by Mark Pryor
“There’s someone, a woman.” Hugo studied the moving images. “Holy cow, is that Delia Treviño?”
“Her glory is a little more . . . palatable, wouldn’t you say?”
Hugo looked up. “Do I need to watch the whole thing, or is it what it looks like?”
“It’s most definitely what it looks like. Leo Barsetti having sex with Delia Treviño.”
“Which we knew about,” Hugo said. “So the question is, why does Nisha Bhandari have a video of it?”
“No idea.”
“Where did you find it exactly?”
“On a thumb drive in a box of papers from Estruch.” Garcia shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t even know it was in there, could have taken Castañeda or Barsetti’s stuff from the office to go through and it was already there.”
“Possibly.” Hugo saw activity inside Bhandari’s house. A thought tickled at him, a gentle cascade of things he’d seen in this case that didn’t quite add up. “Any news about the fire?”
“The lead investigator called me while you were on the way here. They managed to put it out pretty quickly, though the back of the building is gutted inside. Anyway, the fire department wants to know whether their investigation is separate or part of ours.”
“I guess that depends on what they find, to some extent. If you want my opinion, though, we should work with them for now, act like it’s part of our investigation until we’re sure it’s not. He have anything useful to tell you?”
“No, not really. He told me about the interior offices being destroyed, but that’s about all. Most of the furniture and antiques were saved, not even water damage.”
“Yeah, I saw them carrying a bunch of stuff out. Glad they did.” Hugo pictured the scene in his mind, the quiet chaos being managed with professionalism and speed by the Barcelona firemen, at least one of whom had an eye for a good piece of art.
A particular piece of art.
Hugo felt his stomach drop, and he stared at Chief Inspector Garcia as a few of the pieces fell into place. “I was right, it was no accident,” he said.
“The fire? I think that’s pretty obvious, but—”
“Not the fire.” Hugo pointed to Garcia’s phone. “I need to make another call to the jail, and right now. Can you set that up?”
“Sure, I’ll have them bring Señor Denum to an interview room. We need to record all these calls.”
“It’s not Bart Denum I need to speak to,” Hugo said. “It’s José Paniagua.”
“Paniagua. Are you serious?”
“Seemed like a nice guy, don’t you think?” said Hugo. “But you’ll have to ask him about it, I don’t think he speaks English.”
“Ask him about what? What does he know?”
“I’m curious if he was nice enough to donate more than just his blood.”
Hugo paced back and forth while Chief Inspector Garcia phoned the police station and arranged for José Paniagua to be taken to an interview room. Hugo had declined to explain to Garcia what it was about, excusing himself to the other side of the street to think. And to call Tom.
“Are you nearby?” Hugo asked.
“Depends who’s asking,” Tom chuckled.
“They know you called.”
“Bullshit. They think I called, but no one’s proving anything. Anyway, I thought you said that the important thing is getting Amy back, not shoring up some future criminal case.”
“Yeah,” Hugo conceded. “I think I did say something like that.”
“Well then, you’re welcome. What’s going on there?”
“They’re going through her place, trying to figure out if she’s really in danger.”
“And no doubt you have an opinion on that.”
“I do.”
“You gonna share that with them?”
“Sooner rather than later,” Hugo said. “I just need to check one thing. You know how it is, I don’t like to release the hounds until I’m positive they’ll chase the right rabbit.”
“You think Nisha Bhandari is the rabbit? Makes her sound all cute and fluffy.”
“If I’m right, she’s far from that.” Hugo heard a note in his own voice, of frustration, impatience, and Tom clearly heard it too.
“Speak up, man, what’s the problem?”
“The problem isn’t just proving Bhandari is behind all this, but finding Amy. And finding her before it’s too late.”
Tom was quiet for a moment. “Hugo, look. I know you’re close to her, and to her dad. But, you have to know the reality of this. If the situation were reversed, you know what you’d be telling me, right?”
“Tom, seriously?”
“Yeah, man, seriously. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, I never fucking do. Shit, we’ve had that fucking discussion a few times, Mr. Buttoned-up. But you have to know that if Amy was mixed up with these people, there’s a very small chance of finding her alive, especially if Bhandari has bolted. I’m sorry, Hugo, but you’d be saying the same thing to me.”
“I know the reality, Tom. I just need to do everything in case she’s the exception. I don’t have a choice, and if the situation were reversed, you’d do the same.”
“Yeah, OK. I just . . . you know.”
“Thanks, Tom. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ll damn well worry about you if I want to. And you know what, you may be right, I heard about your clever little deduction on that message Amy sent.”
Hugo paused. “Dammit, Tom. I’m an idiot. Can you do something for me?”
“Whatever you need. Especially if it helps prove you’re an idiot.”
“Can you dig up whatever you can on Gregor Freed, and then get down to his store? I need a plan of it, blueprints or something, but I also need to see if the place has been altered. Officially or unofficially, I have no idea how planning permission works around here.”
“Am I looking for anything in particular?”
“Garcia just said the ‘offices’ were burned. I only saw one there, so I need to know if there’s an extra room at the back, next to the office.”
“Yeah, sure. On my way, I’ll call you if I find anything.”
“Great, I gotta run.” He rang off as Garcia gestured him over. Hugo trotted across the street. “Well?”
“He’s donated blood, plasma, and marrow. The latter only once, two years ago.”
Hugo grinned. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“You mind explaining now?”
“I’ll apologize, too, I knew this was a theoretical possibility, but I’ve never seen it, never come across it, so it just didn’t occur to me until I saw, or remembered that sculpture.”
“What sculpture?”
“The Chimera of Arezzo.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Garcia said.
“You don’t need to. All that matters is that Nisha Bhandari has chimerism, it explains why her DNA wasn’t found at the crime scene.” Hugo saw confusion on Garcia’s face. “It can happen when one twin dies in the womb—the other somehow absorbs the DNA of the one who died, so that if he’s tested later in life, he can have two different profiles.”
“But she wasn’t a twin.”
“I know. The other way it can happen is with a bone-marrow transplant and blood transfusion. Your body keeps its original DNA, but because you have someone else’s marrow, it will continue to produce the donor’s blood. Nisha Bhandari had cancer, which included a bone-marrow transplant. I’m certain that the dates will match up with the time that José Paniagua donated.”
“Wait, are you saying the blood at the Castañeda crime scene was hers?”
Hugo smiled. “I guess technically it was both of theirs. But she’s the one who left it there.”
“She’ll have some cut on her, then. Assuming we find her.”
“No, she won’t.” Hugo looked sheepish. “Don’t ask me how I know, but she doesn’t have any cuts. I think she went to Castañeda’s place to kill him. She took a syringe and simply pulled
a little of her blood and left it behind. She knew it would clear her and that, if the donor had no criminal history, we’d never identify him.”
“Unlucky for her.”
“Very,” said Hugo. “But I’m betting she tried to cover her tracks. Contact the hospital, see if she’s been in touch about donating blood.”
“You think she was going to try and find out who donated to her, either to scare him off, or worse.”
“Yes.”
“So she killed Castañeda. You’re sure of that?”
“And she’s working with Freed. She went to see him, said she needed to tell him about Leo’s death in person because the two men were friends. But neither of them was there.” Hugo thought back to the crime scene, something that hadn’t registered with him at the time, but one of those snippets of information he tended to log away in the hope it would matter later. He saw the bathroom, the blood everywhere, the shower. He snapped his fingers. “Has anyone been into the apartment recently? Is it still closed off?”
“I think so, it should be.”
“The shower. Nisha was a foot shorter than Rubén Castañeda, wasn’t she? And he was only a little shorter than me.”
“So?”
“I stood in the shower, and the head was pointed at my chest. Get someone down there to take photos and measure. If someone rinsed off in there, they’d have adjusted it to their height. The fact that it was the right height for Bhandari, and the fact that there was no hair in the drain, tells me she was there, and cleaned it out. She claimed his place was too dirty for her, and if that’s true, it seems unlikely he’d clean the drain and nothing else.”
“So where is she now? And where’s Amy Dreiss?”
“I can’t tell you for sure,” Hugo said. He nodded toward Bhandari’s apartment. “But I have an idea. Can I go help with the search? There are a couple of pieces of paper I need to find.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hugo walked into the modern apartment, three members of the crime-scene unit glancing up as he entered, then turning back to their work, the painstaking examination, assessment, and cataloguing of Bhandari’s property. Garcia had let them know she was now the prime suspect, shading their approach away from the urgency of finding her and toward the extra diligence required to catch her. Hugo walked through the main room, clean and furnished with modern white pieces, no mess or clutter anywhere. The kitchen lay to his left; to his right, he saw three open doors. Two bedrooms and a bathroom?
He poked his head into the room on the left, obviously her bedroom, then checked the other two without touching anything. He was right, except that she’d been using one of the bedrooms as an office.
Hugo turned to the crime-scene men. “Any of you guys speak English?” he asked hopefully.
The men looked at each other, and one held up a hand. “Yes, a little.”
Hugo spoke slowly. “I just want to know, have you finished in these rooms?”
“El baño y la cama, sí.” The man gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry, we are finished in the bathroom and bedroom. Chief Inspector Garcia wanted us to wait before doing the study.”
“Wait for what?”
“You, I think.” The man stepped forward and handed Hugo a pair of surgical gloves. “Por favor, do not sneeze on anything.”
Hugo smiled. “Thanks, I won’t.”
He started with the filing cabinet, his eyes skimming over the tabs labeled, Taxes, Investments, Employees, Prospects. He was looking for documents relating to her business with Gregor Freed, and he found them in the bottom drawer of her sleek desk. He pulled out a folder and saw three green sales sheets that matched those in Leo Barsetti’s desk.
“Finding anything?” Grace Silva stood in the doorway.
Sitting behind Bhandari’s desk, Hugo looked up. “I think so. I have a theory, anyway.”
“If it helps, we heard from the fire investigators. It was arson, for sure. Started in the office with some kind of liquid. No bodies or anything like that, though.”
A shudder of relief passed through Hugo. “Good, that’s good.”
“So let me guess,” Silva said with a smile. “Your theory is that Bhandari, Barsetti, and Freed were losing money, and the fire was set to hide that, and get an insurance payout.”
“Actually, no.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then what?”
“That theory doesn’t account for everything we know. What about Delia Treviño and this new gang, Los Matadores?”
“Barsetti killed Treviño to stop his wife from finding out about them and leaving him. Maybe Treviño was blackmailing him and, given her criminal background, I’m betting she had friends in this gang, maybe used them to intimidate him. Maybe they even killed his wife for some reason.”
“I didn’t take Barsetti for a killer, did you?”
She held his gaze. “Did you take Nisha Bhandari for one?”
“Not for a while, I’ll give you that.”
“Chief Inspector Garcia told me that Bhandari had no marks on her body from the broken window. Apparently he got that information from you.”
“That’s right.” Hugo didn’t look away, kept his voice and his expression neutral.
“Curious how you’d know that,” she said with a slight smile.
“I asked nicely.”
“And you took her word for it?”
“No.” He held up the three sheets of paper. “But if you want to check for yourself, we need to decipher these.”
“Decipher?” she stepped into the room, a puzzled look on her face.
“The sales and shipping records I saw in Barsetti’s office indicated only a slight downturn in business. Freed himself told me about that, which is why I don’t think the fire was for insurance money.”
“Maybe they had debt we don’t know about.”
“I don’t think so. I realized pretty late that the message from Castañeda’s phone was from Amy. When I did, I was so busy being relieved she was alive, so preoccupied with finding her, that I didn’t stop to think why she was alive. More specifically, why she was alive when other people weren’t.”
“And now you know?”
“These sales and shipping records indicate just a few pieces of large furniture.”
Silva threw up her hand in exasperation. “So business wasn’t as good. We’re back to insurance fraud.”
“No, this was intentional. The selection of these pieces was done to complement the other things they were shipping.”
“Other things, like drugs?” Her eyes widened as the truth hit her. “People. Amy Dreiss.”
Hugo nodded. “They were using the same forty-foot containers for less but larger furniture. What do you think the larger pieces were for? The extra room in the containers?”
Silva shook her head in amazement. “Nisha Bhandari was involved in human trafficking?”
“That’s what I think. I suspect she was relatively new to it and was using the furniture business as a cover.”
“But if they were already making money, why take the risk?”
“Same reason as always, I imagine. Money.”
“And a live person is much less messy, and I suppose requires less care even, than a human organ.”
“Especially if she’s drugged. I mean, look, they take them from a place where no one will miss them, stash them away for a few days with a bottle of water, and then straight into a shipping container and gone.”
“So where is Amy now?”
Hugo sat up straight and stared at Silva. “The same place Nisha Bhandari is. And probably Gregor Freed.”
“Where?”
Hugo stared at the sales sheets again, then pointed to a line at the bottom. “What does this mean?”
Silva leaned over and looked. “Last week they reserved a, what did you call it? A shipping container, in the name of whoever that signature is. Looks like Gregor Freed.”
“That’s where they are, all three of them.” Hugo stood and moved quickly around the desk
. “We need to get men down to the docks, as many as possible and as soon as possible. If we don’t, Bhandari and Freed will be gone. Does the form say where the container is headed?”
“Let me see.” Silva studied the shipping log.
“At the very least,” Hugo said, “we can set up at the other end, be waiting for them if we don’t get them in time here.”
Silva looked up from the page. “No, we can’t. Not where they’re going.”
Ten minutes later, Chief Inspector Garcia was on the phone to the port authority. His frustration was evident as he was put on hold several times, then transferred a few more. Eventually he found someone to talk to, and Hugo could only listen as the conversation passed him by, his own frustration growing as the minutes ticked away. Eventually, Garcia thanked the person he’d been speaking to and rang off. He walked over to where Hugo and Silva stood, waiting.
“Bueno,” he said. “Not much we can do tonight.” He held up a hand. “Relax, Hugo. He said there is one container ship on its way out of the port now, and it was loaded this morning, so they’re not on it. One more was scheduled to leave tonight, but it’s having engine trouble, so it won’t go until the morning. Other than that, the first ship due out is at ten tomorrow morning.”
“Where to?”
“All over. Almost all of the ships make multiple stops.”
“Any of them going to Libya?”
“Yes, all three stop in Tripoli.”
“We need to get down there, find the container those bastards are hiding in,” said Hugo. “How long is the trip?”
“He said it was about fifteen hundred kilometers, which is eight days at sea. Not much fun in a shipping container.”
“They aren’t in it for fun,” said Hugo. “Back home, people are buying those things and converting them into homes, so I’m guessing with a few creature comforts, it’s a pretty decent way to escape a life sentence.”
Garcia gave him a wry smile. “Assuming they escape. You think Freed is with her?”
“Yes, I’m guessing she knew we were onto her, or suspected, and this was their escape plan. I just hope they have Amy with them.”
