DISCLAIMER: I don't own them, I'm not making any money from them, blah blah blah.
For the second day running, Sara slept badly. She awoke more than once with images of Brenda Collins clear in her mind and a craving for alcohol throughout her body. Each time she lay on her back in bed, trying to focus on nothing but controlling her breathing and willing away the images and the cravings.
As she lay awake she heard the sounds of traffic on the road outside somewhere at the back of her mind. The idea of normal people going about normal lives had always seemed either comforting or insulting, but right now the idea that there were hundreds of thousands of people out there with lives of their own just seemed to emphasise how very alone she was.
Going back to her own place after shift had been a defiant gesture of independence. After all, she had an apartment of her own and she was a grown woman. She didn't need someone to hold her as she slept or to worry over her every extreme emotion.
Of course, it was certainly nice, but -
Sara rolled over onto her stomach and gathered up one of the pillows. It was stupid that she should be so lonely and absolutely ridiculous that a simple case should be bothering her so much. She'd known Brenda Collins for all of about a day - she should have been no different to any other victim.
Stupid.
Sara tightened her grip on the pillow a little.
Greg was watching her a little too closely. Honestly, he was almost as bad as Nick when it came to this caring too much, and being horribly obvious with it. Anyone who didn't know them would have assumed Greg was either her boyfriend or her brother. As far as Sara was concerned, she had a boyfriend who was officious enough as it was, and she didn't need another brother. Scott had a tendency to send worried emails from New York, as if she was still ten years old.
What was it with the men in her life? Why did none of them believe she was capable of looking after herself?
"Sara. Greg." Brass put his head around the doorway of the room where they were laying out theories as to how Brenda had ended up in the alleyway. "We've found a woman who volunteers at a soup kitchen at the Episcopal church on Brown Street who thinks she could recognise our street kids - if we're in luck we might be able to figure out if Brenda was part of that big group."
Sara felt a thrill of excitement. "She's willing to ID them?"
Brass gave one of his half smiles. "We've got a lot of photos of missing kids to show her. You two coming?"
Sara was already on her feet. "Yes." Any information this woman could give them was better than the nothing they seemed to have at the moment.
Denise Ortega was a tall, solemn, tired looking woman who met Sara, Greg and Brass at the doorway of the Episcopal church's drop-in centre. The last of the people who'd come in for a free evening meal had drifted back to the streets, and a few volunteers were wiping down the long formica tables. The room smelt of chicken soup and disinfectant, and the bright lights were harsh. It was, Sara thought, a little institutional for a refuge. For a split second, she seemed to picture Brenda sitting at one of the tables.
After a few formalities, Brass dropped the folder of photos on the table. He extracted the first one and handed it to Mrs Ortega. "Do you recognise this girl?"
Mrs Ortega nodded. "That's Blondie. Her hair's grown since then, and she's lost weight - but I suppose she was always a skinny kid. I - I suppose the kid you've got is definitely her?"
Greg nodded. "DNA confirms it."
Mrs Ortega put the photo on the table and gazed at it. "Poor kid."
"Did you know her well?" Brass asked.
"I try to keep tabs on them all, but they're so defensive. They don't let people get close easily. I like - liked - her, though. Some of the kids are really rude, really abrasive, but Blondie was quiet. She'd take no crap from the others, though."
"Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead?"
"No." Mrs Ortega shook her head. "Who would want to kill a kid? Well, obviously someone did, but - no. I have no idea."
"All right." Brass opened the folder again. "These photos are from the missing person's database. They're kids aged between eight and sixteen who've disappeared from Clark County in the last few years. I want you to look at them and see if you recognise any of them."
There was silence in the long room as Mrs Ortega looked through the photographs, studying the face of each child. The volunteers had finished with the tables, and a few voices drifted in from the kitchen to the accompaniment of the sounds of dishwashing.
"No," said Mrs Ortega, finally, tucking the photos back into the folder and handing it to Brass. "None of them. Of course, they've probably changed like Blondie did, but none of them even look familiar. Their poor families."
"So... where did the kids Brenda hung out with come from?" Greg asked, looking from Brass to Sara to Mrs Ortega.
Sara shrugged. "Kids that haven't been reported missing, and kids that've come from outside of Clark County who've made it to Vegas somehow. Bright lights, excitement - they probably think it's better than small town Nevada or wherever they came from."
"Mrs Ortega, do you know where we could find these kids? We've got PD keeping an eye out for them, but they're not at the old factory and we can't find them."
Mrs Ortega shook her head. "Raf and Petey - they're the leaders - they were pretty careful about their security. We always thought they had another hideout, because everyone knows about the factory and Raf doesn't like people to know those things about his kids. They haven't been in since the night Blondie died."
"Was she with them then?"
"I wasn't here that night, but Lara mentioned they'd been in when we heard about Blondie. Lara!"
Lara was a small, red-headed woman who emerged from the kitchen with a large pot in one hand and a dishcloth in the other. According to Lara, who'd been "thinking pretty hard about it", Brenda hadn't been in with the group the night she died. "I asked Angel and the other girl where she was - there were three of them that were usually together, Blondie and Angel and another girl - she never told me her name. But I asked them, and the other girl said she didn't know, and they got their dinner. We can't chase the kids, if they don't turn up there's nothing we can do."
Out of the corner of her eye, Sara noticed Brass making a note of the name 'Angel' besides those of Raf and Petey. She sighed, feeling that it was probably going to be another dead end. Even if they knew who Angel was, didn't mean they were going to be able to track her down.
Sara, Brass and Greg left the drop-in center with a few precious clues and a lot more questions. Brenda hadn't gone for dinner with the other kids - why? Where had she been? Was her absence directly linked to her death? Where were the kids, and what information did they have?
It was dark and cold outside, even with the lights coming from the casinos on the Strip a few blocks away. The few paltry streetlights didn't do a lot to either lighten or cheer up the area. Sara zipped up her jacket, feeling the chill on her cheeks and watching the clouds of steam created by her breathing. It was winter, and Vegas got damn cold at night. Somewhere out there were kids with not enough food or clothes because there was no one to give them the care they needed, even if the kids were prepared to accept it.
There were too many kids out there in the world with no one to love them.
Brass and Greg were walking a few paces ahead of Sara, trying to figure out what 'Raf' could be short for. They'd come up with Rafael and Rafferty, and were now talking about surnames. Sara wandered along behind them, half listening to their conversation, half going over all the evidence, yet again, searching for some connection or clue she'd missed.
There was a - Sara stopped short. There were two girls standing in the shadows on the opposite side of the street, and Brass and Greg were so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn't noticed. Without even thinking, Sara ducked across the street. The girls, who'd been staring at her, didn't move as she approached them. "Hey."
The two girls were maybe thirteen, fourteen years old. One was Hispanic, a tall skinny girl with big brown eyes and a long dark braid hanging over one shoulder. The other was blonde and shorter, her hair cut crookedly shoulder length. She'd probably be beautiful in a few years with a decent haircut and some good meals. Despite the meals from the soup kitchen, both of them were clearly malnourished. "Hi," said the taller girl.
"Are you a cop?" asked the other.
"I'm a crime scene investigator." Sara glanced down the street. Brass and Greg were standing at the Denali, talking. "My name's Sara Sidle. I'm trying to find out who killed a girl named Blondie. Did you know her?"
Both girls nodded.
"Is one of you Angel?" Sara asked hastily, her heart pounding. Brass and Greg would be after her any second now, and who knew what these two girls would do then.
The blonde girl nodded. "Me." She pointed at her captain. "She's Marissa."
"Do you know who killed Blondie?"
Angel and Marissa glanced at each other. "No," said Marissa, after a few long seconds.
Sara's stomach clenched impatiently. Marissa wasn't telling the truth. "Can you tell me where you guys are hanging out at the moment. We need to talk to all of you, see if anyone knows anything about what happened to Blondie." She flicked her eyes sideways, just in time to meet Greg turning his head towards her. Damn. "You do know something, don't you?"
"Sara!"
Damn.
Angel and Marissa exchanged looks again. "Maybe we'll be at the drop-in center tomorrow night," Marissa said. "But maybe not."
Almost before Greg was at Sara's side, Angel and Marissa were disappearing down the street.
"Who're they?"
"The kids Mrs Ortega told us about," Sara said, disappointment racing through her body. One or both of them knew more than they were letting on about what had happened to Brenda. A sudden fear took hold of her - the fear that what had happened to Brenda would happen to one of them, that the next body would be Angel's or Marissa's, beaten and raped liked Brenda had been, and all the life drained out of them.
"What did they say?"
Sara hesitated. "Not much. They know more than what they told me."
"Hurry up, you two!" Brass was leaning out the driver's side of the Denali.
They waited for a car to pass, and walked back across the street.
The rest of the night was rather anti-climactic. Sara and Greg spent it in one of the labs, searching the databases for missing kids who could have been in Brenda's group. They began with all the variants they could on the name Angel - Angel, Angela, Angelica, Angelina, and searched outwards from Las Vegas and then across the state. One Angela, who was too old, and an Angelica, who was half-Chinese, which the girl on the street clearly wasn't. Three possible Marissas - one from Laughlin, one from Reno, one from Carson City. Raf and Petey were harder, but they eventually managed to compile a list of nine possibilities for Raf, and eleven for Petey.
Sara was grateful to have something to do, as mindnumbingly boring as it was. More than that, it was likely to be useless, at least as far as finding Brenda's killer went. She wasn't going to deny the niggling thought in the back of her head that was planning to figure out how to reunite Angel and Marissa with their families, or at least to get them proper care. The horrifying possibility that one of them would end up like Brenda was already playing itself out in her mind.
After all, like Brenda, they were still just kids.
When her shift was over, Sara found herself on Nick's doorstep picking out the key to his door on her keyring. She didn't quite remember making the decision to go there, but she put the key in the lock before she could have second thoughts.
TBC...