Chapter One
Danica
The creak of the door chilled me to the bone. Each footstep bouncing off the rotting floorboards a knife to my soul, tearing it apart strip by strip. His weight pressed into the flimsy stained mattress. My body prickled, fear coursed my veins. A clammy, filthy hand reached beneath the tatty blanket, snaking up my bare thigh.
“You're mine, he didn’t pay. You belong to us now.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying he’d leave me in peace if he believed I was sleeping. He liked it when I screamed, begged for an end to the nightmare he’d trapped me in. The sleeping don’t scream. My prayers went unanswered.
The anguished scream tearing from own mouth rescued me from my nightmare. The same nightmare haunted me night after night. They were getting worse, they often did when something big was changing. I hated change. Routine kept me safe, banished the nightmares behind a cloud of monotony. My eyes moved to the digital clock by the strange bed. Four forty-five. Sleep wouldn’t come for hours, once it did, the alarm would be blaring. I sighed, dragging myself, exhausted, from the bed.
The temp on the shower maxed out, steam filled the room. No matter how hot the water, it’d never wash away what they did, what they made me. I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. His touch still lingered, staining me, marking me as a victim, the one thing I swore I’d never allow myself to become. Fucking nightmares. They leave me unsettled for days afterwards, I'm thrust back into a living Hell, trapped somewhere between life and death, praying for the latter.
Four hours left before I started my new job, if I spent them here, I’d wear a hole in the carpet, I’d be driven insane by own tormenting thoughts. I threw on my running gear and headed for the door, tucking my pepper spray into my sports bra, my taser into my pants. Never again would I allow myself to be taken. I wasn’t a weak, naïve teenage. I was a mother-fucking, ass-kicking detective. Detective Danica Milano, cross me at your own risk.
My feet pounded the tarmac, hot, dry air whipped my skin. I raced faster and faster through the strange streets.
This move was a step up the ladder. A good thing. I’d flown through the ranks after graduating the academy. My lungs burned, my feet ached, my muscles turned to jelly, still I ran, trying to outrun the nightmare. Running always helped clear my head, it chased away the dusty remains of my tortured past. By the time I returned to my apartment, my body laced with sweat, I felt almost human. I hit the shower again.
◆◆◆
Fuelled only by coffee, I hit the road. Focused on my breathing, I wound my station wagon through the streets of Houston. My heart pounding, I pulled my car into the car lot. The station here dwarfed the one I’d grown to know as home. So many people, so much potential for my past to ruin my future if I was recognised.
“You can do this, Dani,” I muttered, forcing myself from the car.
I took a deep, shaking breath, held my head high and strode towards the intimidating building.
“Dani.”
Oh, God. That accent, drawling my name in that way. My body jumped to high alert. I turned deliberately slowly.
“Dani? Dani Milano?”
A balding middle-aged man with a bulging waistline and donut sugar coated lips held out a sticky hand.
“Danica,” I replied sourly, grimacing at the hand. I couldn’t face hearing that name in that accent. He wiped the remains of the donut he’d been scarfing on his brown pants.
“Sorry, love.”
Ugh. Some people just begged for a bullet to the face. This buffoon was one those of people.
“I’m your new partner. Detective Aaron Schilling.”
Awesome, just awesome. I missed Pasadena already.
Schilling followed me, talking incessantly at me, quizzing me on life in Pasadena. He had an Aunt who lived there. Susan, she had three children. One would be around my age.
“I didn’t grow up in Pasadena.”
It was a relief when we finally made it to the office and I was paraded in front of my new colleagues like a cattle at market. At least it stopped the talking. It's never fun, being the new girl.
The show over, my colleagues having studied me, the Police Chief dragged me and Schilling into his office.
“You remember the Roman case?” He asked Schilling.
“Like it was yesterday,” Schilling scowled, “that asshole dead yet?”
“No. His attorneys are filing appeals. The bastard still claims he’s innocent. They’re claiming they have new evidence, an email from the imaginary girlfriend. I want you to head over to Polunsky Unit, go over everything one last time and check this email out. After the whole mess with the Sanchez case, the Governor wants to make sure we have all our t’s crossed and i’s dotted.”
The Sanchez case, I knew that one. A serial rapist and murderer, he terrorised half of Texas, travelling the entire state, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, including three in Pasadena. He went to his death claiming his innocence.
Young, attractive, successful, Sanchez, a charismatic father of four, wasn't your typical serial killer. The media fawned over him. It blew up epically when a fresh victim, with all the hallmarks of Sanchez, turned up a week after he’d been executed. It turned out to be an unrelated crime. A domestic homicide. The murderous husband displayed his wife in the unique elaborate way Sanchez laid out his victims, hoping to get away with murder. He was caught less than a week later, confessed to everything. It didn’t stop the media questioning Sanchez’s innocence or prevent several anti-capital punishment charities filing lawsuits against the state of Texas on behalf of the deceased. The whole debacle was one mega shit storm that no-one wanted repeating.
“Take Detective Milano with you. Fill her in on the case on the way.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Brilliant. I’m spending my day stuck in a car with this stinking idiot.
Schilling brought me upto speed on the Roman case as he drove.
A double killer, he’d been found, covered in the blood of his victims, passed out in a drugged, drunken stupor. The murder weapon, a baseball bat, lay the sofa next to him, his bloody fingerprints dotted around the handle.
The victims, his live-in girlfriend and her eight-year-old daughter, both lay naked in their beds, traces of his semen in and around their genitals. Their DNA was all over him. There’d never been a more open and shut case. The perp himself admitted he had no memory of the incident. His last vivid memory was downing vodka in a local strip club hours earlier.
“Seems a straightforward case to me,” I said.
“Yeah, it was. The guy is as guilty as they come. Forensics found searches for sex slavery on his computer dating back years. The prosecution argued that he wanted to sell the kid and her mum to a sex ring. They think he’d been abusing the kid, the mom caught him, he panicked and flipped, killed ‘em both.”
“So, why we looking at this again?”
A prison was the last place I wanted to be in my current state.
“Dunno,” Schilling shrugged. “All the way through the case he’s denied everything. Reckons the searches were about an ex he was hunting down, some holiday fling. Says the girl was kidnapped and sold into slavery, he was looking for her. He thinks the people who took her framed him to silence him. Thing is he doesn’t have the chick’s name. He expected a jury to believe he’s spent the last ten years of his life hunting down a woman whose name he doesn’t even know.”
Ah, the imaginary girlfriend. The one who emailed him.
“His file’s back there,” Schilling waved towards the backseat, “knock yourself out if you need to know more.”
“No, thanks.”
Pictures of slain children always left me queasy. They somehow seemed worse in print than in real life. My own personal horrors still fresh in my mind, my grisly nightmares needed no more fuel.
The prison loomed on the horizon, it’s imposing gun towers coming into sight first. I hated prisons. They stunk of desperation and oppression. And there was a bigger chance in a place full of felons, murderers and dealers, than anywhere of me being recognised. That’s the last thing I wanted. I’d have to explain my past. People would look at me that way I despise, with pity in their eyes. I’d be treated like a fine china doll. The hushed whispers would start up again. The cases I’d work would be carefully selected, to minimise any trauma. It’s why I left Pasadena.
◆◆◆
“You ready to go?” Schilling asked, flinging open the driver’s door.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I sighed.
Schilling led the way, confidently stalking into the intimidating, redbrick building.
“Detectives Schilling and Milano. We have an interview with death row inmate Leopold Roman,” Schilling told the stony-faced guard at the reception, flashing our badges.
We had to hand over our guns and cell phones. Schilling held onto the small tape recorder.
“Who the fuck calls a baby Leopold?” I hissed. The thick, steel security door clicked open. The sound sent shivers down my spine.
“The fuck kinda people who raise paedophiles I guess.”
Led through the prison by an elderly, silver-haired guard, I kept my head down.
“He’s in there, with his lawyers,” the guard instructed.
“Thanks,” Schilling nodded.
He pushed me through the door first. Leopold Roman, child killer and paedophile, sat hunched over a desk, studying a pile of papers. His long, messy blonde hair hung over his face. Chains snaked from his cuffed wrists to a heavy belt around his waist. His feet, I guessed, would be shackled too.
The lawyer, a young brunette, whispered into her client’s ear. It sickened me the way these lawyers talked to their scum of the earth clients. How did they sleep at night, knowing they’d spent the day helping pure born evil walk free?
Roman lifted his head, pushing his hair back from his face.
Shit.
Fuck and shit.
Shoot me now.
My whole world crashed. I was eighteen years old again, weak, innocent, my whole life ahead of me, balanced on the cusp of disaster.
His emerald eyes locked onto me. Everyone turned to me, following his intense gaze. I felt the color drain from my cheeks. The heavy silence dragged on and on. Seconds passed like minutes. This had to be a mistake.
“Detectives,” Leo half-smiled, the confidence he’d had all those years ago worn down by years of depressing, soul destroying isolation. Polunsky had the well-deserved reputation of being the worst prison in the US. It showed in his face. He’d aged more than a decade, those emerald eyes that once shone with life and hope, gazed at me, empty and dead.
“Thank you for agreeing to look into this for me,” Leo said quietly.
I was frozen, my feet heavy as concrete blocks, an overwhelming urge to run ate away at me. The thick walls pressed in on me, squeezing the air from the room. He kept me going during the darkest days, the thought of seeing him again kept my spirit alive. I’d fallen in love with a child killer, held onto that love for over a decade. His heinous, unforgivable crime tainted the only good thing in my life. For that I hated him.
“Detectives Schilling and Milano,” Schilling hissed through gritted teeth, shoving me towards the desk, inching me closer to the only part of my past I hadn’t fought to forget.
“I remember you, Detective Schilling, from the original case. Detective Milano, I’d shake your hand…” he lifted his shackled wrists, shrugging his broad shoulders. Shoulders I'd cried on.
My mind raced as Schilling ran through the original case. I couldn’t focus. The air weighed heavy, I struggled to breathe. Schilling rested a hand on my thigh, stilling my frantically tapping foot. I wanted to tear his face off for touching me.
“Excuse me,” he said to Leo, yanking our seats back from the table. He spun me to face him, his face so close to mine, the stench of stale coffee and donuts smacked into my nose.
“You okay, Milano?”
“Huh? Yeah, sorry, he just, he looks like someone I used to know. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’m fine.”
Jesus, Dani, pull yourself together. Just breathe Goddamnit. You can do this. I couldn’t do this. If he was gonna expose me, he’d have done it by now. Perhaps he didn’t recognise me.
The interview moved to the imaginary girlfriend. I dreaded what was coming.
“I’m not understanding what connection this holiday fling, four years previous, has to do with the crimes you are convicted of?” Schilling said.
“She wasn’t a holiday fling,” Leo growled, showing the first sign of passion since we’d walked in here. His eyes glittered with unspoken hurt and fury. His cuffed hands balled into fists on the desk.
“She?” Schilling pressed.
“Yes, she. She was female.”
“And does she have a name yet?”
“Dani, she told me she was called Dani. Her birthday is the 31st of August 1989. She’s Mexican, utterly stunning and afraid of her father. He was some kind of gangster. She went missing on the 1st of September 2007, between the hours of 6am and 8 pm in the Mexican tourist resort of Playa Del Secreto. Her last known location was building eleven, first floor, Valentin Imperial Maya. I reported it to the Mexican police on the 2nd of September, 2007, after becoming concerned that her father hadn’t. He seemed the type of man who would want to deal with things in-house, if you know what I mean? It’s all there in my file.”
“Right,” Schilling sighed. “And how she is related to the crimes you are convicted of?”
“I told you this last time,” Leo spat, tears welling in his eyes. “After she was taken I spent three years looking for her, travelling to Mexico whenever I could. About a year into my investigation, an American tourist told me she looked like someone in a skin flick he’d watched. I started to believe a sex trafficking ring kidnapped her, some kind of sick vengeance against her father. I was looking into them when Maia and her mom were murdered. My guess? The questions I asked had them sweating, so they eliminated me in the sickest way possible.”
“But you never learned her name?”
“No. She lied about her first name, I didn’t bother asking her last name.”
“Can I see the email?”
The lawyer peeled a crisp white sheet off her pile of papers, slipping it across the table. Sent from a throwaway email address, Resvue mne is all it said.
“We believe it was sent from a bar in Pasadena. Unfortunately, they have no working cameras but a barman remembered a very slim, attractive latina woman drinking to excess, crying, playing with a cell phone the night the email was sent. We’re waiting on him meeting with a forensic artist,” the lawyer explained.
Jesus, no. That can never happen. I can’t be dragged into this, paraded like a circus freak in front of the media. My father would find me for sure.
“Did she type it with her head?” Schilling grinned, raising a bushy dark eyebrow.
“Like I said, we believe she was drunk at the time of writing it. The barman said she was alone. It’s possible she got away from the traffickers and is in hiding, seeking help.”
Drunk. That’s the understatement of the century. She was so drunk, she can’t remember sending the email. I remember being in the bar. It was the day I decided to hand in my notice in Pasadena, take the promotion in Houston. I remember typing out email after email, begging him to help me deal with the nightmares and the staring and whispering. All of them deleted, unsent. Somewhere between downing the best part of a bottle of vodka and being dragged home by my ex-partner, I’d sent that email. Resvue mne.
“And how did your client receive this email? As far as I know, death row inmates don’t have access to Gmail.”
“My cousin Carly checks that email every day for me, in case I hear anything from Dani. She passed it on to me last month.”
“Will you be looking into this Detective?” The lawyer asked.
“Doubt it,” Schilling said, “I’ll pass it on to my supervisor, but as far as I can see, it changes nothing. Say this girl did exist, it doesn’t change the fact all the evidence tells us only three people were ever inside your client's apartment. Two of those people are now dead. We were never investigating a sex ring. This is a murder investigation. You’ve given us nothing that casts doubt on your client’s guilt.”
Schilling finished up the interview.
“Detective Milano?” Leo asked as I slid my chair back, desperate to escape these painted, green concrete walls.
“Yes?”
“What do you think she wanted rescuing from?”
Life.
“I wouldn’t know."
“There are people there for her. If she still needs help. I’d be there but…” He raised his shackled hands again. “I just want her happy and safe. That’s all. Is she?”
“No.”
Her entire life is one long, maddening shitshow that gets worse by the day.
“I’m innocent, Detective, I want you to know that.”
Schilling propelled me from the room before he could say any more.
The drive back to Houston passed in silence. Schilling side-eyed me anytime we hit traffic.
Paranoia crept into my bones back at the station. My co-workers, all strangers to me, their eyes drilled into my skull, crawled over my skin. They knew. All of it, who my father was, the darkness I was running from. The videos. They’d watched them, witnessed my debasement. Crowded around a grainy police issued TV screen and gazed on as I was abused, dehumanised in the worst possible ways. They knew I was broken.
It was too crowded, too cramped, the air too hot.
“Hello? Earth to Milano? We need to update the chief,” Schilling’s hand waved in front of me, snapping me back to reality.
“I have to go, I’m… sick.”
He had no time to reply. I raced from the imposing office block. I had to get home, I had to think. Leo’s lawyer will have called the station by now, told them who I was. It was only a matter of time before my life here was over.