Daddy struggled to lift his raw, scraped face from the brick but Brody held it in place. “I don’t want trouble, Ranger.”
“That’s too bad.”
Daddy stilled and shoved out a breath. “Let me have a look at those names. I bet I could help you.”
“Not sure if you’re worth the trouble anymore. When I round up your girls and tell them you won’t be out of jail for years, they’ll tell me.”
“You can’t throw me away in jail. This is America.”
Brody laughed.
“Let me look at the names!”
Brody gave him another shove into the bricks before whirling him around as an Austin police cruiser, lights flashing, arrived. “Better talk fast, Daddy.”
Daddy looked at the open book that Brody held in front of his face. When Daddy shook his head, Brody turned the page. Again nothing.
The Austin uniforms approached Brody. “Looks like Daddy is causing you some trouble.”
“Not as helpful as he could be. Mind doing me a favor and dropping him in a cell? I’ll come looking for him sooner or later.”
“I said I’d help!” Daddy shouted. “You’ve only shown me a couple of pages. Shit. Give me a chance.”
Brody thought about fifteen-year-old Hanna working the streets for this monster. He wondered how many second chances he’d given her. He flipped another page. “Look real hard, Daddy, because I’m running out of patience.”
The pimp scanned the page again. “I know one of the names.”
“Which one?”
“Earl. He was a regular.”
“How often did he come by?”
“Least once a week. Men like Hanna. Young, curvy. She has a lot of regulars.”
Anger roiled in Brody. “I’m looking for a regular.”
“I know most of them. I don’t need a notebook for that.”
“Any ever call her by a nickname?”
“Like what?”
“You tell me.”
“Blondie. Alice in Wonderland. One liked her because she reminded him of his granddaughter.”
Brody’s jaw tightened and he wanted nothing more than to pummel the shit out of this guy. Instead, he said in a calm voice, “Who else?”
“One guy had an interest in flowers.”
Brody’s racing pulse stilled. “What kind of flowers?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Roses are red, violets are blue, motherfucker.”
“What did he call Hanna?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he look like?”
“Medium-sized. Dark hair. Wore thick glasses. Looked like an accountant.”
“Did he have a name?”
“I don’t take roll call, motherfucker. He picked her up in a pickup and did his business.”
“When was the last time he picked up Hanna?”
“Few days.”
“Where did he pick her up?”
“Near her corner. Right outside.”
Brody had already sent officers to canvas the shops for security cameras that might have captured Hanna and her last john. He grabbed Daddy by the shoulders and handed him to the Austin cops. “He’s all yours.”
“What are you doing?” Daddy shouted. “I told you what I know.”
“I got a notebook full of Hanna’s solicitation appointments. And you just admitted that you recognized the names of two clients you sent her way. Something tells me that’s not legal in Texas.”
“Bullshit, I did. I was helping you!”
“Like you helped that fifteen-year-old on the streets.”
“Hey, man, she came to me. She was hungry and needed to work, and I put her to work. She got paid.”
Cents on the dollar, he’d bet. “Take him away.”
Daddy dug in his feet and craned his neck toward Brody as the officers led him to the car. “Hey, man, you need me. I can help you find this guy.”
“Really, how’s that?”
“I can ask around. See if the dude gave other girls flower names.”
The pimp was right. The killer could have lined up other girls. And Daddy might be able to figure out who’d vanished and who they were visiting. “Sure. You can help, Daddy.” He eyed the officers. “If you don’t get information from him in twenty-four hours, he goes to jail.” Brody clamped his hand on Daddy’s shoulder and squeezed.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday, April 13, 9:00 A.M.
Brody rubbed his eyes and reached for his coffee cup. One sip of the cold sludge had him muttering an oath as he set the cup aside and leaned back in his chair. He’d been looking for days at surveillance footage of the area where Hanna worked. He’d cross-checked the images with her journal entries, which detailed four hundred entries over the month of March. Four hundred entries. Shit. A fifteen-year-old kid. Daddy remained free, and he’d asked around and discovered that the red pickup had been sighted many times over the last few weeks. But no one had specifics. As Brody stared at Hanna’s entries he vowed Daddy would go down soon.
Of Hanna’s four hundred entries, a good thirty percent were repeats. Hanna also used first and sometimes last names for each entry and made notes in the margin. $$. Remind him of granddaughter. Bad breath. Small dick. Hates talking. And the most important, Robbie: Calls me Bluebonnet.
When he saw the name Robbie listed, his adrenaline snapped. Immediately, he keyed in on those entries. Robbie had visited Hanna ten times during the month. Hanna also noted, Calls me Bluebonnet.
Taking the surveillance footage from a liquor store located across from Hanna’s corner and a paycheck cashier situated on a diagonal to the site, he watched and searched for guys that showed up on the dates Hanna had cited.
Hanna always stood on the same street corner under a light. For the most part, she arrived by five and often didn’t leave her corner for the day until five in the morning. On cold nights she’d stand for an hour waiting and calling out to passersby. On milder nights she’d get in and out of a steady stream of cars. The lighting and angle made it hard to see the johns’ faces, so he paid closer attention to the vehicles. On the nights Robbie visited Hanna, a red pickup truck cruised slowly by the corner. The paint was faded, the back tail bumper bent and pockets of rust had eaten into the edges of the car. The front and back plates both splattered with mud were illegible, but he could see a couple of shovels and rope in the pickup’s bed.
Each time he pulled up, his face remained turned as if he knew the cameras were rolling. It was a precaution he’d learned from Smith who’d done the same when he’d stalked his victims. Smith hadn’t gotten sloppy with surveillance cameras until the end and Brody had been there to nail him.
In the images, Hanna always smiled as she approached Robbie’s passenger door and leaned in to speak to him. They’d talk for several seconds before she settled into the front cab. Robbie never returned Hanna to the same corne
r because she’d reemerge in the camera an hour or so after the initial pickup. Many times Dusty stepped on screen and the two women chatted. Both kept a close eye on Daddy’s van always parked across the street. Daddy was keeping an eye on his investments.
In all the times Robbie showed up in the red pickup truck, the plates were muddied and his face turned. But Brody at least had a link to Robbie.
Brody stared at the frozen screen featuring Hanna leaning into Robbie’s truck.
“I’m going to catch you, you son of a bitch.”
An alarm on his cell phone had him straightening and glancing at the message he’d sent himself before work.
“Wedding,” the display read.
Brody shut the alarm off and rose, stretching the kinks from his back and shoulders. He’d learned long ago that if he had to be somewhere and he was on a case, he had to set the alarm on his phone as a reminder. Too many times he’d been working and lost all track of time. He’d missed or been late to too many family gatherings or dates. His last girlfriend had grown fed up with his misses and absences. “You don’t need a girlfriend. Work is all the mistress you’ll ever need.”
He’d regretted the breakup, but it had not derailed him from work or the case. But since then he’d made a point to be where he said he should be or at least call if he couldn’t.
He rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them before grabbing a red tie he’d brought in this morning. Tying a quick knot, he slid on the blue blazer hanging on the back of his door and reached for his Stetson.
He’d told Jim he’d be at his wedding and he meant it.
The weather outside was sunny and bright, a welcome change from winter’s cold temperatures. This was going to be one of those rare perfect days between winter’s blistering cold temperatures and summer’s scorching heat. He’d once heard that rain was an omen of a happy marriage but he’d never bought into it. It had rained the day he and Jo had married and that union had never stood a chance.
Jo spent far too long on her hair and makeup. She wanted to look good, but no matter how much she combed, curled or twisted her hair, it didn’t look right. By the fourth hairstyle she knew her primping had crossed over into obsession. Exasperated, she let her hair fall, the curled edges brushing the shoulders of the watered silk dress she’d found Wednesday at the last-minute, panicked trip to Zoe’s.