“How’d you discover her?”
She told a deep breath and identified Piper Calhoun.
“A reporter?” Steve glared at her. “You haven’t learned not to talk to the press?”
“Sir, she wasn’t trying to get information; she was trying to give it to me. I considered her a source.”
He played with a desk pen. She went on and told him about the reporter’s suspicions about the presence of trafficking in the Norfolk area.
“Well, Norfolk isn’t Chincoteague,” Steve responded. “You got the name of the couple who held her?”
“No, sir. Not yet.”
“That’s pretty elementary, isn’t it?”
“I’m working on it, sir.”
“What’s the link between the boy and Patricia?” Steve asked. “They’re both Latino. So what?”
Kit stiffened. “Why else would the boat full of people be out on the water?”
“Latinos can’t fish?”
“Why wasn’t the boy reported missing?” Kit retorted.
“Look.” Steve was obviously past frustrated. “You two talk. Chris has done this kind of thing before.” He turned to the Latino agent. “You tell me if she’s wasting time.”
“Sir …” Kit protested.
“I want you to consult! The last thing this office needs is another dead end.”
“How about lunch?” Chris said as they left Steve’s office. Was he smiling to be friendly or grinning at her discomfort? Kit didn’t know.
10
HE TOOK HER TO A THAI PLACE NOT FAR AWAY, A COOL, DARK RESTAURANT with a fountain in the middle. The hostess must have known him, because she smiled and bowed and guided them to a private table near the back and gave him the seat with a view of the cash register. “Set us up with a round of appetizers, would you please?” Chris said, “I’m starving.”
So he came here a lot, Kit thought as she opened the menu. “What do you suggest?”
“How spicy do you like your food?”
“I can take anything.”
“All right then.” He leaned over and pointed to her menu. “The Num Tok. I get the beef. Sliced sirloin tossed with ground rice, and some other stuff like mint and cilantro. Very good. A little less spicy is the Kai Yang Esan. Chicken marinated in coconut milk. And then, there’s always Pad Thai or the salads.”
“I think I’ll go with the beef,” Kit said, closing her menu as a young waitress arrived.
The waitress smiled, filled their glasses with water, and took their orders. “Appetizers come soon,” she said, smiling and nodding.
“And Thai iced tea, for both of us,” Chris added. He turned his attention to Kit as he carefully unfolded his napkin. “Tell me more about your case.”
Kit filled him in on all the details that Steve Gould had been too impatient to listen to.
The waitress came with the tea and appetizers: chicken satay skewers, spring rolls, wonton, and something Kit didn’t recognize.
“What’s that?” Kit asked, as the waitress left.
“Tod Mun Pa, Thai fish cakes. Very spicy.”
Kit reached for one and took a bite, aware that Chris was watching her. The heat filled her mouth, reddened her face, and spread down her throat. She forced herself to not react, to casually reach for her Thai iced tea like it was an afterthought, and not the desperate grab it actually was.
A half-smile crossed Chris’s face. Gallantly, he kept quiet. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. He had long fingers, like a pianist, and no wedding band. But he wore a college ring on his right hand. She couldn’t quite read the name. “So tell me more about the trafficking angle.”
She relayed again the Latina’s story of being brought to North Carolina, and held as a virtual slave in a home in Norfolk.
“How’d you get her to talk to you?”
She had to credit David. David had spoken to Patricia in her own language and had drawn her out. He’s the one who had insisted Kit listen to her story. David. David. Kit’s face flushed. This time, it wasn’t the spicy Thai food.
She took a big drink of water. The waitress came with their entrees. Kit told Chris about David.
“So, this guy’s an off-duty cop?”
“Yes, but he’s not involved any more. He just happened to be around at the time.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kit realized how ludicrous they were. “Just happened” to be with her when they spent all night collecting acorns? “Just happened” to drive with her to Wilmington? “Just happened” to be present when they met Piper and Patricia?
Graciously, Chris gave her a pass. “As Steve said, I worked a trafficking case up on the peninsula.”
“Tell me about it.”
“A guy was bringing women down from New York, running a brothel for the migrant workers,” Chris said.
“And these weren’t normal prostitutes?”
“We found out they had been trafficked in from Central America … they were in forced prostitution in the city and then brought down here for the weekends. These were very poor women. The youngest was thirteen.”
Thirteen. Kit flinched inwardly at the thought. Here she was feeling angry and betrayed by a husband who’d left her. Forced into sex at thirteen! “How’d he transport them?”
“By van.”
“Not by boat?”
“A boat would be too slow. This guy would bring them down on Thursday and take them back Sunday night. Had quite a business going.”
“How did you prosecute him?”
“We got him on a RICO charge. Took the house, the van, everything.” Chris chewed his steak thoughtfully. “I’ll give you copies from the case file so you can see how we did it.”
Back on Chincoteague, Kit went over the files Chris had given her. She studied the surveillance procedures he’d used, the evidence collection techniques, the warrants and the subpoenas. She felt impressed. If she ever brought her case to the point of prosecution, the same level of detail would be required. Granted, she wasn’t working trafficking for prostitution, not that she knew of anyway, but the idea was the same.
Chris was thorough. Neat. Very professional. She could tell that from his notes. The 302s, the Reports of Contact, were complete, question after question, statement after statement developing the facts of the case.
She found him good-looking, too. And unmarried. So why, in the restaurant, did the first mention of David send her tumbling into a whirlpool of emotion and longing?
“No way are you getting involved,” she told herself out loud, “with either of them.”
Chris had loose ends to clean up on some cases in Norfolk, after which he would come up to Chincoteague to further familiarize himself with the case. Steve had given Kit an extension on her two-week deadline, and she promptly made arrangements to keep the cottage at Chincoteague. Connie had gotten her a good deal on it.
Two days later, on a blistering hot afternoon, Chris arrived at her cottage. He looked so out of place in his dark gray suit and white shirt she almost laughed.
“What are you up to?” he asked, nodding to her open laptop on the big harvest table.
Kit wiped her hands on her khaki shorts, feeling slightly silly in her casual attire. She offered Chris a drink. As she poured his iced tea, she updated him. “I called the State Department, and a guy in the Office of Human Trafficking filled me in. They’re figuring about 800,000 people worldwide are transported across national borders every year. That doesn’t even count the ones trafficked within the country.”
“Mostly as prostitutes.”
“Yes.”
“Most don’t start on that road intentionally,” Chris reminded her. “They get tricked into it.”
Kit nodded. The stories she’d read on the State Department Trafficking in Persons Report had tugged at her heart.
“These are desperate people,” Chris continued. “Mostly women and children, although men can be victims, too.”
Kit jumped in. “Criminals kidnapped one guy in Cambodia for his o
rgans. And the kids—some of them were forced to work as domestic servants or in textile mills. Sometimes their parents sell them, even though they know they’re being used for sex.”
“Poor people have to make decisions sometimes that the rest of us have the luxury of not making. That thirteen-year-old girl we found?” Chris said, “She’d been orphaned. Lived with an aunt for a while, until her uncle sold her off.”
“What happened to her?”
“We put her in protective custody. She’s living with a cop’s family now, as a foster child.” Chris took a drink of the iced tea she’d poured for him. “Most of these people,” he gestured toward the computer, “aren’t that lucky.”
“It makes me angry,” Kit said. She looked at the laptop screen. “UNICEF says there are 27 million slaves in the world today, and 1.6 million new children are trafficked every year. That’s a lot of abuse!”
“But here’s the deal: even if Patricia was trafficked, we’re a long way from showing a link to your case.”
“We may have two cases, is that what you’re saying?”
“Right. And if we do, I can guess which one Steve’s going to want us to concentrate on.”
“They both need justice!”
“I agree. But the Bureau has its priorities.”
Kit blew out a breath. She knew he was right. “I was naive to think trafficking didn’t happen in America.”
Chris laughed. “Yes, you were.”
“I read about this case in California where Egyptian diplomats brought with them their house maid, a young girl sold by her poor parents to help feed the rest of their family. And I thought, why didn’t anyone notice? Why didn’t anyone in that suburban neighborhood realize something was wrong? Call the cops?”
“People don’t want to get involved. Or they think it only happens somewhere else. We’ve found Asian women in suburban ‘massage’ parlors who expected legitimate jobs in the United States, but were forced into prostitution.”
“It’s crazy! Why didn’t they go for help?”
“They usually don’t speak the language, the trafficker has their papers, they’re scared, isolated … to them, going to the authorities means going to jail.” Chris bit his lip thoughtfully. “The trafficker holds all the cards.”
By 4:00 p.m., they had gone over all the accumulated evidence in her case. Chris had helped her identify some leads to pursue. He questioned basing a case on such a tenuous link as acorns. He thought she was grabbing at straws.
When she got up to fix another pot of coffee, he stood up and stretched. She spooned the grounds into the filter, poured water from the carafe into the reservoir, and flipped the switch. What could she do to convince him her case was worth pursuing? Perhaps even more importantly, what if she was wrong? Could she afford another black mark? Another allegation that she was intractable? Not a team player?
But the image of the beach child’s body lying on the sand, and the thoughts of the mother who might be missing him, stirred her heart. She couldn’t give up, not yet, anyway.
Chris stood at the French doors looking out over the channel.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Kit’s head had been throbbing all afternoon, and she’d guessed the weather was changing. “Is a storm coming?”
“I think so.”
She opened the door, and the two agents stepped out onto her deck.
Indeed, dark clouds were gathering in the west. Looking east, out over the water, she could see two small fishing boats making their way back toward port. A couple of jet skis, water spraying up like rooster tails behind them, sported in the channel. Far across the water, she saw a lone kayaker.
“He’d better get in,” she said.
“You sound like you’ve had experience,” Chris said, laughing.
“I got caught in a storm out there once, when I was a teenager. It’s not something I want to repeat.” The memory came back easily enough. “I’d been over to Tom’s Cove, down there,” she pointed generally southeast, “looking for shells with an island boy. We saw the clouds building, but he’d thought he could make it back to Chincoteague. Halfway across the channel, the skies opened up.” Even now, she could remember her fear. “It was terrifying. I saw flashes of lightning, streaks of lightning, and balls of lightning, in white, pink, and blue—more varieties than I knew existed.”
“Wow.” Chris turned and looked west.
“I saw lightning strike the water and the land. Then I saw a transformer on the island explode. Here we were, in a metal boat! By the time we reached the dock, I was shaking.”
“I guess you never went out on the water with him again!” Chris laughed.
“You are so right!” Kit shook her head.
“Thunderstorms still amaze me. In Southern California, we don’t have them, not often anyway,” Chris said.
Another rumble of thunder and the first drops of rain drove them inside. They sat down again at the table. “Tell me more about the agricultural workers on the peninsula,” Chris said.
“There are the migrants and the permanent workers. The permanent workers generally work in the poultry processing plants, keeping the broilers, fryers, and roasters moving. They’re supporting families back home. Housing is their biggest problem: they double or triple up … sometimes even sleep in shifts.”
“Do any of them bring their families?”
“Some. And people complain, but the kids honestly often turn out to be as hard-working at school as their parents are on the job.”
“And migrants?”
“That’s a different story. Migrants never stay in one place long enough to impact the schools or most other community services, so there aren’t as many complaints about them.”
“People are just happy to eat the produce they pick.”
“Right.”
A sharp crack of thunder made them both look toward the water. Lightning flashed, then the heavens opened up and sheets of water began dropping from the skies. Then the power failed, and the cottage’s lights went out. “My battery’s low,” Kit said, shutting the lid of her laptop.
“Guess it’s time for a break.” Chris moved toward the French doors. He raised his glass, took a drink, and lowered it. “What’s that?”
“What?” Kit joined him. She thought she saw something off in the distance, but the rain pelting down obscured it. The jet skis were gone, and so were the small boats, and all the birds had disappeared as well, taking cover from the deluge.
She heard clicking on the windows and roof of the house.
“Hail!” Chris said. “Look at that!”
Dime-sized hail collected on the deck. Wind whipped the flag on the dock next door. She could hear it snapping even through the glass. The trees and bushes were shaking back and forth in mad fury, their leaves turned upside down.
Then the storm turned the world into a gray, seamless sheet, making it impossible to tell where water ended and sky began. The storm was beating the water out of the marshes, driving toward Assateague, flattening the marsh grass, the rain and the hail and the wind roaring.
A flash of movement caught Kit’s eye. As quickly as her mind registered it, the movement disappeared. “Did you see that?”
“Somebody’s out there!”
Thunder rumbled. Kit felt it in her chest. She shivered. She retrieved her binoculars from the bookshelves and lifted them to her eyes. “Tell me if you see it again.” She alternated looking with her own eyes and through the binoculars, peering into the gray sheet. Then—a flash of yellow. In an instant, she recognized it: “the kayaker!”
“That can’t be safe.”
The kayaker was out on the channel! Alarm gripped her. All that lightning. And he was working against the wind. “Why doesn’t he just let the storm drive him toward Assateague? At least he’d be on land.”
“He got caught out there.”
“He should have come in sooner!” Kit lifted her binoculars to her eyes again but the person had disappeared into the gray once more. “He
must be inexperienced.”
“What can we do?”
“I don’t know. My neighbor has a small boat … I hate the thought of going out right now.”
“Should we call 911? Is there a rescue squad on the island?”
“Yes.” Kit raised her binoculars again. Just then, she heard a tremendous crack, and a sizzle as lightning struck the marsh not far from where the kayaker emerged from the gray. In the blinding light, she recognized him. Kit took a sharp breath. “David!”
“Who?”
Kit threw the binoculars down, the look on David’s face emblazoned in her mind. “I’ve got to help him.” She grabbed her lifejacket and ran out of the door. “Call 911!”
11
THE RAIN AND HAIL FELT LIKE NEEDLES PELTING HER SKIN. THE STORM sounded so loud! She slipped on some hail, righted herself, and ran across the lawn and onto the neighbor’s pier. The end of the dock held a horseshoe life preserver on a long rope. Kit grabbed it, and threw it out onto the water. The wind immediately drove the preserver out into the channel, taking it to the end of the length of its rope. “David! David!” Kit screamed, but the wind whipped her voice away.
Out on the channel, the little kayak bobbed and nodded, tossed by the waves. David kept stabbing at the water, first on one side, then on the other. But Kit could see him faltering, missing strokes. Then the thunder rolled again, and a flash of lightning turned the gray world white. She jumped into the small boat. She wiped the rain out of her eyes, pulled the starter cord sharply, and the small outboard engine flared into life.
Just as quickly, the engine sputtered and died out. “C’mon!” Kit said, jerking the cord again and again. The motor refused to start. The rain plastered down her hair and it ran over her face. She wiped her eyes. David was about fifty feet from the bright yellow-orange horseshoe shaped life preserver. She yelled to him again, but thunder drowned out her voice. She saw him paddling furiously. Then, as she watched, a gust of wind jerked the paddle from his hand. He reached for it, the kayak capsized, and he began flailing about in the water.
She had no choice. She grabbed the flotation cushions from the boat and jumped into the water, her years as a lifeguard automatically guiding her actions. The water felt rough and cold and the current wanted to tug her downstream. As she got into her sidestroke, waves kept breaking erratically over her. At times, she turned her head hard to breathe, only to get a face full of water.
Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) Page 10
