Chapter Five
1
Lucy Alvarez bounced in the back of the Navigator like a kernel of corn in a popcorn popper, each bump or jolt the SUV took throwing her against one of the walls or tossing her up, only to slam back down against the cargo area floor. With her hands and ankles bound tightly and a gag across her mouth, all she could do was kick and make muffled screams. But the men in the front ignored her, for the most part, turning around only when she tried to raise herself up high enough to be seen from outside the vehicle. Then one of the guys would reach over and push her back down.
The ride took hours. Much of the trip, she was sure, was off-road. The whole time, none of them spoke to her, though they spoke of her quite a bit, appraising every part of her body they’d been privileged to see, and many they hadn’t.
“You think she’ll bruise back there?” one of them asked after a particularly brutal jounce.
“You care?” another had answered. “What is she, a piece of fruit?” They had all laughed at that one.
Lucy’s emotions hopscotched from terror to rage to self-pity; every time she tried to pray—for deliverance from these men, for protection, for a boulder to fall from the sky and crush their car or a cop to stop them for speeding, to be transported away with a wish—her thoughts became so jumbled that she lost track of where she was. There was no telling what they wanted with her, but there was no way it would be good. Men didn’t kidnap someone just to shower her with gifts and crown her a princess. At the least, she figured she was looking at being gang-raped. At worst, she would die in some awful fashion.
There was, of course, one other possibility—they might have kidnapped her for ransom money. If that was the case, they were going to be seriously disappointed.
By the time they stopped she was parched and nauseous. Her arms, cuffed behind her, had gone numb but they had ached for a long time before that and would again, she knew, when sensation came back into them. Her back and neck felt like they were on fire, and her legs were as sore as if she had run a marathon.
She thought she’d never get the taste of the gag out of her mouth. But then, there was a good chance that she’d die with it there. Who knew what these men had in mind for her?
When the SUV’s back was opened, she had looked up from her position on the floor, wide-eyed and fearful. She knew she probably looked like a scared doe, and she hated that. At the moment it was the best she could muster.
The car had parked somewhere out in the desert near an old shack, mud-walled with a simple tarpapered roof, dark in the long shadows cast by the sun dropping behind a nearby hill. Two of the guys pulled her from the vehicle, one muscular with curly gray hair in a yellow polo shirt and khakis, the other smaller, furtive-looking, with straight brown hair and a drooping mustache that gave him a dour expression. He wore a T-shirt with a silhouette of a deer in cross hairs and a gun shop logo on it, over camouflage fatigue pants. That one said, “There you go,” as they stood her on her feet. But when they let go of her, her legs couldn’t support her weight and she collapsed into the dirt. She felt tears spring to her eyes, though she fought to hold them in.
“Come on, get her,” the curly-haired guy said. The tone in his voice, and the speed with which the mustached guy and a couple of others jumped to obey, indicated to Lucy who was in charge here. The man had spoken with the confidence that his command would be carried out swiftly and efficiently. She wondered if he had been a military man in his younger days.
She had, on the ride here, determined to remember as many details about each of them as she possibly could. If she did manage to get out of this alive, she wanted to be able to put all these men in prison.
The mustached guy held the cabin door open while two of the others held her arms and helped/dragged her inside. The curly guy that she took to be their leader, or at least their Alpha dog, had gone in first, carrying an armful of rifles. The man on her right was older than the others, with thinning black hair turning to silver on the temple that Lucy could see when she turned her head. His prescription glasses had clip-on sunglasses attached. He wore a white guayabera shirt, though he was no Mexican, and black slacks. On her left was a younger guy, muscular, in an orange tank top and jeans, with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She thought about trying to pull free from their grip, but realized that she wouldn’t be able to take two steps without falling down until her legs recovered from the cramped ride.
The cabin, once they had her inside and a couple of lanterns lit, turned out to be nicer than she’d expected. The furnishings in the main room were primitive but adequate—a couple of old couches and some thrift store chairs arranged around a stone fireplace, all atop an ancient wooden floor. Sleeping bags were rolled neatly and stacked near one of the couches. The guns were leaned against one of the bare adobe walls, less than twenty feet from her but far out of reach. A kitchen area held no modern appliances, but there was a camp stove and several coolers on the counters. Certainly there would be no indoor plumbing, but she hadn’t seen an outhouse, so that was still a mystery.
The curly guy had taken a beer from one of the coolers and sat in the most comfortable-looking of the various old chairs. Lucy’s escorts led her to one of the couches and shoved her down onto it. Springs stabbed at her butt, which was still an improvement over the past few hours. She rolled her head from side to side, trying to work out the kinks in her neck and shoulders.
Now she could see the last two guys. At first glance she’d thought they were all Anglos, though a couple were deeply tanned. But now she saw that one of them was black. He was short, not much more than five-five, she guessed, but heavily muscled. His hair was cut short, in an almost military trim, and his small brown eyes bored into her like an oilman’s drill into the earth. He wore a dark blue T-shirt and dark shorts, like gym shorts, with expensive athletic shoes. The last man was the heaviest one of the bunch, with a big gut and a big build overall. She figured he must have topped two hundred pounds, probably more, and he wasn’t more than six feet tall. His hair was bright red and unkempt, as if he didn’t own a brush or a comb. His T-shirt, white except for the stains and a couple of torn places where pasty skin showed through, had to be an XXXL, and still when he sat down it rose up over the rolls of his belly. Like the guayabera guy, this one wore glasses, but in contrast to the older man’s heavy black plastic, this guy’s frames were wire. He looked like a computer programmer, Lucy thought, who had accidentally found himself far from his keyboard.
When they were all settled and those who wanted beer had some—except Lucy, who would have given anything for any liquid at that point—the curly-haired man, who sat with his bottle and examined her dispassionately, like a man looking at a used car, finally spoke. She’d guessed it would be him.
“Why do women have tits?” he asked, without preamble. Without waiting for an answer—not that any was forthcoming, certainly not from Lucy, who wouldn’t have dignified the question with a response even if she hadn’t been gagged—he went on. “So men will talk to them.” A couple of the other guys chuckled, mostly nervous laughter. It sounded like they’d heard the joke before. The speaker unfolded a long buck knife and began using it to pare his fingernails as he spoke, flicking them into the cold fireplace as he finished each one. “You belong to us now. We’ll take good care of you.”
Lucy shrugged, tried to indicate her bound arms by shaking her head at them. He seemed to understand.
“For tonight, your hands will stay tied. We’ll take the gag off to let you drink in a few minutes, but then it goes back on, and stays there. By tomorrow you’ll understand how far we are from any living soul, and how little good it would do you to scream or make a fuss of any kind.
“Today and tonight, no one will touch you. We’ll take the cuffs off your ankles so you can stand, walk around in the cabin, stretch a little. If you need to use the facilities, let one of us know and we’ll take you to the head.
“In the morning, you’ll be given more to drink and a little to eat. Then you’ll be untied, and allowed to leave.
“You’ll have a twenty minute head start. Then we’ll come after you. If you get away, get back to civilization, whatever, then you’re free. If we catch you, then you’re really ours and we’ll do whatever we want with you.
“Let me emphasize that last part. Whatever we want. No rules, no laws, no boundaries.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if enjoying some inner vision, and then took a swig of beer.
“I suppose I should tell you that no dove has ever gotten away from us. And some of them genuinely came to enjoy our attentions. Maybe they were women who like that kind of thing anyway, who were into some group action. Is that one of your fantasies, little dove? Being taken over and used by a group of strange men?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing or shaking her head. She stared at him, fire in her eyes.
“Ah, it doesn’t look like it,” he continued, closing the knife and shoving it back into its case on his belt. “Doesn’t really matter to us, I assure you.
“Oh, and you noticed that I called you a dove? That’s what this is, little dove. This is our Dove Hunt. You’re the dove. And we’re very good hunters.”
2
As the afternoon wore on and night fell, Lupe Alvarez’s concern had turned to genuine worry. Lucia had simply gone to the store for some beer and chips for her brothers, who had been working hard building a new room on the house. The mercado was less than a mile from home, and the whole trip should have taken twenty minutes, at the most. But she had been gone for hours.
Jorge recognized the anxious look on her face as she stared at the phone, saying a silent prayer that it would ring and Lucia would be on the other end. “Mama,” he said. “We got to call the police.”
She had resisted that all afternoon, not only because Mexicans, even legal ones, didn’t tend to think of the authorities as their friends, but also because calling them would mean admitting that something terrible had happened. But they’d tried everything else—Jorge and Diego, Lucia’s brothers, and Raul and Oscar, Lupe’s husband and father, respectively, had gone out in the boys’ truck, combing the streets for hours while Lupe had waited at home by the phone, worrying her rosary until her fingers ached. She had lit candles, she had prayed to the Virgin and the Saints. Diego had even called Dagoberto Morales, Lucia’s ex-husband, the one who had been so cruel to her that she’d been forced to leave him and move back home.
It broke Lupe’s heart that her daughter would be divorced before she was even twenty-two. She hadn’t wanted the girl to marry him in the first place—there had been something shady about him, something that didn’t sit right with Lupe, from the very beginning. But when Lucia set her mind to something, she usually did it. This was a girl who had never owned so much as a tricycle, or training wheels, but the day she decided she wanted to ride Jorge’s big two-wheeler, she had climbed up onto the seat and, by the end of the afternoon, was an accomplished rider. Lupe thought that Lucia had inherited her own stubborn streak, and then had improved upon it.
So Lucia got married when she wanted to get married, and when it became clear to her that Dagoberto was no good, she made up her mind to get a divorce. And Lupe had to admit, with all the men in the house, it was nice to have another woman at home again, even if only for a little while.
But nothing was worse than this—not knowing where she was, feeling certain that something so horrible she couldn’t even put a name to it had happened.
“He’s right,” Oscar said. “It’s time.”
Lupe looked at her father. He was usually the last to want anything to do with the authorities. He’d been illegal when he’d moved to the Estados Unidos, and had remained here, with that status, for more than a decade. Dodging the law had become second nature to him, and continued to be even though he and the rest of the family had been citizens for several years now.
“If you think so …” she began.
“I do,” he said. He sat in his chair, feet up on the ottoman, arms crossed resolutely. The circulation in his legs was bad and he had to keep his feet up when he wasn’t working or they swelled and ached. Anyway, he was in his seventies, and had earned the right to relax in the evenings. But he didn’t look very relaxed right now—with his silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he looked every inch the strict schoolteacher he had been back in Veracruz. Only the bad legs and the stringy, tanned arms and the pale circle on his head where his hat kept the sun off during the day revealed that he’d spent the last fifteen years working outdoors instead of in a classroom.
“They’ll just tell us to wait twenty-four hours,” Diego said. “It’s on every TV show.”
Diego was the bigger of the boys, practically a giant compared to his parents Lupe and Raul, neither of whom were taller than five-six. Construction work had put muscles on both boys, but on the smaller Jorge they looked somehow unnatural. Diego just looked like an Aztec prince.
“If that’s what they say, then that’s what they say,” Oscar insisted. “Still, you must try.”
Lupe wasn’t quite sure how making the call had become her responsibility, but she didn’t question it. Keeping the family whole was a woman’s job, she supposed, and this fell into that category somehow. Since Mecca was an unincorporated community, there was no local police force. Instead, she found the phone number of the nearest Sheriff’s substation and called.
When she was finally connected to Henry Rios, what he said chilled her to the bone.
“I’m glad you called, Lupe. We had a report earlier today, about a possible abduction. But it was just from one eyewitness, and not a very reliable one at that. He didn’t know who was taken, or by exactly who, or in what kind of vehicle. It was all really vague.”
“So you think it’s my Lucia?” she asked, fighting back tears.
“I don’t know. But it’s a possibility we’ll have to look at. Don’t you worry, Lupe, we’ll get your girl back if she’s really been taken. It’s kidnapping if someone snatched her, and that’s Federal—we’ll bring the FBI in. They don’t screw around with this stuff.”
“But why—why would they kidnap Lucia? She has no money for a ransom, no—”
“We’re not in a position to answer that yet,” Rios said. “We don’t even know for sure that’s what happened. But we’ll have every law enforcement officer in Riverside County looking for her, and like I said, we’ll ask the FBI for help if it turns out to be a kidnapping. Meantime, you let me know if you hear from anybody, even if they tell you not to call the authorities. Especially if they tell you that. You understand, Lupe? This is your daughter’s life we’re talking about, so we don’t want to take any chances. Let the people who do this for a living take care of it.”
His words were terrifying, as if he were already certain of what had happened to Lucia. By the time she hung up, tears were flowing and Raul was beside her, wrapping his arms around her.
She let her husband hold her as she said another silent prayer for her daughter’s safety.
3
Carter Haynes had hired a crew to set up a wooden stage on one of the slabs, with a podium on it and electric lights beaming down on him from tall poles. A microphone installed on the podium broadcast over a PA system so he could be heard over the rumble of the generators powering everything. He’d picked the best spot available for his address, but “best” was, he had learned, loosely defined here. It was across a broken, fragmented cement slab from a fire pit around which the locals congregated in the evenings, though, which meant there was a built-in audience, many of whom already had lawn chairs. In addition, a couple of rows of chairs that looked as if they’d been ripped right out of an auditorium sat at one edge of the slab, and they were mostly full. Notices had been posted about this meeting for a couple of weeks on the Slab’s bulletin board, near the old cement guardhouse that stood on the road leading up from Salton Estates.
Carter stayed off the stage while people gathered, shooting the breeze with Colonel Franklin Wardlaw, USMC, from the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. Butler, the hick Sheriff’s Lieutenant, and his doofus deputy, Billy Cobb—whom Carter had already begun calling “Corn” in his own mind—stood off to the side, trying to look useful.
Wardlaw was just here as window dressing, to demonstrate that the deal had the military’s support, but Carter had welcomed him with a big smile and a friendly handshake when he’d arrived. He was everything one would expect from a Marine colonel—tall and beefy and white, with short hair and the jutting jaw of an American hero. The good Colonel believed he owned the Chocolate Mountains, and in many respects he might as well have. The range butted almost right up against the Slab—separated from it only by a thin ribbon of canal—and the bombing missions Wardlaw’s people ran in those mountains was one of the major sources of free entertainment for the Slab dwellers.
“You know,” Carter said, “it’s very important to the people who’ll be buying homes here to know that they won’t be hit by any flying shrapnel or anything.”
Wardlaw smiled at that, and his teeth were every bit as straight and white as if they’d been specially constructed by a Marine dentist. “They don’t need to worry about that. We keep a wide berth from the civilian population. Sometimes they can see the drops, but they can’t feel them.”
“There’s kind of a safety zone, right?” Carter asked.
“That’s right,” Wardlaw assured him.
As they spoke, Carter led Wardlaw off to the side, away from his aide, a tall African-American marine Wardlaw had introduced as Jenkins. “Would you be willing to travel a little? Attend sales presentations, from time to time, in LA or San Diego? Some of these people might need a bit of convincing, and it sure sounds good coming from you. Of course,” he added, before the Colonel could object, “your expenses would be covered, you’d be put up in first-class accommodations, and we’d arrange a generous stipend for you.”
“A stipend, you say.”
“That’s right. We don’t need to talk numbers right here, but I’m sure you’d be happy with it. This is a very crucial aspect of the sales pitch, and not one I want to take any chances with.”
Wardlaw didn’t look at him, but worried with the toe of his dress shoe at a strange-looking mushroom that had grown up in a crack in the cement slab. “I’m a busy man, as I’m sure you understand,” he said. “But I’ve always believed that the military and private enterprise have to be fair and helpful with one another. I’m sure we can arrive at some sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement.”
They shook hands again, and Carter excused himself to head back to the platform. Used to urban functions, he had visited Eddie Bauer before this trip and wore a new yellow cotton duck shirt with khaki slacks and deck shoes. He was surprised to see the locals showing up in rags, virtually—torn T-shirts, overalls, ancient stretch pants, filthy, grease-stained jeans. These people, he realized suddenly, were poor. He had known that but not really processed what it meant, before. Now, faced with the reality of it, he understood.
What he was offering them would seem like a fortune.
Lieutenant Butler gave him a heads up. “Reckon that’s all you’re gonna get,” he said. “Most folks are here, and the ones that aren’t probably aren’t coming.”
“I guess I’ll get to it, then,” Carter said. He nodded to Butler and Corn and mounted the stage, feeling the warmth as the lights bathed him. Crossing to the podium, he switched on the microphone and pulled it from its stand. Better to hold it like a rock star or an evangelist, he thought, than like a politician at a press conference. This would be, he knew, his one opportunity to get these people on his side.
He looked out at the crowd of about seventy with a solemn expression and waited for them to quiet.
“Good evening,” he began. “And thanks for coming out tonight.”
“Didn’t have to go far,” someone in the back mouthed off. The rest laughed. Carter allowed himself to crack a smile.
“Yes, that’s true,” he continued. “Nevertheless, I appreciate it. I know that you people, like all Americans, were stunned and horrified by the cowardly attacks on New York and Washington nine days ago. Life isn’t back to normal yet—I don’t know, frankly, if it’ll ever be back to what we consider normal. But life has to go on. Progress continues. Our economy is strong and it can take a few hits. The American people aren’t as soft and weak as those terrorists believe.”
He paused for applause, and there was scattered clapping but no outburst. Butler had warned him that these people had a strong independent streak. The Slab was, some said, practically a country to itself, where the laws of California and the US barely applied.
“Let me get one of those ragheads in my sights!” someone shouted. There were whoops and hollers at that one.
“We’d all like to get our hands on those terrorists,” Carter said. “And in our audience we have a distinguished military guest who some of you know, Col. Wardlaw from the Yuma Air Station. Colonel, maybe you can nail a few terrorists for all of us!” Another burst of applause and whoops met this comment. Wardlaw nodded and smiled politely.
“But before you get the wrong idea, I’m no politician and I’m not here to talk about the attacks. What I am is a businessman. Business, capitalism, the profit motive, that’s what made America great. That’s what the terrorists are fighting against, but capitalism is stronger than whatever they would replace it with. And tonight, I’m here to share the proceeds of capitalism with all of you.”
He paused to let that sink in. The crowd was quiet, now, waiting for an explanation.
“I know you all love living out here, on the Slab. Free of rules, maybe free of taxation, able to do your own thing without making mortgage or rent payments. Sounds good to me too, let me tell you.” He tossed in a chuckle there, and had it returned by his audience. But he knew he was on thin ice here. “But things change, and we have to roll with those changes. So here’s the deal. My company has purchased the land we’re all on—the whole Slab—from its previous owners, the federal government. Our intent is to build a real Salton Estates—not the one that failed, down along the shore, but a workable one right here in one of the loveliest spots in the world. We’ll be putting up luxury homes with one of the best views in the best state in the union, of our own Salton Sea, backed by the Chocolate Mountains.”
From the crowd he heard definite grumbling now, so he pressed on quickly. “Now, legally, I could just have each and every one of you evicted from the premises. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m sure Lieutenant Butler doesn’t have any interest in enforcing something like that, either, even though it would be his job to do so. No, I think you’ll like my idea a whole lot better.”
“You sayin’ my Jayco ain’t a luxury home?” someone shouted.
Carter ignored him and went back to the podium, replacing the microphone in its stand and letting the suspense build for a moment. Before he spoke, he gripped the podium’s sides. “We’re expecting to make a profit from this deal, or we wouldn’t do it. So, in the interests of fairness, we’re going to share that profit with you, up front, out of our own pockets, before we even see a dime.”
This drew some approval from the crowd—a few claps, a couple of shouts.
“That’s right,” he went on. “Because I know you’ll have to move somewhere, pick up stakes, as it were, I will be coming to visit each of you personally over the next several days. And I’ll be bringing two thousand dollars to every household living full-time on the Slab.”
More applause at that. He’d been right—to these people, two grand was a significant amount of change. His sources told him there were fewer than seventy permanent households on the Slab, so the payoff wouldn’t be too expensive. And it’d save money over the long run—if he had gone the eviction route, there would be legal costs, security costs, the risk that some disgruntled ex-Slabber would come back and torch or vandalize the houses after he’d put some real money into them. Everyone would have to sign a release to get their money, agreeing not to bad-mouth the new Salton Estates Corporation and to move at least ten miles away—to make sure they didn’t just set up a new camp right next to the planned resort—but when he was dangling cash in front of them, he thought that process would go smoothly.
On a high note, Carter wrapped up quickly and got off the stage, promising to answer questions individually when he visited each home. The lights were killed, the generators shut down, and Lieutenant Butler walked him to his Town Car. A hotel room waited in Palm Desert, and he couldn’t wait to get there and shower the grit of this place off him.
This had gone more smoothly than he’d expected, but he still hated the Slab.