Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (22 page)

“All right. So she's illegal . . .”

“Not necessarily,” Kit said, pacing. “If she's a trafficking victim she might have been brought into the country on a valid six-month visa. Most victims don't even know their visas will expire in that time. The trafficker, who provided them with the visa, keeps the passport, and the victim is then trapped. They don't go to the authorities because they've been told they'll be in trouble. Or the trafficker threatens their family back home. So she could be using a false identity because the trafficker has her legal papers.” Kit looked at David. His deep brown eyes were fixed on her and in them she saw the emotion she was trying
to resist. She took a deep breath. “You want to see the whole slide show? The presentation I gave my boss and the AUSA?”

“Absolutely.”

David sat beside her at the table. Slide by slide, they went through her presentation. She could hear him breathing, feel his leg when he moved, smell the Irish Spring soap he'd showered with. She fought to stay focused on her work.

When they finished, he said, “I'm impressed.”

Kit smiled.

“No, really. I'm impressed. Cops don't do stuff like that, not at my level, anyway.”

“I had to make the case to get approval to continue. I just kept thinking that I couldn't leave that boy on the beach, all by himself. Remember what you told me? A homicide case is a sacred trust. I owe him a fight for justice in his case. And now . . . now I think we may also be fighting for some living people. The boy is pointing us to them, you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

Kit turned back to the photos on the table. “I need to go to Norfolk. I want to look at the financial records of this C&R Enterprises. I want to talk to Immigration. My partner,” she saw David's eyes flicker, “my partner needs to see these photos.”

“Your partner?”

“Yes. Chris Cruz. You remember him? He helped pull you out of the channel.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“He worked a prostitution trafficking case up here a couple of years ago so our boss thought he might be helpful to me.” Kit reminded him about Patricia's panicked phone call, which Kit had outlined in the presentation. “Chris is checking out that couple. I think we need to compare notes. Plus, I need to recruit some more help. We need to set up surveillance, find
out the identity of the guy I saw driving that truck . . .” She looked at David. “We can take it from here, David.”

He set his jaw. “I'm going to the farm.”

“No, don't.”

“I've got to see it.”

“Stay out of it, David.”

Kit saw something—anger?—ignite in his eyes. “Maria's in trouble, Kit. There's no way I can just sit in Chincoteague like some . . . some cripple waiting for the FBI to fix it.”

“It's not your case.”

“I may not have jurisdiction, but I can go to a farm in Glebe Hill. As far as I know, common citizens are still allowed there.”

“By yourself?”

His face reddened. “If this is the same guy that killed that boy, he didn't kidnap Maria to take her to a baseball game. Somebody's got to find her. Now. Without waiting to put together a PowerPoint show.”

She felt a surge of anger. “So go talk to the police!”

“And say what? Some girl whose name probably isn't Maria didn't look happy when she got shoved into a truck? The Chincoteague cops will say they don't have enough to go on. And do you think the state police . . . fired up because they just lost one of their own . . . are gonna care?”

“OK, David. Go where you want. Do whatever!” She waved her hand in the air. “That's always worked for you before, from what I understand.”

On the drive down to Norfolk the next day, Kit tried to characterize David's reactions. Bullheaded came to mind. Stubborn. Insistent. Impulsive. When “loyal” and “courageous” tried to sneak in the lineup, she thrust them aside. Likewise the guilt from her own sarcasm, which rose in her throat like bile.

Why were things so complicated?

S
LIDING ON JEANS AND A CHAMBRAY SHIRT
, D
AVID
O'C
ONNOR PUT A
snub-nosed revolver into the sling he was wearing. Leaving the house, he got into his car and put his automatic pistol under the seat. He had armed himself as well with dozens of pictures of Maria—he'd convinced the motel manager to give him one from her employment files—with his cell phone number written on the back. David had concocted a story—Maria had ripped him off for
1,000 and he swore he'd find her. And although he didn't have a lot in his savings account, David had pulled out
400 in twenties. Information cost money, and he wasn't going to let money keep him from finding Maria. Or whatever her name was.

To cover his bases, before he left the island, David stopped at the Chincoteague Police Station, reported what he knew about the missing woman, and, as he suspected, the officer on duty wrote out a report but didn't offer a lot of encouragement. Leaving the station, he turned his Jeep toward the bridge, and left the island.

Driving over the causeway, David looked out over the marshes and felt a momentary twinge of regret. He saw cattle egrets, a great blue heron, two great egrets, a dozen or
more fishing gulls, a few terns, and one osprey. He wished he were kayaking, a human invader quietly slipping through the salt marsh world, smelling the stands of cord grass, fending off mosquitoes, and watching as the natural world unfolded before him. Crabs, minnows, fish, turtles, birds, and insects, living together, dying together. He was a long way from the stress of his D.C. job. But he was walking right back into it. Intentionally. That struck even him as a little crazy.

Still, what could he do? Ignore a woman in trouble?

It took him about an hour to get to Glebe Hill. He had the farm's position marked in his GPS. At 9:00 a.m., the workers were in the field as David drove past, well aware he had one shot at making an initial reconnaissance. He looked for the pickup, but it was nowhere in sight, so he swung back around the loop he'd marked on his map, found a place to stow the Jeep, and walked through the woods to watch the place from a hill nearby. He took notes, standing under the oaks and poplars, counting the workers, watching their progress, noting the other buildings he'd seen while driving.

Then, around noon, he saw a van pull up and the workers get in, and he watched as it left the property and drove west on the small road abutting the farm. He was about to leave himself, when he saw the dust trail of a vehicle approaching. He waited, saw a white truck pull into the lane, and watched as a man got out and walked behind the house, disappearing as he did.

Where was that man going? David ran through the woods to get a different angle so he could see better. He stumbled down a hill, slammed his hurt shoulder into a tree, and, out of breath, stopped at the edge of the forest. He still couldn't quite see. But the corn in a field nearby stood about six-feet tall, and that gave him an idea.

David made his way down to the cornfield, and ran quickly across the twenty-foot grassy border around the field, an action which left him momentarily exposed. He ducked into a row of corn, began moving through the plants. The leaves rustled around him like paper. It felt eerie, not being able to see further than a row or two away—he realized in the middle of the field, surrounded by tall corn, that a churning harvester would never see him, or hear him, for that matter, and he could easily be killed in there. He wondered exactly when the corn would be taken down. Not today, he hoped. Please, not today.

His own words surprised him.

Near the end of the row, David crouched down in the dirt. He was a good twelve feet in from the edge of the cornfield and he hoped that that was enough to hide him. From there he could see that there was an old shed of some sort behind the house, and while he watched, the man he had seen driving the truck emerged, a package in his hand.

He looked Hispanic, about 5'8” or 5'9”, cowboy hat . . . as David scribbled notes he saw the man glance over his shoulder, looking straight at the cornfield, and David froze.

But he must not have seen him, because the man turned and walked to his truck and drove off. That's when David noticed his slight limp.

What was in the package? Was the shed a drop zone? Why was the guy limping?

David waited five minutes, by his watch, and then walked quickly from the cornfield to the shed, which stood about twenty yards away.

Built of weathered boards, the shed was about ten by ten, with a roof which had a rudimentary chimney in the middle of it. David knew that on old farms, people smoked their meat, hams in particular, to preserve them. This building would fit that use.

The door was padlocked. David pulled it, but the lock didn't give. He peered through a crack in the boards, but the interior was dark. Walking around the shed, he used his free hand to feel for a loose board that would give him access. Nothing. The second time around he noticed a place on the back of the shed near the top where some boards had rotted just under the roof.

The sweat poured off of him as he paused to consider his next move. Looking through the rotting boards would mean jumping, and pulling himself up with both arms, despite his bad shoulder.

He took a deep breath. Carefully pulling out the revolver hidden in his sling, he removed both it and the sling and put them on the ground. Then he took out his small flashlight, turned it on, and put it between his teeth. He jumped up and reached for the hole created by the rotten boards, missed the first time, and tried again. This time he caught it. Tears came to his eyes and he groaned as his shoulders caught his weight. He used his legs and hoisted himself up, stuck the flashlight into the opening, and looked down.

David could see the beams of the old smokehouse. He could see hooks where the meat had been hung. On the right were shelves, like pantry shelves, filled with jars. But what was in the jars? It was dark, and brown.

Acorns. The jars were full of acorns. Shining his flashlight down to the left, he could see a large metal trunk—just the kind of thing you'd use to keep varmints out of whatever you were storing. The open lid revealed that it was empty.

He couldn't stay up any longer. David dropped to the ground, falling and grabbing his shoulder and crying out. The pain felt like a knife inserted in his shoulder blade. He sat down his back to the building, to catch his breath. “That probably wasn't smart,” he said to himself.

But what was kept in that trunk? Then his hand touched something . . . a loose stone in the foundation. He moved it and was able to pull it out, along with several others. A hole opened up, not big enough for a man, but certainly big enough for a boy.

He was starting to put together a scenario involving a boy, some acorns, and a man doing something secretive when he heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. He looked around the side of the smokehouse. The van was coming back down the lane. He looked toward the cornfield. He had twenty yards of open ground to cover. Could he make it?

David scrambled to his feet. He picked up his sling and his gun. Then he looked around the shed again and saw the van had disappeared behind the house. If he could angle it right, he could keep the house and the shed between him and the van full of field workers. It would be a longer run, but it would be safer.

His heart hammering in his chest, David made a run for it, angling back toward the cornfield, glancing over his shoulder twice to make sure he remained on course. He burst into the space between two rows of corn, and moved quickly into the center of the field. Only then did he look back.