Back from the Brink Page 5

  He stripped the latex gloves from his hands and fished a new, sterile pair from a package in his box. “Grab a pair of these,” he instructed, “and hold the bag open for me.”

  Nicole did as instructed, stepping into what he called the halo—the area of importance around a victim or evidence he didn’t want contaminated, the fewer bodies inside it the better. She crouched beside him, holding the mouth of the bag open, and watched him slide his hands under the placenta. The organ shifted and conformed to the cradle he formed.

  “Lars has a body,” she said.

  “What do we know?” he asked as he slipped the placenta into the bag, sealed it, and stored it for travel.

  “Male, twenties.” Nicole stood while MacAulay gathered his tools and spoke a final note into his digital recorder. “I told him you’d be there inside an hour.”

  MacAulay nodded. “And so I will be.”

  5

  Tandy Longhorn rode to the crime scene with MacAulay. She’d left her truck there, but Nicole had told him she wanted the midwife to ride along for different reasons. She wasn’t ready yet to let Tandy loose. Depending on what they found at the home of the missing woman and baby, Nicole could have more questions for Tandy, and she hoped MacAulay might ease the way to getting some answers.

  The two of them rode in a county vehicle, a van fitted with skate brakes and a variety of hooks and compartments for tools MacAulay was just getting comfortable with. When it became clear that their vast county needed an ME, he had stepped up as a matter of duty. It had taken a while, three years in fact, for him to see his role as an important part of speaking for the victim. The science he practiced produced some of the strongest evidence that made it into the courtroom, and he liked that.

  “I appreciate the ride.”

  “You walked a long way.”

  “For an old woman?”

  “For an old woman through some dense tree cover and up and down some pretty steep slopes.”

  She nodded, and MacAulay turned his attention back to the road.

  “Do you always make house calls? I mean, before delivery?”

  “Almost never,” she said. “I prefer they come to me. I have a pretty good setup.”

  “You were a nurse,” he said.

  “Does that give me more credibility with you?”

  He thought about that. It was true. The more training a medical professional received, the better the outcomes. “Yes.”

  “Well, I still am. A nurse,” she clarified. “I keep up my state certs.”

  “I’ve been out to the reservation. I’ve seen your place.”

  “Surprised you?” There was challenge in her voice.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “New equipment. Some of it top-shelf.” Some of it better than what he had in his own office.

  “Grant money. It built us a new clinic, got us an X-ray machine, ultrasound, a mini lab even.”

  “You were never around when I was there.”

  “Oh, I was around,” she told him.

  He nodded. “I thought as much.”

  “Your sheriff comes around too,” she said. “Part of that community justice agreement.”

  “She keeps her word,” MacAulay said. Nicole believed in restorative justice and atonement. She believed the victim benefited as much as the perpetrator. And she believed tribal issues should be hashed out, as much as possible, on tribal grounds utilizing cultural norms. At this point, only capital cases committed on the reservation were moved to the courtroom.

  “So far.”

  He understood that Tandy’s caution was steeped in a history of betrayal, so he didn’t push further.

  “Who are we looking for?” he asked.

  “A woman not much older than a girl. Not from around here.”

  “You really don’t have a name?”

  “They paid cash,” she said.

  “But for your records,” he pressed.

  “Last name Peach.”

  “Let me guess, first name Georgia?”

  “I had a choice to make. Not the first time. Keep the girl healthy or cut her loose.”

  “So you gave her some prenatal vitamins and her next appointment,” he said, and nodded. He’d have done the same, if it came down to that.

  “You respect that,” she said.

  “I do.”

  The GPS spoke up then and suggested he take the next left turn, leaving the Lake Road behind. He followed the direction and then returned to their conversation.

  “But Georgia Peach? That’s not even trying.”

  “And I appreciate that. Bite my tongue every time I get a Smith or Jones.”

  “Is she healthy?”

  Tandy nodded. “She worked at it. She wrote things down, what she ate, any questions she had, and she sat in my office and opened that little book and asked every one of them every which way until she got the answers she needed, even if it meant she had to change up a few things.”

  “What things?”

  “Exercise,” Tandy offered. “She said she wasn’t much for it but started walking every day as soon as she knew there was a baby on the way. She was good on fruits but not veggies. She changed that too. A lot of people won’t do either.”

  “So she’s responsible,” he said.

  “More than most.”

  She turned and gazed out her window, and MacAulay caught her profile. The tension had eased from her mouth and forehead, but not the worry. Her lips trembled on what he suspected was a whispered prayer.

  “You like her.”

  “I like most of them,” she said, but then nodded. “Yes. She was determined to get things done right, up against odds that made that difficult.”

  They were still on pavement, but there was more gravel here, rising from the asphalt and pinging against the undercarriage. The tree line thickened the farther they drove, and the homes were fewer and the distance between them greater. Eventually, just glimpses of the lake were visible.

  “What odds?”

  She shrugged. “I know nothing for sure, other than she was eating and exercising and they loved each other. That I saw with my own eyes. The rest is … a guess.”

  “It could help save her life,” MacAulay said. “And the life of her baby.”

  She sat with that a good two minutes before she turned toward him and said, “There’s been a lot of talk lately about the passage of friendlies seeking the border.”

  Friendlies. MacAulay liked the word. It fit better than UDAs and worse, the terms bandied about in the newspapers. Refugees from unstable countries seeking asylum.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I’ve heard it.”

  “I’ve seen some pictures, in the papers and on the news,” she said. “It’s possible the young lady is one of them.”

  “A friendly?”

  “Yes. She has the same coloring. An accent. She’s careful about that. I heard it only once, in her excitement, when we determined the baby’s gender. But it was like she fell back into her comfort zone, spoke several sentences, and they had a musical lilt to them that was real natural.”

  “The friendlies are from a lot of countries,” MacAulay said. He remembered that Tandy had first reported the woman as Caucasian, so that narrowed the possibilities.

  “Middle Eastern,” she said. “Beyond that—” She shrugged. “Geography was not my favorite study in school.”

  “And the baby’s father?”

  “American,” she said. “He served.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Semper fi,” she said. “It was tattooed on his bicep.”

  “I’ll pass that along,” he said.

  “I figured you would.” She lapsed into silence, but it was heavy with consideration and MacAulay waited for her. “Those are just a few things that stood out about them.”

  “What else?”

  “At first they arrived on foot. It was like that for months. When she was far enough along a ride became necessary, they switched it up a bit. A different car each ti
me. I noticed a rental tag on more than one of those. The one time she came without the father, she got a ride from a friend. An older woman I thought might be a grandmother to the baby. The woman came back for the exam, which I thought was pushy.” Tandy shrugged. “She was respectful of privacy and didn’t speak much, but she had a commanding presence and Georgia wasn’t entirely comfortable with her.”

  “Did she give her name?”

  “Georgia called her Lois.”

  “How did you know her address?” MacAulay asked. “I mean, since they gave you fake names.”

  “Prenatal vitamins,” Tandy said. “I was worried about her age. If she was under eighteen and still growing …”

  “Prescription,” MacAulay said, and nodded with approval. “And they always require a verifiable address.” An address that checked out in the computer system. Proven existence and no PO boxes.

  “Did you tell the sheriff any of this?”

  “Not much,” Tandy admitted.

  “You know I have to.”

  “I’m hoping you will.”

  “So he was military with health benefits they didn’t use,” he said. “So maybe they weren’t married.”

  “No rings,” Tandy said. “But maybe he left the service.”

  Maybe they were both running. He steered the van through a series of turns as the road curved.

  “It was right about here I noticed some cars parked last night.”

  He felt his eyebrows lift. “You tell the sheriff about that?”

  “She didn’t ask.”

  “You remember color, make, or model of the cars?”

  “I remember some of that. The only reason I don’t have a plate number is because there were no plates.”

  They rounded the last curve, and the house came into view. Nicole had already arrived and was standing at the foot of the porch steps, talking to her second-in-command. Crime-scene tape was stretched across the porch posts and the front door. Forensics techs were crouched in the driveway and garden beds casting plaster prints.

  Tandy sat forward and pointed west, to a break between a bramble of huckleberry brushes. “She went through there,” she said. “And the men followed.”

  6

  Lars stood on the porch, a shoulder propped against a support beam, and rolled the cuffs of his shirt back. Eleven fifteen and the sun was turning it up. The body inside would begin to bake, and if MacAulay didn’t arrive soon, the evidence would decompose at an accelerated rate. He’d opened an upstairs window, the only one with a screen intact. Wouldn’t do much to help the situation, but it would stir the air a little without letting in the bugs.

  He began a mental review of everything he knew.

  Another dead immigrant, this one murdered. Trussed and dropped into the lake to drown—a guess at this point, but he was fairly certain MacAulay would find water in the vic’s lungs.

  Missing BP agents with no sign of struggle.

  They would pay more attention to the agents, because they were life and the possibility of rescue. They were also the emotional pull. The dead bodies would stir more interest, because they were the biggest clues. They had connections that could speak, a network of complicated wiring that, fused together, could light up the entire investigation.

  A party barge adrift. They weren’t made to withstand conditions of ice and slush and didn’t even put in until the weather was warmer. This was perhaps the biggest anomaly. The barge was weird, so far out of the box and easily assigned a place low on the list of priorities, but following it could blow the case wide open. He’d seen it happen before, a small detail spring the lock.

  The guy upstairs. One shot between the eyes, point-blank. There were powder burns, and the skin at entry was seared and puckered. It had been an abrupt killing. Angle suggested the young man had been on his knees, the shooter standing. Hands and feet free, no indication of bondage. At least one accomplice to hold the victim in place. Nothing about the killing here similar to the murder on the lake.

  Sweat rolled from Lars’s hairline, and he loosened his tie. He watched the place where the road curved and the dense tree cover parted, and a few minutes later he heard wheels turning on the gravel road.

  * * *

  Nicole parked the Yukon behind Lars’s, well back from the house. There was a forensics van off to the side and two techs involved in a grid search through the gravel driveway, carrying casting kits—if they found prints, foot or tire, they would begin evidence collection. That was all the personnel Nicole could apply to this crime scene. Her deputies were spread thin over the lake and surrounding areas, and even with help from Border Patrol and Highway Patrol, there were wide-open spaces that needed plugging. Two missing agents and a woman and baby on the run, and somehow the jumbled pieces fit together.

  She climbed from the vehicle and nodded at Lars. Then she looked at the house, small and narrow but well maintained. The paint wasn’t more than a year or two old and the porch was sturdy. She scanned the small yard—square, the grass trimmed, a slatted fence at the back serving as a barrier between the cultivated yard and nature. An upstairs window would provide an unobstructed view of the lake, at least a mile southwest from where they stood. The earth between the house and the shore sloped sharply and was thick with bushes and fruited brambles, evergreen and aspen. It was a rough hike to the lake, and while she observed a few trailheads, she didn’t see an established path. Probably access to berry picking and what looked like an abandoned chicken coop, she thought.

  “MacAulay?” Lars asked. He left his jacket hanging over the porch railing and climbed down the stairs.

  “Right behind me.”

  The ME was a cautious driver. He never let urgency direct his moves. They both knew it could be five minutes, maybe ten, before he rolled on-site.

  Nicole nodded toward the house.

  “One between the eyes,” Lars said.

  “An execution?”

  “My guess,” he confirmed. “In an upstairs bedroom, occupied. Clothes hanging in the closet, toiletries on the dresser. Across from that bedroom is a nursery. Crib and a changing table. Nothing fancy, but clean. There’s a box of diapers and wipes, but the closet is empty and no dresser. Not yet.”

  “No baby clothes?”

  “A few sleepers and onesies. Not enough.”

  Nicole told him about Tandy, the placenta, the young woman on the run.

  “She was expecting a boy,” he said. “All blues and tans.”

  “That fits. Recent ultrasound confirmed it.”

  “Looks like entry was through a downstairs window,” Lars said, and nodded toward the porch, where a screen had been removed from the window and set against the siding. “Three windows upstairs. Two of those screens are out, and the piping for the rain gutter is hanging from the eaves. I think the occupant escaped through there.”

  “They trash the place?”

  “No. A table overturned in the living area. Pillows thrown to the floor in the bedroom. But no evidence of a search.”

  “They knew what they wanted.”

  “The girl,” he said.

  “Or the baby,” Nicole said, remembering Tandy’s words. But not both.

  “So she got out of the house, and then what?” She looked at the trees pressing on the fence, crowding the perimeter of the yard, framing the gravel driveway. “Took cover in the trees?”

  “I can show you where she entered.” He turned, and Nicole followed. Apparently the young woman had run across the driveway and pushed through a thicket of huckleberry bushes. Limbs were broken and dangling, marking her path of escape as well as the passing of the men who had chased her. Lars already had an evidence marker at the site.

  “We have a tracker on staff,” Nicole said. “In forensics.”

  “Yeah. Dan Carly.”

  “I’m going to pull him from the lake,” Nicole decided. “Have him start where she did.”

  “Good idea.”

  Nicole called it in.

  “He works alone,
you know,” Lars said. “No dogs. No partner.”

  No distraction. She knew where Lars was going with his comments. The woods were far from secured, and whoever had done this—chased a pregnant woman from her home, stayed on her heels through miles of thick vegetation—was still at large.

  “He’ll be armed.” Even forensics were required to train and pass a marksmanship test.

  She heard the approach of a vehicle, gravel churned by tires, and turned to watch the ME’s new van thunder around the curve in the road. New to them, anyway. Nicole had overseen the purchase, tracking down a suitable vehicle that was low on miles and didn’t break the budget. She’d found it in an online auction as the sheriff’s department in Seattle, Washington, was downsizing, and had it delivered. It had all the bells and whistles. More specialized equipment at MacAulay’s fingertips and no more using the county ambulance for the transport of bodies. Next, he needed an assistant, but there was no money for that in the budget. Not this year. MacAulay was talking about taking on a partner, or maybe an intern looking for rotation through family medicine. That would lighten the load in his family practice but not supply him with an extra set of hands in the ME’s office. That would make her proposed budget for the next year.

  She and Lars left the perimeter and walked toward the house. MacAulay stopped the van behind Nicole’s Yukon and stepped out of the vehicle. Through the windshield, Nicole could see the white hair of the midwife gathered around her face and connected for a moment with the woman’s level stare. Tandy Longhorn was holding back. Nicole was sure of it. The woman spoke in measured pieces. Nicole had watched it in tribal meetings. She imparted few words and preferred to spend as little time as necessary in conversation.

  “I’ve seen her before,” Lars said.

  “She runs the clinic on the reservation.”

  Lars nodded. “Tribal justice.”

  “Yes.” They had monthly meetings. On rare occasions, when there was a conflict in Nicole’s schedule, Lars filled in for her.

  The woman climbed easily from the truck. She wore a pair of Asics in a vibrant mix of sunset colors and had taken off her jacket and kept it folded over an arm. Behind her, MacAulay opened the back doors of the van and removed the gurney. He began loading it with the tools of his trade.