“WHO IS BACK THERE?”
A chorus of voices spilled out into the night as doors and windows opened up all around us and people started heading towards the alley. Festive music followed them with ill-timed irony.
The gunman met my eyes then lifted his finger to his lips to tell me to be quiet.
Bile rolled through my stomach. If I ran, would he kill me? How about all the people coming? How far would he go?
“I’M HERE—I’M BACK HERE!! HELP ME!” I screamed.
The gunman wasn’t happy. There would probably be a lot of dead bodies to clean up. He pointed at me—like he was marking me—before he made his way back to his car and drove off fast.
As people surrounded me and the dead body, that moment’s-ago bile came up from my stomach, and I spewed all over the ground.
The next few weeks were a whirlwind. Hours spilled into days as I was questioned endlessly, reliving the scene again and again for police, lawyers, sketch artists and important government officials. I found out the name of the suspected shooter was Eduardo Miguel after I positively identified his photo.
I was told my testimony—the DA and the DEA hoped—would cinch his going away for good.
While Eduardo Miguel was locked away, they had no real fear for my safety, but still two special agents were parked outside my apartment, assigned to watch over and protect me until after the trial.
But then he disappeared during transport. That’s when the agents made me drop everything I was doing and go with them to a hotel. They wouldn’t even let me call my family or let my professors know I wasn’t coming in to class. All I could think of when they checked me into the room was that my mom and little sister must have thought I was dead.
It was only temporary, they said.
We weren’t there for more than four hours before the taller one went to get us some food from the diner across the street—the heavyset one watched him out the windows with binoculars.
When the agent came back with takeout containers, I downed half my lemonade before I even took the wrapper off my sandwich.
All of a sudden I started feeling lightheaded and queasy. I broke out in a cold sweat and wondered if maybe there had been some type of bacteria in the drink I’d just guzzled.
Next thing I knew, I woke up here . . .
He’s going to kill me. I have no doubt.
I don’t know why it hasn’t happened already, why he didn’t just get it over with and dump my body in some roadside ravine. Good God, I don’t have any information to bargain with.
Did he contact my mom? Is he demanding a ransom? We don’t have money for that.
What happened to my protection detail? Jesus, maybe they’re dead!
Then another thought hits me: Oh dear God, what if he killed my family?
Think, Rachel. Just think. Breathe. Why would he do that? They know nothing about him.
Shifting where I sit, my body sinks into the give of what seems to be a mattress. To confirm it, old, used springs pop and ping in and out of shape. I can tell by the shape it’s a twin size mattress.
As I trail my hands down behind my body and contort myself so I can feel around, my skin comes in contact with the scratchy polyester of the uncovered mattress. It’s tacky and grimy. I continue feeling over the edge of the mattress to a cold concrete floor.
I’m fucked.
I’m so fucked.
No one knows where I am.
I’m blindfolded, chained and hidden in a killer’s basement.
I try to hold it back, but I can’t. Softly, I begin to cry.
Ryder
As I comb through the information via authorized databases (along with some I’m not so authorized for), an entirely new picture of Eduardo Miguel begins to emerge. I sit back in the hotel chair and stare at the first and most crucial page of notes and facts I’ve compiled. I call it the perp’s “quick profile.”
Chief taught me that you can’t always trust what you hear, to look at the cold facts and let your mind instinctively put the pieces together to form a cohesive picture.
Sometimes our intel is spot on. Other times, when the circumstances in a case just feel wrong, or off, this method proves to be invaluable.
And right now, I’m looking at how the DEA, and the FBI and everyone else who’s so hell bent on bringing down Cruz, could be missing the bigger picture. I see a Miguel who has been hiding behind Cruz as a smokescreen for his own dealings. His cartel is growing in numbers, amassing strength and territory, and all right under the noses of federal agents.
My instinct tells me Miguel wants to be a ghost to honest law enforcement and a source of easy, large cash sums to the dishonest, all while becoming a legend in the cartel. And being brass enough to murder a student on campus and kill the witness to his crime is behavior he’ll want to take credit for.
That kicks it up a notch.