Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

Dr. Hill had said six acorns from every tree would be enough, along with some leaves, and she moved around the edges with her small flashlight, following the mental map in her head. There were three live oaks near this field, two on the east side, one on the north. She slipped six acorns and some leaves into an individual, pre-marked plastic bag, and then moved on to the next tree. When she got back into David’s Jeep, he had created a label with the location of the farm field for one of the plastic boxes. In less than twenty minutes, they had their first samples labeled and stored.

  While David drove to the next field Kit entered information into the database in her computer. Who knew what might be important later? She entered the date, time, number of acorns, and the number of the box they’d been placed in as well as the GPS location. Then she prepared labels for the next farm.

  David volunteered to take this one, but Kit demurred. “I’ll get the acorns. You cover me.”

  At the third field, eight live oaks lined either side of a driveway leading to an old, abandoned house, a big house, grand at one time, but now in disrepair, sitting at the edge of a twenty-acre field of tomato plants.

  “You want me to drive up to it?” David asked.

  “No, just wait here. I’ll walk up the lane.”

  7

  DAVID SAT IN HIS TRUCK, WATCHING KIT WALK QUICKLY TOWARD THE eight live oaks, studying the confidence in her gait, and the way she carried herself. Lost in thought, he almost didn’t hear the gravel crunching under the feet of the big Latino approaching from behind. When he caught sight of him in his outside rear view mirror, he took action.

  “Buenos noches, señor,” David said stepping out of his SUV while smoothly sliding his pistol into his waistband at the small of his back.

  The Hispanic man looked at him, shined a flashlight in his face, and said, in rapid Spanish, “Que haces?” What are you doing?

  David smiled reassuringly and held up his hands in a gesture of innocence and quickly came up with a story about Kit being a biology grad student looking for a particular kind of tree. “Este árbol se denomina en español ‘encino’ y es muy común en el sur de los Estados Unidos y el norte de México.” This tree is called «encino» in Spanish and is very common in the southern United States and northern Mexico.

  The man looked at David, then at Kit, then back to David. “I go tell my boss,” he said in English. “This is his property, his land. He no like people coming here. You stealing?” he asked, peering over David’s shoulder into the truck.

  “No, no … she just wants acorns, for her study, you know? Just acorns.” David glanced over his shoulder. Kit stood next to the farthest tree, about to turn back to the truck. He didn’t want the Hispanic man to get a good view of her.

  David reached for his wallet. The Hispanic man instantly stepped back two feet and pulled a huge knife from the small of his back. “Hey, hey,” David said, showing the man his wallet. He pulled out forty dollars. “This is for the acorns, OK?” He held out the money. The man looked at him, then looked at the bills. He snatched them out of David’s hand, backed away, and took off running. When he had gone around a curve, David gave three quick beeps on the horn, and Kit, picking up on his signal, began running toward the SUV.

  “What’s up?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Gotta go!” David started the engine, swung around on the gravel road, and headed back toward the highway. He told her about the confrontation.

  “Did he get your tag number?” Kit asked.

  “I don’t think so. Once he saw those twenties, he had eyes for nothing else.”

  Kit and David worked their way slowly down the peninsula. By the time they neared the tip, they’d grabbed samples from all eight fields. Their contact with that one man had been their only challenge. As they pulled away from the last location, David asked, “How far is it to UNC Wilmington?”

  “Five hours.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  She looked at her watch. Nearly 4:00 a.m.

  “C’mon,” David said. “We’ll be there by 9:00.”

  “And then we’ll have to drive seven hours back to Chincoteague.”

  “So what else do you have to do?” he asked, grinning.

  “What else do YOU have to do, that’s the question.”

  “I’m good,” he said.

  Soon they were skimming over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the twenty-mile connection between the Delmarva Peninsula and Norfolk, where the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, and the James River all come together. Looking out of her window, Kit could see the lights of ships making their way up and down the shipping lanes, and the smaller lights of a few fishing boats.

  David started talking about Norfolk, and the shipyards, and the huge Navy presence there, and she found out his father was a Naval officer who had died in a plane crash when David was a young boy. He’d joined the Navy to imitate his father. And yes, he’d been married once, a long time ago, when he was in the Navy. “It just didn’t work out,” he said with a shrug.

  Kit stiffened internally at that. What does “it didn’t work out” mean? she wondered.

  “What about you, Kit? You seem so together. Perfect family, right?”

  She rolled her eyes. She told him about her brother, Justin, who was a lawyer and her father, James J. McGovern, also a lawyer. How could she explain her mother? Better just skip it.

  David seemed not to notice. He was comfortable. Easy to talk to. Funny at times. A good listener. And maybe it was the lateness of the night, or the way the light played across his face, or the calm, masculine assurance of his voice … maybe it was all of those things put together that made Kit realize that she felt attracted to him. Very attracted. I don’t want this, she said to herself. I definitely don’t need another man in my life. But when they both reached for something at the center console at the same time, and his hand brushed hers, she felt an emotional rush.

  They remained silent for a while, the dark water slipping past them in a blur as they skimmed across the bridge-tunnel. David shifted in his seat. “So what’d you get in trouble for at the Bureau?”

  She nestled down in her seat. “It’s a long story. We were looking for a suspect who’d raped and killed three women. The AUSA and my boss both thought they knew who’d done it, a petty thief named Braxton. So they started going after him with everything they had. Trouble was, they had no hard evidence.

  “Then a guy gets killed in a shootout up in Pennsylvania. He’d been involved in similar crimes, and I started lobbying to have his DNA tested in our cases.” She glanced over at David. “That was not popular.”

  “You hit a brick wall.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why not test the evidence if you’ve got it?”

  “You know how it goes with these high-profile cases: the bigwigs get invested in a particular suspect. They convince the Director to hold a press conference and say that all of the resources of the Bureau are being devoted to bring the perpetrator to justice. Yada yada yada. Then he announces they have a ‘person of interest’—the bigwigs’ main man. By this time, they’re so far down the road, it would be embarrassing to admit they had the wrong guy … so they just keep pounding and pounding at the case until they get a false confession or until something else happens that’s big and they can kind of let this old case slide under the public’s radar.”

  “You tried to get this second man’s evidence tested and they wouldn’t do it?”

  “Over and over until I got chewed out, big time, and suddenly found myself out of the loop.” Kit grimaced. “Then I got accused of leaking stuff to the press. After being sidelined for three months, I gave it up, and took a transfer to Norfolk.” As Kit finished her story she felt a familiar tightness in her gut. She still couldn’t get past it.

  “That doesn’t say much for justice.”

  “And that’s my problem,” Kit admitted. “I have a passion for justice. God made me that way, I guess.”

  David grew quiet for a moment. “You’
re pretty religious.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  He picked up her iPod. “I checked out your play list while you were getting acorns.”

  Kit looked at him. Until recently, she’d have said her faith was the most important thing about her. “What about you? Do you go to church?” she asked.

  “I did for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. That’s the problem.”

  “What did you think would happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The sun was sending shafts of light into the eastern sky.

  “I love watching the dawn,” Kit said, looking east. “I love the way the colors play across the sky, the pastels: pink, blue, gray …”

  David took a deep breath. “My stepfather was an alcoholic.”

  Kit turned and watched him carefully, trying to guess where he was going with this.

  “He had so many DUIs, he eventually lost his license. So he used to make me drive him to bars. I was fourteen years old and here I was, driving him around so he could get plastered. I guess he figured if we got caught, the judge would go easy on me. I’d take a flashlight and do my homework in the car. I hated it, but at least it gave my mother some peace while we were gone.” David hesitated. “A kid in my class invited me to church and I went with him a few times. One night, when I was driving my stepfather to a bar, I came to a stoplight, and there’s my friend, with his dad, across the intersection, looking at me sitting in the driver’s seat, staring with their mouths open.” He shrugged. “That kid never invited me again.”

  “You never went back to church as an adult?”

  “I did, a few times. I just didn’t feel like I fit in.”

  Kit stared out of her window, a peculiar churning in her stomach. “When I go to church now, I feel odd, too. There are all those families, those couples, and I’m by myself. I’ve come up with lots of excuses for why I haven’t connected with a new church, now that I’ve moved to Norfolk, but you know, the truth is, I just feel like I don’t fit in. Like you.”

  “Well, you need to find one,” David asserted, shifting in his seat.

  “Why? Why me? Why not you?”

  “Because it means something to you. It’s your framework. You can’t let your ex take that away from you.”

  She bit her lips against the stab of pain she felt. “You didn’t know your biological father at all?”

  David shook his head. “I was three when he died. Sometimes … sometimes I think I have a vague memory of him throwing a ball to me or carrying me on his shoulders. But then, it could just be my imagination.” He flexed his hand on the steering wheel. “The thing I don’t get is how much you can miss someone so much, when you never even knew him.” The increasing light of day slid their conversation into a safer zone, lighter topics like politics, and murder trends, and gang violence. By the time David got through Norfolk and turned onto Rt. 58, Kit could no longer keep her eyes open. Fatigue overwhelmed her and his voice grew muffled and the next thing she knew, David was nudging her awake. “You’d better call that prof,” he said. “We’re about fifteen minutes away.”

  Dr. Hill’s upbeat mood told Kit he was impressed. Her all-night project had produced twenty-six samples, each containing six acorns and some leaves. He approved of her system of cataloging the samples.

  “It’ll take a while to do all the testing,” he said. “I’ll have a grad student work on it.”

  “What’s the process?” Kit figured Dr. Hill was in his late thirties. He had dark hair and dark eyes and a flashing smile and she imagined coeds would sign up for his class just for the view. She felt awkward in her now-grubby jeans and muddy boots, her hair all askew, no make-up, and fatigue-darkened eyes.

  Dr. Hill leaned back against a lab table, so charming in his white coat. “It’s complicated. Basically, we have found that in oaks, the microsatellite loci exhibit enough variability to link the acorns to an individual tree with a high degree of statistical confidence.”

  “You’re speaking in tongues,” Kit said.

  The professor grinned. “OK—there’s stuff in the DNA that lets us differentiate individual trees fairly well. We extract the DNA, store it in deionized H2O, then put it through a process in which we look at the genetic variations. If all goes well, we’ll have a match with the acorns your little boy had in his pocket.”

  “And if not?”

  “You get to have another adventure.”

  Kit drove back to Norfolk while David slept. On the way, she called her neighbor and told her she was going to stop by to collect her mail. Ellen was a perpetually cheery brunette given to long skirts and flowers in her hair. Kit thought she would have done well in the ’60s. She’d brought Kit brownies when she moved in, invited her to church three times, and volunteered to care for Kit’s nonexistent pets. On sunny days, Ellen proclaimed it delightful. If it was dreary, she pronounced it a nice change.

  Kit pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and touched David’s arm. “I’m going in to collect my mail,” she said when he opened his eyes. “Back in a few minutes.”

  Ellen threw open her door when Kit knocked. Today, she wore a patchwork denim skirt and a flowered shirt. She handed Kit her mail, caught her up on the current gossip, and then said, “Some reporter’s been around looking for you,” Ellen said. “Name’s Piper something. I gave her your cell phone number. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Piper Calhoun from the Norfolk Times. Kit’s heart sank. Actually, she did mind. Very much. “That’s a private number, Ellen. Please don’t give it out again. These reporters …”

  Ellen waved her hand. “Oh, I know. They can be a pain. Sorry if I messed you up. I think I got the last two digits reversed, anyway. She said she couldn’t get through. You can tell her to lose the number. You may see her. She called me a while ago and I said you were coming by.”

  “You told her I was coming here?”

  Ellen blinked. “My bad.”

  Kit was still fuming when she returned to the SUV. David was awake, standing outside, leaning against the passenger door, looking toward her building. “Get in!” she commanded.

  He responded quickly. “What’s up?”

  She turned the key in the ignition and started to tell him about Ellen when a young woman pulled into the space next to her and rolled down the passenger-side window of her battered Ford Focus.

  “Kit McGovern?” the young woman called out, peering over her sunglasses.

  Kit’s mouth straightened into a line. She shoved the car into reverse.

  David sat straight up. “What’s going on?”

  “Reporter.”

  The young woman jumped out of her car and raced to the driver’s door. Kit turned around to back up. “Wait!” the woman called, slapping the hood. “Wait.”

  “Hold on,” David said suddenly, grabbing the dash.

  Kit slammed on the brakes. She turned to look forward. That gave the young woman time to race to Kit’s door and grab on to the handle. Kit shot David a look. “I could have gotten away.”

  The reporter was wearing khaki pants and a black top, and the tattoo of some kind of vine wound up the left side of her neck. “Miss McGovern, I’m Piper Calhoun.”

  “I have no comment,” Kit said, turning again to back out. She took her foot off the brake.

  “But you’re investigating that murder on Assateague, right?” The woman had her hand on Kit’s door and was following her at a jog.

  “No comment.”

  “But wait, stop.”

  Kit stepped hard on the brake. “Look, Miss Calhoun. All inquiries need to go through the press office downtown. You’re getting nothing from me.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.” Kit began backing out again.

  “So I guess … I guess you’re not interested in the possibility that human trafficking is involved?”

  Kit froze. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Che
ck this out,” David said.

  She glared at him. “I can’t! That’s how I got in trouble before! Do you want me to lose my job?”

  “Then let me.”

  8

  THEY FOLLOWED PIPER CALHOUN TO A DINGY APARTMENT NEAR THE Norfolk Naval Base. “It’s all I could afford,” she said apologetically as she stood outside Kit’s car. “Reporters don’t make much, you know.”

  Kit didn’t know. All she knew was that contacts with the media had to be cleared through the press office, a step she decidedly hadn’t taken. “I’ll wait here,” she said.

  “Be right back,” David replied.

  Kit rolled her eyes and laid her head back on the headrest.

  Piper Calhoun led David into her building. “I’ve been working on a story for three months, maybe more,” she said as she inserted a key in the lock. “Some people in the newsroom are ticked. They think I’m not carrying my weight. But hey, they’ll see eventually.” She pushed the door in. “Come on in.”

  David stepped into the small living room. It smelled of food—garlic and something else, cilantro maybe? A worn brown couch covered by a colorful blanket was pushed against one wall. Above it hung a movie poster advertising “Twilight.” Two worn armchairs and a beat-up coffee table completed the décor. A bead curtain covered one window and newspapers lay piled in the corner.

  “Hold on,” Piper said, disappearing into the back, where David presumed the bedrooms were. She emerged a few seconds later, followed by a small, thin Hispanic woman dressed in a bright, orange top and a long black skirt.

  “This is Patricia, a friend of mine,” Piper said. She pronounced the name the Spanish way, Pa-tree-si-a.

  The young Latina stared at the floor. David asked her something in Spanish, and the woman’s eyes lit up. She looked at him, her eyes searching his face, and then she answered him, hesitantly at first, then with more fluency and as her story came out, he grew increasingly focused.

  David emerged from the building after fifteen or twenty minutes. He walked over to Kit’s driver’s door. “You need to speak to this woman, Patricia.”