Hard Trauma

by Franklin Horton

  Accusing her.

  In those blackened sockets Tia suddenly saw the problem. Though she prayed several times a day, when had she last offered Santa Muerte anything of true value to her? When had she last made an offering of significance? Had it been that long ago? Was it truly twenty years since she unearthed her dead child and placed her there?

  Over the years, Tia had killed people who wronged her. It was part of doing business. Had she offered anything to her godmother? Had she brought Holy Death even a taste of the blood she spilled?

  No.

  She’d been selfish and now she was paying the price. She understood now what she had to do.

  She went to the kitchen and found her largest, sharpest knife. She returned to her spare bedroom and stared at the sleeping Gretchen. It had been several years since she’d removed a head. It was not as easy as they made it look in the movies. It was nasty work and even the sound of it turned the stomach. The hacking and chopping. The splashing. The spine.

  Lights swept her window as a car turned into her driveway. Had she spent that long in prayer? Had an hour passed already? She placed the knife on the dresser and went to the door. The child could wait. At least she knew what she needed to do now.

  “I’m sorry, Holy Death,” she whispered. “I will make this up to you.”

  33

  Just before sunup, two armored vehicles from the Tucson Police Department’s SWAT Unit rolled into the Barrio Libre neighborhood. Masked men in armor and tactical gear rode on running boards, hands locked around grab handles, weapons dangling from slings. The vehicles rolled to a stop in front of a nondescript house and the officers swarmed in efficient, practiced movements.

  While one team covered the side entrance, the primary element used a battering ram to take out the front door. Black-clad teams flooded into the house, weapons raised. Tactical lights bathed the interior in bright light.

  “Police!” an officer bellowed. “Policia!”

  In seconds they’d cleared the house.

  “All clear!” reported team leader said over his radio. “There’s no one in the house.”

  Two detectives in police windbreakers entered the cramped house. Detective Terry Smith played a flashlight around the interior of the living room. He flipped a wall switch and turned on the overhead light, frowning at the decor. “I thought this lady was some kind of big shot. This place is tacky as hell.”

  Detective Janet Paye was shining her own light around, taking in the gaudy artwork and the shelves of knick-knacks. “Big fish in a small pond.”

  In the kitchen, Detective Smith opened the refrigerator and sniffed the milk. He laid a hand on the stove top and checked the grounds in the coffee maker. He hit the garbage can with his light and flipped through some of the contents with a gloved hand.

  “Terry!” Detective Paye called from further back in the house. “You have to see this.”

  Detective Smith left the kitchen, eased by a couple of retreating SWAT Team members, and found Paye in the bedroom. She was staring at an altar against the bedroom wall.

  “Jesus Christ,” Smith mumbled.

  “Not Jesus. Santa Muerte.”

  The statute of the skeletal saint stood on a wooden table, placing her head at roughly eye-level with Detective Smith. The base of the statue was surrounded by burned candles, incense burners, and food offerings on plates. A dead gray puppy lay draped across the statue’s feet.

  Detective Smith touched it carefully, examined the eyes and the mouth. “I don’t think this puppy has been dead for more than a few hours. What the hell kind of people do this shit?”

  “Someone who needs a blessing real bad,” Detective Paye said. “This is dark shit.”

  Detective Smith started toward the altar, wanting to more closely examine the items laid out as offerings. He heard a crackle beneath his foot and stepped back, shining his light onto the floor. “Is that a chicken bone?”

  Detective Paye moved her light around the floor, stopping on what was laying beneath the edge of a dresser. “Oh shit.”

  “What?” Smith asked, craning his neck to see where she was pointing her light.

  “That’s human,” Paye asked. “I think it’s real.”

  Then Smith saw it. “It’s a baby.”

  34

  Ty was asleep in his hotel room when a knock at the door woke him up. He checked the peephole and found a man in a suit holding a badge up for him to see. Ty opened the door and peered out.

  “I’m Agent Banner. I need you to get dressed and come with me. We’ve got a task force meeting in thirty minutes and they want you there.”

  Ty gave a groggy nod. “Give me ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

  Before the agents had delivered him to the hotel the night before, they’d let him pick up his truck from Barger’s neighborhood. When he reached the hotel, he’d changed into clean clothes, and the agents took his dirty, blood-stained clothing into evidence. After they left him, he didn’t even have the energy to check his Facebook account or reply to any messages. He was out like a light.

  He took a quick shower, dressed, and delivered his duffel bag to the truck before meeting up with the agent. He didn’t know if he’d be staying in the hotel another night or not so he wanted to stow his gear. He grabbed a cup of coffee in the lobby, and rode with the agent to the Tucson field office.

  He was ushered upstairs to a conference room where the meeting was already underway. Ty recognized Agents Esposito and Cornell. Lieutenant Whitt was sitting there with an expression on her face that was nowhere in the range of friendly. She acknowledged his presence with a curt nod. The remaining dozen or so men were unknown to him, though one looked vaguely familiar.

  Agent Esposito was conducting the meeting. He gestured for Ty to take a seat to his right. “This is Tyler Stone. He was the security guard on duty at the truck stop where Gretchen Wells was abducted. As I learned last night, Mr. Stone had a fourteen year career with U.S. Special Forces before receiving a medical discharge. I asked Mr. Stone to attend this meeting so he could explain how he ended up at our crime scene last night. I think we all know each other but I’m going to go around the room and have you introduce yourself for the benefit of our guests from Virginia.”

  The introductions were brief but demonstrated that the group represented a broad range of law enforcement divisions. There was local law enforcement as well as FBI, and representatives from departments investigating everything from gangs to crimes against children. It turned out the person Ty found vaguely familiar was Cliff Mathis from Door Kickers International. Ty figured he recognized him from one of the pictures he’d seen on the website.

  “With no offense intended toward Lieutenant Whitt of the Virginia State Police, Mr. Stone’s intuitive conclusions led him here when everyone else was going in another direction,” Agent Esposito began. “I also asked Cliff Mathis of Door Kickers International to be part of this meeting because Mr. Stone reached out to him during his ‘investigation’, if that’s what you want to call it. Most of you are familiar with his expertise in the field of child trafficking and exploitation.”

  Esposito continued down a checklist written on a yellow legal pad. “Just to bring everyone up to speed, we obtained a search warrant for Mr. Barger’s residence, which turned up nothing. Mr. Barger has security cameras at his home and we’ve reviewed the footage. We found no evidence of the missing girl being taken to that address. I have more information along that line that may be of interest to you, but first I want to hear from Mr. Stone. Tyler, can you give us a detailed account of how you ended up in our state?”

  Ty recounted his experience at the Petro Panda on the day of Gretchen’s abduction. He mentioned his lockdown of the business and how that led to his firing. He discussed how he and Lieutenant Whitt had been unable to understand the excited expression on Gretchen’s face, seen in the security camera footage as she exited the store. When he mentioned that image, Agent Esposito projected it on
to a screen in the conference room so the others could see what he was describing.

  “This was all playing through my mind when I got home from work on the night of the abduction. I remembered seeing a softball team taking a lot of pictures while they were there and I started wondering if some of those pictures got posted to social media. If they had, they might have picked up something that the security cameras missed. I printed everything I found and ended up with a big stack of pictures that didn’t make sense to me until the next day. I was at my sister’s house and noticed the reaction on my niece’s face when a neighbor brought over a puppy. It was the exact same look Gretchen had as she was leaving the store. When I left my sister’s house, I started going through those images again. That’s when I found the picture of the woman hanging out by an RV with a puppy. I came to the conclusion that Gretchen’s expression had to be related to that woman and that puppy. I didn’t find any pictures that showed them together, but that was my conclusion based strictly on her expression. It was just a gut feeling. I was frustrated that law enforcement wasn’t interested in my theory, but I understand there was no evidence to back it up.”

  Agent Esposito clicked a button on his laptop and the image on the projection screen changed to that of the woman with the puppy. “So, if I can just interrupt you here for a moment, I think Detective Johnson from the gang unit has some information on the lady in this picture.”

  A man in plain clothes cleared his throat and spoke up. “The woman in the picture is Fidelia Mendoza. She’s known on the streets as Tia, which is a nickname meaning ‘aunt.’ The name goes back to her early days as a madam. She was a major player in the Barrio Libre gang scene in the 80s and 90s, but basically retired when the cartels pushed in. She didn’t have the manpower to take them on.”

  “So if I can jump in here,” Agent Esposito interrupted, “Mr. Stone provided us with this picture last night. With assistance from some of the old timers in the gang unit and facial recognition software, we were able to identify Miss Mendoza. We obtained a warrant to search her home, based on this photo connecting her to the RV where Gretchen Wells’ clothing was found. That warrant was served around 5 AM this morning.”

  Ty looked excitedly from Lieutenant Whitt to Agent Esposito. He’d had no clue of this development. The agent who delivered him to the meeting hadn’t mentioned it. “Did you find her?”

  “No,” Esposito replied, “she wasn’t there. Detective Smith’s unit ran the operation and I’ll let him go over the details.”

  A pale man in his fifties with white hair picked up the story. “Despite Miss Mendoza looking like a little old lady, she has a very violent history. She’s one of the few female gangsters in our city to run her own crew. She rose to power because of her willingness to inflict violence against anyone who messed with her. She never pulled hard time but she was a suspect in several murders. For that reason, we obtained a no-knock warrant and served it with SWAT support. A breaching team took down the door and made entry. Detective Paye and I entered behind them. A thorough search of the house didn’t turn up the missing girl but several items of interest were found, including weapons and a small amount of drugs. The closet and the dressers were left open as if someone had recently packed up and cleared out. The most unusual item we turned up in the search was an altar in Mendoza’s bedroom.”

  “Altar?” Ty asked. “Is that a Catholic thing?”

  Detective Smith shook his head. “Not quite Catholic. Santa Muerte.”

  “I don’t mean to derail the conversation here,” Ty said, throwing a glance at agent Esposito, “but I’m not familiar with Santa Muerte. What is it?”

  The way that they all looked at each other told Ty the term was familiar to everyone else in the room, except perhaps Lieutenant Whitt.

  “It’s like a blend of Catholicism and some kind of ancient death cult,” Agent Cornell explained. “They worship this saint called Santa Muerte, or Holy Death. She’s depicted as a skeleton in fancy robes, like a decked-out grim reaper.”

  “So it’s a cult?” Lieutenant Whitt asked.

  “Not a cult,” Agent Esposito said. “It’s much more than that. It’s a religion with tens of millions of adherents. Anytime you read about some weird occult shit going on in Mexico with the cartels, Santa Muerte is involved. I could talk about this all day but we need to keep moving. Detective Smith, can you explain the significance of the shrine?”

  “There was a child’s skeleton located on the floor in front of the shrine. An infant. It could’ve been a stillborn baby. It’s in the Medical Examiner’s hands now and they’re conducting DNA analysis to see what they can figure out. There was also a dead puppy but it was fresher. Maybe a day or two old. As a matter of fact, it looked very much like that puppy we saw in the picture with Fidelia Mendoza.”

  There were some looks of disgust around the room.

  “So this skeleton was like an offering or something?” Ty asked.

  There were nods around the room.

  “That’s what it appeared to be,” Detective Smith said. “It was old and dried out.”

  “Santa Muerte can be a dark religion,” said Agent Esposito. “There are a lot of stories of cannibalism and human sacrifice.”

  Ty had never heard of this.

  “Detective Smith, you said Fidelia Mendoza was once a madam. Do we have any recent evidence of her being involved in trafficking activities?” Agent Esposito asked.

  The detective settled back in his chair, tapping his ink pen on his legal pad. “None at all. Her name has not been linked to an active investigation since the 90s. She’s been flying under the radar for two decades now. We assume she’s been living on the money she squirreled away when she was in the life. She has connections though. An associate who goes by the name Luis, reported to be her son, is active in the JNGC. We’re not sure if that’s his real name or an alias.”

  Agent Esposito looked toward Lieutenant Whitt. “JNGC stands for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “You guys keep using this word trafficking but there’s no actual evidence of that, right? At the risk of sounding defensive, I’d like to point out that the reason we were not interested in Mr. Stone’s theory about this kidnapping was because it was so unlikely. You all know as well as I do that these types of abductions almost always occur as the result of a custody dispute. This clearly fit the profile. The parents of this child had recently separated and both were fighting for custody. The husband couldn’t be reached to notify him about his missing daughter. This was initially attributed to him being on a backcountry four-wheeling trip in Utah. We eventually found out that he was house shopping in Mexico with his mistress and made up the story about Utah so his wife wouldn’t find out.”

  There were nods around the room.

  “Your conclusions were completely logical, Lieutenant Whitt,” Agent Esposito said. “They were supported by our agents on the scene. To be clear, we have no evidence that the child was picked up with the intention of trafficking her. We’re just trying to put the pieces together. We’re trying to understand why the paths of this woman, Fidelia Mendoza, and this girl, Gretchen Wells, intersected.”

  “I support your conclusions,” Cliff Mathis said to Lieutenant Whitt. “I would have gone in the same direction. Despite the public’s fear of random child abduction, it’s extremely rare. We understand now that most people who end up being trafficked are either groomed into it, owe a debt to the traffickers they are being forced to repay, or suffer from an addiction that makes them easy to manipulate. A random abduction is much more likely to be the work of a child killer. As I told Mr. Stone when we first spoke, I don’t know what to make of this. It doesn’t fit the pattern for any of the most likely scenarios.”

  “I still don’t know how Mr. Stone ran that tag,” Lieutenant Whitt said. “He did not get that information from us and couldn’t have obtained it through customary channels.” She glared at Ty.

  “He declined to provide us with tha
t information,” Esposito noted. “I’m not sure that’s relevant at this point, though. So what about this contractor? What do we know about Barger?”

  A female detective spoke up, referring to her notes. “We’re waiting on the subpoena for his bank records, but there’s no obvious link between him and Mendoza, other than the picture obtained by Mr. Stone. We’re checking the RV for prints. We’re analyzing Barger’s phone and waiting for billing records so we can see if those two have communicated in the past. Preliminary inspection of the contents of the trash bag found at the scene indicates that the clothing appears similar to what Gretchen Wells was wearing when she was abducted. We have the hair sample Lieutenant Whitt provided from the girl’s home and we’re waiting on that analysis now.”

  “And the gunmen?” Esposito asked.

  “Sicarios,” replied the detective from the gang unit. “Long history of cartel-related arrests. Fancy clothes, fancy truck, and fancy guns. Both alive at this point, thanks to Mr. Stone stabilizing the one with gunshot wounds. He’s not able to talk. The one with the concussion is stable but won’t say anything.”

  “Again, pardon my ignorance here, but what exactly is a sicario?” Ty asked. “I’ve heard the word on TV shows but have no idea.”

  “Cartel assassin,” Cornell offered. “A hitman.”

  “Looks like somebody wanted all this to go away,” Detective Smith said. “Some stranger from Virginia shows up and Mendoza panics. The most obvious solution is to kill Barger and kill the stranger. Wrap up any loose ends and get the hell out of town.”

  “Loose ends from what?” Mathis asked. “That’s the question. Is this a kidnapping for ransom? It makes no sense.”

  “Do you have anything connecting the sicarios to Mendoza?” Esposito asked.

  There were several shaking heads but a female detective, Moldonado, replied. “Nothing yet. No phones, other than Barger’s, were located on the scene. We don’t know how they got their orders.”