Amazon Roulette Page 8

  He plumped into his chair like a belligerent child being put in a time-out and, folding his hands on the table, fixed her with a glare she assumed was his CEO look: meant to intimidate and seize control. “What do you want?”

  “Please tell me what happened the afternoon and evening of September 21. You were at Cora Allegan’s residence. Was anyone else there besides you and Ms. Allegan?”

  His expression turned even more glacial. “No.”

  “What time did you arrive?”

  “Two thirty.”

  “Did Ms. Allegan appear to be upset or distracted? Was there anything she did or said that might have indicated fear or concern for her safety?”

  He shifted in his seat. “We didn’t talk much.” His smile oozed bravado.

  “So she gave no indication she was in jeopardy or afraid, or that anything that might have portended her abduction was on her mind?”

  “No. She was—well, she did mention a letter she’d received a few weeks ago. Said it was from those tree-huggers—one of those environmental groups. They were complaining about something.” He shrugged. “Didn’t really seem to bother her; she gets that sort of correspondence all the time.”

  “Did she give you any detail about who the letter was from—the name of the group? Whether there were any threats in it? Whether she’d received mail from them previously?”

  “No. Not really. Like I said, we didn’t spend much time talking.”

  Helen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Very well. So, if you please, can you give me some detail about what happened when her presumed abductors came to the door?” He opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted. “There is a witness who saw what happened.”

  “If there’s a witness, why the hell isn’t he here, getting grilled? If you already know what happened, why am I here, wasting my time?”

  Helen waited. He shuffled his hands around, shifted in his chair, and still she waited. Finally, he spoke. “We were—well, the doorbell rang.”

  “Approximately what time, would you say? You arrived at two thirty, so this was when?”

  “Close to seven. I was—I needed to leave soon, and we were…finished.” At this, the man at least had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. “The doorbell rang around seven o’clock. She went to answer it.”

  “Could you hear or see anything? Any part of the conversation?”

  “No. Not really. I was at the back of the house. Then I heard the door close, and when she didn’t come back, I called out for her. Thought she might have gone to the kitchen to get some coffee. She didn’t answer, but I wasn’t concerned. Sometimes you can’t hear from the kitchen. I mean, why would I be worried? Why would it even occur to me this had happened?” For the first time, Blankenship exhibited bewilderment and concern.

  “And when she didn’t respond, when did you realize something was wrong?”

  “Not long. I was coming out of the back room anyway—I needed to leave—so I went into the kitchen and she wasn’t there. I called again, looked around, then I did start to get worried. Then I thought maybe she was just talking to a neighbor on the front porch, and so I went out to look. No one was there. I checked the garage—her car was still in there. Her cell phone and purse were on the front table.”

  “So she disappeared, and it didn’t occur to you that you should report her missing?”

  “Doesn’t someone have to be missing for more than twenty-four hours before a missing person report can be made?” Blankenship’s snarkiness was back.

  Helen set her jaw and made a few notes, biting her tongue. She declined to educate Mr. Blankenship that the twenty-four-hour rule was, in fact, a myth. When she felt she could be pleasant again, she looked back up at him. “Did you find anything that might give a clue to what happened—who came, how they took her—anything?”

  He sighed, slumped back in his seat. “Your witness probably told you I picked up a piece of paper on the front porch.”

  “What was it?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a damned pizza delivery flyer, that’s for sure, but it’s not any more relevant than one. Just a piece of paper with a kid’s drawing on it. Looked like a secret club symbol or something of that nature. I threw it away.”

  “It was lying on the porch and the only thing on it was a hand-drawn symbol? What did the symbol look like?” She tore a piece of paper from her notebook and slid it across to him. Presumably an important executive would have his own writing implement.

  He frowned, pulled out a pen from his briefcase, and looked blankly at the paper. “I don’t know. I only saw it for a minute. It looked a little like the Soviet Union symbol—the scythe. But not really; there was more to it than that. Like a G that had been stylized…”

  Blankenship grumbled some more, but to Helen’s satisfaction, his pen hand began to move over the paper. When he was done, he shoved it back across the table. “Something sort of like this.”

  Helen stared at it, and her heart skipped a beat. No way. She began to tap and scroll rapidly through her tablet until she got to the image she wanted. “Did it look like this?”

  “Yes, it looked just like that,” Blankenship said. “What is it?”

  Now it was Helen’s turn to settle back in her seat. She barely resisted the urge to lower her face into her hands. Of all the luck.

  Now she was going to have to call Gabe.

  Crap.

  * * *

  September 23

  Napo, Ecuador

  Near Inchiyacu

  Leandro Córdoba slugged back a long drink from his water bottle. Despite the fact that he was traveling along a tributary of the Río Napo, gliding through thick, shaded jungles of the Amazon basin, the heat was heavy and potent. He’d been here for more than six weeks of his three-month volunteer mission and only once had forgotten to fill up his trio of water bottles before leaving the main health clinic.

  It was the first and last time he’d done that.

  “Is the village near?” he asked his companion, Dr. Rafael Saenzdiviteri.

  They’d left the main camp three hours earlier, after loading medicines and equipment onto the flat-bottomed motorized canoe, along with enough food and water for three days. You never knew when a sudden rainstorm would unleash itself on the jungle, and if they were forced to beach and wait it out, it could be hours or even days. Lee was inclined to avoid such a predicament. He preferred the safety of the permanent housing back at their camp, which was much better protection from a hungry jaguar than a hammock suspended between a couple of trees.

  Doc Rafe conferred in Quichua with their guide, the man navigating their boat down the unnamed tributary—at least, it was unnamed in Spanish. Surely it had a name in the local language. Lee had begun to pick up a bit of Quichua, but had to rely on his native Spanish for most of his communication with the nurses, physicians, aides, and other volunteers that worked out of the medical clinic near Inchiyacu. Only the locals spoke the language fluently.

  “He says after another two bends in the river,” Doc told him, swiping a thick, dark arm over his forehead. “And we will see the village on the east side. Look for the solar panel.”

  That was one of the oddest things Lee had experienced since arriving in the rainforest: the occasional solar panel in or near a primitive-looking village. There were rarely more than one or two in any given area, and because of the heavy growth of the top layers of trees, the power generated by the panels was feeble at best.

  The first time he’d seen one, he felt as if he’d traveled into some fourth dimension or science fiction world. Even at home, in a civilized suburb of Barcelona, there weren’t as many solar panels as one might think. But it was the best and most logical way to generate energy in such a remote area, and he’d become used to the anachronistic sight.

  Lee ducked just in time to avoid being struck by a low-hanging branch. One of the other med student volunteers sponsored by Voluntarios/Aventurados: España had been knocked into the river on their first day and
shocked by an eel. She was still limping. The water might look inviting, but there were plenty of snakes, black alligators, and of course piranha lurking beneath the surface.

  Their guide made a sudden sound of alert and pointed to a shaded area near the riverbank. It wasn’t until they were nearly upon it that Lee saw the capybara, soaking in the water. Only the nostrils of the guinea-pig-like rodent showed, which was surprising, as the animal was nearly fifty kilograms and the size of a large dog. The water must be deep near the shore.

  Doc stood at the helm of the boat, his white hair ruffling in a welcome breeze. Lee had grown to like and respect the man, who’d devoted his entire medical career to caring for the people in this remote area. The older man was comforting and empathetic, inspiring trust and calm in his patients—just like Lee aspired to be once he finished his medical training.

  Doc had asked Lee to join him on what was to be a single day’s journey. There’d been reports of illness coming from one of the villages that had been established in a newly cleared area of the jungle. That, Lee had learned, was one of the problems with agriculture in the rainforest, and what caused the people to continually colonize: the land became infertile after too many years of farming, and so they spread out further into the jungle. Of course, the effect from the small number of indigenous people who lived here was minor compared to that of the lumber industry.

  Saving the rainforest had been a common primary school fundraising activity, and Lee had heard the stories of deforestation ravaging the place. But one would never know it, here in the lush green jungle. The sounds of water lapping and surging against the boat and shoreline, the ca-ca-ca or cooo-ee-ya calls of the hundreds of species of birds, and the rustle of brush being disturbed…all of it made the world of twenty-first-century man seem light years away.

  Although he hadn’t been on Facebook or plugged in his iPod to charge in more than three weeks, Lee didn’t miss the technology. For a young man who’d lived his entire life in and near a cosmopolitan city, and who’d done minimal hiking and camping, this mission to the most dangerous, remote place on earth had been an incredible eye-opener. He didn’t need his iPod, his streaming movies. There was a different sort of music here, unending natural entertainment. He was never bored enough that he had to log in somewhere and check in with someone, manufacturing something to say. Of course, his mamá didn’t like the idea of him being without his mobile or access to email, but Lee got to an Internet cafe once a week to send her a message.

  A glint on the shore drew his attention, and as they passed two small, battered solar panels, Lee heard voices in the distance. The boat trundled along under the skillful navigation of their guide, and moments later, the vessel beached at a clearing. A group of young boys played football as their mothers watched and gossiped while working on their weaving.

  Carrying a bulky medical case, Lee followed Doc up crude wooden and sand-packed steps from the shore as the boys watched. Several houses sat on a small hill that would protect them from a flooding river. The structures, made with planed lumber slats aligned vertically, were on stilts rising several meters above the ground. They had high-pitched roofs of thatched gray reeds that looked like unkempt hair.

  “Do you want to go with me?” Doc asked.

  Lee shook his head. It would be more efficient for them to separate, and if there was something he didn’t know how to treat, then he could ask Doc Rafe. The fact that Lee spoke hardly any Quichua was a small factor; there was much that could be communicated with sign language. It was unlikely that many in the village spoke Spanish.

  One of the women detached herself from her companions and approached them. After a brief conversation with Doc Rafe, she gestured to Lee to follow her, and she led him to the house in the center of the group. A crude staircase led to the main entrance, and he had to duck when stepping through the doorway.

  Lee had been in a variety of homes since arriving in Ecuador, each slightly different, some more crude than others. This was a single large room, rather dark except for the pair of light bulbs strung across one wall and the bit of sunlight that filtered through cracks between the wood. The home was neat, although slightly cluttered with aspects of daily living, and it was much warmer inside than out. But, to his dismay, Lee noticed the irregular streaks of black and white on the inside of the walls, and suspected he knew what he’d find.

  In the corner lay a young boy on a hammock, and Lee made his way immediately to the patient. The first thing he saw was the huge swelling above the eye, misshaping the brow and causing red discoloration in the skin around it. Near the boy’s mouth was a black boil-like lesion, and other smaller red marks that looked like deep insect bites.

  Definitely Chagas disease. And it had evolved into a chronic case, for which there was little he could do. The child likely wouldn’t die—although he might need a heart transplant in the future—but it would be an uncomfortable existence.

  Grimly, Lee began to dig in his bag for the Benznidazole and an anti-diarrheal medication. The boy was clearly suffering from both the disease and the dehydration that came along with it. The woman next to him was using a mix of crude Spanish, Quichua, and hand gestures to tell him her son had been sick for four weeks.

  Damn shame they hadn’t sent to the clinic back then, or the disease from the kissing bug could have been cured. And this also meant Lee would need to examine the others in the household to see if any of them were also infected by the parasitic insect.

  The bug lived in the cracks of the walls, or up in the thatched roof, and came out at night, feeding on its human host. They usually attached themselves near the mouth, hence the name “kissing bug.” The streaks of black and white on the wood were clear signs of its presence—being the same fecal matter and waste that caused the infection in humans and animals. It wasn’t a bite or sting that caused the disease, it was the bacteria that clung to the beetle’s legs that was the culprit.

  Lee knew he’d have to talk to Doc Rafe about continuing treatment for the boy, but at least he could begin to make him more comfortable. He’d just finished dosing him with Benznidazole when there was a great commotion outside.

  The boy’s mother hurried from the hut as voices grew louder and more insistent, and Lee, his heart beginning to pound, rose to his feet. Something was definitely wrong.

  He emerged from the building at the same time as Doc poked his head out the door of a neighboring hut. “What is it?” Lee called to him.

  Descending from the houses, they reached the group of villagers simultaneously. Apparently, Doc gleaned a bit of what was happening, for he said, “Follow them,” as a trio of agitated young women gestured toward the jungle. By now, Lee understood: they’d found something terrible.

  Fifteen minutes later, they’d followed the women’s weak trail back into the lush greenery. As the resident medical expert, Doc had been invited to come along, and despite his hypervigilance when it came to the unfamiliar dangers in the jungle, Lee accompanied him.

  When they got to their destination, the young women pointed to a dark cloud of flies swarming over something in the brush. They weren’t going to look, but Lee followed his mentor and several other villagers over to see.

  It was a man—or what was left of him.

  Doc Rafe knelt next to the body, which had not only been torn apart by some animal but was being feasted upon by an array of insects. The victim’s exposed clavicle gleamed dully in the sun-dappled space, and his blood had long congealed, drying dark and thick as oil. He hadn’t been there for more than half a day, or there wouldn’t be this much left of him.

  Two arms and a leg were missing, likely carried off by whatever had attacked. Lee suspected the villagers would be able to tell whether it was a jaguar or some other carnivore, but he didn’t particularly care to ask about those details.

  Despite the gruesome scene, the most striking thing about the victim was his attire—or what was left of it. Although his torso had been lacerated, mauled, and nibbled upon, it was s
till evident he had been wearing a business suit. And on his remaining foot was a mud-caked, scuffed leather loafer. Italian, and expensive.

  The man, whose skin tone and straight ink-black hair seemed to indicate an Oriental heritage, looked as if he’d just stepped out of a business conference.

  “Mother of God,” Doc Rafe muttered, kneeling next to the corpse. He gingerly poked around the pockets of the suit coat and trousers as the villagers observed.

  Lee watched as Doc produced a high-end mobile phone, a leather wallet-like case, and a money clip of colorful bills.

  And absolutely nothing practical for travel in the Amazon basin. Not even a book of matches or a water bottle.

  Crouching next to Doc Rafe, Lee picked up the money clip and thumbed through the purplish-reddish bills with a 2000 mark on them, along with Chinese characters. Yuan? Yuan in the middle of Ecuador?

  The screen on the mobile was shattered, and moisture had gathered, surely rendering it useless.

  But it was the small bifold leather case that yielded the most shocking and pertinent information. Inside were bilingual business cards and identification that established the man as Lo Ing-wen. Leandro knew enough English to read the reverse side of the business card.

  “Lo Ing-wen, president of Oh Yeh Industries,” he read aloud, then looked at Doc.

  How had a Chinese executive turned up in the middle of the jungle?

  TEN

  September 23

  Ann Arbor, Michigan

  Marina trudged up the walk to her red shake-shingled bungalow. She lived in a tree-lined neighborhood with winding streets southwest of campus. The area was mostly populated by tenured professors from the University of Michigan, separated from the student housing by both distance and price.