The lobby, my ass. What I needed was fresh air and nicotine.
The March night had come on hard, the threat of frost silvering the air. I zipped my coat, turned up the collar, and—against my better instincts—pulled out the cigarettes and lighter I’d purchased on the way to the medical examiner’s office in a fit of pre-autopsy anxiety.
I lit up while Yaeger’s phone rang.
A click, and then a man said, “Detective Parnell. We’ve been playing phone tag.”
“Thanks for returning my call.” I snapped the lighter shut and stuffed it in my pocket. “I pulled your name from an article in the North Platte Telegraph concerning an ICE raid on a distribution warehouse. I’m wondering what you can tell me. About the raid and the fallout.”
“That goes back a bit. Eighteen months, isn’t it?” Yaeger’s voice was thin, with a light tremor. I pictured him white haired and frail. “ICE got an anonymous tip that ColdShip was hiring undocumented immigrants. The tip turned out to be right. In response, the company laid off a third of its employees and promised to clean up its act. I entered the picture when I filed a lawsuit against ColdShip on behalf of some of the workers. Unsafe working conditions, mainly. But also sexual harassment.”
“Your firm handles labor-law cases?”
“We usually don’t. But because some of the plaintiffs were undocumented, we took it on. It felt like a chance to make a point—that everyone deserves to work unmolested and in a safe environment.”
“What was the outcome?”
“Like most cases, we settled out of court. A shame, because we had a good case. But the undocumented workers got cold feet, and there went half our plaintiffs. Not that I blame them.”
“It might help my case if you’d share the plaintiffs’ names.”
“Sorry. Nondisclosure was part of the settlement.”
I made my way down the steps and into the thickening dark. My cigarette flared and faded. “Any idea who tipped off ICE?”
Yaeger was silent so long that I thought the connection had broken. I checked my screen. The call was still open.
“Mr. Yaeger?”
“Yes.” A phlegmy cough. “At first we thought it might be a disgruntled worker. When that didn’t pan out, we looked into the possibility that the call came from a male employee accused of sexual harassment. Maybe he decided if the women wouldn’t sleep with him, he’d cost them their jobs. Get some of them deported. But . . .”
“But . . . ?”
“It turned out the truth was a little stranger.”
I took another drag and tipped back my head. Diamond-point stars glittered in the deep vault of the heavens. “Strange in what way?”
“Well.” He made a sound between a chuckle and a sigh. “I say strange. And it was. But I suspect it had more to do with the helplessness and terror these women feel rather than with the truth.”
“I’m listening, Mr. Yaeger.”
“Some of the women told me they’d been threatened by a man who didn’t actually work for ColdShip. They said he rode the trains and raped migrant women in the boxcars. Which, of course, is sadly and horribly believable. But they also told me that the man was a giant with yellow eyes. That he could fly. That he could walk through walls and appear out of nowhere. The women called him crazy. Named him el diablo. The—”
“The devil.” My gaze fell away from the stars. Crazy.
Craze.
In North Platte. With Ami.
“The women swore he appeared in their apartments as if out of thin air. Sometimes to hurt them. Sometimes to threaten. He wanted them to sell themselves while he watched from the darkness. I don’t think it was even for the money. It was just plain ugliness.” Yaeger’s sigh held a whisper of unease. As if deep in his reptile brain, the wild stories rang true. “I doubt that, in their heart of hearts, they thought he was supernatural. But with the hold he had on them, he might as well have been.”
My heart fragmented. The pain one man could visit upon the world. But I kept my voice deliberately brisk, trying to separate my detective self from the part that was breaking. “He sounds like a real prince.”
“Indeed. The women also believed that, like many evil spirits, el diablo was vengeful. Some of them were sure he’d tipped off ICE as punishment when they refused his demands. That he was flushing them out of hiding and back onto the trains where he could hurt them at his leisure.”
I turned back to the medical examiner’s office, fixed my gaze on the faint light falling through the windows.
Craze. Leader of the Superior Gentlemen. Almost certainly the tall, heavily built, yellow-eyed man who walked next to a train in Noah’s drawing. And, quite possibly, a serial rapist, given the common DNA on the doll left by my stalker and the nursing-home rapes.
The devil, indeed.
“You understand this information about el diablo is hearsay, right?” Yaeger said. “Nothing we could use in our suit. Plus, only one woman was courageous enough to go to the cops.”
I flashed to the picture of Ami at ColdShip with Erica and Lupita. The symbol of the Protector on her shirt in Noah’s drawing.
“Aminta Valle,” I said.
Another long pause. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to.” I dropped my cigarette, ground it under my heel. “What did the cops do?”
“There was nothing to be done. This woman was the only person willing to press charges, and our so-called devil hadn’t actually done anything to her beyond offer threats she had no proof of. She was trying to help her friends, guard them from this guy.”
Ami, the Protector.
“Detective Parnell,” Yaeger said. “Is this related to a case you’re working now?”
“A double homicide. Two men.”
A pause. “Then I think there’s something else you should know. The woman who stood up to el diablo, the one whose name you might have just mentioned. She called
