“Oh, my God,” Clare said.
A large white van lay, overturned, among the trees, its crumpled side panel showing where it had rolled. More than once—it must have done a complete 360 and then some to be that far from the road. Only one ambulance, from Corinth—he frowned—but he could see two EMTs, bent over somebody at the side of the van. The Volunteer Fire Department’s pump and hose trucks were angled off to the side, with Huggins’s SUV parked tight behind. He pulled in behind Huggins. Clare had unbuckled and was swinging the door open before he had killed the engine. She dashed toward the ambulance. “Stay out of the way!” he shouted. She waved one hand in acknowledgment.
He found Kevin Flynn arguing with John Huggins, Hadley Knox close by, her arms wrapped around herself. “You okay?” Russ asked. She nodded.
“. . . how much assistance could they need?” Huggins was saying to Flynn. The fire chief’s shoe-leather face and squat four-by-four body made Flynn look even more like a junior varsity basketball player than usual, but the kid wasn’t backing down an inch.
“We won’t know that until your guys get out there and find them!”
“Settle down, Kevin. Give me a report.”
Flynn shot him a frustrated glance. “The driver says she heard a loud noise and then lost control. It looks like the left front tire blew. She went—well, you can see where she went.” He flung his arm out to where tender new grass and delicate maple saplings had been torn raw and crushed. “No witnesses to speak of. The driver said she saw a big boxy vehicle, maybe an Aztek or a Humvee or Jeep Cherokee, but it didn’t stop.” He sounded disgusted. “Didn’t call it in, either. The driver’s complaining of chest and shoulder pains, difficulty breathing, difficulty moving her legs, dizziness. We’ve got one guy unconscious, one guy with a broken arm, and one more banged up pretty bad.”
“That it for injuries? One driver, three passengers?”
Kevin blew out a puff of air. “I don’t know. Officer Knox and I responded with lights and sirens. Like we’re supposed to.”
Russ nodded.
“So when we come over the hill, we see guys running into the woods; I can’t tell you how many. They just scattered.” He glanced past Russ to where the long shadows of the mountains were darkening the woods and fields. “Some of them may be hurt.”
“As I was telling the kid, if they’re well enough to evade arrest, they’re well enough left alone.” Huggins removed his helmet and scrubbed at his bald spot. “I don’t see any need to send my guys chasing after them.”
“Evade arrest?” Russ’s question was aimed at Flynn, but Huggins answered.
“Illegals. Gotta be. Not a one of the ones left behind speaks a word of English. Probably one of them whaddayacallits. Where they smuggle ’em in.”
“The driver is a nun!” Kevin said.
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “John, we’re not working for the Border Patrol. We’re working for the town, and the town doesn’t want injured people wandering around the woods in Cossayuharie, even if they don’t speak English. Get your men walking a search pattern. Tell ’em to shout No soy del I-C-E. Estoy aquí ayudarle. Can you repeat that?”
Huggins screwed up his face, as if he were swallowing something nasty. “No soy del I-C-E. Eztoy ackee a-you-darrel.”
“Close enough.”
“Don’t know why they can’t just learn English,” Huggins said, stomping back to the pump truck.
“I didn’t know you speak Spanish, chief.”
“The army likes its warrant officers to have a second language. Got the chance to polish it up in Panama and the Philippines.”
Flynn looked impressed. Of course, it didn’t take much to impress a twenty-four-year-old who had never been out of New York State.
“C’mon, let’s see if we can sort out these people.” He headed toward the battered van, Flynn falling in beside him. After a beat, so did Knox. “You see or hear anything that might make you think they had another reason to flee?”
Flynn shook his head. “Nope.”
“Well. . . .” Knox sounded hesitant.
“What is it?” Russ stopped and faced his newest officer. She was biting the inside of her cheek. “Listen,” he said. “You know how you tell your kids there aren’t any dumb questions? Well, there aren’t any dumb details. Noticing things around you, at an accident, on a crime scene, patrolling, making a stop—someday it could make the difference between life and death. Your life and death.”
She nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Two of the guys left behind were talking about the accident. One of them was saying he heard two pops, you know, two noises like the tires were blowing out, and the other guy said he heard three.” She looked up at Flynn. “But Officer Flynn said it was one tire blown out. When we got here.”
Next to him, Flynn stiffened. “You speak Spanish, too? Why didn’t you tell me? We coulda questioned those men!”
She shrugged. “You told me our job was to secure the scene.”
Russ sighed. “Hadley. We’re a small department. We can’t afford to have anybody sit on his ass and say, ‘That’s not my job.’ Pardon my French.”
“I didn’t—”
He held up one hand. “We work as a team. If you have anything to contribute to the team, whether it’s an observation, or a skill, or a piece of knowledge, I expect you to put it out there. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He resumed his path toward the overturned van. Just outside his peripheral vision, he could feel Knox glaring daggers at Flynn. He decided to let it be.
He heard a distant whoop carried on the cooling air, and a moment later the Millers Kill ambulance crested the hill. It swung in as close to the van as possible, its EMTs on the ground and headed for the injured before the siren had died away.
No . . . that wasn’t the echo of the ambulance. Far down the valley, where the road ran out of sight between the next mountain gap, he saw a whirl of red-and-whites, following the blazing headlights of a speeding vehicle.
“Christ on a crutch,” he said. Just what he needed, some jacked-up idiot thinking he could give one of their cruisers a run right through an accident site. “Get back!” he bellowed to the Corinth paramedics, who had strapped a man onto a pallet and were now angling for the rear door of the ambulance. He turned back toward where Huggins was huddling with his volunteers. “Everybody away from the road!”
IV
Where was—? He stalked toward the ambulance, his chest tightening, until he spotted Clare kneeling beside someone on another pallet, her BDUs pale in the gathering dark. Well away from the edge of the road. Okay. He saw a flicker of red hair out of the corner of his eye. “Kevin, get on the radio,” Russ said. “I want to know what the hell—” He broke off.
The speeding car was slowing down. Way down. Dust plumed beneath its tires as it veered onto the opposite shoulder and skidded to a stop. The MKPD cruiser rolled into place behind it.
Two men emerged from the car, a souped-up GTO that seemed too small for the size of its driver and passenger. Their dark-blond hair and long-limbed, powerful bodies were similar, although one had a russetty beard swallowing half his face and a couple inches on the other.
“Who’re they?” Knox asked.
“Bruce Christie and his brother Donald,” Russ said.
“What’re they doing out here?” Flynn said.
“Well, that’s a question, isn’t it?” Across the road, Eric McCrea was getting out of the squad car and settling his lid on his head. He was frowning at the Christies, but made no move to stop them. “You two get over to the remaining passengers,” Russ said, without turning. “Take their statements. Knox?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Remember what I said.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Christies struck out toward the van. Russ lengthened his stride, wanting to intercept them, wanting to appear casual. “Can I help you two?” he asked, pitching his voice to carry above the babble of questions and complaint
s and radio reports filling the air.
The brothers stopped. Looked his way. The last time he had seen this pair, he had had his baton in his hand and was threatening to bust Donald Christie’s kneecaps if he didn’t back down and let his brother drive him home from the Dew Drop Inn.
Bruce, the smaller one—inasmuch as any of the Christie boys could be called smaller—laid a steadying hand on his bearded brother’s chest. “Chief Van Alstyne,” he said.
“Bruce.” Russ tipped his head toward their overheated muscle car. “You two were in one all-fired hurry to get here.”
“Your guy was over to Donald’s place when the call came in. We heard it was a van got rolled.” Bruce glanced over to where the van’s undercarriage lay exposed. “We got a van. Wanted to make sure it wan’t ours.” Like all the Christies, Bruce had a strong up-country Cossayuharie accent.
Russ shook his head. “Not unless you loaned it out to a nun.”
“A nun!” Donald Christie’s eyes went wide over his red-gold beard. “Hell, no. We don’t know no nuns.” Russ caught a whiff of sheep and manure as the big man scraped his boots against the pavement.
“He knows that, Donald.” Bruce, widely acknowledged as the brains of the family, rolled his eyes. “What happened?”
“Tire blew. She lost control.” Russ shrugged. “We’ve got three or four injured but nothing life-threatening.”
Bruce gestured toward the pump and hose trucks with his squared-off chin. “Is it likely to blow? Cast off any fire?”
“Nah.”
“Then why’s the fire department trampin’ around all over the place?”
Russ twisted, to see a line of Huggins’s volunteers disappearing between the trees. He turned back to the Christies. “Why so interested?”
Bruce nodded toward the woods. “This is Christie land. All up and down this part of the mountain and the pasturage below.” He pointed to where, in the distance, house lights could be seen twinkling through the dusk. “That’s Donald’s place, there. If there’s gonna be a fire, we want to know.”
“Fair enough. No, your property’s safe. The nun—the sister—was driving a bunch of—ah, migrant laborers. Some of them ran off when they saw my men. My officers,” he corrected.
“Migrant labor? You mean Mexicans?” Bruce frowned.
“The ones left behind are Spanish-speaking. I don’t know where they’re from.”
“Mexicans. Running loose through our woods.” Donald looked to his brother, who thumped the larger man on the chest before turning to Russ.
“You gonna catch ’em?” Bruce demanded.
“We’re going to try to round them up, sure. See if any of them need help.”
“If they need help”—Donald sounded as if he wanted to spit—“they get a free ride to the hospital and the all-you-can-eat buffet. We get sumpin’ wrong, we gotta go to the clinic and sit for an hour to get some woman who ain’t even a doctor. And we’re Americans! There’s been Christies here since 1720!”
Probably interbreeding the whole time.
“Hush,” Bruce said. “Anything we can do to help? Round ’em up, I mean?”
“You . . . want to help?”
“I wanna get them off our land.” Bruce looked up, to where the first star glimmered in the pink and indigo sky. “When it gets cold tonight, they’re not gonna stay freezin’ in the woods when they can stroll right ’cross the pastures and take shelter in one of Donald’s barns.”
“Stealin’ stuff,” Donald added.
“We should turn out the rest of the boys.” Bruce turned toward his brother. “Where’s your phone?”
“Whoa up, there.” Russ held up one hand. “I’m not sending anybody out as a searcher whose got a hair in his ass about immigrants.”
Donald stepped toward him. “You think you can keep us off our own property?”
Bruce thumped him again. “Hush.” He looked at Russ. “We don’t want anything different than you do, Chief. Get these guys off our land. Take ’em to the hospital or send ’em back to Mexico, dun’t matter to me what you do with ’em once we’ve cleared ’em off. Hah?” He glanced at his brother. “Hah? Play nice?”
Donald rumbled deep in his chest but nodded.
“Okay,” Bruce went on. “We can call up some of our cousins and they can help look. Or if you don’t want ’em to help that way, they can camp out on the other side of this forest. That’s Donald’s place, off’n Seven Mile Road. Head off anybody who comes outa the woods.”
Russ took off his glasses and polished them on his blouse front. Seven Mile Road was a hell of a long way away by car. This stretch of the mountain’s spine was bigger than he had thought—a lot bigger. “Okay,” he said, replacing his glasses. “You can assist. You and your cousins.” He knuckled his hands on top of his rig, making himself larger and emphasizing his sidearm. “But I’ll warn you. Once. If there’re any problems, if it looks at any point like one of you messed with one of the missing men, I’m rounding you all up. And we’ll let the DA sort out who did what to whom. Shouldn’t take her more’n a couple weeks.”
Donald rumbled again, more threateningly this time, but Bruce nodded. “Deal.” He held out his hand to his brother. “Gimme your phone.” The larger Christie reached into his side jacket pocket, a movement uncomfortably reminiscent of someone going for a shoulder-holstered firearm. “How many of these guys you got missing?” Bruce asked.
“That’s a good question. Let’s go see what my officers have come up with.” He took a step back, swinging wide so the Christies would walk beside, rather than behind him. To his left, he heard the solid ca-chunk of a door’s closing, and the rear lights of the Corinth ambulance flared red and white. It crawled off the crushed patch of ground it had been parked on, paused at the shoulder, and then, blue lights springing to life, surged onto the road. Leaving behind a solitary figure in desert camo, who turned, spotted him, and jogged over. “Russ,” she called.
“In a minute,” he said. They all converged on the Millers Kill ambulance at the same time. Karl and Annie, the paramedics, were positioning an inflatable cast on the arm of a young Latino, whose closed-off expression may have been due to pain, or to an extreme reluctance to engage with Knox, squatting on the ground next to his pallet.
“Por lo menos dígame si cualesquiera de sus amigos estuvieron lastimados,” she was saying. The injured man ignored her. She stood up, turning to Russ.
“Hel-lo, baby,” Donald said. He sucked and smacked his lips. Kevin Flynn, standing spread-legged behind Knox, flamed up. He opened his mouth.
“If I were your baby, asshole, I’d probably be stupid enough to find that flattering. But I’m not, and I don’t. Get lost.” Hadley looked at Russ. “The only thing I can get out of him is that his name is Amado and he claims to be legal. He’s got some sort of guest-worker permit thing. He’s happy to flash that around, but anything else, forget it.”
Kevin was staring at her, his expression a mixture of admiration and shock. Russ kept his mouth in a straight line. “Thank you, Officer Knox.” He got down on one knee—squatting had gone out of his body’s vocabulary four, five years ago—and looked at the kid. He was young, barely out of his teens, and his scraggly beard and patchy mustache made him look like a boy made up for a high school play.
“Amado.” He tapped his badge. “Yo no soy del ICE. No cuido sobre su estado.”
Clare’s voice. Surprised. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
He gave her a look. Turned back to the injured man, who was wincing as Annie finished Velcroing the splints in place. “Amado, charla a mí.”
“Yo soy Amado Esfuentes. Soy legal.”
“No cuido. Deseo encontrar a sus amigos y ayudarles. ¿Cuántos de ellos están fuera de allí? ¿Cualquier persona estuvo lastimada?”
“What’s he saying?” Flynn asked.
“Same thing I was,” Knox said. “How many are there, is anyone hurt.”
“Russ.” Clare’s voice was insistent. “I know how man
y men there were.”
Of course she did. He was surprised to find a part of himself amused. Smack-dab in the middle of police business. Just like old times. He braced his hand against his thigh and stood up.
“Sister Lucia said there were eight men in the van. They were headed for Michael McGeoch’s dairy farm.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Mike McGeoch’s farm? On Lick Springs Road?”
She shook her head, loosening more strands of hair. “She didn’t say where.” Donald Christie was looking at her, curious about her BDUs, maybe, but he didn’t show any signs of trying out his charm offensive. Of course, she didn’t have everything out there on a platter, like Knox. A jackass like Christie wouldn’t know how to appreciate a woman like Clare.
He turned to the injured man. Karl and Annie were helping him to his feet. In the light from the ambulance’s interior, the kid’s face was gray beneath his caramel skin and thin beard. Annie frowned. “You’ll have to ask the rest of your questions at the hospital, Chief. We need to get this guy and the other one back.”
“Okay. Thanks, Annie.” Russ pointed toward the Christies. “You two. Get to the pump truck and get briefed by John Huggins about the search before you call in any of your family.” Thankfully, they shambled off without protest. “And remember what I said!” he called after them. “Knox. Kevin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yeah, Chief?”
“You two keep the van secure until the tow truck gets here. Kevin, show Knox how to write up the accident report.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw desert camo sidling past him. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“To help with the search.” Clare’s expression said, What did you think I was going to do?
Help with the search. Of course she was. It was too much to hope she might stay out of it for once. “I’m taking off now,” he growled.
I Shall Not Want Page 8