Dark Witness (15 page)

"I grew up on a coast," Andre said. "Florida. I've run on sand. It's not easy. Still, I think you'll find this a little harder."

He slung the larger pack onto his back and stooped to pick up the smaller, heavier one but Josie took hold of it at the same time. He stood up and so did she. The bag was between them.

"Look," she said. "I want to be really clear about why we're here, so you don't think this is some stunt. Hannah is my ward. She is one heroic, gritty girl. I can't begin to describe what she's been through, and not just because of this incident with Gjergy Isai. A lesser person would be dead by now or in an asylum. We're here because she deserves to be given every consideration. We are not here because we don't trust your assessment of the situation so don't take this personally."

"Understood." Andre kept his gaze steady and, though he would have denied it, Josie was sure she saw a wry glint behind his eyes, as if he had heard it all before.

"Yeah. Sure," she mumbled and pulled on the pack again. "I'll take it."

Andre seemed to smile, but it was hard to tell beneath the beard and mustache. She was getting majorly ticked off, but not as ticked off as Andre was getting. He pulled on the pack.

"Trust me. I'll carry it."

"I'd let her have it, Guillard."

Archer and Nell had come around the tail of the plane in time to see the stand off. They distracted Andre just long enough for Josie to take possession of the pack.

"Suit yourself." He stepped aside. "The one you have is the heaviest. If it was my lady, I'd lend a hand."

"Then she probably wouldn't be your lady long," Archer said.

Josie gave him a nod. There was a reason they were going to spend their lives together. He knew when to step back and let her carry the load. She threaded her arms through the harness.

"Which way?" she asked.

Andre started to walk. Josie fell in behind him and Archer pulled up the rear.

"Good luck," Nell called and Josie raised a hand in thanks.

Nell watched until they were out of sight before she set up her own camp. When she was done, as she sat in her small tent, she realized she wasn't wondering about what they were going to find out there. She was thinking how well Andre looked with that woman. She was also thinking how glad she was that he would never notice.

***

Andre didn't have to look at Josie Bates to know that he had been right about running on sand and trudging through the snow. She had gone further than he expected and done so without complaint, but she was struggling. Archer was the one to call a halt at the second mile mark, but Bates stayed upright, her legs splayed in the snow, her fists tight around the harness, eyes forward.

They rested in silence until Andre started them off again. Forty minutes later they were at the site, and Josie Bates was the first to toss aside her pack. She was already prowling the perimeter of the wreck by the time the men put their loads on the ground. She swished away snow on one of the boxes and noted Andre's markings. When Andre joined her he was efficient and professional, showing her what was left of the driver's body, the point of departure from the road, the chain, and lock on the back of the container, and filling her in on the details of the cargo. She asked about the trucker, and Andre ran it down. His name was Joseph Green. He owned the rig. It was uninsured. There was nothing to indicate who he was hauling for or what his destination was. Andre had someone tracking down the cargo. They had the manufacturer, but they were not showing paperwork for a shipment of those lot numbers.

"Inside job. Maybe a friend of this guy worked for the company and loaded for Green after hours," Archer suggested.

"Could be," Andre agreed. "If that's the case, no one's going to come out of the woodwork and admit it."

"Where do you think he would have been heading?" Josie asked as they all ambled toward the back of the truck again.

"I have no idea. That road up there isn't on any map. I'll have to drive it to see where it ends up. Nell can spot for a while, but we can't get the whole thing from the air. Pretty much it's a guess at this point where it dumps out," Andre said.

"And what about the cargo? What's it used for?" Archer asked.

"Liquid nicotine is used in insecticide. When it's super diluted, it's used in those e-cigarettes. Could be he was just taking this to wherever he lived to dilute it and resell it. He could send it anywhere once he did that. If he didn't do it right, though, he could kill a whole bunch of folks including himself. That stuff is three times more toxic than arsenic."

"Ouch," Archer muttered.

"The general public would never know. I wouldn't," Josie mused. "I just think nicotine is nicotine. They put it in gum, on patches, in cigarettes."

"Inhaling isn't the problem when it's in this form," Andre said. "Get it on your skin or ingest it, and you're in trouble. Vomiting. Seizures. Death. It's fast."

"I haven't heard about any big underground push for this stuff," Archer said and looked at Andre. "You?"

Andre shook his head. "There isn't any because there's no real benefit. You're not going to get high from this, just dead."

"Do you think it might be terrorism? Maybe meant for the water supply," Archer asked. Andre shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Josie indicated the container. She was tired of the chemistry lesson. "I'm going inside. Are you good with that?"

"Sure. Just be careful."

Josie motioned to Archer. She was first in, grabbing the sides and hoisting herself up a lot easier than most would do. Archer followed. Andre raised his voice when he heard them head toward the back.

"Don't move anything. Don't touch anything."

While he waited, Andre leaned against a tree, put his hands in his jacket pockets, and watched the beams of their flashlight move through the interior. This little exercise in futility reminded Andre of first responders visiting a sunken ship or a blown up building. All Archer and Josie Bates would find would be twisted metal, tumbled cargo, and terrifying silence. There would be no bodies, and yet death was a certainty. Closure, in Andre's book, was a nice concept but never a reality. The promise of it gave survivors unreasonable hope that they would find something no one else could: words carved into the side of a box or etched onto the floor, a loved one buried but breathing under rubble, clinging to a piece of wood floating in the wide ocean, or hanging from a precipice. That's what survivors envisioned because they had such faith in their loved one's will to live. It was a waste of emotion and time. There would be no happy tears, no miraculous rescue. Even Josie Bates wasn't strong enough to raise the dead or find the lost and that was the only closure she seemed willing to accept.

Tired of waiting, not wanting to interrupt before they reached the only logical conclusion they could, Andre got a plastic bag and a small hand pick and went to collect what he could of the driver's remains. These would be sent to the State Medical Examiner's office in Anchorage for storage until they were claimed – which Andre doubted they ever would be. The rest of him would be collected when the truck was moved. Eventually the bones would be disposed of according to the law and Mr. Green would be forgotten.

Andre had just finished when he heard the sound of the container floor giving. He went to his pack and stored the opaque, zippered bag just as Archer jumped to the ground. Josie followed slowly, but only went as far as the door. She stabilized herself with the angle of her body and one hand that clutched the bent metal frame. Archer put up his hand to help her down. She and Archer locked eyes; Andre kept his on Josie Bates. Andre had to admit she was more than handsome. Few women could look good bundled up in winter clothes, but she did. Few women could handle their disappointment with such grace, but she did. And few women would remain as stubborn as she when everyone was waiting on her.

When Archer turned around and looked at Andre, the trooper shrugged. She was Archer's woman, and he'd have to deal with her until it was time to go. Andre dug into his pack again, and pulled out the things he needed, walked through the snow, over the uneven ground, and dropped the new chain and lock near the container figuring that might get her moving. Josie Bates couldn't take a hint. She scanned the terrain, finally focusing on a point over the men's heads. Archer dropped his hand. Andre made an impatient turn. The day was getting on.

"Ms. Bates," he said. "I've got to secure this site. We have to start back."

"Where's the closest town?" she asked, ignoring Andre's directive.

"There aren't any towns out this far. There's nothing out this far." He indicated the open door. "Do you mind? I've got to inventory and get those boxes back inside."

"Sorry." She moved aside. He climbed in and started counting, but Josie was still talking, and still standing behind him, and still bugging him. "Okay, so where is the nearest human being?"

"Hard to say." His voice came from deep inside the container. She peered through the dark toward the pool of light from his flashlight. He was bent over, pointing to the boxes, counting them off.

"Twenty-two inside." He made a note and walked back to the entrance, ignoring Josie and talking to Archer as he pointed to the snow-covered boxes on the ground. "You want to pass those up here?"

"No problem." Archer handed up the first one while Andre talked more than he had talked in the last three months. Lawyers would ask questions until they got the answer they wanted; Andre figured he would give Josie the truth in the hope that would shut her down.

"People carve spaces out for themselves in Alaska. The farther north they go, the less they want to be found. They live off the land. They don't get permits to hunt. They don't get married or divorced. They just say they're married or divorced, and that makes it so. There are kids up here who have never seen the inside of a school. There are people who come to challenge the great outdoors and disappear into it without a trace. There are cults and communes and whatever else you can imagine. There are no street numbers out here. No neighbors. Nothing."

"So why are they here?" Josie persisted.

Archer handed up another box. Andre took it and walked it back to a stack. The darn things were heavy. His breath blew white as he worked and talked.

"Sometimes they're fugitives. Most times they're just ornery or lonely or a little off their heads. They're folks that can't make it in the real world, so they hunker down behind some tree. For the most part, they are happy." Andre lifted another box and rested a minute. "If you're looking for a city or a town, you won't find it. You might stumble across some squatters settled into what's left of the old mining stations, but you're talking about tiny communities. Five, ten people at the most. They add to the census data when government types can find them, but it's finding them that's the problem."

Andre came back to the front of the container and waited for Archer to bring him the next box. Josie moved out of the way but not out of his face.

"Is that it? Just loners?" she asked.

"There are Inuit villages. The natives move to the river in the summer where they camp, fish, hunt, and stock in for winter." He turned to look at Josie who didn't move back a step as he thought she would. "But, if I'm reading you right, you're asking whether there's a logical place to start looking for those two kids. The answer is no."

Archer handed up the second box. The one Andre had opened on his first pass at the site. Andre checked it. Three vials were missing and now were in the custody of the Public Health Office for analysis.

"There's packing tape in that bag," he directed and Archer obliged. When he found it, he tossed it up. Andre caught it easily, taped the box closed and went to move it, but Josie was in front of him again. He raised an eyebrow as if to ask if she was really going to play this game. She was.

"So, how do you search for someone who is lost in this state? Or, if someone goes missing, do you just kind of chalk them off?"

"When it's called for – and there is a reasonable expectation of success – we alert the troopers to keep their eyes open. Believe me, if we had something solid regarding your kids, we'd be on it. We're not lazy, we're practical and we understand our jurisdiction."

He hoisted the box onto a pile, turning his back on her briefly.

"There aren't enough troopers in all of the north to scour this kind of wilderness. We send up planes if we have a solid search area." He paused, and then called out to Archer. "Can you get those two over there? I didn't see them before."

Archer looked around, saw the boxes nearly hidden under the snow, dug them out and carried the top one over.

"Well–” Josie began but Andre was done with speculation. He rested his weight on one leg. He put his hand up on the broken metal. He looked right at her and told her what she needed to hear.

"Look, we don't have a search area, Ms. Bates. All we have is a duffle bag, a cellphone, and no proof that either of the kids you're looking for was in that container."

"There is blood in there," she insisted.

Archer lifted the box up. Andre stepped over, grabbed it, stacked it, and dusted off his hands.

"We don't know who it belongs to, or how it got there, or how long it's been there. Nobody knows because the driver is dead."

"The duffle has Hannah's clothes in it. I can tell you, those are her clothes," Josie insisted.

"The driver could have picked her up anywhere and let her off anywhere." Andre pushed the box to the side. "He could have stolen the duffle. She could have traded it to him for food. He had it. That's a fact." Andre put his hand on his hips wanting nothing more than to finish his work and be done with this exercise in politics. "You're a lawyer, Ms. Bates. You could explain away that bag a hundred ways from Sunday. I'm just a cop, but I can do the same. It's a fact that it was here; it's not evidence of anything."

They stared at one another, the look of determination in Josie's blue eyes was as hard as old ice and Andre's warm, brown eyes were drained of sympathy. It was Archer who broke the standoff.