by Matt Lincoln
“I can check right now,” I replied as I set my own donut down and picked my tablet back up. I closed the passenger files before opening up the itinerary that Barnes had sent to me. “Looks like the last stop before hitting Miami was Turks & Caicos, and then Aruba two days before that.”
“I’d focus there, then,” Bonnie replied confidently. “I’ll bet you anything that if you check the security footage again, all the passengers who died got off at one of those two stops.”
“You’re the best, Bonnie.” I smiled up at her. Her expertise had actually given us a huge load of useful information, and now, we’d be able to drastically narrow down our search perimeters.
“I know.” She beamed proudly. “Anyway, I’d better get back to the lab, or Clyde’s going to come looking for these donuts.”
“See you,” I called as she turned to leave. “And thanks!”
Bonnie tossed one last smile at us over her shoulder before walking away.
“Come on,” I said to Holm as I stood up as well. “Let’s get back to the ship and check the footage like she suggested.”
“Let’s go,” he replied as he quickly gobbled up the rest of his donut before standing as well. Before we could make any move to leave, however, Diane came striding out of her office toward us. There was a serious look in her eyes, and I knew that either we were in trouble or something had happened with the case.
“I just got a call from the police,” she informed us. “Apparently, a woman came in just a little while ago claiming that she was on the ship and that she was being used as a drug mule.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, my heart thrumming at the news. “Is she still there now?”
“I’m afraid not,” Diane replied. “She suddenly collapsed while they were speaking to her, and they rushed her to the hospital. She’s there now.”
“Alive?” Holm asked with surprise.
“At the moment,” Diane replied tersely. “From what I was told, she’s not in good condition. It’s very precarious at the moment.”
“We’ll go right away,” I replied. We needed to speak to her right now, especially if her condition could worsen at any moment.
“They’ll be expecting you,” Diane replied. “I’ve already called ahead. I was told that she might be under sedation when you arrive, but you should still go. Hopefully, she’ll be lucid and well enough to speak to you.”
I nodded before turning to leave the office, Holm right beside me. There really wasn’t much else to say in this kind of situation. For one of the victims to have survived only to collapse after they’d finally reached out for help. It was horrible, and I could only hope that she would make it through alright.
6
Ethan
My heart was pounding as Holm and I walked into the hospital where the victim was. It had only taken us ten minutes to get here, but my mind had been racing with every possible negative outcome the entire way here. Diane had said that she was in bad shape. What if she had died while we were driving down here?
I pushed the thought from my mind as we walked quickly toward the reception desk. I wouldn’t get anywhere worrying about stuff like that. A woman wearing a set of scrubs leaned over the top of the reception desk, talking with the man who was sitting there in hushed voices. The man turned to look at me as we approached.
“Good morning,” he greeted us politely as the woman stepped a few feet away to give us space. “How can I help you?”
“I’m Agent Marston with MBLIS,” I replied as I pulled my badge out of my pocket to show him. “This is Agent Holm. We’re here to speak to a patient. We were told you’d be expecting us.” I realized as I spoke that I didn’t even have a name to call the victim. Diane hadn’t given us one. It had all been so last minute that we’d rushed down here with barely any information.
“Oh, I can help you,” the woman suddenly spoke up. “Sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping. I was actually down here to wait for you. You’re talking about the woman from the ship, right?”
“That’s right,” I replied as I turned to look at the woman. She was wearing baby pink scrubs and had a doctor’s ID clipped to the pocket on her shirt. Doctor Shelton.
“I’ll take you up there,” she replied before turning to the man at the desk. “I’ll see you later, Ronnie.”
“Later,” he called as she gestured for us to follow her.
“The elevators are over here,” she explained as she led us down an adjacent hallway. “The police are up there now, guarding her room.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I replied as we stepped into the elevator. The suspect was still on the loose, after all.
“Right this way,” Dr. Shelton said as we stepped off the elevator a few moments later. We followed her down a quiet floor. I could see two uniformed officers sitting in chairs in front of a door toward the end of the hall. One of them looked up at me as we approached.
“You must be the agents,” he said as he stuck his hand out toward me. “Officer Riley.”
“Agent Marston,” I replied as I clasped his hand. I waited until Holm and the other officer had introduced themselves before speaking again. “How is the patient doing?”
“She’s fine,” the doctor replied. “She's in a bit of pain, but she’s responding well.”
“Is she lucid?” I asked as I peered into the room. The curtain was drawn around the bed, so I couldn’t see her.
“Yes,” the doctor replied as she bit her lip. “Actually, she refused all narcotics. We’re trying to help her as best we can with other kinds of painkillers, but I’m afraid there’s only so much that we can do.”
“She refused?” I parroted. “Did she say why?”
“Not specifically,” Shelton replied as she looked into the room, a sympathetic expression on her face, “though it’s easy to guess. She became hysterical when he told her we’d be giving her pain meds. She absolutely insisted that we not inject her with anything. I’m guessing whoever put her in this position was most likely in the habit of drugging her as well. It’s common among trafficking victims.”
I knew that all too well. My heart broke for the poor woman, who had clearly been through something terrible if she was refusing medication after almost dying.
“Will she speak to us?” I turned to look at the doctor.
“That’s up to her,” she replied with a shrug. “She’s awake, and she’s lucid, but I’m not sure how much luck you’ll have. She seemed uncomfortable talking very much to anyone, but especially with the male staff. I’m not sure she’ll want to speak with you.”
That, unfortunately, was common among trafficked women as well.
“We’ll just have to try,” I decided. “Do you know her name? Has she said anything about herself?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” the doctor replied. “She had only just started speaking to the police when she collapsed. We managed to get a name out of her, but that was all. She shuts down as soon as anyone tries to ask her about anything personal.”
“She must have been through something terrible,” I noted with sympathy as I looked into the room. “Must have taken a hell of an effort for her just to walk into that police station, just to end up collapsing before she could say anything.”
“You’re right about that,” Shelton replied. “What happened might have caused her to relapse. The shock of a near-death experience is enough to rattle anyone, let alone someone who’s been through what she has. Like I said, your efforts might not be very fruitful. In any case, let’s go inside. I’ll ask if she’s up to talking.”
Dr. Shelton stepped into the room, and Holm and I followed closely behind her. It was so quiet inside that I wouldn’t have known someone was even in here had I not been told that the victim was.
“Wait here,” Shelton instructed us as she pointed toward the end of the hospital bed before pulling the curtain open slightly.
“Gabby?” she called quietly to the woman inside. “Some people are here to speak with you. They’d like to he
lp you. Is that alright?” There was a moment of silence, and then Dr. Shelton nodded to us before slowly peeling the curtain open.
The state of the woman lying in bed shocked me. She was thin and frighteningly so. Her cheeks were sunken in, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her lips were chapped, her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked like she hadn’t had a good meal or a decent night’s sleep in a long time.
“Hi, Gabby,” I greeted her softly. She looked like she wanted to bolt at the sight of Holm and me and probably would have if she didn’t look too weak to move. “My name is Agent Marston. My partner and I work for an agency called MBLIS. We investigate crimes that--”
“No!” the woman croaked, her eyes going as wide as saucers. “You’re here to arrest me? I didn’t do anything wrong! They made me! I’m sorry!” She was rambling, one second insisting she hadn’t done anything and the next apologizing for everything she had done. I felt bad for the poor woman, who was clearly in a state of shock right now.
“It’s okay, Gabby,” I attempted to reassure her. “We’re not here to arrest you. We just want to talk--”
“You’re lying!” she cut me off with a shriek, tossing the blanket off herself and jumping off the side of the bed with incredible speed that she didn’t look capable of. The moment her feet touched the ground, though, she crumpled into a heap.
“Gabby!” Dr. Shelton gasped as she crouched down beside the woman. “Stop, please, you’re going to hurt yourself. Here, let me help you back into bed.” She snapped her head around to look at us, her eyes narrowed with fury. “You two, get out! My patient needs rest. This isn’t good for her!”
My heart sank at that. I didn’t want Gabby to be upset, but we really needed to speak with her. At the same time, I didn’t want to further traumatize a victim.
“Gabby, we really want to help you,” I insisted. “None of this is your fault. We only want to catch the men responsible for this.”
“I told you to get out!” the doctor yelled again as she helped Gabby climb back into the bed.
I wanted to argue, but I clamped my mouth shut. If I wanted to, I could have pushed the issue, but ultimately the victim’s wellbeing was what mattered the most. I didn’t want to inflict any more pain on Gabby by forcing her to speak to us.
“Come on,” Holm muttered quietly to me as he nodded toward the door.
“Wait,” Gabby called out quietly just as I was turning to leave.
I froze in my tracks and spun back around slowly, nervous to even move wrong lest that set her off again. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything else. She just stared down silently, balling the fabric of the blanket up in her fists.
“I’m sorry,” she finally muttered several tense moments later. My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her she didn’t need to apologize for anything, but I stopped myself from speaking at all. I didn’t want to interrupt her when she was finally speaking calmly. “I believe you. That you’re not gonna arrest me. Sorry. I just… I got… I remembered what he used to say, and--sorry. I just thought you came to arrest me because of everything.”
Gabby was rambling again, albeit more quietly this time. I listened intently to every word that she said. It was a bit jumbled, which was normal for victims who had gone through traumatic events. She was also apologizing a lot, which meant that she was probably used to being forced to obey or face punishment. Just thinking about it made my blood boil, and I wanted to catch the sick bastards behind this all the more quickly.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You don’t have to apologize. None of what happened is your fault. Do you want to tell me more about it?” Normally, I would have asked more direct questions, but I had a feeling that right now, it would be better to just let her explain things at her own pace.
“Okay.” Gabby nodded jerkily. When she didn’t continue for several seconds, I realized she was waiting for me to ask her something.
“Why did you think we were going to arrest you, Gabby?” I prompted her from where I was standing.
“They always said that the cops would arrest us if they found out,” she replied, licking her lips nervously as she spoke. “They said that we’d done so much bad stuff that they wouldn’t believe us if we said we were victims. We’d get just as much blame.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide with fear. “I really didn’t want to do it, though. None of it. They made me. I heard that announcement, but I was so scared at first. I didn’t move, but then no one came back, so I just left and--”
“Gabby, calm down,” Dr. Shelton advised her as she moved closer to place a hand on her shoulder gently. “You’re breathing too quickly. I need you to take some deep breaths. Can you do that for me?”
Gabby nodded before mimicking the doctor’s exaggerated breathing motions. I waited patiently while she settled down. As I did, I picked apart all the things she had said. Whoever had been holding her captive had clearly brainwashed her in an attempt to keep her from reaching out for help, and it had evidently worked if she’d initially ignored the announcement we’d played on the ship advising people to come forward for shelter. She also kept saying ‘they’ instead of ‘he,’ which meant that there were definitely multiple perps involved here.
“Sorry,” she apologized again, twisting the blanket up anxiously in her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”
“It’s okay,” I replied as I took a careful, tentative step toward her. It was awkward speaking to her from all the way over here, but I didn’t want to frighten her. Gabby went rigid as I approached but quickly relaxed again as I stopped about a foot away from her bed. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”
“I do,” she cut me off firmly, her voice stronger than I’d heard it up to now. “I want to talk to you. You said you were going to catch the men responsible for this, right?” Her eyes were welling up with tears as she looked up at me.
“Yes,” I replied. “I promise you we will.”
“Okay.” She nodded slowly, her frail shoulders rising and falling as she took long, slow breaths. “I want to help you, then. I’ll tell you about what happened if it will help you find them.”
“That would be a huge help,” I replied gratefully. “To start with, can you tell us more about the people who did this? How did you come to be involved?” I was careful to keep my words as neutral and vague as possible. I didn’t want to sound accusatory or like I was blaming her.
“Uh… it’s a long story.” Gabby chuckled without any humor, her shoulders hunching up to her ears as she curled in on herself. “I, uh… I was dating this guy, Cody. I think it was a year or two ago. It’s hard to keep track of the time ever since-- Well, anyway, Cody owed these guys a lot of money. A lot of money. He was into drugs. We both were. That’s actually how we met. Anyway, one day these guys come knocking, and they tell Cody that he needs to give them the money he owes them, but he didn’t have it. So he told them to just take me instead.”
Her words still came out a bit jumbled, and she muttered as she spoke, but I clung to every word and carefully controlled my reaction as she explained what had happened to her. Realistically, I’d dealt with trafficking and abuse cases before, but this was the first time I was hearing about a victim’s experience firsthand. It was horrible, and I felt both immense sympathy and intense rage boiling inside of me.
“I thought he was joking at first.” She smiled brokenly, her eyes distant as though she recalled a faraway memory. “But then the men grabbed me. They dragged me away. They--” She bit down on her lip hard as tears began to spill out of her eyes.
“Gabby, maybe you should take a break,” Doctor Shelton suggested.
“No!” Gabby exclaimed, her voice cracking as she wiped furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. “No. If I stop, I might not be able to start again. I want to talk about this. I want to.” She turned to look at me, her eyes hard and dry of tears. “They made me work for them to pay off Cody’s debt.” She practically spat that wor
d out, and hearing it made my stomach churn with disgust and anger.
“Funny, though,” she scoffed as she stared down at the blanket. “Days passed, weeks, months, and yet somehow, the debt never seemed to be paid up. Anyway, one day, Andre, he’s the one who was in charge of watching me, tells me he has a special job for me. He took me and some of the other girls in one of the cars. I thought we were going to some rich client’s house or something, but then I saw the ship.”
“The ship that brought you here?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I was so surprised that I actually asked Andre what we were doing there. He told me to just shut up and do what he said, so I did. After we got on the boat, he told us to just stay in our cabins and not go anywhere unless he came to get us first.”
“So you stayed in there for the entire trip?” I asked.
“No.” Gabby shook her head slowly as she scratched at the fabric of the blanket. “A few days ago, he told us we were going to get off. I thought maybe we’d arrived wherever we were going. It was a pretty place. Lots of palm trees, and it was so warm. We weren’t outside for long, though, because Andre took us to this apartment in the city. There were a lot of other girls there. Men with guns, too, like Andre’s. They sprayed something in our mouths that made my throat feel numb. Then they made us swallow these little plastic things.”
That would have been the cocaine, I thought to myself as I digested everything she was revealing to us. She said that there were already a lot of other girls there when she arrived. Could that mean that this wasn’t all the work of a single group, but rather several working in tandem?
“Did they tell you what it was?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied uneasily. “They said it was drugs. Some of the girls were really shocked when they heard that they wanted us to swallow them. The men said that we couldn’t bite down. We had to swallow them whole, or else the drugs would be wasted, and we would die. One of the girls got really scared and started crying, so the man who was with her started hitting her. Everyone else was quiet after that.”
