Chapter Twenty-One
Chase
It seemed like Jordan had been in the room with Officer Reyes for hours. I had watched an officer go into the room with some paperwork and another officer brought a small snack and water. None of them seemed to care at all that I was right there.
Jordan and I had not had a chance to discuss her story or what exactly she was going to tell them. I didn’t know if she was going to tell them about coming over from Liechtenstein or getting kidnapped by Escabar. I didn’t know if she was going to tell them about me putting her in the safe room at my house or the men beating me up. My nerves went crazy as I imagined all the things that might be going on in that room. I was out of control, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Then, I saw the Captain as he started the long walk toward me down the hallway. His eyes pierced through me, and I knew he was friends with my father. Suddenly, I realized that even if I tried to keep this all from my father, it was highly likely he would find out from one of his friends on the police force.
But we had moved beyond worrying about me getting my father’s company. I needed to be responsible and ensure the safety of the people I loved, and I couldn’t do that anymore. Only the Special Crimes Unit and Caption George Bastrop could help us.
“Chase, I’d like to say it is nice to see you, but I don’t think the circumstances call for that,” Captain Bastrop said as he shook my hand and sat next to me.
“Yeah, I got myself into some serious shit, George.”
“Well, let me see if we can figure a way out for you and for your father. I would hate for any of this to get back to him. I hear his health hasn’t been well lately.”
The Captain didn’t wait for me to respond and made his way into the conference room with Officer Reyes. It made my stomach sink to hear him say he had heard about my father’s health being poor. I didn’t know what was getting out to his friends and the public, but maybe my father was sicker than I thought. Maybe I had been so caught up in my own world that I hadn’t spent enough time checking in with my own family.
After Captain Bastrop went into the room, it was another hour before I saw Jordan appear in the doorway. She looked exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and I didn’t want her to be left sitting in the hallway alone for hours like I had.
“Thank you for answering all our questions, Mrs. Foster. You can have a seat,” Officer Reyes said.
“Actually, we’ve had a pretty rough couple of days. Is there anywhere Jordan could take a nap or get some food while she waited for me?” I said as I looked at Captain Bastrop.
I certainly didn’t want to be difficult, but Jordan was my wife now. And I was going to do whatever I could to take care of her – especially since I felt a huge sense of guilt for getting her into the situation that we were in.
“Officer Reyes, take her down to the staff bunk room and grab her some lunch from the cafeteria. I’ll get questioning started here,” the Captain said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly and then kissed Jordan on the cheek before I made my way into the small conference room.
As I entered the room, I realized it was much more like an interrogation room than I had originally thought. It was more comfortable, as there weren’t any bright lights shining in your face and more comfortable furniture. But there was no doubt that the room was being recorded, and we were only a step away from being arrested if we said or did something stupid.
“Chase, let’s get started,” Captain Bastrop said.
“I’m an open book. I’m here for your help, so I’ll tell you everything. But what if I did something that was illegal in the midst of everything?”
“Chase, I can’t guarantee you won’t get charged with a crime, especially since I don’t know what it is you did. But from what I know so far, you and your wife are in some serious shit. You can call an attorney if you’d like or we can just talk this out and see if we can figure out a way to get you two kids out of this mess.”
Captain Bastrop now had the black book in his hands that I had given to Officer Reyes. It was clear that the information in that book was immensely important to the police department. My gut told me that my petty crimes would not be an issue.
“I don’t want an attorney. I just want to keep my loved ones safe. Can you make sure that happens?”
“I’ll do my best, Chase. You did the right thing coming here. Now, let’s talk about this book. Tell me how you got your hands on it.”
There was so much that had happened before I stole that black book, so much more involved in the story than I’m sure even Captain Bastrop really understood. I closed my eyes for a second to think through the story and try to decide the best place to start.
“I had been fucking around and wasting my father’s money, so he cut off a lot of his support. I was stupid and had been gambling, going to some underground clubs. One night, I wasn’t able to pay my losses. Jose Escabar offered me a loan, plus another fifty thousand, to get me by until I got a hold of more money.”
“So, you took a hard money loan from Jose Escabar to cover your illegal gambling loss?”
The way he said it made me sound like a total loser. I hated it. I hated to hear my own words coming back at me from a man with such power and respect.
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, so you owed him some money? Did your father refuse to help you pay him back?”
“Actually, I never told my father. I continued to borrow more and more money from Escabar. I was only able to pay back the interest payments over several months. Then, my father totally cut me off financially. He stopped paying for everything, and I didn’t even have enough money to pay the interest payment.”
“That’s bad news.”
“Yes, sir. Escabar brought me in to his house and threatened me and my family if I didn’t pay him back in two weeks. I don’t have the money. I don’t have access to the money. I panicked and grabbed his black book as I left his house.”
“Yeah, that was a bad move,” Captain Bastrop said as he leaned back in his chair.
“Yes, it was. The next day, I was getting ready to go into work and two of his men shot through my front door. I pushed Jordan into my safe room with the black book and the men beat the shit out of me to try and get the book,” I said as I stood up and showed him my bruised abdomen.
The bruising looked horrendous. It was dark brown and yellow in many spots and still dark purple in others.
“Shit, we’re going to need to get some pictures of that. Is that what happened to your face, too?”
I had totally forgotten that I had some bruising around my eye still, from when Marco had slugged me leaving Escabar’s house.
“Marco popped me in the eye when I left Escabar’s house.”
“Does Marco know you took the book?”
“No, but he was with the two other goons who showed up at my house. They think I took it, but there were a couple other people at Escabar’s house that day who I tried to implicate to get them to leave my house and not kill me.”
“Do you think Marco would cooperate with an investigation?”
That was a good question. I didn’t think Marco wanted to work for Escabar anymore, but I also knew that he would be the first person to get killed if he decided to help the police.
“I’m not sure.”
“Weren’t you two old high school friends?”
The Captain had been friends with my father for many years. It was true that Marco and I had once been friends, but I didn’t count him as a friend, anymore – that was for sure.
“Yeah, we were friends. But I don’t know if he wants out or not.”
“We can deal with that later. There’s another piece of this puzzle that I’m missing, though. How did your wife get kidnapped?”
I took a deep breath and cringed at the thought of having to explain my relationship with Jordan and how we had already gotten married. There was one piece of that story that I didn’t want to share at all, one crucial piece that I thought Captain Bastrop didn’t need to know. He didn’t need to know that I had intended to marry Jordan just so my father would give me his company and think I was responsible. That part of the story I would just have to leave out.
“I met her online. We hit it off, so I had her come out here. After I had been pummeled by Escabar’s goons, she had to go to the store and, apparently, met a woman who was nice to her. She called the woman Salina and the man Salvador. I thought it was pretty fishy, but I couldn’t convince her that those two weren’t her friends. She agreed to meet them to go bowling, and they took her to Escabar.”
“All right, Chase. I’m going to play devil’s advocate here for a minute. How well do you know Jordan? Is it possible that she is actually working for Escabar?” Captain Bastrop said.
“No! What? Absolutely not.”
“Chase, I’m just putting the dots together. You meet this girl online, and she convinces you to invite her over to the States. Within a week, she has you marrying her. She conveniently gets kidnapped by the man who has it out for you and from all stories I’ve heard, he doesn’t hurt her at all. In fact, he left her unharmed for you to pick up at his house. It’s a pretty wild story.”
His words sunk into me like a brick as I played the story out in my head. It wasn’t possible. I had picked Jordan from the online profiles. She hadn’t picked me. I was the one who invited her over, and I was the one who wanted to get married so I could get the company from my father. But the way he spun the story, the way he thought about Jordan, did make me questions things for a moment.
Was it possible that she was working for Escabar? She did seem to very willingly go to meet Salina and Salvador. For being so new to the country, it had struck me as odd that she would want to venture out on her own like that, especially after I had just been beaten so badly in my own home. My mind reeled with the thoughts that Captain Bastrop had put in my head.
“No, it’s not possible,” I said firmly as I tried to hide my uncertainty.
“All right, I was just putting it out there.”
“You don’t know her. She took care of me. She’s stood by me. We have a connection!” I screamed at him.
“Chase, it’s my job to question things. I wouldn’t be doing right by you if I didn’t ask the question.”
“She loves me,” I said quietly as I sat back down.
“Okay, let’s move on. How much do you owe Escabar? What were his terms for letting you live?”
“I owe him a quarter of a million dollars now, and his black book. But I doubt he’ll let me live even if I give him those things.”
Captain Bastrop wrote down the number I gave him. He didn’t seem very positive that I was going to get out of this whole thing in one piece. His face was glum as he looked back up at me. He seemed to be weighing a tough question.
“So, your father knows nothing about this?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t disappoint him. I thought I could handle things on my own. But it has gotten too out of control.”
“Your father is a good man, Chase. I bet if you asked him for the money, he would give it to you.”
“It’s not about the money anymore. Escabar is going to kill me for stealing his black book. There is no way around it. It doesn’t matter if I give the book and the money to him. I know him – I know he plans to kill me.”
“Okay, Chase. Let me talk things over with my boss, and we will get back to you,” Captain Bastrop said as he stood up and opened the door. “You’re free to go. We will get in touch with you.”
My mind swirled with what he was saying. He didn’t plan on protecting us – he wasn’t even offering to let us stay at the police station.
“Where are we supposed to go?”
“Well, somewhere out of sight would probably be a good idea.”
“He’ll find us and kill us. You can’t do anything to protect us?” I said as my anger started to rage inside of me.
“Chase, so far, all I have is a black notebook with writing in it. I don’t know if it’s Jose Escabar’s book. All I know is what you have told me. There are always at least three sides to a story.”
Captain Bastrop seemed unusually cruel in his words toward me. I wasn’t sure what exactly I had said that had pissed him off so much, but it certainly didn’t feel like he was on my side.
Maybe I had become paranoid. Perhaps his comments about Jordan had just put me on edge, and I was projecting those things back onto the Captain. I didn’t feel safe leaving the police station, that was for sure. Even if we had not been followed, it was highly likely we wouldn’t last past the end of the week. I couldn’t risk Jordan’s well-being like that.
“What do you need? I’ll help you get it. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Jordan safe,” I begged him.
“We need him to admit to a few things. You see, Jose Escabar has been involved in a huge cartel operation for years. Drugs and money have passed through international borders and ended up here in Atlanta, all because of him and the people he works for. If you want us to keep you safe, you’ll need to wear a wire and come back to us with some real proof on tape.”
“What are you talking about, George? I can’t get that kind of information out of Escabar. He knows I have the book. He won’t confess anything like that around me. He’s not that stupid.”
“I’m sorry, then. I don’t think we can help you. At least, not right now. Come back if there’s an immediate threat against your life.”
Just like that, Captain Bastrop turned and walked down the hall.
“You can sleep for a bit in the bunk room if you’d like,” he said when he reached the end of the hall.
I was too angry to respond. I had finally gotten up the nerve to go to the police, and they weren’t going to offer us any kind of protection at all. In fact, just knowing that we had come to the police was enough to get us killed. Luckily, we were still driving the vehicle from my friend’s store, so I doubt Escabar’s men would be able to find us too quickly. But still, we had no money and no place to go.
My mind worked through all the possible scenarios. I just couldn’t think of one possible conclusion that ended with Jordan and I being safe. I had really done it. I had finally found some sort of stability in my life, and it was all going to be gone. I was going to be gone.
“Jordan,” I whispered as I opened the bunkroom door.
“Yeah, over here.”
I climbed into her bunk with her and just lay with her in my arms. I couldn’t find the strength to tell her what was going on yet. I didn’t want to ruin her night of sleep. Instead, I held her close to me and stroked her hair with my hand as she drifted back to sleep. It was the only thing that made sense for the moment. We were both so tired. We both needed sleep desperately and at least there, at the police station, we were safe.
The only thing left for me to do was get some sleep as well and hope that in the light of morning, I would have some sort of clear answer. Because, at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing that would save us from our situation. I couldn’t imagine how we would get through the next few days. Perhaps, we would have to take off and leave the country. Maybe if Escabar knew I had turned the black book over to the police, he would leave my family alone. Or maybe he would still hunt them down? I didn’t know.
Nothing about my future was known. Anything could happen.