Bones of the Lost

we got Candy for our Jane Doe’s street name. Maybe Majerick for her pimp.”
    “You figure Majerick works alone, or as a handler for someone else?”
    “Magic’s too mean and too crazy to run a string. If that’s what we’re looking at.”
    I thought about Creach’s words. Young girls arriving every month.
    Arriving from where? Small towns? Middle-class burbs? Big-cityghettos? By buses? Trains? Vehicles in which they’ve thumbed free rides?
    A revolving carousel of women, moving in young and naïve, then sliding down the ladder to places like the Passion Fruit, addicted, broken, youthful optimism gone forever. It was a dispiriting vision.
    Suddenly one of Creach’s comments clicked with something D’Ostillo had said.
    “Show him Dom Rockett’s photo.”
    “Why?”
    “Will you just do it?”
    “Why the hell not.”
    On-screen, I watched the third photo slide across the table, not sure myself what reaction I hoped for.
    “Yeah. He was there.”
    “At the Passion Fruit Club.”
    “Yeah. Totally freaked the chicks out.”
    “They were afraid of him?”
    “Scared shitless.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Hell if I know.”
    Slidell placed Rockett’s picture beside Majerick’s. “Did these men know each other?”
    “Same answer.”
    Slidell flicked impatient fingers.
    “Hell if I know,” Creach repeated himself.
    “Did you ever see them talking to each other?”
    Creach shook his head.
    The monitor receded. The room around me. Facts were clicking together fast.
    Dominick Rockett frequented the Passion Fruit Club. Our Jane Doe worked at the Passion Fruit using the street name Candy. Rosalie D’Ostillo saw Candy and other girls in the Taquería Mixcoatl. The taquería was near the intersection where Candy died. D’Ostillo and Creach thought Candy and the other girls spoke Spanish. Dom Rockett was an importer, probably a smuggler, who made frequent trips to South America.
    I heard Slidell’s footsteps click the tile in Interrogation Room C. The door open, close.
    Creach began whining about his rights. His deal with Slidell. His safety.
    The video and sound cut off.
    I stood in the musty little space, a cold hollowness filling my chest.
    Dear God.
    Could that be it?

“ SUPPOSE THESE GIRLS are being trafficked.”
    Slidell’s expression was beyond dubious.
    “Human trafficking. Think about it.”
    We stood outside the homicide unit squad room. Behind us, through a doorway, stretched a labyrinth of dividers, file cabinets, and desks. A few were occupied.
    “Creach says the Bronco Club features special dancers every month. Very young girls. You think they’re all hitching rides from Iowa and Nebraska?”
    “They’re strippers. They make a few bucks, they move on.”
    “And enroll in PhD programs at Yale,” I snapped.
    “That ain’t what I meant.”
    “Consider this. Who would be well positioned to meet the demand for a constant supply of young women?”
    Slidell gave me a skeptical look.
    “Dom Rockett,” I said.
    “Just ’cause the guy smuggles dead dogs don’t mean he’d smuggle live people.”
    I listed the points that had just toggled in my brain. Candy. The Passion Fruit. Spanish. Frequent buying trips to South America.
    “And Rockett had cash to invest in S&S Enterprises. Where’d he get it?”
    “You’re saying he greases his pockets trafficking child sex slaves?”
    Easy, Brennan
.
    “I’m saying we need to consider the possibility that girls are being brought here illegally then forced to work in the sex trade.”
    “And that Rockett’s the doer.”
    “A number of factors point to him.”
    “Smuggling dead dogs is one thing. Smuggling kids is a mighty big leap.”
    “I understand that.”
    Slidell looked down at the file in his hand. Shifted his feet.
    “Majerick I could see, but that kind of operation is above his skill set. Rockett, eh?” He scrunched one side of his face and shook his head.
    I had to agree. My impression of Dom Rockett was conflicted. A scarred war hero. A man with no interest in helping ID a hit-and-run victim. I felt pity. I felt revulsion.
    “Rockett has the skill set, as you put it. And the infrastructure. The trucks, the supply routes,” I said. “Does he have the coldhearted ruthlessness to traffic helpless kids? I don’t know.”
    The callousness to kill if they rebelled? That thought was too terrible to voice.
    Two more neurons reached out.
    A plastic vial. An antique tusk.
    “Holy crap, Slidell. I just thought of something else.