They turned to the room where the couple had been sighted. Tovar was sitting at the end of a dining table, the woman on the far side. He jumped to his feet and started to come around the table. The first deputy pulled Tovar’s arm behind his back and pressed him against the wall.
Tovar glared over his shoulder. “What’s the meaning of this?”
The deputy slapped cuffs on Tovar and read him his rights.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Tovar protested.
Owen went to the woman who was dressed in a black shirt with a colorful pattern at the neck. Her plump face was smudged with dirt, and her eyes terrified. She was crying and trembling.
The wrist shackle Tovar had hauled her around by was attached to a hasp mounted on the table covered in takeout dishes of specialty foods. The custom table hasp said Tovar had likely done this before.
Owen squatted next to her. “I’m Owen, and I’m a detective. What’s your name?”
Her terrified gaze cut around the room.“No hablo mucho ingles.”
Just as Owen suspected. She didn’t speak much English. Owen repeated the question in Spanish.
“Juanita.”
“Are you being held here against your will?” he asked in Spanish.
“Sí.”
He asked about the other women in the cellar, and if Tovar had brought them all here in his truck.
“Sí. Veinte mujeres.”
Owen looked at Wheeler. “Twenty other women in the cellar.”
Wheeler got in Tovar’s face. “How long you been doing this, scumbag?”
“Doing what?”
“Locking up defenseless women in a cellar in your barn.”
Tovar’s expression held no guilt. “Haven’t been in that cellar in ages. If someone put women in there, I don’t know nothing about it.”
Owen scoffed. “I saw you go in there less than an hour ago to bring Juanita out and heard you talk to the women.”
Tovar snorted. “Not possible. My cameras would’ve alerted me. Got the best of the best.”
“But you didn’t put them at the back of your property, and it was easy to skirt around the fence to avoid them and surprise you.” Owen smiled.
Tovar snarled. “You don’t have any proof other than claiming you saw me go to the cellar. Your word against mine.”
Owen glared at the slippery suspect. “I wasn’t the only one who saw you. There’s another witness.”
The man clamped his mouth closed and glared at Owen.
The deputy searched Tovar, frisking him roughly. His hand came out of Tovar’s pocket holding a ring of keys. “Could be one for the woman’s shackle on here.”
Wheeler grabbed the ring and stepped over to Juanita. He smiled at her, but she continued to tremble. “I won’t hurt you.”
Owen translated.
Wheeler kept smiling, likely to ease her worry. He flipped through the keys to a small one and inserted it in the lock on her wrist. The shackle came free.
“Gracias.”She rubbed her wrist and peered at him, terror still firmly lodged on her face.
