After driving around for about half an hour, Adri saw her victim. She recognized the type. The woman's hair was stringy and greasy, her face unwashed. She wore raised shoes below dirty, torn jeans and a sleeveless shirt under an old jacket. She walked slowly, looking straight ahead, limping just slightly on her right leg. She couldn't have been more obvious if she was wearing a sandwich sign.
Adri pulled up beside her and rolled down the window. "How much for girl on girl?"
The woman gave her a cursory glance, then looked away. Her voice was flat. "Fifty bucks."
Adri fished around in her purse and extended the woman a twenty dollar bill. "That good for up front, rest after?"
The woman took the bill. She turned it over in her palm, squinted at it, and pocketed it. "It'll work."
Adri smiled. "Great! I've got a room at the Super 8 down the street. We'll be there."
"Which room?"
"228."
The woman nodded. "I need to make a call."
Adri smiled. "Go right ahead."
The woman stepped a short distance away, still in sight but out of earshot. Adri lit a cigarette and sat back in her seat, blowing a plume of smoke out the window. The person on the other end of the line would be the girl's pimp. He'd- or she, that happened sometimes- would want to know where the girl was, what she was doing, the motel room where she waa going. All to make sure she was safe, of course. He'd have some sort of tracking program on her cell phone, keeping tabs on her movement. Poor dear.
After a minute the woman came back. "All right." She didn't look pleased or excited at what was about to happen; she mostly looked tired. Adrijana unlocked the car door and let her get in. Adri turned the car towards the motel. They sat in silence.
"What a cigarette?" asked Adri.
"What's in it?"
"Just nic."
"Then no thanks."
Adri snorted. "How long you been doing this?"
No answer.
"Well, how long?"
The girl looked at her, then looked away. "Two years."
"Neat! I know guys like to get a girl on her first night out, but I always like one with experience. What percent of your clients are gals?"
The girl's jaw tightened. "Why does it matter?"
"Curious, that's all. Ten percent? Fifteen?"
The girl looked away. Another silence.
"Thirty percent. I guess."
Adri whistled. "Well... I'd say it's my lucky night, then."
Adri parked the car and they both got out and walked to the room. The girl paused to note the number. Room 228. The room smelled of air fresheners and there were cigarette burns in the comforter.
"Well," said Adri, grinning at the girl. "It's your trade. Ply it."
The woman looked at the bed. She looked at Adri. An expression of resignation passed over her face, and she began taking off her shirt.
zzzz zzzz
The ceiling was white where Adri stared at it. White and flat, and a little chipped near the edges. The other woman was searching for her pants in the mess they had made of the bedclothes. Adri blew out a plume of smoke.
"Another round?"
The girl didn't pause in getting dressed. "Only if you want to pay another fifty bucks."
"Tell you what," said Adri, pulling something out of her bag. "How about you freeze where you are, and we take a rain check on that second round."
Something metal glittered on a leather background in Adri's hand. The woman's eyes went wide. "Oh shi-"
"Hi!" said Adri, waving her free hand. "I'm a cop."
The woman's glance bounced back and forth from the badge to Adri's smiling face. Her face was drained of color. "But you- we-"
"Sure we did," said Adrijana. Her smile seemed to cover her entire face. "Does it matter?"
The woman's eyes flicked behind Adri to the door.
"Wouldn't try it if I were you," said Adri. She pulled a gun out of her bag. "Might not leave your face so pretty. Hands on the wall, now."
The woman flung the shirt she was holding onto the ground. "F*** YOU! You can't use me and then arrest me! I'll tell them what did when we're downtown, I swear to god I will."
"Yeah, and who are they gonna believe, you little whore?" said Adri. "On the wall." The girl oneyed. Adri pulled a pair of handcuffs from her bag and walked over to the wall. "I'm married woman. I have three kids and I go to church every Sunday." The cuffs clicked on. Adri delivered a stinging slap across the woman's face. "That's for sassing me," she said. "You got it resisting arrest."
The woman coughed. There was a speck of blood in the corner of her. "Ughhhh..." She tried to wipe her mouth, and failed because her hands were bound. "I'll tell them..."
"Shut up," said Adri. "We bring in a million vile c**** like you a year, and they have a stupid sob story about how they were raped or beat up or whatever by the arresting officer. Nobody's gonna believe you either. H***, no one's gonna care if they do believe. You think what happena to you matters? You think the decent, law-abiding people care about trash like you?" She made a show of patting the other woman down. "Okay. Out to the car with you."
The woman didn't struggle. All the fight had leaked out of her, and she stumbled along with a listless, deflated air. She sat the woman down in the back seat of her car and buckled her in with the seatbelt. There was a metal loop behind the headrest intended for the securing of a child's car seat, and to this Adri attached a short chain produced from her bag and buckled the collar at the other end around the woman's neck. "Gotta do a few things before we go," said Adri. "Can't have you get any ideas about running off while I do that. Open up."
In her hand she held a bright orange ball gag. A sudden look of fear came into the woman's eyes- the realization that something here was wrong, that what was happening here was far deeper than what she had thought. Adri didn't give her time to resist. She slammed the ball in place, tightening it until she heard a muffled shriek of pain.
"Can't let that go wrong," said Adri. "Also, by the way?"
She held up the gun, pulled the trigger. A click, and a small flame appeared at the tip of the barrel. "It's good for cigs. Like it?"
The girl began to writhe. Her feet made a pounding sound on the car floor. It seemed incredibly loud in the parking lot.
"Hold still, you stupid-" hissed Adri. A rapid glance around. The women kept struggling. She struck the woman. Struck her again. "Shut. Up."
A muffled scream of pain, and the woman went still, so abruptly that Adri thought she had fallen unconscious. Adri pulled her hand back from the woman's chest. Heat rose visibly from her hand, the way to comes out if a car on a hot summer day. The woman stared. She was gasping, a red wept forming on her upper chest. A spot of blood from her nose had begun to mingle with her tears. Adri snorted.
"That's gonna cost you, b****," she said. A black bag came out of her sack. "Lights out."
She pulled the hood down. The woman didn't move. Adri slammed the door. Spat on the ground.
"Stupid," she said. "Stupid, stupid."
She looked around, but there was no sign anyone had seen the disturbance. The parking lot was quiet, nearly empty. No cameras watched this area- she'd checked.
"Need to bring some chloroform or something next time," she growled.
She went back to the room. The woman's shirt and shoes were on the floor and her cell phone was on the table. Adri rolled the clothes under her arm and pocketed the phone. Outside the room she carefully peeled back to 228 sticker to reveal the engraved numbers 227.
She dropped the phone into the dumpster behind the motel. If the woman's pump came looking for her, he'd find no room 228 and whatever cell phone tracking he had would show her as still at the vital. Eventually the trash would be carried off, and he could follow it to no avail. She'd booked the room for another night and payed with cash. Sometime tomorrow the motel manager would come around to enquire why she hadn't checked out, find her gone, shrug, and have the room cleaned for the next guest. If the police got involved- not that they would, nobody cared about trash like that- what would they find? A motel room that dozens of people had stayed in- and had been cleaned since, no less. What evidence could they find from that?
She walked back to her car. The hooded figure was slumped in the back seat, shaking with sobs.
"Just keep quiet, love," called Adri as she started the car. "It'll all be over soon!"
zzzz zzzz
"And this," said Adri, holding up the thin steel cylinder. "Is a needle."
"Please-" said the woman.
"I am not done talking!" snapped Adri. The woman cringed. Adri smiled. "All right, so this is a needle. I stick it under your nails- finger or toe, doesn't matter- maybe tap it with the hammer if I can't get it seated right, and I sort of jiggle it there. To loosen things up, you know? That way I can just get a good grip with the pliers and-" she made a yanking motion. The woman winced again.
"Anyway, that's the introductory stuff. There's more things here, but we'll cover those when the time comes. What do you think?" Adri gestured to include the entire room they were in. "You like it? My sister built it for me."
The room was built of concrete blocks and lit by fluorescent lights. The walls were painted white. The floor was concrete covered by occasional rubber mats. There was a door at one end, made of steel. There were no windows. Along one wall there were three small cells with a cot and a bucket in each. Next to those were three cages, as if for a set of large dogs. Around the edges of the room not covered by cells or cages were several steel tool boxes, the upright kind with multiple drawer and most of them painted red. One of these Adri had rolled out into the center of the room where she and the woman were.
The center of the room held tables and chairs, though putting it that way greatly undersold the horror of the contents. Dentist chairs, with straps up and down them for immobilizing some unfortunate. The tables were surgical tables, stainless steel with chains attached, and it was to one if these the woman from the hotel room was chained, spreadeagle.
"You know, you're the first guest I've had in here," said Adri. She giggled, clapping her hands. "I'm so excited. I've spent years thinking about this! The thing about prison is that it's so
boring. You spend just hours and hours in your cell with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and think." A proud smile danced around her lips. "I designed this place in my head while I was locked up. Now it's real and mmmmm, I am so excited!"
"Please let me go," said the woman.
Adri laughed. "And why should I do that?"
"I have a son," the woman said. Her voice was low and shaky. "He's two. He has brown hair... blue eyes." The woman looked at Adri, face pleading.
Adri cocked her head. "Interesting," she said. "What's his name?"
"Charlie," the woman breathed. "Please, just let me see him again. I'll do anything you want. I swear I won't tell-"
"Oh, that's true," said Adri. She spread her lips, opening them wide in a smirk. "You're not going to tell a soul."
The woman's eyes went wide. "No! No, please!"
"That's right," said Adri affectionately, patting her shoulder. "Keep on begging. Who knows, it might even work." She pulled a cigarette from her pocket and lit it between her fingers. "Just think, you get to be the very first. That's something you'll never have to share with anyone else."
The woman made a sound halfway between a sob and a scream.
Adri pulled open one of the drawers in the toolbox next to her. Metal gleaned up at her in fluorescent light: hammers, pliers, scalpels, scissors, forceps, tools and sharp things and surgical equipment of all kinds. Adri's hand hovered over the drawer.
"Now let's see," she said. "We'll start with-"
