Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel)

by D. A. Keeley

  “I was. Why do you ask?”

  “Not the state police?”

  “I heard the call come over the radio. I was nearby, so I headed over.”

  “What was Nancy like when you got there?”

  “Hysterical.”

  “I can’t believe the husband didn’t come home.”

  “You haven’t met him. I don’t think he wanted a baby in the house. I don’t think he even cares what happens to her.”

  “Nice. His wife makes it seem like they both love taking in kids.”

  “What’s Hewitt say about the whole thing?” he asked.

  “Hewitt?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “didn’t you go in his office when you got to the stationhouse? Just figured he had some master plan to find her.”

  Had Scott Smith been watching her at the station? Or was it an innocent observation? She felt uneasy and only shrugged.

  His phone was on the tabletop and vibrated. He looked at the number and said, “I need to take this.”

  She watched him exit the diner and stand in the parking lot, talking. When he returned, her salad was gone.

  “I need to do a couple interviews,” she said and left money to cover half the bill on the table.

  “Can I call you?” he said.

  “Ah, yeah, sure,” she said and walked out, wondering why he hadn’t taken the call in front of her.

  After all, she had recognized the number.

  Peyton entered Garrett High School and moved through the corridors she’d paced restlessly as a teen. At 5:15 on a Tuesday, few people were there, but she knew that regardless of how the outside world changes, teenagers remain somehow the same, generation after generation. If she visited these hallways at 9 a.m., she’d see the very same bored, doodling kids she’d known fifteen years earlier.

  Thomas Simpson was waiting for her and stood when he entered his office and shook her hand. He seemed young to be a principal. When Peyton and Pete Dye had been sent to this very office, Michael Garnett presided. Now that was how a principal should look: Garnett had a jaw you could split wood on and eyes that had seen everything and could burn a hole in your forehead.

  By contrast, Simpson was thin, pallid, and had blond hair. He didn’t look thirty and seemed way too happy-go-lucky to frighten teens.

  Peyton sat across the desk from him, skipped the small talk, and told him exactly what she wanted.

  “A list of where every student in the school was born?” he re-

  peated.

  She smiled encouragingly.

  Peyton’s “hour or two” of OT had quickly become three, but that was how any investigation went. You pulled the string and kept pulling until you found the spool. And her time was far from wasted. Even her guest-lecturer spot had yielded something: she’d learned Jonathan Hurley, her soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law, had been at the card game. She’d met a Boston attorney outside Reilly’s office door who fit Radke’s vague description of the mysterious man from the poker game and who’d spoken of a delivery near the river. But she hadn’t gotten the lawyer’s name.

  Now she was looking into the unforeseen aspect of all this—the baby and the Spanish-speaking young woman who’d asked about her.

  “Every student in the school?” Simpson shook his head.

  “For the past three years. I’m looking for a Spanish-speaking young woman. She’s somewhere between seventeen and twenty. I figured if anyone knew her, it would be someone here. The girl is part of an ongoing investigation.”

  Peyton glanced out the window. The high school’s varsity boys were ambling off the soccer field. Tommy’s game started under the lights in less than an hour. Jeff’s “I wouldn’t dare” comment not withstanding, she had to be there in case he wasn’t.

  Simpson’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t tell me more than that?”

  She smiled politely. “Sorry.”

  “How can I help you if I don’t know what you want?” He drank from a coffee mug with MAINE POTATO GROWERS on the side.

  “I’m asking if any female student attending the school in the last three years was a native Spanish speaker. Maybe the daughter of a migrant worker. She’d be anywhere from seventeen to twenty-one now.”

  Simpson leaned back in his leather chair and clasped his hands behind his head. Pictures of his family were on his desk. Two daughters younger than Tommy were dressed in pink dresses with pink bows in their hair. There was a small model of a green-and-yellow John Deere tractor as well.

  “No one fits that description this year. There were two girls from Guadalajara last year. Fathers were migrants.”

  “Did they leave after the harvest season?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll get you the attendance records.”

  “Names?”

  “Lopez and Rodriguez. Can’t recall first names off the top of my head, but the list will tell you.”

  Once she had names, she could check I-551 records indicating Green Card status, review DSP-150s, and even Immigrant Visa records. If all else failed, she could run their names at area hospitals. Even see if they had Social Security numbers and then run a criminal records check.

  “See them this year?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not even outside school?”

  “No. Sorry. Have you tried Social Services?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I’ll get the list. Do you have a number where I can fax it?”

  She took out a business card and handed it to him.

  “A Border Patrol agent with a business card?” He grinned.

  “Hard to imagine,” she said, “but they even give us cell phones now. Mind if I talk to a couple teachers? After hours, of course.”

  “A teacher on the premise after hours?” He smiled as if to say, Good luck finding one. “That would be fine.” He walked her to the door.

  She heard a basketball bouncing and paused outside the gym. Two girls were dressed for practice—the Lady Bobcats still wore red—and Peter Dye was showing one how to position the ball in her hand at the free-throw line. Pete Dye, history teacher and coach? And bartender and short-order cook? She shook her head, pulled the door open, and entered.

  “ … like it’s an egg,” Dye was saying, his back to Peyton as he spoke to the teen. “You want space between the ball and your palm. So hold it with the tips of your fingers. That’s how you take spin off the ball. You want it to hit the rim and die.”

  Peyton stopped behind him.

  Looking at the teen, Dye said over his shoulder, “Sorry, but the gym won’t be free until six.”

  “Put me in, coach.”

  Dye turned to see her and broke into a broad smile. He quickly regained his game face. “When you hit five in a row,” he said to the player, “hit the showers. That’s enough for one day.”

  He and Peyton walked to the sideline.

  “They finally let you out of detention?” She tapped his clipboard with her index finger.

  High school football had never been played in Aroostook County, a regional sacrifice made to honor the potato harvest, which in its salad days had seen the majority of teens dismissed from school for three weeks each fall to help on the family farm by picking potatoes. Now machines did most of the harvesting, but the tradition lived on, and football was still not played. The upshot was that high school basketball held near-Indiana-like status here.

  The gym had changed little since she’d captained the high school team more than a decade earlier. The floor had been resurfaced, but the ceiling still looked like a tattered warehouse roof, the paint on the metal beams peeling badly. Sounds and smells were the same: sneakers squawking on the hardwood floor, dry air smelling of rubber and perspiration. She spotted a banner—CLASS C STATE CHAMPIONS 1999—and smiled.

  “Your senior season, right?” Dye said, following her eyes.

  “We had a good team,” she said.

  “True,” he said. “And you should know I run detention now, Agent Cote. Are you here to watch the team?
Practice just ended. These kids needed some extra work.” He motioned to the handful of girls who remained.

  “Actually, I’m looking for information.” She caught his momentary frown.

  “Oh,” he said, “so you’re here on business.”

  He slapped his clipboard against his thigh absently, blond hair neatly combed, dark rings lining his eyes. She remembered his morning at the diner. Coaching on top of two jobs? No longer a hellion, he was working with kids. He looked tired but energized, the way an ER doctor does at the end of a twelve-hour shift—the look of one with a calling.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m trying to find out if there were any Hispanic girls at the school during the past two or three years. Any girls who spoke Spanish fluently.”

  “As in got an A in Spanish, or as in Spanish is their native lan-

  guage?”

  “Native language.”

  “You go to the office yet? They might have records listing stuff like that.”

  “I did. But I figured I’d ask someone on the front lines.”

  He thought for a moment, as Peyton watched the girl at the foul line heave an air ball.

  “There were two girls in classes I taught last year,” he said, “Socorro Lopez and Luz Rodriguez.”

  “That would make them how old?”

  “They were juniors. So seventeen, maybe eighteen.”

  Was that too young? She’d pegged her mystery woman for nineteen to twenty-one.

  He looked at the girl on the foul line. Another air ball. He frowned. “Haven’t seen either this year, though,” he said. “Might’ve been others in the school, but those were two kids I had whose parents were migrant workers.”

  “Did they leave school after the harvest last year?”

  “No. They stuck around.”

  “But didn’t return this year?”

  “Haven’t seen them. But I wasn’t looking either. I have a hundred and seventy-six students in five classes.”

  “Maybe they just changed schools.”

  He shrugged. “Could’ve wanted to work this year instead of going to school, simply dropped out. Or maybe they left the area.” He spread his hands.

  “Either of them pregnant?”

  “Pregnant?” He looked at her, then back to the girl on the foul line. “Not that I knew about.”

  She thought about that, then shifted gears. “Did you see my …

  rapid exit from the diner this morning?”

  Three girls went to the end line and started running suicides.

  “Couldn’t miss it,” he said. “I was hoping you’d roundhouse Jeff.”

  She grinned. “Did you see the young woman I followed?”

  “Sure.”

  “She’s not Lopez or Rodriguez?”

  “Nope. I don’t know the lady you chased personally. Only saw her in the bar a couple times last summer.”

  “You’ve seen her before?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “At the Tip of the Hat a couple times. I work there in the summer. What did she do, anyway?”

  “Ever spoken with her?”

  To the players sprinting, he said, “Just give me two, then call it a day. You’ve worked hard. Nice job today, ladies. Tomorrow, we’ll go over fast breaks and man-to-man coverage.”

  Peyton said, “Shouldn’t that be player-to-player coverage?”

  “I’m not PC.”

  “Have you spoken to the woman before?”

  “Just when she ordered soda. She never drinks, that’s why I remember her. Place is pretty much a beer crowd, and I tend bar.”

  She didn’t drink alcohol, Peyton mused, and she’d asked about the abandoned baby.

  “Does anyone check IDs?” she asked.

  “Listen, you’ve got to talk to the manager about that stuff.”

  “Pete, I’m not asking you about serving minors.”

  She thought back to her first encounter with the young woman. Video at the port of entry, less than two miles from the scene, revealed nothing. So the van hadn’t crossed the border. Was she residing locally? Or had she crossed illegally?

  “For the record,” he said, “I never have and never will serve minors. Way too much to lose. And I give a shit about kids. I wouldn’t do that.”

  He was offended, which she hadn’t intended. But she liked the passion in his voice. It said a lot about who Pete Dye had become.

  “I know you don’t serve minors, Pete. In fact,” she looked around, “I’m impressed as hell by how committed you are to kids.”

  He said nothing. She had a soccer game to get to—had to see if her ex-husband was as committed to his own child as Pete Dye was to his students.

  She was also awaiting information from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement regarding local farms employing migrants. She wanted to check the station’s documents against Immigrations’ papers for every migrant worker in Garrett. But she’d been an agent long enough to know searching for a paper trail would probably prove fruitless.

  “Anyhow, the lady must have ID,” Dye said, “because a guy cards everyone at the door.”

  “Who does that?”

  “Billy Dozier. When I’d see that lady there, she’d usually sit with a redheaded guy in a tweed sports jacket. But I really don’t think she’s in high school. We had three girls here who got pregnant last year. A school this size—that’s a lot. And everyone knows who they are. If the lady in the bar was in high school, I’d have known.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was pregnant last summer, too.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and his eyes narrowed. “Why are you looking at me like that? What did I say?”

  NINETEEN

  SOCCER MOMS WEAR DESIGNER jeans and capri pants, not forest-green, black boots, and S&W .40s clipped to their belts. So Peyton knew she looked out of place standing on the sideline at Tommy’s soccer game. But her appearance was not her concern. Tommy was. Jeff McComb, who’d promised to attend the game, was nowhere in sight.

  She spotted her mother in a canvas lawn chair in the middle of a long row of parents and approached.

  “Glad you could make it,” Lois said. “At least it’s not snowing.” Lois wore a fleece jacket and jeans and quickly turned back to the game. “Tommy keeps looking over here,” she said.

  “Has Jeff been here?”

  Lois shook her head.

  “Damn him,” Peyton said, then yelled encouragement to Tommy.

  It was a clear, cold autumn evening, already dark. In Texas, daylight had seemed to last well past dinner, even during winter. But the haze and pollution of El Paso had been startling after northern Maine’s crisp, clean air. Overhead, clouds moved like slow wisps of cotton. She watched Tommy, bundled in a long-sleeved Under Armour shirt beneath his jersey, struggle to keep up with the other kids, his face red as he kicked awkwardly at the ball. She thought

  of his cleats. White, unblemished, set out carefully to play in front

  of his father.

  Damn Jeff all to hell.

  “Your sister stopped by this morning.”

  Peyton looked at her mother. Throat constricting, she managed, “Oh, really? What did she have to say?”

  “She and Jonathan are ‘having difficulties.’ That’s all. Said she wouldn’t get into it with me, but that you’re her confidant. Glad you two are close. I’m only her mother, for God’s sake. What can’t she say to me?”

  Peyton didn’t answer.

  “I know what it is,” Lois said. “Jonathan wants to write his book, so he’s pressuring her to get a job. She doesn’t have a college degree. Quit to marry him. She was working at Subway in Boston after he got fired last year. He wants to stay home and write all day. I don’t like even listening to his mumbo-jumbo, let alone want to read it.”

  Peyton saw Scott Smith standing in the cluster of parents at the end of the field. At six-three, fit and trim, he stood out in jeans, black shoes, a barn jacket, and dark glasses.r />
  “Who’s that?” Lois said.

  “He’s an agent. Just moved here. He’s divorced. I’ve had lunch with him a couple times.”

  “I see why you would. If I was thirty years younger, I’d be down there talking to him.”

  “Mom.”

  “Actually, if I was ten years younger I might consider it. He have kids?”

  “A nephew.”

  “This is getting better and better.”

  “Mother, please.”

  “Fine.”

  Tommy kicked the ball to a player on his team, and Peyton yelled encouragement.

  “Is your sister getting divorced?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why can’t she tell me that?”

  “They’re just having problems, Mom.”

  “What are they fighting about, money?” Lois asked. “That was my advice when they got married: Never fight about money.”

  “I don’t think that’s it.”

  “What then?”

  The whistle blew, halting play. When Tommy looked over, Peyton waved enthusiastically.

  “Have fun, Tommy!”

  “Tommy told me Jeff promised to be here,” Lois said.

  “I’m not surprised he said that,” Peyton said, “or that he’s not here. He sent Tommy Grand Canyon postcards every week for a year, then cancelled the trip three days before they were supposed to go. He hasn’t changed.”

  “I hope he’s got a good excuse,” Lois said. “For Tommy’s sake.”

  “Peyton, I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  Both women turned to see Scott Smith.

  “Anything new on the baby?” he asked.

  “State police are looking for her.”

  “Not easy,” he said.

  “I’m Lois, Peyton’s very young mother.”

  He smiled.

  “Unbelievable,” Peyton muttered.

  “Which boy is your nephew?” Lois said.

  “How did you know I had a nephew?” he asked, then looked at Peyton. “You saw me down there?”

  Peyton glared at Lois. “Yeah.”

  “He’s number nine.”

  “He’s scored two goals today,” Lois said.

  “Yeah. He’s a good little player. Your boy is a solid player, too. Hey, I was wondering, want to meet for coffee after the shift tonight?”