16. Reasonable Doubt

T he Joanna Capris. The red dot on Kellen’s phone screen sat over the luxury hotel building like a blinking bullseye.

“Swan,” Alexei had addressed that man as. And it was the second time that name had been mentioned in a dream.

Kellen lay back on the hard floor of the motel room, one arm lifted across his forehead, eyes pinned up at the ceiling fan. His fingers were white with pressure on the phone in his hand.

“A fatal police shooting took place in the Carreon district of South Winchester, Arkansas in the afternoon yesterday.” The nonsensical babbling of the TV suddenly sharpened in Kellen’s ears.

His fingers ceased pinning the device in his hand. His head turned, eyes lifting to the television. He was right. It was on the morning news.

“Two suspects were shot and killed, police stating that the individuals were on the run from arresting officers—and that they were both armed.”

Kellen’s brow quirked at the screen. Were they or were they not going to mention the police officer who was also killed?

A series of vibrations broke out from somewhere else in the room, and Kellen abruptly sat up. His eyes momentarily met with those of his dog. Wolf gave him a long look before returning her attention to a set of carefully licked paws.

Letting out a pressured breath, Kellen got to his feet and walked over to the bed. He rifled through the clothing discarded across the blanket until he found the flip phone in the pocket of a jacket. Then the TV remote on the nightstand.

He muted the TV.

“Hello.”

“I have some more details for you. Is now a good time to talk?” Marcus’s voice.

Kellen paced toward the window. “Yeah, now is good.”

There was a three-second pause on the other end. “The captives found yesterday are all Filipino, but from different islands in the Philippines. Most of them speak standard Tagalog, and their stories are all pretty similar. They went to a clinic to ‘donate’ plasma, maybe donate blood—‘donate,’ under the premise of monetary compensation for their time. They’re taken to a room in the clinic, then wake up later on a boat full of Spanish-speakers. They land in Mexico, then get shuttled across the border in cargo crates.”

Kellen’s vision blurred dimly on the moving image of a reporter on the TV screen.

“They don’t know why they’re here,” Marcus was continuing. “But most of them don’t seem to be interested in going back to the Philippines. These are people from farm villages; they grew up deep in poverty, and none of them have much to go back to. These are not people who have people to miss them. Some of them grew up so rural, they don’t even have legal identities.”
Someone did their homework, Kellen silently concluded. Someone carefully targeted individuals with the highest vulnerability. “Precarious situations,” Alexei had said. Were the dancers at Exotix kidnapped Filipinos?

“There are two people we pulled from the box truck who have been quite a bit harder to communicate with,” Marcus went on. “These two speak a rare variation of Tagalog that we only just now found a translator for. They’re from an island called Katakawan. Katakawan is a largely isolated civilization. The island people have been hostile toward government intervention, despite their deeply impoverished state, and given the island is considered barren resource-wise, the government leaves them alone. Katakawan considers itself its own country. It governs itself via a religious organization.”

A cult, Kellen heard in his mind before he even knew where the conclusion came from. He said nothing.

“Anyway, these two Katakawanians are behaving a bit differently. They’re kind of aggressive, to be honest. And they certainly don’t want to be here. They’ve been asking about some other people, though. They gave us a whole list of names and descriptions. Sounds like they were separated from some people they know—people they were kidnapped with, we think. Separated in Mexico, to the best we can figure.”

“I see,” Kellen murmured.

“They’re kids,” Marcus said after a moment. “They’re all just kids. Doc said the oldest one is around twenty-five. There’s a twelve-year-old, too. A twelve-year-old trying to earn money by donating blood. A twelve-year-old who doesn’t feel like anyone would miss him if he disappeared. Can you fucking imagine?”

Silence. Kellen’s teeth sank into his lower lip.

“That’s it for now. Any update on your end?”

Kellen walked back over to the place on the floor where he had left his phone and picked it up. “I have another location,” he responded.

“Another tracking device?” There was almost a tone of dread in Marcus’s voice.

“Yes.”

A long silence followed. “So…you need another SWAT team?”

“Maybe.”

“When and where?”

“ 11 PM. The tracker will tell us where.”

There was a long silence on the other end. “Okay. I’ll arrange a meetup so we can get the device from you.”

Kellen’s eyes narrowed at the silently babbling TV. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I can’t let you come this time,” Marcus responded. “Hell, I don’t know if I can get anyone there this time. It’s hard to get a damn warrant without an address.”

“All of this worked last time,” Kellen said sharply.

“An officer was killed last time.”

There was another silence.

“No protocols were broken, were they?”

“Three people died. Internal Affairs is dissecting every single thing that happened, and your name has already come up a lot more times than my sense of job security would like. We’re not going without a warrant.”

Kellen’s jaw pressed shut, then gradually loosened. His eyes lowered to the darkened smartphone in his hand. “I see.”

“I’ll figure out a location and a time, and I’ll text you,” was the last thing Marcus promised before hanging up.

Kellen silently unlocked his smartphone. The Tracks map stared back at him when the screen came to life. That blinking red dot. Still hovering over the Joanna Capris.

“ 232 -A,” June had said in the dream.

* * * *

Piano music. Dim, expensive lighting.

A feeling Kellen couldn’t even describe sank through his skin and all the way to his bones as he entered the first-floor lobby of the Joanna Capris Hotel. A thick feeling of unsteadiness settled in his stomach as he passed well-dressed strangers sitting among the tables. A wiry man was hitting slow keys on the grand piano in a corner. Lit windows peered in at the fine diners within two distinct co-located restaurants. There was a clothing store. A souvenir shop. A mini bar full of glittering lights at the center of the lobby. A wrap-around balcony overlooking everything from the second floor.

Security everywhere.

Kellen joined the back of a group of people who seemed to be attending a tour.

“And this is a portrait of the very first doorman of the Joanna, Mr. Franklin Oren,” the tour guide was saying. “Oil paint on canvas.”

Some people were taking pictures on their phones.

Kellen melted a little further into the middle of the crowd. There were elevators—two sets of them at least, at both ends of the lobby. But in a place like this, the elevators might require keycards.

Kellen had only spotted one stairway—an oddly narrow and unlit opening closed off by a yellow chain and a security guard standing close by.

There was an indoor fountain full of coins. Kellen followed the tour group past it, the guide babbling ahead the entire time.

“Many of our guests enjoy a meal at one of our first-floor restaurants, but we also offer exquisite dining at our second-floor restaurant, served by our French five-star chef—available exclusively to overnight guests.”

This tour wasn’t going to the second floor.

Kellen was sweating. Sweating in the freezing air conditioning. His eyes followed the slow footsteps of the security guard from beside the stairway, along the wall, and to a service desk behind a sheet of glass. The guard dropped his elbow onto the outer counter, lips curving into a smile on words Kellen couldn’t make out.

Silently, Kellen stepped out of the tour group and started across the polished floor toward the unguarded stairway. His strides lengthened, quickened; eyes keeping the guard within his peripheral vision.

Four steps away, three, one. Kellen soundlessly slipped under the chain and climbed the steps into the darkness that immediately swallowed him.

There were no lights, no windows. The steps sounded like stone. The smell of dust in the air was almost suffocating; the stairway design was archaic. From the width of the passage to the height of the banister, the space felt ancient.

That didn’t mean there weren’t modern security cameras watching it.

Kellen tugged the fabric hood out from the leather jacket he was wearing and kept his face low.

There was a door at the top. Kellen felt out its dimensions, then lightly tested the push handlebar. Ordinary resistance. The door was not locked.

Kellen pressed the door open and slipped out into a carpeted hallway. For three seconds, he took in his surroundings. The overlook balcony visible around the corner. The number on the closest door. The hallway at the other side of the balcony.

An alarm went off.

The sound was deafening. Flashing lights erupted from somewhere near Kellen. He glanced over his shoulder, briefly registering the “Emergency Exit Only: Alarm Will Sound” sign on the door he had just come through—before starting at a calculated pace for the balcony and the hallway beyond it.

Quick footsteps sounded from behind him, and Kellen slipped back his hood and slowed his pace. He kept walking. The footsteps receded.

“Folks do not know how to read,” someone said. The alarm shut off.

Kellen passed two guests and started into the silent atmosphere of the hallway at the other side of the balcony opening.

Deep carpet. The smell of carpet cleaner. Dark wood doors with numbers and letters.

232 -A, 232 -A…

Kellen stopped short in front of 231 -A. He turned to the other side of the hallway, and then he was standing face-to-face with it.

The feeling in his body suddenly seemed to compound. Sweat. Cold. The feeble pounding in his chest, his throat. A sick sensation in his stomach. Weak, disconnected.

It was like dreaming a dream that felt completely real. And then waking up to find it was. That hallway, that door. The temperature of the air. The light. The piano music.

What the hell am I doing here? The thought hit Kellen’s mind, and suddenly, he didn’t know the answer to it.

Feebly, he lifted out his phone and looked at the screen. The red dot on the map. It was a crippling moment of realization: acknowledging the reflexive desire to see that the dot had moved. That it was somewhere else now, and he could simply leave.

I wanted to prove myself wrong. Kellen’s finger lightly pressed the power button, and the cracked screen went dark. And he had been so sure that he would. That this hallway would not look the same. That he wouldn’t recognize this door. That he was just crazy. It was all a “brain fart.”

Fuck, he heard in his head. Fuck, what now? Two choices: definitively prove the reality of something he had spent most of his life fearing. Or walk away and preserve whatever reasonable doubt remained.

Kellen stepped up to the door and knocked on it.