They were at a house halfway between Laredo and Del Rio. The word house was kind. There was what first appeared to be an abandoned warehouse with several trailers and four large, malnourished guard dogs on the other side of the chained-off yard. By the time Lucy and Noah arrived, they’d been tranquilized and Animal Control was taking them to their facility. A fire truck was parked outside as well as two ambulances. Villines’s team searched each building. Spotlights had been brought in, and every vehicle had its headlights shining into the fenced area.
Villines approached them and said, “The trailer is on the brink of collapse. We cleared the place—none of the suspects we’re looking for are there, but we have five women inside. Two are obviously pregnant; the other two are traumatized and in shock. One is deceased. There are no neighbors, there’s nothing in a five-mile radius.”
A paramedic came out of the trailer and approached Villines. “Sheriff, the fire chief says there’s a gas leak, he wants the women cleared out immediately. But the trailer is listing, we have to do this carefully and with minimal personnel. I’ve sent for two more gurneys, they should be here ASAP.”
“Is the gas leak intentional?” Villines asked. “Were they attempting to kill the women?”
“I can’t say. It’s probably because the structure is in such awful condition. There’s no water, no power, I don’t know where the gas is coming from because there isn’t service to the house, but it could be a faulty line.”
Siobhan arrived with one of Villines’s deputies. “I need to help.”
“You will,” Lucy said, “when we get the girls out. We need a triage area away from this structure.”
The paramedic nodded. “We’re already set up on the other side of the fire truck. We have two paramedics and two EMTs on site, another ambulance is on its way, and the coroner.”
He left to talk to the fire chief.
“Was that bastard Zapelli here?” Siobhan asked. “Left those women in these horrid conditions?”
“They were likely moved after Marisol escaped,” Lucy said. “Except for Eloise and Macey, who were left in Freer.” She wanted to talk to Loretta again and search her house thoroughly. There had to be a better record of those seventy-two births than the book Lucy found. How many different women … where they delivered … where they were sent after they gave birth. Lucy wanted to know that they found everyone, that no woman had been left behind to endure more pain and suffering and loss.
“Who died?” Siobhan asked, her voice quivering. “It’s not—Marisol? He killed her, didn’t he?”
Lucy turned to Siobhan. “We don’t know. Go over to the triage area and wait, you can help translate, and they’ll want to talk to a woman.” Or not talk at all. Lucy hadn’t wanted to tell anyone anything after she’d been held captive and raped for two days. She didn’t want to talk about it. She still didn’t, eight years later.
Lucy glanced at Nate, and he nodded and led Siobhan away. Lucy turned to Noah. “They planned to come back,” she said. “Two pregnant women? That’s money for them. They wouldn’t just leave them here. The other house was clean, sterilized. This place?” She shook her head.
“They had to move fast. Maybe they didn’t have another location. Plus, this place is easy to get to on the back roads, no freeways, no neighbors. Temporary.”
“And you said you didn’t know Texas.”
“I can read a map. I’m a quick study. In fact, there’s a road that goes almost straight from Freer to here, bypassing Laredo altogether.”
“I don’t see Zapelli staying here. He was far too neat, too fastidious.”
Noah looked at the time line that Villines and Lucy had prepared. “He was here Monday night for thirty minutes, then again Tuesday morning for forty or so minutes. You said he filled up his tank in Del Rio, correct?”
“Tuesday morning.”
“We need to track down Leo Musgrove. Want to bet Musgrove called him to tell him we were asking questions?”
“I won’t take that bet. The motel he stayed at is less than a mile from the bar we cornered Musgrove in.”
Two paramedics were carrying one pregnant woman out on a board because the gurney couldn’t fit through the narrow, rotted door frame. A deputy came out escorting a petite young woman who was able to walk. She wasn’t pregnant—at least, she didn’t appear to be.
Lucy watched as the paramedics and deputies brought out each of the girls.
The last—the last living girl—was very pregnant. The fire chief carried her out himself and put her on a gurney. “Medics! Stat!”
Siobhan was watching closely and cried out, “Ana! It’s Ana!” She ran to the edge of the fence as the paramedics came through.
“Siobhan—let them work.”
Ana’s eyes were full of fear, but they rested on Siobhan as if she were seeing a ghost. “Siobhan?” she whispered. “Siobhan?”
She began to cry. Siobhan took her hand. “Thank God, thank God, you’re alive.”
“We need to get her to the hospital, stat,” the paramedic said. He gestured to her legs as he carefully put a blanket over her.
Her right leg was broken. The swelling and bruising were severe.
“I want to go. Please,” Siobhan said.
Lucy said, “She’s a translator, knows this girl.” She showed her badge to the paramedic.
He nodded. “We go now.”