Back from the Brink

by Emery Hayes

  “That’s right,” Nicole said. She had released the tracker’s findings the night before. And she had let the team leaders know that the girl was in a safe place. “We’ll show a photo of the dead man to the young lady today.”

  “What’s her name?” Green asked.

  “We have only her first.” And Nicole found herself reluctant to share it. “She’s my first stop today. If I see a connection, I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Could you let me know either way?”

  She felt her lips curl with indecision. Everyone at BP was a suspect. The thought was a whisper in her head. And that included Green.

  “I’ll call you,” she said, and moved on to other details. “I have a deputy working on Monte’s files. ‘Internal’ in particular. So far, we’re pretty sure he was following up on suspicious activity inside your agency.”

  “I figured as much, but I didn’t see any names.”

  “No, he masked them.”

  “Is there any way to uncover them?”

  “We’re working on it.” And she felt reasonably good about a breakthrough there. “How many bad agents are we talking about, Green?”

  “Not many,” he hedged. “Two or three is my guess.”

  “What is Internal Affairs saying?”

  “You know how they work, Sheriff,” Green said, frustration rising in his voice. “They’re saying nothing.”

  “Well, then, what are your suspicions, Green?”

  He thought about that, and Nicole let the silence buzz in her ear without interruption. Through the window, the sky was just beginning to lighten. Clouds were parting, drifting in a cool wind. Stars were receding. The forecast had promised sun and a high temperature of sixty-eight degrees. Balmy for April in the North Country.

  “Monte,” he said. “All my training in personnel indicates he’s most likely behind our troubles.”

  “Because you think he and Baker are involved?” she pressed.

  “And because he has presence here. Men look up to him, follow his lead.”

  “And you can see him recruiting agents into wrongdoing?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

  “And Monte and Baker never worked together before Blue Mesa?”

  “No. Monte was in Wisconsin for a few years before transferring here. Baker has a string of stations behind her beginning with Miami, then Texas, San Diego, and Arizona. Possible they could have met at conferences or trainings, but not probable.”

  “Is it common for agents to move borders?”

  “Yes. We follow the promotional line. Blue Mesa was a big step up for Baker, but her first on the northern border.”

  “And Monte was teaching her the ropes.”

  “He has eighteen years on her, is a senior agent and a supervisor. Also a real nice guy who didn’t complain about investing in an agent with a learning curve. Baker saw that and latched on.”

  “And that was eleven months ago?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the trouble at BP started just before she arrived?”

  “I told you that,” he said. “Two months before Baker even got here.”

  “Get used to the questions, Green,” Nicole advised. “We’re just beginning.”

  She hung up and set her phone beside her plate of pie. She had yet to take a bite. And though the coffee had stopped percolating some time ago, she had yet to pour herself a cup. She sat back and stared out the window. The house was nestled into a knoll and faced east, so that through the large picture window the sunrise was just beginning to blaze across the sky.

  She was in a good place, but it hadn’t always been that way. She had made mistakes, big ones, and she had made reparations. She thought about Baker and her career path without the distractions of family. Those had been lonely days for Nicole. She could see the agent moving closer to Monte. A relationship developing. She was moving in that direction herself, but before coming to Blue Mesa she had been a mess.

  Nicole had made detective at twenty-four, been promoted to homicide at twenty-five, fallen apart at twenty-six. A year of hitting rock bottom where she fell for the charm of a man she later learned was a common drug dealer. She’d been clutching at the wind, nose-diving with only herself to stop the fall. And stop it she did. At twenty-nine, she moved west with a toddler son and the promise of a job in Blue Mesa. It was a demotion but a saving grace. Three years after that, she had been elected sheriff. She was just into her second term and making a difference, even if it was coming about slowly.

  And she was involved, and more, with a good man. She wasn’t very good at waiting once she’d decided on a plan of action and figured if MacAulay didn’t open a conversation about permanence soon, she would.

  She sat up and worked her fork into the pie. Razzleberry, one of Mrs. Neal’s best. Nicole figured the berries—and there were a lot of them—counted as fruit and not a sweet. The flaky pastry around it was a carb. Maybe not top-shelf, but there wasn’t a lot of it. She could work that off before lunch.

  “Hey, no fair,” Jordan said. Her toddler son, now eleven years old, had come into the kitchen, wrapped in a Star Wars comforter. “Pie for breakfast?”

  “No better time,” Nicole said. She smiled and felt the sticky syrup at the corners of her mouth. “Want some?”

  He shuffled into the room and sat down beside her at the table.

  “I had two pieces last night.”

  “Two?”

  “I’m a growing boy.”

  “Yes, you are.” She heard her voice thicken and pushed back the memory of nearly losing Jordan four months before—the utter chaos and destruction, the violent cacophony of wind and the earth thundering beneath her feet, the bullets flying and a brave young man, Joaquin Esparza, who had stepped up when Nicole couldn’t. She would not forget him. To him she owed the best part of her life.

  “Don’t get all mushy on me,” Jordan said.

  “Trying.” She passed a hand over his tousled hair. “You’re up early.”

  “It’s the only time I’ll see you today.”

  Probably true.

  “A lot has happened in a short amount of time,” she said.

  “I know.” He folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them. He had a better understanding of her job now, having been caught in the swales of a criminal’s intentions.

  “So what’s up?” she asked.

  “Remember that Scout trip?”

  She peeled through layers of memory to a conversation they’d had last week. “Hiking up Sunburst?”

  He nodded, reached toward her plate, and swiped a finger-full of berry.

  The Astum River Trail began north of Lake Maria, curved up over Eagles Peak, and ran parallel to the border with Canada. It was a popular hike, but more dangerous with the increased flow of undocumented aliens in that direction. It made Nicole uneasy, even though Jordan would be going with the Boy Scouts. It was sixteen miles round trip, with an overnight camp. Jordan loved the trips. Most were day adventures. Only a handful so far had been overnight. They were working toward a week of rafting on the Kootenai River this summer. Jordan would be twelve by then.

  “It’s tomorrow,” he said, “and I need supplies.”

  “Will a trip to Outdoor Adventure do it?”

  That perked him up. “Absolutely.”

  “If I can’t fit it in today, I’ll ask Mrs. Neal to take you.”

  “Okay. Or MacAulay,” Jordan offered. When Nicole’s brows raised in question, Jordan smiled and shrugged. “He’s into outdoor stuff, understands the trail and what I’ll need on it. He might even think of a few things I don’t and that aren’t on the list. It’s a win-win.”

  MacAulay had accompanied Jordan on a day trip to the Bighorn tributary the month before. They’d talked about it for days afterward. MacAulay had come back from that and bought a new pair of hiking boots, socks, a hat, shorts, and a guidebook on the trails of the north and was talking about lightweight fishing equip
ment.

  But MacAulay had two autopsies to complete and was just coming off the flu. Nicole didn’t know if a trip to the outdoor store was likely, but she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint Jordan. “You want me to ask him?”

  Jordan shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

  He stood and walked around the table to the refrigerator. He pulled out a bottle of vanilla creamer, carried that and a coffee mug to the counter, and mixed her drink. She smiled. Equal parts creamer and coffee, her brew had been the target of disdain far and wide.

  He brought it over and placed it beside her now-empty pie plate. Together, the pie and heavily cream-laced coffee told a story.

  “A definite sugar rush,” he said. “You’d do better to eat a half dozen doughnuts.”

  “A girl’s gotta live a little,” she said.

  “Not long on a diet like that.”

  “Hey, I’ve cleaned up pretty good lately.”

  He nodded and smiled, and Nicole’s heart brightened. “Yes, you have.”

  “Lars had a cheeseburger and fries yesterday.” She felt five years old, tattling on a friend. “And I ordered a chicken Caesar.”

  “Yeah, but did you eat it?”

  She had to think about that. Yes, at her desk while she waited for Deputy Casper to arrive. The lettuce had wilted by then and the chicken was lukewarm, but for a dinner in the midst of a double-homicide-and-missing-agents investigation, it was nothing to complain about. “You betcha. Along with a side of raw snap peas and carrots. They might even have been organic.”

  Jordan pretended to fall over in his chair, clutching his heart. “A shock like that,” he protested, “needs to come with some kind of warning.”

  She swatted his arm. “Go back to bed,” she said. “You can get another hour of z’s before you need to get up for school.”

  “You driving me?”

  She shook her head. “Mrs. Neal. I’ll make your breakfast, though.”

  Jordan shuffled out of the room, wrapped in the comforter, and Nicole stood. She pulled a frying pan from a cabinet, eggs and milk from the refrigerator, and went about making herself scrambled eggs rancheros, adding a double portion of bell pepper and onion and going light on the cheese. She had to compensate somewhere. She put half into Tupperware for Jordan to have when he got up for the day. She brought her half to the table and dug in. The pink and gold had faded from the sky, leaving it a stone-cold blue. She checked the time on her phone: 6:23. Still too early to call MacAulay. It’d been too late to call last night when she’d finished with Casper. She hoped he had slept around the clock, dosed with NyQuil.

  Instead she called her deputy on duty outside Adelai’s hospital room.

  “She’s been sleeping and feeding,” he told her. “Seems to be on a three- to four-hour schedule.”

  Which sounded about right to Nicole. She did the math and figured the young lady would be awake again at nine thirty. She ended the call, then rinsed her dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. She had enough time to shower, dress, and drive over to the superstore for a quick shopping trip.

  14

  Nicole hadn’t shopped for a baby in nearly ten years. For most shower gifts, she had handed over her share of the cost and been happy to let others do the shopping. Sometimes she had resorted to ordering online with direct shipment to the receiver. So perusing the baby section was a nearly foreign experience. For a moment it seemed like the air rippled and smelled sweeter. She wondered if they had a diffuser going or if they’d gone down the aisles sprinkling baby powder. She didn’t see any evidence of it, but she responded to that heady scent of baby just the same and felt a little breathless.

  Nicole grabbed a hand basket and followed a BABY ESSENTIALS sign to an aisle loaded with gentle shampoos and lotions and creams. She chose a boxed set that promised to cover every bathing need. Next she tackled clothing. She knew better than to purchase newborn outfits and instead grabbed sleepers size three to six months, because sleeves could be folded. She added two packages of onesies, socks, a hoodie, and a package of receiving blankets. As she passed an endcap, she picked up and tossed in a package of wipes. The basket wasn’t big enough; she carried a box of diapers under her arm.

  She might have gotten carried away. She remembered being a single mom, alone and scared, and that had propelled her through the aisles.

  Her purchases filled two big bags. She placed them and the diapers in the back seat of the Yukon and drove to the hospital. The sun had sharpened and she drove into its radiant glare, squinting behind her sunglasses. Glacier Community Hospital was located just outside the town’s center and close to the freeway. The big draw was, of course, orthopedics. With skiing injuries and hiking and boating mishaps, the hospital served a patient group of athletes, both amateur and hard-core. There was a wing for obstetrics and pediatrics, another for surgical recovery, and they had an emergency room that stayed busy.

  Nicole parked, grabbed her purchases, and realized she felt a little self-conscious carrying them into the hospital. Her cheeks heated, which was out of character for her, and she did her best to ignore it.

  Adelai was in room 108. Her deputy stood outside her door, sipping from a Styrofoam cup of sludge. Nicole sent him to get a real breakfast across the street at the Harmony Café.

  “You’re awake,” Nicole said as she entered the room. Adelai was sitting up, propped against two pillows. Her son was sleeping in a plastic bassinet beside her bed. The TV was on but the sound was muted, and the young woman was reading the captions on the screen. It was tuned to a local morning news program. Nicole placed the bags and box of diapers in the big chair that doubled as a bed when unfolded. No visitors had come during the night, though Nicole wondered if Lois Embry might be by sometime that day. “And looking a lot better today.”

  “Thank you.” Adelai held Nicole’s gaze for a moment, and then her eyes skittered across the room, glanced off the TV, and settled on her son. “Am I in trouble?”

  “I hope not,” Nicole said. “But a lot has happened in the past thirty hours, hasn’t it?”

  “Longer.”

  “We have questions,” Nicole began. “Some things must be answered, so why don’t we start at the beginning?”

  Adelai sat quietly while she gathered her thoughts, and Nicole waited her out, allowing tension to build. The only other sounds in the room were the slight buzz of the TV and the gentle breathing of Adelai’s son. There was something extraordinary in that, the rhythmic breathing of a newborn. It seemed a silly thought, and oddly moving, so much so that Nicole began to feel uncomfortable with the emotions the young woman and her baby inspired in her. Of course, she had felt that with Jordan. She remembered gazing at him, his beauty new and breathtaking.

  She gave herself a mental shake and prompted Adelai. “Maybe start with the baby’s father.”

  “He’s a good man,” she said. “He loves me and our son.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He didn’t come home. He always comes home, and I had an appointment at the clinic that afternoon. He would not miss it.”

  “But he did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he call you? Or you him?”

  “I tried, but every time it went to voice mail.” Her lips trembled. “And then the last few times not even that.”

  “You said the people after you don’t like you—why, Adelai?”

  The woman shrugged and looked away.

  “Because you’re Syrian?”

  Adelai nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “What happened? You said Matthew prepared you for this.”

  “You know, in case Immigration or Border Patrol came looking for me,” she explained. “I would run so they couldn’t take me away.”

  Adelai’s hands curled into the sheets. Shadows passed through her eyes.

  “There’s more,” Nicole insisted.

  “Matthew got phone calls, from someone who did care. He told Matthew to leave and do it quickly. But we had just go
tten here. We had a home and there’s a clinic close by, to help with the baby. I felt safe here, for the first time in … forever.” She looked at Nicole with unshed tears in her eyes. “I didn’t want to leave. And Matthew said his family would come around. Once we were married, they would have to.”

  “So you stayed,” Nicole said. “You made up names and were careful not to make an impression on people in town.”

  Adelai nodded. “We kept to ourselves.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Adelai thought about that. Her teeth sawed at her bottom lip, her eyes straying to her baby, sleeping peacefully in his bassinet.

  “We would have been married, but the paperwork was long and there was always one or two things more we needed to do with every answer we received.”

  “Because you were born in another country?”

  “And I didn’t have a copy of my birth certificate. We had to apply for that through the Syrian embassy. It took time. And then there were things we needed to do for our government here, for their approval.”

  They had tried going through the proper channels, a bureaucratic mess of paperwork and probably like scaling Everest.

  “And now you fear, for your baby and yourself,” Nicole said.

  “There are plenty of reasons to fear,” Adelai assured her.

  Nicole nodded, because it was true. And she was just about to add to those reasons.

  “You think Matthew is dead,” she began.

  “He would not leave us otherwise. He promised me only death would separate us.”

  “We found a dead man in an upstairs bedroom of your home, and we’re missing two law enforcement agents,” Nicole said. Neither surprise nor fear bloomed on Adelai’s face, but then she had probably seen news of both on the TV. “I’d like to know if the two are connected. Can you help me with that?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Aren’t you curious about the man we found?”

  “I have accepted that Matthew is dead.”

  “I have a picture I’d like you to look at,” Nicole said. Lars had taken the photo after MacAulay turned the body over for transport. The same photo Tandy had looked at, a head shot, with the bullet hole between the eyes clearly visible and some discoloration on the face where blood had pooled after death. She brought it up on her phone and turned it so Adelai could look at the screen. Nicole watched for her reaction. Her eyes flared with surprise and sorrow. There was recognition, and the young woman’s tears flowed freely. Many emotions crossed her face, but Adelai said nothing.