Taken (8 page)

Joe Pike:

six days after they were taken

11.

Joe Pike watched his friend Elvis Cole leave the Burger King parking lot, then entered the longitude and latitude into his GPS. Pike was not using a civilian GPS. He used a military handheld known as a Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, which was also known as a dagger. The DAGR was missile-guidance precise, could not be jammed, and contained the cryptography to use the Army and Air Force GPS satellite system. The DAGR was illegal for civilians to own, but Pike had used it in remote locations throughout Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Central and South America. These were military contract jobs for multinational corporations, mostly, but also the United States government. The government gave the DAGR to him even though it was a crime for him to own it. Governments do that.

Thirty-two minutes later, Pike slid from his Jeep onto a dirt road a hundred yards from the broken airplane and the overgrown landing strip behind it. Pike considered the airplane, then the surrounding land. The landing strip was obvious. The smugglers had smoothed a forty-foot-wide piece of desert for twenty-five hundred feet, pushing their rubble into a low berm along the runway’s length. Now, all these years later, though the creosote bushes and bunchgrass returned, the landing strip created an unnaturally flat table of land with an unnaturally straight edge.

Pike took a deep breath, and waited for the desert’s silence. The Jeep ticked and pinged, but the desert swallowed these sounds as deserts will do, muting them with its emptiness. Deserts held an emptiness that could not be filled, and as the metal cooled, the pops and knocks slowed like a clock running down until the desert was silent.

Pike took another breath, expanding his lungs ever farther, and slowed his heart. Forty-four beats per minute. Forty-two. Forty. Pike wanted to be as still and silent as the desert. The best hunters were one with the land.

Pike made his way through the cholla and creosote, and quickly located the remains of the fire Cole described and the tire print marked with an E. This would be Trehorn’s track, with his friend’s track next to it. Pike thought of these tracks as “friendlies,” and would ignore them if he saw them elsewhere in the area.

Once the two friendly tracks were identified, Pike searched for the oversized quad tracks Cole described. These signs were not easy to find, the way you could see tracks on a sandy beach. The desert hardpack was made of shale plates scattered with sand, rocks, and sun-baked dirt. Though an occasional puddle of sandy soil held a clear track, the signs Pike found were mostly a few inches of thin line on a rock or a shadow pressed into the sand.

Pike worked carefully, and did not hurry. He eased into a push-up position, lowered his head, then changed position and lowered himself again. During his contract years, he was often hired to protect African villages and farm collectives from raiders and poachers. These missions involved tracking dangerous men through vast tracts of mopane scrub or arid savannah. Pike hired Masai warriors to track them. These were lean, mystical men who would study the tilt of a reed for an hour or touch a tree as if they could feel the heat left by a passing Bantu. They claimed the trees and grass spoke to them, and tried to teach Pike what they saw—
be one with these things, and you will see without looking
. Pike never heard voices or saw what they saw, but he learned what to look for, and that a man needed patience to find it. Joe Pike was patient.

He found three nine-millimeter casings almost at once, glittering like small copper mirrors. He found clear prints left by two pickup-sized vehicles, fragments of three different shoe prints, and then found the quad. Cole was right—two big tires mounted side by side, each maybe ten inches wide. A large truck had been here in a place where large trucks did not belong. Pike studied the dual tracks, and noted they lined up with the centerline of the landing strip. He followed them, noting more fragments of smaller treads, some crushed by the quad tracks, others cutting across them. The smaller tracks didn’t follow a straight course, but swerved and curved into the brush. Some of these tracks showed a sideways skid as if the vehicles had been moving fast. Pike wondered why they had turned hard into the brush, but kept following the quad.

Twenty yards past the dead airplane, the quad tracks curved toward the road where his Jeep now waited. Pike thought this was probably how the truck left, so he reversed course, and followed the tracks in the opposite direction back past the airplane.

He was thirty yards beyond the crash when the clearing was suddenly crowded with shoe prints; mostly fragments—the crest of a heel, the edge of a shoe—but enough to see differences in their sizes and soles. The shoe prints overlapped as if many people had stood in a group. Pike lowered himself to study them more closely, and realized the shoe prints completely covered the quad prints. This meant the people were here after the truck.

Something about this bothered him, so Pike backtracked a few feet the way he had come, and discovered the tracks leading to the road were clear. A few feet farther away from the road, and overlapping shoe prints covered the tracks. The line between shoes and no shoes on the quad tracks was clear.

Pike realized he now knew the truck had come from the south, rolled up the centerline to this spot near the crashed airplane, and stopped. A group of people had gotten off or gotten on at the rear of the truck, after which the truck departed toward the road where his Jeep was now parked.

Pike said, “Mm.”

Pike searched for a depression where the truck’s weight would have pressed into the soil when it sat parked. He located the first depression, then two of the remaining three. He paced off the distance between the rear tires and the fronts, which gave him the wheel base. The truck was about twenty feet long with a fourteen-foot box. This was about the size used for local meat deliveries or rented to do-it-yourself movers.

Pike was considering the size of the truck when he noticed a long arcing skid where one of the smaller vehicles crushed a cluster of furry cholla cactus as it raced into the brush. Pike left the quad for a closer look, and saw a path of broken ocotillos and creosote. The creosotes were large, heavy plants, and would have damaged the vehicle, but the driver hadn’t cared. Five more nine-millimeter casings were scattered along the hardpack.

The smaller track was easy to follow. Broken shrubs and deep ruts where the tires dug for traction led in a curving arc through the brush. Forty yards from the landing strip, Pike found four deep sideways skids where the vehicle made a hard, sliding stop. A few feet away, Pike spotted seven nine-millimeter casings and three yellow shotgun shells. Someone had driven hard to this place, stood on the brakes, then fired off rounds. Two guns, so Pike guessed two men. Chased something. Caught it. Killed it.

Pike circled the area, but did not have to go far. Twenty feet away, he found an irregular brown amoeba-shaped stain almost two feet across on the dusty shale. The brown had faded, and was almost the color of dust, but Pike had seen similar stains in similar deserts all over the world, and knew it had once been red.

Something bad had happened here.

Someone had died here.

And the shooters had taken the body.

Pike had been on the scene for one hour and twelve minutes. It was almost three o’clock. He marked the spot, then jogged back to his Jeep to call Elvis Cole.

Elvis Cole:

four days before he is taken

12.

The bathroom felt cold when Pike told me what he had found.

“Big group. Can’t tell how many, but more than ten. Two or three smaller vehicles came hard for the quad. Looks like three, but I can’t confirm.”

“The quad was there first? The others came after?”

“The quad wasn’t running. He was probably stopped when they hit.”

“They followed him?”

“Or knew he would come and waited nearby. He parked, people got out, the bad guys hit.”

“So everyone ran, but got rounded up and put back aboard?”

“Way it looks. At least one man went down. From the amount of blood, KIA.”

“Jesus.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anything else on the kids?”

“No, but I can stay longer.”

I was thinking about it when a man in his thirties with neatly trimmed blond hair opened the door and told me Mr. Locano was ready. He had a faint Russian accent and wore a UCLA class ring. One of Locano’s associates. I told Pike I would call back, and followed the man to Mr. Locano’s office. As before, he was behind his desk when I arrived and came around to speak with me, but this time we did not sit.

He said, “There is a man.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Rudy Sanchez. Rudolfo. Mr. Sanchez is well established, and is known to deal with groups.”

“Thanks, Mr. Locano. This won’t get back to you.”

“Wait. You’ll want his address.”

He gave me a white index card on which he had written
Sanchez & Sons Towing
, along with a Coachella address. Both the address and the business surprised me.

“He lives in Coachella?”

“They tell me he’s an American, and the business is real.”

I put the card away. Maybe a man in the towing business would be confident driving a large truck over rough ground, but maybe the overlap of business and large trucks was only a coincidence. Maybe Krista’s Sanchez and Rudy Sanchez weren’t the same coyote, and maybe Mary Sue was wrong about Q COY SANCHEZ, and the Sanchez in the note wasn’t a coyote, but a shy flirt who was after Krista’s boyfriend. Rudy Sanchez might never have heard of Krista Morales, and she might never have heard of or contacted him.

I said, “I spoke with my associate while I was waiting. There appears to be evidence of some kind of abduction at the crash site.”

“Evidence the girl was taken?”

“Nothing specific to Krista Morales, no, sir, but what he’s found isn’t good.”

“Then let’s hope for the best.”

He pursed his lips as if wrestling with how much he wanted to say, then finally told me.

“Have you seen news accounts of the mass graves found south of the border?”

I nodded. Mass graves containing scores of murder victims were sometimes found, and were so horrific they made national news in the U.S.

He said, “These were immigrants abducted for ransom, Mr. Cole.
Bajadores
leave no witnesses. Let us hold a good thought until we know more.”

I thanked Mr. Locano for his help, and went out to my car. I wanted to talk with Pike about what he had found, but Starkey called as I got into my car.

“I got your DMV on that Mustang. Can you talk?”

“Sure.”

“No one owns it.”

“What do you mean, no one owns it?”

“The owner of record isn’t a person. DMV shows it’s owned by the Arrowhead Trust. That means whoever owns it didn’t buy the car as an individual, but bought it through the trust or transferred title to the trust. Rich people do that for tax reasons.”

“I know, Starkey. Thanks.”

“I know you know. Just sayin’. You want the address?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t give me the address Mary Sue found in Krista’s computer. She gave me a Wilshire Boulevard address not far from UCLA, on a stretch of Wilshire lined with corporate high-rises.

“One-oh-eight-eight-six Wilshire Boulevard, tenth floor, Westwood, nine-oh-oh-two-four.”

She repeated it without my having to ask. Though trusts can and did hold title to anything, Mustangs weren’t typically the type of vehicle held in trust. Trusts were used to shelter high-ticket items like yachts, Ferraris, and multimillion-dollar homes from inheritance taxes.

I said, “Starkey, you at the office?”

“Yeah. I’m done for the day. You want to swing by and pick me up?”

“No. I want you to check a name for me. Rudolfo or Rudy Sanchez. Has a business in Coachella called Sanchez and Sons Tow.”

I gave her the address, and explained his occupation. If Sanchez had ever been arrested in California, his history would show on the California Department of Justice system. I could hear Starkey curse as she typed, and I didn’t blame her. Officers couldn’t tap into the system any time they wanted for any reason at all. She would have to enter a case number and her badge number, which meant her supervisor would be notified of her request, and she would have to justify the search. Fabricating a reason for checking out Rudolfo Sanchez was no big deal, but the paperwork was annoying.

Then she stopped cursing, and lowered her voice.

“Who’s this guy Sanchez to you?”

“If he’s the right Sanchez, he may have had contact with a woman I’m trying to find. But he might not be my guy. I won’t know that until I talk to him.”

“Good luck with that.”

“You found him?”

“I found him. No criminal record. Not even a ticket.”

I was half a beat behind her.

“Then why is he in the system?”

“He was found murdered by gunshot last Saturday afternoon. They fished him out of the Salton Sea.”

I felt the dropsick feeling you get when your stomach washes with acid.

“Is this the same Sanchez?”

“Yes, Cole, I’m sure. Rudolfo Sanchez of Coachella.”

“Sanchez and Sons Tow Service?”

“Jesus, Cole, yes, I’m looking at it right here. Owner of Sanchez and Sons Tow Service, Coachella, California. That would be
your
Rudolfo Sanchez. They found him backstrokin’ last Saturday afternoon.”

Saturday. Krista Morales and Jack Berman disappeared Friday night.

Starkey kept going, reading from her computer.

“No suspects at this time, anyone with information contact Sergeant Mike Bowers of the Coachella Police Department, blah blah blah.”

I thought about Pike and the desert, and what we have found there.

“What kind of gun?”

“Nine-millimeter. Plugged him five times with the nine, and put a load of buckshot in him. A nine-millimeter and a shotgun. You know anything about this?”

“Just what I told you.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“A college student.”

“Anything I should know?”

“It’s like I said, Starkey. I’m not even sure he’s the right Sanchez. You know how many Sanchezes there are?”

“I know it’s the eighth most common Spanish name in America. That’s a lot of Sanchezes.”

“Yeah. I better get back to work.”

“And I know you better not leave me hanging on this. You understand?”

“I understand.”

I hung up and stared at my phone. Then I looked at the address in Coachella. Sanchez & Sons. It was three minutes after four. I called Joe Pike.

“Still there?”

“Yes.”

“I’m coming back.”