Reclaim

by Beth Yarnall

  “Do you have any idea what Billits might have done for Martin or what Billits might have had on him?”

  “Funny you should ask. I found a sealed arrest record on Martin. No charges were ever filed, something the DA has discretion over.”

  “Is there any way to find out what those charges were for?”

  “Not without some hacking into a government data base, which I’m not willing to do. It might be something the police will want to follow up on while trying to figure out what happened to Martin. One of the first things they’ll do is look at his record.”

  “My friend Anna told me something very interesting about Billits.”

  I fill him in on Billits’s daily visitors and the rest of what Anna told me. By the time I’m done, Nolan is sitting back in his seat, a deep line of concentration between his brows.

  “We need to get a look at these guys,” he finally says. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Work. I’m very behind.” Embarrassingly so. Between my newfound chronic lateness and the time I’ve taken away from my regular workload to work on this case it’s a wonder I haven’t been fired.

  “I can do the stakeout alone I guess.”

  “Stakeout?”

  “I want to know who those guys are who are visiting Billits, get photos of them.”

  “Oh. You don’t need to do that.” I bring up the photos Anna sent me. “My friend took pictures of them when they first started coming in. They made her nervous. She joked that those men are the kind that made people disappear. I guess she wanted a record of them just in case. She sent me the pics she took. Here’s the first one.” I hand him my phone.

  He takes a look and then taps on the screen of his phone. He holds our phones side-by-side. “Please tell me they look nothing alike.”

  I point to the picture on Nolan’s phone. “When did you take this and why? How did you already know about this guy?”

  “He was one of the guys guarding the Lucky Inn Motel the other day when I went by for a look. There’s no doubt they’re running a prostitution ring out of there.” He swipes his screen and brings up the next pic. “And here’s the other guy.”

  I flick my finger across my screen and bring up the photo of the second guy Anna sent me. Another match. We turn in unison toward each other, mirroring the same look of shock and disbelief on our faces. This isn’t just a can of worms we’ve opened. It’s a giant festering, puss-filled, maggot swarming wound. The connections click into place. Billits and Carla. Carla and Martin. Martin and Billits. The DA ties everything and everyone together. There’s no way Carla didn’t know who Billits was to her even if she didn’t know who he was to Martin.

  She lied.

  I turn my attention back to the photos on our phones. These men are the links tying Billits to a prostitution ring. A ring that Carla was a part of. Billits wasn’t a just a random customer, he was likely her pimp. Why didn’t she tell us that? Why did she pretend that she didn’t know whom he was other than some guy who paid to have sex with her, some ordinary john?

  “We need to talk to Carla again,” I say. “We’re missing something here. Something she knows.”

  “So much for that photo array with Billits in it that I made to show her.”

  “She probably thought we wouldn’t make the connection between her mystery man and the DA.”

  “No. I think she wanted us to make the connection. Why else would she give us just enough information to identify him without giving up his real name? Her description of his tattoos was very specific. She had to know we’d find him and discover who he really is. I think she knew all along who was behind Martin tanking her case. But why? Why would a man like Billits care about whether or not one of his prostitutes was convicted of murder or not? If anything I’d think that he’d want her cleared so she could keep working for him.”

  A terrible thought occurs to me. So terrible I can’t voice it. I get up from the table on shaky legs and go into Nolan’s office where I left my files. I feel him follow me, but he doesn’t say anything. I go straight for my file on Diego and open it. Right on top is a picture of the preschooler with his beautiful blue eyes. I put the photo of Billits that Nolan printed out right beside Diego’s. Cold dread seeps into me. Their eyes are the same color, the same turquoise blue.

  “Oh, shit,” Nolan breaths. “You don’t think…”

  He doesn’t finish the sentence for the same reason I can’t answer him out loud. It’s too horrific to bear. Carla was fifteen when she had Diego. Fifteen. That means she was fourteen when she got pregnant.

  I push the pics aside and read Diego’s birth certificate with new eyes. There’s no father listed, but the names of the hospital where he was born and the doctor who delivered him are.

  I point to the names. “Is there…” I can hardly push the words out of my mouth. “Is there a way to find out who paid the hospital and doctor bills?”

  Nolan is already in his computer chair, hands on the keyboard before I can finish my sentence. I pace the small room while he does his magic. The constant whir and hum of his machines aren’t soothing me the way they usually do. The longer it takes the more my agitation grows until I’m shaking with it. Carla wanted me to know, but she couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t tell anyone. She was a victim long before the justice system got a hold of her.

  “Cash,” Nolan says. “All of her bills were paid in cash, including the hospital.”

  I nod, knowing he can’t see me. It confirms everything. But I need to hear it from Carla. I need to look her in the eyes and have her tell me the truth and then I need her to tell me what she wants me to do with it. Why did she write to the Freedom Project? Why is she willing to go up against Billits now when she wasn’t then? What changed? Or did anything change? Has she been planning this from the start? Is that what all of this is about—revenge?

  Nolan turns toward me in his seat. “We need to talk to Carla,” he says, echoing my thoughts. “We’re in much deeper waters than she warned us about.”

  “Revenge. It’s a game of revenge. Billits tampered with Carla’s case to get back at her for his son’s death. She’s using us to expose his criminal activities. It’s pay back for putting her away. This isn’t about getting her freedom at all.” How did I not see this sooner?

  “What do you want to do? We could walk away from all of this, tell Carla that we didn’t find anything new that would help her. Or…we could go balls to the wall with it. Mr. Nash has FBI connections. We could turn over everything we have to them and see how it shakes out. Step totally out of the picture. You’d still need to decide what to do about Carla—leave her in prison or try to free her.”

  “Carla is a victim here. Many times over. The fact still remains that she didn’t kill her son. Yes, she was negligent, but his death was a tragic accident. How and when and in what order do we make the attempt to exonerate her? If we do it too soon Billits will be tipped off if he’s not already. If we wait, that’s however many more days she sits in prison for a crime she didn’t commit.

  “I get it now. I get her now. Like really, really get her. I thought I knew what it was like to have no power as an undocumented immigrant. I knew nothing. Carla was taken advantage of in the most reprehensible ways possible. I’m proud of her for trying to get back some dominance here even if she’s using us to do it.”

  “So we’re doing this.”

  Squaring my shoulders, I confirm it with a nod. “We’re doing this.”

  He gives me the flashy grin that struck me from the start. “That’s my girl.”

  I don’t think about how much I want to be just that—his girl. We have so many hurdles to cross, not just with the case, but ones he can never know about. I blink rapidly and look away from him, trying to hold in the tears stinging the backs of my eyes. It’s not fair. Any of it. I won’t get a fairytale ending, but maybe Carla can. Or at least a happy one. I renew my promise to Carla and to myself to free her once and for all. Maybe she can create the life she shou
ld’ve had. The life she was promised when she crossed the boarder all those years ago with her father and brother. The life all immigrants dream of.

  All of them except me.

  19

  Nolan

  The discovery about Billits and Carla seems to have stripped something from Lila. There’s a shadow in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Just thinking about everything Carla went through at the hands of Billits makes my stomach grind. Predators like Billits prey on the vulnerable and a fourteen-year-old undocumented immigrant would definitely be defenseless against someone with the kind of power he has. Billits is in a unique position as DA to be in control of who gets prosecuted or not. It’s genius really.

  If any of his sex workers got arrested he would be in on the decision about things like taking a case to trial and plea deals. I’d bet money that a lot of his victims got off easier than his competition’s. Going to the FBI with what we know will shake up the entire San Diego legal system. I’m overwhelmed with what’s in front of us. By Lila’s frantic back and forth pacing and twisting fingers she’s just as overcome as I am. Maybe more. She was invested in Carla’s story in a way I never was.

  Finding out Carla is using us has to hurt. I want to go to her and tell her everything will be okay, but the words would be useless platitudes. She knows it won’t. We’re in so deep here. Too deep. And we’re all alone in this with no back up at all. If what we think happed did in fact happen and Billits gets wind that we’re piecing things together we could be in some real trouble, the kind you don’t come back from.

  Focusing on the things I can do, I turn back to my computer. I’ve taken the precaution of running my searches through a network that doesn’t write my work onto the main drive of my computer, making it untraceable. The operating system on a thumb drive came with encryption tools and secure erase tools for maximum privacy. If anyone were to log into my computers normally they would think that I never used it. There’s no way to trace my work back to me. Even though I know it’s secure, I can’t help but worry that someone’s been watching us and knows what we know.

  I pull the thumb drive with the self-contained operating system out of my computer and run checks just to be sure. Browser history, cookies, the whole lot. Nothing just like I expected. It’s secure. Even if somebody knew what we’ve been doing there is no way they could trace it back to us. We’re safe at least in that regard. As for Lila’s friend who interned at the DA’s office, Carla, the Freedom Project, Nash Security and Investigations, and everyone else we’ve talked to about the case…not so much. There are a lot of loose threads dangling.

  “Is it too late to call Mr. Nash?” Lila asks.

  “Probably. I’ll put a call into him first thing in the morning. Are you available to meet with him right away?”

  “I’ll have to clear a couple of things, but yes, I can do that.” She rubs her arms as though she’s chilled. “How safe are we? Be honest.”

  “Right now? As safe as we were before we figured out what all of this is about. We’ve done everything we can to keep it as quiet as possible. If Billits knows about us and what we’re doing he hasn’t made any move to tip us off.” I let out a breath. She’s not going to like what I have to say next. “That said, I don’t think you should be alone tonight. I have security here that you don’t have at your place. Stay. Stay with me tonight.”

  She’s already shaking her head before I finish. “I can’t do that. I told you.”

  “I know you did and I’m struggling to understand exactly why. I really am.”

  “I…I don’t expect you to understand. Especially when I don’t quite understand it myself.”

  “We could hang out in the living room, on the couch…”

  “I don’t have any of my things here.”

  “We could stop by your place and pick up a few things.”

  “No.”

  “I could stay at your pla—”

  “No.” She puts her hands up and takes a step back. Her rejection is not just emphatic it’s panicked.

  I take slow, measured breaths, trying to tamp down my anger. I’m not struggling to understand her I’m battling. This is a fight with a faceless, nameless foe. Whatever she’s hiding terrifies her and she won’t let me near it.

  “Okaaayyy. Then we’ll go to the store and buy you what you need. You can sleep anywhere you want here, wherever you’re comfortable. But you will not be alone tonight.”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  The way she says it I know she’s not just talking about tonight, that maybe she’s talking about whatever it is she’s fighting against, because she looks like a solitary woman at war. She hugs herself, swaying back and forth a little, her body turning in on itself. Her gaze doesn’t meet mine the way it normally does. I hate the way she looks right now—small and defeated. And alone. So alone.

  I hold a hand out to her half expecting her to reject the gesture the way she normally does. My hand hangs out there open to her for so long that my arm turns leaden and I have a hard time keeping it up, but I refuse to put it down. This feels like a moment and if I give up I may never get back here to try again with her. We’ll never move beyond what we are to each other right now and, eventually, we won’t be anything at all. I won’t give up on her, on us. I’m starting to see that I might be the only one in her life who never has and never will.

  Finally her gaze tracks slowly from my hand up my arm to my face. Her fingers are cold against my palm. I clasp her hand and something settles inside me. She takes a step forward then another until she steps between my legs and lowers into my lap. I wrap my arms around her. The tension in her is strung tight, but she gradually relaxes and even puts her head on my shoulder.

  “I’ll stay here,” she whispers almost too quietly to be heard. “On the couch, but you have to sleep in your room.”

  “I can do that.”

  She traces a pattern I can’t make out in my palm. I wonder if she knows what she does to me when she’s quiet and vulnerable like this. Puffing my chest out and making me want to slay dragons for her. I don’t remember ever having this sensation with anyone else. What is it about her that does this to me? Do I matter to her? Or am I just what’s happening right now? Will she always keep a part of herself walled off from me or will I eventually break through to the other side?

  “Thank you,” she says in that same small voice. “I know this isn’t normal, I’m not normal.”

  “Normal’s boring.”

  “You’re just being nice.”

  “We all have our things. Yours might be too big to see around right now, but eventually it won’t be.”

  “I want to believe that.”

  “Then believe it. You come from fighters, Lila. Anyone who went through what your parents did to get here is tough. It’s in you to do more, be more.”

  “I think you have too much faith in me. I’m not like my parents. I never would’ve done what they did.”

  “Because you didn’t have to. They did it for you.”

  “They got their green cards because of me.”

  “Yeah? Because of your work with the Freedom Project?”

  “No. Because they cooperated with the police when I was raped.”

  I try not to tense or have any reaction at all at the thought of someone hurting her. It makes me want to punch something. Preferably the son of a bitch who violated her. But she doesn’t need that from me right now. She’s opening up and I have to listen to what she’s saying because it’s important. She’s important.

  “That’s how I got my green card too,” she continues. “Because of a loop hole in the system that gives legal status to undocumented immigrants if they’re a victim of a crime. So you see, I’m not tough.” Her laugh has a brittle, resentful edge to it. “I didn’t do anything to make that happen for my family. I just lay there and waited for it to be over, hoping he wouldn’t kill my family and me.”

  No words. I have no words.

  Swallowing back the go
lf ball that’s suddenly lodged in my throat, I search for something to say, something that might take away her pain and her shame. It’s the shame that guts me. She survived because she’s strong. She’s a fighter. That she thinks less of herself because her protective instincts toward her family ended up having a side benefit for her and her family tears me up. I have a newfound respect and admiration for her. I tell her, but she pushes it away like she’s done with every other compliment I’ve given her.

  “Anyone can lay there and take it,” she says. “There’s nothing noble about being frozen with fear. Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you make him stop? I got asked that over and over. Yeah, why didn’t I? Why couldn’t I move? Why didn’t I scream or try to push him away? Why did I just let him?”

  “You did what you had to do in order to survive.” I can’t help the anger that seeps into my words. It pisses me off that anyone would say that to her let alone think it. “You don’t owe anybody anything.”

  “I wish I had fought back or screamed or something.”

  “Whatever you did or didn’t do was the right thing. You survived.”

  “He died, you know. In prison. Right after the trial. Had a heart attack and died instantly. Didn’t feel a thing. Sometimes I think about doing to him what he did to me. And sometimes I wish it were me who died instead of him. Mostly I want to cut up my green card and reapply based on my accomplishments as a person and not what happened to me.” She looks up at me, her dark eyes calmer than the storm roaring through me. “Isn’t that dumb?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I said that to my mom once. She told me I should be grateful something good came out of something so bad. I don’t know how to be that kind of grateful.”

  Again she’s got me searching for the right words to say. And once again none come. I ease her a little closer, needing the contact more than she seems to. She rests her head on my shoulder, her sigh heavy with the burden she’s carried around for her family. She saved them twice. Once from the man who terrorized her and a second time by changing their legal status. That’s a lot for someone who barely tops out at five feet tall.