Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838)

by White, Linda J.

  Shots rang out.

  “What’s he doing? What’s he shooting at?” Kit said. She moved to the other side of the dockmaster’s office, where she could see better. Lopez was firing toward the stern of the boat, away from the agents.

  “He’s firing off the stern. What’s there?” Kit exclaimed. Then she saw a light, like a flare, arcing through the sky in a reddish blaze. “What … ?”

  Instantly, an enormous explosion rocked the night, and Pleasant Dreams blew apart into a million pieces.

  30

  GOOD GRIEF!” CHRIS STOOD UP AS BURNING FRAGMENTS OF BOAT FLEW into the sky, bright orange embers and flaming pieces, like fireworks against the black night.

  “David!” Kit cried out. “Where is he? Chris …”

  But Chris was on the radio to Chief Gunner. “Get the fireboat up here, now!” There was a garbled response. Then Gunner’s voice came back: “We saw a flare gun fire from the water near the B Dock just before the boat blew.”

  “From the water?” Kit looked at Chris. “Who could have … David? Was it David?”

  They both took off running back to the main pier, past the restaurant and the marina office, and then down toward the B Dock. Steve Gould ran right behind them. Kit’s heart pounded. The marina glowed orange with the light of the burning boat and an acrid smell filled the air. David … David … David … ?

  And then she saw him. Or what she thought could be him. She saw a white cushion in the water just off the end of the dock, and a figure clutching onto it. She stripped off her ballistic vest and took her gun off her belt as she ran. Reaching the end of the dock, she put both down, quickly pulled off her shoes, and jumped into the water.

  The cold took her breath away. All around her, reflections from the fire danced on the water. Here and there a piece of burning boat floated. But as she surfaced from her jump, and shook the water from her eyes, she saw the miracle: it was David, David! He was grinning at her and gripping the cushion. Within seconds, she arrived at his side.

  His eyes were wide. “Kit!”

  “Oh, David!”

  “I got ’em.”

  “That was you?” Kit nodded toward the burning boat.

  He grinned. “Yeah. I got ’em.”

  “You need help?” Chris called from the dock.

  “Get the medics!” Kit looked back at David. “I’m going to pull you over to the ladder on the dock. Can you hold onto the cushion?”

  He nodded and she grabbed the strap on the cushion and swam to the ladder attached to the side of the dock. Then she had David hook his right arm over a rung.

  “Any chance you can climb out?” she asked.

  “No way.” He shook his head.

  “Where are you hurt?”

  “I took a shot in the leg.”

  “Where else?” She had her arm around him, gripping the back of his jeans with one hand and the ladder with the other. They were face to face in the water, so close she wanted to kiss him. Burning debris floated around them and smoke hung in the air. Her heart was trembling. She’d almost lost him, and now here he was, again, alive, and so close.

  “Is he conscious?” her boss called out from the dock above.

  “Yes!” Kit could see the firelight dancing in David’s eyes. “What’s hurt besides your leg?” she asked him again.

  “My leg is killing me. Lost a lot of blood.”

  “Anything broken?”

  He shook his head. “No, no.”

  “Can we pull him up?” Chris called down.

  “No. He’s got an unstable shoulder. We’ll need a rescue basket.”

  David leaned his head against hers and sighed. “Never mind. Tell them they can leave me right here. Forever. I don’t think my leg hurts anymore.”

  He was joking, she realized. Joking! “That’s because it’s frozen,” she retorted.

  “I don’t care.”

  She felt his breath on her face, and the stubble of his beard, and caught the faint smell of his now-familiar shampoo, and she relaxed as his arm drew her closer still. “I love you,” she heard him say, and he kissed her neck.

  Steve had just leaned over the dock. He looked sharply at Chris. “She’s in a relationship with a source?”

  Chris shrugged.

  Minutes later, David was up on the dock. The medics began cutting his wet clothes off, wrapping him in blankets, and one of them was preparing to start an IV. “We’re going to Medevac him to Salisbury,” the chief medic said to Kit, who was standing about ten feet away. “Chopper’s on the way.”

  Chris looked at her. “You go with him. I’ll finish up.”

  Kit thought about that. She wanted to go. She desperately wanted to go. She pulled the blanket an EMT had given her closer. Then she shook her head. “It’s my case, Chris.” Her heart wanted to go. Her head knew she couldn’t. “We’ll send someone else with him.”

  He nodded.

  “Who is Kit?” one of the medics near David shouted.

  “Me.”

  “He wants to say something to you.”

  Quickly Kit went over to the stretcher. David’s eyes were wide open. She touched his face. “You’ll make it, David. You’re going to be OK.” Was that hope or faith? She didn’t know.

  He blinked. “Lopez and Cienfuegos, they kept talking about Sandy Point … something about Sandy Point. A school or something. I couldn’t quite catch it.” David’s voice was shaky. “Check it out, Kit.”

  “I will, David. You take care of yourself.” Then she touched him again.

  Kit collected her vest and gun. David had said Sandy Point. Where was Sandy Point? Her cell phone rang. She heard the sound of rotor blades spinning and looked up as the Medevac chopper took off from a nearby parking lot, its blades beating the air furiously, dust kicking up from the ground. “Hello?” she said, pressing the phone to her ear. Her eyes stayed fixed on the chopper.

  Roger had information for her. Two minutes later, she snapped off the phone and turned to Steve. “Carlotta is leaving her house. Roger’s following her.”

  Chief Gunner appeared. “We’ve pulled two bodies out of the water. Want to take a look?”

  There was enough of Cienfuegos and Lopez left to identify them. Kit, slightly sickened, turned away and looked at her boss. “Just a hunch here, but if Carlotta is headed toward Sandy Point, wherever that is, I want to go there.”

  “Where is it?”

  If Steve’s jaw were any more square he’d be a Lego, Kit thought. The more intense he got, the more angular his face became. “I don’t know …”

  Chief Gunner had joined them. He interjected, “It’s southwest of here, about forty-five minutes, unless you’re running Code 1.”

  “Find out.” Steve nodded toward her cell phone.

  She called Roger, snapped the phone shut, and nodded. “She’s headed in approximately that direction.”

  “Let’s go!”

  Steve opted to ride with her rather than take his own vehicle, a fact which would have been disconcerting on any other night. She’d left Chris in charge of the FBI’s interests in the Ocean City crime scene and was now gunning down Rt. 213 toward Sandy Point, her boss beside her. The roads were empty, the night sky black, the moon a white marker, like a chip a gambler had left on the table.

  Steve cleared his throat. Kit braced herself. Was she going to get a lecture on impulsivity? On maintaining professional distance from informants? What? She shivered in her still-damp clothes.

  “You did a good job back there.”

  Kit raised her eyebrows and glanced toward Steve.

  “You had it organized. You worked well with the locals. And when you needed to take action, you did.”

  Kit felt her pulse quicken. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You can explain your relationship with David to me afterwards.”

  “I assure you, sir …”

  He waved her off. “Later.” Then he leaned forward and tapped the dashboard. “Let’s pick it up.”

  Lights fla
shing and sirens sounding, the drive took less than thirty-five minutes. Steve remained on the phone with Roger much of the way. By the time Kit was ready to turn off 213 and onto Sandy Point Road, Roger reported Carlotta had, indeed, driven to an old school building, that there were lights on and activity throughout the place. “Wait for us there,” Steve commanded.

  The old school building actually looked like a big, oversized house with a cupola on top. Kit figured it was over a hundred years old, built in the days when travel was difficult and multi-grade schools were sprinkled about the county as close to the children they served as possible. Tonight, the old building looked lit up, like a Christmas tree, and inside, Kit could see lots of activity.

  “The sheriff’s emergency response team is getting ready,” Roger told them as they watched the house from the woods nearby. “Carlotta’s got two men with her. I suspect they’re armed.”

  “One of them drove the second van?”

  “Right.”

  The sheriff joined them. “We’re ready.”

  “You have a perimeter established?” Kit was taking no chances this time.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “OK,” Kit said. “Let’s watch and see what they’re doing. Right now, we don’t have any justification for going in. But if they try to move people …”

  “Then we’ve got exigent circumstances.”

  “Right.”

  A man carrying a large box exited the house and put it in the back of a van. Then the second man did the same thing. When two women and some sleepy-eyed children appeared on the front porch, Kit said, “That’s it.”

  “You lead,” Steve said.

  Kit saw the sheriff frown, and a slow smile turn Roger’s mouth up. She knew exactly what they were thinking. The locals might resent following a Fed, much less a woman. Another time she might have made a point of it, but not tonight. There was too much at stake. “The sheriff’s men are used to following him,” she said evenly. “How about if you direct the team,” she said to the sheriff.

  He nodded vigorously. She could see the relief in his eyes. “Here’s the deal: we don’t want those vans to leave. And we don’t want anybody hurt … especially not those children. I think we’re dealing with trafficking victims. They’ll be terrified. They may even be uncooperative. But they’re victims. Carlotta and the men … those are our targets.”

  “Got it.”

  “Your team goes in first, we follow one minute later.”

  After they made sure their radios would work together, the sheriff disappeared into the night. Kit found herself praying silently. Please let this go well. Please keep anyone from getting hurt … She could hear Steve breathing at her side, feel the tension in the air, as she kept her eyes fixed on those vans.

  Ten minutes later, the sheriff radioed that his team was in position. Five minutes after that, when Kit saw another woman being ushered down the steps toward the van, she signaled them to go.

  Three deputies in cars converged on the vans. Three more emerged from the woods to cover the back, and more deputies followed until they’d surrounded the entire house. Flashbangs detonated inside. Women and children screamed. Kit could hear deputies shouting, “Get down! Get down!” She saw people raising their hands in surrender and others dropping to the floor. One woman fell onto her knees, hands raised in supplication, as if she were praying. Within forty-five seconds the whole scene was under control. Or so it seemed. “Let’s go!” Kit said, and she and Steve and Roger began jogging toward the vans and the house.

  Steve cut to the right. That’s when Kit saw a dark figure angling away from a shed just to the left of the large house. At first, she wasn’t sure what she’d seen, but the sweep of a deputy’s flashlight caught a white shirt and Kit broke into a run. “We’ve got a runner!” she yelled.

  The night flashed by in a blur. Kit’s eyes were fixed ahead, although the fugitive had been swallowed up by the forest. She entered the woods and briars snatched at her legs. A low-hanging branch lashed her face. She could hear two others running with her, just behind her. The beam from her flashlight triggered odd shadows and more than once she dodged a nonexistent foe.

  But then she saw a figure clearly in a patch of moonlight filtering down through the trees. “Stop! FBI! Stop!” The figure glanced back and then kept running.

  Kit increased her speed. Her breath was coming hard now and her arms were pumping. She stepped in a marshy area, jumped over a log, and raced through underbrush. When the figure glanced back a second time, they were closer together. Kit could see the fugitive was a woman. She guessed she was unarmed. And she knew she could catch her.

  A minute later, just as the woods broke into an open field, Kit launched herself into the air and tackled her.

  “Ah!” the runner said, thumping facedown onto the ground with Kit on top of her.

  “Give me your hands! Your hands!” Kit yelled, and she grabbed Carlotta’s arms and pulled them behind her. She struggled with her momentarily, but then the woman gave up.

  “You OK?” Steve asked, arriving on the scene completely out of breath.

  “Yes,” Kit said, and the rasp of the cuffs closing around Carlotta’s wrists emphasized her statement.

  By the time they got back to the old schoolhouse, the two men had been cuffed and placed in cruisers, and the sorting-out process of the others present had begun.

  “You’ve got to see this,” Roger told Kit and her boss.

  She handed Carlotta off to a deputy, and then she and Steve followed Roger into the house. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene.

  There were fifteen, maybe twenty Hispanic women and children huddled in the largest room. They looked at her with big, questioning eyes. Some of them were crying. All of them looked terrified, casting sidelong glances at the deputies dressed in SWAT gear who stood around the room. Kit knew they had no idea what was going on, or what was about to happen to them.

  “Look in here,” Roger said, and he led them back to the kitchen. Huge padlocks hung on the handles of each cabinet door and the refrigerator as well. A nearby pantry was secured the same way. “They weren’t allowed access to food. Not even the children.”

  Trash littered the floor and Kit wondered when the place had been cleaned last. The area near the back door was filled with bulging black trash bags. The whole place smelled of garbage and dirty diapers. “Oh, gag,” Kit said softly, unable to contain her disgust.

  “Come upstairs.” Roger led her up a back stairwell. On the second floor of the house, there were four large rooms, former classrooms, two on each side. They served as dormitories. Dirty mattresses covered the wide plank pine floors and clothes were heaped in piles.

  Kit stood in the doorway and counted: each room could hold eight to ten mattresses. “They could pack like … twenty people in each room!”

  “That’s not all … there’s a third floor.” Roger nodded toward a small door, secured by a lock. Just then, a deputy with a huge bolt cutter came up the stairs. He placed the jaws of the cutter on the hasp of the lock and snapped it off. “Thanks,” Roger said. He turned on a flashlight.

  Kit followed him up the small staircase. Part way up, Roger found a light switch and flipped it on. “The office,” Roger said, as he reached the top of the stairs. “We’ll need a warrant to go through this, but can you believe it?”

  Kit couldn’t believe it. The place was a virtual slave quarters. That far out in the country, the victims had no chance to get help. They were completely at the mercy of Carlos, Carlotta, and Hector Lopez.

  As Kit came back downstairs, Steve met her. His face had softened, the angles were all relaxed, like a soldier at parade rest. And his eyes, his eyes were creased at the edges, more like he’d been playing with his grandson than looking at a crime scene. “Kit,” he said, “good job.”

  She felt her face redden.

  He gestured around the room. “They were using these people as slaves. Renting them out as domestics, ag workers … using them to clean
office buildings. Paying them nothing. No medical care, time off, nothing.”

  Kit’s throat tightened. “Where are they from?”

  “Mostly Mexico. That woman over there,” Steve motioned toward a young woman in jeans and a white shirt, “she told me Lopez took their passports. Wouldn’t let them make phone calls. Go anywhere on their own. Lopez was the enforcer. He terrified them. They were trapped.” He shook his head. “Immigration is on the way and so are Social Services and crime scene techs. We need to get warrants to take the computers and so on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kit spotted a young woman, sitting in the corner alone, rocking. She wore a tattered pink dress, and her arms were scored with cuts. Had she been mutilating herself? “What’s with her?” Kit asked, nodding.

  Steve looked in the direction Kit was indicating. “I don’t know.” He caught the eye of the woman in jeans, the one he’d pointed out before, and she came over to where the two agents were standing. She moved gracefully, like a model. “Kit, this is Adriana.” He looked at the Latina. “Can you tell us about the young woman over there?”

  Adriana stiffened as she followed his gesture. She had wide, brown eyes the same color as her hair, which was long and lustrous. Her nose had a slight arch, her skin was the color of caramel, and she had the kind of allure that even dire circumstances couldn’t extinguish. “Is there a place we can talk?” Adriana said in a heavily accented voice.

  “The kitchen?” Kit suggested.

  “Sí. All right.”

  A few minutes later, Adriana walked in, her arm around the waist of the young woman with cuts on her arms. “This is Isabella,” she said.

  Isabella’s long dark hair strategically fell over part of her face, like a curtain behind which she could hide. Parallel lines scored on her arms betrayed the anguish in her soul.

  Wisely, Steve remained quiet, letting Kit take the lead. “Isabella, my name is Kit. We’ve come to help you.” The woman glanced at her as Adriana translated, then her eyes dropped again. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  It would take more than that invitation to get her talking. It would take a cup of tea, and some small talk, and an unrelated conversation to create an atmosphere safe enough for Isabella to open up.