I didn’t say anything.
“People come to me with children that need homes,” she said. “I find them homes.”
“Who brings them to you?”
“Just depends,” she said. “Most times, they request anonymity.”
“You don’t run background checks? Ask for birth records? Anything?”
“As I said. They request anonymity.”
“So you have no idea where these kids are coming from?” I asked, incredulous. “And then you just find some family for them?” I paused. “And you must pay for them. The ones that are brought to you. Then you make it up when you sell to the loving families, correct? Maybe charge double what you paid?”
She didn’t say anything.
I was shaking. I needed to get control of myself and my temper or I’d learn nothing. But sitting there, looking at a woman who did this, made me sick to my stomach.
“How do they find you?” I asked. “The people who bring you children.”
“There are channels,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap. “Just depends.”
“Like which segment of the child trafficking world they are coming from, right?” I said, frowning. “Using big words doesn’t change what you do, lady.”
“I’m helping families who can’t have their own children,” she argued. “They are families desperate for children, families that give them good homes.”
“Or unwittingly take in abducted kids,” I said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She stayed quiet.
I shook my head, trying to shake the anger out of me. I needed to stay focused, remember why I was there. I could let other people deal with the details of her operation.
“A young girl named Elizabeth Tyler,” I said. “I don’t know how or who brought her to you. But you sold her to a family in Minneapolis. The Corzines.”
“I don’t sell these children. I match them…”
“Spare me,” I said, holding up a hand. “You buy and sell children. If you’re paying for them, then you’re looking for kids who need to be placed, to use your bullshit word. You may not be the one snatching them, but you’re just as guilty. So fuck you.”
She sank back into the sofa.
“There may have been a story involving an explosion and the death of her parents,” I said. “It was bullshit. But she was then sold to the Corzines in Minnesota.”
We sat there in silence for a minute or so. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to remember or if she was trying to figure out a way out of her living room. She still hadn’t confirmed anything about Elizabeth, so there was still a possibility that she wasn’t involved in her disappearance. Worst-case scenario was that I’d found a child trafficker and could shut her down.
“She was at the airport,” Janine Bandencoop finally said.
Something pinched inside my gut. “Who was?”
“The girl you’re describing,” she said. “I know she came from San Diego.”
I stepped over Landon, who’d passed out again on the floor, and sat down on the sofa opposite her.
She leaned back in the sofa, as if I might strike her. When she realized I wasn’t going to, she took another breath. “I don’t know who brought her there or how she got there.”
“She was just left there?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I was instructed where to pick her up.”
“But you had to pay for her,” I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.
“The payment was made before she arrived,” she said.
“How?”
“I was given an account,” she said, the lines at the corners of her mouth tight. “I deposited the money there.”
“How much?”
“I don’t recall.”
I steadied my breathing. “So you met her at the airport.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I’d already arranged the match with the family in Minnesota. We arranged a meeting in a hotel. It was the same day. The girl was with me for less than an hour.”
I swallowed hard, choking down the urge to smash her head into the glass table. “So you met the Corzines then?”
She shook her head. “No. I was already gone by the time they arrived to pick her up.”
“I don’t understand.”
She folded her arms around herself again. “I did not have direct contact with the family. I placed her in a hotel room and then left. The family was then responsible for picking her up.”
I stared at her. “Sounds like you’ve got the system down.”
She didn’t say anything.
“So then what? You go back and make sure the room’s empty? The package has been delivered?”
She stayed quiet.
She didn’t need to answer. I knew I was close enough to getting it right. She was covering her tracks and took enough safeguards to make sure she kept her distance. It was what good criminals did.
“What did my daughter say to you in the time you were with her?” I said, my jaw clenched, my hands balled into fists.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Not a word. She was entirely silent.”
“Did you try to talk to her?”
She nodded. “Yes. But she didn’t respond. She barely looked at me. She may have been giving something to calm her nerves.”
I was being bombarded with emotions. I saw Elizabeth, sitting in the Phoenix airport, alone. Snatched from our front yard, driven across the desert, left by herself, then picked up by some woman she’d never seen before. Dropped at another hotel to be picked up by more people she didn’t know. It was nearly suffocating, letting the pictures form in my head.
I cleared my throat. “So you drove her to the hotel? Did she want to go?”
She thought for a moment. “She seemed indifferent. She didn’t speak. But she didn’t resist. She did what I asked. We left the airport, got in the car and drove to the hotel. I explained to her that the family she would be going with would be taking her to Minnesota.”
“Then what?”
She shrugged. “We went to the hotel.”
“But you said you didn’t meet the family.”
Her lips twitched. “Correct.”
I didn’t say anything.
She fidgeted with her hands. “I put her in the hotel room so she could wait for the family.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You left her alone in the room.”
“For just a few minutes, yes.”
I stared down at the floor for a minute. A million questions were running through my head. Why didn’t Elizabeth try to get away? Why didn’t she ask someone for help at the airport? Why didn’t she pick up the hotel phone? I could think of a hundred ways in which she could’ve tried to get away. I had to remind myself, though, that she was young, she’d been told we were dead and that she was probably in shock. But it still frustrated me. And it still didn’t answer the question as to who had taken her from the yard and what happened in between that moment and when she was told we were gone. The more things I was able to unearth, the more questions were left unanswered.
I looked up again at Janine Bandencoop. “So then they just picked her up and that was it?”
She nodded. “Yes. I made sure they showed up. I saw them pull up at the hotel. Then I left.”
“How’d they get into the room?”
“They were instructed to ask at the front desk for an envelope,” she said. “I’d left a key card to the room for them.”
Neat and clean. And awful.
I took another deep breath and stared across the table at her until she started to squirm.
“I want the account information,” I said.
“The what?”
“The account information,” I repeated. “The account that you paid into to buy my daughter in order to sell her.”
“I told you,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t have…”
“I want the fucking account information!” I screamed at her.
She jerked back in the sofa, clearly startled.
“I don’t give a shit what you have to do,” I said, lowering my voice again. “But you will find that account information.”
“I never had a name,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I never had a name.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I want the account number. I want the initial email or whatever that came to you that indicated someone had my daughter and was offering her to you.”