Chapter 3- Troglydtes
Years of training and a survival instinct kicked in, she drew her gun and looked for the shooter, but there were at least a hundred people on the street, he had picked a good day to try and kill someone. Uniforms were rushing out into the street to try and calm the hysteria that had been created by the shooter. Sophia looked above her head, about a half inch above her was a .45 caliber bullet hole.
"Dr. Segura! Are you all right?" Reid was breathless with worry. He had let her go alone, how could he have let her leave alone he cursed himself.
"I'm fine, come on we have to find Barrerra." She was impatient normally and someone trying to kill her tended to get on her nerves. She navigated through the one way streets and narrow alleys like someone who had walked them all. Her blackberry rang, Reid noticed it was a Vivaldi ring tone.
"Segura. Hold on I'll put you on speaker." It was Garcia's dulcet tones coming through the car speakers now. "Antonio Barrerra owns the building on 10th street where the community center is located and has a house on Hedding Street. He comes from a prominent Hispanic family in San Jose, dad was a city councilman, mother was head of the local theatre troupe, both were pioneers in their field and social activist with civil rights movement back in the 60's, his sister is a white house aid, but get this he was a c student in high school, barely made it into the army, went to community college under the GI bill, went to law school at night, graduated in the bottom third, Reid, get this he's specialty in the army, laser mechanics. That's how he knew to zap the cameras."
"You got all that with just his name?" Sophia said astonished at Garcia's prowess.
"Garcia's our resident Goddess of cyberspace." Reid said knowing Garcia was listening in.
"You give me a name and I'll give you their brand of toothpaste chica." Garcia smirked
"Garcia, you have what we call sabor, flavor, thanks." Sophie hung up.
"I'm gonna call Hotch and see if he can have someone go check out Barrerra's house while we're on our way to La Raza.." Reid picked up his phone.
"Do you think they're still alive?" Sophie looked at him and he knew he couldn't lie.
"Statistically speaking if we don't find them within 24 hours after abduction their chances of being alive when we find them are almost negligible." Reid had rattled this off, not knowing what to say to be comforting. "Just know that you're doing everything you can to save them." Reid was a little shocked at himself,that sounded like something Gideon would say.
They arrive at the building on 10th street, school had just let out and the place was teeming with kids and teenagers and some senior citizens. Sophie could hear banda music playing somewhere. "I don't think they like me much." Reid whispered to her while they walked through the courtyard to the reception desk. "It's not you they don't like Dr. Reid, the older generation isn't what you'd call progressive, a woman with authority is like a bull with teats." Sophie had to endure those kinds of looks even in this day and age but now she hardly noticed. "Donde esta Senior Barrerra?" she asked the receptionist. The young girl behind the counter couldn't be more than 16, and when she saw Reid pull out his credentials (he assumed Sophie had introduced them as agents), she took off running. Bewildered Reid stood there for a second until he realized Sophie had chased after her.
"Migra!" "Migra!" the girl shouted. Sophie was hot on her heels and managed to yank her back by an arm. Everyone who had been in the building immediately tried to exit, some were knocked down by the crowd. Sophie walked the girl back to building and shouted "No so la migra! Soy la policia! Quero aydate! Estamos aqi para ayudar! We're here to help." The building was now almost completely empty. Reid finally caught up with her and by now had put together what had happened. "Dr. Reid." Sophie was out of breath at the moment. "Next time, you're in a room full of people afraid of deportation, I would wait to pull out your credentials." She smiled at him.
The girl was in tears thinking she was surely being deported. "I'm not INS, I'm here because three women in this community were murdered, and now two children are missing." Sophie was trying to appeal to the girl's sense of family.
"I d-don't know, I know nothing." The girl was shaking.
"I just want to find Mr. Barrerra to ask him a few questions, maybe he can help us.
"I know nothing, Mr. Barrerra he is un santo, a saint to us."
"Come te llames? What's your name?" Sophie had to get past this road block.
"Me llamo Ysenia." She lowered her head and looked at the floor.
Reid noticed that the girl didn't make eye contact with either one of them the whole time. "Ysenia? Are you afraid of something? You keep looking out the window, are you afraid someone is going to see you?" Reid had counted, she'd looked out the window 12 times in the last four minutes. Sophie looked at him and then asked. "Ysenia, if you're afraid of Mr. Barrerra, we can protect you, but you have to tell me what you know." The girl looked at one then the other. "If I tell you anything, they will come in the night and take them!" Ysenia blurted out. "Take who? Who are they going to take?" Sophia knew this was her window. "My brothers and sisters, Senior Barrerra said that if the police came to tell them nothing, that if I said anything my brothers and sisters would be taken away like the others." Reid and Sophia exchanged nervous glances. "Others? There were other children taken Ysenia? Do you know where they are?" Reid knew they didn't have much time. "Mr. Barrerra brought them here at first, but then he took them. I don't know where they took them, but I heard Mr. Barrerra on the phone with the insurance man, Mr. Than. He said they had to move the children, that it was getting too dangerous. He said not to tell anyone, that my family could be next." Ysenia started sobbing again. Reid immediately dialed Garcia while Sophie tried to comfort Ysenia and put in word to the locals to pick Barrerra up.
"Garcia, I need you to do something for me." Reid always the polite one.
"Anything for you Wonder Boy, wired for sound and ready for action." Garcia actually cracked her knuckles audibly.
"I need to know if Antonio Barrerra has any other properties around town, warehouses, anything industrial, secluded. Also can you forward any insurance policies, he or any of his companies has on individuals, look specifically for any insurance agents with the last name Than." Reid rattled off as fast as he could, afraid that he was right.
"You'll have it in a jiffy and two shakes. The insurance run down will take the extra shake." She was gone before he could say thanks.
"Your people just picked up Barrerra and our tossing his place, Ysenia only lives about a block from here. I called a judge I know and the ink is drying on the warrant for this place, I"ll be back to help as soon as I know she's safe, I hear you're a genius when it comes to patterns and things like that?." She smiled.
"Um, yeah you could say that." He smiled back.
"Well number one, make it so." She saluted him and he couldn't help but grin.
Sophie had dropped off the scared girl at home to worried parents. They weren't exactly sympathetic to her cause but she tried to make them understand that if no one came forward only more people would get hurt or worse. She didn't know how much she'd gotten through, and the thought of those missing kids was eating at her. She pulled the SUV into to the La Raza parking lot and tried to ignore the little butterflies in her stomach at the thought of Spencer Reid, he was so charmingly unaware of how good looking he was, he was nervous around her and as much as Sophie tried her logical mind wouldn't allow her to dismiss this information.
"Two-hundred thousand, Three hundred thousand, and four hundred thousand, all within the last year, in October, January ,and May but what does that mean?" Reid was puzzled at this, Barrerra had taken out insurance policies on all three women in these months all for amounts lower than the $500,000 reporting limit, this was statistically significant, he just didn't know how. He heard Sophie come in and his stomach was immediately in sailors knots. She has a quiet quirkiness, not loud like Garcia but an undercurrent of subversivness, he noticed as Sophie plunked down next to him and grabbed a pile of paperwork from the volumes of records in the file cabinet. He smiled to himself "She's wearing Chuck Taylors too." He mused. He looked over at her and caught her eye, she gazed right back at him not once wavering, he was lost in her for a second, she was magnetic to him, he leaned in and she didn't move away, he felt his hand move up to her cheek and stroke her face before he gently gripped her head in his palm and tipped her face up to his. He felt like someone else had taken over his body and he knew at any moment she was going to pull away from him. When his lips brushed hers they both exhaled and he felt her soft mouth press back soft at first and then more urgently. Now he was running his hands down her back and pulling her body towards him, as they explored each other, he thought of a line from a Neruda poem that reminded him of her "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way." Now was not the time for this he told himself, they had to work, they had to find those children but they had both needed that so badly and it had just happened. He had to tear himself away from her and she must have been along the same train of thought because she immediately jumped back to the case.
"So did you find anything? Any patterns uncovered?" She looked at him trying so hard not to betray the fact she wanted to jump on him again, her strategy was to just pretend like it hadn't happened, at least for now.
He decided to follow her lead. "I did, there's these checking withdrawals on La Raza's business account to cash for the exact same amounts of the insurance policies he had taken out on all the women, but the withhdrawls occur before the first murder. He knew he was going to cash in on these women, but why those months? If his plan was to cash in on these women's death, why were they murdered in September? Reid was brought out of his reverie by his phone ringing. "Garcia, did you find anything?" Reid was hopeful. "You were right about the insurance agent a Van Than was the insurance agent for Barrerra's law firm and business accounts, but he's in the wind, no one at his office has heard from him. Barrerra has holdings all over the city Reid, but he does own a cluster of buildings on Monterey Road, it's out of the way, old industrial section of town. I've got a hunch it's the large building in the middle which is vacant, because that's one of the only buildings still wired to the grid, the rest have all fallen into disrepair, now go find those kids!" Garcia rushed.
"These are gambling debts!" Sophie exclaimed.
"What? How do you know?" Reid had to hide his chagrin at being one upped.
"October is World Series, January is Super Bowl and May is the Kentucky derby, he was betting these women's lives on a game." She was disgusted.
"I never saw that, but why did he wait so long to cash in?" That was the part that bothered both of them. Reid dialed the rest of the team; "Hotch Garcia tracked down a possible location for the kids, we're headed there now." Reid had become more self assured in Sophie's presence.
"Reid, I'll have Morgan and Prentiss meet you there, it's a media circus out here, the Order of the California White Knights have taken to calling these "public service murders" and are going on any network that will listen and praising the work of Daniel Blaine. Their leader is calling for the reinstatement of lynching in St. James park the last one was in 1933. We have to be prepared that this could cause a lot of vigilante violence on both sides. JJ is trying to get them to focus on the missing children.. Barrerra isn't talking, he's lawyerd up." Hotch sounded much more somber than usual.
"We're on our way." Reid hung up without delay and jumped up from his chair.
"We have to find those kids alive, this city is turning into a mob." Reid looked at Sophie and saw the instant tiny flicker of fear he'd seen before and then like a flash in was gone, now her face was nothing but determined, he wondered how she did this, how did she live in two worlds all the time. They had already jumped in the SUV, Reid didn't have to give Sophie directions, she knew exactly where that particular building was.
"Teenagers throw raves there all the time, since the late 90's" She said like someone he knew more than a little about the area. Lights and sirens blasting they made their way down First Street which turned into Monterey road on the outskirts of town. The building loomed ahead and the chain link fence surrounding it didn't stop Sophie, she hopped up as high as she could and scaled the rest of the way. "Now if I don't follow her, she'll think I'm a coward, great." He thought as he awkwardly planted one foot on the fence and tried to hoist himself up, he ended up falling on the other side.
"It's okay, your first time right?" Sophie teased. Reid just smiled and let it slide. "You take the back and I'll come from the front and we'll close in on the bastards." Sophie was already around the building before he could argue, he had a bad feeling about this, who knew splitting up wasn't the safest thing to do, but if they were both caught off guard it wouldn't do them any good either.
He cleared the south side of the building, a door was flapping open. He could hear someone running into the building, he didn't want to give away his position but he couldn't be sure it wasn't Sophie, then he heard two shots fired. "FBI! Federal Agent, stop!" Reid's heart dropped when he saw Sophie turn around but in the shadows it looked like someone had their arm around her throat. "Let me and Agent Segura here go and I'll tell you where the children are." A low but tinny voice emanated from the shadows, now Reid could see the glint of a gun in the shadows, it was pointed right at Sophie's head.
"Put down the gun, let the Agent go and we can talk." Reid was surprised at how authoritative he sounded. "I'm not doing any such thing, me and Agent Segura here are walking out together and if you try to stop us, she get two to the back of the head." He sneered. "Spencer, they're with the troglydtes, where the troglydtes live and have they have fuel." Sophie blurted out. Spencer looked at her and immediately masked his understanding.
"If Barrerra had just listened to me, if he hadn't gotten greedy then he'd been on his way out of country right now, but he had this itch for the games you know." Than boasted
"Why kill the women? Barrerra's the one who owed you money, why not just take him out send a message?" Sophie was trying to stall, trying to get him to talk be comfortable.
"Shut up, you little bitch.. Barrerra had bought insurance policies on those women thinking he could borrow against the cash value to finance high roller bets, but his luck ran out and he would do anything, and I do mean anything to save his own skin, he served those women up with their little brats." Than was sneering almost foaming at the mouth.
"He gave you the other women's children too?" Reid had been afraid of this, the families too scared to come forward.
"Not just them, but other kids in the neighborhood, illegals, vitenamese, mexican, el salvadorean, he had the crazy skin heads pick them up from schools or on the way to the community center and brought them here, they retailed pretty well too, so many people want one, I can't imagine why." Than was enjoying the look of mixed horror and terror on each of their faces.
"Like I said Agent Reid, we're leaving, follow us and she dies." Than went for the door, he knew he couldn't fire a shot in here, lest it ignite the fuel Sophie had warned him about. "There are agents surrounding this building write now, you won't make it out Than, but you don't have to die." Reid was trying to put aside his fury at someone having Sophie at gun point. "Someone is going to die tonight, I assure you." Reid had to make a decision, get to the kids who were underground and risk Than killing Sophie or let two or more children die. Sophie made the decision for him, "Just make sure they're okay." She was desperate for him to listen to her. Than pushed her out toward the awaiting blockade, Reid knew that either a sniper would take him out, and Sophie might get caught in the cross fire or Than would panic and kill her before they took him out. He had to make a decision, every neuron in his brain was working over time.