Robert Crais - Taken

“Yes. He is an immigration attorney who is sympathetic in these matters. I know he represents undocumented people when they are arrested. I have his number.”

“Okay.”

“Thomas Locano. He was very nice. Here-”

She gave me a number with a Pasadena area code. I asked her to call him. As her attorney at that time, he would need her permission to share information.

“Mr. Cole? I will call the police if you think it is best.”

“I’ve been involved less than five hours. Let’s see what develops.”

“I would give up everything for her, Mr. Cole. Without hesitation. I want you to know this.”

“I know you would, but you won’t have to. Nothing happening now is about you. It’s about finding Krista and bringing her home. The police won’t ask your status, and don’t care.”

“Are you sure?”

Outside, a red Jeep Cherokee pulled into the parking lot and parked beside my car. The man inside did not get out. He waited without moving, dark glasses locked forward, immobile as a statue.

I checked the time.

“Yes. I’m sure. This is why I’m the World’s Greatest Detective.”

“You are trying to make me smile again.”

“Yep.”

“It did not work.”

“I know. But I had to try.”

I put away my phone, and went out to the Jeep. The man behind the wheel looked at me as I climbed into the passenger seat, but said nothing. Conversation was not his strong point.

Pike, Joseph, no middle initial, learned the tracking arts as a boy who grew up at the edge of a logging town, and later refined those same arts when he hunted men first as a combat Marine, then later as an LAPD police officer and a private military contractor in Africa, Central America, and the Middle East. If I was good at hunting men, Pike was better. Pike had also been my partner in the agency since we bought it together, and my friend for even longer.

“Thanks for coming.”

His head dipped once. A two-hour drive, and he had come without asking why, and without explanation.

Now, I told him about Krista Morales, her Friday night at the crash site, and what I found when I walked the scene. I gave him the nine-millimeter brass casings and the spent shotgun shell.

“I found these. Trehorn says people shoot out there, so they might not matter.”

Pike sniffed the brass as if the smell would tell him something, then handed them back. Maybe he could follow their scent.

“I marked Trehorn’s track with an E. The bigger truck is a quad. I want your read on what happened.”

Pike nodded again.

“You want me to take you out there?”

He shook his head. I had already texted him the longitude and latitude coordinates from my iPhone.

“Want Trehorn?”

“I’m good alone.”

“Okay. I’m going to see this attorney. Let me know what you find.”

It was one-thirty-two that afternoon when I left Pike in the desert, and drove to see Thomas Locano.

Thomas Locano had a nice suite of offices on the second floor of a two-story building overlooking Mission Street in South Pasadena. His was an older building with a red tile roof, plaster walls, and heavy wooden doors. Like the building, Locano was a gracious man in his early sixties. Two younger associates were employed in his practice, and his assistant was also his wife. Elizabeth, she told me as she led me into his office.

Locano smiled when he stood to greet me, but appeared uncomfortable.

Elizabeth Locano said, “Would you like coffee, Mr. Cole? Or something else?”

“I’m fine, ma’am. Thank you.”

She did not close the door on the way out.

Mr. Locano came from behind his desk so we could sit together in comfortable, overstuffed chairs, and offered a firm, dry hand.

“Nita tells me you’re working for her, and are aware of her status issue.”

“Yes, sir, I am. Did she tell you why I’m here?”

“Her daughter is missing. She believes it has something to do with her status, so she asked me to speak freely with you about these things.”

I passed him the note from the crash site.

“I found this twenty miles outside of Palm Springs at the crash site of an old drug smuggler’s plane. I believe it was written by Nita’s daughter.”

He frowned at the note, then tried to pass it back, but I didn’t take it.

“This isn’t Spanish.”

“No, sir. We believe it means ‘ask a coyote named Sanchez’ or ‘ask about a coyote named Sanchez.’ So that’s what I’m doing. Do you know of a coyote named Sanchez who brings people north through the Imperial Valley?”

Mr. Locano lowered the note. His cool expression told me I had insulted him.

“My practice is immigration law. I help clients obtain visas and green cards, and fight deportation and removal orders. If you believe I’m involved in something illegal, you misunderstand the nature of my work.”

“That isn’t what I meant to suggest, Mr. Locano. If I sounded that way, I apologize.”

He didn’t look mollified.

“Nita told me you’re the go-to attorney when undocumented aliens are arrested, so I’m guessing you’re familiar with how your clients enter this country, and who brings them across.”

“This is not something I’m going to discuss with you.”

I pointed at the note.

“Ask the coyote, Sanchez. Nita Morales saw the crash site when she was seven years old, and being smuggled into this country. She says it used to be a regular transfer spot where people brought north were handed off. Krista visited that same site this past Friday night, and it was the last time anyone has seen her. Today, six days later, I found this note and her driver’s license ten yards from the wreckage.”

He glanced at the note again, and frowned. This time when he offered it back, I took it.

“You believe she had contact with this person, Sanchez?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know. Either way, she wrote this note for a reason, so I want to ask him about it. I need a first name to find him.”

Locano nodded, but more to himself than me.

“I would like to help you, Mr. Cole, but this business you speak of is not what it was.”

“Are you telling me no one comes north anymore?”

“Of course people come, but the guides I knew are gone. The old guides were a cousin who had come to work the seasonal crops, or an in-law who came to visit relatives. If you gave them a few dollars they would help you, as much out of friendship as for the money, but the cartels and their hoodlums have changed this. They patrol the roads like an army to control the movement of guns and drugs, and now nothing comes north without their permission.”

“Including the coyotes?”

“Transporting people is big business now. Groups from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East find passage to Central America, and are taken north through Mexico in large groups. The new coyotes don’t even call them people. They are pollos. Chickens. Not even human.”

“Coyotes eat chickens.”

“Not only chickens, but each other, and each other’s chickens. Do you know what a bajadore is?”

“A bandit?”

“A bandit who steals from other bandits. These are usually members of different cartels, a Baja stealing from a Zeta, a member of the Tijuana cartel stealing from a Sinaloa or La Familia. They steal each other’s drugs, guns, and pollos — whatever can be sold. They even steal each other.”

“Sold. As in slavery?”

“Sold as in ransom. These poor people have already paid their money to the coyote, then they are kidnapped by the bajadores. They have nothing, so the bajadores demand ransom from their families. I do not know people like this. When they are arrested, I do not represent them.”