Authors: Sylvia Sarno
Ann jabbed her finger at the bundle. “Kika is the key to this whole thing. Find her and you’ll find Travis.” When she looked to Tom Long for support she noticed that the detective’s gaze was directed at the floor, as if he were purposely avoiding her eyes.
“You’re so certain Kika Garcia kidnapped your son,” Julian Fox said in a quiet voice.
Ann shrugged off Richard’s warning hand. “You seem to think we have something to do with this.”
Julian’s lips curved up slightly. “I’m just after the facts, Mrs. Olson. Three other children have disappeared.” He ticked their names off his fingers. “Pedro Valdez, Hanna Aziz, and Sabela Villarreal. It’s possible your son’s case is related to these others.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Ann said.
“Why?”
Ann pushed the CPS folder across the table. “Kika Garcia accused us of unspeakable acts and she threatened to take Travis. Not to mention that her boyfriend, Max Ruiz, came into my gallery. We told Tom this already. Ruiz was
very
interested in Travis. Are you even trying to find him?”
“How did you know Ruiz was Ms. Garcia’s boyfriend?” Julian asked in that quiet way of his that Ann was quickly learning to hate.
“My friend, Nora March, told me.” Ann turned to the detective. “Tom. Didn’t you debrief Agent Fox on this?”
Tom Long looked apologetic. “He just wants to hear the information directly.”
Julian joined his hands and tapped his thumbs together. “Our liaison in Tijuana’s looking into things with this Ruiz character. He’ll get back to us as soon as he knows something.”
At least they were considering that Kika could be involved with Travis’s disappearance.
Julian Fox remained silent. Then he said, “I understand you’ve had some trouble at your gallery.”
Ann looked to her husband and back to the agent. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Your assistant told Detective Long you’ve been getting a lot of hostile emails over something you wrote on your blog. What’s that about?”
Ann’s eyebrows lifted. “My post on Chuck Blackmart? Part of what I do on my website,” she explained, “is review what the museums are buying. I usually keep silent on the installation art. But when Blackmart unveiled
The Dummies
, I couldn’t hold back. It’s such an abomination. I had to say something.”
“I see.” Julian looked thoughtful. “You only have one child then. Travis?”
His hand over hers, Richard answered for both of them. “Yes.”
The agent’s impassive gaze remained on Ann. “You must have been real angry when your son destroyed your laptop. I mean for your neighbor to call the police.”
He wants to bait me
.
Richard squeezed Ann’s hand in warning. Glancing at her husband, she saw that he was calm. She would take his lead. “Mr. Fox, do you have children of your own?”
A guarded glimmer hit Julian Fox’s eyes. It passed, but Ann had glimpsed enough of his soul to know that he did not have children, because he didn’t like children.
For the first time, she noticed the agent’s purple button-down shirt. The silver Patek Philippe watch at his slender wrist. His long hair was carefully combed and jelled. This was a man, like the many gay men she encountered in her career as an international art dealer, with more refined sensibilities and tastes than their counterparts in the hetero world. Ann had always felt a kinship with homosexual men. Like her, many of them appreciated the good things in life. But she could see right away that Julian Fox, with his superior attitude, could be never be a friend.
Julian Fox shook his head. “Nope. No kids.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Fox’s eyebrows lifted.
“Because if you had children,” Ann said, her mouth trembling. “You would know they can be difficult.” She felt compelled to explain, but she could see that Agent Fox, with his cool eyes and bored face, didn’t give a damn.
5:00 P.M
.
T
he FBI agent’s suspicious treatment felt like a badly needed kick in the pants. When Ann finally stopped ranting about the injustice of it to her husband, she resolved to take matters into her own hands.
“We can’t trust the police or the FBI, Richard. Not when they’re so depraved to think we had something to do with this,” she said.
“It’s not fair to lump Tom and Will in with the FBI, Ann. They don’t suspect us.”
“I want to talk to Max Ruiz myself,” Ann said. “I bet he knows where his girlfriend is.”
“The FBI’s taking care of that,” Richard said. “The drug cartels are fighting each other in the streets of Tijuana. It’s all over the papers, Annie. You can’t go down there.”
She had already made up her mind. “If the police haven’t found Travis by the end of today, I’m going to Tijuana first thing in the morning. I already called Ruiz’s factory to see if I can talk to him. His secretary won’t even put me through. I have to try to see him in person.”
“You’ve never been to Tijuana,” Richard said. “How’re you going to find him?”
“There’s all kind of stuff on the Internet,” Ann said. “Including the name of his factory and the address. I’ll just map it out on my phone.”
Richard’s face was grim. “I’ll go instead.”
“You should stay in San Diego,” Ann said. “You’re better at dealing with the police than I am.”
Richard’s voice took on an urgent tone. “No one will bother me. With your light hair and skin, you’re a walking target.”
Tears came to Ann’s eyes. “I can’t wait around for someone to bring us news. You don’t understand, Richard. I have to do this.”
His arms around her, Ann felt her husband’s chest heave. She tried to sound positive. “Ruiz can’t be all bad. He gives money to orphanages.”
When they separated, her husband looked exasperated. “If Kika sent him into your gallery to take a look at Travis, as you put it, why would he help you and not her?”
“I don’t know. But right now he’s our only lead. Yes, he might laugh in my face. Or, when he realizes what a terrible mistake’s been made, he could help us. Our son is missing because of his girlfriend. Only a monster would turn me away.”
“There’s no way you’re going to Tijuana, Annie,” Richard said, shaking his head. “So just drop it.”
C
HAPTER
5
Thursday, October 4
6:00 A.M
.
A
nn patted her front jean pockets to reassure herself the money she had stuffed in was still there. Carrying lots of cash in Mexico was not the wisest thing to do. But then again, she reasoned, it might buy her valuable information.
She and her husband had been up since dawn arguing. Neither had slept more than a few hours. “I’m tired of fighting about this, Richard.”
He grabbed a pile of papers off the kitchen table. “How many times do I have to tell you? Fifty thousand people have been killed in the last six years!” He slapped the pages to emphasize his point. “Beheadings. Acid vats filled with half decomposed bodies. Four young Americans found strangled in their car. Just the other day, several drug dealers were found swinging from a bridge. What don’t you understand about this?”
Ann whipped the papers from her husband’s hand and threw them in the trashcan. “No need to go over that again. The FBI hasn’t been able to reach Ruiz. I have to go.”
A hopeful gleam lit Richard’s eyes. “If the police get wind of this, you could be arrested.”
Her heart beat a little faster. Neither the police nor the FBI had expressly forbidden her or Richard to leave San Diego, though an investigation, in which they were apparently suspect, was underway. “I have to go
before
law enforcement orders us to stay put,” she countered.
“For all we know the FBI could have notified border agents already,” Richard said.
Her anxiety mounting, Ann started re-checking her pant pockets. She had her driver’s license, her passport, and photos of Travis. She had downloaded a photo of Kika to her phone. She had directions to Max’s factory. Her—
“Are you listening?”
She continued looking through her pockets. “I heard everything you said.”
“And if you get yourself killed and then we find Travis?” Richard said. “How smart is that?”
“Please try to understand,” she said. “I’ll never forgive myself, if I don’t go. Even when we get Travis back.” She refused to concede that they might never.
Her husband’s eyes were deep pools of sorrow. Ann knew deep down he could never really understand. Richard was whole, and always had been. She had no doubt that like her, he would gladly give his own life to save their child—his love for Travis knew no bounds. She, on the other hand, had so much to atone for. She steadied her voice. “I have to do this.”
Richard’s voice was low. “It’s as bad as that, Annie?”
She couldn’t answer him; the lump in her throat was so big.
“Even so,” he said, “there’s no way I’m letting you go to Tijuana.”
9:30 A.M
.
A
nn parked her car at the international border crossing in San Ysidro and walked the length of the parking lot toward the caged sky-bridge that led into Tijuana. Getting the necessary Mexican car insurance, alone, would have been a hassle, not to mention trying to find her way around a strange city in her Lexus, bedecked with California plates.
Her husband’s determination to keep her from going to Tijuana had nearly stymied Ann’s plan. To her relief, he had agreed to pick up some groceries at the store. Neither of them had eaten much in the past two days, so the ruse had worked. She felt bad tricking Richard and the police; for she was sure that the police too would not have approved her actions. In the end, she felt that she had no choice. She would do anything to find Travis and bring him home.
Walking the enclosed footbridge from San Diego into Mexico, Ann kept looking over her shoulder to see if she was being followed. Thankfully there was no sign of her husband or law enforcement.
Her joints ached with nervous tension. Despite downing several cups of Chinese tea before leaving home, Ann felt lethargic. Struggling to remain positive, she repeated over and over, “He will help me. He will help me.”
A hundred or so yards into her cross-border walk, the solid walls of the sky-bridge had given way to a ten-foot high metal fence. Ann felt like she had entered a floating prison. The concrete sprawl of northern Tijuana below, visible through the thick bars in the fence, reminded her of a prison courtyard, photos of which she had seen years ago in a magazine. She glanced over her shoulder at the border lookout tower. Its massive concrete walls, topped with long rectangular windows, resembled a prison guard post.
Ann tried to bolster her sagging spirit with brave thoughts.
Kika took Travis. Ruiz knows where to find her. He will help me
.
For the past twelve years Ann had lived just twenty-five miles north of Tijuana, but she had never once crossed the border. Her life had been
so insulated, so obliviously unaware of how the poor lived—and she knew there were many in this city—before Travis disappeared.
Entering the floor-to-ceiling turnstile that was the final gateway into Mexico, Ann’s feeling of foreboding deepened. Though her mind told her returning to San Diego would be a relatively simple matter, her heart felt that it would not be so. She remembered Richard’s warning about the bodies found recently, hanging from a bridge.
More than fifty thousand people killed in the drug wars
. Her mind flooding with images of violent death, she leaned against the turnstile and pushed hard.
What if Travis is
dead?
Ann pressed her hand to her mouth to hold back a wave of nausea. Until now, she had refused to let that word into her consciousness. In a rational world, one she had always believed she lived in, such a thing as that was not possible, ever. Not to her son, the little boy who was her life. Straightening her back, Ann moved forward determined to find her son and bring him home.
Tijuana was a far cry from the clean streets of La Jolla, with its beautiful beaches, sweeping ocean vistas, and wild flowers. Everywhere, she saw graffiti-covered buildings, warehouse-style architecture, and pitted roads. Past the concrete jungle at the border crossing, she made her way along Avenida Revolución, the tourist center of the city. The palm trees swaying in the light wind looked sadly out of place amid the gaudy, colored signs and all the stuff—painted clay dogs and pigs and roosters, crudely woven ponchos, rusting garden ornaments—laid out on the sidewalks. She tried to keep herself upbeat with hopeful thoughts of Max Ruiz helping her get Travis back. But the ugliness all around her deepened her depression.
GPS in hand, Ann headed away from the grimy taco stands and the dusty littered streets. From the map, Ruiz’s factory looked to be about five miles from the city center, in the midst of an area thick with smaller roads clustered around a few major thoroughfares. She hoped the bridge where the bodies were recently found was not on the way.
Walking down the street, away from the tourist areas, Ann felt self-conscious. Tijuana residents—men and women alike—were staring at
her. She had briefly considered hailing a taxicab, but dismissed the idea. Kidnapping was rampant in Mexico; she had no way of knowing whether a taxi was legitimate or not. Besides, she was in good shape from all the swimming and walking she did. Five miles wasn’t far to go.
Ann stopped in the shade of a gutted structure to catch her breath and to remove her jacket. The sun was already high in the sky. She was about to resume her journey when a foul odor reached her nose. A raspy voice hissed in her ear. She spun around.
The being standing before Ann was every bit as frightening as her senses had suggested. Leaning on a stout, waist-high stick the man—she realized that’s what he was—wore a filthy rag wrapped around his head to his wiry eyebrows. Beneath the unsightly headdress, greasy gray locks hung to his stooped shoulders. The rest of him was covered in a dark coat patched over with peeling duct tape. The same kind of tape, in better condition, was wound around what appeared to be his sneakers. An empty eye socket was sewn shut. His one good eye ogled Ann hungrily. Without warning, his claw of a hand sprang from his side toward her hair.