sweet smell of charcoal-grilled meat wafted from somewhere close.
Kill the alarm. Drug her, bring her out, put her in a car. No security cameras on the back door, no cameras in the alley. No one sees.
Except maybe someone had. A five-story gray stone apartment building overlooked the alley. Time for shoe-leather cop work, knocking on doors. Curtains covered most windows, but here and there the glass was uncovered.
“Detective. Rob.”
She nodded at the windows.
“Think anyone was awake?”
“At one a.m.?” Xili said. “In Barcelona? Everyone was awake.”
* * *
An hour later they had their answer.
Courtesy of a lady of a certain age who lived in an immaculate two-room apartment on the third floor. Unlike the club managers she was happy to talk. In fact she seemed thrilled to see Xili’s badge. When Xili asked her name, she said, Everyone calls me the Queen.
The Queen was tiny, no more than five feet, her skin papery and pale, her hands trembling, Parkinsonian. But her eyes were awake. Rebecca sensed she’d be reliable. She led them to her bedroom. A plain wooden chair sat by the window that overlooked the alley. The back door to Helado was barely forty feet away.
She looked at Rebecca. “I want to talk to her. By myself.”
“Yell if she gets rowdy,” Xili said. He and Wilkerson walked out.
“I like to look,” the Queen said. “The television gets boring. I see boys and girls in the back. Or boys, you know, with other boys.”
“Does anyone see you?” Rebecca said in Spanish.
“I keep the light out.”
“What about last night?”
The Queen turned out the lights, sat, stared at the empty alley. As if to reenact the moment.
“There was a dog. An ugly dog and I watched him catch a rat.” She glanced at Rebecca. “This was around midnight. Is that what you meant?”
Let her have her fun, tease you, she’ll get there.
“Anything else?”
“Later, a car came. Stopped by the door. Then two men came out of that door, with two girls. The men held one of them. Like she’d had too much drink.”
Close now. “Do you remember, could she walk at all?”
“It looked to me, if they let her go she’d fall. Her head—” the Queen tilted her own head, rag-doll style.
So they’d drugged her. “Then?”
“They put her in the car, the back, and got in on each side. No talking. Quiet as mice. The other girl got into the front. Then they drove off. Only a few seconds. If I hadn’t been watching I wouldn’t have seen.”
If I hadn’t been watching I wouldn’t have seen. Yogi Berra couldn’t have said it better. “Do you remember the car?”
“Black.”
“Small? Medium? Big?”
“Not so big, they were stuffed inside.”
“Do you know what kind?”
“I don’t know about cars,” the Queen said primly. “Maybe a Toyota.”
Maybe meant definitely.
“Did anyone get out before they came?”
“No. The driver stayed inside. A man, but I couldn’t see anything about him.”
Rebecca handed her the poster of Kira.
The Queen held it in her shaking hands. “Yes, yes, her. The one they carried. Your daughter, yes?”
The Mossos should hire you. Now maybe the most important question of all.
“Do you know when this was?”
“Maybe after one, before one thirty. Does that help?”
Rebecca put her hands on the Queen’s thin shoulders, felt the fluttering pulse beneath. “It might.”
And by it might Rebecca meant You have no idea how much.
Because the Queen had given the Mossos what they needed to lock down the search. The alley didn’t have cameras. But with the timing and the basic vehicle information, the police could look for cameras on the streets close to the alley.
A black sedan, most likely a Toyota, heading to the alley around 1 a.m., leaving a few minutes later.
A clear picture of the car and its passengers would be handy. But the license plate would be the real prize. They’d find it. Surveillance cameras were everywhere these days. They only needed one. And the plate would give them a whole new set of leads to chase.
21
Somewhere in Spain
The white glow where the plywood met the window frame was gone.
And the closet was as dark as anywhere Kira had ever been, a man-made cave, so lightless that the air around her was almost liquid. Black was not a color but a shade, with gradients. Kira hadn’t known until now. Another lesson courtesy of Jacques and the gang.
Night. She’d been gone almost twenty-four hours. Her parents must be out of their minds. Tony would have told them about Jacques. No doubt they’d started searching. Probably Becks had even asked