Child With No Name

by Franklin Horton

  More digging in business and corporate databases showed the reason for this. The trucking company was actually a subsidiary of a larger corporation that owned poultry, strawberry, and cucumber farms. This alone didn't raise any eyebrows. It was common for corporations to spin off divisions in that manner. A big company might start its own trucking company to haul its products, a real estate company to purchase its locations or a supply company to ensure an adequate supply of the raw materials they need for their business. That was a pretty standard practice.

  Examining the ownership records of the corporation that owned both the farms and the trucking company took Kel up a tier. There she found an even larger corporation that had successfully replicated this model in agricultural regions throughout the country. They had subsidiaries that grew and trucked corn in the Midwest, grew and hauled both cotton and cattle in Texas. That ran several farms and trucking companies in California doing the same thing with almonds, grapes, olives, and kiwi fruit. In Maine, it was blueberries.

  Blueberries.

  Something about blueberries snagged in Kel’s brain. Her thoughts raced at high speed much of the time and it’s why she was good at her job. As a vet with her own struggles, she found peace in the logical and ordered world of data in much the same way as the operators did when they were on a mission. As the stimulant Ritalin seemed to calm the hyperactive child, the stimulation of multitasking computer operations did the same for Kel. It calmed her.

  Maine...

  There was something about Maine.

  She ran a search of her own machine, indexing files that referenced the word “Maine”. In seconds files began populating the results page. It began to come back to her in a cascade of recollection.

  She grabbed her phone off the desk and fired off a text to Cliff.

  Hey, I know you’re probably busy but I need you to call me as soon as you have a minute. This could be big.

  27

  Interstate 77

  Near North Carolina Border

  Ty was nearing the North Carolina border, still on I-77, and focused on the back of the green semi. He was listening to Leo Moracchioli now with his blistering metal interpretations of classic songs. He was in the zone, mission-focused, and the ring of his cellphone startled him. When he picked it up, he saw it was Cliff calling him.

  “Shit,” he mumbled, assuming Kel had ratted him out. That surprised him because he thought they’d come to an arrangement about accomplishing his goal without crossing any questionable lines. She must have had second thoughts about him going rogue and called the boss anyway. Maybe he still had a lot to learn about working for an organization like DKI, like who to trust.

  “Hello?” he answered, trying to sound casual, but not really feeling like he pulled it off.

  “Hey, Ty, what’s up?”

  Ty wasn’t sure what Cliff knew. How much should he give away? “Uh, nothing.”

  “Listen, man, I know you’re following a green semi down I-77.”

  Ty looked around with suspicion. “Am I being tracked? Do you have a drone on me?”

  Cliff laughed. “No, brother. We don’t do that. Kel called me.”

  Damn, he was busted. “I’m sorry, Cliff. I’m not trying to go rogue on you. It's the same old story. Once you left town I fell in a hole. You know the kind—dark, bottomless, hopeless—I had to reengage or something bad was going to happen.”

  “Did you talk to the doc? You need to let him know when this happens.”

  “No, I plan on it but I haven’t had a chance yet. I came up with a game plan and things kind of took off from there.”

  “That happens with you, doesn’t it? Last time you ended up in Arizona chasing a kidnapped girl. Where you going to end up this time?”

  Ty gave a nervous laugh. “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Listen, it’s cool, man. We’re good. I need you to run me through the chain of events though. What happened after I left you?”

  Ty took a deep breath and let it out through tight lips. Some of the tension he’d experienced at seeing Cliff’s number on the caller ID was dissipating. “Like I said, I got sucked into this hole of depression. It hadn’t happened in weeks but it was like the demons were waiting on me when I got home. I relaxed for a second and they were on me before I knew it. I had to get out of my apartment and get my head back in the game. That’s when I decided that I might be able to plant some of those trail cameras with cell connections across the road from the clinic and collect some useful intel.”

  “Not on clinic property, right?”

  “Nope. Vacant lot across the woods. I dressed like a utility contractor—hardhat, safety vest, orange shirt, clipboard—all that. I even put cones around my truck while I was working. Then when I was getting ready to place the second camera I saw something that got my attention.”

  “Which was?” Cliff asked.

  “I was trying to place a camera in sight of the employee parking lot when this Escalade pulled in. I was checking my sightlines and this woman gets out of the Escalade in a suit, hangs an ID around her neck, and goes into the building. While she’s in there, this other woman gets out of the Escalade and her belly is out there.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “Yeah, very. She’s wasn’t an employee either. She looked like she was a patient at the clinic. She was leaned back against the vehicle smoking when the woman in the suit comes out and hands her some cash. That seemed a little strange to me. Then they got back in the vehicle and drove off.”

  “The clinic could have some fund for helping indigent people with their bills or something. There could be a totally legit excuse for what you saw.”

  “There could be,” Ty agreed, “but it didn’t feel that way. It felt shady.”

  “Acknowledged. Go on.”

  “So I didn’t get the second camera in place because I jumped in my truck to follow them. They went up the interstate as far as Wytheville, Virginia, and the woman in the Escalade handed the pregnant woman off to a truck driver.”

  “And you’re still following them?”

  “Yes, but you obviously know that, right? I was just trying to keep the investigation moving without crossing any ethical boundaries. Sitting at home wasn’t healthy for me. I had to do something.”

  “Well, Kel did contact me but not to rat you out, Ty. She stumbled onto something very interesting. Are you going to be able to talk and stay on their tail?”

  “Yeah, I think so. If something changes I’ll let you know. What did she find?”

  “You know she’s a master at this, right? Forensic accounting, dark web, corporate trails—all that stuff. She was self-taught when I hired her, but since that time we’ve sent her to the best training I could get her into. She’s sharp. Anyway, she starts digging into the info you sent her. Following one company after another into the rabbit hole, trying to see where it ends.”

  “I haven’t talked to her since I sent that information so I don’t know what she found.”

  “The truck you’re following belongs to a company that hauls agricultural products in the central North Carolina area. They’re owned by a larger company that has similar operations in other states around the country. There’s nothing unusual about that in itself until she figured out that there are ties between the company that owns the truck you’re following and the company that owns a blueberry farm in Maine. The same umbrella corporation owns both of them when you go up a couple of levels.”

  “What’s the significance of the blueberry farm?”

  “Oh, just the fact that we raided the place about two years ago. They had twenty-two women and children locked up in a barn, all of them being trafficked for sex. Most were from Central America, brought across the border by coyotes. They thought they were coming up here to work, but that was just a ruse to get them here.”

  “Didn’t anyone track it back up the ladder at the time? Was there nothing to implicate the company that owned the farm?”

  “That didn’t happen and th
ere’s a couple of reasons for it. One, DKI wasn’t involved in the investigation. Immigration got a tip. Someone they pulled in told them about the prisoners being kept on the farm. We were asked to participate in the raid to lend more bodies and because we presumably understood more about dealing with trafficked individuals. They ended up charging the farm manager in the case but we weren’t involved beyond that point.”

  “But you’re saying Kel just connected these two cases?”

  “She was familiar with the blueberry case. When she saw this company had blueberry farms in Maine, she followed that lead. She’s obsessive like that. It turned out to be a hit.”

  “Okay, so that could change things. Do you want me to pull off?”

  “No,” Cliff said. “This development does make it more imperative you aren’t spotted though. Chances are this driver doesn’t really know what’s going on. For some reason he’s being paid to transport this woman and he probably doesn’t even understand why. He’s just doing what he’s told. We need to figure out where she’s going and why she’s going there. I want you to stay on them and update me when something changes.”

  “Got it.”

  “And good work, Ty.”

  Ty smiled. “Thanks, Cliff. Glad to hear you’re not pissed off at me for going rogue.”

  “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the reason you didn’t contact me is that I was out of the country, right?”

  “Absolutely, Cliff.”

  They said their goodbyes and Ty got the message loud and clear. Next time he needed to keep Cliff in the loop. He needed to remember to treat this job like being in the military. Everything was a team effort. Everything required clearance.

  28

  North Carolina

  Once they were in North Carolina, the driver got on Interstate 74 and then turned south on Route 52. If they stayed on it, the road would take them right through Winston-Salem. Ty was nervously eyeing his gas gauge. He was fine for now but would have to fuel up at some point. The trucker could go farther than he could, so he had to hope the pregnant woman’s bladder forced a stop somewhere soon.

  When it did, Ty groaned at the choice of stops. The driver must have been a fan of the Petro Panda chain, Ty’s former employer. Ty was in no position to complain, though. He needed fuel and he needed to go where the green semi went. While the tractor-trailer headed to the diesel pumps, Ty found a vacant pump in the passenger vehicle island that allowed him to maintain visual contact with the truck. Immediately, the pregnant woman climbed out of the passenger door and hurried toward the truck stop. As a former truck stop security guard, Ty had seen that same hurried walk many times before.

  Ty filled his tank while watching the door, waiting to see the woman come back out. He paid at the pump and was sitting in his truck when she popped out the door. She removed a pack of smokes from the waistband of her shorts and bummed a light off an employee smoking by the propane tanks at the corner of the store.

  The pregnant woman stood there looking around the parking lot. Ty noticed the green semi finish fueling and start moving. That got Ty's attention but the woman he was watching made no effort to head in that direction. Was he watching the wrong woman? Was she waiting on the driver to pick her up?

  The driver didn’t pick her up. He pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared from sight. When Ty looked back toward the woman, she flipped her cigarette away and headed toward an old beat-up RV parked in a far corner of the lot.

  When she reached the RV, she banged on the door with her fist until someone opened it. She craned her neck around, trying to get a look inside before climbing in. Her movements were hesitant, tentative, as if she wasn’t sure about what she was doing. Then the door shut and Ty was left wondering what the hell was going on.

  He pulled away from the gas pump and found a spot where he could observe the RV. After a few minutes, a puff of black smoke told him that someone had started the old rattletrap. It pulled forward out of the two spaces it was occupying and headed toward the parking lot exit.

  Ty saw no choice but to keep following the girl, just as he’d done when she switched from the Escalade to the semi. When the RV got back on Route 52, Ty questioned his single-minded commitment to the operation. He really could have used a drink and a bathroom break, but it was too late now.

  The RV ambled south on 52 sticking to the speed limit and obeying every traffic law. Ty called Cliff’s number, wanting to update him on what had taken place since their last call. When Cliff didn’t answer, Ty selected Kel’s number and tried it.

  “Ty?” she answered.

  “It’s me. Cliff wanted me to update him if anything changed, but he didn’t answer his phone. If I give you the info, do you mind to text or email it to him?”

  “Not a problem.” She scrambled for a notepad and pen. “Shoot.”

  Ty relayed what he’d observed at the Petro Panda outside of Winston-Salem. He provided a description of the RV he was following and the tag number. “Just in case you think you might be able to run the tag number now,” he added.

  Kel laughed. “Cliff is on board now. We’ll probably get the go-ahead.”

  “Roger that.”

  “So, I’ll pass this on to Cliff, but I assume he’ll want an update when there’s a change. You can either try to call him or ring me back with that. I don’t mind to pass it on.”

  “What time do you get off?” Ty asked. “I don’t want to bother you at home.”

  Kel laughed. “I don’t think any of us ever go off-duty here, Ty. We’re all in the same boat. We don’t want to miss anything and the adrenaline keeps the monsters away.”

  He completely understood that. “Got it. Then we’ll talk later.”

  South of Norwood, North Carolina, they crossed the Rocky River and the RV signaled a turn. They were on flat land, home to vast farms interspersed with pockets of woods. Ty had to fall back some distance in the light traffic to keep himself from being obvious. He had to open the distance up even more when the RV turned onto a smaller two-lane state road. He allowed a half-mile or more between him and his target, hoping that was enough distance that the driver might not notice that the same truck was following him.

  Staying non-descript became tougher with each turn the RV made. Ty had to sit at intersections several times and let the RV get out of sight before falling back in behind it. He wondered how long this game of cat and mouse could continue before someone in the camper noticed him. Finally, the RV slowed nearly to a crawl and turned onto a sandy dirt road.

  Passing by slowly, Ty saw an old brick farmhouse sitting parallel to the highway. Beyond that was the vast infrastructure of a commercial farming operation. With this being the age of cellphones and instant satellite footage, Ty pulled off at a wide spot up the road and consulted Google maps. He found that the property was the entrance to a vast network of fields, agricultural structures, bunkhouses, and ponds. This matched up nicely with what Kel had discovered about the ownership of the green semi.

  Ty switched to the Contacts screen on his phone and was getting ready to dial Cliff’s number when the phone rang in his hand. It startled him and he dropped the phone all the way down onto the floorboard. When he picked it up, he saw it was Kel calling him back.

  “Hello?”

  “Took you long enough to answer,” Kel teased.

  “I dropped the damn phone.”

  “Oh, sorry. I hope you’re in a safe spot.”

  “I’m on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I probably couldn’t be any safer.”

  “I was calling to let you know that I got the go-ahead to run that RV tag. It traces back to a farm near Ansonville, North Carolina.”

  “That would be exactly where I’m sitting right now,” Ty said. “They just pulled off the road and onto a massive farm in the area you mentioned. I was just checking the place out on Google maps.”

  “It’s huge.”

  “I noticed. What do I need to do?”

&nbs
p; “You need to get out to a safe distance and call Cliff immediately.”

  Ty didn’t like the sound of that. “What if they leave while I’m gone?”

  “I suspect they’re at their destination, Ty. I think that’s a safe assumption.”

  “But I still don’t know why that pregnant lady is here and why she got the cash. If I can catch up with her, she might tell us something useful.”

  “That may not be up to you to figure out, Ty. This is getting more complicated and everyone has their role. We’re not law enforcement.”

  “We don't have anything to give law enforcement yet. We need to gather more information. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  Kel sighed. “Ty, I’m not trying to argue with you. Just call Cliff and he’ll give you instructions.”

  “I’m sorry, Kel. I apologize if I was getting wound up. There’s just something about this job that pulls that out of you. It brings out this intensity.”

  “We’ve all been there, dude. You’re preaching to the choir. Now get to a safe place, somewhere you’re not going to draw attention if you’re seen, and call Cliff. That's the protocol.”

  “Roger that. Talk later.” Ty stewed as he dialed Cliff’s number. He wanted to be doing something besides making this call. He wanted to be taking action and advancing their mission.

  Cliff’s phone rang a few times before he picked up. “Cliff Mathis.”

  Ty noticed Cliff’s voice was a little more subdued than normal. “Hey man, can you talk?” Through the phone, he heard a door shut.

  “Yeah, I can talk now. Just had to step out of a meeting. What’s up?”

  “I tracked the pregnant woman to a farm in North Carolina. It’s a big place and it’s secluded from the road. I can’t see what’s going on there.”