A/N: January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, which I discovered when doing some research on the website for The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Chapter Forty Four:
Sunday, November 2, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA – Cedars Sinai
Hours had passed since Inez left Enos, Soonie and Daisy in the hospital room with nothing to do but wait. The gravity of those hours eclipsed anything either Soonie or Daisy wanted or needed to know from Enos or each other. They had, in fact, forged an unspoken bond, however tenuous or temporary it might be, simply out of their mutual need to protect him with whatever means were within their power. Even if that was limited to relieving any additional pressure on him. They had worked together to keep him calm while they waited.
It was after Inez had not called within twenty minutes of leaving to say it was a false alarm that he knew something was wrong. After she didn't answer her mobile phone, he knew something had happened. And the longer the wait became, the more agitated he became. It was only after the nurse disconnected the line from the wall jack and left with the phone that he settled into the fidgety quiet of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
As hopeful and optimistic as he always tried to be, his thoughts were filled with years of experience that weighed him down with probabilities he couldn't ignore. If nothing was wrong, Inez, or Kate, would have called him immediately. If Inez had simply found her not at home but with nothing to explain it, she would have called him back within half an hour at the most. By the time the nurse took the phone, more than forty minutes had passed.
He knew she was investigating a crime scene.
Sunday, November 2, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA, off Wilshire Blvd.
The Crime Scene Unit van was backed up to the entrance of 131 North Hamilton, surrounded by four other patrol units, a gray Crown Vic and a silver F150. Yellow crime scene tape encircled the entrance, portable lighting fixtures, the vehicles and LAPD officers, uniformed and plain clothes, entering and exiting.
The building had three apartments on the ground floor and three floors above them exclusive to commercial rental with a separate access. Outside the cordoned off section of the street, neighbors in units A and C wanted to know when they could get back into their apartments and two news vans had arrived. Being a little after midnight, there were only a few other looky-loos around to gawk at the activity. That would inevitably come by daylight along with more news vans, cameras and reporters - the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Inside Apartment B, the technicians from forensics were looking for any trace evidence; latent fingerprints, DNA, and blood spatter. Anything that could help determine the who, and the when, of what happened in that apartment that had terminated in the crime scene before them.
Gloved in light blue vinyl, Detective Gordon Thompson pressed the button to review messages on the answer machine and found five that had not been cleared - three he had expected from Inez De Pina and two left by Detective Enos Strate. Trying to find clues to point to the why, he listened to the two messages left by Strate three times, hoping to pick up on anything that might have prompted his straight-arrow, would-be partner to let one of the women in his life go to San Francisco alone, put the other one on a plane back to Georgia, and head for Kate Broussard's apartment in the middle of the night.
The first message said, "Kate, just want to let you know I'm leavin' the airport. I should be there in about half an hour."
The second message said, "Kate." [A pause] "Kate, are you there? Pick up if you're there. Please pick up…..."
He didn't know Strate as well as Inez and thought he might be reading more into the tone of his voice than there actually was.
He called her over and re-played the messages. More than how E had said the words, the seven-second pause at the end of the second message confirmed it for Inez. It was the silence of sudden realization - and fear.
"Time stamp on the first message is close to the time he must have left the airport and the time stamp on the second message," Thompson said, "matches the information we finally got an hour ago from the employee that was on the night shift at the store when..."
"He called from the prepaid phone he bought. Must have been why he stopped," Inez said, tracing the timeline again in her head. Would have taken him fifteen minutes or so to purchase the phone and then call Kate… "So. Where is the phone?"
"Uniforms searched the parking lot three times and found nothing but the wallet and the debris, which they sent to forensics. They haven't called to say they found…"
Inez didn't have to say it. Thompson put his notebook in his pocket. "I'm all over it."
Sunday, November 2, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA – Cedars Sinai
She returned to the hospital and, reaching the door to E's room, she asked Officer Sanchez, "He been giving you any grief?"
"Supervising nurse took the bedside phone early on. She threatened to sedate him if he didn't settle down and stop making his blood pressure go up. Had two other nurses with her. Even looked to me like she wasn't bluffing. It's been quiet as a tomb in there ever since."
Inez had guessed as much when she didn't get another phone call. "Ms. Mun and Ms. Duke still in there?" she asked, knowing the answer. She hadn't seen them in the waiting room when she passed. Officer Sanchez confirmed it with a nod and after she took a second to expel a long breath, opened the door.
"Could you give us the room, please?" she asked, avoiding eye contact with E and directing her attention to Soonie and Daisy. But she might as well have looked at E directly. He could read her like a book sideways.
After they were in the room alone, she stood on the left side of the bed, just out of reach. She knew that any closer might mean the difference between E being despondent and losing it altogether.
Clearly, and with professional detachment, she gave him a blow by blow description of what they had found at Kate's apartment, everything they knew so far, and action they had already taken.
"I'm sorry, E. I wish I could have brought better news."
It was the confirmation and the guilt that, if he could just have made himself remember, he might have been able help Kate, stopped anything from happening to her, or saved her from it that broke him down.
Inez found the atmosphere in the waiting room to be somewhat different than the one she had left several hours earlier.
To the somber question on both their faces, Inez said, "He let the nurse give him a light sedative, enough to make him sleep for a few hours. At least until we know more. I'll tell you what I can and then we need to talk logistics."
'E,' she thought, 'was a good enough cop to know that he couldn't be of any help if he collapsed.' He could only be released later today if he minded his P's and Q's and followed doctor's orders for the next eight hours.
Neither Soonie nor Daisy said a word and sat in pensive silence while she gave them an overview.
Arriving at Kate's apartment building, Inez met with the uniformed patrol officers who had arrived only a minute or two before. After getting no answer at the keyless entry door, and not having the code, she rang the buzzers of the other two tenants and identified herself to gain entry to the interior of the building.
There was no super or manager in residence to give them access. When several knocks and clearly identifying themselves did not provide any response, Inez cited 'reasonable grounds' for the record and instructed the officers to force the door. Once in, it was apparent there had been a struggle violent enough to have caused furniture to be knocked over, glass to be broken, and blood spatter visible on the couch where Inez had sat five months earlier.
But Kate Broussard was nowhere to be found. The door had not been forced prior to their arrival. And no one in the other apartments had heard or seen a thing out of the ordinary.
Kate had disappeared and was likely injured, probably seriously.
None of them wanted to take their thoughts to a place that made her dead.