I told him all about Mrs. Houtz’s kids and grandkids staying at Grandpa’s house while they were in town. He thought that was a good idea, seeing as how that would keep them out of our hair. I could tell by the look on his face, he was trying to figure out a way to wrangle an invite to dinner. I told him if he showed up, it would be fine with the ladies. He said he would think about it. I’m guessing he will be there.
Charlie had decided it was time to go in. We worked our way back through the other homes, going inside every one being oh so careful not to disturb anything. In each of the homes it appeared as though someone had been taking in the mail but nothing else. They weren’t watering the plants, and they certainly weren’t dusting. The dust had accumulated so much that you could tell the path the person took to and from the front doors to the kitchen tables. It didn’t look like they had gone into any of the other rooms in any of the homes. With the exception of the dust, all of them looked to be well cared for, everything was nice and neat and in its place. It just doesn’t make sense that if the homeowners were out of town that they would go to the trouble of having someone pick up the mail but not care for the rest of the house. More than a few of them were obviously wealthy enough to have had a maid service if not a live in maid.
Charlie was very methodical in the way we approached each of the houses. First we would go to the front door and knock. If no one answered we would casually walk to the backdoor. Then we would try to find a window that had a blind left open to try and get a look inside, but those were few and far between; All the while trying not to attract attention from the neighbors or anyone else for that matter. I don’t know how long he has been retired but I was amazed at how easy it was for him to open the door. Once we were inside, the way we moved was even more precise. He told me to make sure not to touch anything. If someone did come home everything needed to be as it had been when he or she left.
We made our way back to the first house we had gone to in Mission Hills a few days before. He was very interested in getting into that house; apparently he had been able to get a good look through a back window, and thought it looked as though someone had been spending more time in that house than the others. We parked the car again and headed up the driveway. We rang the doorbell to make sure no one was home. No one answered so we went around to the back of the house. We went to the guesthouse to make sure no one was staying there. When no one answered Charlie let us in. It was empty and the furniture was covered with sheets. All of the appliances where unplugged. From the looks of it I don’t think anyone had been in that guesthouse for quite some time.
We went to the back door of the house and used Charlie’s “key” to let ourselves in. The first thing I noticed was the large amount of mail on the kitchen table. I know what you’re thinking and no, we didn’t open any of it; we did try looking through the envelopes. Most of it seemed to be junk mail. There were a few bills but none of them seemed to be overdue. I went through all the paper work I could find at the desk in the kitchen very carefully, hoping I could find something that would have told me where these people might have gone. We checked the rest of the house and nothing seemed to be out of place or rummaged through. They had a wall safe in the master bedroom; it was still locked and didn’t show any signs of being tampered with.
We were standing there in the master bedroom trying to figure out what was going on with these people when we heard someone come in the back door. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. Of course Charlie was calm. I wanted to hide, there’s no shame in hiding, but before I could get to a good hiding spot Charlie grabbed my arm and we were sneaking back down the hall towards the kitchen. I was in a crouching position on one side of the hallway and Charlie the other. I swear I have never had an adrenalin rush like that before. My heart was beating so fast I couldn’t hear a thing; it was like being in a silent movie. He was doing little hand signals and I still have no idea what they meant but I was actually moving and quietly at that! We got to the kitchen door and were crouched down on either side. Charlie was doing some of those little head moves you see cops on TV doing, trying to get a look at the person in the kitchen. I thought since I had only ever seen this on TV it would be best to leave it to him to do. I didn’t want to take the chance of bobbing when I should have been weaving and bang heads.
Now this is the part gets a little hazy, so I’m not entirely sure this is the way everything happened but it’s the way I remember it. All of the sudden Charlie jumped up, ran into the kitchen yelling “Tatiana?” She turned around, saw it was Charlie and tried to run. He caught her before she could make it to the door. There she was. The mail order bride my Grandpa had married. She was screaming and crying trying to get away from him. I’ve never seen anyone that hysterical. Charlie got her to a chair, and she calmed down a little. She just kept saying over and over “I’m so sorry, I tried to get him out of it. If they find me they will kill me.” Well that got my attention, and of course I was starting to become a little worked up myself and started yelling, “Where is grandpa?” You should have seen the look on her face. Mary, she had absolutely no idea who I was or that Grandpa had a granddaughter. She started crying even harder. The next thing I knew I woke up in the hospital. I have to go for some more x-rays but I’ll be back later and tell you the rest.
Talk to you later
June 18th
Dear Mary,
I have to tell you I’m getting tired of all these x-rays. Let’s see it looks like I stopped at me waking up in the hospital. When I woke up I turned my head and saw Charlie sitting in the chair next to my bed just staring at me. I asked him how long I had been out, and with a straight face he said twenty years, then he smiled and in his usual smart-ass yet caring way said, “Okay three days.” Of course I tried to ask questions, but my voice was a little weak since I hadn’t spoken for three days. I think that’s a record! He told me to quiet down and went to get the nurse.
She came in and took all my vitals. She said Charlie had been with me the entire time. They had tried to get him to go home and get some rest but he refused, saying he wanted to be here when I woke up. The doctor came in and checked me over and once I got the ok, they let Charlie back in. As Charlie put it I went down like a ton of bricks. Once he got the other girl under control he called the ambulance for me and then called Mark to pick up Tatiana and the other girl. Other girl? What other girl? Not only had Tatiana been staying at that house, one of the other “Brides” that had been trying to get out of the situation was staying there as well. When the other girl heard Tatiana scream she ran down from the attic and was trying to help Tatiana. She hit me in the head with some kind of vase.
Mark and Charlie agreed the less attention they brought to this entire situation the better. They agreed that Charlie would go with me to the hospital and make sure I was taken care of. Mark would take Tatiana and the other woman to Charlie’s house. They both felt they would get more information from them at the house, than interrogating them at the office downtown. Charlie said their theory had turned out to be correct and it’s now a Federal matter. Of course I asked where Grandpa was. In my heart I already knew the answer. If he had been alive he would have been at my bedside. I needed to hear it out loud. I don’t know why, somehow it made it real for me. He took my hand and said, “I’m really sorry to have to tell you this but he died.” I started crying. I wanted to know if they had found him and if Charlie knew where he was now? Charlie said they had found him and he was at the funeral home. The people there had taken care of everything. The funeral would be held when the doctor discharged me from the hospital.
I was numb, and this wasn’t the scared numb I’m used to. It felt like my whole world had been knocked out from underneath me and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Family wise I was alone. I have no family left anywhere. Charlie had left out the details of where they had found Grandpa and I didn’t ask. I guess when it came right down to it I didn’t want or need to know the details of his death. In some st
range way it was enough that they had found him.
I did however want to know everything they had learned from Tatiana. He said they were still questioning Tatiana and the other woman. He promised he would tell me everything, but I couldn’t be there while they were questioning either of them. It had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t an agent, I would have just gotten out of the hospital and that I would probably try to get my hands around her neck, blah, blah, blah. He did say the situation was much bigger than they had thought and they needed Tatiana’s cooperation. Since the only people that really knew about it where Charlie, me, and Mark they were trying to keep it as low key as they could. Mark was only talking to the higher ups in his department. What do you do?
Besides, the hospital wasn’t going to let me out until I could complete a series of tests. A very nice woman came by and gave me the first shot at taking these tests. Now I’ve always been very good at tests but this was more motor function than true or false. There were ten tests in all and I could only do five. They won’t discharge you until you can do at least eight of them by yourself. Most of them had to do with balance. I wanted to get out of there more than anything, but I have to admit my balance was off more than just a tad. It took another two days to get my score up to a nine and I got to go home. By that time they had moved Tatiana to a safe house, and no they weren’t just talking about getting her away from me. I told Charlie I didn’t really care where she was I just wanted to concentrate on Grandpa’s funeral.
When I got home I called the funeral home and went over the arrangements. It was a lovely service. I think everyone in town showed up at the funeral home and then back at the house. There was enough food to feed a third world country, and enough leftovers that I won’t have to cook for a month. After they had all left I realized I was really alone. No parents, no other blood family, just me. That’s going to take some getting used to.
Charlie came over the day after the funeral to check on me. After he got through the barrage of questions Mrs. Houtz and Mrs. Berger had for him, they finally let him back to see me. I asked him if they had gotten any more information from Tatiana. She had told them this particular “Mail Order Bride” agency was nothing but a scam. She was from Russia but she hadn’t been back to that country in ten years. She and some of the other women had answered an ad in the newspaper that promised a new and better life in the United States.
Charlie said from what Mark could understand this “company” had told the women, about ten to fifteen, he had gotten a lucrative modeling contract with a company in the U.S. She said looking back they were all so anxious to get out of Russia they didn’t stop to think why this agency in America didn’t get the models from the states. They all signed their contracts, packed their clothes and jumped on the plane that was to take them to their freedom. Once at the airport a man named Tyler Moran met them. She said he was cordial to all of the women, asking each of them if they needed anything before the flight. It was a chartered flight. Moran and the other women were they only ones on the plane. Once they landed they were handed their luggage and got into the waiting van. It was then he informed them the modeling company had backed out. He told tell them they were in debt to the company to the tune of fifty thousand dollars apiece. He said they would have to work off the debt and he would explain how they could do that when they got to the townhouse.
Tatiana said there were ten women that came over with her. Once they were at the townhouse and settled, Moran had everyone gather in the living room. That’s when he lowered the boom on them. He said they owed the company so much money they would all have to stay here and do what they were told, and to make sure they would stay put there would be a couple of his guys there day and night to make sure none of them tried to leave or contact any of their family. He told them the company had come up with a way that would let the women work off the fifty thousand and save some money. He told them about the mail order bride scam they had come up with.
Moran would pick out a man, the target, for each of them and they were to strike up a relationship with this man. If everything went according to the plan they would marry him. Tatiana said each of the women had a computer, but Moran had set it up so the only site they had access to was the mail order bride site. From what she could tell Moran picked what he thought were rich elderly men for them to talk to. These men would join the web site and think the women they were talking to on-line were in Russia, when in fact the women where all right here in the country. If everything seemed to go well through the e-mails and the man wanted to meet his sweetheart in person, the company would tell him they would arrange everything and have her brought over as a courtesy to them for being such good clients. If the visits went well and the man indicated to the woman he was interested in pursuing the matter, the man would notify Moran and he would arrange the weddings.
When this first started, the plan was for the Brides to be married for at least six months, and then they would reveal to their husband that they had some kind of an addiction problem. Then they would have one of Moran’s men pretend to be married to one of the other brides and recommend Dr. Niemeyer. Once they started with the sessions they would steadily drain the bank account of the husband. When it was time for the wife to come back home they would tell the husband it was best to start slow. After a couple of days the wife would just disappear with whatever money was left in the bank account. If the husband called the office, they would tell him they were looking for her too, if he didn’t call the office, they would call him and ask how everything was going now that the wife had moved back in. The office would give the impression that they would help the husband in any way they could to find the wife. All the while she would be back at the townhouse.
They asked Tatiana how Dr. Niemeyer got involved in this scam. What she had heard was his business hadn’t been doing very well and he had gone to school with Moran. Niemeyer knew Moran was always up to something, had some kind of scam going on. Apparently Moran had been a bad seed his whole life. Moran told Niemeyer about the mail order bride idea he had been working on. Moran was always surfing the Internet looking for some kind of get rich quick business. Apparently he came across mail order bride information, and started talking to a man in Russia that had an idea he thought would make them both rich. At first Moran, Dr. Niemeyer, and the man in Russia were making money, not a lot but enough to keep it going. Tatiana wasn’t sure when it happened or who the first victim was, but at some point Moran and the man in Russia decided it would be more profitable if the men they picked were not only rich but had no family. If there were no family, there would be no one to worry about them or look for them if they went missing. If they went missing the wife could eventually sell any property and collect on any life insurance they may have. Tatiana said the “brides” as they like to call themselves were never involved with the disappearance of the men. By the time it came to that, they were back at the townhouse waiting on another husband. All of them knew what was going on, but they were stuck. They knew if they tried to tell anyone what was going on the husband wouldn’t be the only one missing.
Tatiana told Charlie she really fell in love with Grandpa. When she started the slowly moving back in portion of the scam, she told Grandpa about the entire thing, and had convinced him they needed to leave. As they were getting ready to head out, Moran and a couple of his hired guys showed up. Tatiana said both she and Grandpa had been knocked out. They woke up in a bedroom of one of the empty houses. Tatiana didn’t know which house it was, but thought she would recognize it if she saw it again. She said the two guys that worked for Moran came in and got Grandpa. They told her they would be back and that she was next. She heard them open the garage door, start the car and then the garage door close. She knew it was now or never. She got untied and escaped out the bedroom window, then ran to the house we found her in.
When Tatiana had been back at the townhouse she and the other bride had decided that would be the home they would hide in until they could figure ou
t where and how they could get help. Tatiana also told the other bride she was going to tell Grandpa everything when she started the “move back in” part, and Grandpa may be able to help them. Tatiana made it back to that house, and told the other woman how everything had fallen apart. Both of them would hide up in the attic when they heard someone coming up the drive. Neither of them saw who it was that came to take care of the mail, but could see the car, as it would pull out of the circle drive. They both assumed it was one of Moran’s people.
Several of the brides wanted to get out of the business but none of them could figure out how to leave, or where they could go that they wouldn’t be caught. Tatiana tried calling one of the brides at the townhouse but was hung up on when they recognized her voice. She knew then all of the other brides had been told the two of them had run away. There had been several brides before her that had tried to get out. Everyone at the townhouse was told to call Moran or one of his people immediately if a missing bride tried contacting any of them, and if any of the other brides tried to help the runaways they would be killed as well.
Tatiana and the other bride were on their own; the only people either of them knew where the other Brides, and some of Moran’s people. She said they had no idea what they were going to do or how long they would be able to stay at that house. Tatiana was actually relived when she saw Charlie. She said Grandpa had never said anything about me until they were left in that room. The only thing he got to tell her was that he had a granddaughter. She didn’t know my name, what I looked like or how old I was, nothing.
Mark and the other people with the agency moved pretty fast on this. They had been waiting for a break. Since none of the husbands had any family they couldn’t prove what exactly was happening to the men. They couldn’t even find where the Brides were being kept. They thought maybe the Brides would change states once the husband went missing and start all over again. Mark said if it hadn’t been for Charlie and I putting that list of patients together and seeing what the common thread was they might never had figured out what the good doctor had really been up to. Now that they know and have most of the people involved in custody the only thing I can do is wait for the trial. It should start within the month.
Stacy Matthews - Dear Mary 01 - Think Twice Before You Order Page 8