SIXTY-FIVE
I walked behind the doublewide trailer. A rusted air conditioner, braced by a sawed-off two-by-four, hung from a window, rattling and dripping water into the sand. There was one rear entrance or exit. To reach the door I had to step up on a large paint can. The door was locked. I worked my way around the back of the trailer, heading for the front, stepping over dozens of used condoms.
I saw the sun wink from something shiny behind a clump of trees to the far right end of the trailer. I recognized the SUV. It was the Escalade that Ortega drove. I could hear the engine ticking from heat. I felt the hood. The motor was warm. It was unlocked, and keys hung from the ignition.
I could feel Ortega was close. Maybe watching my every move.
I opened the front door to the trailer. The recycled air smelled of cheap perfume, sweat-soaked sheets, and nail polish remover.
Six women, all looking terrified, sat on tattered furniture. The couch was the shade of a UPS truck, frayed and faded. The floor was linoleum, stained yellow, dirty and buckling in places. Latin music played from an area that looked like a kitchen. I stepped in from the heat, and closed the door.
One girl, no more than seventeen, sat with her legs bent at the knees, her arms wrapped around her legs, her small body rocking back and forth. She didn’t look up at me, her eyes wide and not looking at anything in the physical sense. I could see cigarette burns on her arms, between the scars from what looked like self-cutting and mutilation. There was a handprint bruise on her thigh, fresh bloodstains on her yellow shorts.
The other women simply stared at me. Expressionless. They were all so young, ranging in age from about sixteen to early twenties. I said,
“Buenas tardes. Hablar Ingles?”
“Si,”
said one of the youngest girls.
“What is your name?”
She was hesitant, looking at the other women. I said, “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you. I’m not a policeman, and I’m not with the Border Patrol or Immigration. My name is Sean O’Brien. I’m here to help you. Are you held against your will?”
The girl stared at me, not sure what to say. I asked her to repeat, in Spanish, what I said so the others could understand. She did and none of the women spoke.
The youngest girl said, “My name is Maria.” She was fearful, eyes wide.
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.
I could see dread in her eyes, and it wasn’t because I felt she was afraid of me. She licked her dry lips, her eyes darting around the room.
“I know you’re being forced to have sex. That’s against United States laws. Human beings can’t be held as slaves—sex slaves or any kind of human bondage. Do you understand?”
The women each offered the slightest nod. I looked at the youngest girl. “How do they pay you?”
She reached in her jeans pocket and pulled out a condom wrapper. “We turn in these at the end of the week. They give us five dollar for every one we have.”
“Five dollars?”
She nodded.
“How much do they charge the men?”
“Farm workers twenty dollars. The men’s we meet in the hotels, houses, and the condo…maybe five hundred dollar.”
“And you are given five dollars for that?”
“Sometimes more.”
“Where is the condo?”
“I don’t know how to find it. They take us there.”
“Who takes you there? Is it Hector Ortega?”
Her eyes found mine, the whites showing. She looked at the other women. They sat straight. Too straight. I knew Ortega was in the trailer.
“I’ll write my number down,” I said, with the same inflection and audio levels. “You’ll call me. We’ll file a lawsuit against the people that run this outfit.”
I gestured for one girl to come forward. She did, and I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Where in the trailer is Ortega?”
She looked over her shoulders, bit her bottom lip, pointed toward the back, and whispered, “Last room.”
SIXTY-SIX
I pulled out the Glock, motioned for the women to leave the trailer, and I started down the hall. The interior had been divided in at least a dozen small rooms. Most of the doors were open. I could see the same sized small beds in each room. The farther I got in the trailer, the stronger the odor of sheets and mattresses soaked in perspiration and body fluids. I could hear the air-conditioner straining in the hot sun.
I also heard a sound behind me.
I whirled around and pointed the Glock in the terrified face of a farm worker. He looked like he’d just come back from the fields, a John Deere hat on backwards, ruby red FSU T-shirt, filthy jeans smelling of green tomatoes and pesticides. He stuck his hands straight up.
I lowered the Glock. He looked over my right shoulder for a half second. It was all I needed. I dropped to the floor just as the gunfire roared in the trailer. The bullet hit the farm worker in the chest. I came up firing a shot at Ortega as he unloaded two rounds at my head. Both bullets missed my left ear and slammed into the flimsy trailer wall.
Ortega ran down the hall and out the front door. I followed. I saw other drops of blood past the fallen man. I had hit Ortega.
I ran around the side of the trailer where I knew Ortega had parked the SUV. I could see him searching frantically for the keys. I crept up behind the SUV and pointed the Glock in the window. “Hands on the wheel!”
“You fuckin’ shot me!”
“That’s the appetizer. Drop the gun and put your hands on the wheel. Now!”
He dropped his gun in his lap and slapped his hands on the steering wheel. I held the Glock in his face, reached though the open window, and lifted up his gun.
“I need a doctor!”
I looked at the gunshot wound in his right arm. “Get out of the car!”
“You’re trying to kill me!”
“I will kill you if you don’t get out of the car.”
He got out and stood in front of me holding one hand against his bleeding arm.
“Start walking!” I said.
“Where? Man, I need a doctor!”
I pushed him toward the dirt road in front of the trailers. He gripped his upper left arm and walked, blood seeping through his fingers, running down his bare arm. Farm workers watched from the edges of the road. The dog tied to a backhoe began barking.
“Shut up shithead!” Ortega yelled at the dog.
‘That macheen…sometime I see them take it out at night.’
“Stop!” I said, pushing Ortega toward the dog, a mix-breed with more lab than anything else. I kept the gun on Ortega while I rubbed the dog’s head. I looked up to where the rope was tied to the backhoe. It was then, in the late afternoon sun, that I saw it.
A long blonde hair, catching the afternoon light, glistening, hanging motionless from one of the teeth on the backhoe claw.
SIXTY-SEVEN
The strand of hair was caught in dried dirt in the tip of one dull metal tooth. “Well, what do we have here, Ortega?”
He swallowed, licked his thin lips. “I need an ambulance!”
“That
is
a lot of blood pouring down your arm. Must be your heart beating faster to compensate for the loss of your blood. I’d say you’re down to about five, many seven minutes before your heart starts pumping air.”
“Call 911 asshole!”
“Tell me where the bodies are buried, and I’ll call an ambulance. If you don’t, we’ll have to follow the backhoe tracks, could take a while. You and me tromping all over the south forty. I know the backhoe was used to dig graves. Where are they?”
He looked at the hair and looked back at me. The color drained from his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He blurted, “A half mile, down the easement, past the packing house, follow a dried-up canal to Farm 13. There’s fresh earth there. We don’t use that field. They’re buried there.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You don’t know exactly? I ought to let you die! You bastard!”
I saw Manny Lopez standing near one trailer. “Manny, take off your belt, tie it round his upper arm, right above the wound.”
Manny started the tourniquet while I held the gun on Ortega and dialed my cell with one hand. I called Dan Grant and told him what had happened and added, “Send an ambulance. Bring in forensics, the whole team, and a lot of body bags.”
I hung up and called Lauren Miles. “This will be one your folks in Quantico will talk about in classes for years to come. Bring your camera guys, that way your instructors will have illustrations when they teach the chapter on the real killing fields.”
“We’ll take choppers and be there in an hour,” she said.
#
TWO SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES
held Ortega under armed guard as he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
A small army of investigators and forensics people assembled at Farm 13. The former tomato field looked like it hadn’t been farmed in years. Weeds and Brazilian pepper trees sprouted over the 150 acres of sandy soil. It was easy to see where the backhoe had been. A strip of land, about fifty feet long, was disturbed, fresh-turned soil.
It was here where men in white jumpsuits and masks over their mouths and noses descended with shovels. The first body was found within five minutes. County and federal law enforcement people stood in a near circle while forensics investigators began uncovering the rest of the bodies. The dead were lined in a shallow, mass grave, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. There were seven women and two men.
“Internal organs missing,” the ME said, looking up from ditch of the dead.
I stepped closer. The victims appeared to have dark hair and features, except for one. The matted hair was blonde. I had a feeling I was looking at the partially decomposed body of Robin Eastman. The sad life of a young stripper, caught in a maniacal turf war, ended like a gutted fish.
Lauren and Dan stood next to me and watched the proceedings. Both the FBI and the county investigators were doing a good job documenting with video and numerous digital cameras.
Lauren looked to the west and pointed. “Chopper isn’t ours. Media are coming.”
Dan said, “We got to keep them back a good fifty yards!”
The senior ME came up out from the graves, removed his mask, and said, “In thirty-three years, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Any idea the time-line from the first killing to the latest?” I asked.
“That’ll take some lab work, but I’d estimate the one at the far end has been in the ground about five months. The last one down, few days.”
Dan shook his head. “How do you even try a case like this?”
“What do you mean?” Lauren asked.
“Quantity of bodies. Death penalty isn’t enough.”
I said, “Lauren, maybe you can take your FBI team and pay Josh and Richard Brennen a little visit. Their neglect, their handed-down abuse and indifference allowed it to exist in the first place. That’s a crime in my book.”
Dan looked over and held his hand up. To four deputies he yelled, “There’s a bunch of media people coming. I see the satellite trucks. Make sure nobody gets on this side of the tape. I mean nobody!”
I said, “The last puzzle piece has to be found. I need to get on the road to find it.”
“Where’re you going?” Lauren asked.
“Xanadu.”
#
AS I APPRAOCHED MY JEEP
, Manny Lopez was standing near it. “You found bodies?”
“Yes. Too many.”
“I never think this would happen when I come to this country.”
He held out his hand. I saw the keys from the Escalade in his dirty fingers. He said, “I took these so Ortega could not go. You take them.”
I smiled and folded his hand over the keys. “You keep them. I have a feeling he won’t need the car.”
“I do not know how to drive.”
“I’ll teach you.”
He smiled, nodded, and put the keys in his pocket.
I cranked the Jeep and started down the dirt road. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Manny petting the dog I’d freed from the leash. Both the dog and Manny seemed to be grinning.
SIXTY-EIGHT
The Club Xanadu was posh in a tacky kind of way. It was a cavernous club with plenty of seating in dark recessed areas away from the stage. A small chain hung across a flight of steps leading to a second floor. The sign in the middle of the chain read:
VIP Only.
On the stage, one dancer played to an audience of a dozen or so men. Her boredom was the only thing she was hiding.
Half a dozen women worked the room offering conversation and lap dances for hire. Ron Hamilton and I sat at a table away from the stage. His tie was lose, hair grayer than I remembered, dark circles under his eyes. He said, “This definitely isn’t your run-of-the-mill strip joint. The women all have the same type bodies and looks. Hand-picked from somewhere.”
“I always appreciated your powers of observation. Can you see what I see?”
“What’s that?”
“Lot’s of small cameras all over the room. If Santana is here today, he’s seen us.”
“We don’t look any different from the rest of the guys in here.”
“Maybe. But I’m thinking that if he’s the same perp from four years ago, he might recognize me. Remember the media frenzy? I hated to see my face in the papers.”
“Sean, you’ve changed. Job does that to us.”
A cocktail waitress approached our table. She said, “Hi, gentlemen. What can I get you?”
“Corona,” I said.
“Same thing,” Ron said.
She flashed a real smile and took an order from another table before going to the bar. The first dancer left the stage, slipped into a low cut dress and began working the room. She walked over to our table. Dark hair, black eyes, and smile that seemed as manufactured as her breasts. She said, “How about a dance?”
“Maybe later,” I said. I’d like to get to know you first.”
“Lot of guys just want somebody to talk to. My name’s Alicia?”
I said, “Sean and Ron.”
“Hi, Sean and Ron. Buy me a drink? ”
“Just don’t order champagne,” Ron said.
“Gottcha.”
The cocktail waitress brought our beers, and Alicia ordered a glass of white wine. She said, “I haven’t seen you fellas in here before. First time?”
Ron said, “Yeah, kinda hard to get out much anymore.”
“I understand. The wife factor, huh?”
“Something like that,” I said.
The cocktail waitress brought the glass of wine, set it in front of Alicia and said, “Gentlemen, you want to run a tab?”
I handed her a twenty. “Keep the change.”
Alicia sipped from her glass. “I know all about the wife factor. This club is like a big ol’ group therapy place for men. Women got Oprah. Men got nobody.”
“Alicia,” I said, “Where’s Santana?”
She looked like she couldn’t swallow the sip of wine. She inhaled through flared nostrils. “I don’t know. I don’t see him.”
I saw her glance up at one of the hidden cameras. She positioned the wine glass in front of her lips. “Ya’ll cops? I haven’t done nothing.”
Ron said, “We didn’t say you did. All we want is a little information about—”
I cut Ron off, lifted my beer glass to my mouth said, “He reads lips, doesn’t he?”
She smiled and nodded with her eyes. “You got it, big guy.”
“He’s watching us now, isn’t he?”
“Maybe.”
“Alicia, what do you want to do when you move on from this profession?’
“I want to be an actress. Always wanted to since I was a little girl. First time I saw Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I knew I wanted to act.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling out a one hundred bill, folding it quickly, but giving her enough time to see the denomination. “This is you chance to act. I’ll take that lap dance, but what I really want is for you to whisper in my ear. Act like you’re telling me all the fantasies you think I want to hear, but you’re really responding to my questions. Okay?”
“I can do that.”
She stood and slipped off her dress. She wore nothing but a G-string. As the music started, she sat in my lap, and whispered in my ear. “What do you want to know?”
I could see the flash of glitter body makeup, smell her perfume, and feel the heat of her body against me. “Tell me everything you know about the person I mentioned.”
In a soft whisper she said, “He’s weird. Sort of a Michael Jackson weird, I guess. Real choosy about the girls he sleeps with. I’ve never done him. I wouldn’t. One of the girls, she’s doesn’t work here any more, told me about him.”
“What was her name?”
“She goes by the name Tabitha, but her real name is Robin Eastman. Anyway, she told me he showers before and after sex, and he shaves his body. Everywhere, even his friggin balls. No hair anywhere.”
“Where’s Robin?”
“She left a while back. Nobody’s seen or heard from her since.”
“Did she quit?”
“Don’t know. She would have told us bye if she quit. He probably had one of his managers fire her. Makes my skin crawl, the way he looks at you.”
“What color are his eyes?”
“Greenish, but I try not to look at his eyes.”
“Does he keep an office here?”
“I heard there’s an office above the VIP area, but I can’t say for sure it’s his.”
“How would you know if he’s here?”
“I’ve only seen him twice in the nine months I’ve worked here. There is a private entrance on the other side of the building.”
The music end. I handed her the money and closed her hand around it. “Good luck in your acting.”
“Thanks,” she said, zipping the dress up.