Madison’s notes

Madison looked over in the side-view mirror until Eastman was out of sight, then she let out a long groan and flopped back into the seat of Dexter’s car.

“Your stuff’s in the backseat.” Dexter said, thumbing over his shoulder in-between shifting gears. He rolled the window down and let the breeze run through his short black hair. He liked to claim he preferred to smell the city, that’s how he spotted stories. Madison could tell it was because the A/C was broken and he was too cheap to fix it. She reached back and found a small gym bag behind the driver’s seat. She pulled out the State College sweatshirt inside and slipped it over her head. “Why are you so sweaty?” He asked, noting the dampness on her white top.

“We had an exercise session to close out the day. They paddled my ass. Ow. Ow.”

“I hear you. You know, I’ve been doing this boot camp thing three times a week, really attacks your core-.”

“That wasn’t a metaphor, Dex. They literally beat my ass with paddles. It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

He laughed. A **** glare from Madison stopped that in its tracks. “...Really?”

“Yes, Dex. It’s a **** school.” She pulled out a pair of sweatpants from the bag.

“Must not be a good one, you haven’t called me Master once.” He looked over as she started to undo the tartan skirt.

“Eyes on the road, perv.” She grabbed his chin and pointed his face forward. She gingerly slipped the skirt down her hips, even the soft skirt felt like dragging sandpaper over her raw skin. The sweat pants were no better, but at least her legs were covered for the first time today.

“I think you called me Boss once.” He mused.

“I must have been exhausted.” Madison leaned against the car window. Just like now, she was exhausted right now. Just need to get home. Take an edible, get the notes down in her laptop, and then she could take the rest of the night off to sleep.

“Did you get any good leads, any thing we can use? Anything I can follow up on?”

Madison remembered the girl, Tatiana. She said Senator Johnson owned her? That was certainly something they could use. But not yet, it was too tenuous. Same with Anna’s owner, limo guy. Harvey? She wasn’t sure if that was his first name or last name, she’d need to do more research. Start with the plate number.

“...Earth to Madison? Anything?” Dexter poked her in the shoulder.

“Yeah but not yet.” She brushed him off. “I need to look into some things first.”

“I can do the research, Madison. You’re a little occupied during the day.”

“Thanks, fearless leader. But you’re like a pitbull on a pantleg. If I gave you anything this early on, you’d chase it relentlessly, maybe publish too early. It might close things off for me. You’ll just have to give me some more time to develop it.”

He shrugged as he made the turn into the parking lot of her apartment complex. “I’ve gotta trust your judgment on this one. Since you finally called me ‘Fearless Leader’ I think you might be wising up.” He stopped in front of her door and turned off the engine. His voice took on a serious tone.. “You don’t think anyone suspects, do you?”

“No, who would? This plan is just insane enough to work.”

“It’s insane alright. They call you Mad Maddy for a reason.”

“I’ll be fine, Dex. Thanks for worrying about me.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” He waited until she climbed out. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning to pick you up.”

Madison nodded and headed upstairs to her studio. Once she was finally back in her space, she took a long exhale. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me.” Madison called out to her voice-activated stereo, and soft, relaxing music began trickling through the small space.

She popped open her bathroom medicine cabinet, and took a weed gummy. Usually a half would do it, but this felt like a full gummy night. She figured she had about 90 minutes before it hit her like a brick, so no time to waste. She turned the faucet to start filling up her bathtub and added some Epsom salt from under the sink. That should help with the bruising.

Madison stepped out of her sweats and panties and twisted around to see what she could in her small bathroom mirror. What she could see, she didn’t like.

“Fuck, I guess I’ll have to be a good girl tomorrow.” She said to no one in particular. Madison set her laptop on a small table next to her bathtub, before stripping off and climbing in.

“Oh yeah…” This apartment sucked, but she was right over the main boiler so at least the water was always hot. The little things.

Madison wrote down everything she could recall from her four classmates and the teacher, Stonebridge. Then she turned to her research.

“Senator Johnson… Pretty consistently opposed to slavery. At least publicly…” Madison parsed through some of his statements on the issue. They’d been softening notably in the last few months. “I suppose having a pretty young woman under your thumb would make it seem acceptable. Fuckin’ pig.” She shook her head.

Madison logged into the local license plate database using the login credentials from an old “friend” she had met in a bar. She hadn’t gone into it looking to swipe his passwords. But the sex sucked, so she considered that an appropriate compensation for her time.

The SUV was a dead end. Owned by a corporation and leased to another corporation, which was probably owned by another corporation and blah blah blah, nothing to tie him to Tatiana there. Tatiana’s name didn’t appear on the lists of any slaves recently auctioned or imported, which made sense if she was smuggled in by some asshole with a private plane.

She tried the limo that Anna took home. Registered to Harvey Carlyle, the real estate heir. The guy was born into an empire and just spent his life living on its benefits. “Kinda surprising that Anna was his first ****, considering. Guy like that seems like he’d be first in line.” Or was she? Madison searched and found a few **** transfers from his name, all sales. “Seems like this creep and his buddies just pass them around.” Madison clenched her fists and stifled a scream. All of it was legal. Did anything shock people any more?

The gummy was starting to take effect, so Madison chose to table that for the rest of the evening. Danielle and Ashley could wait, although she doubted there would be anything meaningful about Ashley on the internet. That one, she’d have to interview directly. And that risk needed to be carefully planned. But that was a tomorrow problem. She pushed away the computer table and let herself sink into the hot water.