Page 68 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
Entering the room behind her was a man. He was Black, too, and wearing a suit that was so sharp it could have drawn blood. Compared to the parade of crumpled, stubbled and sweat-stained people she’d seen in the hallways of this place, this guy looked like he had just stepped out of the pages of GQ.
Weck jerked her head at the man. “This is my colleague, AUSA Malcolm Oates.”
“Are you going to explain any of this to me?” Julia said. “Or is the suspense supposed to kill me?”
Weck didn’t answer; she was too busy rummaging in her bag, occasionally coming up with items of interest. A yellow legal pad, a cellphone, a pair of blue-rimmed reading glasses.
Julia eyed the largest binder on the table. It was stamped with some kind of government crest and encircled by a long string of letters. She read them upside down: OCDETF.
Weck noticed her interest. “Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force,” she translated, taking her seat.
Catchy, Julia thought.
“We are part of a Chicago Strike Force of combined law enforcement agencies, whose job is to target CPOTs.” She had put on the glasses; they magnified the clumps of mascara that had settled into the creases beneath her eyes. “Those are what call Consolidated Priority Targets. Or what others like to call drug lords.”
She took a breath, tried to pull herself together. “Well, I’m a ballet dancer. And I’m afraid I don’t know any drug lords.”
Weck was tapping her pen on the pad. Her gaze went to the ring on Julia’s finger. “That’s not strictly true though, is it?”
Julia covered the ring up with her other hand and said nothing.
Oates said, “Just how much do you know about your new fiancé, Miss Mikkelsen?”
Julia reached out a shaking hand for the cup and took a sip of water. It was warm and tasted like plastic.
Weck said, “I take it you know about his involvement withLa Mano Negra?”
The special agent seemed to take Julia’s continued silence as a yes. “So, I expect you also know that said involvement places him smack bang in the middle of a transnational criminal enterprise that imports billions of dollars’ worth of heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl into Chicago and other U.S. cities.”
The only sound in the room was the tap of Weck’s pen.
Julia wished she’d hadn’t drunk the water because she now felt like she was going to throw it up.
Weck sat back in her chair and opened the binder. “How about I give you a brief bio on your boyfriend and you let me know which bits he left out?”
She began flipping pages. Julia dropped her head and closed her eyes, wishing she could so easily close off her mind to all of this.
“Danilo Amador Castaño, born in Torreón in the state of Coahuila. Father, Hector, was a mechanic who owned his own auto shop. Mom, María, was a schoolteacher. One younger brother, Sebastián. By all accounts, it was a stable upbringing and a happy childhood for both the Castaño boys. Until one day, when Daniel was thirteen, the family packed up in a hurry and vanished overnight. Paid coyotes a considerable sum of money to take them over the border near El Paso.”
Weck turned a page, went on, “Turns out Hector had been both laundering money through his business and smuggling drugs for theSinaloacartel. His business had been failing, and they approached him and offered to help. But he soon learned that help from the cartel comes with quite the price tag. And when he decided he didn’t want to pay that price anymore, there was only one way out. To run. As fast and as far away as he could.
“They tracked them down, of course. Maybe they had spies watching his house, or maybe they owned one of the coyotes. Who knows? What we do know is that they intercepted the van with him and his whole extended family in it, eight people in all, crossing the Chihuahuan Desert on the U.S. side. And, well, ended that little dream.”
Weck removed several photos from the binder and slid them across the table to Julia. It took her a second to realize what she was seeing and, by then, it was too late to unsee them.
A white Sprinter van riddled with hundreds of bullet holes. They had shattered the windows, blown out the windshield, and warped the metal sides. The rear doors were open, revealing the damage the bullets had inflicted on the slumped bodies inside.
Weck had the decency to look away as she turned the page. “No one knows how the boys survived. The bodies of their mother and grandmother likely shielded them from the bullets. Daniel, however, received a shrapnel wound to the side of his face.”
Julia swallowed a sharp lump in her throat. His scar. The one that sat just above the cross inked onto his left cheekbone. He’d gotten it from surviving an attack that had killed his whole family.
Weck said, “They hid under that pile of bodies, Daniel keeping his four-year-old brother quiet for hours. We know this because by the time a border patrol showed up, the turkey vultures already numbered in the dozens.” She paused, then added, “They still had to pry him away from his mother’s body, though.”
Julia kept her head down, hot tears blurring the view of her hands clasped in her lap.
She didn’t want to be hearing about Daniel’s family like this. From her. She wanted him to have been the one to tell her. When he was ready to.
Weck took the photos back, apparently satisfied they had traumatized Julia enough. “Both boys wound up in ICE custody. But they escaped from the El Paso hospital where they’d been taken. From there, they vanished. It wasn’t until Daniel reached sixteen that he came to the attention of the LAPD. Now sporting some interesting ink.”
