Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel) (8 page)

“That’s why we have ulcers.” He finished his side salad, and as if on cue, the waitress brought his burger.

An agent couldn’t afford to connect emotionally with the people he or she apprehended. She’d learned that her first week, so she didn’t say what she was thinking: Rural smuggling schemes preyed on the poor, leaving the Kenny Radkes of the world, the mules, to take the big risks—and, in turn, the big falls.

Smith had surely read Radke’s file. He would know Radke’s story. A trembling hand as he passed his license and registration to a Customs officer led to his two-year stint at Warren. But she had grown up with Radke, knew he’d been motherless, had been raised by his old man, the town drunk. She sympathized with Radke, maybe even empathized with him. And still she’d held the urine test over his head.

“Radke’s into something,” she said. “He got beaten up for a reason. Someone doesn’t like him talking to me.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s something else completely,” Smith said, ate more of his burger, and swallowed. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, I brought a bag of clothes for the little girl you found.”

“Great. Just leave them on my desk.”

He nodded. “What do you like to do when you’re not working?”

“Between work and Tommy, I don’t do much, honestly. I go to the dojo
whenever I can.”

“Black belt?”

“Yeah.” She was nearly finished with her salad.

“I was wondering,” he said, “if maybe … we could have dinner sometime?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” She smiled at him.

“I was thinking …”

“Scott, I know what you meant. I was kidding. I’d love to.”

“Really?” He sounded like an eighth grader asking his first crush to the movies.

“I need to get in the field.” She stood and put ten dollars on the table. “Call anytime.”

As she left the diner, she thought of Scott Smith’s eyes and also of being able to tell her mother she had a date. She wondered which she liked more.

She climbed behind the wheel and slid the Expedition into gear. Before she could pull out, Stan Jackman pulled up beside her, jumped out, and tapped on her window. She rolled it down and felt the burst of cold air.

“I got this for Tommy.” He held up a glossy Red Sox folder. “I was at Wal-Mart, saw it, and figured he could use it. My grandson has one for school papers. Thought Tommy might like it.”

The folder had a photo of Red Sox slugger David Ortiz hitting a ball, the crowd behind him going wild.

“That’s awfully nice,” Peyton said. “Thanks very much.”

He waved that off, eyes dropping to examine his feet. “I try to stay busy.”

Since he’d invited her and Tommy to dinner during her second week at Garrett Station—where they’d both met Karen, who by then was clearly fighting for her life but willed the strength to prepare a stunning meal—Jackman had treated her like something of a surrogate daughter and Tommy like a grandchild.

“Heading home?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess.” He moved the toe of his right boot, crushing a fragment of ice.

“You okay?”

“Some days,” he said, “I don’t like going home. Karen is everywhere. She decorated that whole house. Put her heart and soul into it, you know? Everything was always ‘just so.’ Me, I’m pretty much a slob …”

Peyton couldn’t help but grin.

“But her, she was a perfectionist. And the house, that was her thing …” His voice trailed off. “Never be anyone like her. She was my once-in-a-lifetime.”

“You’re going to make me cry,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re a romantic. Wish I was.”

“The divorce will pass, you’ll move on.”

“It’s been three years,” she said. “And who said anything about my divorce?”

Jackman smiled. “You act just like my daughter,” he said.

“Ever think of buying a new house?” Peyton said. “A fresh start and all that?”

“I don’t want to leave that house. It would be too final, like leaving Karen behind.”

“My mother had a tough time the first year after Dad died.”

Jackman’s eyes left Peyton’s. “Hope to Christ your mother didn’t go through
this
.”

“Stan, my sister and I grab a bite once in a while. Why don’t you join us sometime?”

“You don’t want some old geezer slowing you down.”

“Slowing me down? I had to buy you a soda at the range last week.”

He turned back to her. “I beat you one time in a best-of-ten.”

“You beat me when the money was on the line.”

“We fired five hundred rounds, Peyton. I was terrible. Stop trying to make me feel better.”

Agents tested four times a year, firing three hundred to five hundred rounds with a service pistol, a carbine, and a twelve-gauge. Border patrol agents were generally considered the elite marksmen among law-enforcement personnel. Jackman had nearly failed to qualify for the first time in his career.

“You’ve got a good heart.” He smiled. “Just like my daughter. Tell your sister I’ll buy lunch.” He turned and walked away, shoulders slumped.

TEN

H
EWITT WANTED SEISMIC MOTIONS
sensors in the ground.

The problem was they were a bitch to install once the ground was frozen. But at just after midnight, light snow was falling steadily. It softened the ground a little but also meant she’d have to bring a broom (or use a pine-tree branch) to sweep over her tracks upon returning to the truck, a skill she’d perfected in the desert sand in Texas.

With a hands-free headlamp strapped to her cap, she plunged her shovel into the earth. The headlamp’s beam jolted as she drove the shovel’s blade six inches into the ground. In ten minutes, her hands were sore.

The sensors looked like gadgets Tommy would rig up—cylindrical units like coffee tins and square plastic boxes. The cylinder was the motion detector. Its findings went to the box, which transmitted the data. By 1 a.m., Peyton had three units surrounding the area where the baby had been discovered.

She put her shovel in the back of the Expedition and climbed behind the wheel. She didn’t bother to start the engine because she didn’t need the heater. Beneath the Kevlar vest, her T-shirt was soaked from the workout. Scattered flurries died against the windshield. She used night-vision goggles to conduct a visual sweep of the landscape.

Nothing but fallen maple leafs blowing to and fro across the dirt field like discarded plastic wrappers. Thirty yards away, she saw two red eyes a foot off the ground. The animal’s outline told her it was either a raccoon or a large fox. A raccoon, when threatened or cornered, could kill a much larger dog, its claws and teeth perfect complements to its ornery disposition. She was glad to be in the truck.

She set the goggles aside, grabbed her Nalgene water bottle, and checked the radio. All quiet there.

The previous night, this same field had been barren. This night, the field was covered with fresh snow, which would make hiking treacherous. But the risk of another twisted ankle was worth it because an unsullied white blanket made tracking easier. El Paso’s deserts, despite high winds that covered tracks, had proven easier than northern Maine’s frozen tundra in regards to reading and aging prints. Distinguishing an hour-old frozen track from one three days old took years of experience.

Sweating from digging holes, she finished her water. She knew she’d have to pee within the hour. But she was still tired. She reached behind her, grabbed her Stanley thermos, and poured a cup of Starbucks she’d brewed in the office pot. Her career had taught her to enjoy solitude. She could sit, maintaining stoic vigilance, for hours. Peyton leaned back in her seat and scanned the field once more. Still nothing.

Something about the meeting with Hewitt, Leo Miller, and Susan Perry tugged at her. The baby looked Hispanic, and the swaying roadside woman spoke Spanish. So the question had been raised: Was the young woman the baby’s mother?

Racial profiling?

In El Paso, if she stopped a car and men fled, profiling had nothing to do with the ensuing foot chase. Was this scenario different? The majority of Maine’s population, as Kenny Radke had annoyingly indicated, was overwhelmingly Anglo. Any assumption that the young woman and baby were linked was based on location. They had been discovered within a quarter-mile radius of one another, after all. But she couldn’t deny that the assumption was also based on assumed ethnicity. And that assumption was based on skin color.

Could racial profiling be more prevalent on the northern border? The coffee burned her stomach. She considered a more frightening question: Was there any way around it?

Peyton shifted her gaze from the field to the river. The water was calm. Her mother had said her sister had called earlier that evening. At breakfast, Elise had been unwilling to discuss what was bothering her—perhaps she wanted to get it off her chest now. Peyton had a feeling that whatever was bothering Elise had to do with Jonathan, who had glared at her when she’d left the diner. What had that been about?

She checked the volume on the radio, a large black rectangle where the console in a standard Ford Expedition was located. Red lights stared at her, deadpan: dead air.

She put the plastic cup down, slid the Expedition into reverse, and drove out on Smythe Road, her mind running to Bill Henderson, owner of Henderson Farms, who hired migrant workers to help with the annual harvest. She could leave the day shift gang an email suggesting someone contact Bill. It might lead to a line on her swaying woman.

Heading south on Route 1 at forty-five miles per hour, she saw sparse traffic. Garrett wasn’t exactly a “city that didn’t sleep.” She saw one van, but it had Maine plates—not the New Brunswick tags on the Aerostar into which the wandering woman had been pulled.

Headlights appeared at the crest of a small hill. Even from a hundred yards with no radar, she could tell the small compact was exceeding the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit as it cruised past her in the opposite direction.

She tapped her brake lights to see the driver’s reaction.

The Dodge Neon swerved, momentarily crossing the yellow dividing line, and quickly slowed.

Someone was either nervous or drunk. She swung the Expedition around, hitting the flashers.

When the driver of the Neon accelerated, the chase was on.

ELEVEN

P
EYTON WAS HITTING SEVENTY-FIVE
miles an hour in a matter of seconds, and the Neon was no match for the Expedition’s horsepower.

Route 1 weaved from one rural community to the next with few streetlights. The Expedition’s high beams slashed the darkness, illuminating the Neon’s license plate.

With one hand on the wheel, Peyton took the radio and notified the stationhouse of where she was and what she was doing. As she read the plate number, the Neon’s brake lights twitched and brightened, the car skidding to a stop. All four doors burst opened. Four men leaped from the vehicle and started across an adjacent potato field.

“Pursuit is now on foot,” she called into the radio, flung the door open, and burst out, Maglite in hand. “Freeze!”

No one stopped.

Running, she immediately took inventory, the Maglite’s beam traversing the field. Ski-Doo Jacket and tattered Army Coat ran side by side. They had thirty yards on her, moving fast. Paint-Stained Sweatshirt ran swiftly in a different direction. The fourth man, Brown Leather Jacket, was closest.

She focused on the easiest prey. It had stopped snowing, but the dusting left the ground wet. Her right foot slipped, sending a jolt through her sore ankle.

“Goddamn it, I said
freeze
!”

Closing in, she heard Leather Jacket’s rasp. He was built like a bowling ball and lunged forward, as if dragging a weight.

She dove at his feet and caught her right knee and left shoulder on jagged ground.

His fall was worse—face-first on the frozen earth. When he rolled onto his back and started up, the Maglite showed blood on his face.

“You bitch.”

She took three steps back and released the safety strap on her .40, glancing at the others, who had stopped running.

People fled when they had contraband in their possession, and flight had been their original response. So why were they now all walking back?

“Your pals don’t trust you to keep your mouth shut,” she said.

Leather Jacket looked at her, then at his friends.

“What’s in the car?”

Ski-Doo and Sweatshirt followed Army Coat’s lead. Her flashlight darted from those three back to Leather Jacket, who was off the ground now. He covered his face with his hands, then he held them before him and saw the blood.

“You bitch!”

“Extensive vocabulary,” Peyton said, eyes darting.

Army Coat was twenty feet away now and made eye contact with Leather Jacket. It was a warning glare:
Don
’
t sell us out
.

“It’s over,” Peyton said, her flashlight bouncing from bloody-faced Leather Jacket to Army Coat.

Except it wasn’t over.

Leather Jacket swung—a full-out, over-the-top haymaker, which she easily dodged, sidestepping the punch. He gasped, still spent from his run. His pungent body odor reeked amid the crisp autumnal night air.

“Nobody wants this to get out of hand,” she said.

Drawing the .40 was a last resort. She clutched the Maglite like a billy club. If she could collar Leather Jacket, get him in wrist ties, she sensed the others would fall in line. They didn’t trust him.

Leather Jacket lunged again.

This time, she used his momentum, grabbing his lead arm, twisting it behind him, and shoving him hard to the ground. He hit the frozen dirt with a grunt. More blood on his face.

“You’re getting your ass kicked by a woman,” Army Coat said.

Leather Jacket climbed to his feet slowly, groaning.

“You ought to be embarrassed. I wouldn’t let her do that to me.” Army Coat stepped closer to Peyton. “No way she’d do that to me. In fact”—he looked her up and down—“I think we could have some fun with her.”

The flashlight showed a two-day growth on Army Coat. Greasy, shoulder-length hair. Tobacco-stained teeth.