“Sigue,” he told her. “Dígales.” “Tell them.”
Joanna watched as Elena gathered herself by taking a long steadying breath before she spoke again. This time her words came so quickly and softly that Joanna was forced to rely entirely on Arturo’s translation.
When I was fourteen, my stepfather sold me to a pimp who put me to work on the streets. I was still a virgin. That meant I was worth more. Later, when I got pregnant, the pimp knocked me out with some drug and sold me to another man who liked women who were pregnant. When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. Someone dropped me off at a house with three other girls, all of them pregnant. They were the ones who told me we were in Guadalajara. A few weeks later, when the first girl gave birth, she disappeared, and so did her baby.
“Do you think the man killed them?” Jaime asked.
Elena shuddered and answered with a nod.
One of the other girls asked him where they went. He said that he got rid of them—that they were his and he could do what he wanted with them.
Hearing Arturo’s translation of that, Joanna felt sick to her stomach. This story was almost a carbon copy of one from several years earlier when members of her department had stumbled across a depraved predator named James Ardmore who had been doing something chillingly similar right here in Cochise County to yet another collection of unfortunate young women whom he had held captive, tortured, abused, and finally murdered.
Joanna wasn’t the only one who saw the similarity. Raymond turned to her with an anguished look on his face. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s almost the same thing that happened to Latisha.”
Latisha Marcum had been the sole survivor of Ardmore’s basement torture chamber, and as a newly hired deputy, Garth had played a key role in rescuing her.
“I wonder what the guy fed her,” Garth added. “Ardmore kept his prisoners alive by feeding them dry dog food.”
When they turned their attention back to the computer monitor, Jaime was speaking again.
“What happened next?” he asked.
I wanted my baby. No matter if it was a boy or a girl, it was still my baby. If it was a girl, I would have named her Lucia, after my mother, and if it was a boy, I was going to name him Xavier, after my father.
At the house the three of us who were left did everything—cooking, cleaning, housework. One day I was out in the yard hanging the wash when I saw a group of workmen next door. I went over to them and told them that the man in the house was evil—that he was holding us prisoner. Two of the workmen pulled me over the fence—they were very strong—and the man in charge said he would call the police and have the man arrested.
But I didn’t wait for the police. I was afraid they wouldn’t arrest him—that they would believe the man and not the girls. Or if they did arrest him, they’d let him out, and he’d come find me. So I took off, hitchhiking. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to get far away. I made it as far as a town called San Luis Potosí. That’s where I hooked up with a migrant caravan on its way north.
Most of the people in the caravan were nice. They were hoping to go to America to find a better life, and that’s what I was hoping for too. Walking all day long every day wasn’t easy, especially since I was pregnant, but I did it—for me and for the baby.
Sometimes people gave us rides, but mostly we walked. There were lots more men than women. Some of the men had wives with them but a lot of them didn’t, and so...
Elena paused for a moment and looked beseechingly at Arturo before leaning over and whispering something into his ear.
He nodded before replying, “Sí, saben lo que haces.” “Yes, they know what you do.”
Resignedly, Elena turned back to Jaime and looked him directly in the eye as she answered.
My stepfather turned me into a prostitute. There were lots of single men in the caravan and very few women. Some of them had plenty of money, and I needed money. Since I’m good at what I do, I made lots of money. I was worried that someone would try to steal it, so Imade friends with an old woman—a grandmother. I called her myBancos de la Abuela, my Grandmother Banker. I shared some of the money I earned with her, and she kept mine safe.
At first I thought I would go to Juarez, but along the way, I heard people saying that going to a smaller town might make it easier to sneak across the border. When part of the caravan broke off to come to Naco, I came with them—since Grandmother Banker’s family was coming here too.
By then it was almost time for my baby to be born. I decided trying to cross the border right then would be too risky. So I used my money to buy a tiny house, not much more than a shack, but that’s where Xavier and I have lived since the day he was born. Grandmother Banker’s family managed to make it across the border, but the coyote taking them said she was too old and wouldn’t be able to walk fast enough. He refused to take her. Once her family left, she ended up staying with me and helped with the baby. She died of Covid in 2022. I still miss her.
Elena paused her narrative long enough to wipe a tear from her eye, and Joanna could tell that she had come to love the old woman who had befriended and helped her on the difficult journey north.
Detective Howell, who had been silent throughout most of the interview, spoke up, only now Jaime was the one doing the translating.
“When is the last time you saw your son?”
That would be Friday a week ago. Fridays are usually busy for me, and I don’t let Xavier stay in the house when I have...guests, so I would give him some food and send him outside to play. That night when my company left, Xavier was nowhere to be found. I looked for him for hours but couldn’t find him.
“Did you report him missing?” Deb asked.
Elena shook her head.
People like me don’t go to the police with our troubles. Policemen are not our friends. I was afraid they would accuse me of doing to Xavier what my stepfather did to me—selling him to traffickers.They’re here, you know, even in Naco. And that’s what I suspected when I couldn’t find him—that the traffickers had gotten him.
