . . I don’t know. She’s been getting worse. This new doctor claims she’s got—” He glanced at his daughter, and stopped himself. “That she’s got some sort of multiple personalities, that some of ’em could have violent tendencies. But I don’t think . . . Besides, she was home all night.”

  He wiped a hand across his brow, shaking his head. Holt squeezed his shoulder supportively. “You let us deal with Chaplin. We just have to ask Scarlett a few questions, and then we’ll have to wait to see if Chaplin presses charges. Zack, now that things are under control here, why don’t you go take a crack at Chaplin. Get him talking, see if you can sort him out.”

  Zack looked from Holt to Hascall. Evidently the chief felt they weren’t going to get anything further out of Scarlett, and Zack had to admit that Holt was doing a better job of keeping Hascall’s temper under control than he could. “Got it.”

  Brad was nowhere to be seen among the dwindling crowd. Zack made a few inquiries, but no one seemed to know where he went. He was climbing into his car to drive to Brad’s apartment when Holt came out of the house. “Hang on a sec, son,” he called.

  Zack rested his arm on the driver’s-side window and waited for Holt to walk over and duck down to his window.

  “Let me know what Chaplin has to say,” he said. “If I were you, I’d encourage him to drop this.”

  “How long you and Pete Hascall been friends?” Zack probed, already knowing the answer. “Any chance you’re letting that cloud your judgment?”

  Holt laughed. “Hell, I’m friends with just about eighty percent of the folks in this town,” he said. “And the rest of ’em either just moved here, or they’ve got good reason not to like me. But don’t worry, I won’t go easy on the girl because of that. It’s just that Brad . . . well, some people just have it coming. Don’t know many young men more in need of a beating.” Holt shrugged. “Oh, and hey, I forgot to tell you . . . guess who called me this morning to let me know he was getting crank calls and what was I going to do about it?”

  Zack raised his eyebrows. “No idea . . .”

  “Don Wilcox. Isabel Wilcox’s dad.” Holt paused for a moment to let that sink in. “So I looked up the number. Guess who called over there and got him all riled up, pretending to be Izzi, begging him to come help her?”

  Uneasiness spread through Zack. “Who?”

  “The good doctor,” Holt said, leaning down so he could look Zack square in the face. “None other than Dr. Kim Patterson herself.”

  Interesting. One more unexpected turn in the very twisted path that this case was taking. “Okay, I’ll go talk to her about that later today. And I’ll have Evelyn pull her call records,” Zack said, putting the car in drive. “Right now I want to go finish up with our boy. Can’t have him sulking because he got his feelings hurt.”

  * * *

  CHAPLIN LIVED IN A nondescript town house with a dead potted plant on the porch. Zack peered through the screen door and found Chaplin sitting in a large leather recliner watching a daytime talk show and drinking a Red Bull.

  “Nice place you have here,” Zack commented, noting that the only furniture other than the recliner and a cheap pressboard media stand was a dinette set, a worn couch, and a coffee table. If Chaplin was turning a healthy profit from his various enterprises, he wasn’t spending it on home decor.

  “Fuck off,” Chaplin muttered, long red scratches running the length of his neck. His lip was swollen and a purple bruise was blooming over his left eye.

  Zack snorted and opened the door a crack. “Got beat up by a teenage girl? Come on, Chaplin, you can do better than that. Maybe we could start with people you might have come in contact with through your business.” He put extra emphasis on the last word, to make it clear he wasn’t talking about the docks.

  For the next ten minutes, he came at Chaplin from every angle he could think of, trying to convince him to reveal something about his porn-distribution ring, anything that could give some leads about Isabel, but Chaplin clammed up and resorted to one-syllable res
ponses interspersed with moaning about the pain he was in, until Zack couldn’t take it anymore.

  “So you’re sticking to your story—you’re saying this girl, who you’ve got at least six inches and fifty pounds on, came over here and beat the shit out of you for no reason at all.”

  Brad glared at him for a long moment, and Zack knew there was something he was holding back.

  “She must have had a reason,” he tried. “What was it, Brad? You stiff her on a drug buy? Tried to force her to join your little porn circus? Come on, what was it?”

  “It wasn’t anything like that,” Brad muttered.

  Bingo. Zack knew he was close, and shifted his tone to suggest he was more sympathetic to Brad’s situation. “Look, I know she’s unstable,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of messed-up, freaky chicks in my time, and that one . . .” He tapped his forehead.

  “It was just one time,” Brad said. “And I didn’t realize what she was like. She came on strong, you know? It was, like, zero to sixty with her. One minute it’s ‘Hi, how you doing,’ and the next minute she’s got her hand down my pants.”

  Zack raised his eyebrows. “You’re saying . . . you slept with Scarlett Hascall?”

  “One time,” Chaplin repeated. “And it was a long time ago.”

  “She’s nineteen. A long time ago, like before she was legal?”

  “Naw, just after that.” Brad avoided eye contact, placing the Red Bull against his swollen eye.

  Zack realized that he was going to lose Brad if he continued down this road. He forced a smile. “Okay, so a while back, you and Scarlett hook up. And, what, she finds out about your . . . ‘relationship’ with Cherise and Starlatta?”

  Chaplin was already shaking his head. “It wasn’t some jealous ex-girlfriend rage thing. I’ve never seen a girl get like this. She didn’t seem . . . like herself at all. And the most fucked-up thing was, she went psycho when I wouldn’t call her Izzi.” He shook his head, a look of genuine disgust on his face. “Isabel Wilcox. Something is clearly not right with that girl.”