Forced Disappearance

by Marton, Dana

  She had no idea if he was flirting or just being a Latin male. The culture—including what was considered professional and what wasn’t, how men and women related to each other—was different here.

  First and foremost, she didn’t want to give offense. She was hungry. Lunch sounded reasonable at two p.m. And the truth was, she wouldn’t have minded learning more about him.

  They found the restaurant, in the business district, without trouble: Especiero—a modern space with a gleaming open kitchen. Miranda showed Glenn’s photo to the waitstaff. The hostess and one of the waiters remembered him, but both said he left without incident.

  After a pleasant meal, on their way out, Miranda stopped to talk to a beggar by the curb who was missing both ears. She tried not to stare as she flashed the photo and asked the man in her best broken Spanish whether he’d seen the person in the picture. The beggar shook his head. Miranda dropped a few bolívars into his tin cup anyway.

  “That’s pretty useless,” Roberto commented as he held his car’s door open for her. Since he had a special sticker on the windshield, he’d been able to pull over right in front of the restaurant and park by the curb. “The beggars rotate around.”

  He seemed to be right. Even as Miranda slipped in on the passenger side, the man she’d just talked to tucked his cardboard sign under his arm and shuffled away.

  “What do you think happened to his ears?”

  “Probably a conflict with one of the crime lords who run the slums.”

  “Do you think Glenn could have ended up in the slums? Kidnapped?”

  “You would have received a ransom note by now. Slum violence usually stays in the slums. Danning’s disappearance has none of the earmarks. We have no indication that he went anywhere near the lawless areas.”

  “How lawless?”

  “Cops don’t go in there. If the government wants something, they do a military-style invasion, with troops. The level of violence . . .” He shrugged. “Venezuela has one tenth of the population of the US and twenty thousand violent deaths every year. In the slums, if you can’t afford a gun and you have business to take care of, you can rent one. No rules, no laws.”

  Didn’t sound like a place she particularly wanted to visit, unless she found clues that led there. She couldn’t imagine Glenn having any business in the “lawless areas,” as Roberto had put it.

  She scrolled through the files on her phone. Where had Glenn been between lunch and dinner? Did the person he’d met arrange for his disappearance?

  He’d never made it back to his rental at the parking garage on the corner, according to the files. Glenn’s silver Audi S4 had been eventually found on level two by the rental agency. According to the private investigators the family hired, they’d watched the security footage already and seen no sign of Glenn returning from his dinner.

  “I’d like to go to the garage next,” she told Roberto. “And I’d like access to the security footage for March first.” She wanted to see for herself what there was to see.

  “I’ll set that up.” He pulled into traffic, then drove to the end of the block and into the brand-new four-storey parking garage.

  She noted the automatic gate, no attendants on duty who could have witnessed any wrongdoing.

  Roberto drove up to the second level as slowly as possible, giving her a chance to notice all the details. Like any parking garage, the structure was dim and grim, plenty of places for someone to hide for an ambush. Except, supposedly, security video showed no such thing. Glenn had disappeared before he made it this far.

  How?

  Miranda was still trying to figure that out when Roberto dropped her off at her hotel a little after four p.m. Rain had begun to fall, but just barely, nothing like the torrential downpour of the rainy season that she knew to be coming shortly. She hoped to be home with Glenn by the time that hit.

  For a moment, she wondered what he was like now. Still as nerdy? Still as inquisitive a lover? A long-forgotten memory flashed into her mind, the two of them at Menemsha Beach on Martha’s Vineyard, where he’d taken her for a long weekend, making love in the ocean in the middle of the night because he’d wanted to experiment with water.

  She pushed the stray images away, as she always had. They felt like a betrayal of Matthew.

  “I could come up for some coffee and we could discuss the investigation,” Roberto offered with a sexy smile, his dark gaze holding hers.

  Oh. Miranda blinked. It’d been a long time since anyone had looked at her like that. Part of her appreciated the attention, but mostly she wasn’t sure if she was ready. Matthew, Glenn, Roberto—too many men in her head.

  Yet . . . a quick affair with a hot guy who wanted her. What was wrong with that? Once she went back to the US, they’d never see each other again. They would be consenting adults, having a moment of fun. It wouldn’t really affect the investigation in any way. He wasn’t a suspect, and he wasn’t a coworker, not really.

  But she found herself shaking her head. “I’m pretty tired from the long flight. I’m going to grab a little extra sleep.”

  He gave a disappointed nod, but didn’t push, which she appreciated. They said goodbye, and she went upstairs, worked through her files, trying to decide what to do the next day.

  She thought about the restaurant in the business district where Glenn had had dinner, the last place anyone remembered seeing him. Where had he gone from there? Why didn’t he go back to his car?

  She closed her eyes to visualize him coming out of the restaurant after a good meal. She tried to picture him as the man in the files, but his image kept reverting in her mind to the Glenn she’d known in college, so she went with it.

  In the movie in her mind, he stepped outside, pausing to loosen his tie against the heat.

  She opened her eyes. Who wore a tie on vacation? Yet, the wait staff at the restaurant had given a full description that included a charcoal-gray suit and an olive-green tie and shirt. The restaurant was nice, but not so fancy that someone would put on a suit and tie if he wasn’t wearing them already. She made a mental note of the anomaly, then closed her eyes again.

  He turned toward the parking garage, but never made it to his car. And nobody had seen anything suspicious. She wracked her brain, then gave up an hour later when she became so desperate she was considering alien abduction.

  Put yourself in the spot. She needed to be there. She needed to be in the same spot, at the same time. Glenn had disappeared around eight in the evening. She glanced at her phone, which showed seven p.m.

  She drove back, parked in the same parking structure as Glenn, on the second floor.

  She walked down the stairs and out to the street, turning toward the restaurant. The rain had stopped; everything smelled fresh and glistened. A different crowd filled the street, and young people out partying had replaced professionals going about their business. She noted every shop she passed—all closed this time of the night. She decided that interviewing the shop owners wasn’t a priority for now.

  Traffic bustled on the busy four-lane road, even at this late hour. Somebody had to have seen something, but she had no way to identify who’d been driving by here that night.

  She didn’t see any traffic cameras, no cameras above the doors of the small shops either. Surveillance wasn’t at US levels yet in Caracas.

  At the restaurant she turned around and walked back toward the parking garage, watching the stores, watching traffic again. If there was a clue to be had here, she was determined to find it.

  Her gaze caught on the beggar settling in front of the parking garage—the same earless man she’d given money to earlier in the day. He must have rotated back to this street again.

  She walked over to him. “Perdóneme,” she began, then went on in her best broken Spanish. “Do you know others who work on this corner?”

  The man shook his tin cup.

&nb
sp; She dropped a couple of bolívars into it. “I’m still looking for this man.” She showed him the printout of Glenn’s photo, then reclaimed it long enough to scribble the hotel and her name on the bottom. She handed it over. She could print another copy for herself. “You bring me someone who saw this man, sí?” She searched her wallet and pulled a bill, held it up. “I pay you one hundred US dollars.”

  The man gave a toothless grin that didn’t reach his eyes. The eyes said he was thinking about knocking her off the curb, into traffic, and grabbing the bill. “Juan will help.” He leaned forward.

  She stepped back and tucked the money away. “Thank you, Juan. Find whoever was sitting here a month ago, around this time in the evening. You bring him to me, sí?”

  Chapter 5

  ROBERTO, ALL SUAVE charm and smiles, waited for Miranda in the lobby when she came down in the morning, impatient to make progress today.

  He looked her over and gave an appreciative whistle.

  She couldn’t help a smile. She was used to not being noticed as a woman at work, litigation had taken that out of US workplaces. Which was pretty much for the better. But Roberto’s easygoing charm wasn’t offensive.

  “Good morning.”

  “A morning spent with a beautiful woman cannot be bad,” he declared, then said after a small pause, “We have a meeting scheduled with the parking garage security.”

  “Thank you, Roberto.”

  He handed her the slim folder he was holding. “Danning’s case file.”

  His ready assistance kept taking her by surprise. She scanned the two-dozen pages of printouts, everything in Spanish. Looked like basic case parameters and a handful of interviews. “Thank you. I might need help with translation later.”

  “I’m at your service.”

  Roberto held the door open for her as they exited the lobby. He wore a sharp, dark suit, similar to the one he’d worn the day before. Same look, same helpful attitude. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d been assigned to her more so to keep an eye on her than to help her investigate.

  Once again, his gleaming black Mercedes waited by the curb, but they barely took two steps toward it when Juan, the homeless guy, rushed up to them, tugging a scruffy friend in tow.

  “Señorita!” Juan kept his head down and his back bent, giving Roberto a wide berth. “Señorita, un momento.”

  Roberto moved swiftly to put himself between her and the men, but she put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I was expecting them.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow. But, after a moment, he stood down with a nod.

  She stepped closer to the men. “What is it, Juan?”

  “Rami saw your friend.” Juan tugged the younger man forward.

  Rami looked like a trash truck had run him over. Or like he’d slept in the back of a trash truck, his clothes stained and ripped beyond recognition.

  She pulled out a new printout she kept ready in her pocket, hope sending a rush of adrenaline through her. “Have you seen this man?”

  Smelling as if he’d taken his breakfast in liquid form, the guy waffled, his small brown eyes narrowing as he watched her with a calculating expression.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. She reached into her pocket and handed him a handful of bolívars.

  Rami smiled, half his teeth yellow and chipped, the other half black and rotten. “Sí, señorita. I saw him at the parking garage.”

  Maybe. “What was he wearing?”

  The man closed his eyes for a second, drawing his brows together. Then his eyes popped open. “Rich suit. Green shirt.”

  Okay. So maybe he had seen Glenn. “Was he heading toward the garage or away from it?” If the man had seen Glenn heading to the restaurant, he would be of little help. Glenn had disappeared on his way back to his car.

  Rami sucked a rotten black tooth. “He was walking toward me.”

  Excitement jumped inside her. “Toward the corner?”

  “Sí.”

  “Did he go into the parking garage?” she rushed to ask.

  “No, señorita.” The man cast a flat glance toward Roberto, obviously not a fan of police. “A car stopped and two men got out. They took him.”

  “Did they look friendly? Or did they have guns? How much do you remember?”

  “Guns, sí.” He looked at Roberto again.

  Roberto, mindful that he was impeding progress, stepped back and gave the man some space.

  “Were they police?” Miranda asked under her breath.

  But Rami shook his head.

  “Then what?” She reached into her pocket for more money, held it while the man evaluated whether the bills would be worth the trouble he might get into for speaking.

  But after a brief consideration, he whispered, “National Guard.” Then he grabbed the money and booked the hell out of there, ducking between pedestrians and disappearing around the corner the next second.

  Juan stayed, but stood back, poised to flee, his eyes on Roberto. With the police sticker on his car, everybody knew who Roberto was.

  “Juan is good help, sí?”

  “Sí.” She pulled a hundred dollars from her wallet and handed the money over. The information she’d gained was worth it.

  Juan scampered off after his friend without another word.

  She looked after them, a million more questions flying through her head, but those men wouldn’t have the answers. No matter. She’d find more answers somewhere else. She’d already found more than the private investigators had. She grinned. Progress.

  “National Guard?” Roberto rubbed his chin. “Do you still want to go to the parking garage security firm?” He walked her to his car and opened the passenger-side door for her.

  She sat in. “What do you know about the National Guard?”

  “They have over thirty thousand officers and the most comprehensive law-enforcement system in the country. Compare that to the Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas with eight thousand, or the National Police with less than three thousand.” He slid behind the wheel.

  “Why would they take Danning?”

  “He could have been busted for drugs, prostitution, any number of things. Tourists are not always on their best behavior when they travel.”

  The Glenn she knew hadn’t been interested in drugs or prostitutes, but she hadn’t seen him in the last decade. People changed. Could he change that much? She shook her head, waiting for more as Roberto pulled away from the curb.

  “As sad as it makes me, we cannot count out corruption,” he said after a while.

  “You mean they could have picked him up because he’s a rich American, then trumped up some charge in the hopes that he would pay them off to make it all go away?”

  Roberto shrugged. “Every country has corruption, has people in power who are as bad as the criminals, sí?”

  Sadly, she couldn’t contradict him. She’d seen plenty of bad behavior from people who should have known better. She thought that over for a while. “But why didn’t he simply pay? He has money.”

  Roberto’s gaze cut to her, sharpened. “What was he doing here?”

  “A simple vacation. He was a tourist.”

  Roberto raised an eyebrow.

  Yeah, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure either. Glenn hadn’t done anything touristy, as far as she could tell. He’d been wearing a suit and tie when he’d disappeared.

  “I assume the National Guard has a command center in Caracas?” She considered the new direction her investigation was taking. “Could we go there next, please?”

  “Regional Command Five is a few blocks from here.”

  He stayed silent for the rest of the ride, lost in thought, his forehead furrowed.

  “You will find him,” he pronounced as he pulled up to the guardhouse and gate that led to the National Guard headquarters.

 
; “How do you know?”

  Roberto held up his badge to the guardhouse window. “You are a good investigator.”

  He pulled up in front of a square building that looked gray and imposing, decidedly military in flavor. He checked them in at reception with his badge and requested to talk with the colonel.

  She expected a runaround, to be told to come back next week. But, after a couple of phone calls, they were escorted by a young guardsman farther into the building.

  Everyone they passed wore the National Guard uniform, either in dark green or green camouflage. The guardsmen paid them scant attention. Their escort led Miranda and Roberto down a long corridor to a utilitarian waiting room in the back, where they were seated.

  She smiled at Roberto. “Thanks.”

  “I want to find Señor Danning as much as you do,” he said pleasantly. “I’m not that different from the police captain. I don’t want tourists to think of my country as a dangerous destination. I’m here to help.”

  Maybe. She had her doubts about him, whether he’d been sent to obfuscate her investigation as well as to keep an eye on her and report back to the captain. But so far Roberto truly seemed to be on her side. And his badge did come in handy.

  As far as partners went, she couldn’t complain. She felt pretty optimistic as they waited.

  The door opened in a few minutes and a gaunt, older man appeared, in full uniform. His crooked lips stretched into an instant smile, upsetting the balance of his bushy, white mustache.

  “Welcome, Señorita Soto.” The colonel greeted her first, then Roberto. “Señor Falcón.” He gestured them into his lair, toward the two chairs facing his desk. “How can I help you?”

  She scanned the large office as they sat. Two bookshelves and half a dozen filing cabinets lined the walls to the side. The wall behind the desk displayed several regional maps.

  Miranda pulled Glenn’s photo from her pocket and laid it on the desk. “I’m looking for Glenn Danning, a United States citizen. He disappeared here in Caracas on March first. I understand that he was arrested by the National Guard.”