Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) (24 page)

“We didn’t work in the fields.”

A look of tragic understanding passed between the agent and Odilia.

“We’ll get you some help. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Carrizales said. “I’m only sorry we weren’t here earlier.”

XXIX

Michael rode the rush all morning long. He’d never felt anything like it. The victories piling up at his feet were almost too much. Every phone call, every text, every e-mail was a new document found or connection made. They found building contracts related to the Blocks, leases for the unmarked warehouses, and even customs information relating to cargo containers brought in through the Port of Long Beach.

If they’d had to go in blind, it would have taken months if not years to get a foothold. But thanks to Luis, it took hours. All the more shocking was the key evidence that had gotten the ball rolling. Not the murder weapon, not the location of the fields, not even where Luis believed Maria and possibly others were buried. No, it was the registration of the truck that provided the financial road map once they gained access to the Marshak Corporation’s financials. It was a company truck, but not one that belonged to the Marshaks. Not directly anyway. Rather, it was owned by a holding company with a single officer, Jason Marshak. The holding company received substantial financial transfers from the Marshak Corporation, money that inevitably disappeared, albeit on dates a clever Treasury liaison linked to various construction projects relating to the Blocks. These payments went back ten years. Once this was uncovered, the rest unraveled neatly.

Never let it be said criminals were smart.

Of everything he’d recovered himself, Michael’s saddest discovery from the files at the main campus related to the laundering of the workers through Santiago’s farm and five other alleged landowners’ farms. “Alleged” because even as the Marshaks went through the motions of transferring ownership to these trusted former field hands, there were any number of clauses that would allow them to yank it back out from under them. They couldn’t sell it to a third party, they couldn’t grow anything that the Marshaks couldn’t sell, and they couldn’t add on to the parcel. For all intents and purposes the laborers and, to a lesser degree, the landowners were indeed slaves, but by the letter of the law, it was perfectly legal.

What quickly became clear was that few in the company actually knew about the conspiracy. The overseers, whose pay was handled by the same shell company that owned the truck Zarate drove, were free to hire who they wanted. No one at the Marshak company would know they were on the payroll. The irony was if more people—specifically, more accountants or lawyers—had known about the illegal side of the business, Michael’s job might’ve been more difficult. Without much effort, they could’ve covered their tracks more efficiently.

Guess Marshak didn’t trust his own lawyers not to rat him out,
Michael thought.
Maybe there’s hope for the human race after all.

And in the mix of all of this, he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the blackmailer with the photos of him and Annie to forward that story to the
Los Angeles Times
, to his superior, or even to Helen. But it never came. He knew he wasn’t so lucky that the whole thing would vanish. He was now hoping the blackmailer, realizing how stacked the deck was against him, might be holding on to the pictures to use as leverage in a potential plea down the line.

That Michael could handle.

The phone rang. It was Rebenold for the tenth time that hour alone.

“You’re about to hear from the state highway patrol. They found remains.”

“Zarate?”

“Yes, but even more after they searched the area with metal detectors. They believe the first one they pulled out of the ground is Maria Higuera. There are more coming.”

Though he’d assumed this would be the case, it still hit Michael like a hammer blow. She’d been in front of him only days before. He’d been the one who’d sent her up there. Now, like Annie and Santiago, she was dead.

And he would reap the benefits.

“When the press gets word of the recovered remains, this becomes something else entirely,” Rebenold cautioned Michael. “As it involves foreign nationals and a major American corporation, it’ll be front-page news around the world. We have to be extremely sensitive.”

“Of course.”

He got off the phone and sat back in his chair. He’d taken over one of the Marshak conference rooms, which was now an obstacle course of boxes and files. A steady stream of assistants and clerks navigated their way over to him, but he asked that everyone set up elsewhere. He didn’t want the background noise.

But now the silence was almost too much.

His cell rang. Rebenold again.

“Turn on the news,” she said.

Michael looked for a remote for the television on the wall and couldn’t find one. He opened his laptop and went to the website for the local ABC affiliate. There was a press conference going on, but he couldn’t tell where. It was in front of a courthouse, but it wasn’t LA, and the man identified as a police chief was no one he recognized.

“What is this?” Michael asked.

“Henry Marshak just turned himself in for the murders of Annie Whittaker, Santiago Higuera, and Maria Higuera.”

Oh, today is just going to be full of surprises, isn’t it?
Michael thought.

The roundup of the Marshak field workers was unprecedented in scale. INS had been told to expect large numbers, but they thought this meant a couple hundred people. When they discovered it was clearly many more than this, they called in members of the Air National Guard to help.

If this had been a typical scenario, a clusterfuck would have been inevitable. Getting local government agencies to allocate hard-won resources for something previously unbudgeted for was difficult to impossible. But in the face of what appeared to be a grotesque violation of human rights directly under their noses, a rare moment of unity coalesced.

Trucks were mobilized; local businesses contributed emergency supplies, from food to toiletries to clothing; and hangars at Santa Ynez Airport were repurposed to house the workers. Cots were laid out and fans arranged at the doors to deal with the stifling heat. Temporary barricades kept the workers corralled and far off the runways.

Though there were far more men than women—Odilia guessed it was about one hundred to one—no one had to be told that the women needed to be housed separately. Few had any doubt what the women had gone through was far worse than the men. The male workers were treated as victims, too, but law enforcement determined the men had been allowed to use the women as unpaid prostitutes. Once they realized that, they couldn’t help regarding them as criminals. Several of the male workers had actually looked away in shame when their female counterparts were brought from their apartments. This was the first time many of them had seen the women in the daylight.

There was a prevailing sense of uncertainty among the workers. No one knew how long they would be in custody. Some feared they’d be jailed, despite the agents’ assurances. Virtually all believed they’d seen the last of the Blocks, though they hadn’t been privy to the inner workings of the Marshak clan the way Odilia had. She’d seen how the laws of the land didn’t apply to them.

Santiago told her they’d be heroes, that everyone who’d been wronged by this evil family would rally to them. That they’d start a new life together and raise a family. That he would care for her forever.

And, of course, he told her how different he was from Jason Marshak.

But just like all the others, he’d picked her out because she was pretty. After he’d had his way with her a few times, he decided he would save her. When she was in the metal shack on La Calavera, memories of Santiago kept returning to her no matter how much she’d vowed to never think of him again. She hoped, now that she was away from the Blocks, that all of this pain would finally be allowed to fade.

When they arrived at the hangar, each woman was given two towels, a blanket, two bottles of water, and three military MREs. They were told to pick a cot, shower if they wanted to, and that hot meals would be arriving soon.

As others took cots closest to the temporary showers or food lines, Odilia selected a cot closest to the back doors. Hot as it was, she knew they wouldn’t close them at night, and she wanted to sleep as close to the stars as she could.

Glenn was halfway to Los Angeles when he learned his brother had confessed to triple murder. It was Jack who let him know, the lawyer sounding now a decade older than he had an hour before.

“This is the last day you need something like this thrown onto the fire,” he said with a sigh, “but I can’t imagine any day that news like this would be welcome. Additionally, I’m sorry to ask you over the phone, but I need to know how you want me to proceed.”

Glenn searched his mind for an answer but found none. He wondered if this was what it felt like to have a stroke. He had never felt less in control in his life, as if he was hurtling down a ski slope, unable to turn or arrest his progress. There’d be a crash soon. What scared him most was not knowing the extent of the damage. It was sure to be a permanent injury, but maybe he’d still be able to walk away with some of his dignity intact.

“Did he call you?” Glenn asked.

“He did, but only to say he’d only talk to you.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.”

“I agree. I think that would be a terrible idea.”

Glenn hung up and told the driver to turn around. His eyes flitted around the back of the SUV, as if the answer were waiting there to be found. He wondered if Henry had heard about the raids and suffered some kind of mental break. He needed to be hospitalized, not arraigned. He reached for his phone to inform Jack of this assessment but then paused.

Is there a solution here?
he wondered.
Could they just dump all this at Henry’s feet and call it a day?

He pondered this for the rest of the drive. If there was some kind of crime uncovered within the company, the coincidence of his brother turning himself in for murders—plural—he obviously didn’t commit just might spin things in the right direction. Henry had been plagued by guilt and this was the result, full stop.

When they arrived at the police station, the television press was already out in force. They reacted to Glenn getting out of the SUV like iron filings to a magnet.

“Mr. Marshak! Can we speak to you?” they said, hurrying over with cameramen in tow. “Can you comment on your brother’s statement?”

He considered saying something off the cuff, then realized he needed to look like a man already in mourning.

“Not . . . not right now,” he offered, voice shaking.

A man in jeans and a button-up shirt emerged from the station to escort him in.

“I’m Detective Heidecker. Next time, give us a heads-up when you arrive and we’ll let you in the back door.”

Glenn nodded and shot a look back. Henry’s truck was parked at the curb a few yards away. If the folks in the news vans flanking it had any idea whose it was, he was sure they’d have a camera on it.

“He drove himself,” Glenn said.

“What’s that, sir?” the detective asked.

“Nothing,” Glenn replied. The image of Henry calmly parking and walking in didn’t square with the raving madman Glenn had conjured.

Rather than a cell or conference room, Glenn was led to the station’s break room. There he found Henry sitting at a card table, legs stretched underneath. The only things indicating he was there in any official capacity were the handcuffs on his wrists. He grinned up at Glenn, as if having finally been discovered at the end of a long round of hide-and-seek.

“How are you, Glenn?”

Glenn couldn’t look at him. His eyes flitted to a pair of police officer’s union posters on the wall and then to packets of coffee creamer spilled onto the counter next to an ancient coffeemaker. If his brother expected him to play along with his mania, he had another thing coming.

“I want you to know I didn’t plan it to happen this way,” Henry went on. “I had no idea the district attorney’s office was making its move today. I had a feeling they knew something, but today suggests they knew quite a bit more than I thought.”

Glenn had prepared himself for crazy conspiracy theories, incoherent raving, or perhaps even jealousy and bile. This rational, almost conciliatory Henry suggested calculation. He’d thought about this ahead of time and was in perfect control of his faculties when he stepped into the police station.