by Jonas Saul
What had that psychologist said to her before she got Cole Lincoln? He’d said something about a cube in the desert, a ladder, flowers and a storm. She would never forget the horse representing how she felt about Aaron. But it was the clouds and the storm in the distance that came to mind right now. They represented her problems in life and they always seemed to be right above her, a perpetual storm. How much could the cube take, the cube being her ego, her self-identity?
Sarah rolled to her side and drew her knees up to her chest. The wounds from the Enzo Cartel struggle mixed in with the new ones. Did it really matter? She could heal. She always did. The pain was never much of a problem initially. Adrenaline and endorphins were the body’s natural Advil. It was always hours later, or even the next day, when the pain was made real, laid out on the table for all to see. Healing was the real pain. In healing, you felt every movement, every detail, each breath.
Healing sucked, but it was also necessary and welcomed. To heal is to fight another day.
She willed her body to heal. She willed her body to stop yearning for the drug. Wasn’t the heroin just another wound? One that could heal? It would take a few weeks, a month. But so did a broken bone.
But while the bone healed, she didn’t yearn for another broken bone.
Fuck heroin.
She opened her eyes. Same dank holding cell. Same shit. Different country. Different rules.
Fuck it all.
She’d beat this. She’d beat them. As soon as the throbbing, shaking and headache subsided, she’d beat them.
Yeah, right.
Something was bound to happen. Vivian had to have foreseen all this. As always, everything was part of the bigger picture. Being human meant she was left out of the bigger picture—for now. When whatever was supposed to happen happened, she’d see it for what it was and be grateful she made it, she lived it. Happy for the people she saved.
But it always sucked in the moment.
The door to the cell crashed open. She flinched and moaned at the jolt of pain that shot through her.
“Get up,” a man barked.
“You know what’s funny?” Sarah asked.
“What?”
“A lot of things. Lighten the fuck up.”
The man called out to his colleagues and two minutes later they were dragging her down the corridor.
“Is this round two?” she asked.
No one answered her.
This time the interview room had several chairs set up around a rectangular table. Whatever was going on, they wanted to talk this time. She looked forward to a talk. Maybe a cup of coffee.
They dropped her in a chair without restraints. Her first thought was how dangerous that was, but then reminded herself how she looked and realized no one was worried about her.
Soon, three men stood on the other side of the table. No one took a chair. Only one man’s badge was visible on his belt. All three were armed.
It was their court, their ball game. She was content to sit and wait them out. Eventually one of them would speak. Or they would punch and kick her again. The withdrawal symptoms hadn’t gotten worse, but they weren’t showing signs of abating either. Her ability to rebuff an attack remained severely limited.
“Why were you at the casino?” the scruffy-haired man to her right asked.
“Try my luck. One never knows what corner Lady Luck might be hiding behind.”
The man to her left adjusted his feet and rolled his shoulders as if he was preparing to take a shot to the head. Or maybe he was preparing to give one.
“I won’t ask again,” Scruffy said.
“You kind of just did.”
They waited. She waited.
The man in the middle stepped forward. “Are you going to talk to us, tell us what we want to know? Or be evasive and answer nothing?”
“You know how many times I’ve been in an interview room? This has become so routine it’s ridiculous. Been there, tried that.” Her right leg bounced up and down. She stopped it. “So let’s go around that block again.” She shook her head and mumbled to herself, “Getting bored with these interviews, Vivian.”
“You ever been in a Mexican prison, Señorita? I assure you, it’s different than what you’re used to north of the border.”
She studied their eyes, one by one. “Okay, how about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” Scruffy asked.
“A trade.”
The men exchanged glances. Scruffy glared back at her with bloodshot eyes. “You have nothing to offer us.”
“Ahh, but I do. I have something quite valuable.”
“What’s that?” the roll-the-shoulder man said to her left.
“Information.” She slapped her leg. “Holy shit. You guys are thick. Isn’t that what you’ve been asking me for? You want answers from me, so I want answers from you.”
“Forget it,” man in the middle said. “This isn’t a conversation in a coffee shop. This is an interrogation.” He slapped his hands on the table, the sound reverberating throughout the small room. “Just answer our fucking questions.”
“Wow, some people just know how to suck the nice out of you, don’t they?” Sarah glared at him. “Nice Sarah just exited the building, so fuck you. I’m an American citizen. I’ve done nothing wrong. I want a phone call. I want a lawyer. Call the embassy and suck yourselves off. I’m done with you lot. Now, charge me or release me, asshole.”
A vein bulged on the man’s forehead as his eyes seemed to extend from their sockets by the very internal pressure of his anger. She waited for the blow to the face, but it didn’t come. Instead, the man on her left placed a hand on his colleague and pulled him up and away from Sarah. Quietly, he guided him out of the room. When she was alone with Scruffy, he sat down opposite her.
“Here’s what we know,” Scruffy said. “The Enzo Cartel compound is in ruins. Your name is linked to that. A hotel outside Tijuana was attacked by the cartel. Many of our friends and, in some cases, family, died in that attack. Are you aware that Mexican police officers were killed while protecting you?”
“Yes. I am aware of that and I am truly sorry. You have my condolences. As you are probably aware, I wasn’t in the hotel the night it got hit.”
“I know. You were saving a nun from being raped by two cartel men.”
Sarah frowned. Usually people didn’t surprise her so easily. “How would you know about that? And me? How could you know that was me?”
“That nun is my sister. That is the only reason you’re not dead or on life support in the local hospital. My name is Manuel Hernandez and I’m here to help you. But you have to tell me what you’re here for. Why Rosarito? Why that casino? And how are Wallace Stern, Mark Struben and Eddie Coleman involved with you? Did you know they were going to rob the casino?”
Sarah cleared her throat, sat up straighter and turned toward Hernandez. She adjusted her chair and leaned in to rest her arms on the surface of the table. Was he really the nun’s brother? A cop? They could’ve easily gotten an identification from the nun and matched it to her. With all those dead men in the Baja Café just down the road from the church, they might want Sarah for murder. After all, she did enter that café with bloody intent.
Trust no one and hate most cops has kept her alive. Maybe it was prudent to stay true to oneself and not try to change things. If it wasn’t broken and all that.
She cleared her throat. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m on vacation with my boyfriend? He’s probably worried sick right now with all that’s going on at the hotel and I’m nowhere to be found. Any chance I could get that phone call?”
Hernandez studied her face. She met his eyes and didn’t waver. After a moment, he pushed his chair back, a metal shriek sounding off the floor, got up and walked from the room, leaving her to her thoughts.
Hey Vivian, we cool here?
No answer came.
Chapter 19
At the front desk of the hotel, Parkman identified himself
and asked to speak to the manager. Aaron stood off to the side while the weary desk clerk, probably overworked and stressed about last night, paged the manager.
Five minutes later, a rotund American-looking man waddled in from the casino. He was unshaven and looked close to having a coronary.
“How can I help you?” the manager asked without shaking Parkman’s hand. The man’s voice was high, whiny, completely unexpected coming out of that body.
“My name’s Parkman. I understand my colleague, a Mr. Schaffer, called ahead.”
“Ah, yes. Follow me.”
The manager turned and strode toward the elevators. Parkman followed and motioned for Aaron who hustled in behind him. The manager walked past the elevators, down a hall and stopped at a door marked, Security: Private.
“Your names again?” he asked.
“I’m Parkman, and this is Aaron.”
They shook hands. The manager’s hand was clammy, cold and wet. Parkman fought the urge to wipe his hand off on his jeans.
“Now, normally this wouldn’t happen. And if it did, the proper channels, proper procedures would be followed. But after what Sarah did to that cartel, not only do I want to help her friends, but I don’t want anything on record that I did. Understood?”
Parkman and Aaron nodded.
“I wasn’t here,” the manager went on. “Neither were you. I will disavow any knowledge of this if word were to spread.”
“We understand.”
After a moment’s pause, the manager slipped a key in the doorknob and turned it. He opened the door and stepped back.
“Bob?” he shouted into the room.
“Yeah?” a man said.
“Give these boys anything they want. Just no casino.”
“Yes sir.”
A slight wind ruffled Parkman’s sleeve as the manager slipped past him, heading back the way they had come.
“He talked like this was a presidential coup or something,” Aaron whispered over Parkman’s shoulder.
“It’s all about being careful in Mexico. Staying off the radar.”
They moved inside the room and let the door ease shut behind them. The place reminded Parkman of images he’d seen of the inside of nuclear power plant’s control rooms. A long table with several chairs faced a wall of TV screens depicting several areas of the hotel at the same time. It was like the inside of a network TV station.
“Hey, Bob,” the manager said as he looked over the screens, taking it all in. “We need your help.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Bob was just as heavy as the manager, each side of his lower abdomen hanging off the chair. Candy wrappers littered his workspace and a half-eaten Mars bar sat to his right. Parkman glanced in the garbage and wasn’t surprised to see a McDonald’s bag scrunched up in a ball at the bottom.
“We’re looking for a girl—”
“Aren’t we all,” Bob guffawed, trying to make a joke. Something about him screamed creepy to Parkman.
He stole a glance Aaron’s way. The firm eyes, tightened jaw and taut skin on his knuckles told Parkman a story—he wasn’t willing to entertain humor at this time.
“The girl is missing from this hotel,” Parkman said. To elevate the sense of urgency, and to keep Bob from joking further, Parkman added, “She may have been kidnapped from the premises.”
Bob pulled his eyes away from the screens in front of him and faced Parkman. “Nobody is kidnapped from this hotel. Too much security. You’re mistaken.” Bob swiveled back to his screens.
The balls on some people.
“Last night. Twenty minutes before the shit hit the roof, maybe try the lobby cameras—”
“The fan,” Bob interjected.
Parkman frowned and exchanged a glance with Aaron who seemed ready to choke the guy. That would be an unfair fight.
“Excuse me?” Parkman asked.
“You said, shit hit the roof. I believe the expression is shit hit the fan.”
Parkman clenched and unclenched his fists. “You’re right. The fan.” He pulled in a deep breath, exhaled sharply, then let his hands open. “The girl is a dirty blonde. It’ll possibly appear as light brown hair on these screens. She would’ve checked in with this man to your left. About ten minutes later, she would’ve entered the lobby on her own. We need to see everything we can regarding her. Where she went. Who she might have met. Everything we—”
“Time?” Bob interrupted again.
“Aaron, you have an approximate?”
“Nine-thirty. Thereabouts.”
The center console in front of Bob stopped recording. He typed on a keyboard and a moment later the camera started up again with a timer in the bottom right corner, last night’s date and time stamped on the frame. The screen was at least a twenty-inch diameter, big enough for all three men to watch it whether sitting or standing.
“I’ll increase the speed to two-times.” Bob adjusted something on the console. “If you see her, shout out.”
They watched in silence. After a minute, it was almost nine-forty in the evening and Sarah hadn’t shown up yet.
“This is reminding me of Joanne’s apartment building,” Aaron said. “Scares me.”
“Who was Joanne?” Parkman adjusted his feet and bent closer to the screen. “Your sister, right?”
“After she went missing, and the police were doing fuck all about it, I went to her apartment building in Mississauga, a part of Toronto, and asked around. The superintendent let me in to view the cameras in the lobby. I saw Joanne walk out of the building with the man who later killed her. It was the last time I saw her alive. On a camera.”
“I’m sorry.” Parkman didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “That won’t happen here, though. We’ll find her. Vivian’s got this.”
“Let’s just hope so—”
“There,” Parkman shouted and pointed at the screen.
Sarah and Aaron walked by the camera’s lens on their way to the elevators.
“Yes, that’s us. Now take it about five minutes later. If she used the elevator, it’ll show up. Are there other cameras in the lobby?”
“Yes, two more. Once we capture what we want to see, it’ll be easy to load the other two to the date and time. This is the main one, though. Everyone usually shows up on this one.”
Bob let the two-times fast forward feature continue for three minutes by the camera’s clock, then slowed it to real time. Parkman adjusted his shirt as sweat formed under his arms. The temperature in the room increased. A stench of some kind wafted up from the garbage canister beside Bob’s chair. Or maybe it was Bob himself.
“There.” Aaron pointed. “I came off the elevator and walked to that couch. That’s when I called you, Parkman.”
“Okay, watch closely,” Parkman said. “If she used the elevator, she’ll show up any second.”
Less than half a minute later, Sarah moved into the camera from the bottom where the elevators were. She watched Aaron, his back to her.
“She was right behind me. How could I miss that?”
Sarah moved slowly, heading to the left.
“She’s going into the casino.” Bob shrugged. “Without a court order, nobody sees casino footage.”
“We know. Just keep your eyes peeled for her to exit the casino.”
A few moments later, the Aaron on the screen got up off the couch and headed for the small convenience store in the lobby for the Advil. After that, he entered the camera again on his way to the elevator. They didn’t have to wait long for Sarah to show. It couldn’t have been another minute before she walked on camera again, walking toward the front entrance to the hotel.
“She’s leaving,” Aaron whispered.
“Not so fast.” Parkman jerked his head toward the screen.
Sarah had stopped by a couch. A man had approached her. They appeared to be talking, then Sarah dropped to the couch to sit. Parkman leaned in to get a better look at the man’s face but couldn’t.
Sarah got
to her feet, leaned in close to either whisper something to the man, or kiss him, then started past him. The man followed her off camera and out the front door of the hotel.
“Who the hell was that?” Aaron asked, the uncertainty of what had just transpired written all over his face.
There was no doubt Sarah knew the man on the camera. Knew him in an intimate way. She would never get that close to anyone.
