by Betty Webb
“That might not be an insurmountable problem,” Victor said. “Aziza was asleep in the back seat when Nicole drove up. For all she knows, she’s right outside Phoenix.”
“But she knows your names. How many Victor and Evelyn Friedmans can there be who run cattle ranches in Arizona?”
He gave me a wintry smile. “For security reasons, we never use our real names around the runaways. They know us as Roy and Dale.” As in Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. In their television program and movies, the old-time Arizona ranch couple helped the helpless, and now a modern couple was doing the same.
“There might be a solution,” Victor continued. “Nicole told us they’d been staying at a homeless camp near the border, about fifteen miles from here. Maybe they can drive back there and you can just happen to find them.”
I nodded. “It might work. I’ll follow right behind to make sure they’re safe, then I’ll alert the authorities. But we might have trouble proving that Aziza’s in danger.”
Evelyn found her voice again. “There’s no way Nicole’s lying.”
Victor interrupted. “Honey, just because such a terrible thing happened to Nicole doesn’t guarantee the same thing’s about to happen to Aziza. At least that’s the way the law will see it. Her parents won’t let that older sister hang around long enough to be examined, either. The second this business hits the fan, she’ll be on the next flight to Egypt. Hell, she might be gone already. I’m sure CPS will go after Reverend Hall, but they might put Nicole’s warning about Aziza down to post traumatic stress. They’d be partially right, too. A kid can’t endure that kind of brutality without suffering long-term psychological effects.”
He was right. In this situation, emotional problems were all but guaranteed. Nicole would need years of therapy. Both mental and physical.
“Two girls dead and two other girls wishing they were,” Evelyn mourned. “How many people in Los Perdidos are involved in this?”
Victor grunted. “God only knows. Somebody has to do something. What was it Nicole called the woman who did this to her?”
“The Cutter,” I said. “She called her the Cutter.”
We had to find her.
And get her client list.
Chapter Nineteen
“How did you learn about this place?” I asked Nicole, as we huddled in the Buick at the edge of the homeless encampment. The border was so close I could see the lights of Naco, Mexico, twinkling in the distance.
“One of the girls at the river told me.”
Ah, the infamous teenage grapevine. It always amazed me how teenagers could know so much, yet so little. Like what might happen to them in the future. Nicole had told me that when she’d first helped Aziza out of her bedroom window, she planned to take the girl over the border into Mexico. From here, the crossing would have taken mere minutes. Her plans changed when she remembered the Friedmans’ safe house.
I peered through the night toward the forms of the homeless, lit only by the full moon. Most seemed to be harmless families and individuals down on their luck. Several, I suspected, were undocumented aliens, also harmless, trekking northward to obtain minimum-wage jobs. Still, homeless camps were notorious for attracting the criminal element.
A recent roundup at one such encampment near Phoenix had rousted a woman wanted for questioning in the beating death of her toddler, two men fleeing domestic battery warrants, an escapee from the Criminally Insane ward at Phoenix State Hospital, and an accused rapist who had jumped bail. A search of the area, the bank above a dry riverbed, had uncovered several shanks, two machetes, three handguns, and a sawed-off shotgun. Adding liveliness to the hoard were several stashes of crack, crystal meth, and a shopping bag full of stolen prescription drugs. Homeless camps made for dangerous sanctuaries.
In the back seat, Aziza whimpered through a dream. l turned around to make certain she was all right and saw her wrapped cocoon-like in blankets, surrounded by empty fast food containers and crumpled napkins. Tacos appeared to be the girls’ food group of choice, and the scent of stale Fire Sauce mingled with nervous perspiration. Through the rear view window, I saw my moon-bathed Jeep parked behind us and longed for its fresher air, but the girls needed the safety of the locked Buick.
“How did you think you were going to support yourself in Mexico?” I asked Nicole, whispering, so we wouldn’t wake Aziza.
“I figured we’d hitchhike to Nogales and work as tour guides or something,” Nicole whispered back. “Raymundo taught me a little Spanish.”
Tour guides or something. I didn’t know whether to laugh at Nicole or hug her. Given her meager resources, she’d done pretty well for Aziza. At least she had managed to keep the girl intact.
A half-hour earlier, I had called the sheriff on my cell, and told him where to find us. I’d purposely kept my story vague, confiding just enough about Nicole’s condition that he agreed not to contact either set of parents before arranging a medical exam for the teen. I was attempting to come up with a way to explain Aziza’s story about “Roy” and Dale” when a movement at the Buick’s passenger side window startled me. A man’s face, battered from an accident or fight, pressed against it. He was so tall he had to bend almost double to peer in.
“C’mon, girls, let me in the car,” he whined. “Don’t ya know it’s cold out here?”
“Go away!” I yelled. A terrified Nicole shrank against me.
The man tried the door, but it was locked. Frustrated, he pounded on the glass. I hauled out my .38 and made certain he saw it. “I said, go away.”
He went.
Glancing toward Aziza, I saw the hump of blankets stir, but she slept on.
As Nicole trembled against me, I assured her I would shoot anyone who tried to hurt either her or Aziza.
When she calmed down, I asked, “How long did you two stay here?”
“Um, that first night, you know, when Aziza and I first took off, we parked on some dirt road between Los Perdidos and Benson and slept there. But being alone was pretty scary—God, there were coyotes and everything.”
Which meant she and Aziza had spent two days in the encampment. I wondered if she realized how far they had stretched their luck.
“We stayed near the women,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “So everything was mostly okay.”
I didn’t miss that mostly. “What happened?”
A sleepy voice from the back seat stopped me. “I must use the bathroom.” Aziza, finally awake.
Nicole twisted around. “Oh, honey, can’t you wait?”
“No!”
Whispering, Nicole asked me, “What if that guy’s out there? When we were here before, he was looking at us real funny. He was drunk then, too. Or something.”
One drunk against my loaded .38 didn’t worry me. Nevertheless, leaving the car was a bad idea. “Aziza, I saw an empty cardboard cup back there. Can you use that?”
“Go in the car?” She sounded scandalized. “No!” Scrabbling sounds told me she was gathering Taco Bell napkins. “I must hurry!”
Her urgency suggested there was no time for argument, so I relented. “All right, but I’m standing guard.” Once I checked our surroundings to make certain the drunk had fled, I retrieved my carry-all and helped the child out of the car. “You come too,” I told Nicole. “We need to stay together.” I ushered both girls to the space between the Taurus and the Jeep and directed Aziza to squat down.
She wasn’t having it. “People can see!”
Ordinarily, her modesty would have been admirable, but not now. “It’s safer near the car. If someone else comes along, we can jump in and lock the doors.” Then I remembered that she had slept through our drunken visitor’s advances and was unaware of the danger.
“I do not care. I must go over there, where it is dark.” She motioned toward a thicket of creosote bushes. The front of the creosote was moon-tipped and silvery, the shadow side was nearly black. It could have hidden anything or anyone.
I disliked frightening children, bu
t in this case, it was the lesser of evils. “Better not. Rattlesnakes nest in places like that.”
At first it seemed as if my tall tale would work, but after a moment of hopping from leg to leg, Aziza dashed toward a mesquite grove that was even darker than her first choice. I ran after her, Nicole close behind. For such a small girl, Aziza was amazingly fast, and by the time we reached the mesquite, she was already hidden in shadows.
“Aziza!” I hissed. “Hurry back to the car. It’s not safe out here.”
“I do hurry!”A rustle of clothing and Taco Bell napkins.
The shadows were so deep and the child so small we couldn’t see her, just hear her. Nicole, her maternal instincts kicked into overdrive, split off from me and ran into the darkest part of the grove, leaving me the only person lit by moonlight. I didn’t like this at all.
“There you are!” I heard Nicole call, her relief matching my own.
A final rustle from Aziza’s direction, an accompanying giggle.
Then heavy footsteps from the same direction. Not a child’s.
Nicole screamed.
I rushed into the dark.
As I became accustomed to the lack of light, I saw Nicole struggling with the same tall man who had attempted to get into the Buick.
“C’mon, Sweetie,” he mumbled, groping at her breasts. “Give Ol’ Hugh a kiss.”
Not bothering to pull my .38 this time—he was beyond threat, and besides, a shot might hit Nicole—I closed the distance between us. When I was near enough to smell the man’s rank body odor, I wrapped the straps of the carry-all around my hand and swung.
The carry-all, weighted by my firearm, connected with the side of his head. The blow wasn’t hard enough to knock him down, but it did make him release Nicole. She scuttled out of the way and ran to Aziza, who by this time, had emerged from the shadows.
“Take her to the car and lock it!” I yelled, as the man lunged at me.
“Bitch! I’ll fix you for that.” He sounded more enraged than drunk.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nicole stooping down for a rock. Instead of taking Aziza to safety, she intended to join the battle. In order to avert that particular disaster, I brought my right knee up and cold-cocked Ol’ Hugh. As he bent over to clutch his privates, I grabbed him by the hair and slammed my knee into his nose.
With a splatter of blood, he went down.
“Back to the car!” I called to the girls. For once, they obeyed. After retrieving my carry-all, I left Ol’ Hugh moaning in the dirt and followed them.
As soon as I locked us inside the Buick again, I began my lecture. “Homeless encampments aren’t safe places for girls.” I caught myself. “I mean young women. The majority of these folks are good people, but as you’ve just seen, some pretty rough guys…”
My attempt at lecturing the unlecturable trailed off as a line of flashing blue lights topped the horizon. After making certain Ol’ Hugh wasn’t hovering nearby to exact his revenge, I opened the car door and waited. Scurrying noises and movements in the brush signaled that several individuals in the encampment were already on the run. Most campers remained where they were, but their faces, lit by approaching headlights, tightened with anxiety.
Sheriff Avery’s cruiser arrived first, and when I flashed the Buick’s headlights, he braked to a halt next to us. “How are the girls?” he asked, stepping out.
“Fine for now, although you need to arrest some big guy calling himself Ol’ Hugh. He attacked Nicole. But he’s not the major problem. Did you bring anyone from Child Protective Services?”
He looked past me into the car. “I recognize Nicole, but is that Aziza Wahab in the back seat?”
“Yes. Did you hear me, Sheriff? Is anyone from CPS here?” All I could see were uniformed deputies, no civilians.
Avery waved a dismissive hand. “There’s plenty of time for that. I promised Aziza’s parents I’d bring her straight home.”
“You called them? After I told you not to?”
“I don’t take orders from you, Ms. Jones. In fact, I’m mighty curious how you managed to track down these girls when the combined resources of the sheriff’s department and Department of Public Safety couldn’t do it.”
“You can’t take Aziza home!”
Ignoring me, he tried to open the car door, but Nicole, who must have heard our conversation, sprang forward and locked it.
“Open that door, Miss Hall!” Avery shouted.
The teenager shook her head furiously, and for added emphasis, put her hands on the steering wheel and switched on the ignition.
Frightened that she was about to bolt again, I seized the sheriff by the sleeve, a risky thing to do, cops’ reflexes being what they are. “You need to listen to me. Aziza’s in danger.”
He tried to brush my hand away, but I hung on.
Glaring, he reached onto his belt and unsnapped the handcuffs. For Nicole’s sake, I had hoped to explain the extent of her injuries privately, but the sight of those handcuffs made me realize that if I didn’t speak up now, it would be too late. So I blurted out everything.
The Cutter. The amputations. The two dead girls.
I told him Aziza was next on the Cutter’s list.
When I was through, the sheriff stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
But he put away the handcuffs.
***
An hour later, we pulled up in front of the Wahab’s house. The porch light was on, and Dr. Wahab, fully dressed in sweater and slacks, answered the door on the first knock. His face beamed delight when the sheriff informed him Aziza was safe.
“Quibilah!” he called to his wife, adding something in Arabic. Then, in English, “She is safe, Quibilah! I see her in the car!”
Within seconds Aziza’s mother, wrapped in an elegant brocade robe, joined her husband on the porch. Behind her were the Wahab sons, also in robes, but no Shalimar.
“We are most grateful to you and your men,” Dr. Wahab said. “Such excellent work!”
Sheriff Avery corrected him. “Thank Ms. Jones, sir. She’s the one who found the girls.”
Wahab sounded puzzled “Girls, did you say?”
Impatient with all this, Mrs. Wahab pushed past us. “Aziza! Aziza! Come in the house!”
What with the shouting and the idling cruisers, we made quite a commotion, and lights winked on all over the neighborhood. Front doors opened and curious faces appeared at windows. Both Wahabs were oblivious, focused only on their daughter.
Aziza’s mother was halfway down the walk to the cruiser when the sheriff caught her. “Not yet, ma’am!” he said, arming her back to the porch. “I need to speak to Aziza’s older sister.”
Dr. Wahab’s face assumed a cautious expression. “What does Shalimar have to do with this? Surely you understand that we are eager to see Aziza, to comfort her. Why, she has been gone from her family for three entire days! This is unsupportable.”
To my relief, the sheriff didn’t budge. “There have been certain allegations made against your family. Shalimar can tell me whether they’re true or false, which is why I need to see her.”
Sounding frightened, Quibilah Wahab spoke to her husband in excited Arabic. When Dr. Wahab replied in a sharp tone, she fell silent.
After pushing Quibilah roughly behind him, Aziza’s father addressed the sheriff again. “I fail to see why the whereabouts of Shalimar concerns you, but since you are so forward as to insist, I inform you that yesterday we put her on a plane to Egypt. She is to be married tomorrow.”
“What?” I could no longer contain myself. “She’s only fifteen!”
Dr. Wahab didn’t bother looking at me, a mere woman. “Our customs are different,” he said, dismissively. Then, to the sheriff, “Hand Aziza over. I insist.”
It was Avery’s call. Without Shalimar to confirm the Wahab’s plans to have Aziza cut, he would have a tough time convincing CPS to take the young girl into protective custody. Not only that, the political fallout, if Nicole’s concerns turned out t
o be groundless, would be tremendous. The sheriff might find himself out of a job.
Avery shook his head. “Aziza will spend the night with Child Protective Services, sir. Your attorney can contact me in the morning.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left the porch.
I jumped into my Jeep to follow the sheriff’s cruiser to his office, but before turning on the ignition, threw a glance over my shoulder. The Wahabs remained on the porch, staring at the police car. Then the sound of a slammed door captured my attention. Terrycloth robe clutched around her, an elderly woman exited the house next door and walked toward the Wahabs. I recognized her as Asenath Nour, manager of the Nile Restaurant.
Dr. Wahab growled something at her in Arabic.
The old woman hesitated, then moved forward again, her eyes riveted on Quibilah Wahab.
When Dr. Wahab raised his voice to a near-shriek and punctuated his words with a shaken fist, she paled and started back to her house.
But not before giving Mrs. Wahab a look that would have frozen the desert.
Chapter Twenty
“Nicole’s injuries are consistent with her story,” Dr. Lanphear told the sheriff the next morning, when he emerged from the examination room at Los Perdidos General Hospital. “Her external genitalia have been amputated, and the vagina will require major reconstructive surgery. That plastic tube…” He cleared his throat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient to see.”
Without looking either the sheriff or myself in the eye, he began walking down the hall, as if to get away from us as quickly as possible.
And that confirmed my hunch.
“Hey, Doctor!” I yelled. “I’m not finished with you.”
He walked faster.
“Lena?” Sheriff Avery said, shocked. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I just found it.” I chased after Lanphear, catching up as he was about to board the elevator. I moved in front of him, blocking his access.
“You knew!” Of course he did. No doctor with access to the Internet could have failed to recognize the meaning of Precious Doe’s wounds.
