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THE THREE GUYS IN FRONT of me were Mexican. Short, wiry, and deadly. They had me dead to rights, and they knew it.
The sprinkle turned into a drizzle. Water trickled harmlessly from the sky in a kind of misty vapor. The wind blew, and the treetops swayed and sagged under the pressure, but the thunder and lightning had stopped.
The middle guy said, “I am Oskar Tega. You’re Mr. Widow.”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or merely stating a fact. So I nodded.
Tega pushed the Five-Seven pistol closer to Sheldon’s head. The muzzle pressed into her skin.
“This is your woman?” he asked. He jerked her by the tuft of her hair, pulling her close to him. She let out a whimper. His lips moved inches from her ear.
I stayed quiet. I looked at the guy on the left-hand side, then the guy on the right-hand side, and then back to Tega. Oskar Tega wasn’t anything special. He was older than I had pictured. Maybe early 50s. His hair was black and gray and slicked back. Stubble had besieged his face. Earlier, I had thought he wore black, but I was wrong. He was dressed in a dark green slicker. It looked black in the dark. From what I could tell, he was a thin guy. So were his friends.
I stared at Sheldon. I never lowered the CZ 52, even though I was pretty sure it was useless.
Sheldon said, “I’m sorry. They were going to kill me.”
Tega nodded, and then he whipped her around and pointed the Five-Seven at her head.
“Toss the gun, Mr. Widow, or I kill her.”
Sheldon stared at me with tears in her eyes. She begged, “Please. They’ll kill me.”
I thought about Salbutamol again. I thought about asthma, and I thought about Faye Matlind and her dead husband. And then I thought about Sheldon’s body. Immaculate. I pictured her in my mind, jogging around the lake. With a body like that, she must’ve run and exercised six, maybe seven days a week.
I kept my eyes open. Gun trained on Tega.
Asthma. Salbutamol. Faye Matlind.
Then, in a sudden and quick movement, I pointed the gun straight at Sheldon, center mass, and said, “Not if I kill her first.”
I squeezed the trigger.
Sheldon’s face turned white, but she didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t flinch.
The gun hammer fell back, and the empty air was filled with a snapping metallic sound like a mousetrap. It echoed into the trees and was lost in the distant sound of the roaring fire from across the lake. Nothing else happened. No gunshot. No bullet. Nothing. The gun hadn’t fired. I tossed it to the ground and dropped the Maglite. I didn’t raise my hands like a prisoner but lowered them to my sides. Let them relax.
“You removed the firing pin,” I said. I shook my head and looked at the CZ 52 as it sank down in the grass and mud. I looked back up and said, “I knew that gun was a piece of shit. One thing about the CZ 52 is the easily removable firing pin. No way does a woman like you live here in this town, own a Remington shotgun, and not know anything about guns. You set me up. Probably led the sheriff here, too. But the truth is that you probably could’ve just left the firing pin in that stupid gun. You could’ve left it alone. That shitty relic probably would’ve blown up in my hand.”
Sheldon’s eyes turned cold, and Tega released her from his grip. She stepped forward. She asked, “How did you know?”
I stared at her, emotionless, and said, “You met a man abroad? A benefactor?” Then I turned to Tega and said, “Tega, I wondered when you’d show your face. I thought for sure it would’ve been after we made it to the Medical Center.”
Tega asked, “Where?”
“The Eckhart Medical Center.”
He nodded, pointed the Five-Seven at my chest.
I said, “Sheldon works for you. She always has. That’s how you got so many, girls. She’s the one who looked after them. They’d need a medical doctor to keep them healthy. To keep them sedated. To keep them calm. To keep them prime for your customers. And she was probably the one abducting them. I mean, who’s more trustworthy than a doctor? And a woman doctor? No one would suspect her.”
Sheldon said, “How did you know? When?”
I said, “The day I met you. In retrospect. But I was slow. Too slow. I liked you. I ignored my suspicions. You ran around the lake like an Olympic runner. In immaculate shape. Great body. You could compete nationally. But it was the Salbutamol that gave you away. I saw you buying it.”
Tega cocked his head and looked at me questioningly. He tried to pronounce the word, but couldn’t.
Sheldon said, “Salbutamol. It’s a medication for severe asthma.”
I asked, “Who would you be buying that for? Yourself? You don’t have asthma. No one with serious asthma would be able to have a body like yours. No way! You fed me that bullshit that you were buying it for the clinic, but you only had one box. No, that medication was for someone in particular—a patient, but not one from this town. If it were a regular patient, then you would have bought a lot more. Might as well stock up on it instead of having to return to the store constantly and buy more.
“And you had all kinds of female products stacked up in your clinic. Boxes and boxes. Enough for an all-girl community. Who’s that for? The women who live here? No offense, but I’ve been around this town, and it’s a pretty boring place. No one here is having that much sex. You didn’t need it for anyone living here—you needed it for Tega’s girls.
“You needed Salbutamol to treat Faye Matlind. She is real. I saw her medications in Chris Matlind’s motel room. She’s asthmatic. You had to take care of her. You were in charge of taking care of all of them. Tega can’t use his stock if it’s dead or pregnant, can he?
“Plus, why does the Eckhart Medical Center need a barbed wire fence? Not because of animals. That place was surrounded like a prison because it is a prison.”
A devastating silence fell between us like Sheldon and I were locked in time. Finally, I said, “You were my mom’s contact. She must’ve reached out to you. Being the local doctor and an outsider and a woman. She didn’t trust Grady. But she trusted you. How did she figure that? Did you know her?”
Sheldon shook her head. To be fair to her, there were signs of tears in her eyes—a symbol of remorse, but that didn’t affect me — not one bit.
She said, “Deveraux figured that I might’ve seen something. She figured that maybe I had knowledge of some man buying up supplies of medication. Like maybe a stranger was holding Ann Gables somewhere and needed feminine medications to keep her healthy.”
I nodded. It made sense. In a way, my mom had reached the same suspicion that I had. But what were the odds that she’d reach out to the one person who was a part of it?
Tega interrupted. “So you figured it all out. You know why I’m here?”
I said, “You’re here to pick up your human stock. You aren’t into drugs. That’s all smoke and mirrors to keep the cops guessing. You deal in sex slaves. You’re scum. The lowest of the low. I’ll admit that at first, I thought that the rednecks were keeping the girls, but you’re too smart to trust a bunch of rednecks. They aren’t the best at keeping secrets. If one of them got caught, they’d roll on you the first chance they got. But you did buy drugs from them. They cooked your meth—meth that Sheldon used to keep the girls tweaking.
“I’m guessing they’re already loaded on your seaplane. And they’re tweaked out of their minds. Probably have no idea what day it is, let alone where they are or what’s happening to them. “You used Sheldon to take care of the girls for you. You trusted her. And who can you trust more than a doctor?”
Silence fell across us. No one spoke for a long moment, and then Tega said, “Good for you. You got it. For a gringo, you’re quite smart.”
Sheldon looked away for a moment, and then she looked back at me. It was a cold, uncaring stare.
Tega moved his finger into the Five-Seven’s trigger housing.
I said, “Before you kill me, tell me, how did you recruit her? Was it money?”
Sheldon said, “How do you think a small-town girl gets through medical school? Especially in this backwoods state? He paid for my education. He paid for the Medical Center.” She paused. “I belong to him.”
I nodded and said, “He paid for your schooling, and in return, you had to host his criminal enterprise here in a small town.”
She nodded. It was as simple as that. I didn’t condone it, not by a long shot, but I understood it. I had grown up in Mississippi. Parts of it were still bordering on the third world. I understood wanting to escape, but not like this. Then I said, “All of those lives—Matlind, Grady. And none of those women will ever make it out alive. You know that. I hope it was worth it.”
Tega said, “Sheldon was my first girl.” He reached out his right hand, lowered the Five-Seven with his left, and caressed her face. There was some obvious sentimentality there.
I nodded again. I got it. They had met when she went out of the country. Became lovers. She probably had dreams of being by his side in Mexico, living out their days on a Mexican beach. She’d work some kind of local clinic, and he’d run his operations from Mexico. They would travel together under the guise of her Medical Center’s name, doing medical charity work. But the reality was far darker than she had predicted. And now, she was just as guilty as he was.
Tega said, “I’m afraid it’s time for us to go. But I’m so impressed with you that I will give you the gift of a painless death—a quick bullet to the head.”
Tega raised his gun again, aimed at my head, and prepared to fire.