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  Dan slowly turned the doorknob. As the door opened, he looked around the corner. It was a storeroom with shelves on three walls filled with provisions. Etta was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with her legs tied together, her hands behind her back, and duct tape across her mouth. When she saw who it was, tears began running down her face. Dan reached down and eased the tape from her face.

  “Is he here anywhere?” Dan asked as he cut the rope from her feet, helped her up and the untied the rope from her hands.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. He said he had to go somewhere, but he’d be back tonight.”

  By that time, Levi was going through the CDs on the shelves while another agent was trying to log onto one of the computers and another going through a binder on one of the desks.

  “One binder is a schedule of incoming shipments,” the agent said.

  “What’s he shipping?” Dan asked.

  The agent looked up and said, “People.”

  “I have to call my contact at the DOJ and the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. With all this, we have a good case,” Levi said. “Now, we just have to find our man.”

  Dan smiled. “I think I know where we can find him.”

  Chapter 29

  As Schemke drove down the main street of Fort Landers, he looked at the uninspiring shops and insipid people. It was hard to believe he had come from such a bourgeois existence. It was amusing that Etta had come to this place. He smiled at the irony of it

  He crossed the bridge over the inlet to the harbor, remembering his youth. That’s where it all began, in that shabby place they called Hellville. He remembered it so well. He’d stayed with his father after his mother died. He was afraid to say anything about what had happened, because he knew his dad would kill him. For two years he’d suffered the man’s abuse until he could stand it no more.

  He had woken up in the middle of the night when he heard something in the front of the trailer. He climbed out of his bed and tiptoed down the hall, stepping over empty bottles and dirty clothes. His dad had come in and was sitting with his back to Carl. He was drinking from a bottle of cheap whiskey and smoking.

  He remembered seeing the man’s hand, yellowed with nicotine, with dirty nails, as he ran his hand through his greasy hair. He saw a hammer on the kitchen counter and picked it up. Carl Sr. heard him and turned around, but not in time to stop the claw of the hammer being buried into his brain.

  After killing his father, he’d been caught and sent to a juvenile facility for a while and then ended up at a correctional boy’s camp. That’s where he had met a boy who was younger than him, but he saw something of himself in Brian.

  They had both been loners, misfits in society, and their oddities caused them to gravitate to each other. It wasn’t that they were actually friends. Neither of them had any regard for anyone, but in each other they found succor in the fact that there was someone else like themselves. They had also both lost their mothers—Carl, because she died, and Brian because she left. They also shared another characteristic. They both had extraordinary arrogance.

  Carl pulled around the block and parked the car he had rented under one of the names in his cache of pseudonyms. The vacant lot in back of the house was no accident. Everything the boss did was for a purpose. Looking around and seeing no one, he went to a ramshackle shed. Anyone looking in the shed would think it was simply something left over from a house that had once stood on the property.

  Carl lifted some loose boards on the floor of the shed to access a trap door and climbed down a ladder to a tunnel. At the end of that tunnel, there were two more ladders leading up into different parts of the boss’s house. He had been there many times before. He rapped on the door. Momentarily, the trap door was opened.

  “Come on up, Carl,” Brian said.

  Carl climbed the ladder and hesitantly stepped up into the kitchen. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I heard you were hiding out somewhere.”

  “If one is careful, Carl, one doesn’t need to hide out. Perhaps that’s something you haven’t learned yet.”

  Carl had grown to despise Brian, but he was the connection he needed in the organization. He looked around the tiny kitchen. He had always hated the place and cringed at its shabbiness. It was unsuitable for someone in the boss’s position.

  I’d never be caught dead living in a place like this, Carl thought as Brian led him through the small unassuming house.

  Carl had always imagined himself in much grander surroundings. He had to admit though, it had been a great cover for the boss many years. No one would have ever suspected. He’d spent some time there before and after surgeries in the past. The smell of it always nauseated him. Disinfectant mixed with food smells and some sickening sweet floral aroma that reminded him of funeral homes.

  “Is the doctor here?” he asked as they entered the living room.

  “Yes, the doctor is preparing for you now.” He turned around to see the boss standing there looking, as usual, like a country bumpkin. “This will be your last surgery, my boy. We’ve accommodated you before because you brought us a lot of money with your contacts and your disguises worked to our benefit. But you’ve now jeopardized everything because of this woman. The FBI has gotten too close. You should have just let her go. However, we’ll get past this little setback. You’ll be ready to receive the Miami shipment in two weeks I assume?”

  “Of course, boss.”

  “Good. Your scars will have almost healed by then.”

  “Are you ready, Carl?” a deep voice resonated from the hallway. “Brian, can you give us a hand?”

  Brian followed Carl down the long hallway to a bedroom that had been turned into an makeshift operating room. A hospital gurney had been placed in the center of the room. A big screen television set hung from the wall at the foot of the gurney. There was a stainless steel instrument stand at the head of the table.

  The doctor stood in the dark corner wearing green surgical scrubs. He walked forward into the light from the overhead lamp. He looked up at Carl, examining his previous work. His long face held no compassion, no expression at all really.

  “Go behind that screen, Carl. Remove your shirt. You’ll find a gown there. Please put it on. Brian, will you put the instruments on that table for me?”

  “Sure doc.” Brian said.

  He put on surgical gloves and took the instruments from a sterilizer and laid them on a stainless-steel tray on the table.

  Carl came out from behind the screen and got on the gurney. The doctor adjusted the arm of the light.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what to expect in the way of pain after the anesthetic wears off.”

  “Does he have to be in here?” Carl asked about Brian.

  “He’ll be helping with the anesthesia, Carl. Don’t worry.”

  Brian reached down the sides of the table and brought up a strap and wrapped it around Carl’s arm.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’ll have to strap you down, just so you don’t move suddenly. We wouldn’t want to destroy that handsome face of your now, would we?” the doctor chided.

  They buckled straps over each forearm and his feet.

  “Now just relax. Brian, put the mask over Carl’s nose, will you? Carl, we’ll be using a mild sedative before we put you under.”

  Carl felt a sharp prick in his arm.

  “I’ll be shaving your head, Carl. That will be part of your identity from here on out. I’m also surgically altering your fingerprints. Now, Brian, would you like to turn on the video for Carl?”

  “A video?”

  “Yes, just until you get sleepy.”

  The doctor nodded to Brian who picked up a remote control and turned on the big screen. There in front of Carl was a video of Etta, chained to the rock wall. As the camera rotated, he saw himself in the scuba gear. He began holding her under and then she went limp. He walked away until the water was ove
r his head, and then he swam out of the cave.

  “What is this? How did you get this?” Carl argued, but his words were beginning to slur.

  “Just watch,” Brian said.

  Then he saw Etta rise up out of the water, coughing. She began to swim toward the back of the cave. The next scene was one taken in the cabin of her lying unconscious in a twin bed.

  “She’s alive?” he looked up at Brian who was grinning.

  “For now,” he said. “I find her quite charming. I can see why you might have fallen for her. But that was no excuse to go against protocol.”

  Then Brian began dripping the anesthesia into the mask over Carl’s nose and mouth.

  Carl’s eyes bulged in fear as he began to drift off.

  Chapter 30

  The agents hauled a dozen boxes of evidence out of Brian’s cabin and put them in Levi’s van. Included were videos of hundreds of women, but many were of people, men and women, who appeared to be the perpetrators doing their job of enticing and recruiting. Many were blackmail videos of victim’s families, no doubt used to convince them into submission.

  There were binders full of names and locations of victims listed under regional bosses and pimps. Many names had been marked out with a red pen and the letter D for deceased. Brian kept accurate books.

  There were binders for each regional boss. Carl Schemke’s name was on the spine of one of the binders. Several photos showed him in previous identities. A regular person would never recognize that he was the same man from one identity to the other, except for the steel coldness of his eyes.

  Dan took Etta to a hospital and said he’d be back for her the next day. One of his deputies was assigned to guard her door there. She was more than happy to stay there. Dan, Bix, and the FBI agents suited up in their Kevlar vests.

  As they prepared to get into the vehicles and head for the location Dan had indicated, Bix said, “If we arrest them now, we lose the chance to save whoever is coming in on that boat in Miami.”

  “I know, and if we don’t, we chance even more people falling prey to these monsters,” Dan said.

  Following behind them, Levi told them that for every human that is freed from trafficking, hundreds are still enslaved, and for every trafficker put behind bars, dozens take over the business.

  “Human trafficking is a thirty-two billion dollar a year business. It’s estimated that there are about twenty-one million trafficked people around the world. It’s the real pandemic of the twenty-first century,” Levi said as he clipped a shotgun to the dash in the van.

  “What’s our country coming to,” Bix said.

  “My boy, this country isn’t much different than any other when it comes to evil. No country is immune to it. It might surprise you that women are the main perpetrators of this crime. We don’t even make a dent in the problem with one boat load or the arrest of one kingpin. But we do what we can do and get who we can, and we’re taking this one down. We’ve been chasing this bunch for a long time. Most of the time it’s committed right under our noses, by businessmen and women in suits, by some of our most trusted leaders, and what you might consider the average Joe on the street… and by your next door neighbor.”

  Dan looked over at Levi and smiled. “Ready?”

  They parked out of sight. The S.W.A.T. team had come from Argon in the northern part of the county. Fort Landers had never seen this kind of crime in all the years Dan had worked for the Sheriff’s Department, though he now knew it had been there all along.

  When they were bent down behind the fence, Dan said he’d go to the front door and knock.

  “I’ll take two men from the S.W.A.T team with me, the others will stay in back with you, but you have to stay out of sight until the door is opened. Bix, you stand at the corner and give the signal to Agent Levi when I nod to you, got it? Agent Levi, you and your men come through the back door when Bix gives you the signal.”

  Levi didn’t like that Dan had taken charge, but he knew in this case, it was probably their only chance to get inside without firepower. He wanted this one taken alive.

  Dan went around to the front of the house and climbed the six steps to the front door. A porch swing hung on rusted chains that were whining as the chair swung back and forth in the breeze. Red geranium petals fluttered cheerfully in baskets hung on either side of the door.

  Dan knocked and waited. “Just a minute,” someone said and then he heard the sound of voices. He knocked again.

  “I said hold your horses!”

  Finally, he heard someone walking across the hardwood floor. He heard the flip lock, then a deadbolt being thrown. Finally, he saw the doorknob turn and the door was opened.

  “Hello, Sheriff. What are you doing here this time of night?”

  “Mind if I come in for a minute?” He turned and nodded to Bix.

  At the signal, four S.W.A.T. team members came through the back door and two others followed Dan into the pink and green living room of Ida Mae Walton.

  ****

  After the surgery, Brian and the doctor had helped Schemke into Brian’s truck. He was still out when Brian pulled into the gravel parking lot of a secluded motel that rented cabins by the week near the Alligator River. He paid for a week in advance and asked for the cabin that was farthest from the road.

  Half carrying the groggy Schemke to the cabin, he walked inside and lay Schemke down on the double bed. The room had the smell of a pine cleaning solvent. It reminded Brian of the boys’ camp where he’d spent five years of his life.

  He went back out to the truck and got a bag of groceries that he’d stopped to get, brought them inside and put them on the red Formica table. He took a bottle of painkillers from his jacket pocket and set them on the nightstand next to the plastic Magic Fingers coin box.

  Before leaving, he took a bottle of scotch from the grocery bag, opened it, and took a long drink. Then he set the scotch on the nightstand next to the pills and tossed an envelope onto the bed.

  He looked at his expensive gold watch and walked out. He’d been gone for hours, so he was anxious to get back to the cabin.

  Two agents had been left behind at Brian’s cabin. Their vehicle was still parked out of site. It was getting dark, but they didn’t turn on any lights. They didn’t want to warn Brian that anything had changed since he’d left that morning.

  Finally, they heard his tires crunching to a stop in front of the cabin. One of the agents stood behind the door and the other watched from the side of the window until he unlocked the door and walked inside. Brian was face down on the floor in handcuffs before he had a chance to turn on the light.

  Chapter 31

  Etta’s sister and brother-in-law, the Smithsons, were once again sitting in Sheriff Baker’s office, but this time the news was not so grim.

  “She’s been staying with my mom since the hospital released her. She was fine. They found some traces of benzodiazepine in her blood. That’s what Brian Walton used to knock her out.”

  “What’s that?” David asked.

  “Rohypnol, commonly referred to as a date rape drug.”

  “Oh, my God,” Ella said, putting her hands to her face.

  “Other than being traumatized, her wounds have healed nicely from the time she was chained in the cave,” Dan said.

  “Chained in a cave? This gets worse,” Ella had not heard all of the details and Dan thought it best that she at least know some of what happened before her sister arrived.

  He told her about how it was no accident that Etta ended up living next door to Ida Mae Walton. Walton and her people had been watching Carl Schemke for some time. Carl, the mayor and the Chief of Police in Cleveland Falls all worked for Walton. The man that won the seat of mayor was there first, then he brought in Darryl Sykes and Carl. It was a hub for their operation, and they were a team. Even some of the mayor’s staff were involved as recruiters.

  Carl hadn’t been working for Ida Mae as long as the other two. He became involved through Brian Walton. He seemed
like the perfect fit to Walton. He was ruthless and smart, but his ego outshined all the rest of his nefarious attributes. He began liking the esteem he garnered being the golden boy in the city government, and it gave him an opportunity that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. One of the organizations best recruiters was his human resources manager.

  Carl’s fetish for drowning the pretty women he became involved with hadn’t been a problem until he met Etta Bernard. In fact, the organization was anxious for him to get rid of her. Not only had the FBI been watching her, but Walton’s people were also watching her. Etta was a problem for them, and Carl kept drifting further and further from the fold, making decisions that endangered their operation.

  “It was the typical Peter Principle,” Dan said. “Carl Schemke had become incompetent and careless. Brian and his mother, Ida Mae, found out Etta suspected what her husband was involved in because the organization had been watching him for several months. The house was bugged. The FBI found the transmitters when they searched it.”

  After hearing all of that, David asked, “How did they get her to come to the same town as Walton and move in next door to her? They were tailing her.”

  “Coming to Fort Landers was simply by accident,” Dan said. “She really didn’t know where she was going. She just got in her car and drove.”

  He explained that the two men following her were probably as surprised as anyone that she ended up stopping for lunch in the town where their boss lived. Ida Mae had bought a lot of property in Fort Landers. When Hank died, she knew he hadn’t paid the property taxes on the house for two years. She bought that, too, thinking it would be a good hideout for her people when they needed it. The whole story of Hank’s brother wanting to rent it was fabricated. He was pretty much a loner, so no one was surprised when this guy showed up saying he was Hank’s brother.