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She picks up on the first ring. “Cat. How’s the beach house?”
Amazing. Instead, I settle with, “Good. It’s always nice to get away.”
“You going to make it home for the Debrief?”
“Yup. I’m just packing up now.” I run a hand through my hair and try to breathe past the lump in my throat. “Toni…” I trail off for a second, my mind frantic. Panicked.
My thoughts pinball around in my head. Aiden’s face pops into my mind. He trusts me. He took my goddamn laptop to try and solidify my alibi. And, still, I’m betraying him. I’mlyingto him.
Guilt rises, threatening to consume me. I would give anything to take back that last ten minutes with him, those last few words…
But life doesn’t work like that.
I should know that by now.
“Catherine? Is everything alright?”
As Toni’s voice filters over the line to me, my memories rise. Lizzie, in her car, her head thrown back, howling like a wolf at the moon. Toni, sitting by my bed late at night, talking to me when I couldn’t sleep, even with the light on. Toni, with Cass on her lap, reading her Dr. Seuss. Lyla, holding my hair up when I threw up after drinking too much at the Gatsby. Jules, taking my grocery run when I was down and out with period cramps. I think of all the times they’ve been there for me.
“Yes,” I lie. I know what I have to do. “Toni, I think Lizzie was with Will Rusche the night before she died.”
“What?”
“I’m coming home. I’ll explain everything when I get there.”
Chapter 23
Aiden
July 4, 2008
Unfortunately for the LAPD staffworking today, crime doesn’t stop for public holidays. If anything, holidays are basically a breeding ground for violence. Nothing pays police overtime quite like the entire population off from work, drinking in excess, and spending time with their families.
But today, or at least as of eleven in the morning, things have been eerily quiet. Those officers who are in the station all have their heads down, probably silently begrudging having to work on the holiday. Even the phones are muted. For now.
It's nice though. The quiet gives me time to think about the things Catherine told me about the Antoinette Rupetta Escort Agency.
As someone who lost my ability to be surprised a long time ago, it’s been a revelation to unearth Antoinette’s agency. The operation is run like a legitimate business, with rules and internal safety mechanisms in place. The girls file their taxes—or most of them anyway. They look after one another. They manage their sexual health.
It’s unusual, almost unheard of.
Most prostitution organizations are exploitative by nature. They’re male-run groups with little internal cohesion that take advantage of globalization and economic forces to extort their victims,especiallyyoung women and children. People like Catherine. Addicts with no other options. Trafficked humans. The runaway kids who find themselves picked up by men who promise them the things they’ve never had. Immigrant sex slaves, sold by their parents in third-world countries as children and smuggled into the US to spend their lives locked in an apartment, servicing up to twenty clients a day.
Seeing the girls, acknowledging what they’ve accomplished, makes me wonder if people understand what they’re legislating by criminalizing prostitution. And the really baffling thing is that the complexity of the issue should mean that the voting population are talkingmoreabout it…and yet…the silence is deafening.
When Sade walks up to my desk, a thin stack of papers in hand, and asks, “Got a minute?” I nod, and put my pen down, giving her my full attention.
She closes it behind her, turns, and stops when she sees my face. “What?”
I lean back in my chair and place my hands on my stomach. “Have you ever arrested a woman for solicitation? Or prostitution?”
“Of course.” She raises her eyebrows. “This is LA.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I try to sort my thoughts, separating my knowledge of the girls from my knowledge of the average corner working girl. “What was your evidence? For bringing her in?”
