Joule sat across from Jacob McQueeny. She had managed to sleep in this morning having been up most of the night. This time, she had information for him.
“Salvador Torres and Sarah and Gretchen Mueller are part of a group with close to fifty people. They help the migrants cross the desert.” She laid out a little more info that Salvador had given her.
“Not surprising,” Jacob said. “The only surprising part is the number. That's a reasonable portion of the town.”
“They're not all from El Indio,” Joule told him before she thought about the wisdom of it. She'd already decided she would tell him only some of it. Salvador Torres had given her no other names than the ones she brought to the table. So, she didn't have that information to share, but had the numbers and their locations maybe been too much? She did not want to get these people in trouble. Certainly not before her missing were found.
Honestly, she didn't want to get them in trouble afterwards either. She appreciated the work. They took a huge risk each night they did it.
“They leave out food, water, medication, birth control, clothing.” She wondered if Jacob McQueeny was surprised by any of it. He didn't seem to be, though Joule had been.
What Salvador had explained to her about the coyotes and their willingness to take money and sell people in exchange was concerning. The goal of his group was to get as many migrants through on foot by their own hand as possible.
“They don't interfere,” Joule told Jacob now. “They avoid interacting with the coyotes at all costs. They aren’t prepared for a fight.”
They just tried to give the people the means to get themselves away. Or at least that’s what Salvador told her. For the first time she realized she’d eaten it up with a spoon. Now, only Jacob’s healthy skepticism reminded her that she should dole up some of her own.
“Do they think their people get through?”
“They don’t have people. They don’t follow anyone. Just have points where they leave out what they collected. Some do and some don't.” She paused. “The drop points have to keep changing. So word seems to get around among the migrants that they should look for the things, but to avoid the cartels, they have to find new places and not interfere with the drug drops. They've had trouble in the past with some of their groups getting surrounded and going missing.”
That had perked Jacob up and he began asking questions.
Joule was glad she could answer this. She felt she had been smart, taking out her phone and tapping out notes getting dates for at least proximities whenever Salvador Torres could offer them. Now she used those notes to help Jacob who pulled out his own device and compared his own notes to the information.
“This one is actually really close to this missing file.” He held up the phone and she tried to read a very tiny copy of an official document. All she could make out was that it was a missing persons’ report. “Two young women from San Antonio went missing together. Street workers out beyond the edge of town.”
He pointed to another couple of the approximate dates she’d given him. “These don't seem to match anything. But this one—” He pointed at another. “The family reported a young couple missing.”
“They were illegal immigrants and they were reported missing?” Joule had always thought that wouldn’t happen. Staying hidden was key, wasn’t it?
Jacob held the file up toward her. “It’s very uncommon. But they felt that what had happened had been so severe that it might be useful to help others. Or for filing for political asylum and mostly for getting them found.”
“They went missing from one of the groups that Torres and Mueller were helping.” They’d seen them twice, Salvador said. Then there were fewer of them the third time they’d seen them. For some reason, this group had hung out in the desert in the same place for a while rather than moving north or east and out of harm’s way.
They had been searching for their missing, Joule realized now, and she felt a deep pang of painful kinship.
She looked to Jacob. “What's next?”
“We go out again. This time, let’s see if we can take the drones that your company has?”
Joule didn't doubt that Dr. Murasawa would find a way. She just had to be sure her old boss wasn’t shut down before this was over.
“On it,” she told him.
“We'll meet out there tonight and follow whatever footprints we can find.” He looked at something that came in on his phone then turned his attention back to her. “Clearly this has been happening for a while. Definitely a trafficking situation.”
Joule’s heart clenched. All along she had wondered about human trafficking. “They sell them?”
Jacob looked away for a moment as if knowing she wouldn't want to hear it. “I think they have to.”
“What do you mean?” Her heart was pounding. She needed these answers, and she so badly didn’t want them.
“Look how many go missing.” He pulled up information from some of his sister’s earlier research. It showed tracked footprints and how the research team had tried to follow them through, find out where they were going, how many disappeared. “Even with conservative estimates, there’s far more going missing than the people working for them.”
“Do you think they position them at different places around the country? Or along the border?” She reached for something better than being sold into some kind of awful situation. For her brother, and for Sarah and Aurora. Not that working for the cartels was easy or even safe.
“They might. But it’s still human trafficking.”
True, Joule thought. And it would make it that much harder to find Cage, Aurora and Sarah.