Sufficient Ransom (37 page)

Richard was watching her, a concerned expression on his face. “I was just thinking…” Ann said. Glancing over at Travis, who was busy munching his burger and looking out the window, she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about these things in front of their son. Richard nodded in understanding. He didn’t seem to want to rehash anything either.

Ann noticed that the lines on her husband’s forehead had deepened. His eyes were touched with sadness. She had increased his suffering—first Tijuana, and the tunnel, and then the God thing. Crazy with grief over Travis, she had been on the verge of sacrificing her mind to religion. Chet had urged her to have faith, to believe, but he could give her no reasons why she should. He expected her to believe just because he said it, or because the Bible said it.

And to think that the very person whom Ann had trusted to guide her from her nightmare was the very person who had created it. Richard had warned her about Chet, but she wouldn’t listen. She had let the pastor fool her. He had deliberately torn Ann’s life apart. Then he offered her a way out. His way.
New Way
. “If you accept Jesus,” Chet had said, “you will get your son back.” Thank goodness it was all over.

Chet had shot himself in the woods near the camp. So much for his soul belonging to God, Ann had thought, when she heard the news. Pastor Todd was released from jail after posting bail, a huge sum. Pannikin
insisted Chet had masterminded the kidnappings and murdered his own mother because she had uncovered
Chet’s
scheme.

The sheer insanity of Chet and Todd’s thinking was evidenced by their belief that once she and Richard were converted, they would agree with New Way’s methods. That they would be thankful that Travis had been kidnapped and introduced to Jesus. Ann couldn’t think of anything more warped.

A knock at the door ended Ann’s ruminations. She heard a woman’s voice. Richard opened the door wide. A nurse entered the room pushing a wheel chair.

“Kika!” Ann said, happy to see her friend.

Kika smiled through her bandages. “You couldn’t stand that I was getting all the attention, could you? You had to get yourself shot.”

Ann’s eyes misted. Her friend looked weak and frail. “I was so scared for you.” The nurse positioned Kika’s chair by the bed. Ann reached down and gently embraced her friend.

Bitter amusement flitted across Kika’s half visible face. “I wasn’t going to let that bastard Chet have the last word.” She raised her medallion to her lips and kissed it. “Forgive me, Mary.”

Travis waved a chocolate covered hand in greeting. “Hi Kika.” He went back to licking his fingers.

Kika’s eyes softened. “Enjoy your cake, little one.”

Travis had believed Chet’s lie about going on a long vacation. He had lived with a fundamentalist Christian family and their five children on their farm near Palomar Mountain, a remote area seventy miles northeast of San Diego. The family, New Way members of course, had been told by Chet that the Olsons were abusive, immoral non-believers. They thought they were saving Travis’s life by taking him in.

Ann gathered from what Travis had said about his experience, and from what the child psychologist assigned to debrief him afterwards said, that after the initial shock of separation from his parents had worn off, he had settled down to his new life with this Christian family. But he never stopped wanting to go home. When one of the children got hold of his father’s cell phone, Travis took the opportunity to call.

Watching Kika talk to Richard, it occurred to Ann that her friend was just as religious as Chet, but for some reason Kika’s devotion didn’t bother her. Maybe because Kika treated her belief in God as a private matter. Unlike Chet, she didn’t try to impose her values on others. Kika respected that Ann didn’t believe in God and left it at that.

Kika was picking at the hospital blanket on her lap. She looked self-conscious. “Max is picking me up today,” she said.

Ann was concerned her friend was not well enough to go home. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Kika reached back and patted the nurse’s hand. “Between Max and Camille here, I’ll be fine.”

The thought of home warmed Ann’s heart. She couldn’t wait to shut the world out so she and her family could start to heal. “They’re letting me out today too.”

“That’s great,” Kika said vaguely. She looked from Richard to Ann, a crumpled tissue in her hand.

“What’s wrong, Kika?” Ann asked.

Her friend shrugged. “So much has happened. I don’t know what to make of it all. It’s just—”

“You wish things could have turned out differently with your father?” Ann said softly. “You deserved better. And Nora too. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.”

“I wish we could have known what we were to each other,” Kika said, dabbing the tissue at her eyes. “It’s so unfair.”

Ann remembered Nora’s will. As Nora’s biological daughter, Kika had just inherited twenty million dollars. Kika was a rich woman, but Ann knew she didn’t care about the money. And to think that she had accused this wonderful person of kidnapping Travis.

Soon after Kika left, Tom Long came to see Ann. “I hear you’ve been pestering the doctors to let you out,” the detective grinned.

Ann grinned back. “I’m going home this afternoon.” She was glad Tom didn’t hold a grudge over Pine Wood.

Tom glanced around the room. “Where’s everyone?”

“Richard took Travis for a walk. They wanted to check out the pond at the back of the hospital. So, Tom, are you finally going to fill me in on how you came to suspect Chet?”

“Yeah,” Tom smiled. “Why not?” He pulled up a chair. “Let’s start with his mother’s murder. That unfortunate event is what got him on our radar screen. The morning she died, Chet sent his mother an email ranting about her cutting off the spigot. That there was no sign of a forced entry into her home, indicated Mrs. March knew her assailant. Chet said he was at the movies that night, but one of Mrs. March’s neighbors saw his car pulling out of his mother’s garage. Her phone calls to you about Travis, hours before she was killed, confirmed our suspicion that Chet was involved. And lastly, the fact that Mrs. March was placed dead in a tub of water indicated that her killer’s motivation was, at least in part, ideological.”

The detective shook his head. “Chet took this notion of converting people to Jesus very seriously. Once we nailed his motive, connecting Chet and Pannikin to Travis and to some of other children was easy.”

“What do you mean ‘some of the other children’? Didn’t Chet and Todd take all the kids?”

“Actually not,” Tom said. “Only Hanna Aziz, Sabela Villarreal, and Travis.”

“Who took Pedro Valdez and Jesús Ramirez?” Ann asked.

“Uh, we’re still working on them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say that we’ve got some guys south of the border helping us.”

“Max Ruiz?”

Tom Long looked regretful. “I’m not free to say.”

“So the drug cartels did take those children,” Ann said.

“All I can say is that we have it from a reliable source that the children are alive and unharmed,” Tom said.

Ann breathed a sigh. “Thank goodness for that. Tell me about Sabela. Did she wake up? Is she okay?”

“She woke up early this morning,” Tom said.

Tears of relief sprang to Ann’s eyes. “I was so worried about her.”

“As soon as we get the okay from her doctors we’ll talk to Sabela,” Tom said. “It was her situation that gave us the evidence we needed to confirm our hypothesis about Chet and Todd. Fingerprints on Sabela’s shoes matched those of a north San Diego man we’d been watching—an Arthur Zoekler.”

“That name’s familiar,” Ann said, remembering. “Isn’t he a ministry leader at New Way?”

“Children’s Ministry,” Tom said, his gray eyes darkening. “The Feds shut New Way down. Todd Pannikin will never preach again.”

“Except to fellow sickos in prison,” Ann said. “Hopefully on death row. After what he did.”

Tom shifted in his chair and re-crossed his legs. “Getting back to Arthur Zoekler,” he said. “Zoekler was stopped a week ago in Escondido. Routine traffic check—he’d been driving erratically. A young girl, about seven or eight, was in the front seat. The child was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over her face and no seat belt. When the officer from County Sheriff’s questioned why the girl was sitting in the front seat unbuckled, the man explained that she was his niece and that she had unbuckled herself when they pulled over. Apparently the girl looked frightened. The officer, his name is Teddy Burke, thought she was scared because her uncle was in trouble with a policeman. Burke ran a check on Zoekler’s license and discovered that he was arrested for petty larceny five years ago, but that he’d had a clean record since. So he let Zoekler go.

“Something about the little girl bothered Burke. He wasn’t sure, because the cap hid much of her face, but he thought that he had seen her before in connection with a crime. Later that day, he called on Zoekler at his home in a remote part Escondido. About forty miles northeast of San Diego. He was hoping to catch sight of the girl again. Burke explained that he was sorry he had frightened the man’s niece and wanted to apologize to her in person. Zoekler told him the girl wasn’t there. Her mother had picked her up; they were on their way home.

Tom continued. “Unable to get the girl’s frightened face out of his mind Burke reported the incident to the investigator on duty. Given what’s been going on with all the missing children, the investigator, an old friend of mine from USC, didn’t want to take any chances. He told me about it the next day.

“We started poking into Zoekler’s affairs and discovered that he was New Way’s new children’s ministry leader. We toyed with the idea of bringing him in for more questioning. But we had no definite idea of anything. Only a suspicion that the man was up to no good. So we decided to watch his place.”

“Did you see the little girl again?” Ann said.

The detective leaned forward in his chair. “No, we didn’t. But the New Way connection was a red flag, after what had happened to Nora March. Her son being the co-founder, along with her old friend Pannikin, and all. We got the okay to peek into Zoekler’s finances to see if we could shake loose any clues. Bank statements showed that on the fifth and twentieth of the last two months, New Way had paid Zoekler $500. From what we could tell, Zoekler hadn’t worked for that money; his ministry duties at New Way were strictly volunteer. We wondered if he was being paid to take care of the little girl. Then we made another discovery. According to a neighbor we questioned, a stranger had been visiting the Zoekler home, twice a week. This man would stay for an hour and then leave. Guess who he was?”

“Chet?” Ann said.

“It was Pannikin,” Tom said. “From there, we discovered that several of the missing children had a connection to New Way. Some were not so obvious. A guidance counselor who had angered the parents of a child she had counseled—Mrs. Aziz. An ER doc whose actions concerning an accident victim were viewed as unchristian—Dr. Aziz. Parents who neglected their daughter’s religious education—Sabela Villarreal. An atheist who was suspected of harming her child and influencing a major donor to stop supporting their church—you, Ann. By the way, we think it was Travis’s teacher, Amanda White, who came up with the idea of taking Travis. She belongs to the church.”

Ann felt a surge of hatred for the woman who had started all the trouble. “Have you arrested her yet?”

“Let’s just say we’re talking to her,” Tom said.

Ann hoped the teacher would see jail time for her crimes. “So this Arthur Zoekler. His so-called niece was really Sabela Villarreal, right?”

Tom sat back in his chair. “Yup. Zoekler confessed everything. He claims he’d repented his role in Sabela’s disappearance, and told his wife to bring the girl home. He was lying of course.”

“It was the sister-in-law, Gabrielle, who told New Way about Sabela. Right?”

The detective nodded. “Gabrielle Rodriguez.”

“How did Sabela get away?” Ann asked.

“We’ll find out when we debrief her.”

A hint of reproach crept into Ann’s voice. “It would’ve been nice to know some of this before, Tom.”

“I’m sorry, Ann. There’s no way we could’ve shared this information with you or Richard. For Travis’s safety and that of the other children. Speaking of which, I could
easily
have brought charges against both of you for interfering in Pine Wood.”

“Maybe one day, when you have a child of your own, you’ll understand,” Ann said.

Tom smiled easily. “Maybe.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in!” Ann said.

Julian Fox entered the room.

Ann was not expecting the agent to visit her. Not after the way she treated him in Pine Wood.

Tom Long reached over and clasped his friend’s hand. “Hey, Jules.”

Ann addressed the agent. “What brings you here?”

Julian sat on the edge of Ann’s bed, his blue eyes twinkling. “Wanted to see how you were doing. It’s not every day one of our customers gets shot.”

Ann’s smile was rueful. “Yeah. That wasn’t very fun.”

“And I came to say goodbye.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Where are you going?”

“To Key West,” Julian said. “For a much needed vacation. Haven’t been anywhere in years.”

“I see.” Ann was surprised that in his line of work, the agent didn’t take more time off. Her voice was quieter. “I’m sorry I haven’t been the easiest person to work with.”

There was acceptance in Julian’s eyes. “No harm, no foul,” he said, smiling.

Ann looked from the detective to the agent. “Tom was just telling me about Sabela Villarreal and the clues that led you to Chet and Todd. What about Hanna Aziz? What happened to her?”

“She was kidnapped by Chet and given to a fundamentalist Christian family,” Julian said. “Same as Travis. She’s safe at home with her family now. The people who took her and Travis in are facing kidnapping charges.” After sharing a few more details about the other children who had disappeared, Julian stood up. “It’s time for me to go. May you always be at peace, Ann. And your family too.”

Ann reached for the agent’s hand. “Thank you for everything, Julian. Let’s stay in touch.”