A Voice from the Field

by Neal Griffin

  “I’ll be careful, Mama. You’ll see. I’ll send money and before too long I’ll come home.”

  She had been a fool. Why had she allowed them to take her away? Why hadn’t she fought harder? Screamed? Did anyone even notice that she was gone? Did she even matter?

  It was quiet now. No noises came from outside. She knew the rattle of keys would eventually break the silence. The heavy footsteps. The opening of the door. The cackling call. But for now it was silent and she lay still, her body numb, her mind dull. She closed her eyes and tried to picture her home and family, but instead a voice called out from somewhere in the blackness. A voice of hope.

  Come to me, mija.

  SIXTEEN

  Tia walked into the office and took the chief’s extended hand, making sure to hold her breath. “Good morning, Chief.”

  “I was starting to worry.” Sawyer shook her hand slowly and gave her a hard look. “Figured you got caught in all that Newberg early-morning traffic.”

  Tia understood the not-so-subtle message but let it go without any comeback. The episode in the locker room remained fresh in her mind, not to mention in her throat, and her voice was genuinely humble. “Sorry, sir.”

  Ben turned to the other man in the room, who got up from the couch as Tia walked toward him. “Detective Suarez, I’m sure you recognize Sheriff John Solo. He tells me you two have never met.”

  Tia offered her hand to the man, whose face and public image were well known. Solo was in his third term as sheriff of Waukesha County and Tia thought he was holding up pretty well. The rugged good looks of his campaign posters were apparently not the work of Photoshop. His thick, wiry hair was more white than gray, and styled in a crew cut that sat well on his angular face. His muscular physique was wrapped in deep ebony skin, smooth and unblemished, giving the impression of a healthy lifestyle. His crisp khaki uniform shirt was tailored to his V-shaped torso and the four stars on the lapels were polished silver. A Western-style hat bearing the emblem of Waukesha County sat on the coffee table.

  Still uneasy about the nature of the meeting, Tia offered the easiest greeting. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”

  Solo smiled and a map of deep, ancient laugh lines appeared around his brown eyes. He looked down from his six-and-a-half-foot vantage point and Tia felt swallowed whole by his personality. He pumped her hand and said, in a booming voice, “Call me John. Good to meet you, Tia. How’s the gut?”

  “I’m, uh … I mean, it’s great. Never better.” Tia patted her midsection with an open palm. The story of her near-death encounter had stayed in the local headlines for several weeks. All the attention had gotten old, but if the sheriff wanted to remind her boss of all the shit she’d been through for this department, who was she to stop him?

  “Have a seat, detective,” the chief said, leaning back against the edge of his desk. Tia dropped into the visitor’s chair, doing her best to appear at ease, though her skin was clammy and her stomach had roiled back to life.

  Tia hoped whatever the chief and sheriff needed to talk about would take less than fifteen minutes. Any longer and round two might be all over the chief’s carpet. The sheriff resumed his seat on the couch.

  Watching her carefully and speaking coolly, Ben said, “Sheriff Solo came by to talk about your run-in with Gunther Kane.”

  Tia swallowed hard. “Well, chief, like you and I have talked about, that was a pretty messed-up operation and I know we made some mistakes. But I get it. Kane is off-limits. I was out of line before, so—”

  “Suarez?”

  Tia looked at her boss. “Yes, Chief?”

  “Can I finish before you mea culpa yourself right out the door?” One of Ben’s eyebrows was arched, an expression Tia knew well.

  “Sorry, sir.” From the corner of her eye Tia saw the sheriff look down at his boots and stifle a laugh.

  Ben took a breath and started again. “Sheriff Solo, maybe it would be better if you explained why you’re here.”

  The sheriff leaned his tall frame forward on the couch that took on the look of doll furniture. He put his forearms on his knees. “Tia, are you familiar with the North Aryan Front?”

  “The militia group?” He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard about them in various intel briefings and training seminars. White supremacists, right? Preach all that ‘hate the government, love the land’ bullshit?”

  “Those are the ones. They’ve been a minor pain in my ass ever since I took office, mostly low-level stuff. Demonstrations at public events. Membership drives out in front of the county office building. Every once in a while they’ll hold a public meeting to try to drum up support for their cause.”

  “Which is what exactly?” Tia asked.

  He shrugged. “Nothing too specific. It’s not like they work off a manifesto or anything. Mostly a bunch of pissed-off, down-on-their-luck farmers. Lately they’ve been recruiting a few younger guys, vets coming back from overseas. They’re pretty much convinced the federal government is conspiring to take away their guns and turn them all into vegetarian socialists. Most of their get-togethers are glorified bitch sessions. I’ve written them off as peddlers of harmless nonsensical bullshit.”

  “Okay, sir.” Tia smiled at the sheriff’s colorful description and shrugged. “What’s that got to do with Kane?”

  “Gunther Kane came onto the local scene about two years ago. In his younger days, going back ten or twelve years, he rode with the Hells Angels chapter out of Milwaukee. Full-patched member. A one percenter all the way. He got busted for felony assault and did three years in Waupun. While he was locked up, he parlayed with the Aryan Brotherhood.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tia wanted to move the conversation along. Her stomach was at a full churn. “We got all that off his rap sheet when we arrested him. Didn’t mean much to the prosecutor in Milwaukee.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve heard,” Solo said.

  Her stomach gurgled loud enough that she was pretty sure both men heard it. “Again, sir, no disrespect, but what do you need from me?”

  “Kane discharged parole two years ago. He’s been free and clear of the law ever since. He stumbled onto a job at the Roadhouse Score out on Highway 53. Started off as a bouncer and worked his way into management.”

  “That’s the old strip joint, right?” Tia asked. “Can’t say I spend a lot time there, but it sounds like just the place for him.”

  “A bunch of the regulars are some of the more hard-core element of North Aryan Front,” Solo said. “That’s where they hold their get-togethers. Look out for new members. That’s where Kane comes in.”

  Tia thought it over. “So the guy goes from riding with HA and being a soldier in the Aryan Brotherhood to hanging out with a bunch of yahoos who like to run around in the woods dressed in camouflage? Pretty big step down, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’d think so, but it seems Kane may have found his niche. When he was running with Hells Angels and the Brotherhood, he was a face in the crowd. With the NAF, he can run the show.”

  Tia and Ben exchanged a glance. Tia knew she wasn’t the only one who was starting to get interested. The sheriff went on.

  “Kane helped the boys of the North Aryan Front set up an LLC and take ownership of the Roadhouse. It’s a strategy he learned from his days with HA. Those bastards own enough legit businesses to have their own Chamber of Commerce.”

  Tia found herself warming to the distinguished sheriff, beginning to understand why, in a county that was 90 percent white, he kept getting reelected.

  “Kane avoids the spotlight,” Solo said. “He lets the old guard bang the drum with all the philosophical bullshit. He seems more interested in raising capital. We think he’s doing pretty well.”

  “So they make their money through the club?”

  He shrugged. “Some of it, yeah. Probably running dope and I’m sure they’ve got some special hanky-panky going on with the dancers—the usual strip joint stuff. But it looks like they’ve got another income stream, outside the club.”r />
  Tia cocked her head. At this sign of interest, Solo cleared his throat and leaned in.

  “Now, this is where it gets a bit dicey. We’ve had to keep a few things off the books. I’m going to ask that you do the same.”

  Tia nodded. “Of course, sir.”

  “Chief Sawyer told me about your run-in with Kane. He says there was a second man. The fella who drove off in the van?”

  Tia nodded and spoke matter-of-factly. “Yep. Kane called him Jessup.”

  The Sheriff picked up a file folder off the couch and pulled out a black-and-white eight-by-ten photo. He held it up so Ben and Tia could both see it. It looked like a surveillance photo and showed a group of men in a dusty parking lot. “That was taken two days ago outside the Roadhouse Score. Recognize anyone?”

  Tia didn’t hesitate in pointing to a man in the crowd. “That’s him right there. The skinny, tweaker-looking prick. I landed a pretty good shot right in his nut sac. Any chance he’s walking with a limp?”

  Both men cringed. Solo said, “That’s Jessup Tanner.”

  “So who is he?” Tia asked. “Another outlaw biker turned businessman?”

  “Not hardly. Tanner’s NAF, but he’s no Johnny-come-lately like Kane. Tanner’s a true believer, drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago. Hard-core racist politics. Separatist ideology. Lives off the grid. Hunkered down on a few acres here in Waukesha County. It’s been in his family for a hundred years. Used to be a lot more, but the dumb son of a bitch refuses to pay property taxes, so the state has taken most of it. In a few years he’ll be nothing more than a white-trash squatter.

  “Kane and Tanner are thick as thieves. The brain trust of the NAF, if you can imagine such a thing. In the past three months, they’ve taken two major road trips that we know of. Both times they hauled ass to California in less than twenty-four hours. Then they took about three weeks to get back to Wisconsin.”

  “How do you know this?” Tia asked. “You got them on a tracker?”

  The Sheriff looked down to his boots again. “Yeah, that’s one of the things we need to keep kind of quiet.”

  “So that’s a yes on the tracker, but a no on the warrant to go along with it?”

  “Exactly. My deputies were just trying to get a quick sneak peak. Turns out they got an eyeful.”

  It made sense. Tia had used the same strategy on a few cases. Any cop can follow a crook around public places without a warrant, but if the bad guys start covering any kind of distance local agencies are hard-pressed to keep up. It takes resources to run that kind of surveillance. A good solution was to throw an electronic GPS tracker onto the crook’s car and follow him by computer, but that requires a warrant. On occasion, cops would ignore the legal requirement and take a quick “sneak peak.” If things got interesting, then the cop would formally request a warrant. In the world of cop rule bending, Tia knew, a “black tracker” was pretty low-level stuff.

  “Once my guys realized what was at stake,” Solo said, “they fell on the sword and told me what they were up to. I chewed their asses appropriately and we’ve moved on.”

  Tia forgot about her stomach. She wanted to hear more. “What did they tell you?”

  His voice sounded grim. “From the intel we got off the tracker, we know Kane and Tanner spent some time in LA and Vegas. After that, they hit a bunch of truck stops, low-rent hotels, some farms. We figured they were running dope, buying some pretty good weight on the West Coast, then doing nickel-and-dime deals all the way home. Course we can’t use any of that because it’s ill-gotten off the unwarranted tracker, but it all made pretty good sense. That is, until you arrested Kane in Milwaukee.”

  Tia was confused. It didn’t help that she had killed off a pretty good portion of her frontal lobe the night before, but she was still staggered by the picture forming in her mind. She refused to accept it. “I’m not following you, Sheriff.”

  Solo stared at Tia; his voice seemed almost sorrowful when he said, “We can’t be sure, but when we put together what we already knew, along with your run-in with Kane, we got to thinking maybe the dope angle might be all wrong.”

  Ben added, “I told the Sheriff about Kane’s assault on you. How he tried to pull you into the van. I told him about the girl you saw.”

  Tia’s head was spinning. Ben had said “the girl you saw,” not “the girl you thought you saw.”

  “What? What are you saying?” She knew she sounded confused. She couldn’t help that.

  “It all makes sense now,” Solo said.

  Ben spoke patiently. “Think about it, Tia.”

  Tia shook her head. She couldn’t think, didn’t want to think. Her head was still pounding. Angry, she said, “Think about what?”

  The sheriff answered, “We think Kane might be involved in trafficking.”

  “Yeah, I heard you,” Tia said, desperate for some other truth. “Meth? Grass? What?”

  “No, Tia,” Solo said. “Human trafficking.”

  There it was. The thing she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself.

  Jesus Christ. And you let them drive away.

  The office disappeared and everything went dark. Tia stared into the back of the van as if staring down a long tunnel. The face. The screams. The heat of the night. TJ’s voice buzzing in her ear. Sirens wailing. The van door slammed shut and it all disappeared. Tia was back in Ben’s office.

  The chief was talking. “You said Kane figured you to be a wet, right? Just across the border?”

  “Yeah.” Tia’s mouth had gone dry and it was difficult to speak. “He asked me … if I’d just come up from Mexico. Something like that.”

  “Like maybe he could snatch you up and not worry too much about anyone taking notice?” Ben asked. “You said the girl looked Latina, right? And she was pretty young?”

  “Yeah. Fifteen, sixteen.” Tia’s voice was a whisper. “Seventeen tops.”

  Ben rounded out his explanation. “Well, what if they—Kane and Tanner, that is—what if they snatched her up just like they tried to do to you? Maybe out in California. Arizona. Somewhere down by the border, anyway. Then drove across country with her. Pimping her out all the way back.”

  The sheriff said, “If they played it right, if they snatched up a streetwalker, somebody who was undocumented, nobody would notice. And even if she was reported as a missing person, it wouldn’t garner much attention.” He shrugged. “Course just as likely, she didn’t get reported at all. She just … went away.”

  Tia stared out the window behind Ben’s desk, the girl’s muffled cry for help filling her head. Her brown terrified eyes. The duct tape across her mouth. Tia’s stomach heaved and she almost reached for the trash can. She swallowed and willed the bile to stay down. She spoke to no one in particular, her voice barely audible. “So she was there.”

  The sheriff confirmed what everyone was already thinking. “They haven’t been tripping out west for dope. They’ve been tripping for people.”

  The words hung over all three cops in the room. The gravity of the discovery wasn’t lost on any of them. Tia asked the obvious question. “Now what?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Solo leaned back, signaling the end of his tale. “Seems like somebody needs to make a project out of Mr. Gunther Kane and his dimwit partner, Tanner.”

  “I absolutely agree, Sheriff,” Ben said. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Seeing that Kane and Tanner operate out of that shit-hole strip club right smack in the middle of my county and five miles outside Newberg, I think a joint operation between our two agencies would be a good next step. I’d like to get things started with surveillance tonight, if you can spare Suarez.”

  “It sounds like a lot to bite off,” Ben said. Tia noticed that he avoided the issue of surveillance and her availability. “Any thought to giving the feds a call? Maybe they’ll throw some money and people your way.”

  The sheriff waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Yeah, I called them. Got nothing but lip service. Bunch of excuses a
nd double-talk, so the hell with them. If we make a human-trafficking case on Kane, we’ll go with state charges for kidnapping. I don’t doubt once all the work is done and the headlines are in the paper the feds will try to steal it away from us. Damn glory hounds. But that’s a battle for down the road.”

  Ben turned to Tia and she picked up the reluctance in his voice. “Well, what do you say, Detective? You clear to work a detail tonight?”

  Tia was speechless. It was all too much, but she tried to push out an enthusiastic response. “Uh … yeah. I mean hell yeah, Chief. I’m all over it.”

  The sheriff stood and turned to Tia. “I’ve assigned a couple of U/C detectives to work surveillance at the Roadhouse tonight. We’ll start slow. Just try to get the lay of the land. Zero in on the comings and goings of our two main players. Try to ID some of the lower-level guys. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find somebody we can put a twist on. Get somebody on the inside to wire up for us. Sound good to you folks?”

  Ben answered for them both. “Sounds like a plan, John. Let me talk it over with Suarez and my detective sergeant. We’ll work out the details, but count us in.”

  The sheriff was headed for the door when Tia called out, “Excuse me, Sheriff?”

  “Yes, Tia?”

  “Uh, so where is she?”

  Both men looked at her in confusion, so she tried again. “I mean the girl in the van. Where is she?”

  The sheriff shook his head and his voice was solemn. “I can’t answer that, Tia. I don’t know.”

  Tia looked at both men and found herself wishing she were like them. Their suspicions of what was happening were still nebulous and nonspecific. For Tia, the whole thing came with a face. Ben’s voice brought her back to the moment.

  “Thanks again, Sheriff. We’ll get things rolling on our end.”