Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

  They’d missed them! “Good work, Jen.” At least she hadn’t sat there for hours watching an empty building. “Come back here, quick as you can.”

  Chris arrived moments later. “OK, I have an agent working with the banks … there’s two of them, one for Lopez, one for Cienfuegos. We’re live on their ATM cards.”

  “Great. Roger is going to stay here and coordinate information. Steve is at Cienfuegos’s house. Let’s you and I take two more agents and a second car and head north. That way we’ll be close when we locate them.”

  “Look,” David said, mustering all the strength he could. “It’s true, I was a cop in D.C. But I shot a kid and I’m off the force and I needed the money. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t care what you were running. I just needed the money. Haven’t you ever heard of a bad cop?”

  Cienfuegos’s eyes fell on David’s iPod wires, which were protruding from his pocket. He jerked the wires, and pulled out the iPod. Then he held his hand out toward Consuela and snapped his fingers. She looked confused at first, then retrieved her purse, and dug her own iPod out of it.

  David felt suddenly dizzy. They were the same model, and Cienfuegos was comparing them. He closed his eyes.

  Cienfuegos cursed loudly. David’s eyes flew open just as the Mexican threw his iPod onto the ground and stomped on it. Lopez moved forward and grabbed David by the throat. He began squeezing, cutting off his air. David gasped desperately for breath.

  He looked into Lopez’s eyes. They were cold, like a snake’s eyes, and David saw his pupils enlarge and his face relax in pleasure. An icy cold chill raced through David’s veins. His knees grew weak. Lopez tightened his grip. Consuela watched, her arms crossed. Then the edges of David’s vision began to grow dark. Oh, God, he thought. Oh, God!

  “¡Alto!” Cienfuegos said, jerking Lopez out of the way. David’s throat ripped open and he began to cough. But Cienfuegos threw David back against the car. “Who are you working for?” he demanded. “Who?”

  David didn’t answer. Cienfuegos cursed again and drove his fist into David’s jaw. Then everything went black.

  “Look, there aren’t that many roads,” Kit said, looking at a map while Chris drove the black SUV north on Rt. 13. “Not until we get to Salisbury, anyway.”

  “My guess is they’ll head straight north, to Philly or New York. They won’t risk crossing the Bay Bridge. The toll takers could ID them.”

  “You don’t think they’ll just hole up somewhere?”

  Chris should his head. “They want to get off this peninsula as quickly as they can.”

  Kit settled back in her seat, her thoughts racing. “So at Pocomoke, they can go Rt. 13 or 113.”

  “They’ll go 13. It’s much quicker.”

  Kit nodded. The lights streaked by in the dark night. The dread she’d been avoiding now gripped her. She stared at the road ahead. The dotted centerline flashed by like a strobe. Her head pounded. She glanced at Chris. “How long …” her voice stuck in her throat.

  Chris flexed his hand on the steering wheel. She saw his jaw shift. “It all depends on where he took the shot. If an artery got hit …” Chris’s voice trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Think positively. With just a flesh wound, he can last a long time, especially if he can put pressure on it.” He nodded his head, as if affirming his own thinking. “David’s smart. He won’t panic. He’ll take care of himself.”

  Kit bit the corner of her lip. Her cell phone rang. She picked it up. “Yes? Yes …” She gestured for Chris to speed up. “Good! We’re on the way.” She looked at Chris. “Maryland State Police chopper has a white Escalade on the bypass around Salisbury.”

  “All right!”

  When he woke up, he could tell he was in a vehicle but he had no idea where or when or how he got there … he tried to move, and realized his hands were bound behind his back and there was tape across his mouth. Anger flashed through him. The thin stream of air he could take in past the tape wasn’t enough. He began fighting, then realized quickly it was fruitless. Heart pounding, he began reciting the alphabet backwards in his head, a technique he’d perfected as a boy facing a drunken stepfather and trying to survive. Gradually, like a slowly melting glacier, his anger began to disappear. His heart rate slowed. His throat relaxed a little. He could breathe better. And his trembling became sporadic.

  Where was he? In the back of a car. With something over him. A blanket. He moved his head around until his face emerged, and he pulled in a grateful breath of cool air. Please help me, please help me, please help me, he prayed silently.

  An occasional flash of light helped him get oriented. He was on the back seat of the Suburban. He could hear Lopez and Cienfuegos up front. Where was Consuela? And where were they going?

  The men were speaking Spanish. David forced himself to concentrate, and slowly he began to catch snatches of their conversation. He heard the word “Consuela” and then the word “barco”—boat. He heard Cienfuegos laugh softly and then say, in English, “We’ll be halfway to Miami.”

  The FBI vehicles screamed up Rt. 13, lights flashing, jockeying through traffic and blasting across intersections. Kit, her stomach tight, stayed on the phone, listening to the Maryland State Police narrate the apprehension of the Escalade.

  “How much farther?” Chris asked her.

  She glanced over at the GPS unit. “About twelve miles.”

  “Ten minutes then.” He glanced over at her.

  Kit pressed the phone to her ear. The state police had pulled the Escalade over. She held up one finger, asking Chris to wait. She frowned. “One occupant,” she said, looking over at Chris.

  Her partner grimaced. “Wrong car?”

  Nine minutes later, Chris pulled their SUV up behind the cluster of cop cars surrounding the Escalade in the parking lot of a bowling alley. Red and blue lights flashed so brightly Kit could hardly see around them. She jumped out of the Bureau car before it came to a complete stop, and raced toward the Escalade, flashing her badge. She looked inside, and fought nausea when she saw the blood all over the back seat. “Where’s the driver?” she asked a cop nearby.

  He motioned toward a state police car. Kit approached it. A state trooper looked up at her. “You Agent McGovern?”

  “Yes.” She flashed her creds.

  “The young woman there was the only occupant.” He nodded toward a Latina.

  Kit shielded her eyes from the flashing lights. Did she know her? Was it …

  “Car’s registered to a Cienfuegos.”

  Chris suddenly appeared at her side. “Who is she?”

  “David’s Maria,” Kit said softly.

  29

  LOOK, MS. ESPINOZA,” KIT SAID, PACING IN THE INTERVIEW ROOM AT the state police headquarters, “the amount of meth we found makes you eligible for a nice long sentence in federal prison. You want to spend the rest of your life in jail? Never get married? Never see your family?”

  Consuela Espinoza, AKA Maria, twisted her hands in her lap. She wouldn’t make eye contact with Kit. “No comprende,” she said over and over, shaking her head.

  Sure, Kit thought.

  But Chris was right on it. He leaned over Consuela, his arms braced on the table. And he spoke to her in Spanish, explaining her situation firmly, and pressing her again about where Carlos Cienfuegos was and what she was doing with his car, about her relationship with him and how long she had known him.

  Kit studied the young woman as Chris questioned her. She was beautiful, with long, dark hair and dark eyes. Slim. Attractive. But there was a hollowness in her cheeks that caught her attention. Was she on meth? Is that what it was? Then she noticed something else. The woman kept touching her belly, almost cradling it, as if it were tender, as if …

  “Consuela,” Kit said suddenly.

  Chris turned toward her in surprise.

  “Do you want your baby to be born in jail?”

  The woman looked at her, shocked.

  “We need to know where these men are. You help us a
nd we’ll help you.” Kit softened her voice. “Consuela, it’s not just about you any longer, is it? It’s about doing what’s best for that baby. Will Carlos take care of you? Or will he dump you like he’s dumped other women?” Kit saw a shift in Consuela’s eyes, a bit of uncertainty. “Maybe he’s already dumped you.”

  “He protect me … from Hector.”

  Ah, yes. Consuela/Maria had seduced Cienfuegos, Hector’s boss, to keep Hector from hurting her again. Smart move. Still, Cienfuegos was using her. Kit felt sure of that. She pressed the woman. “Where exactly did he tell you to drive to, Consuela? With David’s blood all over the back seat of your car? Knowing we were looking for a white Escalade?”

  Tears came to the woman’s eyes.

  “Do you really think he’s coming to meet you?”

  Chris picked it up. “Tell us as much as you know, Consuela, and we’ll help you out.”

  Time seemed to crawl. Kit’s heart was beating hard. Then Consuela looked at her.

  “He tell me,” the woman said hesitantly, “he tell me drive north on Rt. 13 to Elkton, and he meet me there. Tonight.”

  “Where? Where exactly?”

  She gave them the name of a motel. Chris turned and left the room to notify the Maryland State Police.

  “What else?”

  “He have me bring things to him.”

  “Like what?”

  She described a suitcase, a large plastic container, and some personal things: toothbrush, toothpaste, clothing, money, food, and rope.

  “But these things aren’t in the Escalade.”

  Consuela shook her head.

  “So you gave them to him.”

  She nodded and described the Suburban.

  Kit had one more question. “Consuela, we know David was shot. How was he when you saw him?”

  The woman stared at her blankly, her mouth a thin line.

  “Consuela, he was your friend!”

  Then the woman broke down. She buried her face in her hands. “He is bleeding everywhere. And I told them, I told them!”

  “Told them what?”

  “That he is a cop!”

  Ciefuegos and Lopez jerked David out from under the blanket that covered him, through the back door of the Suburban, and into the night air. They pulled him to his feet. Eyes wide, he looked around. They were in a marina. The night sky stretched above them like a black cape. Hundreds of boats sat bobbing in their slips. The metallic clank of halyards against masts and the creaking of docklines were the only sounds. What time was it? David had no idea.

  The men leaned David against the Suburban. Lopez pulled out a huge knife and showed it to him. “You make one sound,” Cienfuegos said, “and my friend here gut you like a fish. Comprende?”

  David nodded. With one swift move, Cienfuegos ripped the tape off David’s mouth. “Can you walk?”

  David shook his head. When they pulled him from the car, he had broken into an instant sweat and now a chill swept over him. What were they going to do?

  “Let’s dump him,” Lopez said in Spanish.

  “No. We keep him until we are out of here. Then we have plenty of ocean to put him in, right, Hector?”

  Lopez didn’t acknowledge the reference. “Look at him! He’s dead soon!” he said, gesturing toward the blood.

  “We keep him for now!” Cienfuegos snarled.

  The two men got on either side of David and half-carried him down the main pier and onto one of the docks. Each time David’s right leg hit the boards it sent a jolt of pain through him and he bit his lip to keep from crying out. How much blood had he lost?

  They went past sailboats, trawlers, and powerboats. Some had small lights on inside, indicating someone might be on board, and David prayed someone, anyone, would just look out and see them. He knew that, if confronted, the men would make up a story: David was drunk, he was hurt … whatever. That’s why they’d taken the tape off his mouth, to remove obvious signs he was being abducted.

  But no one seemed to be out in the marina, and since David figured it was late, that seemed normal. He felt dizzy. The moon danced in the night and the stars swayed. David squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, focusing on the pier. He could hear the occasional gurgle of a bilge pump. The smell of diesel and fish filled his nose. They walked down the C Dock and stopped in front of a big, sedan-bridge cruiser.

  “In there,” he heard Cienfuegos say, and they stepped onto the boat’s swim platform, and then onto the boat.

  Kit turned Consuela over to a female state trooper and emerged from the interview room, nearly bumping into Chris as she did. She looked at her partner. His eyes held more energy than she’d seen in days. “I’ve got the Maryland and Delaware State Police responding …”

  “They’re not going to Elkton,” Kit said, interrupting.

  Chris looked at her quizzically.

  “She’s the decoy. The men either went south or …” Kit hesitated, unsure of herself, “… or maybe headed east.”

  “East.”

  “Toward the boat.”

  Chris frowned. The harsh lights of the hallway intensified his expression. “What are you thinking?”

  “I think they set Consuela up. They knew we’d be looking for that car. Cienfuegos’s boat is fifty-two feet long and plenty sturdy enough for ocean travel. It may be the boat that’s been running people up and down the coast.” Kit put her hand to her forehead. “Boats like that may carry, say, five hundred gallons of fuel, plenty enough for a long trip.” She looked up, her eyes imploring Chris. “Look, I know this is a long shot, but there aren’t too many roads on the peninsula. Cienfuegos knows he’s limited to Rt. 13, basically, if he wants to leave, and so, why wouldn’t he think of an alternative escape route?”

  “The boat.”

  “Right. Something that would keep him off the roads. It’s a big ocean out there, and who’d be looking for them there? In the middle of the night? He doesn’t know that we know he has a boat. His odds of getting away are a lot better out on the Atlantic.” Her breathing was shallow. “Besides, remember what Consuela said she took to him? Rope? What’s that for? A boat?”

  She watched Chris for his reaction. He put his hands on his hips, walked away three paces, touched his chin, furrowed his brow.

  Then he looked at her. “It’s crazy, but I think you could be right. Where is it?”

  “The boat? Ocean City.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The trip from Salisbury to Ocean City would take at least thirty-five intense minutes. Kit stayed on the cell phone and the radio, calling ahead to the Maryland State Police, coordinating with Roger, and double-checking the boat’s location and slip number. She also called Steve, who decided to meet them at the marina. She clicked off her phone and wiped her sweaty hands on her khakis.

  Chris sped through the dark night, his lights flashing. Kit could see the concentration in his face, the intensity in his eyes. Most women would find him attractive, but his intensity only reminded her of David.

  David. Had she met him only to lose him? He’d stirred up feelings in her she thought were dead, intense longings she thought she’d never experience again. What’s more, God had used him to challenge her thinking, to force her to confront her lack of forgiveness for Eric. So was that all God had had in mind? David was a momentary catalyst for her spiritual growth?

  Oh, please, no … no … no …

  Tears came to her eyes and she turned to look out of the window so Chris wouldn’t see them. Please God, she prayed silently, protect him. Please help me to find him. Please, God …

  Her cell phone rang. The Ocean City police were at the marina. A plainclothes officer had strolled down the dock and found slip 1430 empty. But over on the C Dock, a big Sea Ray had its motor running.

  “What’s the name?”

  “Pleasant Dreams.”

  Wait. “Roger said Cienfuegos’s boat was named ‘Night Magic’.”

  “Boat names can be changed … easily.”

&nbs
p; Kit took a deep breath. “Odd time of night to have a boat warming up.”

  “Too early for fishing,” the cop agreed, “and too late for cruising.”

  “If it starts to move out, call me right away. We’re maybe ten minutes out.” She snapped her phone shut and turned to Chris. “The name’s wrong on the boat.”

  “Names can be changed.”

  “That’s what the cop said.”

  Chris pressed on the accelerator and took the SUV up to eighty-five mph. “I’m going with your instincts.” He nodded toward her cell phone. “Call the boss.”

  “You don’t think that’s premature?”

  “Call him and tell him what you just found out.”

  So she did. Steve said he was on the way, with reinforcements. “Set it up before you move,” he warned Kit.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Fair Winds Marina sat just west of the Ocean City Inlet, an opening into sheltered waters from the Atlantic Ocean, on the south side of Ocean City. One of the largest in the area, the marina was home to over three hundred pleasure and charter boats of all shapes and sizes. Ocean City is famous for sport fishing: marlin, tuna, bluefish, and shark teem in the waters offshore. Kit had been there as a child, surf fishing for flounder and sea bass. And she’d played at the beach. But Ocean City was a busy, commercial, touristy place, nothing like Chincoteague. It had never captured Kit’s heart.

  Because Cienfuegos was holding David, it was important that he not be alerted to police presence until Kit’s team was ready. She’d toyed with the idea of requesting the Hostage Rescue team from Quantico, or the Norfolk SWAT team, but either group would take a minimum of two hours to get to the scene and Kit wasn’t sure they had that much time. David had been shot, and the amount of blood she’d seen in the Escalade had convinced her time was short.

  Instead, she had decided to rely on the Ocean City police chief’s emergency response team—and whatever agents and state police she could collect.

  Presuming, of course, her hunch was correct, and the Sea Ray warming up belonged to Cienfuegos, and that David was on that boat. And alive. Which was presuming a whole lot, she knew. They could have dumped him anywhere. Why would they want to keep him with them? They could have let him bleed to death. They could have … she stopped herself from pursuing that line of thought. There was no point to it.