by Louisa Luna
“Or you’ll lose them.”
She prepared herself the best she could for the shock of the knife detaching her retina from the socket like an oyster from a shell. Then there was a shot from an unseen gun, the sound so loud and the origin so deceptive, it seemed like it was coming from above them, dropping from the sky.
Castán released the knife and Vega’s wrist instantly, and his body fell to the ground. Vega looked down to see that the bullet had drilled a canal along the side of his head above his right ear, the dark hair matted with blood. He was alive, though. His limbs convulsed, blood bubbling up from his mouth as he moved his lips, trying to speak.
His knife glimmered in the dirt, and Vega picked it up. It was clean. Then she touched the corner of her eye—no blood.
The two men with the kerchiefs on their faces climbed out of the white bags, ran to Castán, and pointed their weapons at his head, standing on either side of Vega.
“Wait!” came a voice in Spanish.
It was the man who had fired the shot into Castán’s head. He had been hiding in the mouth of the tunnel, in the dark, and now he was coming closer. His name was César Villareal.
He was not tall but his chest was wide and thick, and he held a military-grade sniper rifle in one hand as naturally as most people would carry their car keys. Eight more men followed behind him.
“Back up,” he said to the men with the kerchiefs, who did as they were told.
Even though Vega knew he wasn’t speaking to her directly, she did the same.
Villareal peered down at Castán and pointed the sniper rifle at his face, pressed the barrel tip against his cheek. Castán continued to choke, the muscles surrounding his mouth contracting. Vega was fairly certain he was still cognizant of what was happening. She was also certain that was exactly how Villareal wanted him.
Villareal kept the gun on Castán, then gestured to one of the men behind him, who came forward. This man was tall, his hair tied into a ponytail. He was also holding a foot-long bowie knife in each hand.
Vega continued to back away, as did the men with the kerchiefs. They all kept their distance as Villareal and Marco Díaz, the fathers of Maricel and Dulce—the two Janes—went to work on Castán. It took only a few minutes, steam rising in the nearly night air as they opened him up.
* * *
—
Cap sped up as he saw Javier Castán’s SUV on the side of the road, his throat constricting in some kind of emotional anaphylactic shock. He scanned the scene frantically, looking for her. He saw the scooters, along with ten or so men dressed in dark shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots, some of them with kerchiefs over the bottom halves of their faces, some tying up full black garbage bags with rope. They all carried guns—rifles on straps and handguns in holsters.
Finally Cap saw Vega standing with one of the men, her arms folded, watching it all. He pulled over.
“Papi,” said the girl closest to the window, called Areceli, placing her fingers on the glass.
Nati and the girl who hid under the bed, María Elena, clambered over each other to get closer to the window, and then they along with Areceli began yelling at once. Rodrigo, sitting in the passenger seat, powered the window down.
“Papá!” he called.
The man standing with Vega began to run toward the car.
Cap unlocked the doors, and Rodrigo and the girls spilled out, all but Catalina Checado, the girl called Chicago, running to their fathers. One of the men ran and swept Nati up off the ground. Then two others came forward and clutched and hugged Areceli and María Elena, all of them crying and kissing one another’s faces.
Chicago walked unsteadily onto the sand, the blanket falling from her shoulders. She didn’t make a move to pick it up. A tall man with a mustache went to her.
“Lina,” he said, and he pushed his rifle to the side of his body and hugged her.
Chicago let herself be hugged but didn’t move her arms in return. Her father spoke rapidly, what Cap imagined were questions followed by pledges of love, but Chicago didn’t respond, even when her father pulled her out of the embrace and held her face in his hands.
Rodrigo and his father hugged and gripped each other’s backs and shoulders, and Cap felt the space in his esophagus shrink even smaller.
It became almost nonexistent as Vega approached him.
“You all right?” she said to him. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
He nodded, coughed bravely into his fist.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded distractedly, her eyes on Villareal, who squeezed his son for another minute before turning to Vega and Cap.
“Thank you,” he said in English, shaking their hands. “I’m taking my son home now.” He cast his gaze toward the men with the kerchiefs, who were carrying two white body bags and three black garbage bags wound with duct tape toward the tunnel’s opening. “And my daughter,” he added.
Then he turned back to address Vega.
“My boss sends his thanks as well.”
He laughed suddenly then, though his eyes remained static.
“He’s a good person to have in your debt. Perro Perez will know it was us who did this. We will be ready for that.”
He glanced back at the men with the kerchiefs going into the tunnel, the ghost of the sun in a yellow strip behind them.
Villareal continued: “But if Perez finds out about you, he will kill you and anyone you have even thought about loving,” he said calmly. Merely an observation.
“I guess no one should tell him about me, then,” said Vega.
Villareal smiled broadly.
“I guess you’re right.”
He turned around then and spoke quietly to Rodrigo. He put his arm around his son’s shoulders and they headed toward the tunnel.
“Adios, Vega,” called Villareal over his shoulder.
The men with the kerchiefs had already carried the bags into the tunnel, then Montalvo’s men with their girls who were still alive went next, wheeling the scooters inside. Nati’s arms were still slung around her father’s neck, while Chicago’s father led her like a blind person. Villareal and Rodrigo were the last.
Vega and Cap watched all those people disappear into the tunnel, one by one. Rodrigo paused and turned around before going inside. He was too far away for Vega and Cap to make out the exact expression on his face; they couldn’t tell if he was smiling or stoic but they could see him lift a finger to his temple, either in a salute goodbye or, Cap thought, in a corroboration that what happened was committed to memory. Right here, he seemed to be saying with his finger to his head: everything is right in here.
Then he was gone, into the tunnel, and Vega and Cap stood for a few minutes as it got colder and darker in the desert. Eventually they got in their car and left too, and it was like none of them were ever there.
25
the next morning mCtiernan met them at the hotel. he stood in the parking lot leaning against a minivan, waving a white envelope as Cap and Vega descended the stairs.
“Fresh from the district court,” he said. “Order to release the six girls from the Oren North facility to police custody.”
Cap wasn’t feeling like himself, if he was admitting things. He’d been so tired and sore and had crashed so hard from all the adrenaline blasts of the day before that his memory after they’d left the tunnel was spotty at best. He’d told Vega she should drive, not trusting his reflexes, and he’d dozed on the way to the hotel, sporadically filling Vega in on his exchange with the girls at the Surf Motel. He barely recalled climbing the stairs to his room, and he fell asleep in his clothes, waking up only when the sun tore through the curtains at 6:15.
But he knew this was good news, even through the dust.
They all got into the minivan, McTiernan driving, Cap in the passenger seat, and Vega
in the row behind them. McTiernan put on a sports radio station and he and Cap talked about players and stats and games, Cap lamenting the Mets’ Series loss in ’15, and McTiernan lamenting the Padres not even getting close since ’06.
Cap felt an unfamiliar buoyancy—even though their work wasn’t done, there was somehow cause to feel optimistic. He and McTiernan laughed easily and often, and Cap checked Vega in the side mirror. He saw her leaning her head against the window, eyes shut. But he knew better than to think she was actually sleeping; he knew she was thinking, that the path was narrowing, and soon they would come to the last locked door with a fresh-cut key.
* * *
—
The light gleamed red on the backs of her eyelids. She listened to Cap and McTiernan talk about baseball but was also replaying the conversation she and Cap had had the night before, when he’d been half-asleep in the car from the tunnel back to the hotel. He had, in turn, been recalling the interactions with Mackey and then the Montalvo girls at the Surf Motel: how Mackey acted like an entitled little brat; how Chicago was just like Isabel Benitez, numb from trauma, train off the tracks; how none of the girls had thought to attempt escape even though they were only handcuffed to each other and not to some immovable object; how Nati asked for Dalena Cortez, and Cap was unexpectedly moved by that, heartened by the sign that the girls were looking out for one another.
Now McTiernan was telling a story as he drove: “When I was a beat cop, I got this call from Carmel Valley—it’s pretty upscale, and me and my partner get there, and the wife had hit her husband with a fungo.”
They both laughed.
“She must not have been that angry,” said Cap, still laughing.
“Right?” said McTiernan. “If he’d really pissed her off, she would’ve hit him with a standard bat.”
“Who in hell has a fungo lying around?”
Vega opened her eyes and interrupted: “What’s a fungo?”
The men glanced at her in the backseat, surprised she was listening, eager to let her in.
“It’s a short, skinny bat that coaches use for practice,” said McTiernan.
“They can hit the ball further with it,” Cap added. “Don’t they use it for bunting, too?” he asked McTiernan.
Vega stopped listening then, shut off her interest in the conversation like she was switching radio stations. She pictured what a fungo would look like next to a regulation baseball bat, and how it would not be unlike what a paring knife would look next to a handmade hunting knife.
* * *
—
Steve McConnell held the sheet of paper in his hands for a solid three minutes, his eyes scurrying over the words like house mice, back and forth, back and forth.
They were in the trailer, McTiernan standing directly opposite McConnell, the conference table between them. Cap was right behind McTiernan with his hand over his mouth, trying to physically pull the grin off his face so it wasn’t so obvious. Vega and Sam the guard stood on either side of the closed door.
“Mr. McConnell, we’re on a tight schedule here so we’d appreciate if we could move the process along,” said McTiernan, polite and firm.
“This is a federally run facility. You’ll have to run this through DHS,” said McConnell, not sounding particularly convinced about it himself.
“And that’s why we went through a federal district court,” said McTiernan. “Those six girls are potential witnesses for an ongoing homicide and human trafficking police investigation. If you don’t release them to us now, I can look into having you arrested for kidnapping.”
Cap grinned openly now, felt like McTiernan’s little brother on the school yard. Yeah, what he said.
McConnell stared at McTiernan for another moment, as if to make his reticence known by pausing. Then he looked at Sam the guard, who stepped forward.
“Those six,” said McConnell, handing Sam the paper. “Only those six,” he said to the room, as if McTiernan would try to shove a few more kids in his pockets on the way out.
After Sam left, McConnell sighed and said, “There anything else I can help you with?”
“Yeah, I have to interview one of the girls again,” said Vega, still standing by the door. “Dalena Cortez. Could you have your guard bring her here?”
Cap was a little surprised but pretended not to be; this had not been discussed in the van. McConnell sneered, his gray eyes filmy.
“Fine,” he said, not moving.
“I’d like to talk to my partner and Detective McTiernan first,” she said. “If you’ll excuse us.”
Now they all stared at McConnell, who realized he was being ousted from his office.
“If you could make it quick,” he mumbled, grabbed a pair of sunglasses from his desk, and left the trailer.
As soon as the door shut, Cap said, “That was maybe a little too enjoyable.”
McTiernan took his phone out and began taking pictures of the trailer.
“Federally run, my ass,” McTiernan said. “There’s no way any brass would sign off on this. People are going to get fired at ISC, that’s all I’m saying.”
McTiernan walked around the table, still taking pictures. He held the phone up to a small window at the rear of the trailer and took pictures of the camp.
Cap turned to Vega and asked, “Why do you need to talk to Dalena?”
“I think she might have seen an exchange between Davis and Mackey that she didn’t know was meaningful at the time,” said Vega.
Cap nodded, got the distinct feeling she wasn’t telling him the whole story. He glanced at McTiernan, still taking pictures at the window.
“You want to tell me what you’re looking for?” he said to her, leaning in a little.
Vega leaned in too. Now their foreheads almost touched.
“Not really, Caplan,” she said.
He smiled and stepped back.
“Okay, Ms. Vega,” he said, raising his hands.
Then he and McTiernan left the trailer. Cap stood on the steps outside as he shut the door and watched Vega sit at the conference table and knock on it twice, tilt her head toward it like she was expecting a response.
* * *
—
Dalena came in, still wearing the baggy ISC shirt, jeans, tennis shoes with no laces. She appeared expectant and not afraid, her eyes alert. She sat in the chair across from Vega without being told to.
“Hi, Dalena. How are you?” said Vega.
Dalena shrugged.
“Where are you taking us?” she said, not particularly suspicious.
“Well, right now we’re taking you to the police station, and you’re going to meet with people from a group, an organization that helps girls from other countries. They might be able to contact your families,” Vega explained.
Dalena thought about it for a moment.
“Will they send us back?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Vega said honestly. “It’s strange in this country right now. I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen.”
Dalena didn’t appear distressed. Her eyes left Vega’s and searched the room behind her.
“Where are you from exactly?” asked Vega, keeping her tone casual.
“Chiapas,” said Dalena. Then she smiled. “A nowhere town. That’s what they call them. Farms between towns that have no address. Nowhere towns. I am from there.”
“How did you get here?”
Dalena brought her eyes back to Vega. They were deep and brown.
“My parents sent me with my little sister and some other kids. One of the others had a cousin who was older, so he was the leader. We walked a long way. Then we took a bus.”
She stopped speaking. It was like she had hit a pothole.
“My sister got sick. I don’t know what it was but her throat was swollen and she couldn’t talk
. Then she died on the bus. Coyote Ben was there when we got off the bus, and we went with him. Along the Tijuana River.”
She listed the events without a lot of attachment to any of it, like she had recalled the experience to herself many times before.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” said Vega.
Dalena shrugged again, moved her mouth around, did not cry.
Vega leaned in toward the table and folded her hands.
“Dalena, do you know what a fingerprint is?” she asked.
Dalena looked confused. She didn’t answer.
Vega held up her hand and pointed to her index fingertip.
“It’s like a stamp. Everyone’s is different. And whatever you touch, you leave your stamp.”
Vega placed her hand palm down on the table.
“So right now, my fingerprints are on this table, and police can know I was here.”
Dalena’s breath was steady. She kept her eyes on Vega.
“The police have all the things from the house in Salton in boxes. All the loose things from the bedrooms and the bathrooms and the kitchen. They will know who touched what things because of the fingerprints. Do you understand?”
Dalena didn’t nod or shake her head. She stared at Vega, frozen.
“So if there’s a weapon, like a knife from the kitchen, that was used to cut the limes for the drinks for the men who came to the house, the police will be able to tell who touched that knife.”
Dalena continued to stare. She didn’t answer.
“Do you know anything about a knife like that?” asked Vega.
Still no answer. Vega was having trouble reading her. She couldn’t tell if Dalena didn’t understand or was simply staying stoic.
Finally she spoke: “Coyote Ben let me use it for the drinks.”
“How long were you in the house?” Vega asked.
“A year, maybe,” Dalena said. “The city girls got there and didn’t know anything. Chicago got her brains burned out because she used to cry all the time.”