‘I’m quite certain. I spoke with him this morning and he asked me to come by at six. I—’
Before he could get any further, two armed policemen appeared at his side.
‘Derek Williams?’
‘Yes?’ Williams looked up, baffled. Not only because they seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere, but because they knew his name.
‘Mr Williams, you’re under arrest.’
Before Williams could say anything, the men unceremoniously grabbed an elbow each and physically lifted him off his feet, dragging him backwards towards the street door he’d come in by.
‘Under arrest? For what?’ Williams demanded, aware of the curious looks from everybody else in the lobby and strangely embarrassed by them. ‘This is a mistake!’
‘For visa violations,’ one of the cops answered, while his partner dug an elbow painfully and deliberately into Williams’ ribs. ‘We have orders to deport you immediately.’
‘Deport me? What?’ Williams erupted. ‘This is bullshit. I don’t need a visa. I’m a tourist on—’
A hard blow under the jaw stopped him mid-sentence. A second aimed directly at his nose broke the bone with an audible crunch. Blood poured from Williams’ face like an open faucet. The pain was excruciating, but it was the shock, the total surprise of what was happening, that slowed his reactions. Before he knew it, he was being bundled into the back of an unmarked car. And then the beating began in earnest.
He assumed he must have been conscious boarding the plane, but he had no memory of it, or of passing through Mexico City International. He did remember waking mid-flight with indescribable pain in his face and ribs, and a man in a white lab coat sitting next to him pulling out a syringe and plunging it into his leg. When he landed at LAX, however, the seat beside him was empty, so perhaps he’d imagined that part?
Lorraine’s anxious face, waiting to meet him, was the first ‘real’ thing he remembered.
‘I got a phone call from some rude asshole at the embassy in Mexico City telling me you’d be on this flight,’ she told him. ‘I almost didn’t come. I thought it was a prank call at first. Jesus Christ, Derek, what happened? What did they do to you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Williams mumbled, a fat lip muffling his words. ‘One minute I’m waiting for a meeting with this businessman I told you about, and the next thing I know two lunatics are beating the crap out of me and I’m being deported.’
‘Well, you need to see a doctor,’ Lorraine insisted. ‘I’ll take you to the urgent care on Pico on our way home. And then we should go to the police. I mean, seriously, Derek, you’re an American citizen. You have rights.’
‘No.’ Williams interrupted her. ‘No police. And I don’t need a doctor either.’
‘Of course you need a doctor, are you nuts?’
‘NO!’ he said, more loudly than he meant to. ‘Sorry, honey. All I want is to go home and sleep and then I need to call the Clancys. See if you can get them in for a meeting first thing tomorrow.’
Williams’ head was exploding with pain even before Todd Clancy started yelling.
‘How dare you!’ Charlie’s father shook his fist threateningly in Williams’ general direction, like an angry cartoon character. ‘We sent you out to Mexico to find out what happened to our daughter. Not to have you come back here and slander her, drag her name through the mud. You repeat these allegations and I swear to God I’ll sue you for every miserable cent you own!’
‘They’re not “allegations”, Mr Clancy,’ Williams said, keeping his cool in the face of this unexpected onslaught. ‘Think about it. I have no reason to make any of this up, do I? I’m talking to you both privately, as my clients.’
‘Ex clients,’ growled Tucker Clancy.
‘Sir, all I’m interested in is getting justice for your daughter,’ Williams protested. ‘And I believe we just got a whole lot closer. What happened to me proves it. We’re rattling some pretty powerful cages over there.’
‘We’re not “closer” to anything,’ Tucker Clancy snarled, his white button-down shirt looking tighter and more uncomfortable than ever.
‘Were you aware that Missing had been investigating Charlotte’s disappearance long before they contacted you?’ Williams asked, abruptly changing tack.
‘What do you mean?’ Tucker’s eyes narrowed.
‘Frederique Zidane, Charlotte’s friend, had already been visited, by Mrs Baden personally, months before I showed up. Do you have any idea why Mrs Baden might have kept that from you?’
Mary Clancy and her husband exchanged troubled glances.
‘No,’ said Tucker, still visibly angry. ‘All I know is, whatever this French girl told you, or Valentina Baden, or anybody else, it’s a lie. My daughter would never have an affair with a married man. Never! Charlie wasn’t even … she was eighteen, for God’s sake. She was still a virgin.’
‘Oh, Tucker!’ His wife rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘Come on, honey.’