by Jeff Miller
Dagny wasn’t sure what kind of assurances she could make. Each year, the government could give out up to 250 S visas, more commonly called “snitch visas,” to people helping with a criminal investigation who would otherwise be deported. It was hard to qualify for a snitch visa. Being a victim of a crime wasn’t enough; the applicant had to deliver information critical to a conviction. Only the attorney general had the authority to approve one of these visas.
If they took the case, she couldn’t promise any snitch visas. The best she could do was assure the immigrants in Bilford that she wouldn’t voluntarily turn their names over to immigration authorities. This might be enough to get them to talk to her. “Do you have a list of the missing? Identifiers? Ages, descriptions, and the like? Have you gathered photographs of them? Listed the places they were last seen, who saw them, and the dates and times of the sightings? A list of people they worked for? Do you have a roster of the families? Addresses and phone numbers? Any of these things?”
He shook his head. “I have a list of the names of the missing. I could get you the rest.” He smiled. “So, you’re taking the case?”
“It’s not my call.” A dozen dead, presumably. It was better than a financial fraud case, certainly. The Professor would see that. “Head back to Dayton,” she instructed. “Get a sense of whether the families would be willing to talk with me. If I can convince my boss to let me, I’ll come out and meet with them.” She handed him her phone. “Type in your contact information.”
He entered his phone number and e-mail address in her phone and handed it back to her, smiling brightly.
“This isn’t yes yet,” Dagny said.
“But it’s not a no. That’s enough for me to celebrate.”
She walked him to the door. “Dayton is a long way to drive for a half-hour meeting. Why didn’t you just call?”
“It’s too easy to say no on a phone.”
That was true enough. She sent him off, went up to shower, and thought about her pitch to the Professor.
CHAPTER 11
“Why didn’t you just call?”
“It’s too easy to say no on a phone,” Dagny said. She was sitting in front of his desk, looking at the reflection of the overhead light on the Professor’s bald pate.
“I find it easy to say no every which way.” He reached down, grabbed the pneumatic lift of his chair, and rose until the spot of light shifted out of her view.
Her eyes drifted over to the photograph on a bookshelf next to the desk. It showed Director Hoover standing next to a younger, taller, and stronger version of Timothy McDougal. He’d lived a full life even before she’d been born.
She looked back at him. “You wanted a case with bodies,” she said.
“And you don’t have any.”
“We have them. We just don’t know where they are.”
“It’s not a murder case without dead bodies.” He began to stroke his white beard down to its point. Dagny knew that this meant he was open to argument.
“Plenty of murderers have been convicted without a body.”
“Of course, there could be a murderer out there. I want to know that there is a murderer out there. I want to know that I’m chasing something real.”
“These people are real, and they’re missing.”
“It’s weak, Dagny.”
“If we don’t take this case, no one else will.”
“That’s not the criteria I use.” He opened his right desk drawer, withdrew a bag of Cheetos, and opened it. His fingers dove into the bag and carried orange puffs to his mouth. He tilted the open end of the bag toward Dagny, but she refused. The Professor shrugged. She knew it had been an insincere offer. He wanted the whole bag to himself.
“We’ll find the bodies.”
“They’re probably working in the fields of Mexico right now.” Crunch, crunch.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Because of this priest you don’t even know.” Crunch, crunch. It was hard to be taken seriously by a man eating Cheetos.
“I trust him.”
“Everyone trusts priests. It’s why they were able to molest a million young boys.”
“Not fair.”
Martha McDougal entered through the door to the study, and the Professor quickly stuffed the bag of Cheetos back in his desk drawer. She set a fruit-and-cheese plate on the desk. “In case you’re hungry,” she said to Dagny. Although she said it lovingly, she meant: You need to eat this. The Professor licked the orange dust off his fingers, but not before his wife noticed and shook her head.
“Thanks, Martha.” Dagny took a cube of cheese, and Martha left, assuaged. One point, Dagny figured, and she’d tally it later. “If you need bodies, I’ll go to Bilford and find them.”
“Suppose you do. A dozen dead Mexicans. What do you think is going to happen to their families when the press descends upon them, and the politicians grandstand, and the local police and this Sheriff Ron see a chance to be part of something bigger than anything they’ve had before?”
“It’s Don. And we can keep it quiet.”
“Dead bodies don’t keep quiet. You’ll end up breaking every promise you make. It will destroy the community.”
“If someone is killing folks, he’s already destroying the community.”
“I don’t doubt the problem, but we’re not the answer.”
“If we’re not the answer, there is no answer.”
“Exactly,” he said. That was the problem with working with an octogenarian, Dagny thought. He’d seen ample evidence that most problems couldn’t be solved. But no problem could ever be solved if you didn’t try.
Perhaps it would help to remind him of the alternative. “So, you’re ready to take Victor’s money case, then?”
“Not yet,” he grumbled. “We still have two days—”
“Under your arbitrary deadline—”
“To find a better case.”
“Then I’ve got two days to find some bodies in Bilford.”
“Dagny—”
“If I find the bodies, this is the case you want. It’s important, and anyone else would get caught up in the politics of it. No one else could do it right. That’s why you formed this group: to handle the cases that no one else can do. Victor’s fraud case, he could hand his files to any field office in the country, and they’d do a competent job at it. But in Bilford, there’s no one to help these folks. Only us.”
He lifted an empty pipe from his desk, brought it to his mouth, and leaned back in his chair. “In 1958, I was tasked with overseeing a Major Crimes Act investigation concerning the disappearance of three Ute tribal leaders at the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in northeast Utah. Their religion was nature, and they believed that they descended from the bear and not the ape.” Dagny could tell that she was in for a long story.
“They were a nomadic tribe, thrust into war with Mormons, of all people, who were a settling tribe. The Utes, you see, are fundamentally different from us to their core, but that isn’t what mattered. What mattered was that they saw themselves as fundamentally different from us, because, as you know, perception is more important that reality when you’re looking for cooperation. I was an agent of a government that was a hundred and fifty years old. The Bureau had been an institution for only fifty. The Utes have lived in the Great Basin area for more than ten thousand years! To them, I wasn’t a foreigner; I was a baby alien, and my credentials were less than the feces they used to fertilize. But I thought I was the only one who could help them, and they were terrified enough to let me.
“The warmth shown upon my arrival was like nothing I had seen. I was outfitted with garb and accessories. They feted me with ceremony and ritual and tried to bequeath gifts. Oh, how they showered me with love.
“Two weeks in, I had a working theory. The missing men, I told the tribe, were not murdered or kidnapped—they had fled, along with the small fortune of the community. I was certain I could apprehend them and return the funds, but my overture
s were rebuffed. Everyone turned silent. My car was vandalized. My food was poisoned. All because I shattered an illusion they held dear. If I were one of them, would they have shunned me this way? Of course not. But I was an outsider, and they had welcomed only my assistance, not my judgment. To say their own men had stolen from them was to demean and insult their culture. You can only do that from within.
“So, Dagny Gray, you might see yourself as the savior of the immigrant population of Bilford, Ohio, and they might see you the same way, until you get close to the truth.”
She shook her head. “First, you made up that entire story.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Second, I’ve got someone on the inside: Father Vega. I don’t need people to trust me, because they’ll trust him.”
“You don’t know them, and you don’t know him, so that’s a conclusion without evidentiary support.” He paused. “What gave it away?”
“You went too far when you said you were poisoned.” She grabbed another cube of cheese—now, there would be two points to enter later. “This isn’t an Indian Reservation. It’s a small town in Ohio. There are people missing. Their lives matter. Whether my presence is welcome or not, their lives matter.” She rose from her chair and started toward the door.
“Two days,” the Professor called. “Two days to get me bodies.”
CHAPTER 12
When Dagny rolled her suitcase through the automatic sliding doors at Dayton International Airport, Diego was leaning against the red fender of his ’69 Corvette convertible, which he’d parked at the curb. He smiled at her.
She pointed up to the dark clouds above and then to his open-topped car. “Pretty optimistic,” she said.
“Wildly so.” He grabbed her suitcase and placed it in the trunk. “Good flight?”
Between her past life as a lawyer and her increasing years as a special agent, Dagny had spent enough time in planes to qualify for a pilot’s license. “Is there such a thing?”
“Every one that lands,” he said, still smiling. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“They let you park here and wait?”
“Priests get away with a lot.”
“Apparently.” His giddiness confused her at first, but then she understood. He’d been bearing the weight of the missing by himself, and now there was someone to share it. That’s why he was so happy. “Are you sure I can’t rent a car?”
“Absolutely not. You’ll take mine once we get to town.”
“What will you use?”
“I don’t have anywhere to be until Sunday morning, and until then, I’ll be with you.”
Dagny tossed her backpack to the floor of the car and climbed into the passenger seat. “I don’t have until Sunday.”
Diego sat behind the wheel. “What do you mean?”
“My being here doesn’t mean we’re taking this case. It means I’m trying to get us to take the case. And I’ve got two days to find . . .” She didn’t want to say bodies, in case he still held out hope that they were living.
“Evidence?”
That’s cute, she thought. “Yes. Two days to find some evidence.”
“And then you’ll take the case?” His smile was fading.
“Then I’ll make the case that we should take the case.”
“And if we don’t find anything in two days?”
“I’ll be sucked into something else.”
His smile was gone. “We need to have a good two days, then.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Dagny, the list is longer now.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five.” He paused, then added, “That I know of.”
“Jesus,” she said, forgetting for the moment that she was talking to a priest.
He drove fast, or maybe it only seemed like it with the top down. Dagny had been in a convertible only once before, on a date in high school with a boy who later boasted about things that hadn’t happened. She’d harbored a hatred of them ever since. Diego, however, was not that boy—a fact of which she had to remind herself.
“It’s an hour to Bilford,” he said, but it was hard to hear him over the rush of the wind.
“What?”
“It’s an hour to Bilford,” he repeated, “but you’ll feel years away when you get there.”
They drove through the northern suburbs of Dayton, past strip malls and factories, some of each abandoned. Lit by gloomy skies, it all looked like the kind of stock footage politicians used in negative campaign ads. Dagny remembered reading about a surprising study that showed that students were more likely to accept a spot at a college they visited on a cloudy day. No one was sure why this was the case, but the author posited that poor weather made academic activities appear more inviting. It seemed a little crackpot to Dagny, although it had rained on the day she toured Rice University, her alma mater. Nothing about the gloom in North Dayton made anything look inviting now.
A raindrop hit Dagny’s arm. “It’s starting to rain,” she said.
“I think we can beat it,” he said, but it was pouring before he could finish the sentence.
Dagny unbuckled her seat belt and stuck her fingers under the hatch that covered the top, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled the car over to the side and turned around. “You have to kind of jiggle it.” The hatch opened, and the two of them attached the cover to the frame of the windshield.
“Hold on,” he said, jumping out of the car to secure the hatch. When he climbed back into the car, the water from his drenched hair poured down his face.
Dagny laughed.
“This is funny?”
She nodded.
“Maybe a little,” he said, smiling back. He pulled onto the road and headed toward Bilford.
When they got to the border, there was a billboard with the chubby, mustached Sheriff Don yanking his thumb over his shoulder. NO PLACE LIKE HOME, it read.
“Subtle,” Dagny noted. She’d downloaded the sheriff’s book to her iPad and had skimmed it on the plane. It was mostly what she’d expected.
“There’s one on every major road that comes in and out of Bilford County. He has them at each entrance to Bilford City, too.” Diego pulled off the main road onto a smaller one.
“Where are we going?”
“On a camping trip.”
The yard was surrounded by an eighteen-foot barbed-wire fence—electrified, according to the various warning signs around it. Inside, the tents were arranged in ten rows of ten. The prisoners wore gray jailhouse garb with bright-pink bras on top of them. Each had a shovel they were using to dig holes in the mud. Diego pulled up next to the fence and stopped the car. “They sleep four to a tent, even though half of the tents are empty. At five a.m., they start shoveling; at nine, they fill the holes; at one, they dig again, and so forth.”
“This is supposed to be a holding jail, right? After they’re sentenced, they go to a prison.”
“Except the prison’s full, so the petty criminals are sent back here after sentencing. Thieves and shoplifters, but also guys late on their child support. And if you’re undocumented, you’re kept here until ICE does something with you. That can take a while.”
A bolt of lightning lit the sky. Dagny watched the men continue to dig. Four guards stood watching from under clear umbrellas, holding guns in their hands. One of the prisoners slipped in the mud, and a guard collared his arm and pulled him back up, then motioned for him to keep digging.
“Why do they stay here?”
“The prisoners?”
“The undocumented. Why would they stay in Bilford County?”
“Because it’s their home. They have family and friends here. It’s a real community. And because moving away means that Sheriff Don wins. We can be stubborn that way. Plus, the president’s people keep promising amnesty. It feels like relief is imminent. Of course, they’ve been promising it for years. But don’t misunderstand: A lot of people have left, too—mostly to neighboring counties, although that may not
last now that Sheriff Don has been threatening to go after them there.”
“He wouldn’t have jurisdiction.”
“He has an agreement with ICE to provide federal immigration support. Although he hasn’t tested it, he claims this gives him power to conduct raids anywhere federal law applies. One of these days, he’s going to try it, because being king of Bilford isn’t enough for this guy.”
“What’s his goal?”
“I don’t know. Senate, I’d guess. Or a television show. More power or more money, or both. I suspect he’ll end up in prison one day for financial shenanigans or something.”
“They got Capone for taxes.” Dagny looked down at her watch. “This is interesting, but it’s not helping me build a case.” It was time to move on.
“Right.” Diego started the car and drove back onto the road. “They’re probably waiting for us now.”
He tried to prepare Dagny for meeting the families, offering all manner of advice. They are afraid. Listen more than ask. Smile. Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver—their hopes can’t take it. Be patient—their English is poor. And smile. None of this was necessary—her job was to interview people. She knew when to confront and when to comfort. But she understood why he needed to say it.
They followed the winding back roads of Bilford County, driving through Madison and Zakes, to the town of Cleves, which seemed to consist almost entirely of strip malls and fast-food restaurants. Diego pulled into the lot for John Sanders Ford and circled around to the back.
“We’re meeting here?”
“Yes.” He stopped the car, grabbed an umbrella from the floor, and stepped out. Walking around to her side, he opened the door and held the umbrella above her. Dagny grabbed her backpack and accepted his escort to a large metal garage door. There was an intercom next to the door, and he pushed the button.
“Yes?” a deep voice bellowed.
“Swordfish,” Diego said.
The garage door rose. They walked in, and the door closed behind them. By Dagny’s quick count, there were about sixty people seated in five rows of folding chairs, arranged in a semicircle. A large man in a suit walked over and extended his hand to her.
