Villines nodded. “Johnny. Johnny Honeycutt. He came to see me yesterday after classes—he teaches math and science at one of the local high schools. A good kid—well, he’s not a kid. He’s twenty-seven, but he’s my wife’s youngest brother and was ten when I got married, so I’ve always thought of him as a kid. He had some hypothetical questions that I don’t think were hypothetical. He wanted to know specifically what the law was regarding asylum for foreign nationals who were brought illegally to this country for the purposes of sex trafficking. Now, he didn’t ask the question flat-out, he talked around it, but that’s what he was looking for. He then saw the photos of Baby Elizabeth on my desk and the photo you brought me of the de la Rosa sisters. He left awfully quick. I called my in-laws last night and my mother-in-law said George and Johnny had gone out and she didn’t know when they would be back. Now, you have to understand my mother-in-law. She is as honest as the day is long. The most Christian of Christian women, but with a spine of steel. I pushed a bit, put on my cop attitude you could say, and she lied to me. Told me that they went to fix the tractor and left their cell phones in the house. I know for a fact that they couldn’t fix the tractor because Johnny told me the parts he needed were back-ordered. For my ma to lie? No—I didn’t want to believe it. But she did.”
Lucy asked, “Do they have information about Marisol or the other girls?”
“I don’t know. It was really weird. I would have gone out there last night, but it’s a goodly drive, and Johnny called me an hour later and said everything was fine. He hedged about the tractor, and then said he was going to stay at Ma’s for the night because he and Dad had a couple of beers. That, I would believe—Johnny and George can get to drinking while playing cards after dinner. But Johnny didn’t sound like he’d been drinking. He sounded … I don’t know, different.”
“Would you mind giving us their contact information?”
“Go easy on them. My in-laws are good people, salt of the earth. They would never break the law on purpose.” He paused. “I’d like to go out with you, if you don’t mind.”
“We’d like to talk to Johnny first. You said he’s a teacher?”
Adam nodded, glanced at the clock. “It’s after four, I don’t know if he’ll still be on campus.”
“Would you mind calling him and finding out?”
Adam picked up his personal cell phone and dialed a number. “Hey, Johnny, what’s up?… Are you still at school?… Why you going out to the ranch again?… Is Ma okay?… Fine … Yeah, sure. I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “Okay, he’s going back out to the ranch. Johnny is a good son, sees Ma and Dad at least once a week, but this would be the third time this week and it’s only Wednesday.”
“Lead the way, Deputy,” Nate said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On the map, the Honeycutt ranch was eighteen miles as the crow flies from Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Because they were coming from Laredo, it took them much longer to wind through the flat desert roads once they left Highway 59. It was five thirty by the time they arrived. Adam Villines parked next to an older, well-maintained pickup with a high school faculty parking sticker on the rear window. Nate pulled in next to Villines.
The house was a two-story, old-fashioned farmhouse with a wide wraparound porch that had recently been painted. “Five kids, two parents, one bathroom,” Adam said with a smile. But he looked worried.
He knocked on the screen. “Ma, it’s Adam.”
The door opened almost immediately. A young man stood there. John Honeycutt.
“What’s going on?” John asked his brother-in-law. He eyed Lucy and Nate.
“Can we come in, John?” Adam said quietly. “It’s important.”
John was angry, but he swung the door open and let them enter.
Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt were at the dining room table with a map of the county in front of them. Both looked startled when Adam walked in with Nate and Lucy behind them. “Adam—what’s wrong?” Mrs. Honeycutt said.
Adam took off his hat. “I think you know, Ma. These people here, they’re FBI agents. Lucy Kincaid and Nate Dunning. I’ve been working with them on a case for the last few days.” He glanced at John. “And I think you might know something about it.”
“I don’t know what you think I know,” John began, but then Mr. Honeycutt cleared his throat.
“Son, we need to tell them. We can’t do this on our own.”
John ran his hands through his hair and walked to the far side of the room. “Dad.”
They exchanged a look, and John simply looked down, shielding his eyes.
George stood and shook their hands. “I’m George Honeycutt. My wife, Nadia. Please, come in, sit at the table. We’ve been talking about calling you all day, Adam.”
“I wish you had.”
Everyone sat at the dining room table, except John. He paced between the dining room and the adjoining living room.
Adam asked, “What happened, George?”
“Monday night Johnny came out to look at the tractor. We found a young woman in the barn. She was sleeping under the hay. Don’t know how long she’d been there, at least a night, maybe two. She had some food in a backpack, but she was mighty sick. We brought her inside, fed her, Nadia helped her with her shower. She talked to Nadia.”
Nadia nodded, a deep frown on her face. “Poor girl, bless her heart. She didn’t really talk to me so much as cry. I don’t think she’s cried for a long time. She said her sister is in trouble, that she had to find her, get her out of a bad situation. As George said, I had helped her with her shower. Her clothes were bloody, I thought she’d been—I don’t know, shot or stabbed.” She shook her head. “She’d given birth recently. I could see by her stomach, the way it sagged because she was so very thin. She had a fever, we gave her some antibiotics—I know, we’re not supposed to share medicine, but the girl needed it. She was terrified of the police, didn’t want us to call anyone, even a doctor. She slept all night, and George, Johnny, and I talked. I told them what she’d said to me—that she and her sister had been kept as prisoners. Well, we all know what that means.”
“You should have called me, Ma,” Adam said.