Hotwire (10 page)

“It simply means don’t dismiss something that appears ordinary. Outsiders come here and they tend to see a simpler life, an uncomplicated people. But human nature is human nature. People out here are capable of the same things as people in cities. You might think it’s easier to hide the mistakes, the evil—if you will—in the city, but sometimes it’s just as easy to hide things in plain sight.”

Lucy set her mug down and reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out what looked like bib lettuce in a Ziploc bag. She held on to it, fingering it carefully.

“I think this is
Salvia divinorum
. They call it the sage of seers. The non-
divinorum
is the salvia you find in gardens and flower beds. This is a psychoactive species of mint. It grows mostly in Mexico and some southwestern states. The Mazatec people believed it had spiritual and healing properties. You dry it and smoke it, or you wad it up when it’s still green”—she held up the bag—“and chew it. They say its hallucinatory properties are more potent than LSD. It’s the newest rave for teenagers.”

She fingered the bag and then looked directly at Maggie when she said, “I found this under one of the dead boys when I was examining him.”

“And you put it in your pocket?”

“Sheriff Skylar is a man who means well. Possession, distribution, and sale of salvia is illegal in more than a dozen states. Including Nebraska. There was a young woman whose body was found in the river several months ago. Some say she was tripping on salvia. Thought she could fly and jumped from the Highway 83 bridge. That bridge is a hundred and fifty feet above the water.

“There were friends with her at the time. No arrests were made. There was no mention of drug use. It was said to be an accident. Sometimes it can be devastating for grieving parents to learn bad things about their dead child. I thought it was important that this didn’t accidentally get lost or misplaced because of good intentions.”

Lucy set the plastic bag on the side table between them, relinquishing it, handing it over to Maggie.

“I’ll understand if you no longer want me to participate in this investigation.”

Maggie left the bag on the table, sipped her tea, and considered what Lucy had done. In most cases it could be viewed as obstructing a federal investigation. Perhaps even tampering with evidence and certainly not following the chain of command. What was it that her old boss and mentor, Kyle Cunningham, would say? “Rules were made for the head to judge when the heart got in the way.”

Finally Maggie looked over at the woman and said, “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9

SEVENTEEN

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Mary Ellen Wychulis waited outside her new boss’s office. The undersecretary of Food Safety and Inspection Services hated tardy employees but obviously didn’t mind keeping them waiting. Mary Ellen crossed her legs and let her foot tap out her annoyance.

She was missing her son’s first official playdate. Her husband had emailed three photos—mostly blurs of babies surrounded by too many toys—but they were enough to make her ache. She had only been back at work three weeks and already she wished she had taken some extra time.

It didn’t help matters that she returned to a new boss; her old one, promoted up the ranks, had been kind enough to make sure her job was secure before he left. These days that was no small feat. And so she was grateful even if her new boss was obsessive-compulsive, an outsider who Mary Ellen believed was an obvious political pick.

Mary Ellen felt like she had spent the last three weeks teaching her the nuts and bolts of the job. But she held her tongue even when she realized her husband was, most likely, right. Had she not been pregnant, her previous boss would have recommended Mary Ellen for his old position. She didn’t like to admit that such bias still ran rampant in the federal government, especially at the upper levels. Had she been a man with the same qualifications, age, marital status, and even a new baby, she would, no doubt, be the new undersecretary.

The door to the office opened so suddenly that Mary Ellen startled. A man in a military uniform marched out then turned back.

“Keep me posted,” he said.

Mary Ellen could see that her boss, Irene Baldwin, had followed him to the door. The officer looked familiar but Mary Ellen couldn’t put a name to the face, although she realized he resembled too many military elite—thick-chested with steel-gray hair, a rubber-stamped scowl, and lifeless eyes.

She watched the man march all the way down the hall before it hit her. General Lorimer was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a single project her boss was supposed to be working on with the Department of Defense. She wondered what brought him here.

“Wychulis. Good, you’re on time. Enter,” Irene Baldwin said with a wave of her hand then darted back into her office before her last guest had even reached the elevator.

Baldwin had changed the office so remarkably from its previous occupant that each time Mary Ellen walked in she had to remind herself she worked for the government, not a Fortune 500 company. But it was also a reminder that Baldwin not only
had
worked for a Fortune 500 company but
had
run one.

Where framed black-and-white photos of agricultural history had hung on the walls, there were now canvases in vibrant-colored oils with abstract images that on closer inspection could depict stalks of grain or bird’s-eye views of a forest. The new wall decorations looked like they belonged in a contemporary art museum instead of the office of an undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture.

“Sit,” Baldwin told Mary Ellen.

Her one- or two-word commands reminded Mary Ellen of dog obedience school.

Baldwin continued to stand behind her desk and pull file folders from a neat stack piled on the polished corner. The only other things on the desk were three pens and a legal pad.

“I have questions,” she said, sorting through the contents of a file folder.

Mary Ellen sat on the edge of her chair. Of course, she had questions. Every morning she had questions and she expected Mary Ellen to save her precious time by providing the answers. Mary Ellen kept her back ramrod straight, her feet flat on the floor, preparing for whatever Baldwin wanted.

“I have a request to continue”—Baldwin paused to put on a pair of reading glasses—“something called a mobile slaughter unit in Fort Collins, Colorado. What exactly is that?”

“It’s part of the ‘Know your farmer, know your food’ initiative. The unit travels from site to site and provides services to small regional producers at a host farm.”

“Services?”

“Yes.”

“Slaughter services.”

“That’s correct.” Mary Ellen refrained from any more details. One thing she had learned about Baldwin—and learned the hard way—was that the woman enjoyed making a game of what she believed were the agency’s “absurdities” or “foibles.” Despite Mary Ellen’s recent absence she had almost five years invested at the USDA and a loyalty to public service. She didn’t appreciate the sarcasm even if some of it was justified. Of course any agency had problems.

Baldwin came from the private sector. She had worked her way up the ranks of a large food corporation, ultimately becoming responsible for developing the research facility which was known worldwide for its cutting-edge labs. It was no secret that she was hired to bridge the communication gap between the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the private processors and distributors who provided the nation’s food supply. Her experience would give credibility to an agency that had the reputation of beating up on those same processors and distributors that it was supposed to work closely with, not just regulate to assure the safety of the nation’s food supply.

“Second question.” Baldwin pushed at the glasses that tended to slide to the end of her nose. “Why do I have a citizen’s petition from”—she paused again as she flipped pages—“a Wesley Stotter, who says these mobile slaughter units are, quote, being used for unethical and secretive government experiments, unquote?”

“I’m not familiar with that petition.”

“No?” Baldwin slid the file to Mary Ellen’s side of the desk. “Please read it. Stotter is a syndicated talk-radio guy. Looks like he has a rather significant audience, though a somewhat strange mix of antigovernment and UFO fanatics. Could be nothing. Could be a media headache waiting to explode into a migraine. Last question.”

Her curt, brisk style had Mary Ellen’s head spinning and stomach turning the first several days.

The woman pulled another file from the stack.

“What in the world is a ‘spent hen’ and why is there a pending review waiting for my confirmation?”

“Spent hens are old egg-laying birds, past their productivity. Most commercial buyers like fast-food restaurants or processed-food companies won’t buy them. The hens spend most of their lives caged while laying eggs so their bones tend to be brittle and can splinter.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a review. Brittle bones would definitely be a food-safety issue. If no one wants to buy them, why is there a review?”

“Well, actually for the last decade the USDA has bought them. Millions of pounds, in fact.”

“What on earth for?”

Mary Ellen fidgeted with the pages in her lap. There was nothing else in the folder except the document asking for confirmation from Baldwin to continue the review. Mary Ellen wanted to kick whoever had put this on her boss’s desk in the first place. She didn’t want to hear her boss’s sarcasm and judgment, even if she agreed.

“Wychulis, I have only the request. Please enlighten me. Why in the world did the USDA buy millions of pounds of brittle-boned chickens?”

“For the National School Lunch Program.”

EIGHTEEN

NEBRASKA

Maggie had slept. Hard enough that she needed to remember where she was. The scent of brewed coffee and freshly baked bread wafted up to the loft, but when she looked over the side rail she didn’t see Lucy in the kitchen.

The woman had loaned Maggie an oversized T-shirt to sleep in. It looked new and had blocks of brightly colored train cars with a logo that read RAILFEST 1999. She found her clothes, which had been soaked and stained with blood and debris, now freshly laundered and stacked neatly on an upholstered bench by the stairs. Even her shoes had been cleaned, the mud scraped off and the leather polished. She wondered if Lucy had slept at all.

Maggie opened the sliding glass door to the porch and stepped out into the morning sunlight. Blue skies—not a patch of white cloud—stretched over miles of sandhills, the yellow and burnt-orange grasses waving so that the hills looked like they were actually moving.

Directly below—what Maggie had not been able to see last night—were a patio and landscaped garden with brick-paved pathways between berms of flowers. Colorful birdhouses hung from trees. A small fountain made of watering cans trickled a stream down onto rocks. Maggie could hear wind chimes and smell pine. And in the middle of this paradise was Lucy’s tall thin figure, arms stretched above her head, the wide sleeves of her shirt and the slow, graceful movements of her arms looking like wings of a bird.

Sheriff Skylar had mentioned Lucy’s Indian heritage and Maggie wondered if this was, perhaps, part of a silent tribal dance. Lucy saw her, completed the circle her arms had started, and then shouted up, “You’re welcome to join me for a little yoga before breakfast.”

Maggie was glad she was far enough away that Lucy couldn’t see her embarrassment. Yoga. Of course, it was yoga. What was wrong with her? She was as bad as Skylar.

“No, thanks. Do I have time for a short run instead?”

“That’s fine. Help yourself to whatever you can find in the closet and the bottom drawer of the bureau.”

Maggie found shorts and a sweatshirt. Thankfully Lucy wore baggie workout clothes. Her shoes were a bit long but Maggie fixed them by putting on two pairs of socks. In minutes she made her way out the long driveway with Jake, the black shepherd, following along.