Ties That Bind

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Joyce Hamada wasn't hard to spot in the crowd of students that surged out of Smith Hall shortly after three. Kate Ross had found her picture in the case file Oscar Baron had given to Amanda, but the picture did not do her justice. Baggy jeans and a loose-fitting Portland State sweatshirt could not conceal her voluptuous figure. Jet-black hair hung to Hamada's waist and gleamed in the afternoon sun as if it had been polished. Her almond-shaped eyes were wide and alive, the highlight of a face that would have looked great on the cover of a fashion magazine.

Kate followed the nineteen-year-old sophomore across the street to the parking garage. She lagged behind when Hamada walked up a flight of stairs to the third floor, and closed the gap while she was tossing her books into the back of a beat-up Mazda.

"Miss Hamada?"

The woman spun in panic, her eyes wide. Kate held out her credentials.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you. My name is Kate Ross. I'm an investigator working for the lawyer who's defending Jon Dupre. Do you have a minute?"

"You've got the wrong person. I don't know this man."

"I'm talking to you here, Miss Hamada, because I don't want to embarrass you in a more public setting."

"I'm late. I have to go," Hamada said as she opened the driver's door.

"You were arrested for prostitution three months ago but the charges were dropped. Jon Dupre posted your bail and paid Oscar Baron's legal fees. That's a strange thing for someone you don't know to do."

Hamada swore and her shoulders slumped.

"I don't want to hurt you. I'm not interested in things you may have done. I just want to talk about some things that might be relevant to Jon's case."

Hamada sighed. She got into the car and motioned Kate around to the passenger side.

"Ask your questions," Hamada said when Kate shut the door.

"Why don't you start by telling me how you met Jon?"

Hamada laughed, but her eyes didn't. "I was fresh off the bus from Medford, my first time in the big city, if you can believe that. About two weeks after school started, I went to one of the clubs with some girls from school. Jon made a move on me and I didn't know what hit me. He's this great-looking, older guy, he dresses well, and he's ultrasmooth, not geeky like most of the freshman boys. The next thing I know I'm in this house I'd only seen in the movies, high on cocaine, and he's fucking my brains out. I thought I'd died and gone to Hollywood."

"How did he convince you to work for him?"

"I don't want to get into that stuff. I'm out of the life now that he's locked up." Hamada paused and shook her head. "The way he killed that lawyer, that could have been me."

"Did Jon ever hit you?"

"Yeah," Hamada said, hanging her head.

"Why didn't you leave him?"

She laughed harshly. "You think it's easy to walk away from someone like Jon?"

"Jon says that you were at his house with another girl on the evening that Senator Travis was killed."

"So?" Hamada asked defensively.

"Were you there?"

"Yeah."

"Do you remember Jon calling anyone that night?"

"He was always on the phone. I didn't pay any attention."

"Did you hear him mention Senator Travis?"

"No, but we weren't always in the same room. Besides, we left early."

"Why is that?"

"Jon got pretty fucked up on some drug he was doing, and Ally chased us out."

"Ally Bennett?"

"Yeah. She was like a mother hen when she was around Jon. Always trying to act important."

"You and Bennett didn't get along?"

"It wasn't like that. She's just territorial where Jon is concerned. She could be nice, too."

"The DA may subpoena some of the women who worked for Jon to convince the jury that he has a violent nature. If you're a witness, what can we expect from you?"

"He roughed me up once when I didn't want to go out on a job. He scared me more than hurt me. Once I did what he wanted he was nice again."

"Can you think of anything that would help Jon?"

"Not really. I'm sort of relieved that he's in jail. I wanted to quit, but he made it hard. I hated it, really. Having some fat pig slobbering over me. I always took a long shower afterwards. Sometimes it didn't help. There'd be this smell that would stay with me."

"Was being afraid of Jon the only thing that made you stay?"

"Look, the money was great. My folks don't have much and it really helped. But, all in all, I'm glad I have an excuse to get out."

Kate headed for Ally Bennett's apartment as soon as she finished talking to Joyce Hamada. She had to find out how long Ally Bennett had stayed with Jon Dupre on the night Travis was murdered. Kate tried to remember if the medical examiner had estimated a time of death. If Bennett had stayed most of the night, she could be Jon's alibi.

Kate pulled into the lot at Ally's apartment complex and walked to Ally's door, which was ajar. She knocked. No one answered.

"Ally?" Kate called as she pushed the door all the way open. It looked like a freight train had driven through the apartment at full throttle. The Van Gogh and Monet prints had been thrown to the floor, cracking the glass, the cushions on the sofa had been ripped to shreds, books littered the floor, and the bookshelf had been overturned.

Kate crossed the living room and walked down the hall to the bedroom, hoping that she would not run across Bennett's body. The bedroom had suffered the same fate as the living room. Sheets and blankets were strewn across the floor and the mattress had been ripped open. Every drawer in the dresser had been pulled out and Bennett's clothes had been tossed about.

After a brief look at the kitchen and bathroom, which had also been trashed, Kate left, pulling the door shut and wiping her prints from the knob. Then she drove to the parking lot of a nearby supermarket and phoned Amanda.

"What do you think happened?" Amanda asked after Kate told her about her interview with Joyce Hamada and her visit to Bennett's apartment.

"I can't begin to guess, but finding Bennett should be our chief priority."

"If she can alibi Jon for the evening of Senator Travis's murder I might be able to convince Tim Kerrigan to back off on those charges."

"I'll get right on it."

"And I'll call Sally Grace and see if she has an estimate of Travis's time of death."

"Okay. Phone me with it if you get one."

"Will do. Where are you going to start looking?"

"I'll hit the computer to see if Bennett has used a credit card recently and I'll talk to people at her apartment complex. Maybe see if Hamada or that other woman knows if she's working somewhere now that Exotic Escorts is on hiatus."

"Sounds good."

They rang off and Amanda thought about this new twist. Why had Bennett's apartment been trashed? Bennett could be dead, or so scared that she'd run. And what if she was dead? Amanda hoped that they could find her, and that she was safe.

Amanda's mother had died in childbirth, but she'd had one great parent and a carefree childhood. She always felt incredibly lucky about the breaks life had dealt her. Amanda shivered. Growing up with a sexual predator for a father, having to sell your body because it was the only way to get by. She thought about the psychological scars she carried from her one brief brush with depravity. What if every day of your life was like the moments she'd spent as a prisoner of the surgeon?

Amanda hoped that Ally had escaped the people who'd invaded her apartment and she hoped, for Jon's sake, that Kate could find her. A call girl was not the greatest alibi her pimp could have, but it would be a lot better than what they had now.