Focused on Murder, page 22
I hit call back. It went to voice mail. I tried Wilcox. “They got the guy already?”
“How did you find that out? It just happened ten minutes ago.”
“I asked the twins to keep me informed.”
Wilcox said, “Karli and Kaeli drove through a weigh station down in Iowa. They saw a trucker who looked like the guy watching Kim at the truck stop and demanded to search his truck. He resisted, so they got the station guy and a couple of other truckers to help them. The truck came up empty, but Kaeli recognized a silver barrette on the floor of the sleep compartment from the one in Kim’s hair.”
“That’s right, she wore two silver barrettes.” I couldn’t believe the amazing luck.
“The guy told them he heard CB chatter about a trucker who abducted an Asian girl, so he dumped her on the outskirts of Des Moines and took off. The highway patrol has him in custody and they’re waiting for the FBI. He insists he didn’t touch her, of course, but trafficking, kidnapping, crossing state lines, he’s in trouble.”
The poor, scared kid could be anywhere. “What are you doing to find Kim?”
“I’ve sent her picture to everyone down there. They’ve got a Missing Child alert out.” He sighed. “Now, we wait.”
The whole scenario was too much coincidence for this skeptic. I called Karli again and this time she answered. “Hey, Britt. We got that guy.”
“I heard. You just happened to be in Des Moines and before that you just happened to be at that truck stop where the girls were dropped?”
Her voice hard, she said, “What we’re doing is important. We don’t like to blab it all over. TAT is everything to us.”
“It was no accident that you were at that truck stop where you found Kim and Binh?”
“We had a load to deliver in that county, and yes, we watch that truck stop. It’s a known trafficking spot.”
“And that guy you went after?”
“We put out the word to look for a guy with his description, but we were headed south already.”
I shivered, started the car and set the heat on high. “How did you get him to confess he took Kim?”
“You don’t want to hear about that.”
I couldn’t keep a certain amount of awe out of my voice. “You’re vigilantes.”
Kaeli came on the phone, her voice wary. “Please don’t tell the sheriff.”
“I won’t, but I’d like to hear the real story.”
“Our little sister Mia ran off when she got mad at our dad for being too strict. A trafficker got her at a park in Minneapolis where she was hanging out with some kids. They found her in Chicago a year later.” Her voice trembled, “Dead. Mia was thirteen.”
Karli’s voice again, firm and resolved. “We are licensed truckers. We just report what we see. That’s all.”
“I understand. Thank you for telling me. I’m so sorry about your sister.” I sat stunned in my car when my phone rang, startling me. The sheriff’s ID popped up.
“Meet me at the hospital—now.”
He’d already hung up so I didn’t have time to ask why.
Chapter 24
Wilcox and I pulled into Branson Hospital at the same time. Together, we burst through the doors and down the maze of corridors toward Hanh’s room.
Slightly ahead of me, he talked over his shoulder. “They found Kim at a KFC in Des Moines, and she wants Binh.”
“Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I hurried after him, panting and holding my arm against my side.
He said, “I sent her photo to every law enforcement agency in Minnesota and adjacent states. Des Moines highway patrol matched it up with a report about an Asian girl who locked herself in a KFC bathroom, and refused to come out. She said she wanted Binh, and you.” Slightly out of breath, he stopped before we opened the door to Binh and Hanh’s room, looked at me, and said, “You must have made an impression.”
I shrugged. “I promised I would find them.”
He pushed his cowboy hat off his forehead. “It never occurred to you it would be near impossible to follow through on your promise?”
I looked him in the eye. “Only every minute of every day since those guys took them, and left me to die.”
He reached for the door, but I stopped him. “Wait, don’t those public bathrooms have locks on the outside in case they have to go in after someone? Why not just get her out?”
His eyes rolled. “You couldn’t make this stuff up. The employees couldn’t find a key and couldn’t reach their manager, so they called the fire department to break down the door. They were about to do it when the highway patrol arrived and told them to wait for us.”
“No one thought of a locksmith?” I asked.
“I guess not. Clueless bunch of kids. One of them was trying to pry it off with a screwdriver.”
I looked at the time on my phone. “Kim’s been locked in there several hours already.” Wilcox opened the hospital room door, ready to charge in, but I put a hand on his arm. “Slow down, Sheriff. Don’t scare them.”
“Right.” He took off his hat and smoothed his hair.
Ly and Binh sat next to Hanh’s bed. Their smiles warmed my heart. Maybe they wouldn’t be afraid of every stranger if enough decent people crossed their paths from now on.
Wilcox told them we’d found Kim. The girls crowded close to him while he explained what happened, and that he wanted Binh and me to come with him. Ly translated for Binh. She grabbed my hand, ready to go.
Wilcox spoke to someone at the nurse’s station, and hustled us to his car. He hit the gas before we were buckled, and spun out of the parking lot. “We’re flying down,” he told me.
We held on as he shot through Branson with lights flashing and siren screaming. “Maybe we should wait for the plane,” I said. He whipped around corners, tore through intersections, and sped down the highway to the airport.
The pilot had the engines running. We hustled aboard and in less than two hours arrived at the Des Moines airport. A highway patrol officer took us to a KFC on the outskirts of the city.
Inside, a couple of firefighters and two police officers, male and female, waited near the bathroom hallway. A line of people at the counter appeared mildly interested in the drama, but most faced forward, looking at their smart phones.
Wilcox tapped on the bathroom door. I urged Binh closer. She spoke in Vietnamese and when she stopped, I called to Kim. “It’s Britt from the shack. We’ll take you to Ly and Hanh.”
Another fast exchange between Binh and Kim in their language, and the handle jiggled and opened. Kim stood in the doorway blinking at the crowd of people watching her. Binh threw her arms around her with another outburst in Vietnamese. They hugged, crying and laughing. My camera clicked.
Kim turned to me. Her body trembled, but her chin was up. She said, “You took long time.”
I lowered my camera, kneeled to be closer, and said, “I know. And you’ve been so brave.”
I stood up, and walking backward with my camera clicking, urged them toward me. Binh took Kim’s hand, and the two walked through a gauntlet of uniforms—firefighters with their axes, police officer, Wilcox and the local sheriff.
Wilcox came forward and pointed to a small round table. “Let’s get the young lady something to eat.” I seated the girls and went to the counter for food while Wilcox talked with the law enforcement brigade still waiting. In a few minutes, they all left, except for one officer who would take us back to the plane.
With Binh sitting across from her talking nonstop, Kim wolfed down several pieces of roasted chicken, and a large iced tea. Wilcox and I sat at a table next to them with our coffee. I said, “Sheriff, I admire your restraint in not bombarding Kim with questions right away. I’m definitely seeing a kinder side of you with these girls.”
His head tilted as if trying to figure me out. “I could say the same about you.”
The moment turned awkward, and we both got busy checking our phones. He said, “I want to wait for the interpreter/advocate back at the office and get Kim’s story recorded, but there is something I’d like to know. He leaned toward the girls’ table. “Why did you pick KFC, Kim?”
She gulped her tea. “We have KFC and Burger King in Vietnam. I didn’t see Burger King.”
As we were leaving, a young employee with a dimple in his left cheek came over to the table and shyly handed Kim a stack of KFC coupons. “I’m sorry if we scared you.”
I sat across from the girls on the plane. Kim pointed at my eye, and winced. “I watch that mask man in shack kick you.”
I nodded. “He got me pretty good.” Kim knew more English than the others so I didn’t wait for the interpreter. “How did the trucker get to you?”
She said, “I go to bathroom and man with gloves grab me and put his hand on my mouth. I try to bite, but glove too thick. He lock me in little room in truck. I scream, but truck too loud.”
I hesitated, and then asked, “Did he make you have sex?”
The question didn’t seem to upset her. She shook her head. “He said saving me for later, but after we drive long time he stop and push me out. I run until I find KFC.”
I reached across the aisle and tucked her hair behind one ear. “No more bad guys now.”
Dark smudges bruised the area under her eyes. “My mother was prostitute in brothel. She get sick and they throw her on street. I take her place and support her until she die, then run away and Quan find me.” She looked at me, disillusion in her eyes. “I think America a chance for better life. Not like this.”
“A chance for a better life” were Binh’s exact words, too. I took Kim’s small, square hand in mine. “It will get better now.”
We didn’t need an interpreter to tell us what the girls were saying in Hanh’s hospital room. When their laughter and loud chatter subsided, Binh helped Kim shower and wash her hair. Nurse Cranky, who had a soft side for everyone except me, even let us stay while she checked all the girls’ vitals and hooked Kim up to the nutrients that would help her recover more quickly. Dr. Fromm examined her, and said, “You should be able to leave the hospital tomorrow afternoon. You’re a tough young lady.”
In her oversized blue hospital gown, her dark head with its unruly hair resting against the white pillow, Kim looked more tired and vulnerable than tough. She’d earned the right to let down her guard now and enjoy a moment of peace with her friends.
Hanh would be released as well. Mr. and Mrs. Vo said they would be back for all the girls the following day. A background check by the sheriff’s office revealed they were upstanding citizens, and active in their Vietnamese community organization. I’d thought so, but understood the need to check them out.
When Kim and Hanh slept, I took Binh and Ly to Little’s for the night. At first, Binh hadn’t wanted to be separated from Kim, but she agreed after Ly coaxed her.
Little fed them and Lars and I settled them in the guest bedroom. Ly asked me to leave Rock again. After they’d closed down the restaurant for the night, Little, Lars and I sat in their living room and talked about the girls and their sad past.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vo are about to change that for them,” said Lars, leaning back into the cushions.
Resting his stockinged feet on the coffee table, Little nodded. “They might never forget their hardships, but with love and care they can heal in time.”
I told Little and Lars all about Kaeli and Karli.
Lars said, “You know they come in here all the time, right?”
Little noticed my confused stare. “They park that red semi across the street. It irritates some of the customers because they can’t see the lake when it’s parked there, and their airbrakes scare the old folks.”
“We love those twins, said Lars. “They’ve been coming in since I put the sign out on the highway two years ago.”
I dimly remembered seeing a red semi in front of Little’s, but lots of people came and went from Little’s that I didn’t know. It pleased me that they knew the twins and liked them as much as I did.
Before going home to my cabin, I checked on Binh and Ly, asleep with their arms around each other. Rock was curled at the bottom of the bed. His reassuring presence watched over me many times in the past as well. I scratched Rock’s ears and went home.
Gratified that everything worked out so well with the girls, I still wanted to contact one more person. I tossed a few chunks of wood in the stove, called Edgar, and set his mind at ease.
“Now we can all get a good night’s sleep, especially those children,” he said. “Thank you, Britt. I know it’s too late to save Isabel and Nathan, but have you heard if Wilcox has figured out who killed them?”
I didn’t have anything to offer. Those poor kids had been all but forgotten in the wake of the trafficking ring.
Hoping a hot bath would help me sleep, I peeled off my eye bandage so it wouldn’t get wet. The fearful Windigo image that scared Tommy stared back at me from the mirror. The bruise that ran from my eye to my jaw had turned green, a slit was visible beneath the bulbous swelling and an inch long vertical scar ran from my eye into my eyebrow. In fact, I had half an eyebrow now. At least it would mean less work for Violet. I hoped my eye wasn’t permanently closed. I twisted the top off a bottle of bath bubbles she’d given me and poured it in. Steaming hot water percolated around my body like a good witch’s brew, drawing out aches and pains. It didn’t relax me, though. Edgar reminded me that there was still work to be done.
.....
In the morning, I pulled my laptop onto my lap and checked out the Maelstrom Resort website. I hoped to see something that didn’t fit. The twin truckers finding the girls was no coincidence, and I didn’t think Isabel’s and Nathan’s murders were a coincidence either, or the connection with Tommy.
The website showed the resort as a summer wonderland. Kids played on the giant inflatable trampoline on the lake, and grinning, sunburned families waved from pontoons. A pyramid of jewel-toned kayaks was stacked on the shore, and a fleet of slick speedboats lined the dock. The resort even offered boat shuttle service to and from the casino. A banner ran across the top of the site: “Coming Soon! Isabel’s nightclub! Watch this space for updates.”
The website described the cabins as having all the amenities of a five-star hotel. The blanket of winter hid all the expensive boats and kayaks and updated cabins when I’d visited the resort. The cabin where Nathan was hung must have been one of the older ones, not yet renovated.
I hadn’t focused on how up-scale the resort was now and wondered why Maelstrom’s was doing so much better than others in the region. Maybe Arnie was in debt or in trouble with loan sharks like Gerald Jackson. Maybe he over-borrowed to make that grand resort for Isabel and couldn’t pay it back, and the same kind of people made examples of his children as the sharks who beat up Gerald and Tommy.
Aware that Sebastian usually went to sleep when everyone else woke up, I typed in the familiar email address anyway.
-Hey, Sebastian, the four girls are safe. Thanks for your help.
He fired back.
-Not a problem. Need anything else?
Did the guy never sleep? I’d hoped he’d say that.
-Since you asked, I’m wondering if you could take a look at Maelstrom Resort’s financials.
I was brushing my teeth when my email pinged.
-I’ve sent attachments so you can see the bank statements and resort’s information but the summary is that there’s a huge discrepancy between how much the resort loses on a monthly basis and how much he has in the bank. The guy’s loaded. Plus, I’ve located an offshore account but haven’t gotten into it yet. I’ll have that later today.
That looked intriguing. Most likely Arnie invested wisely years ago, and used that money to keep up the resort, but maybe there was more to the story. I typed,
-Thanks so much, Sebastian. Once again, I owe you.
-Not a problem. Let me know if you want me to dig deeper.
I’d tried to pay Sebastian several times for his help but he always said, “Not a problem.” I’d told him my cabin was open to him anytime, whether he needed it for a safe haven or simply as a place to relax.
At 10 a.m. I pulled into Maelstrom’s Resort. The only vehicles were the gaudy Maelstrom van, and Pauly’s and Dee’s cars. No guests were parked at any of the cabins that I could see.
I pushed through the lodge’s oversized knotty pine door, rang a bell at the desk, and in a moment Dee appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Hey Dee, I’m sorry to bother, but is Arnie around?”
She looked alarmed. “Oh dear, what happened to your eye? We heard you’ve been involved in finding those poor girls the Indians were hiding on the reservation. Did one of them hit you?” She looked terrified, as if a marauding band of Ojibwe would surround the lodge any minute brandishing tomahawks.
I involuntarily touched my bandage. “There’s nothing connecting any Ojibwe to those girls.”
Lips pursed, she said, “They were found on Indian land. I’d say that’s a connection.”
I could have commented that her own stepson was found hanged on Maelstrom property but that didn’t mean she did it, and that I’d found Isabel on mine, but I just left it.
“Is Arnie around?”
“He’s in his office, I’ll tell him you’re here.” She hustled up the stairs to the family quarters.
I sat on one of the plush oversized sofas and waited. In a minute she returned wearing her sky-blue down coat, and carrying a tote loaded with a Bible and pamphlets. “He’ll be right down. Can I get you coffee before I go to church?” She glanced at her watch.
“I’m fine. Thanks, Dee.”
She hitched the tote over her shoulder and the door closed, cutting off her humming rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
I looked up as Arnie and Pauly clattered down the stairs. Arnie spoke over his shoulder. “Get out there and chop some wood for Cabin 6.”
