Valiant Page 9

  The return address was from Ft. Leavenworth Prison.

  Inside was a single USB thumb drive and a small sheet of paper with the name El Toro, handwritten in red ink. A receipt for the price the Lieutenant’s wife and children had paid for his betrayal. On it was a handdrawn map and a list of instructions.

  Once the device was connected to his computer, it took several minutes for him to find the courage to play the video file it contained. A sheer horror and guilt masked his face as he watched his daughter and son being tortured and killed. A thick sorrow flooded his soul as he witnessed the last bit of hope leaving his wife’s body.

  Whether or not the Lieutenant would take the package to the authorities wouldn’t matter. Whether or not they were able to raid and search the prison would make no difference.

  In a rage, the Lieutenant lifted his computer screen and threw it against the wall. He flung his chair across the room, crashing it through a window. His screams echoed through the neighborhood. Those who could hear him paused, but soon ignored the uproar. Each of them knew of his suffering. Each of them would do the same, had they been in his position.

  Lieutenant Schaeffer clutched the center of his chest. He began to sweat and his skin turned pale. A pounding sensation ached between his shoulders and his breath escaped him. He fell to one knee and recovered. After a few moments of fading pain, he stormed from his home, leaving the front door wide open, with nothing but the keys to his red pickup truck. He threw himself into the driver’s seat. His hand smacked away the rearview mirror so he wouldn’t have to see the reflection of the wet and red face of a broken man.

  The engine roared. The tires squealed as he backed from his driveway and sped through the streets. Two long streaks of black tire marks decorated the road. They were the last thing anyone would ever see from Lieutenant Schaeffer.

  He drove far away from the city to an empty open land beside Lake Clinton. Nothing but bare grass and empty fields surrounded him. With the truck’s gear in neutral, the Lieutenant revved the engine. Staring across the water’s horizon, he shoved the shifter into drive. The truck slammed into the water, pushing farther out into the lake as water filled the cab. With his seatbelt still strapping him to his seat, Schaeffer’s foot continued to floor the gas pedal.

  At the same time the final ring from a sunken truck was rippling cross the lake top, El Toro was way lying in his prison cell, on his back, with his hands folded behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling, chewing a piece of gum. Not a single emotion displayed on his face. Countless packs of cigarettes had been delivered to him. Trades from other inmates for their opportunity to rape, torture, and murder to their own satisfaction.

  El Toro didn’t smoke, but having received so much of such a valuable currency for a prison, he was able to feel once again what it felt like to be in charge. He had discovered the advantages of running such a business, and the benefits it would give him in an effort to regain his power. Selling children to paying customers so they could do with them whatever they pleased.

  In addition, he had found a sense of satisfaction in repaying those who betrayed him. Taking away the one thing people care more about than themselves. The one thing they will give up their own lives to protect. And even more, as in Lieutenant Schaeffer’s case, the one thing they can no longer go on living without.

  However, to gain so much control and profit would be difficult to achieve from inside a cage.

  El Toro realized he would have to make his escape.

  14. THE DEVIL’S ACCESS

  It’s not unusual for Haylee to be gone when I come home from work. Seeing her car in the driveway tells me she stayed home from school. Maybe that’s why she was calling me last night, to tell me she was sick. Maybe she found out about Austin, and her heart is too broken for her to face him today.

  Setting my jacket and gym bag on the couch, I call her name.

  “Haylee?”

  Inside her room, her bed is empty and unmade.

  That’s not like her at all. She’s always kept her room neat.

  I check the bathroom.

  Her toothbrush and bath towel are dry.

  “Are you home?”

  No response.

  Panic sets in.

  My heart pounds through my chest.

  I slide open the patio door to the backyard and look around.

  There’s no one.

  I flip through my phone and call her number. Her cell phone rings from her bedroom. I toss back the blankets and pillows, but the volume of her ringtone doesn’t change. Kneeling to the floor, I find it underneath her bed, still plugged into a charger. Her backpack and shoes are still here as well as her keys.

  My vision gets blurry.

  My thoughts begin to scatter.

  Beads of sweat form across my forehead.

  A moment ago there was a chilling breeze through the house, but now, it’s fucking hot in here.

  I take off my vest and drop it to the floor. Each room I go into is one I’ve already searched only moments ago. It’s not like we live in a mansion; there are only so many places she could be.

  My daughter has simply vanished.

  I fall to my knees beside her bed and unlock her phone. The screen shows her most recent call made to me, a call I never answered.

  Gravity pulls heavy.

  Thoughts race through my mind of the worst-case scenario.

  Ideas I don’t want to entertain.

  Part of me already knows what happened, and the voice in my head tells me its not possible; don’t think about it.

  To think is all I need to do, but I can barely focus on anything.

  Tears threaten to escape my eyes.

  “Don’t cry,” says the voice in my head. “You need to focus.”

  Pushing my hand to the carpet to leverage myself up, my fingers brush against something hard, something small, and something plastic.

  The cap of a syringe with subtle teeth marks.

  Surrounding it is nothing else, but there’s no reason for it to be here.

  A moment ago, my gut was telling me something is wrong. Now, it’s a certainty.

  If someone took her, how did they get in?

  Haylee’s too smart to open the door for a total stranger.

  The doorframes and windows are still intact.

  I snatch my keys from the kitchen table and then freeze. The sound of a car racing in the street outside catches my attention, as does the cold breeze through the living room. I look to the window.

  The heater kicks on.

  The curtains sway to the warm breath of the vents, shifting aside enough for me to see the latch unlocked.

  The sound of the car fades away and leaves me in silence, except for the ticking from the clock on the wall.

  A rush of adrenaline replaces my fatigue from working all night, like coffee for a hangover.

  Everything becomes a blur, skipping along like a video on fast-forward.

  I don’t remember getting in my car, or speeding through traffic, or even parking at station and rushing inside.

  All I know is, the line has been crossed.

  No more bullshit.

  The rules are out the window.

  I don’t care about a conflict.

  I don’t care about his ongoing investigation.

  Detective Spencer is going to tell me what he knows, or I’ll beat it out of him.

  Storming into his office, that’s exactly what I tell him. He can tell I’m desperate for answers. His chin drops. He can see it in my face; he knows what happened before I have a chance to tell him.

  The last thing you tell a woman on a rampage is to calm down. It’s a lesson the detective quickly learns. Throwing my arm across his desk, I knock stacks of file folders and papers to the floor.

  “You tell me what you know, goddamn it!”

  Checking the halls for prying eyes and open ears, Spencer closes the door to his office.

  He points to an empty chair, but there’s no way I’m sitting d
own.

  “If I give you information,” he says, “and you go out there and do something stupid, you could jeopardize this whole case.”

  “I’m not asking,” I reply, shoving the chair to the floor. “Tell me what you know!”

  The room falls silent. The kind of silence that thickens the air when tough decisions are being made. Pushing his fingers through his hair, he sighs and picks up three of the folders at his feet. Falling in front of me, they slap the top of his desk.

  “Sit down,” he says, lifting the chair to its feet. “This is going to make your stomach churn.”

  As my arms grip the arms to lower myself to the seat, Spencer flips open the top folder. Paper-clipped to a half inch stack of papers is a photograph of a college kid. A young man. The photograph is from his football season. Posed on one knee with his helmet in hand. Spiky blonde hair. Green eyes. Bright smile. A whole future ahead of him.

  “Anthony Fritz,” says Spencer. “Eighteen years old. Last seen early September of 2018 at Cherry Creek South High School in Denver, Colorado. He was called in to see medical staff for a checkup on his sore knee. The doctor on-site ordered a steroid shot, but it wasn’t steroids the needle injected into his leg. Anthony fell unconscious and was rushed to a hospital by ambulance, but he never arrived.”

  The detective turns the photograph to show the next page and another photo. This one shows a dead Anthony Fritz.

  “His body found dropped in a ditch of a secluded stream in Tijuana, Mexico. He was pronounced dead of a heroin overdose. He had been lying in the heat for several days. The autopsy found clear plastic packets of brown powder shoved into his rectum and swallowed into his stomach. One of them had burst. The shreds of burned skin on the bottom of his feet indicated he had been running away. A bruise, the size of a fist, was left in the center of his stomach. Someone had punched him hard enough to make a bag leak.”

  It’s hard for me to swallow, but I do and it triggers a single tear to fall along my cheek.

  “A mule,” says Spencer. “Why should a cartel take the risk of running drugs themselves when they can use some kid they can buy off the black market?”

  Spencer closes the folder and tosses it aside, opening the second to a photo of a young brunette female. Her yearbook photo. Sophomore year. Posing in a red sweater with her light brown hair styled to curl over her shoulders, her smile is the kind to light up anyone’s day, just like Haylee’s.

  “Stephanie Brandt,” he says, “Sixteen years old from St. Louis, Missouri. She disappeared during her driving test. Witnesses say they last saw her with a strange man they assumed was her instructor, driving away from the interstate where a large van drove up next to her. Her father says the instructors name was Levi. The DMV says they have no employees with that name.”

  Detective Spencer, turns her photograph to a paper printed with low quality photographs. Screen captures from a video starring a screaming and frightened Stephanie Brandt, lying on a wooden table in an empty, dirty, concrete room. A basement or some room of an old building made to look like a dungeon. Her body is stripped to nothing, and some parts of her skin are darkened with bruises. Her hands are bound with chains beside her head. Those chains run under a thick wooden table and shackle to her feet. To try and break free meant pulling against her own body.

  Between her spread legs stands a muscular man who’s forcing himself inside of her. To the side is a second man, dressed in a suit, who’s capturing every moment from a different angle on his video camera.

  Spencer turns to the next page which has similar photographs.

  At the head of the table, is another man, a nude body builder, with his face hidden out of frame and his hand pushing Stephanie’s head back over the table’s edge. He holds a power drill with a long bit pointed at her face. The blurriness of the bit in the picture indicates it was spinning at the time the photo was taken.

  “Trust me,” says Spencer. “You don’t want me to give you details.”

  He’s right, but I can’t look away, and I can’t close my eyes in fear of my own imagination getting the best of me.

  “Snuff,” he says. “There’s a high demand for this shit, especially in Russia where they pay good money to see movies with young American girls being tortured, raped, and killed.”

  It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten yet today. At this point, whatever would have been left in my stomach, I would be throwing up all over the detective’s desk.

  Spencer’s eyes never leave me as he folds her file and tosses it to the side. He moves slow, as though he’s waiting for me to tell him to stop, but my open mouth can’t form words. All it does is taste the saltiness of a second tear from my other cheek.

  The third folder contains the file of a victim with the most inconceivable fate. Spencer’s hesitant to open it, but I’m not backing off. If Haylee is missing, I want to know every detail no matter how gruesome.

  “North Sentinel Island,” he says, opening the folder. “Not your average dream vacation. Especially for Lacey Kirchhoff from Little Rock, Arkansas. She was on her way to the airport to spend a weekend with some friends in Florida. The rideshare driver never got her to her destination.

  The photograph makes me cringe. Still, my wet eyes won’t close and my head won’t turn away.

  What was once a beautiful girl in the last years of high school is a pile of charred skeletal remains. The bones of her wrists are bound behind her, tied around a post by thin metal wire. The skull is tilted back with its mouth open as if the last purpose it served was to scream in unimaginable pain toward the sky.

  “The Sentinelese people,” he continues, “they’re a tribe secluded from the rest of the world. To even make contact with them could be deadly. Yet, to the right people, they provide a currency. A supply of pure uncut heroin in exchange for servants.”

  It’s explained to me, some of the missing children are traded for drugs. The tribe members use them for physical labor. The young men tend crops and build huts. The women are forced into pregnancy and mother the children so the tribe can continues its legacy. All for nothing. Starved to the edges of death and beaten if they retaliate.

  A few months ago, shortly before the photograph was taken, the tribesmen of the North Sentinel Island celebrated in a rare event. A total solar eclipse would cast a shadow over their land. They consider this to be a sign from the gods, a request from the heavens for the blood of a young servant.

  Lacey Kirchhoff was tied to a post, and stood on a rock placed over a pile of dry branches and wood. She cried desperately as she looked to the horizon, begging for a last minute sign of hope or rescue. As the black moon covered the sun, a ring flashed around the circle in the sky as a sign for the tribesmen to initiate their sacrifice. Their flaming torches met with the brush underneath the rock, setting fire to the screaming young girl.

  As the smoke from her body lifted toward the sky, the moon began to uncover the light. As the last shred of her voice echoed to the heavens, the light returned to nourish the tribe’s crops.

  “They’re a protected tribe,” Spencer adds, closing the file. “It’s illegal for any government agency to approach the island, much less make any attempts to hold them accountable for murder. Hell, we’re not even allowed to fly over the fucking place.”

  There are not a lot of times when I regret my own actions, but demanding Spencer to fill me in on this case is now the worst of them. It takes everything I have not to visualize Haylee suffering the same ways. To stay focused, I have to come up with questions that don’t involve her directly.

  “So how do the kids get there?” I ask, with a crackling voice.

  Spencer pulls open his desk drawer to another folder. He tosses it in front of me and walks around to lean over my shoulder. With his breath close to my ear, he opens the cover. Profile photos of those associated with the kidnapping ring.

  “Only The Devil has access to everything evil,” he adds. “They call him El Toro. The Bull. The Sentinelese people welcome him with open
arms. When he visits, he arrives with new slaves and leaves with rather large amounts of pure heroin. That kind of power can’t be measured. El Toro has been doing this for years. He hires a new crew for each roundup and buttons down in cities across the Midwest. The ones most devoted to him are former members of his team in the Afghanistan War.”

  Spencer points to a man in one of the photographs.

  “Stephanie Brandt’s mysterious driving instructor, Levi, is the son of a former colleague who was killed in combat, or so the records indicate. Each summer, they gather children and hold them in some remote location for a week, maybe two. Then they move on to the next city.”

  Pointing to another photo, the man staring back at me matches a snapshot from the surveillance camera’s at police headquarters the night Miranda Neal’s daughter was bailed out of jail. A shaved head. Built. Muscular.

  Spencer sighs.

  “Even the man we thought was him, turned out to be someone on his payroll. With no accurate information, we don’t even know who we’re looking for.”

  The detective walks back behind his desk and continues telling me El Toro has yet to be apprehended. Those who can point their fingers are too afraid. Others who tried were found dead before they had a chance to speak.

  Following a thought and looking toward the floor, I shake my head.

  “With multiple kidnappings across multiple states, why isn’t this a Federal investigation?”

  Spencer nods, closes the file, and walks behind his desk to his seat across from me.

  “The FBI is definitely involved,” he replies, “but if El Toro is arrested, they want the State to do the work first. That way, if he somehow beats the case, they can slap him with Federal prosecution as a backup. They want to make sure the system doesn’t fail, and they’re watching from the sidelines. Don’t worry. It gets even more complicated than that.”

  Looking to Spencer with confused eyes, I asked him how it’s complicated.

  “He can’t be touched,” he says. “If El Toro is taken into custody or someone kills him, or hell, if the son-of-a-bitch doesn’t show up because he overslept; he has a standing order for his crew.”