Night Auditor

Prologue (4)

Remains of his morning coffee and bile were emptied out of his stomach as Langley reached the hotel's front porch. Ramos and Griffin approached him and helped him up.

"It's okay," said Ramos. "We did the same thing when we saw."

"What the hell happened in there?!" exclaimed Langley. Two decades on the job and he had nothing to show for but the remains of his coffee vomit on the wooden floor. He felt terrible for Ms. Aguinaldo who had to clean up his bodily excretion while going through a terrible, and extraordinary, work day.

"Luckily for us," said Ramos. "That ain't our side of things. And it doesn't look like we are needed here so we'll head out." Griffin, who hadn't spoken a single word since Langley arrived, trailed behind Ramos like a sick puppy. But after what Langley saw, he fully understood the ghostlike expression on the poor kid's face. Tough way to break a newbie in.

"Sheriff," a first responder called from the ambulance. Langley recognized her as Marie, one of the ladies who went to his church. "Come meet our friend."

Langley dropped his gaze to find a girl, probably eleven or twelve years old, sitting slouched by the edge of the van's rollaway bed. The girl did not look hurt except for the perceivable trauma her eyes were giving away. The look reminded him of his daughter Katherine years ago when he denied her a movie date with a senior boy.

Langley bent towards the girl who flinched away in return. He stepped back. "Hi there," he said. "I won't hurt you. My name is Langley. Sheriff Lance Langley. What's your name?"

The girl locked her gaze towards the daisies sitting on the ground. "Do you know those men?" He tried asking again. A thought occurred in him, the same thought that would always occur whenever a scene, any type of scene, involved a child. It was all too the same.

"Ms. Aguinaldo doesn't know her name either," said Marie. "But she thinks the girl's the daughter of one of the men up there."

Maybe that explained the tragic look in the girl's eyes. The shock of your father being slaughtered to death with his two friends. But what was with the flinching? God, he wished his intrusive thoughts were wrong. Let this poor girl just happened to be on vacation with these strange men, nothing more. Langley once again turned his attention to the girl and asked, "Is one of them your father?"

No response.

"Are you on vacation with them, darlin'?" asked the sheriff. Saying the question out loud made him realize how absurd of a question it was. Why would an eleven year old girl travel with three men in a town such as Lagro? He was asking the wrong questions, yet the silver lining was this: the girl was here, safe. She wasn't going to be another unsolved case to be left forgotten in the dozens of other unsolved cases sitting on his desk. He hoped she was the missing girl he had gotten a call for two days ago.

Inspired, Langley quickly unbuttoned one of his front pockets and took out an old photo of Katherine: a creased wallet-size photo of her from sixth grade Picture Day, which college student Katherine would now hate.

Langley showed the photo closer to the girl who now seemed interested. "This is my daughter, Katherine. She is off to college now but she used to be your age. Sometimes I miss that phase, sometimes I don't. I mostly do if I'm being honest. Your age was about the last time I truly felt like a dad. It was about the last time my daughters openly needed me."

No response. Where were all the other children now, Langley wondered. Katherine and Emma could have easily been one of those unfortunate children if fate allowed it.

"They used to come to me for help, my daughters. Katherine took a whole year to learn how to ride her bike. Her younger sister, Emma, learned it in a day! But Katherine, oh my Katherine." Langley reminisced on the moment, forgetting for a second about the massacre in 412. "A year of learning how to ride a bike meant a year of bruises and pain and crying. But it was also a year of running to her old man for comfort. Because I used to be able to fix everything. Nowadays, I'm lucky if they complain to me about a new boyfriend."

"You can't fix everything," the girl finally spoke. Her voice, soft and hoarse. The voice of an innocent who had been through more than what most people would go through in their lifetimes. Including him.

"I agree with you," said Langley. "But we can always try, can't we?"

"You can't fix what happened in there."

Langley sat next to the girl. Marie, the first responder, quietly listened. "What exactly happened? Will you tell us?"

The girl spoke softly, and slowly, with the maturity in her voice becoming more apparent as her story progressed. She lived in Winter Springs, an old subdivision on the opposite end of town. She was walking home from school when two men quickly swept her off the street and tied her in the back of the van. For two days, they kept her there. It was dark, it was hot, it was a factory of unending nightmares not even sleep would allow her to escape from. She thought the nightmare was going to be over when they got here. But she was heavily disappointed when the men had taken her out of the van, still with her lips taped shut and a sweaty towel wrapped around her head, and dragged her through the back of the hotel.

The two men carried the girl up to the fourth level until they reached 412. They kept her mouth taped but when they finally removed the towel off her head, she saw a man, naked, lying on his back in the hotel bed.

"You do as he says," one of her kidnappers had demanded. "You do as he says or we will slit your throat open and leave you here for your family to never find you."

The girl tried to hold back her tears and thought of her mother who always chanted mind over matter during her yoga sessions. Her mother now seemed like a person she knew from a lifetime ago. She was never getting home.

The man on the bed smiled a fiendish smile that made even the farthest end of her spine quiver. The man's chubby right hand began traveling over his mountainous body until it barely reached his erect penis. Looking at the man alone made her feel disgusted. "You're mine," the man whispered.

What happened next was indescribable but not for the reasons she originally thought. Before her abductors could escape the room, an awful, yet amazing thing had happened next. The girl was saved.