Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

  He couldn’t stay up any longer. David dropped to the ground, falling and grabbing his shoulder and crying out. The pain felt like a knife inserted in his shoulder blade. He sat down his back to the building, to catch his breath. “That probably wasn’t smart,” he said to himself.

  But what was kept in that trunk? Then his hand touched something … a loose stone in the foundation. He moved it and was able to pull it out, along with several others. A hole opened up, not big enough for a man, but certainly big enough for a boy.

  He was starting to put together a scenario involving a boy, some acorns, and a man doing something secretive when he heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. He looked around the side of the smokehouse. The van was coming back down the lane. He looked toward the cornfield. He had twenty yards of open ground to cover. Could he make it?

  David scrambled to his feet. He picked up his sling and his gun. Then he looked around the shed again and saw the van had disappeared behind the house. If he could angle it right, he could keep the house and the shed between him and the van full of field workers. It would be a longer run, but it would be safer.

  His heart hammering in his chest, David made a run for it, angling back toward the cornfield, glancing over his shoulder twice to make sure he remained on course. He burst into the space between two rows of corn, and moved quickly into the center of the field. Only then did he look back.

  Kit spent the morning in the Norfolk office typing up search warrants. Then Chris Cruz joined her, sitting down next to her. He began methodically straightening the pens and pencils scattered on the desk near him. Kit watched, curious. When he looked up, she said, “So, tell me about the Barneses.”

  “They denied keeping Patricia, of course,” Chris said. “They said they hired her as a favor, and hoped to help her get her GED and then go to community college. Oddly, they didn’t think to pay her Social Security, nor did they withhold taxes. Funny how that works out.”

  “And how did they find her?”

  “Through an online ad.” Chris picked a piece of fuzz off of his slacks. His eyes were blue and striking, so clear, and a marked contrast to his dark hair.

  “What do they do for a living?”

  “He’s a lawyer. She has no job that we can tell.”

  “No kids?”

  “No. Just a lot of art, all around the house. What we could see of it anyway.” Chris shook his head. “They acted like Patricia had just run away from a wonderful opportunity. They were so surprised, after all they had done for her. When I pressed them for the name of the person who connected them, and mentioned little details like Social Security and taxes and work permits and so on, they lawyered up. Now, we’re blocked until we can connect some more dots.”

  Chris went on, describing their house , the cars they drove, their looks and demeanor. He talked as if he’d been raised in a sophisticated home, and Kit wondered again how the son of two doctors had become an FBI agent. She’d worked with plenty of ex-cops, lawyers, and accountants. But vocations often ran in families and Chris’s just didn’t seem to fit.

  “What about this woman abducted on the island?” Chris asked when he’d finished recounting his efforts.

  “The picture just looks like a possible abduction. We’re not sure.”

  “Could she be Patricia’s friend?”

  Kit shook her head. “Different name. Ages aren’t close. Maria worked as a motel clerk. David O’Connor would talk to her sometimes.”

  “And where is he now?” Chris asked.

  “I … I don’t know. I have a feeling he may be trying to find her.” The hollow in the pit of her stomach grew.

  “Lone Ranger?”

  “I guess.” Kit showed Chris the search warrants she’d written up, detailing the Bureau’s interest in C&R Enterprises’ employee records, its business property filings, and other financial papers. “So what do you think?” she asked him when he’d had time to scan the paperwork.

  “I think these will fly, once I tweak them a little. Let’s fix them up and then we need to go see the judge.”

  His sojourn in the cornfield left David grubby, as grubby as a farm worker, and that suited him just fine. Around 5:00 p.m., after checking into a nearby hotel, he drove to the closest bar.

  Chico’s was built of cinderblocks that, at some time in the past, had been white. Now they were varying shades of brown and gray … dirt and smoke-colored. Surrounded by a crushed oyster-shell parking lot, the bar had gang graffiti on one side and a propane tank out back.

  The interior was dark and smelled like smoke. The bar, made of glossy, varnished wood, was scarred by knife marks. David slid onto a barstool, and waited. He was the only patron in the place. A few minutes later, a short man who David bet was from Mexico, walked out from the back.

  “Buenos dias,” David began. In Spanish, he asked him what there was to eat and ordered a round of enchiladas and Coke. When the man emerged a few minutes later, David casually struck up a conversation. How was business? When did most of his clients come in? How long had he been bartending?

  When he’d established rapport, David let it slip that he needed a new ID. Then he pulled out a picture of Maria and asked the man if he’d ever seen the girl. He hadn’t, and David slipped him a twenty, told him to keep the photo, and asked him to call him if he ever did. She’d stolen his wallet, David said, and he wanted it back.

  He knew most men would buy the implication that she had ripped him off after a sexual encounter. He repeated this scenario many more times that night, stopping at bars, convenience stores, and sleazy restaurants. By midnight he was exhausted and dirty, he smelled like stale cigarettes, his stomach was rumbling from Chico’s enchiladas, and he was no closer to finding Maria than he had been at the beginning of the day.

  This is all seed work, he told himself. Just seed work. He went back to his motel, took a hot shower, and got into bed. After he turned the light out, he realized that, fatigued as he was, he couldn’t sleep. Why? What was he feeling?

  It was loneliness, he finally decided, and that in itself was odd, because he’d been by himself for a long, long time.

  Frustrated, he turned the bedside light on and picked up one of the books Ben Heitzler, Kit’s agent-friend in Washington, had given him. Confused by Kit’s rejection, David had retreated to D.C. for a couple of weeks. He needed to see his doctor anyway, after his kayaking misadventure. But while in Washington, he decided to look up Ben, as Kit had suggested, and their time together had rocked his world. Ben was indeed a strong Christian. An initial discussion had led to long talks, late into the night, on topics so deep David thought he’d get lost in them—origin, purpose, destiny—things he thought about but rarely discussed with anyone. Ben’s perspectives were new to David and he found them stimulating. The two men hit it off, and when David left, Ben had handed him three books: The Case for Christ, The Reason for God, and Why Jesus? along with a Bible. Now, David was digging into them whenever he had the chance, calling Ben with questions, and rethinking his life.

  He opened Why Jesus? and began reading, and sometime after 2:00 a.m., his eyes finally shut.

  Kit spent two days going over the public tax and other records of C&R Enterprises, but it was a stray piece of information that she picked up from the state police that motivated her boss to move her case forward.

  “A pacifier?” Steve Gould had responded when Kit told him about the item found in the white box truck at the scene of the police shooting.

  “Right. Whoever shot that cop was smart enough to smash his dashboard camera. That, to me, implies someone trying to evade more than a routine traffic citation. There was something in that truck the driver didn’t want the trooper to see. That truck was pretty big for someone carrying drugs. I think people is a more likely scenario. And the pacifier would go along with that.”

  “So what happened to the people? And why didn’t the driver just drive off after he’d shot the trooper?”

  “Because he knew the trooper had a
lready called in his tag number. He shoots the cop, and he’s Eastern Shore’s Most Wanted. Everybody’s after him. So he abandons the truck, which he knows is untraceable anyway, and takes off on foot.”

  “And where’d the people go?” Steve repeated.

  Kit shifted in her seat, knowing she had no answer. “Let me go up there and look at the scene. Maybe there are tracks in the dirt.”

  “They looked.”

  “Maybe on the shoulder and the brush next to it. I’ll look farther.”

  Gould shook his head. “You find tracks, or any other evidence of human cargo, and I’ll authorize an offsite office up there for you.”

  “And more staff?”

  Steve Gould blew out a breath. “And more staff.”

  Chris Cruz, dressed in his blue business suit and Italian leather shoes, stepped daintily over the drainage ditch. “Over here,” Kit said. She’d pushed her way through some briars on the edge of the road and had emerged on the edge of a soybean field. She watched as Chris worked his way carefully through an opening in the brush. She figured he was in the process of ruining another set of shoes.

  “Look,” Kit said, pointing down. The field was slightly muddy, and at one point, the dirt was compressed, like a path. The soybean plants beyond it lay crushed and flattened. Kit aimed her camera and took picture after picture.

  A state trooper followed Chris. “I’ll be darned,” he said. “Are you telling me there were people in that truck?”

  “That’s what I think,” Kit said. “I’d like you to consider having your evidence techs go over it again with that in mind. Maybe they’ll find hairs with different DNA, or fibers, or something else that will help us out.”

  Chris looked around. “Where would they go?” He motioned toward what seemed like an endless field of plants.

  “Who knows? In the dark, they could have moved a long way without anyone seeing them.”

  As Steve promised, the new lead resulted in a new offsite office. It stood in the back of an industrial park just off Rt. 13 in Accomack County. “We can put cots in the back and a mini-fridge and microwave,” Kit said, as Tayloe Jones, the support staffer who’d found the place, showed them around. “The middle room will be the squad room, and up front will look like a regular small business reception area.”

  “Something as uninteresting as possible so no one ever comes in. Something like ‘Hoover Radio Repair,’ ” Chris said.

  Tayloe replied, “I’ll have a sign made.”

  Kit looked at her watch. “We need to go. We’re due to meet with Roger Lee from the state police in thirty minutes.”

  17

  ROGER LEE WAS A FORTY-SOMETHING MAN WITH SALT-AND-PEPPER HAIR. Slim and fit, he wore his gray state police uniform well. His eyes were gray, too, and Kit noticed right away that he was left-handed. Like David. David’s left shoulder bore the scar from his shooting incident. He’d been using his strong hand when he and his partner confronted the boy and had been shot in the left shoulder.

  David. She needed to tell him about the investigation. She needed to warn him to stay out of it. She needed to make sure he remained out of the way if any arrests or shooting went down. She needed to … Kit forced her mind back into the present.

  “So how can we help you?” Lee began.

  Kit briefed him on the case so far. She told him about the boy, the acorns, the link to the farm, the human trafficking angle, and the possibility the trooper who had been shot had been killed by a trafficker. “You know they found a baby’s pacifier in the back the truck?” Kit asked.

  Lee nodded. “I guess I just figured that it came from a shipment of household goods.”

  “I don’t think so.” Kit shifted in her chair. “We’ve got warrants for the business records of C&R Enterprises. We want employees’ names, a list of vehicles they own, and other data. When we get those, we’ll go for IRS data and eventually, wiretaps. We’ve got to find out if there’s a link between the dead boy, the missing woman, the ambushed trooper, and some of the other things going on.”

  “And what do you want from us?”

  Chris Cruz leaned forward, his navy blue suit stretching across his back. “Here’s the deal, Roger. You’ll be our main link to the state police. We may need help with surveillance, records searches, and, when it comes down to it, arrests. We’d like you to be part of our team, and work with us until we get this case solved. We’re setting up an offsite, and we’ll give you a key and access to all of our records. We’d also like your help in enlisting the aid of the sheriff’s office if we need it.”

  Lee nodded. “That’s what my boss said, and that’s fine with me. I’ll need to clear some things off my desk first. I’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”

  Immediately after the meeting, the Chincoteague police chief called Kit. “We got somebody here you might want to talk to.”

  “Who’s that?’

  “Latino fella. We picked him up with a whole lotta meth. Down at one of the marinas. I thought that was right odd. Thought it might make you prick up your ears.”

  “What made you suspect him?” Kit asked Chief Daisey later as he walked with her to an interview room.

  “Got a tip.”

  “From … ?”

  “Anonymous.” Daisey put his hand on the door of the room and looked full at Kit. “We don’t get too many tips like this.”

  Miguel Martinez looked almost like a child, sitting at the table. Small, with brown skin, the furtive glances he stole as Kit and the chief entered the room conveyed fear to her. A police officer stood leaning against the wall. Kit guessed he was there to translate.

  But it was quickly clear the officer knew very little Spanish, and Martinez knew no English. To every hesitantly phrased question, Martinez shook his head and cast plaintive glances at everyone in the room.

  Back in the chief’s office, Kit found out that two officers had responded to a small fishing boat marina near the tip of the island. The suspect was standing out in clear view, a backpack in his hand. When the officer asked if he could look inside, using gestures to indicate what he wanted, Martinez readily handed it over. Inside was two hundred grams of crystal meth, enough to book Martinez on possession with intent to distribute.

  “We got no use for crystal meth here,” Chief Daisey said. “Migrants been bringing it in to the U.S. from Mexico, I hear. That’s one import we don’t need.”

  “Did the officers ask him why he was here?”

  “They did, but, as you saw, there isn’t much communication going on. We got someone coming down from Salisbury to help us out. He kept saying something like ‘boy.’ That’s what made me think of you. Why was he at a marina? Why was he looking for a boy? Could it have to do with your case? I mean,” Chief Daisey leaned forward, “what if this guy ran afoul of some drug dealer … or user? What if they took his kid to get back at him? Wouldn’t that be a possibility?”

  Kit nodded. “That would be.” She asked for a piece of paper and wrote down some questions she wanted answered. “When you get a fluent translator, see if you can get answers to these.”

  On his second visit to Chico’s, the bartender gave David the number of a man who could help him with the new ID he needed. Two hours and 200 later, David had a Virginia commercial driver’s license with his picture and the name “David Castillo” on it, and a new Social Security number. He was dark enough he figured he might pass for Hispanic. At any rate, using his own first name would give him a fighting chance to remember his alias when he had to introduce himself.

  He hung out in a couple of bars, drinking Cokes and nonalcoholic beer, and he let it drop that he was looking for work as a trucker. He had two hookers approach him and one guy offer him drugs, and he’d collected more smoke in his lungs than he’d had in years.

  But late that second night, while David was sitting back at Chico’s, staring at an international soccer game on the TV, a man walked in wearing a cowboy hat and boots. He had a small cigar in his hand. And he limped.

 
; The man stopped at the table right inside the door. A Latino stood up, lit the cigar for the newcomer, and sat back down.

  David moved his eyes back on the soccer game. He listened carefully, heard the man approach, and pretended not to notice when the man sat down on the stool next to him. “Yeah, go!” David yelled, pumping his arm up in the air as a player took a shot at the goal. A thin stream of cigar smoke wafted his way. Slowly he turned his head to the right, casually taking a drink as he did.

  The man was Latino, probably forty years old, short, brown hair, black eyes, and he had a scar which bisected his right cheek. “You rooting for Mexico?” the man said in Spanish.

  “I’m rooting for whoever is strong enough to win, you know?” David replied in Spanish, chewing on a piece of ice. Was this the guy Kit had seen at the live oak farm? The man who seemed threatening to her? The one with the scar? If so, he might be the same guy David had seen there. David turned back to watch the game.

  Moments later, the man spoke again. “You the loser last time, eh?”

  David looked. The man grinned and gestured toward David’s left arm, which was in a sling. He refused to respond, turning instead back to the game.

  But his skin was crawling. He took a long drink of Coke, then casually turned to his right. “You know anyone looking for a truck driver?” he asked in Spanish.

  “You know one?” the man said, puffing on his cigar.

  “Me.”

  The Mexican laughed. “With that?” he gestured again.

  David took a long drink. “I can do more with one hand than most guys can with two.”

  “Sí? Let’s go!”The Mexican propped his right elbow on the bar.

  David eyed him. “What’s your name?”

  “They call me ‘Jefe.’ ”

  Jefe. Boss. David swallowed. “OK.” He put his right elbow on the bar and gripped the man’s hand. What was this guy’s game? In the mirror, he could see others watching them. First one man, then another stood up. A few walked slowly over in their direction.