OUT OF THE SHADOWS
by Robert W. Tinsley

"Farrah has not been able to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time since the police found her," said Dr. George Aziz.

Mrs. Aziz was a damsel in distress. Except for being married and maybe too old to be someone else's idea of a damsel. But the image worked, for me at least. She and her husband had come to Jack Brady, knight errant in badly tarnished armor, to right a wrong.

Dr. Aziz was a well-known surgeon here in El Paso , Texas . He obviously loved his wife. Not something a private investigator sees all that often. It made me want to help them.

"I'm afraid to go to sleep," said Mrs. Aziz. She was a small woman, Levantine in her appearance, and looked more than a bit the worse for wear. I could see the ghost of beauty in her drawn face and listless, dull black hair.

I'm not a psychiatrist. They had already tried that; at least enough to know that finding out what had happened to her during the five days Mrs. Aziz had been among the Disappeared was important. The police hadn't helped a lot. Now it was time for the private investigator.

Dr. Aziz continued the story while Mrs. Aziz twisted a handkerchief between her hands.

Farrah Aziz had driven to Sunland Park Mall on a Monday morning and parked outside the Dillard's store at five minutes to 10 AM. She remembered clearly because she was miffed they weren't open yet. That was the last clear thing she remembered until she woke up in Providence Memorial Hospital late the following Friday evening.

When she hadn't returned home by 4 PM that Monday, the maid called Dr. Aziz at his office. The doctor then began calling their friends and acquaintances.

"I was frantic," said Dr. Aziz. "I talked to everyone we know. I even called the admitting desks of all the hospitals. No one had seen her."

The police logged his call to report his wife missing at 6:17 PM. He handed me a copy of the report. Over the next five days the police did all the right things and found nothing. She was gone. Her car was gone. No one had seen anything.

Then at 3:20 the following Friday afternoon a patrol officer cruising the parking lot at Sunland Park Mall spotted her car parked outside Dillard's and called it in.

The officer found Mrs. Aziz unconscious on the front seat of the car. Her clothes were clean and pressed, and she smelled of soap. The same brand of soap, it turned out, that she used at home. An ambulance took her to Providence where her blood work indicated the presence of Phenobarbital. Not a lot, just enough to knock her out for a few hours. They decided to let her sleep it off, and, in due time, she woke up.

A medical exam showed no evidence of sexual assault. There were a number of needle tracks on her arms, but no trace in her body of any drugs other than the Phenobarbital.

She couldn't remember a thing. Nothing. It was as if she had been asleep the whole time. No amount of questioning by the police, her husband, or several psychiatrists could bring out any memory of where she had been or what she had been doing.

Then the nightmares started. Frightening without being specific. She would wake up every couple of hours gasping, in a cold sweat.

"You have to help us, Mr. Brady," said Dr. Aziz. "The police have lost interest. Even the FBI isn't doing anything more."

"Did they run the car and Mrs. Aziz's clothes through the crime lab?" I asked.

Dr. Aziz nodded. "They took the car and Farrah's clothes. When the El Paso Police crime lab couldn't find anything, they sent it all to the FBI in Quantico . They didn't find anything either."

That was interesting. It was almost as good as finding fibers or saliva or skin cells. What it meant was that whoever had taken Mrs. Aziz knew as much about forensics as the FBI. That eliminated a lot of chaff. Unfortunately it didn't point anywhere in particular either.

"All right, Dr. Aziz," I said. "I'll look around some more, but I'm not sure I'll be able to find anything that the police and the FBI haven't found."

"Thank you, Mr. Brady. Anything you can do will be appreciated."

When I shook Mrs. Aziz's hand, limp and fragile, I thought I saw a brief spark of hope in her eyes. But it quickly sank beneath the surface of the depression, despair, frustration and plain bone-deep fatigue that I'm sure had plagued her since her abduction. I really hoped I could help her.

* * *

I met Johnny Soto, head of the El Paso Police Crimes Against Persons Division, at Anita's, a small restaurant/bar in Five Points. He ordered a Corona . I had Dos Equis .

The waitress set our beers in front of us and headed back to the bar. Johnny's Corona had a wedge of lime stuffed into the mouth of the bottle.

"Any beer," I said as he extracted the lime and squeezed some juice into the bottle, "that requires the addition of lime juice to make it palatable is no better than snake piss."

Johnny took a swig out of the bottle and then smoothed his luxuriant moustache with his index finger. "What about Tecate?" he asked.

"I rest my case," I said, grinning.

"So," said Johnny, "Aziz came to see you?"

"Yep."

"Did you let him hire you?"

"Yep."

"You didn't used to take money under false pretenses. What's the matter, bill collectors dogging your tracks?"

"The fact that I'm looking into the situation makes them feel better. If I don't find anything in a few days, I'll tell them so."

Johnny took another drink. "You won't find anything. We interviewed everybody we could find. We went over her car and her clothes with a microscope. Nada. Menos que nada. Less than nothing. No fibers, no dust, not even any rocks imbedded in the tire treads."

"Who would be capable of cleaning up that thoroughly?" I asked.

Johnny shrugged. "An ex-cop. An agent of a foreign government."

"Or an agent of our government."

"Where the hell did that come from?"

I waved my hand in dismissal. "Just rambling."

"The other stumbling block," said Johnny, "is the issue of motive. What was the motive for abducting her? She wasn't robbed, raped or ransomed. I think someone made a mistake, and it took them that long to correct it."

"Johnny, these are bad guys. They shouldn't be running around loose."

"Hey! You point them out to me, I'll arrest them. Meanwhile, drink your beer."

* * *

The next morning we had a walk-in client. Not totally unheard of, but usually they call first.

This guy looked like a banker, or a lawyer, wearing the uniform of the Blue Pin-Stripe Brigade. He strode into the office without giving more than a glance at Kathleen who was holding the door for him.

Now, you have to understand that Kathleen stands a little over 6-feet tall in low heels, and she looks like a supermodel. The man that could walk by her without straining the muscles in his neck, without at least acknowledging her, was either already dead or so totally focused on his mission that everything else was just noise.

The guy advanced across the office with his hand out and a smile pasted on his face. He didn't look dead. I wondered who was dead.

"Mr. Brady, my name is Charles Hillary. I've heard good things about you." He handed me a card printed on heavy crème-colored stock. It identified him as a lawyer out of Dallas . Now I knew something was hinky. Lawyers like him don't come to see you; you go to see them.

I showed him into one of the client chairs. "That's nice to know, Mr. Hillary. All the way to Dallas , huh? What can Brady Investigations do for you?"

"I have a client, an owner of a small technology firm, who believes his business partner, let's call him Mr. B for the moment, is selling trade secrets to a competitor."

"If the man is a partner in the business, why would he do that?"

"This competitor has offered to buy out the company. My client doesn't want to sell. Mr. B does. Since my client is the majority stockholder, there has been no sale."

"So Mr. B decides to get his money another way," I said.

"Precisely," Hillary said, smiling as if congratulating a particularly bright pupil. "The problem is, we have no proof. That's where you come in."

"Mr. Hillary, I don't know Dallas very well . . ."

"Oh, you wouldn't be in Dallas . We want you to go to Cabo San Lucas ."

I raised my eyebrows. " Cabo ?"

"Precisely. Mr. B is leaving for a three-week vacation there tomorrow. We expect he will be meeting his contact with the other company to pass on more trade secrets for cash. We would like you to follow him for the entire time he is there. Get photos, videotapes, recordings, if possible, of everyone he meets. Of course you will need help. I understand that you use the young lady outside as an operative from time to time. By all means bring her along. She would certainly provide some protective coloration, as it were. You would, of course, be staying in the same hotel where Mr. B is staying."

I took a deep breath. “You want me and Kathleen to spend three weeks in Cabo San Lucas , in a luxury hotel, following this Mr. B? That would be a very expensive proposition, Mr. Hillary. Besides, we have other clients, other cases that need to be worked here."

"We understand that this would be something of an imposition and might cost you some other business. That's why we are willing to offer twice your standard rate. That would come to $120 per hour for yourself and $80 per hour for the young lady, I believe. And we wouldn't expect you to limit yourself to only 8 hours per day. Of course, we would want you to be ready to leave for Cabo tomorrow." He sat back looking smug, like he was used to getting what he wanted.

I supposed he was waiting for me to ask the obvious question, so I did. "Why me, Mr. Hillary?"

Again he smiled as if I was his star pupil. "You have an excellent reputation that has spread well beyond the confines of this provincial corner of Texas . Both you and the young lady speak fluent Spanish. During your time with the Navy and the Border Patrol you spent considerable time in Latin America and are familiar with the way things operate there. We felt you were the best man for the job."

"Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence," I said, standing. "Listen, I need to see about moving some things around. Why don't I give you a call at your hotel later."

Hillary stood and shook my hand. "That will be fine," he said. "But . . ."

"But?"

"I don't want this to sound too melodramatic, but this is a limited time offer. Keep in mind that it expires at midnight."

As soon as he was out the door, Kathleen came bouncing into my office. It was a sight to behold.

" Cabo ! How absolutely cool!"

Kathleen had, of course, been doing her job: listening to and recording my conversation with Hillary.

"Don't bother packing your bikini," I said. "We're not going anywhere."

Kathleen's face fell. "No? Why?"

"That offer stunk like week-old fish. Someone is trying to get us out of town, and they're willing to spend a lot of money to do it."

"Why would anyone want us out of town?"

"The out of town part," I said, "is just the carrot on the end of the stick. Whoever it is doesn't want us working on something we've got going now."

"What have we got that someone would want us to drop? We've got two pre-employment background checks, a skip-trace on a guy who walked out on a $2,000 credit card bill, and that Aziz thing."

"It has to be the Aziz case. Something about that hasn't felt right from the beginning."

* * *

The next morning I was in the Sunland Park Mall parking lot outside the Dillard's store at a quarter to 10. I wasn't sure what I was doing there. I guess I just wanted to get a feel for the place.

It was pretty ordinary. Dillard's anchored the end of one wing of the mall. This side of the store also contained the loading dock. Right next to that was a trash dumpster.

As I was standing there staring at the side of the building waiting for lightning to strike, a battered '75 Ford pickup drove up to the dumpster and stopped. The bed of the pickup was stacked 8-feet high with flattened cardboard boxes.

It was a Servicio Particular , one of a fleet of such pickups that cross into El Paso every morning from Juarez . Each one has the abbreviation Serv. Part. hand-painted in small letters on the panel just in front of the doors above a Juarez phone number. These guys will do just about any odd job offered, but most make their living picking up discarded cardboard and taking it back to Juarez for recycling.

A short wiry man wearing a dirty blue-and-white “gimme” cap got out of the truck and started pawing through the dumpster. Each of these guys has a set route that he drives, and they are so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. I wondered if the police had questioned him. There was one way to find out.

I walked toward him. " Buenos dias, Maestro ," I said.

The man had climbed into the dumpster and was tossing pieces of cardboard out onto the pavement. " Buenos ," he said.

Up close I could see he was an older man, but that was as close as I could get to an age. These guys live a hard life. This one could be anywhere between 40 and 60.

"I have the permission to take the boxes," he said in Spanish, climbing out of the dumpster.

"Of course. You work hard for your living," I said gesturing to his truck, sticking with Spanish. "How often do you come here?"

He looked around and shrugged. He knew I could find that out with little trouble. "I come here every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday."

"You always come here at this time?"

He shrugged again. He kept his eyes centered on my Adam's apple. Low enough to be deferential but still high enough to see my eyes.

"You remember the woman who was abducted from here not long ago?"

His eyes dropped to my feet. "A terrible thing."

" Si . A terrible thing. Especially for her children."

The man nodded. His eyes came back up to my Adam's apple. "But she came back. She was not hurt?"

"No. But she has nightmares. Horrible dreams. They are making her sick." His eyes dropped again. "She has these nightmares because she cannot remember what happened to her. The men who took her did something to keep her from remembering. Until she finds out what happened, the nightmares will continue. She will get sicker and sicker. Her children suffer because she cannot be a proper mother to them."

The man nodded. "Perhaps she should see a curandera . Perhaps she was cursed." A cuandera is a folk healer. Many times they are the only health care givers poor Mexicans get to see. Some of them are half healer, half witch.

"Perhaps," I said. I looked up to the East toward the sun. "She was taken from her family at this time of day. On a Monday. The day and the time you come here."

I knew by now that the police hadn't talked to him. If they had, he would have been eager to talk about it. His fifteen minutes of fame. I took out my wallet and held up two twenties, probably a week's income for him.

"You saw what happened that morning. Right over there." I pointed vaguely into the parking lot. "You are a hard-working man. What happened was none of your concern. If you had gone to the police, they would have kept you from working for a long time. They might even have thought you had something to do with it and put you in jail."

His eyes had moved up to my face now.

"Even I am keeping you from your work. Tell me what you saw and I will pay you for your time, then you may go about your business." I had, of course, memorized the phone number on his truck. I could find him again if I needed to. "You will be doing a good thing, helping a mother return to her family."

He looked around as if expecting some kind of trick. Then he said, "A big white truck, a Suburban. New. It was very quick. No more than a few seconds."

"How many men?"

"Three. Two of them, young men, strong, jumped out and grabbed the woman. They put her in the back seat, then drove away. One of them drove her car."

"The third man. He was the driver of the Suburban?"

" Si . I hid in the dumpster, but I saw him as he drove away. He had hair like yours." My hair was short and white. "He also had a scar." His finger traced a jagged line down the left side of his face from the end of his eyebrow to the bottom of his ear.

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. Scars are almost like fingerprints. No two are exactly alike. That scar on a man about my age. I knew the man. What I didn't know was whom he was working for now.

* * *

When I got back to the office Kathleen was sitting at her desk, back straight, hands flat on the desktop in front of her. Something was wrong. I stopped in mid-stride and looked closely. Her left cheek was red and a bruise was just coming up under her eye. Her upper arms were just starting to show blue finger marks.

"What the hell happened," I said.

She took a deep breath. "You know how you said that Hillary fellow was just trying to get us out of town to keep us from working on a case?" Her voice was steady as a rock, though a little lower pitched than normal. "You were right. I met the guys he was fronting for. They were considerably more detailed in what they wanted."

"Who were they?"

"Three guys. The leader was about your age, almost as tall as you but about 50 pounds lighter. He had a scar down the left side of his face. The other two were young muscle. Nobody particular. One of them grabbed me. I stomped on his instep. These stiletto heels are good for something. The other one hit me, then they both held me while the honcho talked."

My jaw was clamped so tight my teeth were hurting. I wasn't breathing any too regularly either. My fists were clenched and I could feel my knees trembling. "What did he say?"

"He said to stay away from the Aziz case. That it was a mistake. Then they let me go and left."

I haven't wanted to kill anyone that badly in a long time. I also knew that way wouldn't get me anything but grief. Fortunately, there was another way.

I made a conscious effort to relax. "OK. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go in my office and make a call to an old boss of mine. You are going to strap on those cute little .357s of yours and leave. In about an hour come in the back way and hide out in the Ladies Room. I figure those jackals will return at about 1800 hours. You come in behind them. These guys are dangerous. If one of them goes for a gun, kill him. Don't make a mistake on this."

I left her to prepare and went into my office to do a little preparation myself.

* * *

They were ten minutes late. I had left the door to my office open so I could see them when they came in. Quinn O'Farrell walked in first followed by his two goons. It had been almost 20 years since I had last seen Quinn. He was a mean, sadistic bastard then, and it didn't look like he had mellowed any.

As soon as they walked into my office I stepped in front of the goon that wasn't limping and punched him in the solar plexus with all I had. As he doubled over I brought my knee up to meet his nose. Just as he came upright I swept his feet out from under him. His head hit the floor with a hollow thock. A second and a half start to finish.

Quinn didn't move, but the other goon went for his piece.

"Don't!" Kathleen used her Command Voice. Of course the fact that she backed it up with a .357 belly gun in each hand helped convince the goon to freeze.

I stepped in close to Quinn and looked him straight in the eye.

"I see you haven't slowed down much," he said.

"You have," I said. "In the old days you would have been on me before that turd hit the floor. You've gotten forgetful too. You forgot Rule #1 of Brady's Rules of Life and Death: Nobody messes with my people."

"These aren't the old days, Jack. I'm still working for Uncle, though. Homeland Security."

"That why you went after Mrs. Aziz?"

Quinn nodded. "She has a brother in Syria . He's connected with an organization that we believe helps finance al-Qaida. We thought she was involved too. Turns out she wasn't. We put her back where we found her. No harm done."

"You always were a loose cannon, Quinn. I'll bet you still are. Mrs. Aziz has a brother that might be helping al-Qaida. Not a lot to go on there. I'll bet this whole thing was unsanctioned. When you found out she had nothing to do with anything you were in a spot. You couldn't kill her. Too much paperwork. You couldn't just let her go. She screams like a banshee and brings down all kinds of heat. So you got the bright idea to put her back without her memory. What was it? Post-hypnotic suggestion? Drug-induced amnesia?"

"Something like that."

"Well, you screwed up, amigo . Didn't think ahead."

"Look, Jack. We're in a new kind of war. We have to take drastic measures to protect America . The Patriot Act gave us that mission. You've done shit like this before in ' Nam , in Guatemala , other places."

"I've never taken a mother from her children, terrorized her, then deprived her of the means to work through her experience. And I sure as hell have never done it to an American. You better grab your slicker, boyo. You're about to be in the middle of a shit storm."

"Don't make a mistake, Jack. You know what I can do."

"You want to try me on, Quinn? Go ahead. Now or later. I'll cut you into bite-sized pieces and feed you to the coyotes." Quinn's gaze finally broke away. He was mine.

I stepped back. "Now pick that piece of shit off my floor and get out."

Quinn and the vertical goon picked up their fallen comrade and left.

Kathleen followed them out of the building. When she came back, she closed the door and leaned up against it. "Whew! I didn't know I could hold my breath that long. I thought you two were going to go at it tooth and nail."

"For a while there, I thought so too. But Quinn lost his edge. Getting old I guess."

"And you're not?"

I grinned. "I'm starting to think I might be. I really don't want to do that again."

"Well at least we can tell Mrs. Aziz what happened to her. You think she'll go to the media?"

"I don't know. I hope so. The only way to stop abuses of power like this is to shine a light on them."

"It'll be her word against the government's, won't it?"

I grinned again. "What? You think I forgot to turn on the recorder?"