Winning Texas

by Nancy Stancill

  Next, they studied its security arrangements by driving roads in the ranch’s vicinity. The property was heavily wooded and its buildings were set back and hidden by large oak trees and tall rail and wire fences. They couldn’t tell for sure, but worried that the fences might be electrified. A manned guard gate off a two-lane rural road and a locked back entrance off a dirt road appeared to be the only entrance and exit. Numerous signs around the property warned: Keep out. Exotic animals. Dangerous!

  Lots of Hill Country ranches were getting exotic animals, mostly varieties of deer and antelope to adorn the property around palatial second homes. There’d been news stories about a few ranches that stocked rhinoceros, zebras, lions and other safari-type animals that amateur hunters could pay big money to shoot and kill. Annie thought that was a horrid practice, but she knew it was just another way that Texas catered to rich and feckless hunters. There wasn’t much anyone could do to stop it. She wondered, though, whether the signs at the Krause ranch were phony. She and Travis had driven around the area a lot and never saw any wildlife near the edges. It could be just a ruse to keep the curious at bay.

  Annie had shared with Travis everything she’d gleaned from Zogu about the possibility that the ranch forced captive women to produce babies for sale. She and Travis had gone quickly to Fredericksburg with the goal of getting inside the compound. As they worked at night in separate, cheap motel rooms, Annie researched adoption on the Internet and found a long, sad history of legal and illegal practices in Texas. Much was perfectly legal. For instance, she learned that one of the most famous Texas agencies, the Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, had placed 30,000 babies in its 125-year history, attracting couples from all over the United States. The agency started as a last stop for the infamous orphan trains that traveled west with unwanted children.

  In more recent years, infertile couples still flocked to Texas in droves, oddly because of its conservative social and political climate. Large number of teenagers who got pregnant in Texas had been brought up to oppose abortion. They’d opt instead to carry an unplanned baby to term and relinquish it for adoption. Plenty of wiggle room in state laws also abetted semi-legal private adoptions, where clandestine amounts of money changed hands between lawyers, couples and expectant mothers. Mothers-to-be could get many expenses legally paid during pregnancy and could postpone school or working for a while. If this tipped over into baby-selling territory, usually all the parties kept quiet.

  Travis regaled Lila Jo with bits of research during his calls to Houston. She naturally had a keen interest. She was excited that her pregnancy at last was becoming visible. She felt good, too, after a few weeks of mild morning sickness. Lila Jo had told her estranged husband, Beebe Lemmons, about the baby and he’d been surprisingly gracious. Travis suspected that his goodwill stemmed mostly from the fact that Lila Jo would be willing to divorce him quickly without lobbying for a financial share of his construction business. She just wanted half the proceeds from the sale of the couple’s big house in Katy. Lila Jo reported brisk traffic on the property from her marketing efforts, but no offers yet.

  Both Travis and Annie were glad to be away from the newsroom because of its suffocating angst. Every day a new crop of rumors emerged, usually bogus, but the inescapable fact remained that after the new owners finished chopping jobs, only about one-quarter of the journalists would remain. This might be their last big story for the Times, so they were determined to go out with a bang.

  On the third day, they saw their chance. They’d noticed that each morning, a truck from the local grocery store arrived at the ranch at 10 a.m. The driver looked barely out of his teens. They went to the store early and hung around until Travis saw the guy, clean-cut in jeans and T-shirt, and struck up a conversation. His name was Jared Wells and it turned out that he and Travis shared a love of fishing, skateboarding and some of the local bands that played in Austin. Travis helped him load the bags and boxes of groceries into the van and it emerged that he was headed to the Krause ranch. Travis told his new friend that he had a girlfriend at the ranch that he and his sister desperately wanted to see. He offered Jared $50 to allow Annie and him to accompany the delivery. Travis assured Jared that he’d help unload numerous bags of groceries at the ranch’s big kitchen.

  “What does your girlfriend do there?” Jared asked.

  “I think she cleans rooms,” Travis said. “What’s the place like?”

  Annie stayed quiet in the back seat, letting her so-called brother do all the talking.

  “Hard to put your finger on it, but there’s something strange about it,” Jared said. “Lots of pregnant women walking around, like it could be a maternity home or something.”

  “Interesting. How many people are usually around?” Travis kept his voice casual, but his skin suddenly prickled. Annie was right. This was going to be a monster of a story if they lived to tell it. Jared was driving like a maniac on the curving country road, but Travis didn’t dare say anything.

  “Maybe about thirty, including a few maids and kitchen workers,” Jared said. “Sometimes visitors come and stay in one of the bunkhouses. I’ve seen cars parked with out of state tags.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “All of the bills go to a woman named Juliana Souza. Sometimes she’s there and sometimes she’s not. I’ve seen her and she’s a real looker, but I hear she’s kind of a bitch.”

  Travis and Annie listened in fully absorbed silence, wishing they could jot it all down in their reporter notebooks. Annie surreptitiously took a few notes in the back seat. They tried to look casual when Jared stopped at the guard gate. The guard was playing some kind of game on his iPad and impatiently waved them through. Inside the ranch, they drove on a ring road and then turned into what appeared to be a pleasant compound of ranch-style buildings. Travis didn’t see any exotic animals, but thought the majestic oaks and scrub vegetation likely sheltered plenty of deer. They parked near a central building that appeared to be the cafeteria. He and Jared jumped out and began unpacking boxes and bags of groceries. Annie wandered off toward the barracks-style buildings. Her mission was to find Leka’s cousin, Vera.

  “Looks like lunch has started,” the ever-helpful Jared told Travis. “You might be able to find your girlfriend if you go through the dining room.”

  “Good idea,” Travis said. “How about if I carry these two bags through to the kitchen and scope it out?”

  “Whatever, dude,” Jared said. “Meet you in the back.”

  Travis grabbed the bags and walked slowly through the dining room. It was nicely appointed with soft green walls and pine tables and chairs, giving it the feel of a summer camp for grownups. Some women trickled in for lunch, several in visible stages of pregnancy, sitting at tables of four to six. He’d been shown pictures of two women Annie’s informant had given her. He didn’t see anyone who looked like them. Maybe they’d be in as the lunch hour approached. He carried in more bags and helped Jared put things away in a giant storeroom.

  Travis lurked at the edges of the dining room until he felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. He whirled around and saw a heavyset woman wearing a uniform, an old-fashioned hairnet and a stern look on her face. He guessed she was the cafeteria manager.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my dining room?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’m just helping Jared with groceries. I’m a writer visiting the area to do a story on Texas ranches. Jared said this one was one of the most beautiful places he’d ever seen.”

  “You need to leave. I won’t have you disturbing my girls during lunch.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll just get my sister. She’s nearby, looking for wildflowers.”

  “Five minutes and you all better be gone.”

  “Of course,” he said. She walked away
toward the kitchen.

  “Travis, let’s blow this joint.” Jared had come up behind them at the end of the conversation. “Get your sister before the old biddy comes back.”

  “Sure thing, dude.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Annie wandered through the trees to an unadorned building that looked several degrees less fancy than the other one set slightly further back in the greenery. She suspected that the girls were housed in the modest building and the other one was reserved for the well-heeled couples who came to adopt babies. That one looked deserted. She walked inside the first building and wandered down the hall. Doors were closed, but one young woman was walking toward her. Annie put on her friendly, helpful reporter’s face. The woman was short, with dark hair, and a chunky figure. Annie couldn’t tell if she was pregnant, but she looked about the right age.

  “Hello, I’m Annie. I’m looking for a young woman named Vera,” she said. “Is she on this hall?”

  “Yeah, last door on the left,” the woman said. “You a friend? She doesn’t speak a whole lot of English.”

  “I’m a friend of a friend,” Annie smiled. “Thank you so much.”

  Annie knocked on the door and a young woman opened it. She was petite, with drooping blonde hair and a frightened look in her big brown eyes.

  “Are you Vera?” Annie said. “I’m a friend of Leka, your cousin.” She held out the multi-colored silk scarf Leka had given her to signal that Annie could be trusted. She’d told Annie that Vera had always admired that scarf.

  “Leka,” the woman said, grabbing the scarf and holding it to her face to sniff the faint aroma of her cousin’s perfume. She quickly pulled Annie inside her small room with its single bed, chair and dresser. She shut the door, clutched at Annie’s arm and began speaking in a mixture of English, Albanian and impromptu sign language. Tears rolled down her face.

  Annie sat with her on the bed and listened carefully, asking questions when she could break into Vera’s torrent of talk. Eventually she patched together the story. Vera had been at the ranch for a few weeks with five other Albanian women who also lived in the building. She and the others had been injected weekly by a nurse with what they believed was sperm. The girls knew they were expected to become pregnant and stay at the ranch until they bore a baby. Vera was waiting to find out if she was pregnant. Most of the girls staying there were in some stage of pregnancy already. They were fed well and examined regularly. Babies were usually delivered on the premises and separated from the mothers. When infants were just a few days old, couples arriving in fancy cars would take them away. Ms. Juliana, who ran the place, threatened to turn the girls over to immigration authorities if they tried to leave before they delivered. She told the girls that they’d go to prison for long stretches because none had immigration papers. She also promised the women expertly forged immigration papers, money for a new start and a job if they delivered a healthy baby, stayed quiet about it and signed the necessary papers. They’d be taken back to Houston or Brownsville to begin a new life.

  Annie was mesmerized, listening in silence or asking questions until her cell phone rang. She saw it was Travis and picked up.

  “Got to get out of here fast,” Travis’s voice was jittery. “The cafeteria manager discovered us. Get to the van as fast as you can. It’s still parked in back of the kitchen.”

  Annie hung up and patted Vera on the shoulder. “I have to leave quickly, but we’ll be back in a few hours to get all of you out of here. We’ll take you back to Houston. Please be patient just a little longer.”

  Vera nodded, but looked panicky. “Please don’t forget about us.”

  Annie hurried out of the building. She looked around carefully, but saw little activity in the wooded areas between buildings. She walked purposefully across the campus, keeping a deliberate pace but not moving so fast that she’d arouse attention.

  She passed the fancy building where baby-seeking couples stayed and walked past what she thought must be the administration building. The campus was quiet and seemed mostly empty, though she noticed two pregnant girls walking toward the cafeteria. It wasn’t far, she thought, trying to breathe normally and stay calm. She was almost there – another five minutes and she’d be safe.

  Suddenly she heard a pop and felt a burning pain in her side. She looked around, but didn’t see anyone. To her surprise, blood was dripping down the side of her blouse. She tried to zigzag, the way she’d been taught to protect herself in an ambush. It was too late. She heard another pop, felt a searing pain in her arm and fell to the ground.

  CHAPTER 48

  Juliana Souza sat in her office at the Krause Ranch administrative building. She looked through the spreadsheet on her computer with satisfaction. It had been a good month, with two placements finalized. The Benson family from New Jersey had paid $70,000 for the Ruiz girl, and the Robinettes from Boston had given her a check for $75,000 for the Munoz boy. She’d solved the hardest problem, obtaining birth certificates, by finding a worker in the state’s records department and paying him under the table to produce authentic-looking documents. Her infertile couples, sorted through and handpicked for their discretion by her Houston lawyer, would pay almost any price for a healthy white infant. Even though many of the mothers had light brown skin, the babies looked sufficiently Anglo to suit the prospective parents. She’d picked male sperm donors who were tall, blond and fair-skinned, part of the German-Texas community. It was a huge selling point. The regular supply of donated sperm from young men in the Hill Country was part of a deal Kyle had reached when he began giving money to the German-Texas cause.

  That was the only benefit so far from his extravagant support of the German-Texas movement, Juliana reflected bitterly. She’d become increasingly angry that he was wasting hard-earned money because of a silly high school friendship with Sam Wurzbach. The state senator had persuaded Kyle to donate a half-million dollars to the German Texas cause. Luckily, he’d gotten himself killed, so perhaps Kyle would get back to making money instead of spending it. She knew about the Nazi origins of his late grandfather and suspected that the old man was the reason behind her fiancé’s ridiculous outlay. At least the Nazi connection had served the purpose of bringing him to Brazil, where she’d met him, fallen in love and gotten her ticket to America. If he’d only marry her, everything would work out. She’d make sure of that.

  An insistent knocking on her door interrupted her thoughts.

  “Who is it?” she asked in an unwelcoming tone. Juliana didn’t like to be bothered when she was looking at private ledgers.

  “It’s Helga. I have your lunch”

  Helga Schmidt opened the door, depositing a tray with her usual Caesar salad, iced tea and fruit salad on the table. Juliana prided herself on her slender but voluptuous figure and she worked hard to maintain it. She had her own exercise room at the ranch, and usually ran every morning she was forced to be on the property. If only Helga and the pregnant women would follow her example, she thought, maybe they wouldn’t get so enormously fat and ugly. Maybe the food bills would come down.

  Helga stood in front of her, idiotically waiting for permission to speak. Really, she was a tiresome woman, afraid of her own shadow. Juliana realized that because the ranch was out in the country, she couldn’t hire the cream of the crop, or employees who’d question much that went on. By and large, her help was abysmal.

  “Do you want something, Helga?” Juliana said, trying to disguise her impatience.

  “Just wanted you to know that a writer and his sister came with the food deliveryman today,” Helga said in her peculiar lilting German Texas accent. “He said they wanted to see this ranch because they’d heard it was one of the most beautiful in the Hill Country. I told him to leave.”

  “When was this?” Juliana said,
her voice rising.

  “About ten minutes ago,” Helga said. “I didn’t want to disturb you before your lunch time.”

  “Why didn’t you bring them to me?”

  “The writer seemed very nice and said his sister was hunting for wildflowers. He apologized and said he’d find her and leave.”

  “Helga, that was foolish. I’ve told you before that we have to operate secretly because of the competition. You should know visitors aren’t allowed.” Juliana tried to speak calmly, but her head was spinning.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Juliana.”

  “Just leave and come back later for my tray.”

  Helga closed the door softly and she sprang into action. That stupid woman had ruined everything. Juliana knew it with a certainty born of superior survival instincts. If someone unknown was on the premises, it was disastrous. A writer and his sister, huh? She looked out the window and saw a tall woman walking across the grass, looking around nervously. Juliana never forgot faces and she thought she recognized the woman who accompanied the cop to the club’s porn star show. She obviously was a spy of some sort, intent on unmasking the business. Juliana had to work fast before the stranger left with all the ranch’s secrets.

  She opened her right-hand desk drawer where she kept her loaded pistol. The open window in her office offered a perfect, easy shot before the woman got away. She fired twice and saw she’d hit her target. The woman fell, likely dead, but perhaps only wounded. At least Juliana had stopped her for a crucial few minutes so that she could escape.