Jo Robertson - The Traitor

Today the door swung open and Santos dropped his eyes from where he expected to see Magdalena to the slender form of her daughter Corazon. The child's large dark eyes, so like her mother's, looked very serious and a little fearful. Too serious and too fearful for such a little girl.

"Hóla, little one, where is your madre today?"

Cory shook her head silently as Santos peered around her into the spacious foyer.

"Is she sleeping?"

Cory looked down at her feet, digging the toe of one shoe into the cement. "She's gone."

"Gone? Some shopping?" Santos laughed and gently caressed the girl's head. "Ay, mothers are always going shopping."

She shook her head and glanced over her right shoulder as if she expected someone to reach out and grab her. "Not shopping," she whispered.

Santos crouched down so that his massive size seemed smaller and his eyes did not look down on her from his enormous height. "How long has your mama been gone, pequena bebé?"

Large tears welled up in the girl's eyes but she did not allow them to drop. "Since Sunday." She swiped at her nose. "I miss her."

So long? Santos knew that something was very wrong. Magdalena would not be gone so many days from her child if she could help it.

In Torres' office on the second floor, the three of them speculated about the death of the drug dealer. Isabella relaxed behind the desk, her feet propped up on one edge, her shoes off. Pretty red-painted toenails peeked from the hem of her slacks. She'd removed her jacket and slung it across the back of the chair, and the firm outline of her breasts showed beneath the sheer white blouse when she locked her fingers behind her head.

"Why murder the drug dealer, someone so low in the organization?" she mused aloud.

Rafe slouched against a wide bookcase filled with law books and case law journals to the right of the desk. He found it easier on his imagination to think of Isabella by her last name and he figured it bugged her a little. "Someone was worried we're getting too close, Torres, that we'd squeeze information out of him."

"Or it could be retaliation for the botched buy," Slater suggested. The sheriff lounged in a comfortable arm chair that he occupied with annoying familiarity.

Torres bit her lower lip. "But he wasn't killed in the same manner as Lupe."

"Close enough," Slater answered. Rafe had already filled the sheriff in on the details of the hit on his C.I.

"The message they're sending this time is for us, not the other dealers in Vargas' network." Rafe added. "This murder was a cover-up, not retaliation. The dealer's death was efficient, smooth, and quick, and not nearly violent enough. Someone didn't want us getting to him."

"Bloody, though," Slater argued.

Torres' phone rang and she reached for it before Slater could comment further. "Torres." A moment later she grimaced and shook her head in disgust. "What can I do for you this morning, Mr. District Attorney?"

She made a finger-down-her-throat barfing motion, and Slater patted her shoulder, mouthing to Rafe, "Charles Barrington."

Rafe speculated again about the care-free relationship between Slater and Torres. He couldn't figure out if they were an item or had been an item. Maybe they just had a brother-sister relationship, but whatever it was, he felt a surge of jealousy at their easy-going friendship.

"Yeah, okay. Right," she continued, making a yackety-yak motion with the thumb and fingers of her right hand. Suddenly she stopped fooling around, straightened up, and became all business. "When?"

Slater edged forward in his chair, tension in his big body.

Torres grabbed a pencil and pad. "Where?" Pause. "How many?" She slammed down the pencil and said, "I'm on it." She hung up and leaned back in her chair, locking her fingers over her stomach, a grim but smug look on her face.

"What?" Slater asked.

"A deputy sheriff coming back from Reno, off duty, and yes, one of ours, comes across a large delivery van in the breakdown lane headed east on I-80." She leaned forward, elbows on the desk blotter. "Being the Good Samaritan that all Bigler County deputies are, he whips his car around, crosses the freeway divider – illegally of course – and like a good Boy Scout, proceeds to help the two men change a tire."

Slater folded his arms, apparently amused at the roundabout way she told the story. Rafe rubbed his hand through his hair and tried not to scream an obscenity. He made a hurry up motion with his hands and got a frown for his efforts.

"Anyway, also being a good detective, he notices the heavy weight of the freight on the tires, the general shiftiness of the two men in the cab, and the super heavy-duty locks on the back of the van. He grows even more suspicious when the men appear panicky about receiving his help and then hears faint noises from the back of the van."

"What kind of noises," Rafe asked.

Anger tinged with fear preceded her answer. "Human noises."

Rafe had no doubt what was in that truck and precisely where it was headed.

"Probable cause?" Slater asked.

"Likely not enough," Torres answered. "But he bullies them into opening the rear anyway. Guess what he finds?"

"You tell us, Torres," Rafe said although he was sure he knew the answer.

He recognized a brief flash of pain in Torres' expression. When she answered, her voice was barely above a whisper. "Nine young girls, half-naked, half-starved, dirty."

"Where were they headed?" Rafe asked.

"Vargas' whore house." Slater's answer showed he understood.

She nodded and her eyes turned flinty. "Young girls, ten, eleven, maybe."

"Christ," Slater said. "Babies."

"Something else," Torres added. "And you'll like this part, Hashemi."

"Yeah? What's that?" he asked.

"Ten kilos of high-grade heroin in the tire wheels."

"Will the search stick in court?" Slater asked.

"Doesn't matter," Rafe answered for Torres. He knew if he pulled in his Homeland Security buddies, they could bypass the courts altogether, although he knew she wouldn't like that.

"Let's go check it out," he said, glancing at her face and noting the distress there. He hoped she wouldn't be too emotionally involved to be effective in the case. "We need to be careful how we handle this," he admonished, looking to Slater for backing.

"We can't be sure the truck belongs to Vargas until we investigate further," Slater said.

Torres agreed. "The registration wasn't in his name."

"Maybe not, but ten to one he's involved," Slater muttered.

Santos opened his mouth to ask Corazon another question about her mother when Vargas walked up behind her, placing his meaty hand on her thin shoulder. "You're late," he snapped and motioned for Santos to enter and follow him down the hall.

Vargas rarely invited Santos into this inner sanctum. He had been to the house many times over the five years Vargas had occupied the mansion, but seldom went beyond the porch and the grounds. He had patrolled the perimeter of the property, guarded the family at the pool area, but had almost no occasion to be inside the house.

Vargas walked to his office with the agitated gait of a man beset with many problems. Was Magdalena one of the problems and had his boss found a way to deal with it?

Santos remained standing while Vargas stood behind his desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. "Where is Magdalena?" Santos asked casually.

"Why the fuck do you care where that slut is?" Vargas snarled, looking up from his desk to pierce his bodyguard with those vicious eyes. An air of edginess surrounded him as if he waited for a reason to vent his anger and give in to the violence that was always just beneath the surface.