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There was no way to prepare Kinsley for the meeting. I had little information myself. But as we sat with Lita, slowly the entire story came out.
Lita tried to explain what had happened. She did the best she could, but at times she stopped speaking English and neither of us understood Tabiqian. This is when having a translator would have been handy, but I had faith that Kinsley was understanding Lita no matter what.
“If I understand correctly, you’re saying that your daughter hasn’t been seen or heard from for almost fifteen years?” Kinsley asked.
Lita nodded and wiped her tears away. “Not one word. My husband searched and went to the police demanding they tell him where she was. No one ever did.”
Kinsley looked at me briefly then back to Lita. “Do you remember the last time you saw her?” Lita nodded again. “Can you tell me what you saw?”
Lita sobbed. “The police came when my husband was at work. I told my daughter to hide in her room and lock her door. But they forced their way inside and took her from our house. I tried pleading with them, but they pushed me down and said if I ever wanted to see my daughter again, I’d stop fighting.” She choked back more tears.
“What happened next?” she prodded.
Lita wiped her tears and blew her nose. “I obeyed them. What choice did I have? But they…they lied. They always lie. And…and we…we never saw her again after that day.”
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this from a family. The first time I thought it had to be someone pretending to be the police. But I’d learned since then that police were just hired guns for the government to control the people. If you had a problem, the last people you wanted to show up were the police. Hell, they usually were the cause of the problem back then.
Kinsley never even looked at me or asked any questions about what Lita was telling her about the police. Instead, she stayed focused on Lita. I knew her questions would come to me later.
She reached out and took Lita’s hands in hers. “I’m so sorry for what you have been through. I will do everything I can to find out what happened to your daughter.”
I could see she meant what she was saying. There was no promise to find her or bring her home, but just the promise to try to find out what happened. But from what I’d learnt, delivering on even that wasn’t going to be easy. People here didn’t like to talk about the past. Not with us, and not even amongst themselves. Things were changing for sure. People were relatively more willing to talk, but still, what they needed was to heal as a country. That wasn’t something we could do for them.
“Thank you for coming to my home and listening to my story. I have not talked about it to anyone before,” Lita said.
“That is why Mr. Blaze and I are here. To help families like yours,” she replied.
Trying. Haven’t been successful yet.
“I don’t expect you to find anything. I am just happy to know that even after all these years, someone other than me still cares,” Lita stated.
“I care. Draven cares. And I know President O’Connor cares as well as so many others,” she replied.
Lita nodded, then hugged Kinsley before we left her home. This was huge. Kinsley had no idea what a breakthrough she’d accomplished. Not only did Lita talk but hugged her afterwards. This definitely blew my mind. They might be affectionate people, but I’d never seen it. They didn’t walk in public holding hands, and I had never seen any of them kissing. Unless you initiate a handshake, you weren’t getting one either.
When we got back in the SUV I expected Kinsley to provide me with some feedback, but she didn’t utter a word. Was she processing it all?
TJ broke the silence. “Bennett wanted to know if you have time tonight to meet with him,” he asked me.
“Not tonight, but I can in the morning.” If it was something that couldn’t wait, Bennett would let me know. I wasn’t canceling my dinner plans with Kinsley, even if she wanted me to.
“If you need to go…” she started.
“I don’t,” I said firmly. “Sorry. What I meant was I don’t work for Bennett. If there is something he thinks I need to know, he can come see me.”
She looked at me strangely. I couldn’t read what was going through her mind, but she didn’t push the subject. Instead, she asked, “Is this a common scenario? I mean the one Lita told us.”
“Unfortunately, it is.”
“And what she said about the police. Is that true as well?” she questioned.
“It was. Not any longer. I can’t tell you what happened to change everything here, but I suspect the old government was overthrown and so were the corrupt police.”And I have a feeling that TJ knows more about how that happened than I do, don’t you?
No one needed to tell me why Bennett’s team was here. Security for the resort was one piece, but you didn’t need former Marines who were with specialized training like that to handle tourists.
TJ, even though he could hear our conversation, said nothing.
“I can’t believe that a government would…do such a thing to their women. What on earth would possess them to do it?”
