Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel) (2 page)

“Don’t bother,” he said. “See me when you get to the office.”

When Hewitt hung up, she sat alone in the dark SUV, humiliated.

Brown eyes stared up at her. Whispering soothing words to the baby failed to ease her frustration. She was no rookie. She was thirty-three, an eleven-year veteran. She’d worked Operation Hold the Line in El Paso, had been promoted there, and had not returned to her hometown only to receive false tips and be embarrassed in front of her boss. After her successes in El Paso, she would damn well thrive in tiny Garrett, Maine, which had a population totaling all of 1,100.

For God’s sake then, how, despite night-vision goggles and binoculars, had she failed to see someone place a white sack in a dirt-covered field?

The sun was now an orange splash on the distant horizon. If the tip was legit, the drop had been rescheduled. She’d talk to Kenny Radke about that.

A second Expedition pulled in. Agents Scott Smith and Miguel Jimenez climbed out. Jimenez got into her passenger’s seat.

She pressed her index finger to her lips and pointed to the baby.

“What’s that?”

“What’s it look like?”

“That’s why you called for the ambulance?” Jimenez was the youngest agent at Garrett Station, the son of Mexican immigrants, a devout Catholic, and native Spanish speaker.

She nodded. “I found her.”

Smith stood in front of the truck, binoculars out, scanning the land below.

“What kind of asshole leaves a baby in a potato field?” Jimenez said.

“No idea.”

“Well, I’m almost jealous. This is more action than I’ve had on a night shift in months. Place is dead compared to Brownsville. Is it hurt?”

“
It
? If I thought she was hurt, I’d have rushed her to the hospital. She wasn’t outside for long.”

Despite hailing from different parts of the country, Peyton knew Miguel’s path had been similar to hers. The Border Patrol was a way out for each. She’d served obligatory time in El Paso and returned home to the northern border; Jimenez, an El Paso native, put in for a transfer to Garrett Station to gain experience on the northern border. Like her, he was a career agent, the US Department of Homeland Security’s eagle tattooed on his right forearm.

Leaning forward, he studied the baby and looked up, surprised.

“She’s Hispanic.”

“Possibly. Dark complexion. Could be French. Could be lots of ethnicities. But migrants do work the potato harvest. Most leave afterward.”

“Not all,” he said. “Not this year.”

“She’s not necessarily with them, Miguel.”

The SUV’s defrost hissed against the windshield.

“Get an ID on the guy who left her?”

She hesitated, but it was futile. The story would get out, sooner or later—her BC Bud tip had been bullshit, and Peyton Cote had been left holding a baby. She was the new agent, having returned to her hometown only four months earlier. But newbie status wouldn’t save her. She knew diapers and teething rings would find their way to her locker.

“I got nothing. No ID, no bust.”

The ambulance pulled in behind them. They both got out, and she approached the EMTs. She could smell the acidic odor from the nearby potato processing plant.

Smith smirked. “Starting an orphanage, Peyton?”

“Keep smiling,” she said, “and you’ll see how my steel toe feels against your right testicle.”

“Jesus, relax.”

“She’s a black belt,” Jimenez warned, “with a temper.”

Peyton carefully handed the baby girl to the EMT and answered several questions as Jimenez and Smith departed. When the ambulance left, she returned to her SUV.

Beyond the field, the Crystal View River looked dark and cold. She knew this region—its topography, people, and culture—well. Mornings like this reminded her of that—and of her childhood. The loss of her family’s farm years ago had meant the end of life as she knew it—carefree days that began with her mother’s homemade
ployes
, and afternoons spent among the century-old maples. And with the farm went her father’s dignity, “homemaker” status for her mother, and a debt-free college education for herself. The Border Patrol had been a lifeline she’d grabbed onto with both hands. She’d built more than just a career since joining; she’d built a life. Now she had a son to take care of. Failures like this one were not an option.

She thought she’d seen everything in El Paso, but how long had the tiny girl lain inside a pillowcase on the frozen ground? To die? Or had it been intended for Peyton to find her?

The wind was picking up, and wet snowflakes began to fall. In the distance, beyond the blue spruce, a series of large waves crashed unexpectedly against the river’s shoreline.

Peyton refocused the binoculars on the river but saw nothing. If there had been a boat there, she’d missed that, too.

TWO

B
ORDER PATROL AGENTS WORK
odd hours. Eight-hour shifts are often scheduled around station needs (Garrett Station had fewer than thirty agents) and even the angle of the sun (it’s easier to sign cut and spot footprints when the sun is low). In Garrett, Maine, which was actually farther north than Montreal, the sun rose at 4:30 a.m. in the summer and set around 4 p.m. during the shortest winter days. So shifts were far from regular. Peyton, though, liked the irregularity of Garrett Station. She found it to be informal. All agents—even Mike Hewitt, the boss—were on a first-name basis.

Peyton returned to Garrett Station at 5:30 a.m., climbed out of the Expedition, and slung her duffle over her shoulder. It contained night-vision goggles, binoculars, PowerBars, and area maps. A gunmetal sky now spit heavy wet flakes.

Stan Jackman, an agent nearing the mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven, strolled toward her.

“Just heard the good news.” He extended his hand.

Flurries hit his thinning hair and melted against his pate.

Peyton shook his hand. She couldn’t look at him without thinking of his wife of thirty-four years, Karen, whom she’d met only once. Karen had recently lost her brief battle to pancreatic cancer. Nor could Peyton help noticing his sudden weight gain and the red capillary lines associated with drinking that now mapped Stan’s nose.

“My shift was a disaster,” she said.

“Congratulations on BORSTAR,” he said. “Quite an honor.”

The wind and falling slush were harbingers of a nasty winter, and in this place, where solitude and desolation spawned an us-against-the-world mentality and wind chills pushed minus fifty, harbingers were taken seriously.

“This place makes Minnesota seem warm.” He shook his head. “I’m heading home. Anyhow, it’s great to have someone from Garrett Station get the nod.”

The US Border Patrol’s Search, Trauma, and Rescue (BORSTAR) team was a specialized unit comprised of volunteer agents selected from a nationwide pool to undergo rigorous fitness, medical, and rescue training. They were an all-star squad of sorts, traveling wherever necessary to find and save agents and civilians. Peyton had been surprised at her selection, even more so when she’d discovered it was her boss of only four months, Mike Hewitt, who’d made the nomination.

She knew Hewitt was waiting for her. And she knew he wanted to speak to her about Kenny Radke. She looked down at the slush-covered pavement and started toward the stationhouse door.

“Are we the DEA or the Border Patrol?”

She had just taken her seat across the desk from Hewitt, who wasted no time.

“Or, shit,” he continued, “maybe we’re a daycare, because I have the Department of Health and Human Services on line one.”

He hadn’t bothered to close his office door. Peyton knew the receptionist and the agents scattered around the bullpen would be enjoying this.

“Am I getting warm?”

She’d learned long ago that little good comes from answering rhetorical questions, so she let these pass and sat perfectly still.

Hewitt drank coffee, swallowed without grimacing—a feat that, to Peyton, indicated the guy either lacked taste buds or could chew nails, because few things in this world were as bad as stationhouse coffee. A silver oak leaf was pinned to his lapel, designating him PAIC, but it was Hewitt’s NAVY SEAL mug that spoke to who he was: desk always immaculate; in his early forties, he was trim and fit. Desk job or not, the guy was still capable of running down even the quickest border jumper.

And right now his scowl told her he was ready for a fight.

“Care to explain what the hell happened tonight?”

“I found a baby.”

“Peyton, don’t push my buttons.”

“That’s what happened, Mike.”

Hewitt leaned back in his swivel chair.

“Your old boss told me you are driven. I know it can be tough being in the ten percent, but don’t get a chip on your shoulder.”

“You think I have a chip on my shoulder because I’m a female agent?”

Hewitt didn’t speak.

“I call it determination,” she said.

“Fine. You insisted Kenny Radke’s tip was legit. So, against what the guy’s rap sheet told me and what my gut said, I let you chase it down. I should’ve insisted you hand it over to Maine DEA and let
them
look like fools. Now we have a meeting with DHHS and the state police. At best, this was Attempted Homicide and state police take it over. At worst, you stumbled onto something larger, and this is going to be a shit storm.”

There was no sound from the bullpen. She knew the desk jockeys were all ears. She stood and closed the door.

“I grew up here, went to school with Radke. I know his tendencies, and I know for sure that if it can be smoked and is within a fifty-mile radius, he knows about it. I still think something’s going on down there.”

He pointed to her chair, and she sat down again.

“Look, Peyton, in El Paso you could be a one-person team every shift because something happens just about every shift. The northern border is different. Teamwork is more prevalent here. Sometimes you work for weeks with nothing to show for it. I’d like to see this station make a big bust, too. But not by gambling on the likes of Kenny Radke.”

“I understand the differences, and I’m a team player.”

“You sure about that? When I interviewed you for this position, you told me you wanted to move back to Garrett for your son. I understood that to mean you knew what you were giving up. If you need the adrenaline rush, this might not work out.”

She thought about Tommy, who’d be waking soon. In the four months since returning to Garrett, Peyton had yet to find a suitable house to purchase. So she and Tommy were staying with her mother, Lois, who conveniently provided childcare. Convenient or not, staying with her mother was getting old. Even more frustrating than life in her mother’s guestroom, Peyton wanted to be the one to make Tommy breakfast. But it wasn’t to be. Not this morning. She hated it when her roles—as single parent and agent—conflicted.

She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “I got a bad tip. That’s all this is, Mike. Don’t read anything more into it.”

But she knew he was right on at least one thing: she had rolled the dice on Kenny Radke, and he’d burned her, a rookie mistake.

Informants in this town of 1,100 were about as easy to come by as a heat rash in January. And who should she find creeping down a dirt road near the border in a rusted Aerostar van the previous week? Kenny Radke, with a dime bag in his glove compartment. No way she’d confess to using the dime bag as leverage with Radke.

She wasn’t an adrenaline junkie. Radke had just burned her. And she’d discuss that with him very shortly.

She leaned back in her seat and exhaled. “DEA says BC Bud is being grown in Youngsville, New Brunswick. Entering here, going to Boston and New York.”

“Straight down I-95?”

She shrugged. “Possibly. Know how many logging trucks and potato trucks go down I-95 each day? I was thinking maybe Radke told someone, and they changed plans.”

“And left a baby instead? On the coldest night of the fall? Someone must have left her to freeze.”

“I don’t think so. If they wanted her to freeze, why leave her where someone would see her? Why not just throw her in the river or leave her behind a tree?”

“Jesus, that’s bleak.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.” Her eyes left Hewitt’s. Through the window, the sun was rising over the Crystal View River. The dark water looked cold. “In El Paso one time I saw a mother let her baby drown so she could make it across the Rio Grande. I think someone wanted me to find this little girl.”

“You, in particular?”

“I was there. I walked the perimeter once, never saw the baby. Someone sure timed it perfectly.”

“So whoever left her was watching you, which explains how you didn’t see the drop. Did you use motion sensors?”

She shifted in her chair. He wouldn’t like the answer. “I had night-vision goggles, and I was sign-cutting on foot.” Her ability to sign-cut—reading the landscape, instinctively noting what should and should not be there, spotting tracks and aging them—had been a big reason for her BORSTAR accolade.

“We have those detectors for a reason, Peyton. They cost a damned fortune. Anything on the wire to help us ID the baby? Missing persons reports? Anything?”

“Not yet. I talked to the state police and DHHS. It happened so close to the border that, if it’s okay with you, we’re going to be in on it, too.”

“Which explains why they’re both calling me.”

“
Something
is going on near the river,” she said. “That’s our border. We need to know what.”

When she left Hewitt’s office and crossed the bullpen, Scott Smith looked up from typing. “Anything I can do for the baby?”

“You busting my chops again, Scott?”

“No. I’m dead serious. And I’m sorry about the ‘orphanage’ comment earlier. I was trying to be funny.”

She stopped walking. “Apology accepted. I probably overreacted.”

“My brother, in Caribou, had twin girls last year,” he said. “They have a bassinet and clothes for a little girl.”

Like her, Smith was divorced. He’d been there only six months. Another newcomer trying to make a friend?

“Thanks, Scott. Maybe we could take up a collection for her. Wherever she ends up, she’ll need those things.”