A Voice from the Field

by Neal Griffin

  They had bought the car at an auction when Tia was thirteen years old. Her dad told her it was a classic American muscle car. All she saw was a rusted-out shell of metal that belched black smoke whenever you started it up. On her sixteenth birthday, her father had handed her the keys to a fully restored classic ’64 GTO. She was the envy of Newberg High School.

  Tia grabbed the bag and slammed the door shut, harder than she needed to. Memories and lies all folded into one. She thought back to the time spent with her family in Mexico. Everything is different now. Jesus, what am I doing here?

  Tia threw her bag across the front seat of the pickup and hoisted herself inside. The Roadhouse was only about a fifteen-minute drive away and it wouldn’t be dark for an hour. She would have too much time to sit and stew.

  What a waste of time, she thought. Sit my ass in a parking lot for what? For who? How does this help anyone?

  Tia thought about the bar, not far up the road. She could see the neon sign: Fireside Lounge. She’d been in many times, drawn to the place’s dark, typically empty interior. She could slide in there, knock back a couple. That, plus a bottle to go, would make the boredom of a long stakeout much more tolerable.

  Why not? Jacobs sure the hell wasn’t going to know. Just the thought of a drink lifted her spirits and lightened her mood. She pulled out a mental barstool and ordered a tequila sunrise and a shot of Jose Cuervo. By the time she hit the highway, her imaginary drink glowed like an orange ball floating just beyond her reach. It’ll be real soon enough, she thought. She pressed the accelerator to the floor, making sure not to look back at her goddamned car.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “There’s at least a couple of ’em inside, boss,” Buster Cobb reported. “Another one, a female, in a lay-off truck in the parking lot.”

  Kane wasn’t surprised. In the privacy of his office, he used the closed-circuit surveillance cameras to zero in on a white dude sitting alone at a corner table. The black-and-white images on the screen were grainy, but Kane could still make out the man’s long, clean hair and neatly trimmed beard. Throw in the healthy tan, the fact that the guy didn’t smoke, and he’d been nursing the same beer all night, it all signaled “cop.” Kane had sent over a dancer, who’d pushed the envelope of what was legally allowed, and the man hadn’t so much as touched her tit.

  Dumb ass might as well wear a badge pinned to his forehead. Kane had sent Cobb to scour the rest of the club and the perimeter of the parking lot. Hearing that the one outside was female, he already knew who he was dealing with.

  “Let me guess. The one in the parking lot. Brown bitch. Kinda hot looking?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Suarez.”

  “You want I should let ’em know we made ’em, tell ’em to shove off?”

  “Nah. I like knowing where they’re at. In fact, make sure we don’t tip our hand. As long as they feel their cover ain’t blown, they’ll stick around.”

  “You got it, boss. You need anything else. A drink? Maybe I send one of the girls back?”

  “Nah, but spread the word. Make sure security knows a no-touch policy is in effect. Bartenders shouldn’t offer any special activities. You go through the girls’ dressing room, check their shit for dope. Tonight we’re nothing short of model fucking citizens.”

  “Right, boss.”

  Cobb sauntered out, leaving Kane alone in his office. So Suarez was following through.

  He looked out the window of his second-floor office, getting a bird’s-eye view of the Roadhouse Score. The place was packed and the bartenders were hustling to keep up. The cops on-scene would put a damper on the final score, but he’d give them nothing to react to. Just a legal strip club providing wholesome adult entertainment. Even without the extra income from the under-the-table stuff it was going to be a good night at the till. And his other plans would take care of what he needed for the deal with Bell.

  Kane wondered if he should give Tanner a heads-up. He tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking about making a phone call, then let it go. Always risky to get on the phone and start talking specifics. Besides. Tanner sure as hell knew the score, could take care of his damn self. But Kane might need an insurance policy.

  Cobb returned after checking the dancers’ gear. Kane didn’t ask what he’d found and Buster offered no specifics, just said, “Everything’s clean now, boss.”

  “I got a mission for you, Buster. It’s a road trip and it’s damn important.” Kane scribbled an address on a pad of paper, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to Buster. “You’re going to have to haul down there and back. Don’t dawdle. You hear me?”

  Buster looked at the address. His face took on a look of childlike excitement at being given what was clearly an important assignment. “Don’t dawdle. Got it, boss.”

  “All right, Buster. Listen close. This is what I need you to do.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Rain pummeled the roof and hood of the pickup truck hard enough to drown out the country music, but the voice had been persistent.

  She needs you. Go to her.

  From the far corner of the muddy parking lot she could smell the booze inside the Roadhouse Score. Tia had somehow mustered the will to resist a stop at the bar, but now she realized a liquor store was less than two miles up the road and would be open for another hour. She could be there and back in less than five minutes. Just a couple of those little airline bottles, she told herself. Three of them ought to do it. Then again, what the hell. Get a fifth and call it a party. Who’s going to know?

  A clap of thunder cleared her head and she wondered how much longer the deputies would want to stay on the surveillance. She picked up her phone. Almost 1:00 A.M. She had been slumped down in the seat of the pickup truck for over four hours. She punched out a quick text to Connor. “still quiet here. how r u?”

  Tia set the phone back on the center console, assuming she’d get no response. She’d sent half a dozen text messages to Connor; all had gone unanswered. She pictured him on the back dock of the Piggly Wiggly, unloading two semi-trailers full of slabs of meat, cases of beer, canned goods, dairy, and whatever else ended up on the shelves of a grocery store. Heavy lifting for sure and taxing on his legs. But Connor wouldn’t think of asking for special treatment. And here I am, she thought, bitching about sitting on my ass in a parking lot, collecting overtime.

  The monotony didn’t help. Tia had been assigned to the outer perimeter, which was about the same as being a security guard. From her vantage point at the farthest edge of the lot she could keep an eye on the front entrance to the Roadhouse Score and monitor any cars that were coming or going from the rear. So far she hadn’t seen any of the players. Then again, there were only two she was really concerned about, and from what she had gathered from Jacobs and Phelps, only one of them was present. Gunther Kane had been in the club since the deputies had arrived, but Jessup Tanner was nowhere to be seen.

  Tia thought back to the morning. A little over twelve hours ago, she thought to herself, you were heaving your guts into a toilet, figuring your career was about to end. Now you’re ready to get back in the mix? Yep. Sure am.

  Tia fought against the urge to drop the truck into drive, instead allowing herself the fantasy of picturing all the different bottles of tequila, vodka, and whiskey stored neatly in the imaginary liquor cabinet in her mind. Bottle after bottle in long beautiful rows.

  Despite her boredom and her demons, Tia figured her low-level assignment beat the alternative of being inside the club. The parking lot had been packed when she first set up. Probably the place had been standing room only, and the last place she wanted to be was shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of Wisconsin rednecks in a strip bar. Over the past hour the lot had gradually cleared out, and now it was occupied by the last ten or fifteen pickups and beat-up Eldorados.

  Tia’s phone chimed and she grabbed it, hoping for a message from Connor. She was disappointed to see it was a group text from one of the deputies inside the Roadhouse.

&
nbsp; “Putting operation down. S-One on-scene. No unusual activity. S-Two a no-show. Place emptying out.”

  Had they been made? She couldn’t see how, but it seemed like a good idea to at least talk it over, try to figure out where Tanner had gone. She texted back: “where 2 4 debrief?”

  The response was quick.

  “No need 4 debrief. Try again 2mrrw night. Go ahead & secure.”

  Fine with me, she thought. If she left the goat at the sheriff’s station and drove straight home in the truck, she’d get to the farmhouse about the same time as Connor. She banged out a text she knew he would be happy to get.

  “no activity all night. told u so. headed home. see u there.”

  A moment later her phone rang; she looked at the number and was again disappointed. Still not Connor.

  “What’s up, Phelps?” she said, answering. She spotted him leaving the Roadhouse Score and heading for his vehicle, phone at his ear.

  She was glad it was Phelps on the line. It had been pretty obvious that Jacobs wasn’t keen on her being part of the surveillance team. Phelps struck Tia as a decent sort of guy, not to mention a solid cop. When he spoke, she heard frustration in his voice, the car door slamming in the background as he got in. “That was some bullshit.”

  Tia listened as he described the evening.

  “A whole night and we didn’t see so much as a hand-to-hand dope deal. That was the most legit strip club I’ve ever spent six hours in.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet it was just killing you guys to sit around with all those half-naked women all over the place, huh?”

  “Half? Hell, girl, you need to get out more often. There ain’t no half about it. But yeah. We definitely took one for the team.”

  Tia laughed. “I’m out of here. Same thing tomorrow night?” She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was one thirty in the morning and her first thought was that she had thirty minutes until the liquor stores closed. You got it bad, Suarez. She forced herself to focus on Phelps’s voice.

  “Yeah. We’ll do it again. We’ll brief at the same place. Be there by nineteen hundred hours.” She heard his car start up while he kept talking. “I’m going to run by Tanner’s place. Make sure he’s not out and about. Little worried that he never showed up. Hope he ain’t off on some road trip by himself.”

  “Tanner’s place? The place we covered in briefing? The farm on the county line?”

  “Yeah,” Phelps said. “Would’ve been good to put someone out there tonight to keep an eye on him, but we figured he’d be at the Roadhouse as usual. If I can get some extra bodies, we’ll add his place as a target location tomorrow.”

  “Jacobs going with you?”

  “No. Says he got plans at two o’clock in the morning, if you can believe that shit.” She could sense his irritation. “No sweat. I got this.”

  Tia knew what she had to do, cop to cop. “You want some cover? I can tag along.”

  “Nah. It’s just a drive-by. I want to see if Tanner’s van is there. Only thing is, it’s fifteen miles in the wrong direction for me. My wife’s gonna be all pissed off. Not only did I spend the entire evening in a strip club; I’m probably not going to get home until about daybreak.”

  Tia got the not-so-subtle hint. “I know where the place is at. It’s pretty much on my way home. Let me handle it.”

  “You sure?” The voice held feigned surprise.

  “No problem. Just a drive-by to check for his ride, right?” Tia started the truck. “He still driving that white van?”

  “Yep. He usually parks it near the shed alongside the main house. I went out there once before to poke around. The place is a real shit hole.”

  Tia fastened her seat belt. “What’s the best approach?”

  “About a quarter mile west of the place there’s a dirt road between the cornfields. Park and walk in from there. Once you get within about a hundred yards of the house, you should be able to eyeball the van.”

  Tia held the phone away from her face and stared at it. Fricking deputies. Drive-by, my ass, she thought. Sounds like a fricking recon patrol. She knew that county cops were used to working alone and had a tendency to take a lot of unnecessary chances. Not wanting to come off sounding like a city cop or a wuss, she decided not to object.

  “Just text me if it’s there or not,” Phelps said. “It he flew the coop or some shit, we’ll deal with it later.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll take care of it. Go on and get home.”

  “Thanks, Suarez. I really appreciate it. These U/C vice details drive my wife nuts.”

  Tia thought about Connor and what he would say if he knew what she had just agreed to. “I get it, dude. No sweat.”

  “See you tonight.” She could hear his engine rev through the phone just before the call clicked off. A few seconds later she saw his truck pull out of the lot.

  Anxious to be home and already regretting her willingness to help out, Tia blew out a breath. Hell, it’s not even my case, she thought. The rain had eased off, but this little errand was going to cost her some time. If she didn’t get home before Connor came by, he might not wait.

  She tapped out another message.

  “quick roll by for a house check then home. see u in a few. wait for me.”

  Yeah, he’s going to love that, she thought. “Jesus, Suarez,” she said out loud. “The shit you get yourself into.”

  Tucking her phone into her jacket pocket, Tia started the truck. She turned onto the roadway and punched the accelerator. In that same instant a sense of someone else’s anxiety began to mix in with her own.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Angelica stood in the sunlight looking out over the courtyard of the only home she’d ever known. She wore the brightly colored dress her grandmother had made for her quinceañera almost two years ago. Her feet were bare but clean and she could feel the warm, dry earth beneath them. The cuts and bruises that had covered her body were gone, along with the pain, but her memory of the awful place remained clear in her mind. It had been real, she was certain of that, but now it was over. She ran toward the red adobe house, flew into her mother’s open arms, and pressed her cheek against the careworn skin of the old woman’s face. She had escaped, but how? The journey to America had taken days. Now, in the blink of an eye, she had returned home.

  It was a miracle. God had heard her prayers after all. She stepped back from her mother and twirled around, again and again until she dropped to the ground from dizziness, her head spinning and her long black hair falling across her face. She looked between the strands into the deep blue Mexican sky, which was streaked by white wisps of clouds that looked like long, delicate fingers. The Virgin Mary’s hands, Angelica thought, protecting me. She reached out as if to touch the sky and laughed out loud, overcome with joy.

  A short-tailed hawk flew high above, circling over her. Angelica stared at the hawk, amazed by the grace and ease of his flight. She watched as he circled lower and lower, until he tucked back his wings and began to dive toward her, then opened his wings again and grew larger and larger until he blocked out the sun and darkened the sky.

  The world went cold and black. The hawk plunged lower, the sound of his wings like the beat of a drum. His open beak grew into a maw that threatened to swallow her. His talons plucked her from the earth and Angelica woke with a start, surrounded by darkness. The muted sound of thunder replaced the wings of the bird.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Damn, is this it?

  Tia found the dirt road just where the deputy had said, but it looked more like a path between two cornfields than anything that would qualify as a road. She turned off the two-lane highway and drove in slowly, headlights off. Leaning over the top of the steering wheel, she stared hard through the windshield, though she couldn’t see more than a foot past the hood. She used the sound of corn leaves brushing up against both sides of the truck to navigate the narrow passage. Knowing she would eventually have to back out, Tia stopped after about twenty yards. Surrounded on all sides by
eight-foot-high summer corn, she felt swallowed whole.

  She opened the driver’s door, slipped out, and closed the door without making a sound. It began to rain and within seconds she was drenched from a full-on downpour with raindrops that could fill a shot glass. The rain sounded like hammer blows on the metal surface of the truck. Tia flipped up the hood of her jacket, shook her head, and spoke out loud, no longer worried about the noise. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  She braced herself against the truck for a moment, looking out over a sea of corn that was swaying wildly in the wind. A four-foot-high fence of rusty barbed wire on either side separated her from the field itself. She vaulted over the nearest fencepost easily, but the mud caused her to make a slippery, cartoon-like landing. Tia grabbed the post with both hands and righted herself, but the near fall only added to her growing irritation.

  After just a few steps into the field, her sense of direction vanished. With no moon or stars and no man-made light to steer by, her vision was limited to a few inches in front of her face and she was no longer sure she was walking in a straight line. Even if she had one, using a flashlight would be way too risky. Then again, if she wandered too far into the field and became any more disoriented she might still be wandering around come daybreak. Tia pulled her cell phone from her pocket, cupped her hand over the screen, and pulled up the compass app. According to the deputy, the house should be about two hundred yards due east. She set the phone flat in her hand, got a bearing, and stepped off, thinking to herself, Quick drive-by, my ass. Who am I? Vasco frickin’ da Gama?

  A lightning bolt flashed across the black sky, immediately followed by a crack of thunder. The dark blue strobe of light gave Tia a flash glimpse of her surroundings.

  Corn.

  She risked another glance at her phone, making sure the letter E was directly in front of her, and kept walking. A minute passed and Tia figured she had to be at least halfway to the house, maybe more. A lightning bolt even stronger and brighter than the last arced low overhead, striking nearby. An instantaneous explosion of thunder shook the ground. Tia was pretty sure she felt a jolt of electricity through the soles of her boots. Damn. That was close.