by J. A. Jance
Fountain Hills, Arizona
Breeze Domingo awakened alone in a windowless room where the walls and ceiling looked as though they had been covered with egg cartons. The black dress was gone. So were the silky black underwear and the high heels. She was naked and cold and lying on a hard metal table with thick leather bands restraining her arms and legs.
Fighting her way through the fog, she tried to remember where she was or what had happened. She remembered Chico dropping her off at the gate and riding up the hill in the golf cart. She remembered walking into the book-lined room where the ugly old man had been waiting for her. And then she seemed to remember being given something to drink. After that the world became fuzzy. She recalled the sensation of being thrown over someone’s shoulder and carried, fireman-style, down a seemingly endless staircase, but that was all. She had no idea how much time had passed or even if she was still in the house in Fountain Hills. Where was Chico? He had said he would come back for her, but he hadn’t. Why not? And what was going to happen to her? The possible answers to that question filled her with dread. Whatever it was she knew, it wouldn’t be good.
An invisible door—also covered with what looked like egg cartons—opened, and the ugly man walked into the room. He was wearing a bathrobe. He looked at her and smiled. “It’s about time you woke up,” he said. “Nap’s over. The two of us will have some fun.”
“Where’s Chico?” she asked.
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for him to come back,” the man said. “I guess he didn’t tell you. Chico owed me money. Quite a bit of money, and I agreed to take it out in trade. I tore up his IOU, and now you belong to me.”
He paused long enough to light a cigarette and then stood over her, studying her naked body. “That’s quite a tattoo you have there. Very pretty.”
That was the one part of her fifteenth-birthday present that Jimmy Fox hadn’t been able to cancel, because he hadn’t known about it. Some girls begged to have their ears pierced. Rose Ventana had begged her mother for a tattoo from the time she understood what Connie did for a living. Her mother had always told her that, if she still wanted one, she could have one for her fifteenth birthday. That promise had been made long before Jimmy Fox appeared on the scene, and both Rose and her mother understood how much he would disapprove.
One day while Jimmy was at work, her mother picked Rose up early from school and took her downtown to the tattoo parlor to do the job. The pattern Rose chose was one to match her name, a bright red rose that was tucked out of sight on the inside of her right breast. Connie had positioned it in such a way that it wouldn’t show, even under the low-cut neckline of Rose’s formal—the one she had never worn; the one Jimmy had returned.
The rose was the only thing Breeze Domingo still had from her childhood; it was her only abiding gift from her mother. But she didn’t tell the man with the cigarette any of that. She didn’t want to give him that kind of power over her. Instead, she said nothing.
He shook his head sadly. “Chico told me that you were a good girl, that you would do what you’re told. When I talk to you or ask a question, it’s not good manners if you don’t respond. Understand?”
With that, after taking one last drag on the cigarette, he deftly pressed the burning stub into the middle of the rose tattoo. Breeze howled in agony at the searing pain, and her anguish made the man smile.
“See there?” he said. “That’s more like it.”
Breeze Domingo was accustomed to giving men what they wanted, and what this monster wanted was to see her suffer, to hear her scream. For a time he would carry on a seemingly reasonable conversation, asking her inane questions: Where had she gone to school? What was her favorite subject? What was her favorite food? There was no way to tell in advance if he would find her answers satisfactory, but whenever he didn’t, he burned her again, relishing her futile attempts to writhe out of reach. When he tired of the burning game, he pulled out a knife and played a bloody game of tic-tac-toe on the flat planes of her belly. Only then did he peel off the robe.
Breeze was relieved. After all, sex was what she had expected. He was an old man. How bad could it be? It turned out to be very bad indeed. Frustrated that he couldn’t deliver with his own aged equipment, he railed at her for being an emasculating bitch. Then he pulled a billy club out of the pocket of his robe and came after her with it.
That was about that time when she passed out. He slapped her awake and kept the game going for what seemed like hours, pausing now and then for another cigarette and to lift a bottle to his lips and sip on something that smelled like straight tequila. Finally, with a satisfied sigh, he picked up the robe and put it on. Pulling out a phone, he snapped it open and dialed.
“Okay,” he said when someone finally answered. “I’m done. Get rid of her.”
That was the last she remembered until she awakened again much later. She had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been hours or days. She was bound and gagged, wrapped in what felt like a rolled rug, and lying in the dark on the floor of a moving vehicle that seemed like a panel truck, hurtling forward toward some unknown destination. When the truck went around a curve or a corner, Breeze rolled helplessly one way or the other, unable to stop until she slammed into the wall.
Her whole body hurt from the burns and the cuts. The inside of her body felt bruised and battered, and she needed to pee. She held back as long as she could. When at last she let go, urine ran down the back of her leg and across some of the cuts or burns, she couldn’t tell which. All she knew was that it stung like hell.
She lay there, crying quietly. If the van had stopped, she might have tried banging against the side of the van with her legs, but the rug made that impossible, and they didn’t stop, anyway.
For a time it seemed clear that they were on a freeway. She could hear the sounds of other traffic and the grumbling roar of traveling semis. Then they turned off onto a much quieter road—a slower road with a lot less traffic, though it was still paved. Much later, they pulled onto what felt like a rutted dirt track. As they bounced across the hard washboard surface, the van filled up with a cloud of dust. Breeze needed to cough and sneeze. All she could do was choke. Finally, the van stopped. The back door opened. The man who was standing there was the same one who had driven her up the hill in the golf cart.
“Okay,” he said. “Come to Daddy. Humberto Laos may be the big boss, but he doesn’t get to have all the fun.”
3
5:00 P.M., Friday, April 9
Three Points, Arizona
Officer Alonzo Gutierrez slapped his Border Patrol SUV into park and then stepped outside to survey the nearby portion of mesquite-dotted desert landscape through a pair of high-powered binoculars as the sun drifted down behind the rockbound Baboquivari Peak in the Coyote Mountains to the west.
It was close to the end of Al’s shift, and he was hoping to come up empty. So far his patrol of the sector from Sasabe north to Three Points hadn’t yielded any illegals. If he picked up someone now, he’d be stuck doing paperwork on his own time because, according to his supervisor, overtime was currently off the table no matter what.
Al had grown up in Washington State, the son of migrant workers who had managed to put down roots in Wenatchee. The youngest as well as the tallest of three brothers, he had won a basketball scholarship to WSU. He was the first member of his family to graduate from college, and he should have been living the American dream with a good job and thinking about starting a family of his own. Except things hadn’t worked out quite the way he had expected or wanted.
For one thing, his mother hadn’t lived long enough to see her son graduate in his cap and gown. Once he was out of school with a business degree, the jobs he had hoped for hadn’t materialized. He knew that in the current job market, his less than stellar GPA had hurt him. Jobs for new graduates were scarce to begin with, and even when he managed to get an interview, he never got a callback.
He could have worked with his dad in the o
rchards and maybe found an office job with one of the growers. After all, that was how he had put himself through school—earning money by working in the fields and orchards during the summer months. Stoop work hadn’t been too good for his forebears, but since he had the benefit of an education, he wanted something more than that. And he sure as hell didn’t want to hang around Wenatchee now that his father had hooked up with a new wife, Ramona.
As far as the old man was concerned, Al could have stayed at home indefinitely while he continued his job search. Except Ramona wasn’t having any of that. The witch had made things so miserable at home that Al had taken the first job that presented itself—an offer to go to work for Border Patrol. When he signed up, he had ditched the name Alonzo in favor of plain Al. And when they had shipped him off to the Arizona desert, he hadn’t minded a bit. The farther away from home the job was, the better he liked it. Or so he had thought.
But Al had come to realize that he hated the Arizona desert, and he hated the job. He missed his home state—the rolling hills and fertile farmland of eastern Washington and the snowcapped peaks and towering evergreens of western Washington.
As for the job? Some of the guys were okay, but others weren’t. Some of them were beyond gung-ho. Al was there because it was a job and the only job he could get. The fact that he spoke Spanish, thanks to his mother, had worked in his favor. But along with the job came some very real danger, because there were some genuine bad guys out in the desert.
First and foremost were the drug smugglers, of course, who were often armed to the teeth. They tended to shoot first and ask questions later. Next came the people smugglers—the coyotes. They were generally well armed, too, as they transported vans full of illegals from Mexico and other South American countries across the border and into Arizona’s interior. Their customers included the traditional illegals—the ones in search of jobs—but they also brought along the occasional would-be jihadists. More than once, Al had encountered troops of otherwise hardworking illegals who had been strong-armed into carrying drugs. The cartels gave them a simple choice: Turn into a mule and carry our drugs north or be dead, take your pick.
On a daily basis, though, Al’s work brought him into contact with people who reminded him of his own family—people who crossed the border in search of the American dream, of making a better life for themselves and for their families. And every time he picked up people like that—people whose major crime was wanting to better themselves—he couldn’t help but feel guilty, because his family had come north for the same reason. As he rounded up dispirited border crossers and loaded them into buses to ship back home, Al felt guilty because, but for the grace of God, that could have been him. Or his brothers.
Their grandfather had come to the States as part of the old bracero program. He had married a U.S. citizen and had become a naturalized citizen himself. Had it not been for Al’s father’s mother, Al himself wouldn’t be here, riding around in a Border Patrol vehicle and doing this job. As conflicted as he somehow felt about all this, he continued to remind himself on a daily basis that it was his job—something he was sworn to do, like it or not.
Al had parked his vehicle on a dirt track on King’s Anvil Ranch. Now he walked away from the SUV to the arroyo just out of sight from where he had parked. He knew that illegals often trudged north in dry creek beds, keeping to the sandy washes in hopes of staying out of sight and avoiding apprehension. That was where Al was when he heard the sound of an engine turning over. The engine was followed by a moan of pain that made the hair on the back of Al’s neck stand on end. Drawing his weapon and crouching behind a clump of mesquite, he eased his way over to the edge of the wash. In the sand ten feet away, he saw what appeared to be the naked body of a woman lying faceup in the stream bed.
He stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The sand surrounding the victim was smooth and undisturbed, as though she had been rolled down the bank and left there.
In his months on the job, Al had seen his share of beating victims, but what he saw here went far beyond a mere beating. The woman’s body was bloodied, cut, and bruised. Someone had carved tic-tac-toe games into her skin. Her body was dotted with scabs that he was sure were cigarette burns. But the worst of her injuries looked as though they had been inflicted by someone wearing steel-toed boots while they kicked the hell out of her.
The fact that she was bleeding told Al that she was still alive and her attackers hadn’t been gone long. He suspected they had heard his approaching vehicle, and that was what had sent them packing.
Al was torn. It was possible that he could give chase and catch whoever had done this, but he knew that if he left the woman alone for very long, she might well die. That was when she moaned again. The agonizing sound galvanized him to action. He vaulted down the edge of the bank, dropping down beside her. She must have heard him land. Her eyes blinked open.
“Water,” she whispered. “Water, please.”
Not agua, he noticed. Not por favor. “Water, please,” in English.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll be right back,” He raced back to his vehicle, radioing for help as he went. He had no idea who her assailants were, which direction they were going, or what kind of vehicle they were driving, but he did the best he could.
“How bad is she hurt?” the dispatch operator wanted to know.
Al thought about the catalog of bloody bruises, cuts, and burns. “Looks to me like someone tortured her first,” he said. “Then they threw her down in the sand and kicked hell out of her.”
“Survivable?” the dispatcher asked.
“I don’t know,’ he said. “She’s hurt real bad.”
“Ambulance or helicopter?” the operator asked. “Your call.”
As a taxpayer, Al knew that each and every airlift of an undocumented—and, as a consequence, uninsured—alien was coming out of the pockets of legal Arizona residents at a rate of fifty thousand dollars a pop. Still, he didn’t think the woman would live long enough for a regular ambulance to arrive, to say nothing of driving her the fifty or more miles to the nearest trauma center.
“Needs to be an airlift,” Al answered.
“Airlift it is,” Dispatch said. “I’ll give you a call when I know their ETA.”
“You’ve got my coordinates?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Your vehicle’s GPS position is right here on my computer.”
Al wondered how things had worked back in the days before all the vehicles came equipped with GPS technology. Back then cops out in the boonies were probably a whole lot harder to find.
He collected a bottle of water and a lightweight blanket from the trunk of his vehicle, then made his way back down to the woman. Her eyes were closed again. Out of nowhere, a swarm of flies had appeared. She gave no indication that she even noticed them buzzing around her and made no effort to drive them away. He did.
“I brought you some water,” he said, kneeling beside her. He knew it was dangerous to move a victim, but he did so anyway, lifting her as gently as he could into a semi-sitting position so he could give her some water. Her eyes flickered open briefly, and she moaned again. He held the open bottle up to her parched lips and tried to dribble some water into her mouth. He was afraid she might choke on it, but she managed to swallow a small sip. He offered her more, but she closed her eyes. Since the woman—a girl, really—had apparently passed out, he didn’t dare give her more for fear of drowning her.
“They’re sending a helicopter to take you to the hospital,” he explained, covering her naked body with the blanket, more for modesty’s sake than for warmth. She was already far too warm. “They’ll be here soon,” he added. “Hang on.”
Most of the illegals he had met spoke some English, but only with prodding. This one had spoken English even under terrible physical stress. Her blond hair and olive skin constituted a mixed message. She might be Hispanic, but he wasn’t sure she was an illegal. If not, who was she, and what was she doing here?
/> Al sat there cradling the injured woman and keeping the flies away until the helicopter showed up half an hour later. While they waited, he noticed the tape residue on her arms, legs, and mouth—evidence that she had been restrained by her captors either during the attack or before. As the air ambulance attendants moved her onto a gurney, Al noticed the tiny rose tattoo discreetly inked into the side of her right breast with what appeared to be a cigarette burn marring the center of the flower.
Not a prison tat, Ali realized. And not a DIY homegrown ink job, either. Al couldn’t ever remember seeing a female illegal sporting a professional tattoo.
Relieved that she was still among the living, Al left her in the care of the air ambulance attendants and went looking for the crime scene. He found it on the other side of the wash, just opposite the spot where he had found her.
On the far bank, the rocky red dirt had been disturbed. From the way the grass was bent, it looked like something—a blanket, maybe, with something heavy in it—had been dropped on the ground. Unfortunately, there were no legible tire or footprints to be found. Broken stalks of dried grass and mesquite branches showed where people on foot had tramped through the desert. Here and there around the place where the blanket must have been, Al found what looked like blood spattered on the ground, as though much of the beating had been administered right there.
He was photographing the scene when his immediate supervisor, Sergeant Dobbs, showed up.
“What have you got?” Kevin Dobbs asked.
“Looks like the worst of the assault happened here,” Al answered. “The victim is being airlifted to the trauma center at Physicians Medical in Tucson. If she doesn’t make it, this will turn into a homicide. Do you want me to notify Pima County?”
“Naw,” Dobbs said, shaking his head. “Don’t bother. If you do that, you’ll be stuck with a world of paperwork, and so will I. You found her and got her transported. She’s an illegal. That makes her somebody else’s problem.”