Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel)

by D. A. Keeley

  “Kidnapped?” Miller said.

  “I don’t think so. She seemed glad to get away.”

  “She didn’t like answering your questions,” Hewitt said, “and you weren’t even in uniform. Which means she’s probably heard them before. You found the baby near where the woman was abducted.”

  “We don’t know the ethnicity of either yet,” Peyton said. “The situations may or may not be linked. And, as for the location, there’s only one port of entry in Garrett, so I don’t think location means much.”

  “The woman spoke Spanish?” Perry asked.

  Peyton nodded. “She looked younger than twenty-one.”

  “Think she was high?” Miller said.

  “Yeah. She got nervous when I asked her name. We need to question her. Local cops, state troopers, Customs, and our guys are on the lookout for the van.”

  Perry shook her head. “If that woman—you say not even twenty-one, just a girl—is the mother …”

  “That’s quite a leap,” Peyton said.

  “But if she is, imagine the guilt she must be carrying. It would explain any drug use.”

  “Mike’s right. We’re throwing around too many hypotheticals,” Peyton said. “We’ve got to talk to this woman and to the baby’s parents.”

  “Hypothesizing is part of my job,” Perry said with a smile and a shrug. “Imagination can be a great tool.”

  “That may be so, but a few years ago, I found this couple in the desert heading toward the US border. A hundred and fifteen degrees outside. So stoned they damn near walked right into me. I put the ties on their wrists. Neither said a word when I asked if anyone else was with them. Three days later, a different agent found a five-year-old boy sitting next to his dead infant sister in the brush a quarter-mile from where I picked up the parents. They were charged with Manslaughter. Should’ve been Murder One.”

  Perry frowned. “That’s a horrible story. Why did you tell us that?”

  “To show that you can’t hypothesize about human nature,” Peyton said. “We need to find the parents.”

  NINE

  “WHERE ARE YOU HEADED?” Scott Smith asked.

  Peyton, running on three cups of coffee, garbed in her forest-green wool winter field jacket, and toting a duffle, had been nearly out the door.

  “I’m going to run home, grab something to eat. I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

  He waved her off and stood up. “I’m not checking up on you, Peyton. I’m heading into town to grab something at the diner. Thought I’d ask if you wanted to join me.”

  She looked around. Just the two of them in the bullpen. Miller and Susan Perry had left, and Hewitt’s office door was closed.

  “We’re both on duty,” Smith said. “And we both need to eat. Killing a half-hour before you go out in field won’t hurt. Besides, you’ve put in a few extra hours today already. I’ll meet you there,” he said and walked past her and out the door before she could object.

  She drove slowly, thinking of Smith, of her mother’s incessant remarks about her stagnant love life, and about Jeff, who was taking her house shopping in the morning and who no doubt hoped the excursion would lead to more.

  She parked her Expedition across the lot from Smith’s service vehicle. No need to be side by side.

  “Glad you came,” Smith said when she slid in across from him. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  He smiled at her and waved to the waitress. He was medium height with a runner’s physique. But it was his eyes that she had noticed when she’d first arrived at Garrett Station. And she noticed them again here.

  “You’re from here, right?”

  “Born and raised,” she said. She paused to order coffee and the chef’s salad with vinaigrette. She’d make sure to finish the coffee before the salad arrived.

  “And now you’ve returned,” he said when the waitress departed.

  “This is home, and Tommy needs stability.”

  “You were in El Paso?”

  “You know a lot about me.”

  “Not really,” he said. “This is a small station. But you are our only BORSTAR agent. There are a few promotional materials kicking around.”

  “Good God,” she said. “Let’s talk about you.”

  “I was in Arizona. My marriage crashed and burned out there. I needed a change, and this was as far away as I could get. Plus my brother and his family are here.” He brushed a tuft of black hair away from his eye. “Still, colder than anywhere I’ve ever lived.”

  “It’s not even November yet.”

  “That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

  The front door opened and closed, and a burst of cold air entered the diner. Peyton heard the bell and turned to see a man in a tan Carhartt jacket and a John Deere cap next to a woman in nursing scrubs. The man carried a toddler.

  “Lot of farmers around here,” Smith said.

  “I grew up on a farm. It’s a hard life.”

  “Parents still here?”

  “My mother. My father’s dead.”

  “Nice being back home?”

  “It has its advantages. My mother helps out a lot. She also can’t believe she raised a daughter who carries a weapon every day. To my mother, a career woman was a first-grade teacher. Success meant you married a farmer and raised a family.”

  He smiled. “Hell, where did she go wrong?”

  “Yeah, I know. Then you throw my divorce on top of that, and let’s just say we don’t always see eye to eye. But my ex lives here, which is partly why I came back. For Tommy. He needs a man in his life. You have kids?”

  “No. Wasn’t married long enough. It’s the one good thing I can say about my marriage. I didn’t make that mistake.”

  “I don’t think of it as a mistake,” she said.

  “Shit, that came out wrong.” He looked down and cursed under his breath.

  “I heard that,” she said, “and, no, you didn’t.”

  He looked at her, blue eyes narrowing.

  “You said, ‘I blew it’ when you looked down. You haven’t blown it.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  The waitress returned with the salads.

  “Heard you’re taking a lot of shit for the Kenny Radke thing.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Just around. Also heard Radke finally got his ass kicked.”

  “You know him?”

  “I stopped him once. He gave me shit. I had nothing to hold him on, though. Wish I had.”

  She turned toward the window. The open potato fields offered a ceaseless wind. Flurries had dusted the parking lot, and snow swept back and forth beneath streetlamps like the sand snakes she’d seen in El Paso.

  “He’s in the hospital,” she said, “and it’s probably on me. I held a urine test over him to get some information. Not real proud of that right now.”

  “I’m sure he had it coming. Besides, at least you feel bad about it. I know agents who get off on those power plays.”

  His comment didn’t make her feel any better. The Kenny Radke predicament came down to situational ethics: She had needed information he could provide, so she made the only play she’d had. Had her decision landed the guy in the hospital?

  “Nothing’s black and white in this job,” she said.

  “That’s why we have ulcers.” He finished his side salad, and as if on cue, the waitress brought his burger.

  An agent couldn’t afford to connect emotionally with the people he or she apprehended. She’d learned that her first week, so she didn’t say what she was thinking: Rural smuggling schemes preyed on the poor, leaving the Kenny Radkes of the world, the mules, to take the big risks—and, in turn, the big falls.

  Smith had surely read Radke’s file. He would know Radke’s story. A trembling hand as he passed his license and registration to a Customs officer led to his two-year stint at Warren. But she had grown up with Radke, knew he’d been motherless, had been raised by his old man, the town drun
k. She sympathized with Radke, maybe even empathized with him. And still she’d held the urine test over his head.

  “Radke’s into something,” she said. “He got beaten up for a reason. Someone doesn’t like him talking to me.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s something else completely,” Smith said, ate more of his burger, and swallowed. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, I brought a bag of clothes for the little girl you found.”

  “Great. Just leave them on my desk.”

  He nodded. “What do you like to do when you’re not working?”

  “Between work and Tommy, I don’t do much, honestly. I go to the dojo whenever I can.”

  “Black belt?”

  “Yeah.” She was nearly finished with her salad.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “if maybe … we could have dinner sometime?”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” She smiled at him.

  “I was thinking …”

  “Scott, I know what you meant. I was kidding. I’d love to.”

  “Really?” He sounded like an eighth grader asking his first crush to the movies.

  “I need to get in the field.” She stood and put ten dollars on the table. “Call anytime.”

  As she left the diner, she thought of Scott Smith’s eyes and also of being able to tell her mother she had a date. She wondered which she liked more.

  She climbed behind the wheel and slid the Expedition into gear. Before she could pull out, Stan Jackman pulled up beside her, jumped out, and tapped on her window. She rolled it down and felt the burst of cold air.

  “I got this for Tommy.” He held up a glossy Red Sox folder. “I was at Wal-Mart, saw it, and figured he could use it. My grandson has one for school papers. Thought Tommy might like it.”

  The folder had a photo of Red Sox slugger David Ortiz hitting a ball, the crowd behind him going wild.

  “That’s awfully nice,” Peyton said. “Thanks very much.”

  He waved that off, eyes dropping to examine his feet. “I try to stay busy.”

  Since he’d invited her and Tommy to dinner during her second week at Garrett Station—where they’d both met Karen, who by then was clearly fighting for her life but willed the strength to prepare a stunning meal—Jackman had treated her like something of a surrogate daughter and Tommy like a grandchild.

  “Heading home?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I guess.” He moved the toe of his right boot, crushing a fragment of ice.

  “You okay?”

  “Some days,” he said, “I don’t like going home. Karen is everywhere. She decorated that whole house. Put her heart and soul into it, you know? Everything was always ‘just so.’ Me, I’m pretty much a slob …”

  Peyton couldn’t help but grin.

  “But her, she was a perfectionist. And the house, that was her thing …” His voice trailed off. “Never be anyone like her. She was my once-in-a-lifetime.”

  “You’re going to make me cry,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’re a romantic. Wish I was.”

  “The divorce will pass, you’ll move on.”

  “It’s been three years,” she said. “And who said anything about my divorce?”

  Jackman smiled. “You act just like my daughter,” he said.

  “Ever think of buying a new house?” Peyton said. “A fresh start and all that?”

  “I don’t want to leave that house. It would be too final, like leaving Karen behind.”

  “My mother had a tough time the first year after Dad died.”

  Jackman’s eyes left Peyton’s. “Hope to Christ your mother didn’t go through this.”

  “Stan, my sister and I grab a bite once in a while. Why don’t you join us sometime?”

  “You don’t want some old geezer slowing you down.”

  “Slowing me down? I had to buy you a soda at the range last week.”

  He turned back to her. “I beat you one time in a best-of-ten.”

  “You beat me when the money was on the line.”

  “We fired five hundred rounds, Peyton. I was terrible. Stop trying to make me feel better.”

  Agents tested four times a year, firing three hundred to five hundred rounds with a service pistol, a carbine, and a twelve-gauge. Border patrol agents were generally considered the elite marksmen among law-enforcement personnel. Jackman had nearly failed to qualify for the first time in his career.

  “You’ve got a good heart.” He smiled. “Just like my daughter. Tell your sister I’ll buy lunch.” He turned and walked away, shoulders slumped.

  TEN

  HEWITT WANTED SEISMIC MOTIONS sensors in the ground.

  The problem was they were a bitch to install once the ground was frozen. But at just after midnight, light snow was falling steadily. It softened the ground a little but also meant she’d have to bring a broom (or use a pine-tree branch) to sweep over her tracks upon returning to the truck, a skill she’d perfected in the desert sand in Texas.

  With a hands-free headlamp strapped to her cap, she plunged her shovel into the earth. The headlamp’s beam jolted as she drove the shovel’s blade six inches into the ground. In ten minutes, her hands were sore.

  The sensors looked like gadgets Tommy would rig up—cylindrical units like coffee tins and square plastic boxes. The cylinder was the motion detector. Its findings went to the box, which transmitted the data. By 1 a.m., Peyton had three units surrounding the area where the baby had been discovered.

  She put her shovel in the back of the Expedition and climbed behind the wheel. She didn’t bother to start the engine because she didn’t need the heater. Beneath the Kevlar vest, her T-shirt was soaked from the workout. Scattered flurries died against the windshield. She used night-vision goggles to conduct a visual sweep of the landscape.

  Nothing but fallen maple leafs blowing to and fro across the dirt field like discarded plastic wrappers. Thirty yards away, she saw two red eyes a foot off the ground. The animal’s outline told her it was either a raccoon or a large fox. A raccoon, when threatened or cornered, could kill a much larger dog, its claws and teeth perfect complements to its ornery disposition. She was glad to be in the truck.

  She set the goggles aside, grabbed her Nalgene water bottle, and checked the radio. All quiet there.

  The previous night, this same field had been barren. This night, the field was covered with fresh snow, which would make hiking treacherous. But the risk of another twisted ankle was worth it because an unsullied white blanket made tracking easier. El Paso’s deserts, despite high winds that covered tracks, had proven easier than northern Maine’s frozen tundra in regards to reading and aging prints. Distinguishing an hour-old frozen track from one three days old took years of experience.

  Sweating from digging holes, she finished her water. She knew she’d have to pee within the hour. But she was still tired. She reached behind her, grabbed her Stanley thermos, and poured a cup of Starbucks she’d brewed in the office pot. Her career had taught her to enjoy solitude. She could sit, maintaining stoic vigilance, for hours. Peyton leaned back in her seat and scanned the field once more. Still nothing.

  Something about the meeting with Hewitt, Leo Miller, and Susan Perry tugged at her. The baby looked Hispanic, and the swaying roadside woman spoke Spanish. So the question had been raised: Was the young woman the baby’s mother?

  Racial profiling?

  In El Paso, if she stopped a car and men fled, profiling had nothing to do with the ensuing foot chase. Was this scenario different? The majority of Maine’s population, as Kenny Radke had annoyingly indicated, was overwhelmingly Anglo. Any assumption that the young woman and baby were linked was based on location. They had been discovered within a quarter-mile radius of one another, after all. But she couldn’t deny that the assumption was also based on assumed ethnicity. And that assumption was based on skin color.

  Could racial profiling be more prevalent on the northern border? The coffee bu
rned her stomach. She considered a more frightening question: Was there any way around it?

  Peyton shifted her gaze from the field to the river. The water was calm. Her mother had said her sister had called earlier that evening. At breakfast, Elise had been unwilling to discuss what was bothering her—perhaps she wanted to get it off her chest now. Peyton had a feeling that whatever was bothering Elise had to do with Jonathan, who had glared at her when she’d left the diner. What had that been about?

  She checked the volume on the radio, a large black rectangle where the console in a standard Ford Expedition was located. Red lights stared at her, deadpan: dead air.

  She put the plastic cup down, slid the Expedition into reverse, and drove out on Smythe Road, her mind running to Bill Henderson, owner of Henderson Farms, who hired migrant workers to help with the annual harvest. She could leave the day shift gang an email suggesting someone contact Bill. It might lead to a line on her swaying woman.

  Heading south on Route 1 at forty-five miles per hour, she saw sparse traffic. Garrett wasn’t exactly a “city that didn’t sleep.” She saw one van, but it had Maine plates—not the New Brunswick tags on the Aerostar into which the wandering woman had been pulled.

  Headlights appeared at the crest of a small hill. Even from a hundred yards with no radar, she could tell the small compact was exceeding the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit as it cruised past her in the opposite direction.

  She tapped her brake lights to see the driver’s reaction.

  The Dodge Neon swerved, momentarily crossing the yellow dividing line, and quickly slowed.

  Someone was either nervous or drunk. She swung the Expedition around, hitting the flashers.

  When the driver of the Neon accelerated, the chase was on.

  ELEVEN

  PEYTON WAS HITTING SEVENTY-FIVE miles an hour in a matter of seconds, and the Neon was no match for the Expedition’s horsepower.

  Route 1 weaved from one rural community to the next with few streetlights. The Expedition’s high beams slashed the darkness, illuminating the Neon’s license plate.

  With one hand on the wheel, Peyton took the radio and notified the stationhouse of where she was and what she was doing. As she read the plate number, the Neon’s brake lights twitched and brightened, the car skidding to a stop. All four doors burst opened. Four men leaped from the vehicle and started across an adjacent potato field.