by Leigh Jones
“And I hope you’ll have mercy. I know that’s not solely your decision, but I expect your word will go a long way with the prosecutor. I’ve advised Muriel not to ask for anything in return for her information. But we both know that’s a leap of faith.”
Johnson’s gut twisted in anticipation. He looked from the earnest priest to the quiet woman next to him.
“I can’t promise anything, of course. But I’ll do everything I can to make sure we do the right thing.”
The priest nodded. “I know you will. That’s why we’re here.”
An expectant silence hovered over the table for a few minutes. Johnson shifted restlessly in his chair. Three times he stopped himself from urging the widow to speak. As impatient as he was, he sensed she shouldn’t be rushed. Whatever she came to say cost her a great deal. Finally, she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and met his eye.
“The main thing I want you to remember, detective, is that my husband was a good man.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
An hour and a half later, Johnson leaned against the wall in the hall, his head pressed back against the sheetrock. An overwhelming sadness settled over him like a smothering blanket. When Muriel finished talking, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and reassure her everything would be okay. Every drop of her grief saturated his soul. He promised her he would plead her case with the district attorney, although he doubted the prosecutor would bring charges. Muriel had benefited from her husband’s illegal activity and had interfered with the investigation. But surely she’d paid the price, and then some. It was hard to see her as anything other than a victim.
Throughout the summer, he had searched in vain for a connection between the first two murders, finally concluding they must be unrelated. He never dreamed they would be so intimately tied together. He now had the ‘how’ and ‘why’ for both murders. But the ‘who’ was still missing. Who was the girl willing to risk everything for a better life in America? And who had killed Julian Costa over the remorse that drove him to confess?
He was so engrossed turning the details of Muriel’s story over in his mind that he didn’t notice Dylan Connor walking down the hall toward him.
“Hey boss, you okay?”
Johnson dragged his thoughts back to the present, and tried to focus on the young officer standing in front of him. “Yeah. I’m just processing a lot of information right now.”
“Well, I’ve got something else for you to chew on.”
Johnson pushed off the wall and stood up straight, his mind suddenly cleared by the memory of the assignment he’d given Connor a few hours earlier. “You’ve got a name?”
“Oh yeah, and it’s quite a name.” Connor grinned wide, obviously proud of himself.
“Let’s have it.”
“Well, when you left, you asked me to look at all the houses on Sportsman Road owned by companies. But when I heard about what went down with your chase and the girl they found, I figured I should focus on that house. Did you know it was one of the ones you wanted me to look at?”
The hair on the back of Johnson’s neck rose. “No. But I guess I should have known whoever owned that house wouldn’t want to make it obvious who he was.”
“You don’t know the half of it. I had to dig through three shell corporations to figure out who that little love nest belonged to.”
Johnson cringed. Love had absolutely nothing to do with it. He motioned impatiently for Connor to continue. “So, who owns it?”
“You’re really not going to believe it.”
“Connor!”
“Okay, okay. It’s Eduardo Reyes.”
Chapter 33
Almost two hours later, Johnson walked into the hospital. The rapid-fire revelations of the last 12 hours left him punch-drunk. He could hardly lay the case out for the chief, who had waited patiently through his interview with Muriel to get an update on the day’s events. Lugar had finally latched onto the case, his previous hesitancy overcome by the indisputable evidence. He showed a true policeman’s enthusiasm for every detail, until Johnson revealed Eduardo Reyes’ connection to the house. The blood drained from Lugar’s face and he put his head in his hands. What could have been a relatively open and shut case would turn into an epic legal battle with Reyes involved. He would hire the best lawyers, put up the biggest fight. He could call half the island as character witnesses. They would all swear he could never be involved in something like this.
And at the moment, they didn’t have a smoking gun to put in Reyes’ hand. He owned the house, sure, but he could easily claim he lent it to a friend and had no idea what was going on inside. Johnson had another investigator chasing down the details on the man who had crashed his SUV on I-45. They knew who the vehicle was registered to, but they needed to make sure José Vargas was the one behind the wheel when it burst into flames. Johnson fully expected to find a close connection between the dead man and Reyes, but since Vargas could no longer speak for himself, Reyes would be free to put his own spin on things.
The entire case would hinge on witness testimony. And the only person likely to testify willingly was the traumatized girl he was about to interview.
An emergency room nurse pointed him to a room on the third floor. An officer sat outside the door, looking bored. He sat up a little straighter when he spotted Johnson walking down the hall toward him, but he was obviously tired. Johnson patted his shoulder in encouragement. He hoped it was enough to perk up the young policeman until his replacement arrived.
Peering through the small glass window in the hospital room door, Johnson could only see the end of the patient’s bed. Officer Lilian Jimenez sat in a chair in the corner, her legs tucked under her and her forehead creased into a deep frown as she watched her charge. When she looked up, Johnson waved. She stood slowly and tip-toed toward the door.
“She’s asleep,” Jimenez said when the door clicked quietly closed behind her.
Johnson nodded. “How’s she doing? Has she said anything?”
“Bits and pieces. Man, detective, I’m telling you .... if just half of what she said is true ...” Jimenez swallowed and then cleared her throat, finally crossing her arms tightly across her chest. “I’ve never heard anything like this.”
A heavy sense of dread settled on Johnson’s shoulders, pressing down on his chest and squeezing his heart. This girl’s story would probably keep him up at night for months to come, wishing he didn’t know so much about man’s depravity
“Do you think she’s ready to talk?”
“I think she wants to tell her story. I don’t think it will be easy, now or ever.”
“Jarrell said she didn’t speak any English.”
“Not much, no. I’ll have to translate for most of it.”
“Alright. Why don’t you let her know I’m here and see if she wants to talk. I would wait until tomorrow, but I need to ask her about a couple of men I’m hoping to get arrest warrants for. I don’t want to give them any more time to prepare a defense.”
Johnson watched through the window in the door as Jimenez went back into the room and around the corner to the front of the bed. About five minutes later, she peeked around the corner and motioned for him to come in.
He took a deep breath before pushing open the door.
The girl propped up on pillows in the bed looked impossibly young. Dark purple bruises covered her cheeks. One eye was swollen. White tape almost obscured her nose. Johnson guessed it was broken. She watched him with wide, frightened eyes. He’d seen the same look on the faces of cornered animals he’d rescued over the years. She clutched the covers to her chest. Dark red lines encircled her wrists, remnants of the restraints that had recently bound her.
Horror, pity, and an overwhelming sense of injustice rooted Johnson’s feet to the floor. All he could do for several moments was stand and stare. By the time he wrestled his emotions into submission enough to step further into the room, the girl’s fear had faded into watchfulness. She dropped her hands into her lap and glanc
ed at Jimenez, who nodded encouragement. Johnson pulled a chair from the corner toward the bed, close enough to have a conversation but not too close to make the girl feel uncomfortable.
He smiled gently.
“What’s your name?”
“Esperanza.” Her voice was hoarse and quiet. But it resonated with the strength and determination that had probably helped keep her alive.
“I’m Detective Peter Johnson. I’m here to find out what happened to you so that we can arrest the men who did this and put them in jail for a very long time.”
Esperanza’s big brown eyes filled with tears.
“Mi hermana,” she whispered. “Ellos mataron a mi hermana.”
“They killed my sister,” Jimenez translated quietly.
The girl’s raw grief stabbed at Johnson’s gut.
“Can you tell me what happened? From the beginning? Where are you from and how did you get here?”
Esperanza nodded. She took a few shaky breaths and pushed herself up straighter on her pillows. Johnson kept his eyes on her face, even as he strained to hear Jimenez’s translation. Her quiet words fell hesitantly at first but soon tumbled over each other in her desire to be heard.
“I’m from Mexico, from a small town south of Playa del Carmen. There was nothing there for me but poverty and hardship. I wanted a better life. In America.”
Johnson nodded his understanding.
“That was the start of all my trouble,” she said, her voice cracking under the weight of her regret. “All our trouble. It was a great sin.”
Johnson shook his head sadly. “This is not your fault.”
“It is. You don’t know. But you will.” Esperanza swallowed and twisted the covers in her lap. “I heard about some men who could help smuggle people into America on the cruise ships that come every day to Cancun. I told my mama, and she encouraged me to go. The smugglers promised good jobs, as nannies or maids. I knew a few other girls who had gone. Their families hadn’t heard from them in a while, but they hadn’t come back either, so we knew they hadn’t been caught and deported. That seemed like a good sign. I imagined them living good lives in America.”
Esperanza looked up at Jimenez and back at Johnson. He nodded encouragingly.
“When my sister heard about my plans, she begged me to take her. She was too young. Just sixteen...” Esperanza’s voice cracked and she paused as tears filled her eyes. “I told her no. But she didn’t give up. And she was hard to refuse when she wanted something.”
“What was her name?” Johnson asked quietly.
“Gloria.” Big tears rolled down the girl’s long lashes and clung to her cheeks. “She refused to let me leave without her. She finally persuaded Mama, who didn’t want to let her go. But she said if we were together, we could look after each other.”
Esperanza gave a little, gasping sob and put her hands over her face. Johnson glanced at Jimenez, who was wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. His throat tightened. He thought about the girl in the party dress washed up on the shore near Channelview Drive. Just sixteen years old.
“We met the smugglers at the cruise ship dock late one night. There was another girl there, too, but I didn’t know her. They snuck all of us on board the ship and hid us in one of the crew member’s cabins. They gave us pills for the seasickness. We slept through the whole trip. When we woke up, we were in a warehouse, tied up and gagged. And the other girl was gone. We were terrified. They kept us there for hours. It must have been a whole day because when we left, it was dark. They put us in the back of a van and drove us to the house.”
“Is that where we found you?”
She nodded, pausing for a long time. She seemed lost in the memory.
“There was a man there. He untied us. I thought at first everything was going to be okay. Then he came for Gloria...” Her trembling voice trailed off. Jimenez handed her a box of tissue. “I tried to fight him off. He beat me. Then he... he... he raped her. Then he came for me.”
Sobs racked her slender frame. Johnson, who had been leaning forward, his elbows on his knees as he listened, sat back and raked his fingers through his hair. The girl’s minimal account of her horror didn’t stop his imagination from filling in the details. Bile rose in his throat. He pictured the sisters, alone, violated, terrified. A kernel of anger began to burn in the pit of his stomach.
“He locked us in a room with no food or water. The next day, he came back. He was almost like a different person. He let us out of the room and brought us to the table to eat dinner. We didn’t dare run. He told us we worked for him, that we had a debt to pay, for our journey. He told us we would work as... prostitutes. Once we had paid our debt, he would let us go. Gloria believed him. I didn’t, but I never told her that. I didn’t want to steal her hope. It was all she had left.”
Esperanza paused again, overcome by her tears.
“After that, he was almost kind to us. He brought us clothes and things to decorate our bedrooms. A woman came in to cut our hair and show us how to fix our makeup. He never tied us up again, but he left another man to watch over us. We called him El Carcelero. He was always there.”
“Did you ever try to escape?”
She shook her head sadly. “We never had a chance. We were never alone. After about two weeks, El Jefe had his first party.”
“El Jefe?”
“That’s what we called him. We never knew his name.”
They might not have known his name, but Johnson bet Esperanza would never forget the man’s face. He had a photo of Reyes on his phone. He would show it to her before he left, but he sensed now was not the right time.
“What happened at the parties?”
“It was our job to entertain his friends. Sometimes they would go fishing first. Then they came back to the house for drinks and dinner. And they took turns... with us. A lot of the men came often.”
“Do you think they knew you were prisoners?”
Esperanza shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think most of them cared. They never took much interest in us, beyond what they could get from us. But then there was one man...”
Anticipation shivered down Johnson’s spine.
“He was like a love-sick boy with Gloria. He acted like he really cared. I thought maybe he would be her way out.”
Recounting that hope brought on a fresh round of tears, and Esperanza paused to wipe her face and blow her nose. Johnson waited for her to finish.
“Do you know his name?” he asked.
“Jim.”
That single syllable reverberated through Johnson’s mind, knocking hard against his already throbbing head. It had to be James Finney. He thought about the businessman’s emotional reaction to seeing Gloria’s picture. Johnson took his response for guilt, but maybe there was more to it.
“I told Gloria to encourage him,” Esperanza continued. “I thought she could persuade him to take her away. We knew she would not really be free. She would still belong to a man. But at least it would only have been one man. And we hoped maybe someday he would give her more freedom, or even just let her go. All she wanted to do was go home to Mama.”
Esperanza shook her head sadly and wiped her eyes again. It took her longer to continue, and Johnson’s stomach twisted as he realized she was probably getting close to recounting her sister’s death.
“That was our plan,” she said. “And it seemed to be working. But El Jefe was getting tired of Jim always coming around. One night, he showed up to a party he hadn’t been invited to. El Jefe told him he could see Gloria but only after all the other men had a turn. He paraded them in front of Jim and even encouraged them to be rough with her. Jim sat on the couch all night, watching everything but never saying a word. But I could tell he was getting more and more angry.”
Johnson pictured mild-mannered Finney’s rising rage. Had he taken it out on Gloria?
“When all of the other men left, he went back to her room. I was worried, but I hoped what had happened would give him the pus
h he needed to take Gloria away. Instead he killed her.”
Esperanza put her hands over her face. After a minute, tears began to run down her arms. Her whole body shook. Powerless in the face of her suffering, Johnson shifted in his chair to try to ease the vice-grip of anger and sorrow twisting his insides.
“Do you want to take a break?” His husky voice sounded grating in the quiet room.
Esperanza didn’t respond at first but eventually shook her head. She managed to get her tears under control when she pulled her hands away from her face, but her mouth was still twisted in an agonized snarl. Jimenez had to lean forward to catch her gravely, garbled words, translating them in a whisper just loud enough for Johnson to understand.
“I don’t know for sure what happened. He said he had his hands around her throat while they were in bed and was overcome by his feelings. He squeezed the life out of her! I was in my room, next door, and I never heard her make a sound.”
Esperanza gulped a few breaths. Her trembling had become so violent her teeth chattered.
“I ran into her room when I heard him yelling. So did El Carcelero. She was laying in bed, so peaceful. It looked like she’d just gone to sleep. But she never woke up.”
Johnson could guess the rest of the story. He thought having all the pieces to this puzzle would provide some relief. But it only brought a numb sense of horror at the depths of evil that lurked in the human heart.
“El Carcelero said they had to get rid of her body, but I kept saying we had to call the police. I wouldn’t let her go. So El Carcelero tied me up. They wrapped her in a sheet and carried her away. There was a small boat under the house. I heard them drag it to the water and start up the engine. I don’t know how long they were gone. When they came back, Jim left. I never saw him again.”
Esperanza looked up, her tortured eyes locking on to Johnson’s in desperation.
“Every time I close my eyes I see her at the bottom of the ocean,” Esperanza choked out. “She deserved a proper burial.”
Pity washed over Johnson and he reached out and grasped her hand before he could stop himself.