“So what’s your guess?” Mel asked me, once we’d both had a chance to read through it. “Does it seem likely to you that this guy, just like Mama Rose, decided to straighten up and fly right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m of the opinion that he just stopped getting caught.”
The Records clerk, who had two sons of her own, happened to have an old GameBoy in the bottom drawer of her desk. She kept it around to use on those occasions when her kids dropped by to see her at work and she needed to keep them occupied. When we headed off to join Lupe Rivera, Detective Caldwell, and the translator in the interview room, Alfonso and Tomas were seated side by side in a worn armchair with their faces glued to the tiny screen.
Mel knocked on the door of the interview room, and Lucy Caldwell came out. “I hope you’ve got something for me,” she said. “Either she knows nothing and she can’t tell, or she knows plenty and she won’t tell. Either way, I’m not making any progress.”
“Let’s try a reality check,” I said. “How about we drop Mr. Rios’s photo in front of her and see what happens?”
Lupe Rivera’s reaction to seeing Miguel Rios’s face was every bit as jarring as her sons’ response to hearing the man’s name. Her skin turned ashen; her jaw dropped. After a moment, she shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before,” she said.
Not true!
“Look,” I told her. “Up till now, you haven’t been in any trouble. But if you start lying to us, you will be. You may not realize this, but if you don’t tell the truth, we can put you in jail. Besides, we know you have seen this man before, just this morning, as a matter of fact. Alfonso says he came by the house today, looking for your husband. What did he want?”
As the translator delivered my words, Lupe buried her face in her hands and began to weep.
“Tell us,” Mel urged. “We need to know what’s going on. That’s the only way we can help you.”
Gradually, over the next hour or so, the story came out. Tomas had come to the country illegally and had arranged a green-card marriage. He had divorced the woman once he had his permanent residency, then had gone back down to Mexico and married his childhood sweetheart. Sometimes he came home and sometimes he sent money. Still not a citizen and wanting to have his family with him, he had made arrangements to smuggle Lupe and the boys into the country.
“And that’s where Rios came in?” I asked.
Lupe nodded. “Not Miguel himself but people who work for him.”
“Do these people have a name?”
“Tomas used the same people who brought him across the border years ago. Now it’s more expensive. He had to save his money for a long time. Bringing us here cost him twenty thousand dollars in cash. We came across the border at a place called Agua Pri-eta and then rode north in a big Suburban with blacked-out windows. They dropped us off somewhere down around Tacoma. Tomas met us there and brought us here.”
“When was this?” Lucy asked.
“Two years ago.”
“And were you and your boys the only passengers on the trip north?”
“No. There were two men and some young girls-three of them-teenagers. They weren’t much older than my boys, but they were traveling alone. They didn’t have any money for food, so we shared what we could with them. On the second night, the driver asked one of the girls to have sex with him. She told him no. Later on I heard the driver and the two men joking about it. ‘That’s all right,’ the driver said. ‘She can tell me no now, but I’ll have her later. After they get cleaned up, they’ll smell a lot better.’”
I glanced at Mel and saw the tension in the muscles of her cheeks. She takes a very dim view of men who prey on young girls.
“In other words, the girls would be working off the price of their fares,” she said. “As prostitutes.”
Lupe nodded. “Si,” she said in a very small voice.
“Did the girls have any idea about what was in store for them?”
“No,” Lupe said. “I don’t think so.”
“What did Miguel want when he came here this morning?”
“I know Tomas did things for Miguel sometimes, things he wouldn’t talk about. This morning Miguel was very angry. He wanted to talk to Tomas, but my husband was already gone. Miguel said that I should give Tomas a message-that there were worse things than being dead.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened then?”
“I called Tomas’s boss at work, hoping to talk to him and let him know Miguel was looking for him, but my husband wasn’t there. He hadn’t shown up. And then I started thinking about what if Tomas was in some kind of trouble? What if he ran away and left us? That’s when I went through his drawers and things. If he was supposed to keep his mouth shut, I thought maybe I might find something that would let me know what was wrong.”
“And that’s when you found the photo?” Mel asked.
Lupe nodded.
“The photo of the boy you thought might be your husband’s child by another woman?”
Lupe didn’t answer for a very long time. “If I tell you the truth now and if it’s different from what I told you before, will you still put me in jail?”
“That depends,” I said.
“The picture wasn’t in Tomas’s drawer,” Lupe said. “It was in his Bible. Like he had been praying over it. And I thought…”
Tears spilled out of her eyes. She couldn’t go on.
“You thought what?” I asked.
“I thought he was a…” She struggled for a moment before continuing. “A boy someone had used just like those men used those poor girls. And I thought Tomas knew about it and he couldn’t stand it-that he was afraid the same thing could happen to Alfonso and Little Tomas. So when that other man told me the boy was his nephew and he was fine, I was very happy. But now that I know the boy’s mother is dead, I’m afraid-afraid Tomas has done something awful. So afraid.”
With good reason, I thought as she collapsed in tears once more. With very good reason.
Butch caught Joanna’s eye as she returned to the table. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Everything’s fine,” she said, even though everything wasn’t fine. She found herself wondering how many times her own father and countless others like him had come home from work and told their families that everything was A-OK. She suspected it wasn’t just a law enforcement subterfuge. Maybe it was a grown-up subterfuge. Maybe it was the kind of little white lie adults always tell the people they love.
Dennis was asleep within minutes of being belted into his car seat. On the way home, though, Joanna couldn’t keep all the ugliness locked inside her, and so she told Butch all about the situation at Caring Friends because it was far too heavy a burden to bear alone. When they got home, Butch carried Dennis into his room and put him to bed while Joanna went into the office and inserted the memory card into her home computer.
Norm Higgins was right. The photos were appalling and as graphic as any autopsy photos Joanna had ever seen. Derek Higgins had used a ruler to document the seeping wounds on Faye Carter’s back and buttocks. One of them was a full three and a half inches wide. Derek had also scanned a copy of the death certificate into the file. Joanna recognized the doctor’s name. Dr. Clay Forrest was the same physician who had pronounced Inez Fletcher’s death as due to natural causes. Sepsis. Again.
Scrolling through the photos, Joanna came face-to-face with the idea that now Inez Fletcher’s remains would most likely need to be exhumed. The evidence in front of her was telling, but it wouldn’t satisfy the requirements of a court of law. Derek’s sworn statement wouldn’t hold up to the demands of maintaining a chain of evidence. Only an official autopsy would do that.
A while later Butch came into her office and stood behind her, staring at the computer screen over her shoulder. Finally he heaved a sigh and walked away. By the time Joanna followed him into the bedroom, he was already in bed.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he said gruffly.
“Somebody has to,” she said.
