Tears of the Princess

By Melodie Thomas

Edited by Holly Hart

This is the first chapter of the sequel to “Princess of the Desert”. I do recommend reading the first story before starting this one, as much of the story will not make sense otherwise. Again, I would like to give my unending thanks to Holly for her editing and guidance. I do hope I am making her job a little easier as I gain more experience at this writing thing. I welcome your comments, thoughts and suggestions as that is the only way I will know what needs to be improved. As with the first story, I will maintain the “r21/a” rating. Though I will attempt to avoid many of the explicit descriptions, the story will be venturing into some of the darker corners of society, where dreams are many, but fairy tales are few.

Chapter 1

Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Veracruz, Mexico, the shipping capital of Mexico that handles over seventy five percent of all in import and export activity for Mexico. With that much money passing through one town, both above and below the table, the government has to be involved and getting their cut. The post card picture views of the down town high rises and the opulent resorts along the southern beach are in large contrast to the dirty, dump alleys off of the shipping ports that contain dozens of bars and back alley brothels, designed to care for the weary sailor from a newly arriving ship, and take the extra money that he has just been paid. In the back alleyways, anything can be bought or sold, tobacco, liquor, drugs, or people. If you have the right amount of money, you can buy a human life here, or have one eliminated just as easily.

I have spent the last three days in this shit hole, living in a rat infested, two hundred eighty peso per night room just down the street. I have not had a hair cut in almost a year, nor have I shaved in the last six months. Wearing torn blue jeans, a torn tee shirt and I have grease under my nails, I guess the only thing that sets me apart from those around me, is that I did have bath last month. With the exception of the bath, I look just like the rest of the dockyard and ship hands, who are the primary customers for this part of town. However, I am not from one of the ships lying at harbor, nor do I work on the docks. I am here to hunt, I hunt people.

Specifically, I am hunting for Sandy Wilson and Katie Madox, a couple of fifteen year old girls who disappeared from their parent’s suburban San Diego home a little over three months ago. The story that we got, was Sandy and Katie had decided it was a good idea to impress their school friends by being able to supply various drugs as party favors, being the most popular girls in school and all. The girls were turning such a good business for the local drug dealer that he started forwarding them credit on purchases for parties, but then the parties started getting smaller and smaller, while the credit kept getting bigger and bigger. One day, the girls just failed to come home from school.

A missing persons report was finally filed three days after the girls had failed to return home. I guess two fifteen year olds missing for two days was okay with the parents, however, three days was too much. The police department took just under a week to identify the relationship the girls had with the drug dealer and another week to get enough evidence on the drug dealer to bring him in for questioning. After a day of questioning, the drug dealer agreed to tell police where the girls were, in exchange for dropping the drug charges. The dealer claimed the girls owned him thousands of dollars, in the five digit range, they couldn’t pay. The dealer went to his supplier with the problem and the supplier said he would deal with it.

One evening, both girls were snatched off the street, walking home from school, loaded on a boat and taken to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they were sold to a brothel owner for twice what they owed. The local police, realizing they were now out of their element, contacted the FBI, who contacted the State Department, who contact the Mexican Ambassador, who promptly denied that the Mexican government had any involvement in the case. However, the Ambassador did say, that since the U.S. Government was doing such a good job in helping smooth border relations with Mexico, that his government would see if they had a couple of free resources that could ‘look around’ for the missing girls.

The State Department reported back to the FBI that the Mexican government was working on it, the FBI reported the same to the local police. The local police told the parents the Government was working on it, closed the case and started working on getting evidence on the drug supplier that had been named by the drug dealer. Four weeks later, Mary Beth Rosenthal, managing director for the global nonprofit organization ‘Trail of Tears’, which commits to both a direct and indirect battle against human slavery and trafficking, received a phone call from one of the distraught mothers along with a plea for help. Mary Beth reviewed the case, authorized the funding and passed the case over to me, Dan McNeil.

I have been working with Trail of Tears for around ten months. I started a month after the FBI decided they no longer needed my services, which was two days after the disciplinary panel decided I was a disgrace to the badge and should no longer be allowed to wear it. I was a rogue agent that did not believe in following protocol, chain of command and other well established procedures. I had also failed to protect my principle; my negligence had cost the life of a critical government witness. At least I agreed with that last part, my negligence had cost the life of Stephanie, the woman that I loved.

In the months that followed Stephanie’s death, the witch hunt was running at full steam within the echelons of the government, and I was being labeled as a conspiracy theorist or a simple nut case. I had become convinced there was no way Smith could have done the things he did without inside connections and the backing of someone in the government. The use of the Air force bases, the embassy in Philippines, classified radio equipment, and activating a SEAL team in Hawaii. Those things just could not have been done without some government or military backing. As I was testifying before the oversight committee and various members of the Justice Department, I quickly came to a horrifying realization that the cover-up was much bigger than I imagined, and I was going to lose. Evidence started disappearing, the Ambassador to the Philippines testified that he’d had no visitors during the time in question and none of the special radio equipment was used. None of the Air Force bases showed any records of the Lear at their facility, nor was there any record of Stephanie or me on any base.

The Justice Department started threatening me with charges if I continued to push such a preposterous story. They already had enough evidence to charge me with border violations, since I claimed to have been in the Philippines, but immigration showed no records of me leaving or entering the country. They showed me the charges for the hotel and expenses in the Philippines and Hawaii were coming through my FBI business expense system, not through some government credit card that I thought I was using. They were talking misappropriation of government funds, or embezzlement. The final straw came when we reviewed the evidence collected at the island during the final raid. Reports from the Navy showed only the bodies of five men being recovered, all identified as known drug dealers. The bodies of Vivian Vasnev and the girls had disappeared. Justice was starting to paint a picture of a gay FBI agent and his transsexual girlfriend getting involved with some drug activity that went bad.

Congress completed their review of the case after a month of testimony and with no victims, no detention center, no suspects or no real evidence of any kind, ruled the issue was more the overactive imagination of an uncontrolled FBI agent that obviously needed psychiatric counseling. The FBI sent me to their resident psychiatrist who found, not surprisingly, that I was unfit for duty and recommended that I be released from the Bureau. A private consultation with the men reporting to the Director gave me the option to quietly resign, which would avoid a termination on my record, and the charges the Justice Department were threatening would disappear. I know what a stacked deck and a losing hand looks like so I left. A month later, I received a call from Mary Beth telling me she had heard some things about me and some people she knew recommended she contact me if she wanted a good investigator. I flew to Sacramento to meet with her and the chain of events led me to this dump of a bar, two blocks off of the shipping docks in Veracruz, Mexico, looking for two lost girls.

We started our search for the missing girls in Puerto Vallarta, where the drug dealer said they were sold to a brothel owner. Since I had started working for Mary Beth, I have had a constant partner in Charlie Swenson, a 25 year old bean pole of a kid that does not look a day over eighteen. Charlie is a couple of inches over six feet, but was long and gangly. His hair was shoulder length and looked like a couple of rats nested in it. I don’t think he shaved since he was sixteen and his four or five dozen whiskers made a ratty pile on his chin. Though he looked like a drugged out rocker, Charlie was a good kid who’d lost his sister to a forced prostitution ring when she was thirteen years old. They found her body two years later. Charlie is a tireless bloodhound when we are on a trail. He insists the cops did not do enough to find his sister before it was too late and has sworn a personal oath that he will not make the same mistake.

On this case, I am also working with Mike Hernandez, an American born Chicano who earned his stripes on the streets of LA. Mike speaks the language like a native and carries the street creed of the gangs in Mexico that Charlie and I are lacking. My boat drivers on this trip are Peter and Marsha Bates, a married couple. When working in Mexico we usually use a boat because we have better options for getting in and getting out without involving the authorities. Since we don’t have any official authority to be here, it is best that way.

Contrary to what some might think, finding the trail of a couple of young white girls, traveling without parents in the heartland of Mexico is not that difficult if you ask the right questions while holding the right amount of money. It took us less than a day to pick up the trail as they headed east out of Puerto Vallarta and just over three weeks to track them to Veracruz. It took two days in Veracruz to narrow the search to the shipping docks and we have spent the last three days moving from dive bar to dive bar looking and listening.

There are probably four or five dozen bars scattered throughout the area surrounding the docks, and for the most part they are all the same. Though the names are different, and some of the lights and signs are different, but they are all filled with drunken sailors, dock hands and prostitutes. They all have wooden floors that are now more dirt than wood, a couple of dozen broken up tables and chairs, that you would question could even hold your weight, a community bathroom that reaches a sanitation level that even the cockroaches avoid, and two or three rooms in the back where the women apply their trade.

This was the third bar I had been in today, and it did not look much different than the two prior. Charlie had heard the name of this place mentioned by a couple a dock hands an hour ago as a place with some interesting new girls, which was enough for us to take a look. I grabbed a table in the back, near the entrance to the special rooms, while Charlie took a stool at the bar where he could see the front door and me.

I had just ordered my beer when one of the local senoritas who used the back rooms as an office, started discussing with me the possibility of being her next customer. Since drawing attention to myself was the last thing I wanted, I offered to buy her a beer and discuss the issue, at least I would look the same as the other six or seven guys in the bar. I was about halfway through a bottle of beer when a heavy set Mexican came in off of the street and started up a discussion with the bartender. I was a little too far away to get the whole conversation but I did get enough to know the new arrival wanted to negotiate the cost of an hour with ‘the blonde’. Since blondes in Mexico are not that common, and Sandy Wilson was a blonde, this had my attention.

“I heard the man over there say you have a blonde here?” I asked the Senorita sitting across from me.

She rolled her eyes and gave a heavy sigh, “Si, we have a young skinny blonde here. I don’t know why all you men want those skinny runts. They don’t know how to treat a man like I do. I suppose you want the skinny blonde too?” She asked me, with more than just a little disgust in her voice.

“No, no,” I tried to assure her, “I was only surprised to hear that there was a blonde here, is all.”

She smiled back at me, at least I think it was a smile, “It is okay, I can take better care of you. I told Jose that he should not have bought both of those skinny girls.”

“There are two here?” I asked with a forced look of amusement and surprise.

“Si, dos, and I wish they would go away. They are hurting business for the rest of us.”

The negotiations at the bar reach a point where the new arrival wanted to see the merchandise he was purchasing before he put the cash on the counter. The bartender walked across the room, to the door leading to the back, which was only six feet or so from my table. A couple of minutes later he returned to the bar area leading a blonde girl. The girl was five-four or five-five, long blonde hair that was very stringy as it did not appear it had been washed in a few weeks. She was wearing a black miniskirt that barely covered her butt and no panties. She was also wearing what use to be a white chiffon top that was unbuttoned, and tied around the midriff, most of her small boobs where hanging out. The poor girl was trying to walk in what appeared to be a pair of six inch spike heels, and she was not being very successful at it. I had just found Sandy Wilson.

I casually reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. I don’t smoke, but everyone else in here did, so no one was going to be paying attention to me. I tapped out one cigarette, put it between my lips and lit it, blowing the smoke out without inhaling, God I hate these things. I then placed the cigarette in the ashtray at the table and ignored it.

Charlie has this neat application in his cell phone that turns one of the hot buttons on the outside of the phone into a special tool. If Charlie presses this button, his phone starts ringing like an incoming call. As soon as Charlie saw me set the cigarette in the ashtray, he pressed the button on his phone and his phone started ringing.

“Hello? Hello?” Charlie said to his cell, “Wait, I can’t hear you, let me step outside.” Charlie stood up and walked out the front door, talking on his fake cell phone call.

The heavy set Mexican, smiling with the satisfaction of his inspection, handed a wad of money over to the barman, grabbed Sandy by the hand, and basically pulled her into the back hallway.

The cigarette was my signal to Charlie of a confirmed identification, and Charlie walking outside talking on his cell was the signal to Mike that we had the targets and he needed to move the truck close to the windows. A few minutes later, Charlie re-entered the bar and walked directly to the door that led to the back rooms, but made the left as if he was going to the toilet. We had discovered in most of these places, if you opened the door to the toilet, it blocked the view to the hallway around the back rooms, it was also the signal to the rest of the bar that the toilet was in use. A few minutes later, I heard the door to the toilet close, which meant that Charlie had slipped into the back hallway and now it was my turn to repeat the maneuver. It was show time.

Slipping into the hallway behind the open toilet door, I spotted Charlie two doors down with his ear pressed against a door. As he saw me enter, he nodded his head at the door he was listening too indicating this was the one. I slid up to the wall beside the door, while Charlie was on the other side, by the doorknob. I pulled the lead shot filled leather blackjack out of my back pocket and looped the holding strap around my wrist, and nodded to Charlie, who reached down and slowly turned the doorknob. Surprisingly, the knob turned silently, releasing the door latch. Now, if it would just open as silently.

The door only moved about four inches before the hinges start creaking, which meant we had to go to plan B. I quickly pushed the door open, stepping into the room at the same time. The heavy Mexican was standing with his back to the door and Sandy was on her knees in front of him. I did not need to see it to know what was happening. I was already one step into the room before the man started to turn. He was only part way around when I completed the second step and the blackjack connected with the back of his head with a solid, hollow, thump. The impact propelled his head forward and his body started to fall to my left. I quickly caught his body and lowered him quietly to the ground as Charlie closed the door behind us. Sandy was still on her knees with her mouth open and her eyes as wide as saucers.

“Are you Sandy Wilson?” I asked as I rested the Mexican’s unconscious body on the floor.

Sandy just nodded with a look of fear on her face.

“My name is Dan, and I am here to take you home.”

“Home?” she asked, as if in a dream.

“Yes, home. Do you have any clothes?”

Sandy looked at me then down at herself, then back at me.

“Do you have pants, a shirt, shoes?” I asked again

Sandy just shook her head.

“Great. Is Katie Madox here?”

Sandy nodded her head and pointed at the wall, indicating the next room.

“Get her shoes off of her and get her wrapped in something,” I told Charlie as I headed back for the door.

I slipped back out into the hallway, relieved to find it empty. I started moving towards the next door when it suddenly opened and a big white guy, six foot plus, two hundred fifty or better, with tattoos on two arms that looked like tree trunks, stepped into the hall.

He looked at me for a second, “You next?”

“Yeah,” I grunted.

He nodded, “you might want to clean her up a bit. Been a while for me, if you know what I mean, but damn well worth it.” He slapped me on the shoulder and he moved past, down the hall, returning to the bar.

I quickly stepped into the room and closed the door. Lying on the bed, in the fetal position was a naked fifteen year old with chestnut brown hair. She looked at me with hollow eyes and I saw the big wet spot on the bed under her butt, shit.

“Katie?” I asked and received a head nod for a response.

“I am here to take you home, do you have any clothes?”

She just nodded her head toward the two-drawer dresser against the wall. I opened the top drawer and found a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, which I handed to her along with a dirty towel that was lying on top.

“Clean yourself up and get dressed, we are leaving.”

Just then, Charlie slipped into the room with Sandy, wrapped in a blanket, “Windows are nailed shut in the other room.” Charlie whispered.

I quickly stepped over to the window in this room and found the same thing, nailed shut, from the outside. I guess breaking in was not what they were worried about. The glass was painted over so we could not see out. I pulled a small roll of duct tape out of my front pocket and proceeded to tape up one of the nine panes in the window. Behind me, Charlie was forcing the tee shirt on to Katie. After the tape was in place, I grabbed the pillow off the bed, put it over the pane and punched it; the glass in the window fractured, but was held in place by the tape. Removing the pillow and pulling on the tape, I was able to remove most of the windowpane, at least enough to look out and see Mike.

Mike saw me and recognized my indication that the window was nailed shut. He pulled a large crowbar and bolt cutters out of the truck and headed our way. Forcing the crowbar under the window near the nails, he jerked down on it. The nails gave ground with a loud screech, but the window moved enough for him to get the bolt cutters in the gap and cut the nails. With all three nails cut, it still took significant effort from both of us to get the window open and it did not open quietly, we would have probably been better off just to break it, because if someone didn’t hear this racket, they were deaf.

Charlie started forcing the girls out the window to Mike as I moved back over to the door, hearing footsteps coming down the hall. I reached the door just as it opened and the barman stepped in carrying a Colt .45 ACP. Since I was expecting him, and he was not expecting me, the blackjack made contact with the bridge of his nose before he could react. I grabbed his shirt, and the gun as he started to fall, pulling him into the room. Charlie was just going out the window as I closed the door again, but I could hear people shouting in the bar. I went out the window head first, taking the 45 with me, just as someone kicked in the door to the room. I hit the dirt on my right shoulder and did a full roll, coming back up on my feet, running for the truck. I could hear people shouting at us from the window, and I just hoped like hell they did not have another gun, as I ejected the magazine from the 45, cleared the chamber and threw the gun into a garbage pile just before jumping into the back of the truck.

Mike had the truck moving before I was sitting, with Charlie leaned up against the cab in the back of the truck on one side, me on the other, hoping we looked like a couple of drunk deck hands getting a ride back to our ship. The girls were under a tarp at our feet and were either too drugged, scared or both to move. There was a lot of yelling coming from the bar as we left, and I was fully expecting a Mexican chase scene to unfold, but it didn’t happen. Mike made a number of turns and maneuvers through various alleyways and side streets before we found ourselves on the main road leading to the shipping piers. As we merged with traffic, Mike continued north, past the shipping piers and on out of town.

About a half hour north of the shipping pier, Mike turned off the main road onto a dirt two lane that headed toward the coast. Two miles later, Mike stopped at the bottom of an old wooden dock that extended about one hundred yards into the bay. At the end of the dock was our thirty foot cabin cruiser with Peter and Marsha waiting for us.

The dock was made of old cracked wood, and neither of the girls had shoes, so I scooped Katie up in my arms while Mike carried Sandy and we walked out to the boat. We carried the girls below to the cabin and placed them on a bunk as Charlie released the dock ropes and Peter started up the twin 300hp inboards for the run for home. Marsha came down the hatch to the cabin area just as Mike headed back up.

“How are they?” Marsha asked.

“High on something, and they were not using condoms.” I replied.

Marsha lowered her eyes and shook her head, “Well, at least they are alive.”

“Yeah,” as I headed back up the hatch to topside.

Marsha was a registered nurse and she would do the best she could to get the girls cleaned up before their reunion with their parents. We were not worried about the trail of evidence or collecting evidence, because no one was going to be sent to trial here, no one would even try to press charges.

As I came back on deck, Mike handed me a beer and I took a chair next to Charlie and grabbed the binoculars. Until we were outside the twelve-mile limit and into international waters, a chase was still possible, Charlie, who had already been watching the horizon, shook his head, indicating there was nothing out there yet. Thirty minutes later, Peter signaled that we had reached international water as he swung the bow of the boat to the north. I reached into the compartment by my chair and pulled out the satellite phone stored there and pressed the speed dial button.

“Hello, Dan,” came the voice of Mary Beth a couple of moments later.

“We got them.” I responded.

There was a moments silence and a sigh, “Thank you. Where are you headed?”

“Corpus Christi, should be there early morning tomorrow.”

“Okay, I will contact the Coast Guard. They need anything special?”

“No, just medical and psychiatric.” I answered, after another swallow of beer.

“You heading home?”

“Yeah, I think all three of us are going to take a couple of days. I will be in touch in a few days.”

“Okay, talk to you in a few days,” and the line went dead.

Friday, August 6, 2010
At six yesterday morning, we rendezvoused with a Coast Guard cutter two hours out of Corpus Christi and transferred our charges to them. This was a system that Mary Beth had worked out sometime ago. The politicians, the police and the Coast Guard got credit for finding some lost people, and we stayed out of the press. It was a whole lot easier doing our job if people did not know who we were. Besides, it saved us having to answering a bunch of questions to police, reporters, and even worse, families.

Mike, Charlie and I got off in Corpus Christi and caught a taxi to the airport, where tickets were already waiting for us on the first available flights. Peter and Marsha would put the boat into storage and catch flights out tomorrow. Mike had the best connection and was gone within the hour. Charlie and I had a couple of hours to kill, so found our way to one of the airport lounges to have a couple of beers.

“You going to go tell Stephanie we brought a couple more home?” Charlie asked a few beers into the wait.

“Yep, as soon as I get a shower, I am a little late delivering the flowers, too.” I replied staring at my beer.

“You going to be okay?” Charlie asked with real concern in is voice.

I sighed for a moment, “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

Charlie and I had shared a lot of the skeletons in our closets with each other, and he knows going home to me was bitter sweet. I went to see Stephanie every day when I was in Tucson, and missed it when I was on the road. But, he also knew I could not sleep in my own house. Every night, when I closed my eyes, I could hear Stephanie crying in the other room. In the beginning, I would spend hours searching through the house to find her, which I never did. Now I just lay there and listen. I know as soon as I close my eyes I will hear her sobs, and my heart will break all over again. Friends and family have been trying to get me to sell the house and move, but I can’t do that. Maybe she is really there, and I can’t abandon her again.

Charlie’s flight left about forty five minutes before mine, so we said our goodbyes at his gate and I watched him board the plane, then wandered over to my gate to wait. I had just sat down when my cell phone rang, it was Mike Holiday. Mike was another casualty of the whole affair last year. No, he had not lost his job, but he did lose my mom. Mike knew we were in a losing situation and he and I discussed it many times. Something was being covered up, and some powers somewhere were getting rid of the trouble makers. Mike was more than willing to go to war with me. He was on the island the night Stephanie died and he knew the evidence was being tampered with. However, he was only two years from getting his pension and I convinced him to stay out of it. Besides, I would still have a friend on the inside, should I need one. My mom did not see things the same. Her son was being made out to be an incompetent idiot, which I may well have been, but she could not stand the fact that Mike was not fighting for me. I tried to explain it but to no avail. As soon as I was released from the FBI, Mike was released from his duties as boyfriend.

“Hey, Mike.” I answered the phone.

“Hi, Dan. I hear you are back in country.” I think Mike had some form of connection with Mary Beth, because he always seemed to know what was going on. I could never prove it, but I have the feeling that Mary Beth had initially gotten my name from Mike.

“Yeah, waiting for my flight home now.”

“Great, I am going to be down in Tucson tomorrow. Feel like catching a couple beers in the afternoon?”

“Sure, don’t have anything else going at the moment.” This was usually a code signal from Mike that he had something he wanted to talk to me about. After the experiences we’d both had in the case, we did not trust that someone was not keeping track of us in some fashion. All communications between us were done face to face in a public area. Maybe we were paranoid, but maybe we had a good reason to be.

“Okay, give you a call tomorrow afternoon. Fly safe.”

“See you, Mike.”

The flight to Tucson was only a couple of hours and I landed in midafternoon. I took a taxi home, dropped my duffle bag in the laundry room and headed for the shower. It actually took two showers before I could no longer smell the stink of the Mexican bars. I decided the clothes were heading straight for the dump. After the shower, I dressed in clean clothes from the closet, climbed into my Vette and headed to the cemetery.

After I buried Stephanie, I would visit her each day, and each time I would just sit on the grass next to her grave and talk to her. After about three weeks of that, a small concrete park bench showed up, set alongside Stephanie’s grave. I have no idea who put it there, but it has never moved since it was placed. I parked at the cemetery, walked to Stephanie’s grave, placed the flowers by the headstone and took my place on the bench next to her. There was something about the rock stain on her headstone, which in the beginning drove me crazy. Her head stone had her name, and below that the words, ‘Princess of the Desert’. Inside each carved letter, a black stain had been added so the words stand out against the white stone. However, there seemed to be something wrong with the stain in the word ‘Princess’ because, even though the company that supplied it said it could not happen, the black stain seeped out slowing forming black streaks that ran down the face of the headstone. They reminded me of tears.

I told Stephanie that we had brought two more home alive, I thought she would like that. I told her I missed her and that I loved her. For the thousandth time, I tried to apologize to her for not doing my job, not taking care of her, for failing her when she needed me, and for the thousandth time the tears started to flow.

Mike agreed to meet me at the Irish Pub this afternoon, and I arrived about a half hour early, taking a booth in the back. Right on time, I saw Mike coming through the front door, but he was not alone. There was a woman with him. It took a couple of seconds for the recognition to set in, but when it did I could not stop smiling as I stood to get a hug from my sister, Brenda.

Anymore, there are times, where it is really hard to remember that Brenda use to be my scrapping older brother as we grew up. She was looking more and more like a natural woman every time I saw her. Her brown hair was now well below her shoulder blades, she sported a very feminine figure, and she walked across the Pub in three inch heels as if she were born in them.

“At least you don’t smell as bad as you look,” Brenda said as she stepped back from our hug. “You look like you live on the street and your eyes don’t look like you have slept in a month.”

“It’s a good thing you did not see me yesterday,” I smiled, “I could not stand the smell of myself. Besides, it is not true, I slept a little last week.”

Brenda shook her head as she slid into the booth on Mike’s side, “Seriously, Dan, I am worried about you.”

I just smiled and nodded, seems I hear that lot from friends and family any more. “What brings you down here Bren?”

“I called her,” Mike said, “told her I was coming down for the day to see if she wanted to come along.”

“I wanted to come see for myself that you were okay.” Brenda added.

“Well,” I said spreading my arms, “here I am, all safe and sound.”

Brenda maintained a worried look on her face, “Why does that not make me feel any better?”

The waitress arrived at the table and we ordered beer and a couple of plates of appetizers that would work for snacks while we visited.

“You ever talk to Mom?” I asked Mike, thinking, here were the two kids with the ex-boyfriend, where was Mom?

Mike just looked down at his beer and shook his head.

“I am still working on Mom,” Brenda said, “but she is pretty stubborn.”

“Yeah,” Mike added, “She not only blames me for not helping you more, but she also is blaming me for not responding faster that last night when Brenda told me the story.”

“That is crazy,” I responded, “you did what you were supposed to do.”

“She is just hurting too, Dan.” Brenda stepped in, “She loved Stephanie and she hates what has happened to you. She needed to blame someone, and poor Mike was the target.”

We were all quiet for a few moments. “I have something to show you.” Mike reached inside his jacket. He took a piece of folded white paper and slid it across the table to me. I opened it and saw a picture of a group of men standing on some outdoor steps somewhere. At first I had no idea what I was looking at or why I was looking at it.

“Okay, so what does this have to do …” I froze. There in the back corner; I felt a chill go down my spine as I stared at the picture.

“Is that him?” Mike asked

“When was this taken?”

“A little over two months ago, in Thailand. Bangkok to be exact.”

“Why?” I asked, still staring at the man in the photo.

“It was actually a newspaper photo taken of a meeting of the Thai leadership counsel. Is it him?”

“Joshua Smith, or whatever the hell is name is.” I answered as I refolded the paper and slid it back to Mike. “Was that a military uniform he was wearing?”

“Not sure, kind of looks like one, and kind of doesn’t.” Mike answered.

I looked Mike right in the eye, “Mike, if I ever find that son of a bitch; I am going to kill him.”

“Dan!” Brenda responded in surprise.

“I hope I get to talk to him first,” Mike stepped in.

“Oh, I plan to talk to him, but one of us will not survive that conversation.”

We were all quiet for a minute. “What are you doing with the picture, Mike?” I asked.

“Just keeping my eyes open. I want to find these people too, just like you, looking for evidence, building my own files.”

I nodded, “I appreciate you keeping me in the loop.”

“I will keep doing so, as long as you promise to behave yourself. We need to find all of these people, Dan, not go ballistic each time we find one.”

I nodded, “I understand, Mike, but understand me, I have no intention of letting any of these people go to trial.”

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Monday, I got a call from Mary Beth asking if I could come up to Sacramento for a few days, she had a couple of cases she wanted to look at. After checking flights, I sent a text message to Charlie, telling him I would be in Sacramento on Wednesday, to which he said he would be as well. My flight did not leave until noon, so this morning I went to the cemetery to tell Stephanie that I would be gone for a while and I would be back to see her as soon as I could.

I was sitting on the concrete bench, next to Stephanie’s grave, lost in my own thoughts, when I felt a hand rest lightly on my shoulder. Looking up I saw Paula Rienfelt standing next to me. I moved over on the bench so she would have a place to sit, as she settled in next to me.

“How are you doing, Dan?” Paula asked

I just shrugged in response.

“Brenda called me; she is quite worried about you.” Paula sat quietly for a moment since I didn’t respond. “Do you still come here every day?”

I nodded.

“Do you still hear her crying at night when you sleep?”

Another nod.

“Dan, I really wish you would let me help you. This is not good, you need to let go.”

“Thanks Paula,” I sighed, “I don’t really need any help, I just need to find a way to make it up to her, and I don’t think I can ever let go of her. I was supposed to take care of her and protect her, I failed.”

“What would Stephanie want you to do, Dan?”

I looked up at the sky, with a sigh, “She would want me to go on with my life, which is what I am doing. I am just doing it my way. Right now, I have a plane to catch. Walk with me to my car?”

“Okay, but when you come back, I want you to come see me, spend some time talking to me.”

I nodded, I knew I needed to.

“Promise?”

“I promise, Paula.”

The flight to Sacramento was just over two hours and a total of three hours by the time I got a rental car and drove over to the office. The ‘Trail of Tears’ office was nothing fancy. This was an organization that had been started by various backers to help fight human trafficking and slavery around the world. It was a nonprofit organization and Mary Beth was a firm believer that the money donated by her supporters should be spent on the fight against trafficking, not on the frills of an office, furniture or fancy cars.

The Sacramento office was a small three room affair located in a strip mall on the lower income side of town. The front windows were covered in handmade advertisements, but the racks just inside the door were loaded with pamphlets, brochures and other reading material about the extent and impact of human trafficking on the world as a whole. The main office area consisted of four cheap metal desks manned by volunteers who answered phones and emails. Mary Beth used one larger office for herself, and a smaller room that doubled as a pantry and storage room. There was always a large urn of coffee against the back wall, and usually a plate full of cookies, or some other homemade goodies sitting next to it.

As I made my way through the front door, three of the four desks were occupied by regular volunteers that I knew, who all waved. Charlie was already here, sitting in a folding chair back by the coffee pot, reading a newspaper, I tapped him on the shoulder as I got a cup of coffee.

“She is waiting for you.” Charlie said, without looking up from the paper.

“Then, let’s go see the lady.”

Charlie folded his paper, stood and followed me to the only office door in the place, which was almost always open. I tapped on the door frame as I walked in. Mary Beth was well into her fifties, with long blonde hair that was starting to show a lot more gray than blonde. Despite her age, she still presented the very attractive figure of a younger active woman. She looked up from the file she was reading and smiled as we walked in.

“Dan, good to see you. Charlie, could you close the door?”

I took a seat across the desk from Mary Beth, while Charlie closed the door and took the seat next to me.

“What do you have for us Aunt Bee?” I asked with a smile. I started calling Mary Beth ‘MB’ after working with her for a few months. Soon ‘MB’ start to morph into ‘MBee’, and then Charlie picked it up and started calling her Aunt Bee, the name just stuck after that.

“I have something a little different for you to look into for me.” Mary Beth said and she lifted a file off her desk and slid it in a drawer. “I have a friend in Singapore who runs a sort of half-way house for girls trying to get out of a trafficked situation and get back home. Her name is Chi Lee Leong and I owe her a couple of favors. I was talking to Chi Lee a couple of days ago and she told me a story that was told to her by one of her local contacts. It seems that a friend, told a friend, who told a friend about a group of traffickers who were kidnapping young boys, force feminizing them, and turning them into prostitutes.”

“What?” Charlie said, sitting up straighter in his chair.

I had forgotten about the coffee in my hand. My attention was locked in on Mary Beth as this was hitting too close to home.

Mary Beth caught my stare, “Dan, I don’t think this is the same thing you were working on. This is more like the report that came out of Bangalore back in 2008, where young boys were forced to have a full SRS and then turned into prostitutes. However, in this case, so I have been told, not all are getting the full meal deal, some are only being converted partway, depending on the market they are targeted for.”

“Okay,” I said, still not relaxing, “Why us, and what do want us to do?”

“Well, as I said, I owe Chi Lee a couple of favors and she asked if I had an investigator she could borrow for a week or so to look into this story. I guess the local police don’t have time for it, so she would like to have a little independent research done to see if there is anything to the story.”

Mary Beth paused and looked at me, I guess expecting a response that did not come.

“What I would like,” Mary Beth continued, “would be for the two of you to fly over there, meet with Chi Lee, talk to her source and see if there is anything there you can advise them on, see if there is anything to it. Can you do that?”

I thought about it for a moment, “Up for a road trip Charlie?”

“I’m game, Boss, let’s go.”