Ringmaster

We had the apartment surrounded. There were officers on the roof, ready to swing through the windows. Several others, including me, were at the door. 

We had him. After years of searching, we had finally found him. I had finally found him. 

The SWAT officer in front of me breaks down the door and we all stream into the apartment, guns drawn, ready for a fight. But it doesn’t play out like that.

Our suspect sits in a wooden chair in the middle of the room, his hands clasped together in his lap. At our entrance, he gazes up and tilts his head slowly, taking all of us in. Many of the officers seem taken aback. They were expecting a struggle of some kind. They wanted one. They wanted to show the man just a fraction of the pain he caused so many others, but they would not get that chance.

With a smile on his face, the man holds out his hands, and after a moment, I step forward and handcuff him before roughly bringing him to his feet. Not once did he struggle or make any move to suggest that he was distressed.

***

Vincent Adler. The leader of one of the biggest human trafficking rings in North America. It was eerie, watching him. His reaction to being caught is definitely not what I expected. For a man who might have just lost everything, he was too calm. 

We’ve been sitting in the interview room for almost ten minutes now, in the hopes that Adler may become jittery. But no such luck, as I can clearly tell looking at him. 

“Well, Detective King. I presume you’ve got some questions for me?” he asks. 

“Many. Let’s begin with where you’re keeping them.”

The way he looks at me makes my skin crawl. His fingers tap out a steady rhythm on the metal table. He leans back in the seat comfortably.

“The way you burst into my home, I would have thought you’d have more than circumstantial evidence. You have nothing, don’t you?” he asks in a mocking tone.

Ignoring him, I plow on, hoping he’ll slip up. I can only hope that his arrogance trips him up. 

“Who was your first victim?”

Adler chuckles, eyeing the file in front of me. “Are those her files?” Adler waits for a response, but when I don’t answer, he continues. “Lisa Denvers, 14 at the time. Want to confirm that?”

He is indeed correct. Denvers had gone missing over a decade ago. She’ll be 27 a couple of weeks from now. That is, if she’s still alive. I had been a rookie when she had gone missing, and I can still remember the weeks after her disappearance. Rumours spread like wildfire, but most people believed she had run away from home, as she was known to be a troublemaker child. 

“What happened to her?”

Adler shuts his eyes, and a small smile forms on his lips. The sight of it makes me sick. 

“She’s gone now. Tell her parents that. I bet they really miss her.”

It takes all of my strength not to lunge across the table and beat the living crap out of him. If there weren’t security cameras watching us, he wouldn’t be so lucky. And he knows that, so he takes advantage of that. Even in here, he’s the one with all the power.

“When did you take her? Where?”

“2004. From a park near her home.”

That’s odd. Before coming in here, I made sure to look over the files. Denvers went missing in 2003. He probably has his dates mixed up. In the past three decades, he has abducted over 700 children for his trafficking ring. Those are just the ones that we know of. There could be hundreds more, and we have no idea. And Adler is not one to remember every single one of them. For him, it’s just business.

The officer standing guard by the door, Perez, shifts uncomfortably when Adler looks him up and down. His eyes linger on Perez’s handgun and then at his ankle, where there is a small bulge in the man’s pants. Probably a second hidden holster, in the case of an emergency. 

To my right, I can feel several eyes watching me, although I can’t see them. Through the one-way mirror, I know that there will be at least a dozen officers and FBI agents, listening to the interview, ready to lock this guy up. I have to get this right. This may just be the biggest case in my entire career.

“What happens to the girls?”

He shrugs. “They’re sold. I thought you’d know that, detective.” After a pause, he leans forward, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Let’s drop the formalities, Luke. Ask what you’re really after. I don’t have time to play around with silly questions that you already know the answers to.”

For a moment, I’m taken aback by the fact that he knows my name. I brush that aside, convincing myself that he heard it from a passing officer. Deep down, I know that is not true. No one here calls me Luke. 

“Alright then, Adler. Why are you in such a rush to get this over with? Got somewhere you need to be?”

Adler glances up at the clock, his head tilted to the side, working something out in his head. 

Before I can ask something else, a police officer bursts into the room, a file in hand. I jump to my feet, startled at the intrusion. Adler however, does not seem surprised. 

“King, it’s not him.”

My mind goes blank. Not him?

I stride to the door and the officer hands me the file. Perez leans in so he can listen. Despite my brain telling me not to, I open the file. 

Pictures of ‘Adler’ are inside, but it is not him. This man’s name is William Knight. His criminal record takes up over two pages and ranges in severity, from public intoxication and vandalism to assault with a deadly weapon. The real Adler is the picture next to the guy I’ve got, and they look awfully similar. Glancing back at the man at the table, I can now see that it is not him. His hair is longer, and his features are sharper, stronger. How could I have missed this? 

“His prints didn’t match with the ones that we’ve got. This ain’t Adler, King. We got the wrong guy.”

I want to throw the file right back at the officer. I want to go back five minutes, where we had the right guy and it was only a matter of getting information out of him. 

I make it to the table in two strides. Yanking him up by the collar, I shove him back against the wall. The officer at the door moves forward to stop me, but Perez puts an arm out, holding him back.

“Where is he, you son of a bitch?” 

A cruel smile lifts his lips and he lets out a short laugh. He clicks his tongue, shaking his head slowly. “Ah, Luke. You never were too bright, huh?”

“Where are they?” I yell as several officers enter the room. They pull me off of him and then shove Knight roughly back into the chair. 

“Asco,” he says simply. “Let’s see if you can catch the Ringmaster.”

***

Within the hour, we surround the abandoned Asco warehouse, shut down over a decade ago but never demolished. My heart pounds in my chest, and only one thought goes through my head, over and over again; Please don’t let us be too late.

A SWAT officer enters first, me right behind her. 

Upon entering the warehouse, we find it empty. I want to scream.

It’s a short corridor to a large open space, according to the blueprints to this place. 

We make our way down the dim corridor, and I hope that there will be something. Anything. 

There’s nothing. It’s completely empty, except for a wooden chair in the center of the room. To my horror, I realize there is a girl in the chair, a pool of blood around her. Her head is leaning forward so I can’t see her face, and her hands and feet are bound to the chair. There are several bruises that blot any exposed skin, all of different hues and sizes.

I step forward and kneel down on the balls of my feet. No pulse.

There is a ribbon with a little bow on the top of the girl’s head, tangled into her long dark hair. Bright red, just like the blood. So much blood. When I stand, I notice a small card in the girl’s lap, my name printed on it in large, neat letters.

Perez steps forward and hands me a pair of latex gloves and I slip them on. Stepping back, I let the other officers begin their work, and I can hear the distant sound of ambulance sirens. No need for that now.

Inside the envelope is a slip of paper, My hands are trembling, although I don’t know why. I hand the envelope to a forensic analyst to be checked for fingerprints. Carefully, I unfold the paper. I have to read the note several times before it registers in my head. My heart seems to stop, and I look around for I don’t know what. 

You’re next, pretty boy.

- The Ringmaster