Once again she revised her plan of action. She’d visit Dulcidio the next day. Then, she’d head to the shopping district and talk to Carmela, another friend of Herminio, who worked there. However, before going out, she’d call her uncle and inform him the place she was going. She couldn’t anymore risk, Carolina was crazy, but not that much. In what kind of predicament Camile had thrown her into? She’d never worry about the holes in the teeth of her friends. She giggled by herself. Carolina was exhausted and turned in for the day.
***
The captured girl had to go the bathroom. Neither of her kidnappers were close by. She’d have to relieve in her pants, because her bladder was unable to hold in all the liquid that wanted to get out. Unable to keep it in, she did it right over there. She started to cry and whimper. She’s exhausted. Decided to try to sleep, it’s the better option to escape the constant suffering.
“Why?” she mumbled to herself. “Why me?”
***
“I want to talk to the owner of this place.” Mendonza showed the police badge and the judicial warrant.
One of the staffs pointed to a short and bald man sitting behind a table in a glass room. Mendonza stepped forward to the cabinet and showed the warrant to the owner of the Lucky Clover Lottery. The man grabbed all the paperwork and analyzed it.
“I need the recordings of your external safety camera with images from Saturday morning.“ said Victor Mendonza.
“Yes, sir, please follow me to the back.”
Mendonza grabbed the pen drive with the recordings like a miner holds a huge gold nugget. He got in the car and darted towards the police station. It was the morning of the fifth day of abduction and needed to study that material as fast as possible. The results from the Traffic Department’s searches had arrived the night before, but couldn’t find anything conclusive. It was impressing the number of black cars with those final digits. It’d take days, if not months, to verify every single found result.
The Deputy entered his office, plugged the pen drive to his desktop and forwarded the video until the approximate time informed by Henrich. He watched it impatiently and, after a few minutes of waiting, there it was. The black car. He called a technician from the audio and video department and demanded the plate number was collected from that image. After a few more minutes, Fontes appeared, celebrating the good news. The two friends got anxious, waiting together, the result of the technical analyses. After 30 minutes, the video technician entered the room in a rush.
“HVP8735! Black Golf! The owner’s name’s Richard Balsemao Dias. We got the bastard!
Quickly that data was passed via radio. All unities got out in the streets hunting the black Golf, car plate HVP8735. Five units were sent to Richard’s house, all of Rio’s police was involved in closing the siege on the kidnappers. Fontes and Mendonza were out in the Deputy’s vehicle and joined the searches. At the same time, the car plate information was passed to all local TV stations, the anchors and announcers asked that anyone in possession of any information got quickly in contact with the police. Almost immediately, various anonymous telephone calls started to come in. There was a general commotion in all Rio de Janeiro and surrounding cities.
The vehicles received possible addresses of the wanted car. Other unities arrived at the house of Richard Dias and caught him in the act when he was gathering his belongings in order to flee. The car, however, was not in the garage and the search continued throughout the city. Other people in the smuggler’s house were also arrested, everyone taken in as potential suspects.
Albeit the initial success, the police still had to find the girl’s whereabouts and Richard refused to assume his hand in the crime. He even said his car had been stolen a few days ago and that could be related to the kidnapping.
Close to the lunch hour, the police received a call that once again the investigation’s route. One person had seen the car in question a number of times in a house close to where he lived and believed that could be the criminal’s hideout. A lot of vehicles were directed there. The kidnapping finally seemed to get close to the end.
Mendonza felt his heart in his throat while he drove hastily towards the address in an ordinary neighborhood. He almost couldn’t believe they’d free the girl, that his internal peace would come back, at least for some time and that, finally, he could sleep one entire night.
Chapter 11 – In a Dark Basement
The girl heard a huge bang by the upper side, probably by the entrance door. She felt afraid; something was wrong. Could it be that one of the kidnappers, in a fury outburst, wanted to kill her? She coiled into herself at a distant corner, hoping to become invisible. She prayed. She wasn’t ready to die, but felt like that was her time to go. She kept on listening to the strong noises of doors, one after the other. The noise of hurried footsteps on the upper floors. Screaming, doors shutting.
‘What’s going on?’ the girls wondered, silently. She started crying again. In her core, she felt like everything was over. She didn’t have any more strength, she’d rather die than living in that distressful situation. Suddenly, the girls heard another bang much closer. It’s the basement door that had been broken. She bit into the muzzle and retracted every single muscle in her body, preparing herself for a gunshot or a knife...
***
Mendonza made a point of going in the front. The had broken into the house and verified all the rooms, but everything was empty, the kidnappers had run away from the place. Finally, they got to the basement, forcing the entrance. The Deputy climbed down the stairs with a flashlight in his hand, his heart hammering against his ribs, unknowing of what he could find. He heard a cry and turned the flashlight towards the source. In a dark and filthy corner, there was the girl, shrunken into herself, her hands tied together and to a pipe, feet also tied and all dirty. The officer got emotional and also shed a few tears. He bent down took the blindfold from her eyes and, paternally embracing her, said:
“It’s alright, now, Carolina. It’s over. We found you!
Chapter 12 – The Doctor’s Secretary
The girl was in the hospital recovering. There’re serum and medication IVs in her arm. The days in captivity were cruel to her. The parents were constantly by her side, didn’t want to get away again for nothing in this world. They wanted to know how everything had happened. Carolina explained how everything started and how everything unfolded until Friday night.
“And on Saturday, what happened?” asked her father.
“Well, I woke up early, resolute on visiting Herminio’s remaining friends just like I planned. However, after Friday, I thought the situation was getting way out of hand and decided to involve uncle Victor in my investigation.
“And why didn’t you call me, Carolina?” asked Mendonza.
“I forgot to call you, uncle. I remembered when I was inside the bus, but were not picking up at all.
“I was travelling to Resende, to solve some family problems that took the whole week.”
“Yeah... So, I decided to abort the mission and got off the bus right away. I was in the Central Square and needed to cross it to ride the bus back. But I don’t understand how they knew about my investigation and how they found me.
“About that... We talked to Soraya, like you told us. When you visited her, she felt endangered and talked to a local trump, called Hector, who called Mozer and threatened him, in case he wouldn’t leave the woman alone. But as you can imagine, the ruffian wasn’t aware of anything at all and found out about everything later on, due to you pushing Soraya so much. They just had to put two and two together and soon they found you. It seems the original plan was to get as soon as went out, but there was too much movement in the neighborhood., and they decided to wait. They followed the bus until you got off and then attacked.” Explained Victor Mendonza.
“But in the end, what was up with the dentist?” wondered the father.
“From what I gathered from the two kidnappers that were with me, he was helping Richard to smuggle diamo
nds by hiding them in dental prothesis. In the beginning I thought it had something to do with cocaine, because I saw some kind of powder on the clinic’s floor. But I was wrong.” Said Carolina.
“How did come to know about the diamonds?” questioned Mendonza.
“When they started asking me about the diamonds, I thought they’d caught the wrong girl and taught my parents had them. Only later on I understood they thought I was in cahoots with the dentist and wanted to force me to say where were the diamonds he stole.”
“Well, sadly the two ruffians flew away, but at least we apprehended the boss and other people involved. The two that got away, sooner or later will do something wrong again and will end up behind the bars.” Said the Deputy.
“But I insist, what about the dentist? Did he die?” said Carolina’s father, stuck on the matter.
“That will remain a mystery.” said Mendonza, shrugging it off.
“That would be the case, if you weren’t before the best amateur detective of all Rio de Janeiro.” Said Carolina, smiling smugly despite her situation.
“What do you mean?” asked everyone?
“Well, while I was in captivity, I didn’t have a lot to do besides thinking. I started to connect some dots and finally realized where the dentist is.”
“And where is he?”
“In his office, sitting comfortably on a chair.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Whelp, when Camile passed me clinic’s address, she described the doctor’s secretary. Should’ve been an olive-skinned woman, but when I arrived there was a white woman. I thought he could’ve changed secretaries, but then she told me she’s been there for three years. I hadn’t understood the reason behind the lie, but then I connected everything. Dr. Paschoal needed to flee, dismissed the secretary and disguised himself as his own employee and took her place. I wouldn’t have figured if she, or rather he, hadn’t made a point of showing me his smile, the same extra white smile that I saw in his social media pictures. His face’s indeed beautiful and with delicate features. With the right make up, he could very well pass as a woman. At the moment I didn’t notice it, but later everything made sense. Dr. Herminio Paschoal is now disguised as a secretary. He planned going to the clinic for a few days until finally ‘give up the job’ and disappear without a trace.”
“That’s fantastic, Carolina!”
“I know, right?” said the girl, very cheeky. “A pity I didn’t realize everything beforehand, would’ve spared me a lot of work and a painful kidnapping.” And Carolina smiled, albeit awkwardly.
Everyone smiled with her, supporting the girl. Everything was well again with the detective together with her family. It’s shame, however, that Camile still couldn’t get her channel completed yet...
THE END
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