The way he was looking at her… she had the strangest sense that maybe he knew. Or knew enough. Even without her telling.
“It’s okay,” he said. “And you don’t have one thing to be sorry for, do you understand? Not one.”
She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Did the special police you know… did anyone…”
He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, there’s not a lot to go on, and no one has been able to find anything. But I’m not going to give up. And I won’t let anyone else, either.”
“What about the men who took us? The Thai men? I described them all to the people from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.” She pronounced the unfamiliar words carefully.
“As I understand it, that’s a dead end. No one knows who the men are or how to find them. I know the police have your description, and if they catch anyone who looks like that, they’ll be questioned very closely.”
“Will you tell me if that happens?”
“Of course.”
She pursed her lips, frustrated. To be right here, able to ask a Portland police officer, and still not find anything useful… it was maddening.
“What about the men on the boat? The boat from Portland. How did the police even know there were smuggled people on it?”
“That’s funny, I had the same question. I asked around. Word is, it was an anonymous call to Chief Emmanuel of Llewellyn PD. Seems like a rival gang dropped a dime.”
“Dropped a dime?”
“An expression. It refers to the days when public phones only cost a dime. Someone wanting to turn someone in would use a public phone so the call couldn’t be traced. So ‘drop a dime’ came to mean an anonymous tip to the police.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Could be a lot of reasons. A business rival, disrupting someone else’s shipment. Payback for something. Maybe something else personal. Hard to say. The caller had specific information about the barge and the timing. Llewellyn PD doesn’t have much experience with people smuggling, so they called INS. There must have been a lot of cops and agents on the dock the day they rescued you.”
She nodded. “I heard the police killed two of the smugglers. But that they caught one. Maybe he knows something?”
Rick smiled. “You have good cop instincts, you know that? And yes, you heard right, two of them died in a gunfight when the police rescued you. But no, the third guy’s not talking. Says his dead brother handled all the logistics-the communications, the contacts with people who hired them. He says he didn’t know anything, didn’t even know you were all kidnapped.”
“He’s a liar.”
“I know. And I wish there were a way to prove it. The AUSA-that’s the Assistant United States Attorney, the federal prosecutor, the person responsible for putting people in prison when they commit federal crimes like kidnapping and people smuggling-the AUSA threatened him with a lot of prison time if he wouldn’t talk. But the guy still claimed to know nothing.”
“So they’ll put him in prison for a long time?”
“Twenty years. Maybe less, with time off for good behavior.”
She thought of Nason. “That doesn’t sound like so long.”
“No, you’re right. In a just world, it would be longer.”
“And… does anyone know who the other people on the boat were? Where they came from? The boat from Thailand had thirteen children. But when I woke up, it was a new boat, and the Thai children were gone and all the other people were new. They spoke languages I didn’t know.”
“This guy they caught, Timothy Tyler-goes by ‘Weed,’ by the way-he says he doesn’t know where you all came from, or who provided you. And he’s stuck to that story. The others were from a lot of different places-China, Guatemala, Sri Lanka-a mix.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. It could mean a lot of things. But in general, it means Weed’s gang or whoever hired them thought they had a willing buyer, or buyers, somewhere as far east of Portland as Llewellyn. And maybe farther east. Modern-day slavery is all over the place. Not just Portland, not just Llewellyn. Everywhere.”
“Who was going to buy us?”
“No way to know at this point. Could have been a nail salon, agricultural interests… or some sick homeowner, who wanted a maid he didn’t have to pay or account for.”
“But the children on the boat. Me, and the two who died. They were going to sell us, too?”
“Yeah. People buy children, too, I’m sorry to say. I think you can imagine why.”
She didn’t have to imagine. She knew. And Rick probably knew she knew, but was too respectful to say so.
“What about the other people on the boat from Portland? What happened to them?”
“Well, they were all adults, and they were all here illegally, so my understanding is they’ve been repatriated. Sent back to the countries they came from. You were the only kid who survived the trip, so that made you a special case. The truth is, INS didn’t know what to do with you. I guess Fred pulled some strings.”
“Strings?”
“Sorry, another expression. It means… used influence. He knows a lot of people. And then there’s his brother, Ezra, the senator. You’ve probably met him.”
Something in his tone made Livia sense he didn’t like the brother much more than he liked Mr. Lone. She wanted to ask, but only said, “Yes.”
She wanted to tell him that Mr. Lone said he knew where Nason was. But what if telling Rick made things worse for Nason? The last time she had thought she was protecting Nason, she had caused her to be hurt, hurt so badly. What if that happened again? What if Mr. Lone were telling the truth, and had located Nason through his contacts, his senator brother, something like that, and now Livia did something stupid like tell the wrong person, and got Nason hurt again?
She couldn’t risk that. She couldn’t.
But there was one more possibility. And this was her chance. She had to tell him.
She cleared her throat again and said, “There’s one thing I didn’t say to the other police who asked me. And I want to tell you. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Not Mrs. Lone. Not Mr. Lone. No one.”
“Why, honey?”
“You just have to promise.”
“Whatever you tell me, I’ll try to help. But I won’t be much use alone.”
Livia considered. It was a good point, and she hadn’t thought of it.
“Okay,” she said. “You can tell the other police you trust. But I want this… just please, I need your help. Please.”
“All right. Okay.”
“You won’t tell?”
“I won’t tell.”
“Do you know a Thai policeman?”
“You mean, a certain Thai policeman?”
“No, no, I mean, do you know Thai policemen. Any Thai policemen.”
“I don’t. But I work with people who would know the Thai police, yes.”
All right. It wasn’t quite what she’d been hoping for, but it would have to be enough.
She told him how her parents had sold her and Nason. She described Skull Face and Dirty Beard and Square Head, leaving out the parts she couldn’t talk about-parts she thought he might sense regardless. Most of all, she described where her parents lived, in enough detail so that the Thai police could go to the village.
“But you can’t tell any Thai policemen where I am,” she said. “I don’t want my parents to know. I never want to see them again. Ever. I don’t even want anyone to contact them now, but they’re the only ones who know who they sold us to. So maybe they can help find Nason. And”-her eyes filled up and she blinked away the tears-“I love her. Even more than I hate them.”
“You don’t even want your parents to know-”
“No. They don’t deserve to know anything. Not even where I am. Not even if I’m alive.”
He nodded. “All right.”
She thought about how her people hated the Thai police, whose only job seemed to be to stop the hill tribes from cutting land in the forest where they could plant food. Some people tried to pay them bribes. The police took the money, then drove the people off their land anyway.