He cautiously approached Maria’s tent, hand still on his firearm. While Sylvia understood his trepidation, did he really have to scare the piss out of these poor people? They wanted to eat their dinners, take their shits, and prepare for another night sleeping in the cold.
“Fuck,” Joseph muttered once he took a peek inside the tent. The way he ripped open the flap and dove inside implored Sylvia to rush forward as well. “Montoya here. I’ve got one of the possible victims,” he spat into his radio. “I need backup and paramedics in the Garden of Eden right now. No weapons. Proceed with caution. I’ll try to meet you toward the front.”
Sylvia popped up the moment Joseph knelt on the ground. There, huddled in the far back corner of Maria’s otherwise spacious tent, was a girl of only about nine or ten. Her face was gaunt, her hair stringy, and the way she held herself implied that nobody had touched her in a friendly way in a long time.
“Oh my God,” Sylvia gasped. “A little girl?” With cuts on her face and hands?
“What’s your name?” Joseph asked softly. He did not attempt to touch the girl, which was a damn good thing, because she stared at him as if he were going to do a number of terrible things to her. Because what she needs right now is some big guy cornering her! Really, did Sylvia have to interpret all the body language for this daft bastard?
Apparently, because Joseph was the one who could interpret the language the girl spoke.
“Come te llamas?” He flattened his hand against his heart. “Yo soy Josef. Estoy aqui para ayudar.”
Tears brimmed in the little girl’s brown eyes. “Me llamo Cristina…” she said with a shaky voice. “Mama? Dónde está Mama?”
She was crying now. Her scratchy plaid blanket fell away to reveal nothing more than a faded T-shirt and worn out shorts on her hungry frame.
“Lo siento,” Joseph said. “No le sé.” He glanced back at Sylvia, who still had one hand clasped over her mouth. “Estás herido?”
The little girl was crying too hard to answer. Maria appeared behind Sylvia, muttering that cops, had no way with children. Sylvia was thinking quite the opposite. When Joseph gathered the scrawny girl up in his arms, blanket still wrapped securely around her? Something popped inside of her. Perhaps it was the glimpse of true humanity cresting Joseph’s visage as he turned around, the little girl sobbing in his arms while half the camp watched on in a mixture of curiosity and heartbreak.
They reached the front of the camp as paramedics with a small police escort arrived. Cristina was so shaken that she almost refused to let go of Joseph when he attempted to lower her to the stretcher. Sylvia had to intervene, placing a light hand on the girl’s bony leg and telling her – in English – that she was going to be okay.
Whether or not the girl understood her words did not matter. Cristina reached for Sylvia, still clinging for dear life to Joseph’s neck.
“Mama,” she cried. “Dónde está mi mama?”
Nobody had an answer for her. Not yet, anyway.
Chapter 23
Joseph
From top to bottom the station was a mess. Agents consulted with the FBI and phoned in their orders. Officers filled out paperwork and attempted to process the amount of witnesses they had gathered from the scene. Clerks were up to their necks making phone calls and summoning lawyers from the four corners of the earth. The first thing Joseph did when he entered the building was call social services on behalf of Cristina.
The paramedics were reluctant to take her straight to the station, but with only topical cuts as her fresh wounds, relented after stressing how important it was that Cristina eat some damn food.
Joseph bought her a light dinner since he was afraid anything heavier would do more harm than good. Cristina was malnourished, but alert, the only things keeping them from having a rousing conversation in the coziest interview room they had being her fear, her fatigue, and her constant questions about her mother. It also did not help that she did not speak any form of standardized Spanish. Joseph recognized her dialect as being decidedly Salvadorian, and without a better interpreter on the premises, convinced his mother to let him interview the girl.
“You said so yourself, I’m emotional and good with interviews,” he said to her. A stack of papers, including notes dictating what questions he should ask, littered his desk. Genevieve hovered nearby, although it was clear she was in a hurry to jet off elsewhere to deal with what was happening in her department. “I’ve already built up a rapport with her anyway. Let me see what I can get out of her.”
“All right,” his mother cosigned. “I’ll be watching through the window.”
That didn’t faze Joseph. What did was facing a sad and scared little girl in a sterile interview room. The one I first reunited with Sylvia in. Ah, shit. Sylvia. Joseph barely had time to process her once again appearing in his life. Where was she now? He didn’t keep up with where she was after Cristina was found.
Yes, yes. Cristina was the most important person right now. Sylvia would have to wait.
She was with a Spanish-speaking social worker, picking at steamed rice and grilled vegetables. An opened carton of milk remained untouched. Why wasn’t she eating? Did she feel too sick? Was she waiting for news of her mother? Joseph decided to take the most fatherly approach he could muster. Whatever level of fatherly that was.
“Cristina,” he said, drawing upon his grandmother’s unique vocabulary to speak with her in ways she might better understand. “Are you feeling any better? Is the food okay? I can get you something else if you prefer.”
She pushed aside the rice and vegetables, shaking her head. Her light brown eyes pleaded with Joseph to fix her situation, but the words that came out of her mouth were carefully thought out and rather couched. “It’s fine. Thanks.”
Joseph minded his demeanor as he set a tape recorder between them and flipped open a legal notepad. The pen clicked to life on yellow paper. Cristina watched his every movement, huddled deep inside a big, baggy sweatshirt pulled from Joseph’s locker. The social worker draped her arm across the back of Cristina’s chair. A knowing look told Joseph that the social worker hoped this interview could be accomplished without sending the girl into a fit. They still didn’t know where her mother was – none of the other supposed runaways had been found, and it wasn’t looking good for some of the injured victims.
“Can you tell me your name, Cristina? Your full name.”
“Maria Cristina de La Esperanza.”
“How old are you?”
She pulled the milk carton toward her. Thank goodness. She was finally feeling comfortable enough to ingest some sustenance.
“Eleven.”
“Where are you from?”
“Here!”
“From Portland? Or do you mean the United States?”
The social worker put a hand of warning on the table. “Let’s not get into that right now.” She put that same hand gentle on Cristina’s arm. “Where do you consider home, Cristina?”
The little girl distracted herself with a long, hearty drink of milk. Joseph finished writing out some more questions he had by the time Cristina was comfortable enough to speak again. “Soya. That’s where Mama and I lived before we came here.”
“She must mean Soyapango,” the social worker said. “That’s in El Salvador.”
I know, thanks. Who was the one who spoke some Salvadoran here? Besides Cristina, obviously. “When did you come to the United States, Cristina?”
“Last year.”
Over the course of a frazzled half hour Joseph got as many personal details out of Cristina as possible. She had been born in and grown up in Soyapango with only her mother and grandmother to take care of her. After her grandmother died, her mother feared one of the men in the neighborhood and decided to go to America with Cristina. Probably gang activity. Joseph was not intimately familiar with Salvadoran gang structure like he was with the Mexican variety, but he knew gangs weren’t good business anywhere. Extortion. “Protection.” Forced prostit
ution. Drug smuggling, particularly between South and North America. If Cristina’s mother was wrapped up in any of this against her will, then she would have good reason to get the hell out of Soyapango. Unfortunately for many gang refugees, the only way to get into the United Streets was through a different kind of smuggling. Joseph did not doubt that both Cristina and her mother were here illegally, especially when Cristina could not provide the name of her mother’s employer before they were kidnapped by “the joggers.” Like the social worker said, though, this is not the time to get into that.
“So how did you come to be in the back of that big truck, Cristina?”
Her milk was gone by now. Her poor parched throat was probably tired of talking, but Joseph motioned through the one-way mirror for someone to bring Cristina more drink and encouraged her to keep talking.
“I was staying with Mrs. Sanchez while mother was working. She came home early, and Mrs. Sanchez said she heard terrible things about joggers in the neighborhood. My mother was really scared. It felt like Soya again.”
“So what did she do?”
“She took my hand and tried to hurry us home, but it was already midnight and the joggers were out. They… they took us.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Three. Two men and one woman. They were dressed in expensive exercise clothes. The kind the gringos wear.”
Marie Bell. If this happened recently, then it was not jogger Marie, who had died at the hospital a few weeks ago from her injuries sustained after fighting Agent Kline. There are still no answers there.
Joseph was believing more and more that Marie Bell was working for Alexander Sheen’s deplorable enterprise. Who suspected a jogger out for a late night run? If Marie Bell was strong enough to knock Agent Kline into a coma, then she was strong enough to subdue at-risk women and children long enough to take them to wherever they stored waiting bodies.
As it so happened, Cristina had a lot of information about that.
A warehouse somewhere in North Portland acted as the storing cubicle for that week’s catch. A dozen or so women and children were rounded up from around inner Portland and shoved into cages until it was time to load them into the back of a truck and ship them south. Cristina admitted she couldn’t understand most of what the criminals said, but she did say that one of the other victims was bilingual and often lamented being shipped back to Mexico. “She thought the joggers were like the border guards. She thought it was a government operation. That we were all illegals being sent back to Mexico. But that didn’t make any sense. Only she was from Mexico, and two of the women there were homeless white Americans. Why would they send American citizens to Mexico?”
Joseph wouldn’t be the one to tell her. All he knew so far was that victims were routed through Mexico before being jammed into the cargo hold of a plane to Thailand. The details, such as how this was constantly pulled off even with only small groups of victims, were still murky.
“Tell me what you remember about the crash.”
“One of the other women said that she could see into the cab of the truck. I wanted to go there, even with one of the bad men driving, because there were tigers on the other side of our wall and they scared me.” Cristina shivered. “That same woman whispered to the rest of us that we could hijack the truck if we all worked together. I think she knew this wasn’t a deportation, you know? She said we were going to be sold for sex.”
The social worker’s hand clenched. Joseph hesitantly wrote Cristina’s words down in English.
“I stayed with Mama while the others planned to take the truck. I don’t know. It was a blur. I was so scared. I was afraid that the bad man would figure out what we were doing and sic the tigers on us.” Tears crested the poor girl’s eyes. The social worker smoothed down Cristina’s hair. Joseph’s hand gripped his pen until it burned against his skin. “I don’t know what really happened. Just that one moment I was hugging Mama, and the next everything was smoky and the tigers were making noises. I was so scared that I had to run!”
“Do you know what happened to your mother?”
“No! Do you know? Please tell me! She told me not to run away from her… but I was so scared…” Joseph’s sweatshirt was covered in the little girl’s tears by the time she finished speaking.
The door opened behind Joseph. In stepped a fellow agent carrying a bottle of juice in one hand and a stack of photos in the other. “Ask her if any of these women are her mother.” The agent slipped Joseph the photos. “All but one are stable.”
He glanced at the photos. I can’t show these to her. The women who were conscious had glassy eyes and cuts all over their faces. The ones who were unconscious would look like corpses to a little girl. If none of these women were her mother, then they disturbed her for no reason. But if one of them was? She would be even more distraught to see her like this, stable at the ICU or not.
The social worker stepped over while Cristina played with the cap on her orange juice. She’s not here right now. She’s detaching. Probably for the best. Whatever terrible memories Joseph had to dig up were not helping anyone but the justice system.
“Let’s see…” The social worker picked the top photo. “Cristina, does your mother have a birthmark above her right eye?”
Once they finished describing most of the photos to Cristina, the little girl finally admitted that one sounded like her mother. The social worker slowly slid the photo across the table, purposely covering up a facial bruise with her hand. “Is this your mother, Cristina?”
From the way she demanded to be taken to the woman before the Apocalypse began, it was safe to say that yes, that woman was Cristina’s bruised mother.
His own mother’s voice, on the other hand, was what he heard over the speakers shortly afterward. “Great work, Montoya. Come out here for a second.”
He left the tape recorder on but flipped his notes shut. With them tucked beneath his arm, he left the interview room and reconvened with his mother and a few other agents hovering around. “Did you get that?” Joseph jerked his thumb toward the interview room.
“Yes. Martinez was kind enough to translate the important parts.” Nevertheless, Genevieve motioned to the notes her son courted. “But as soon as you have those typed up for me, I would like to see them.”
Of course. Even though she had an affair with a Mexican billionaire heir and partially raised a Spanish-speaking son, Genevieve Stone’s comprehension of the language was still rudimentary at best. Joseph hadn’t taken notes in English simply to amuse himself. His mother would be the first to go over then once they had the chance.
“You’ll also need to send a copy to Agent Lewis here.” A nondescript agent in slacks and a black shirt stepped forward. “Since this is his case now.”
Joseph refused to frown. “Yes, of course. I’ll make sure both you and Agent Lewis get copies of my notes and the full Spanish transcript of the interview.” Did Agent Lewis even speak Spanish? That should’ve been a requirement for working in the department…
“We’re going to want copies too.”
Nobody smiled when they heard that deep, authoritative voice. Joseph was perhaps the least impressed. First his mother, then this Agent Lewis… and now Agent Maggie Jameson sashaying through the station as if she were god’s gift from the FBI? Great. Just great.
“Who sent you?”
“This is officially an FBI matter now,” Maggie said, completely ignoring Agent Lewis in favor of talking directly to Commander Stone and her son. “We’ve got an interstate conspiracy to traffic human beings. My boss is breathing down my neck to commandeer this case, so… here I am.”
“Surely we can somehow work together on this,” Genevieve said. “My agents have been working this case for months.”
“Yes, and I greatly appreciate that. Lets me know where to begin with my own formal investigation.” She put her hands on her hips. Taller than Joseph, Maggie’s slim but muscular figure was more than imposing. It didn’t help that she wore
all black, the only color of her outfit the big and yellow FBI letters littering her jacket. Her sidearm was also bigger than anyone else’s in that department. Show off. Joseph didn’t have time for this.
“I’m going to have to talk to your director about this,” Genevieve muttered. “Until I confer with him on these matters, I’m afraid I can’t hand over our notes.”
“You do that.” Maggie lowered her arms the moment she made eye contact with Joseph. “What were you doing in there? I thought you were booted from this case after you and Rogers blew y’all’s cover.”
Joseph kept a tight grip on his notes. “I’m the only one around here who understands Salvadoran.”
“Sounded like regular ol’ Spanish to me…”
“You’re welcome to make the valiant attempt next time.” Joseph stepped away. “I need to type these up. So, if you’ll excuse me…”
Maggie let him go. His mother, on the other hand, followed him to his desk.
“We’re sending the girl back to the hospital for further examination and to see what happens with her mother. Unless we find this supposedly bilingual woman the girl was talking about, that mother is going to be our next best bet to get some information.”
Joseph logged into his computer. “What about the driver?”
“Still unconscious. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”
“Great. Any casualties?”
“A couple of the victims are touch and go right now, but so far, so good.” She clapped her hand on her son’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else. Email that transcript to me as soon as you have finished it.”
“Will do.”
Was that a glimmer of a smile Genevieve bestowed upon him before she left his side? No way. She wasn’t the kind of woman who smiled at anyone, even her own son. And definitely not at work. Besides, there was nothing to smile about right now.
Joseph blocked out the rabble of the office as soon as his word processor was open. Yet he had barely typed the first three questions he had asked Cristina before someone suddenly occupied the chair next to his.
Damaged Goods Page 25