Chapter 10
The cashier in the supermarket had not been able to forget the ruthless faces of the men who had handed her the hundred dollar bill. She knew she had seen them somewhere before. But where? And then, some time later, wrapping glasses in old newspaper for a customer, she, saw their pictures! So that was it! She retrieved the hundred dollar bill from the cash drawer and checked the serial number against the list. Sure enough, it was one of the stolen bills. She told her boss and the police were phoned immediately.
That had been the first alert.
But at that point, there was a little that the police could do. Were the gangsters hiding out here or just passing through? It was impossible to tell. Nevertheless, they' intensified their watch on the area.
It was a junior detective who first noticed a series of curious complaints, all from the same apartment building. Women's screams, new tenants who never left the house. Then, finally, a call from a man who had seen a girl matching the description of the bank robbers' hostage, climbing down the fire escape in front of his window.
It seemed a good enough clue to check out fully armed.
After the capture, the media had been kind to Ellie. They had suppressed the details of how the gangsters had been found, and nothing appeared in the papers about the strange orgy the police had crashed in on.
Ellie was a heroine. She was presented to all the world as a brave young woman who had suffered a terrible ordeal. No one imagined the true depths of the degradation which she had undergone or the terrible things she had learned about herself.