The Others Read online

  “It’s peaceful.” Caller ID shows UNKNOWN. I swipe to answer. “Delgado Investigations. This is Dan Delgado.”

  If my phone rings, it’s not because something happy has happened. The person on the other end is generally distraught. A woman suspects her husband is cheating, or vice versa, and is usually right. A tenant believes his landlord installed cameras in bathroom vents—he did. A teen believes her girlfriend is straight—she wasn’t. But I can’t tell if the woman on the other end of this call is upset or just loud, because she’s speaking Spanish.

  Despite having a Puerto Rican grandfather and a half Puerto Rican father, the most Hispanic thing about me is my last name. My grandparents passed when I was young, and my parents not much later, all of them claimed by a different disease or cancer, long before their time. I was raised in foster homes, which left me with just two things to remember my family by: a last name and a perpetual tan.

  I did take three years of Spanish in high school, but I spent most of my afternoons smoking pot and forgetting the day’s lessons. High school had a different meaning for me. There are two things I can ask for in Spanish. Cerveza and el baño, which go hand-in-hand and reveal my state of mind at that time of my life, which I generally refer to as B.H.—Before Her—in my own personal timeline. The past five years have been A.H.—After Her. The seven years between the two…I try not to think about and generally succeed, except for one day each year.

  Today.

  The day Kailyn died.

  It was a car accident in every sense of the term. She veered off the road. Struck a tree. Most likely evading an animal. Happens all the time. No one to blame. No one to be angry at. No one to hate. I was at the office working a missing persons case, but was mostly waiting for The News. Instead of a phone call, I got an office visit, and instead of my wife’s voice, it was my captain’s. After hearing, ‘She didn’t make it,’ I have no idea what else was said.

  The weeks that followed are a haze.

  I don’t remember the funeral.

  That was the same day I left the job. They never did find the missing woman from my case.

  I hold the phone out to Wini. “Español.”

  Wini speaks fluent Spanish because her grandmother was Mexican, fluent French because who knows why, and enough German to intimidate me.

  “Hola,” Wini says, “Soy Wini—”

  Wini falls silent, listening. After a few minutes, she looks her age. When she speaks, it comes out as a squeaky whisper, “¿Cual es tu direccion?”

  She scribbles an address down on a notepad kept hidden in the strap of her bra. Looks like we’re going for a drive, which is good news. There’s nothing more distracting than a new case.

  “Mantenerte fuerte. Llegaremos pronto.” Wini hangs up the phone and lets out a long sigh.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Juxtaposition,” she says, trying to rediscover her sense of humor. She fails. “Missing child.”

  “Missing— We don’t handle— Has she gone to the police?”

  “Marta Ramos, the mother… That was her on the phone. She’s illegal. Father’s still south of the border. The daughter was born here, but if Marta calls the police—”

  “I get it.” I ponder the predicament for a moment and wonder if taking the case means breaking the law. I decide I don’t care, and am about to say so, but Wini takes my silence as debate.

  “You used to work cases like this. Before. You might try to bury the man you once were, but—”

  “Wini.”

  Her mouth clamps shut.

  “Get the keys.”

  “I’m coming?” she asks.

  “I no habla Español, remember? Also, you’re driving.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I stand from my chair and head for the door, phone in hand. “Research.”

  I’m a half step through my home office’s doorway when I stop and turn around.

  I nearly left it behind.

  Today of all days.

  Wini takes the keys from a hook mounted on the wall behind her desk. Eyes me, and then my desk. “You don’t need it.”

  “Mmm,” I say, which could be taken as agreement, or at least mulling it over. It’s neither. I hurry back to the desk, snatch up the unopened envelope—one of the few things to survive Kailyn’s crash intact—and stuff it into my pocket before leaving.

  I hope the kid isn’t really missing, but that it will take at least the whole day to find her.

  I can already feel the chink widening.

  2

  Here’s what I found out about Marta Ramos and her missing daughter—Isabella—during the two hour drive from San Francisco to Santa Cruz: absolutamente nada.

  They’re ghosts. There’re no criminal records north or south of the border, which means Marta successfully moved between countries without being caught. There’s no mention of them in any newspapers. No school records for mother or daughter. The father, who Wini says was named Mateo, has been out of the picture since Isabella’s conception.

  But that doesn’t rule him out.

  The vast majority of child abductions are committed by parents or close relatives, often times out of a sense of duty or justice. In this case, it could be that Mateo, having finally heard that his Mexican daughter was being raised as an American, decided to take her home. Motivations are simple like that. Most people are driven by refined ideas of right and wrong.

  Once you identify a person’s ideals, they’re easy to predict and track down. If Mateo took his daughter because of national pride, he’d likely return home, secure in the belief that he was doing what was right, that Marta lacked the means to pursue him, and that she would not report the abduction to authorities, who would hurt her case more than help it. If that was the case, Mateo would be mostly correct. Under normal circumstances, he’d have little to worry about beyond getting back across the border.

  But these aren’t normal circumstances. Marta managed to reach me on a day when I’m more sensitive to the plight of a severed family. I understand her anguish. Her desperation. And by the time we stop, I’m ready to summon Seal Team 6 and descend on Mexico with a holy rage until Mateo—that bastard—is caught.

  “You all right?” Wini asks, putting the car into park. “Been staring at your phone for nearly two hours, and you look ready to throttle someone.”

  “Fine,” I say in a way that says I’m not. I look up and I’m surprised to see we’re parked in a decent neighborhood. “I thought they were…”

  “Poor?” Wini says the word for me.

  “Most first generation illegals are.” I’m feeling angry and defensive now. “It’s not exactly easy to get a job or buy a house when any kind of paperwork will flag ICE.”

  “You’re right,” she says, “and wrong.” Wini leans forward, looking out the window. The house we’re parked in front of has a manicured lawn, a bright blue paint job, and what looks like newish construction. Maybe ten years old, tops. She points to the side yard, where an unruly pecan tree commingling with two palms shades an unkempt portion of yard in which sits a small trailer. The tires are flat. Its front end is propped up on cinder blocks. Some kind of moss is growing up the side wall, the white door stained black with some kind of mold. “That’s where they’re staying.”

  And now I’m offended. Not for myself. For Marta. It’s bad enough that the place is a shithole. Honestly, I expected that. But sitting beside this house, in this neighborhood… I can’t imagine how demoralizing it must feel.

  “Let’s go.” I open the door, step out into the summer heat and close the door behind me, a little too hard. The air here smells like flowers, and something earthy. Manure, I think. How much do these people spend on their yards? Does grass really need cow shit to grow?

  Slow down, I tell myself as I charge up the grass-covered slope, heading for the ramshackle trailer. My spiral into self-righteous outrage isn’t going to do anyone any good.

  By the time I reach the trailer, I’m calm
, or at least able to project a less tumultuous state of mind. I knock on the trailer door and note that it’s open a crack. “Hello?”

  “Hola?” Wini says.

  “Pretty sure she understands ‘hello’ in English,” I say.

  “Take a tone with me and I’ll slap it out of you.” Wini grins for just a moment before giving me a stare that makes me wonder if she was serious.

  “Hola,” I say, and tug open the door, peeking through the gap. “Hola…” I open the door wide and I’m nearly staggered back by what I find. The trailer’s interior is…nice. Plush. Modern. Stylish. I give the exterior a onceover and notice that the mold and moss are artificial. This isn’t a defunct trailer at all. It’s a very nice tiny home in disguise. From the street, no one would give it a second look. Most people in the neighborhood probably pretend it’s not there.

  Not a bad place to live off the government’s radar. And big enough for a mother and daughter.

  I take a step inside, noting the handmade decorative pillows, the bright drawings on the small fridge, and the cellphone resting on the kitchenette table.

  Movement through the windows draws my eyes. Wini turns to look at me through the glass. “Out here.”

  I’m once again caught off guard. Hiding behind the trailer is a lush and well-tended garden, a lemon tree, and an orange tree. Even during hard times, Marta might have been able to live off this small plot of land.

  “Here,” Wini says, pointing to the garden’s edge.

  A discarded shovel lies atop a pepper plant, which has broken under the garden tool’s weight.

  “Whoever planted all this would not do that,” Wini says, and she’s right. Given the garden’s pristine appearance, whoever tends to it—maybe Marta—would be horrified by the shovel’s abuse.

  I crouch by the shovel, inspecting its head for signs of anything nefarious, but I see only dirt. The soil at the garden’s fringe tells another story. Footprints. Partials. But two distinct sets—one narrow, one broad. Both deep.

  “Over here,” I say, scooting a few feet further down. When Wini joins me, I position her at the garden’s edge. “Stand there.”

  “Is this normal behavior for you on a case?” she asks, watching me pick up the shovel.

  “I’m usually alone,” I say, handing her the shovel. I angle the shovel toward the ground and push it in between a pair of tomato plants. “Okay, you’re her. Marta.”

  “What should I—”

  “Just stand there.” I move up behind her.

  “But what do you wa—”

  Wini’s voice is cut off as I wrap one hand over her mouth and struggle to hold her, as she reacts like anyone would.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I coo, letting her go.

  “What the hell, Dan?” Wini looks about ready to knock my teeth out, and she probably could.

  “Sorry. I had to see. Had to simulate it.” I point to the garden’s edge. The shovel lies discarded atop a tomato plant. The two sets of footprints at the garden’s edge.

  When Wini sees the mess we’ve made, she turns to the mess we found and puts a hand to her mouth. “Someone took her?”

  I don’t want to say it. Nothing is certain—until it is. But that requires more evidence, and sometimes a body. Right now, there are signs that a man came up behind a woman and startled her. Coupled with the open trailer door and left-behind phone, there’s enough to raise suspicion, but not nearly enough to make me break Marta’s trust and call the police.

  Though that is now an option. Better for Marta and Isabella to be alive and deported to Mexico than dead and deported to whatever kind of afterlife might exist. I’m good at finding people. I was a fine detective. But my resources are somewhat limited, and my manpower is…aging and sarcastic.

  “Check the house,” I say. “If no one answers the door, listen for…”

  “People doing the nasty,” Wini says. “Got it. Though I doubt a worried mother would be screwing around right now, especially knowing we were on the way.”

  “When it comes to sex, people are like Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Sex…finds a way.”

  Wini gives me a set of squinty eyes. “Thought you didn’t like science-fiction.”

  I head back to the trailer. “Dinosaurs aren’t science fiction.”

  “When geneticists bring them back to life in the present day, they are.” Wini’s words trail off as she walks toward the home’s front yard and I step inside the trailer.

  Without touching anything, I scour the mini-home for anything unusual. The only thing out of place is the cellphone, and that’s only because I’m pretty sure its owner isn’t here. I lean out the door and hear Wini’s fist knocking on the front door. It’s followed by six muffled doorbell rings. “Hey, Wini!”

  “I don’t think anyone is home,” she yells from the front.

  “Call Marta’s phone.”

  In the silence that follows I start to worry that whoever snuck up on Marta might still be here, and might have subdued Wini.

  When the phone blares the vibrato voice of an opera singer, I flail back and nearly fall from the trailer’s door. After composing myself, I note the caller ID number displayed, answer the phone and say, “Thanks,” before hanging up.

  I take a seat at the small table and tap the phone’s home button. “Shit,” I grumble when I’m greeted by a six digit passcode screen. I try the three most common numbers—all ones, all nines, and one through six. None work. “Shit, again.”

  And then, an epiphany of sorts, written out and stuck to the fridge above a drawing of a castle. My eyes linger on the drawing. There’s a princess in the tower, her brown hair blowing horizontal in the wind. A prince is on one knee below, arms raised in a proposal. A word bubble extending out from the princess says, ‘Necesito orinar.’

  From the drawing, my eyes shift to a photo of a woman and a girl, who I identify when I spot the trailer behind them. I pluck the photo from the fridge. Marta is a beauty, wearing a colorful skirt, a dirty tank top, and gardening gloves. Isabella’s large brown eyes all but break my heart, not just because she’s an adorable ten-, maybe eleven-year-old kid, but because I can feel the love for her mother radiating off the photo.

  I pocket the photo and try the six digit, very random code stuck to the fridge. Works on the first try.

  I’m greeted by a text message received forty-five minutes ago. The text is simple—yesterday’s date, and a set of coordinates. The photo accompanying the text drains the blood from my face. I place the phone beside the photo and compare faces. The phone’s image is dark, taken at night, and somewhat blurry, but there’s no doubt; they’re both Isabella.

  The biggest difference between the two images isn’t the lighting, or the focus. It’s the look on Isabella’s face. In the second photo, she’s terrified and on the run.

  Wini gives the door a gentle knock before opening it. “Anything?”

  I wave Wini to enter, and when she sits across from me, I turn the phone around so she can see the text and the photo. When she looks confused, I turn the fridge photo around and tap it. “I think that’s Isabella.”

  “Oh, dear,” Wini says, picking up the photo, her hand shaking. Then her eyes snap back to the phone. “This is dated yesterday.”

  “But was delivered today.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Could be the kidnappers. But there’s no ransom ask, and I doubt she has anything to give.”

  “Except herself,” Wini points out, reminding me how dark the job can get.

  Using Marta’s phone, I copy and paste the coordinates into Google maps. The location pops up immediately and I double-tap to zoom in, revealing the town’s name. “Colorado City. Arizona.”

  “Do you think that’s where she went?” Wini asks. “Or was taken?”

  “I’m not—”

  The phone chimes in my hand. A fresh text. It’s just three words, but they hold my heart hostage for a beat.

  WHO. ARE. YOU?

  3

 
; I stopped carrying a gun on the day I turned in my badge. I still own a Glock 22, but it’s been sitting in my office drawer for five years. My job occasionally leads to confrontations, but most are settled with words and only once with fists—he was drunk.

  As I reread the three-word message, some instinctual caveman part of my brain screams ‘danger’ to which the modern, well-trained peace officer in me responds, ‘Where’s my gun?’

  But maybe it was a coincidence? Maybe whoever sent the photo and coordinates doesn’t know Marta is missing, too? If Isabella was kidnapped, this might be my only chance to communicate with her captors.

  After turning the phone around for Wini to see, her eyes going wide, I tap out a reply: Marta. Who is this?

  I’m about to tap the Send button when Wini grasps my wrist. “Spanish!”

  The phone drops from my hand, released as though scalding hot. The three-inch fall to the tabletop does no visible damage. If I had hit Send…

  “Can you?” I ask Wini.

  Wini turns the phone around, sliding it across the small table. She’s not a technophobe—she’s a champ on the Internet—but her cellphone is a Nokia brick and she doesn’t text.

  “Just type your message and tap the Send button,” I tell her.

  “I understand the concept of texting.” She deletes my near catastrophic message and starts typing in Spanish. I can’t read it upside down, but the phone chimes again before she can hit send. A fresh message appears, and I’m able to read it upside-down: LEAVE. THEY’RE COMING.

  “Who’s coming?” I ask aloud.

  The phone goes black. I take it from Wini’s hand and squeeze the power button. Nothing. It’s a brick.

  The chop of approaching helicopter blades tickles my ears, but doesn’t really register until Wini grasps my hand and turns her eyes to the small window beside us. “I think they’re already here.”

  We share a collective ‘oh shit’ moment and stand together, rushing out the door. A black helicopter thunders overhead, banking hard to swing around.

  I assume the chopper belongs to one of the federal law enforcement agencies, though it has no markings or serial numbers. No matter which agency it is, I don’t want to be here when they arrive. I’ve failed to report a missing child, not to mention having knowledge of illegals residing in the U.S. They’re not the most grievous of crimes, but they could land us in an interrogation room for the day, and at a later date, in a courtroom.