“Well, this seals Fredo’s fate,” I said to Larson. What the demon had done to the woman in that room was pretty ugly. There wasn’t any way Fredo could deny renting the room, and he probably couldn’t deny supplying the woman. I could charge him with accessory to murder at the very least.
The only other occupied room we found on that level contained a naked blood vampire and three naked teenage boys. The boys were still breathing and looked as though they would survive.
At the end of the hall was a steel door with an impressive lock. I touched it and used my magik to open it. The large room inside held a dozen cots and a toilet in the corner at the far end. Ten human women of various ethnicities and ages stared at us with wide, frightened eyes.
“Looks like we’ve nailed him good,” Larson said.
“One link in the chain,” I answered. “Tell Dr. Harrison to call social services. I’m going up to his office. If we get really lucky, we’ll find who Fredo bought them from. But I’m betting we’ll at least get a list of where he planned to sell them.”
Chapter 9
Officially, I had the following two days off, so I didn’t have to worry about explaining anything to Novak. Two days I could devote to finding Sarah Benning, assuming I didn’t get tagged for another case. Murder and mayhem repeatedly proved they had no respect for my personal life.
Kirsten was in the kitchen making her breakfast, so I stumbled in to see if I could beg some scraps.
“Good morning, Miss Merry Sunshine,” she said. “Sit.”
I did as she ordered, and she placed an omelet and a cup of coffee in front of me. Having a hearth witch as a roommate had no downside that I’d ever found.
“You’re going to make someone a wonderful wife,” I said.
“No, I’m not. Any man who wants my company full time had better have a herd of servants standing by to fulfill my every whim. Although, why I would want to settle for one man forever eludes me. Any leads on that rich kid?”
She put her own breakfast on the table and sat down.
I told her what I had found out from my afternoon of interviews.
“Johansson? His wife is a customer of mine. Witch. She’s brought her daughter into the store with her a few times.”
“Know anything about the husband and father?”
“Never met him. But there was some kind of scandal a few years ago. Don’t remember anything about it, though.” She stared off into space for a few moments, then said, “Maybe more than a few years. I think I overheard my parents talking about it.”
The lives of the filthy-rich and magikal were standard gossip material for the lower classes.
“Do you think you’ll have time to stop by the store today?” she asked. “I’ve got a pump in the greenhouse that’s making funny noises.” Kirsten gave me that wide-eyed ‘oh, poor helpless me’ expression that had helped her overcome most of her life’s obstacles.
“Yeah, I’ll make it by. Not sure when,” I said around a mouthful of eggs.
She finished her breakfast and darted out the door. I gathered our dishes, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher. After that, I tidied up the house a bit, took a shower, and sat down at the computer.
The scandal involving Johansson had occurred when Kirsten and I were Sarah’s and Cassie’s age. The wife Kirsten knew was his third wife, and his affair with her had been part of what broke up his first marriage. Maybe his second as well, but I didn’t find anything about that.
She wasn’t the scandal, though. That involved the pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter of a business associate. Martin Johansson had been sixty-two at the time. The girl’s father had imprudently challenged Johansson to a magikal duel of honor and been left a paraplegic.
As was normally the case in such unfortunate events, the injured man refused to press charges. He was left to raise his daughter’s bastard, who would have been a constant reminder of all the injuries Johansson had inflicted on his family. There were rumors of more indiscretions with underage girls, but none of the rumors included names.
The important thing from my standpoint was the validation of Martin Johansson as at least a borderline pedophile. And at seventy-nine, he was far from the age when mages lost interest in sex.
I hauled my motorcycle out of the garage and rode up to Loyola to talk to the boyfriends Cassie had told me about. I was proud of that bike. It was only a year old, sparkly red and black and chrome, and I had customized it with every magitek enhancement I could think of.
I had checked, and one of Sarah’s boyfriends lived in a dormitory, while the other rented an apartment near campus. I started with the one in the dorms, who Cassie identified as the previous month’s fling.
Joel Vanzetti was a nice Italian boy from New Jersey who was very handsome but turned out to be devoid of any magik. At first, he didn’t want to talk to me, but when I told him Sarah was missing and that he might be considered a person of interest, he stumbled all over himself to establish an alibi. The underage girl he was sleeping with that night turned out to be Jerilyn Novak, one of the girls that Justus Benning identified as Sarah’s friend.
Kurt Darlington, who according to Cassie was Sarah’s current bedmate, didn’t strike me as being particularly studious. He didn’t show up for his ten o’clock class. When I checked his apartment, he was playing naked games with his roommate and two coeds, who obviously weren’t the studious type, either. He quickly established
