“Her name is Elizabeth Crawford.”
Vargas was surprised and must have shown it, because Pasternak said, “Not what you were expecting?”
“The name I heard was Angie.”
Pasternak’s eyes widened slightly. “Who’s your source?”
“Not until I get the rest.”
“The only people who could possibly know that name are people who had direct contact with her.”
“Exactly,” Vargas said. “So finish what you were saying.”
Pasternak nodded. “Like I told you, her name is Elizabeth Crawford. First few days she was at Burke Memorial ICU and we got nothing from her. Paramedics reported that she kept saying the name Angie over and over again, but her speech was slurred and nobody was even sure if that was accurate. Whatever the case, she wasn’t much help with the identification. They almost lost her a few times and I gotta say, it’s a miracle she pulled through. Somebody fights that hard to survive, you figure they must have a real good reason to live.”
“Did you fingerprint her?”
Another nod. “That’s what did it for us. We put her in the database and got a hit out of Los Angeles. We contacted her place of employment, wound up talking to her ex-husband, and he told us she’d been missing for several months. Went on vacation and never came back. And guess where she went?”
“Where?”
“Mexico.”
“Juarez?”
Pasternak shook his head. “Baja Norte. She and her sister went on a Mexican Riviera cruise and disappeared off the face of the earth. Cruise line reported it when their room steward realized they hadn’t returned in a while. And the purser said Crawford had mentioned she had ‘misplaced her sister.’”
“So then Angie’s the sister?”
“Nope. Her name is Jennifer. Angie’s still a mystery to us.”
“I assume the FBI was called in?”
“FBI, Homeland Security, the whole ball of wax. They checked activity on their credit cards, tried tracing their cell phones, and got nada.”
“Until Taco Bell.”
“That’s right. And believe me, they threw everything they had into it, since Crawford was practically one of their own.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s an assistant district attorney. Or was. Just like her ex. They thought maybe the disappearances might’ve had something to do with one of her cases, but they could never connect anything. She dealt mostly with domestic crimes and special victims.”
Vargas felt a small bump in his heart rate. This story just kept getting better and better. But he wondered why he hadn’t heard about this.
Then he realized that it had happened around the time he was up in Vancouver, going through his third stint of rehab. The one that finally stuck. And he hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to the world before that.
“So what’s her condition now?”
“Last I heard, not so good. Once she was physically able, she was transferred to a traumatic brain injury facility in LA. The ex tells me the lucid periods are few and far between. She managed to give us a couple of names that we looked into, but we got nothing. Her doctor thinks they might be a product of the brain injury.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it. The ex says she keeps calling him, thinking it’s ten months ago and that she’s still down in Playa Azul.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“According to him, she’s completely fucked.”
Pasternak lifted his cup, took another sip, then set it down and gave Vargas a hard stare.
“Okay, hotshot, now it’s your turn. Tell me about Juarez.”
55
Vargas reached into the satchel under the table, brought out the manila envelope, and handed it to Pasternak.
Pasternak said nothing as he pulled out the three photographs.
“She look familiar?” Vargas asked.
Pasternak was leafing through them now, staring at them with undisguised surprise. “What the hell is this?”
“I’ll tell you what it isn’t,” Vargas said. “It isn’t a Taco Bell parking lot.”
“I can see that. I assume this is in Juarez?”
“About a half hour or so south. Place called Dead Man’s Dunes.”
“And the woman with her?”
“A nun. There were four more found nearby and a fifth outside.”
It took Pasternak about two seconds to put it together.
“Holy…fucking…shit. The Casa de la Muerte murders?”
He’d said it fairly loud and several of the other customers turned and stared at him. But he either was oblivious or didn’t give a damn.
“I don’t fucking believe it. We got a couple bulletins on this, but nobody ever said anything about an American woman, let alone Crawford. Where’d you get these?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, but there’s a Chihuahua state police homicide investigator you might want to take a look into. Guy by the name of Rojas. He removed these photos and every other trace of Crawford from the official file.”
“Wait, wait, now,” Pasternak said. “Back up a bit. Start at the top.”
So Vargas did, telling him about the trip to Juarez and the tour of the Casa de la Muerte crime scene. About the Ainsworths letting it slip that there was an American woman named Angie, and about Rojas’s cover-up, including what Rojas had thought was a fatal shot to the head.
Vargas didn’t mention the ride in the trunk of his car or the executions at the egg ranch. No point in getting caught up in this thing as a material witness. Not right now, at least.
Pasternak would likely find out about it all himself-probably with Garcia’s help, once Operation Rojas kicked into gear-but Vargas planned to be long gone when that happened.
“You have anything in your files on a hit man with a half-burnt face?”
Pasternak shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I’d know if we did.”
“What about a religious cult called La Santa Muerte?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.” Pasternak pointed to the photos. “They have something to do with this?”
“I can’t be sure, but it’s come up in conversation.”
“You wanna clue me in?”
“Apparently the cult is run by someone called El Santo,” Vargas said. “They’re into drug smuggling and God knows what else, and the guy with the burnt face seems to be their enforcer. I did a quick Internet search when I was down in Juarez and got zero hits. Which means they’re about as far under the radar as you can get.”
“And Juarez is so far out of our jurisdiction it might as well be Mars,” Pasternak said. “But since this is all directly connected to my case, it warrants a road trip, and I have a feeling the FBI’s gonna want to ride shotgun.”
“I have a feeling you’re right,” Vargas told him. “But all we’ve got so far is a rumored cover-up. We still don’t know how Elizabeth Crawford wound up in that house, surrounded by five dead nuns.”
“True, but what you’ve given me here puts me a step closer to closing an attempted-murder case, and if this fucker Rojas is as bent as you say he is, he’s going down.”
