Moving around the outside of the house, she gazed up at the live oak, the one she identified as the mother tree from which the boy’s acorns had come. The tree’s elongated oval leaves were green and thick. Kit placed her hand on the massive trunk, and looked up. The leaves were so dense only tiny bits of sky came through.
Kit took more photos, then headed back for her car. She was nine-tenths of the way back down the lane when a white pickup truck suddenly pulled in. Her heart jumping, Kit stepped into the ditch, hoping the man would just drive by.
No such luck.
A muscular man wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a cowboy hat stepped out. He looked Hispanic, and stood just a couple of inches taller than her, about five foot eight, Kit figured. A scar bisected his right cheek. His eyes were brown, his skin leathery and dark, and when he looked at Kit, she felt like he was undressing her. “Buenos dias, señorita. What are you doing?”
Kit tugged at her UVA cap to draw attention to it, smiled, and said, “Looking for a tree. Found what I was looking for right back there.” She gestured back toward the live oak.
“What kind of a tree are you talking about?” The man shifted his weight.
“It’s an oak, a live oak. Quercus virginiana. You see, we’re working on a project …” Kit lapsed into a speech full of as much technical jargon as she could think of on the fly, a tactic designed to sound intelligent and bore the man as quickly as possible. It worked—she saw his eyes glaze over.
He finally interrupted her. “This is private property, you understand? You stay off of it.” The man spat on the ground.
“Who’s the owner?” she said eagerly, “because I’d like to …”
The man looked around. “You are here by yourself?”
“Oh, no!” Kit replied. “There’s a bunch of us.”
“Really, chica? Where are the others?”
Kit saw a glint in his eye that she didn’t like and when he took a step forward, she quickly moved away. Then her cell phone rang. “Hello? Yes? I got the live oak, Steve. I’m almost to the road. I’ll meet you there,” she said, without taking her eyes off the man. She snapped the phone shut, making a mental note to call her boss later and explain. “I have to go meet my partners,” she said to the man, and walked away, aware that the man’s eyes were following her, conscious of any sound he might make. And as she walked past his truck, she glanced back, and memorized his tag number.
Grateful to be away from the scarred man, Kit turned onto the main north-south road, Rt. 13, and called Connie Jester back on Chincoteague. She told Connie what information she needed. “Grease the skids for me, would you please?” she asked.
She called her boss, left a voicemail message explaining her odd call but minimizing the danger. Steve wouldn’t like her taking risks on her own. Then she dialed a member of the support staff at her office in Norfolk. “I need you to run some plates for me,” Kit said.
Juanita was good at her job, and the answer came back just a few minutes later. “C&R Enterprises in Accomack County. You need an address?”
“Sure.”
Kit wrote down what she gave her.
When Kit got to the courthouse, she found out quickly that Connie had paved the way. The clerk in the county land records office welcomed her, offering plenty of information. “Well, yes,” Mary Granger said. “You can see here: I think this is the property you’re talkin’ about. Only I’m hopin’ you’re not thinkin’ about a big development or anything, ’cause I’d hate to see all that land get et up.”
Kit assured her she was not talking about hundreds of homes.
“Well, this here farm is 237 acres. Owner’s name is … let’s see … C&R Enterprises. That’d be Curtis and Richards, Sam Curtis and Tom Richards. Tom’s married to Sam’s daughter. They own five or six pieces of property in the county, not including their own homes. Don’t think they’ll sell to you, not as long as they’re making money in tomatoes and corn.”
“The house on the property looks pretty old.”
“Sure is. That’s an 1870 farmhouse. Why I remember when Grammy Curtis lived there. Her old man got killed, got messed up in a harvester. She stayed on, though, working that farm and raising them kids on her own.” Mary shook her head. “Sammy, he was the smartest of the bunch. Hard work got ’im where he is, that’s it. Hard work.”
Kit bent over the county tax maps. She pointed to a small rectangle. “What’s this building?”
“That’d be the tomato plant. See, the growers’ pickin’ crews, they bring the tomatoes in, wash ’em, grade ’em, and then ship ’em off.”
“Does C&R own that, too?”
“Yes, ma’am. I told ya. Sammy’s smart.”
Accomack County had not yet put its land records on computer, so Kit had to be content with copies of plats and copious notes. Leaving the county office building, her hands full of papers, Kit rounded a hedge and stopped short. There, parked next to her Subaru, sat a white pickup truck like the one she’d seen on the live oak farm’s lane. She glanced around. She didn’t see the scar-faced man who’d been driving it. But as she approached her Subaru, he stepped out from behind a large van parked nearby.
A cold chill raced through Kit. She’d left her gun in her car in case there was a metal detector in the courthouse. She hugged the papers to her chest and laced her keys through her fingers so that one protruded through each gap in her now-clenched fist. Then she met the man’s leering gaze straight on.
“Ah, we meet again,” the man said. As he smiled, his gold tooth glinted in the bright sun. “I pay my taxes,” he said, tapping an envelope in his left hand. He nodded toward the papers in her hand. “You get everything you need?”
He was standing right in front of her driver’s side door. “Yes. Now excuse me,” she said, moving forward.
But the man didn’t move, and Kit found herself just inches from his face. She could smell the alcohol on his breath, and the sweat that permeated his clothes.
“Let me tell you something,” he said, his eyes glittering with anger, “it is not safe for a young woman like you to be alone out there, in the country, so far from help. Things could happen, you know? Bad things, that would be in your dreams for the rest of your life.”
“Move away from my car,” Kit commanded. “Now.”
“Oh, you are a strong woman. I see. But really, you know, it would take only one man, just one, to start the nightmares.” Then he stepped back, swept his arm grandly toward her car, and said, “Here you go, señorita. Buenos dias.”
The confrontation had Kit adrenalized all the way back to Chincoteague. He was trying to scare her. He had clearly followed her. And now he had identified the car she drove and knew that she’d been to the county records office. Her cover might have been blown—in any case, she wouldn’t be as free to explore the area around the farm, or question locals, now that she’d been spotted. She was going to need help.
Kit compulsively glanced in her rearview mirror. Was the man following her now? Not so that she could see. She’d hate for him to find out she lived alone on Chincoteague.
Convinced no white truck was on her tail, she stopped at an Office Depot and bought an all-in-one printer/copier/fax machine. The time had come to cement the deal with Steve, to get him to commit to her ongoing investigation. She would use Google Earth to create satellite views of the farmhouse where the oaks were located, the tomato fields, the tomato processing plant, and the surrounding area. She’d create a PowerPoint show that would include those views plus the botanist’s data, the autopsy report and pictures of the body, and the data she’d collected on migrant labor—basically all the information she’d collected so far. And she’d include information about the man with the gold tooth.
One problem: even she thought her case was thin. She had no suspect, no crime scene, no means, motive, or opportunity. Just a suspicious man, some tomato seeds, a handful of acorns, a little dead beach child—and her gut instincts.
A key piece of the puzzle came from an
unexpected quarter.
13
KIT, I’M SORRY TO CALL YOU SO LATE, BUT SHE’S BEEN CRYING FOR THREE hours.” Piper’s voice sounded frantic.
“Who has?”
“Patricia. Look, she’s ready to talk. She needs to talk.”
Kit glanced at her watch. Nearly 11:00 p.m. and she was only halfway through preparing the presentation. “I’ve got a big meeting tomorrow in Norfolk. Why don’t we get together then, late in the afternoon, say around 4:00?”
“Not you, Kit. Or Chris. She wants to talk to that guy—David.”
“He’s not here, Piper. I don’t know where he is.” That was the truth. The house on Main Street had been dark every time she’d passed it. His car was gone. The painting had not progressed. Where was he?
Kit swallowed hard. She heard Piper say something to the Latina. Then Piper said, “Listen to her, Kit,” and she must have passed her phone to Patricia.
In very broken English, the woman began to speak. “My friend, she has trouble. I scared it is that man, the one brought us from Mexico.”
“What man? What’s his name?” Kit figured if the woman was serious she’d start giving up some worthwhile information.
The Latina hesitated. “Hector.”
“What’s his last name?”
“That is all I know. We call him ‘Hector.’ I hear he get trouble when I run. My friend, she run first. Months before me. Then he find her! He take her. I scared what he do. I really scared, missy.”
What was she saying? That the trafficker had tracked down one of his escaped victims? Kit needed to know more. Most of all, she needed to know if Patricia was sincere. “I will try to help you, Patricia, but you have to help me. Who were the people you were forced to work for?”
Silence followed.
“I need to know, Patricia, before I can help.”
“OK. I tell you. Barnes. Robert and Rhonda Barnes. They live on Seaview Avenue in Norfolk. Big white house. The number is 2317.”
“And what’s your friend’s name, the one who is missing?”
“Consuela Espinoza.”
“She lived in Norfolk, with you?”
“Oh, no. She go up … up north. Almost to Maryland. She send me a message maybe six, eight months ago. Give to a man I know who comes to Norfolk sometimes with the tomatoes. It says she get away and go now to a place I do not know. But he find her! I know Hector find her … and now … please, please help her! He is no good, this Hector. No good.”
“How do you know he found her?”
“I hear it. From people who come to the market.”
“And where does Hector live?”
“I do not know that. He drive truck … a big white truck, from Mexico all the way to here. But I do not know where he lives.”
When Kit hung up the phone she felt confused by and irritated at the interruption. What was she supposed to do with that information? Why did Piper have to call her at 11 o’clock at night? What could she do then? And how in the world could she identify a person with a name as common as Hector?
Kit tried getting back to her presentation. She printed some more files, created two new PowerPoint slides … but she couldn’t let go of Patricia’s phone call. So she fixed a pot of coffee and stepped out onto her deck as it brewed.
The night was warm and humid. Crickets and night insects clicked and buzzed in the weeds. The marsh and the channel were black, and from somewhere, Kit heard an owl hoot.
Puzzled both by Piper’s phone call and her reaction to it, Kit stepped off the porch and walked down to her neighbor’s dock. The neighbor’s boat bobbed in the gentle waves of the channel. The horseshoe life preserver was hanging again on its hook, just where it had been when Kit had needed it for David.
She touched it. David. Where was he? She’d seen no sign of him at the house on Main Street. Someone from the police department had called her … David’s kayak had been found, but they didn’t know where he was staying. She’d given them directions, then tried to call him, but all she’d gotten was his voicemail.
In fact, she hadn’t seen him for what … a week? More than a week. Where was he? And why did she want so much to talk to him?
Right now, smelling the salt marsh, looking out over the water, she was nagged by sadness, and tears came to her eyes.
She thought about how he’d helped her gather the acorns for her investigation, about the conversations they’d had all night, driving all that way to Wilmington, about his sense of humor and sheer masculinity. About how he’d talked—in Spanish—to Patricia, gaining her trust and discerning the basis in truth of her story. David was sharp. He had good law enforcement instincts. He seemed compassionate. And he was …
… and then, she got it—in a flash, she knew the significance of Piper’s phone call: what if the man who brought Patricia up from Mexico was also trafficking people into the peninsula? What if he had moved her beach child’s mother into this area? Or the boy himself?
Could he have been trafficking people out on the ocean? Could the boy have become a problem? And who was this man, Hector? And why would someone traffic a mother and child in. Unless … unless, he’d tricked the mother, told her she could bring the child, then stole the child to be sold, to whom?
Kit stopped there, fresh anger surging within her.
She turned to go back inside and looked up, and there, above her house appeared a white cross. She’d never noticed it before. Moving right to get a different angle on it, she realized what it was: her neighbor across the street had a flagpole shaped like a mast with a yardarm. You could only see the top of it over Kit’s cottage, and it looked like a cross. David’s cross. She had doubted him. Dismissed him. But there it was. She closed her eyes. Tears began running down her cheeks. “God, I’m so confused. Please help me figure all this out,” she whispered, “my presentation, the case, and … and David. Everything, God. Just everything. I know I can’t do this without you. But I’m so afraid … so afraid you’ll let me down again. I’m so afraid.”
Kit smoothed her navy blue suit jacket as she waited for her boss in the conference room at the Norfolk FBI office. She touched the skin underneath her eyes, hoping no puffiness remained, hoping it didn’t show the fatigue from staying up until 4:00 a.m. preparing her presentation. And the drive down had been arduous—police activity along Rt. 13 had delayed her for nearly an hour. It was a good thing she had left very early.
She heard a noise and looked up, expecting to see Steve Gould and the Assistant U. S. Attorney, who Steve had invited to sit in on their meeting. But Chris Cruz walked in, spit-shined and polished. “I see you got the memo,” Chris said, tugging at the sleeves of his navy blue suit coat.
She smiled. “But you forgot the ruffled collar.”
He laughed.
Steve Gould followed seconds later. Behind him strode a short, intense man with small eyes and a pronounced cowlick, wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a gray-striped tie, the AUSA, Kit presumed. “This is Mark Handley,” Steve said, confirming her guess. “Special Agents Kit McGovern and Chris Cruz.” His introductions prompted handshaking all around and then rustling as everyone took a seat around the conference table.
Steve gave her the go-ahead and Kit’s stomach clenched as she passed out her handouts. Then she stood behind her laptop and started going through her PowerPoint presentation. As she progressively moved through her slides, she began to relax.
She told them about finding the boy’s body on the beach, about the quantity of tomato seeds in his belly and the acorns in his pocket. She went through the findings of the botanist, and then presented the pictures of the live oaks and the farmhouse, and told them about the scar-faced man.
The squad secretary interrupted Kit’s presentation, entering the room and handing Steve a note. He frowned as he read it. “A state trooper was shot to death early this morning on Rt. 13,” he said to the others.
“That must have been the police activity I passed on the way down!” Kit said. The cri
me scene investigation she’d passed had completely closed southbound Rt. 13. Traffic had been diverted to the other side of the road, causing massive delays.
“Pulled over a white box truck with stolen plates and apparently the driver shot him and destroyed the dashboard camera.”
“Do they have the truck?” Chris asked.
Steve nodded. “They’re just now taking it to the state police garage.” He took a deep breath and looked at Kit. “Continue.”
The men were looking at her expectantly. Kit tucked a stray hair behind her ear. She refocused on her own case. She told them about the gunfire from the boat on the open ocean, the scar-faced man and his aggressive behavior, mentioned the crews she’d observed working in the fields, the basics of tomato production on the Eastern Shore, and then finally brought in the information Patricia had provided her the night before: the indication that she and others had been trafficked into Virginia, forced into domestic servitude, and that at least one victim might have been abducted following her escape from her captors.
The AUSA began peppering her with questions. How long had the boy been dead? What did she think was the connection with her beach child? Why would traffickers move people over the water? What made her think that there was enough of a need for domestic servants on the peninsula to warrant trafficking? Why would an eight-year-old boy be part of this scenario, anyway? “I think it’s far more likely that he was just an illegal alien and now his grieving parents just don’t want to draw the attention of the law,” Mark said.
All the while, Chris Cruz sat with his hand touching his chin, as if he were lost in thought. Kit glanced at him from time to time, trying to read his mind. Finally he spoke. Dropping his hand, he looked at Kit. “What kind of vehicle was Patricia transported in?”
“A large box truck,” Kit said, and right away she saw where he was going.
Steve Gould tapped his pen on the table. He got it, too. He glanced at the AUSA, then looked at Kit. “You now have the names of the people who held this victim, right?”
“Yes,” Kit confirmed.
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