Back from the Brink Read online

  “Given similar circumstances,” he agreed reluctantly.

  “Make the call,” she said. “Redirect that party boat to my forensics lab.”

  She thought he would refuse. It was written all over his face, a stubbornness that went inches deep. And if he did, Nicole would have to exercise her command. She would have to take over the investigation, here and now, call in the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security to assist—she wasn’t sure which agency kept BP on the burner but would now make it her business to find out.

  “So be it,” he said. “I’ll redirect.” He called in the order while Nicole waited. “The tags on the party barge were stripped, but we have the serial number.”

  “And ownership?”

  “Still waiting on that. Going through DMV and the manufacturer. Seeing who can get back to us first. Definitely not a rental, though.”

  Even with their instant connect, without a tag number it could take the DMV hours to sift through the digital paperwork on recreational vehicles.

  Green called over an agent, a woman younger than Nicole and dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a hoodie. Her badge was on a chain she wore around her neck. The casual look, even her gender, would put people at ease. Green explained her reassignment to the canvassing of the lake homes, and she stepped forward, offering Nicole her hand.

  “Agent Leigh Calder,” she said.

  Nicole shook her hand. “We’re going solo, more ground covered that way.”

  The agent nodded, and Nicole allowed her to gather her things before meeting at the Yukon.

  “When they raise your skiff,” she told Green, “it’s mine. It goes directly to our forensics impound.”

  “Bullsh—”

  But Nicole shook her head. “One way or another, a crime has occurred out here. That’s my jurisdiction.”

  “We could argue that.”

  “Not successfully. As we stand, here and now, it’s me and you—” But it wouldn’t stay that way. There was protocol to follow, and she hoped someone within BP, bigger than Green, had already made the necessary calls. “You want me to change that, say the word.”

  Her words were as good as drawing a line in the sand. They both knew that. Green’s eyes flared at the challenge, but she stood her ground no problem. She could probably bend steel with her gaze. “You know as well as I do,” she said, “when rescue turns to recovery, the sheriff’s department becomes the leader of the pack.”

  They faced off like that for a good twenty seconds before Green conceded. “I know regulations.”

  “Then abide by them.”

  Nicole walked away. She needed a word with Ty before they left to canvass the lake homes. With Lars accompanying her, Ty and Arthur Sleeping Bear would have to hold things down on this end. Ty was a natural choice, already steeped as he was in the investigation. But he also had specific water and land skills that placed him above others. He knew the look of currents and what they meant, the feel and shape of land formations and what it took to scale them. She found Ty working his way through a grid search just inside the wooded copse. She explained the circumstances, the canvass, and made sure he knew their department was top dog.

  “You comfortable getting into it with BP?”

  “I’ll go rabid if I need to.”

  Nicole smiled. “Arthur knows to keep chain of evidence on our side. You may need to help him with that.”

  “No problem,” he assured her.

  She nodded. “How you holding up?”

  Ty’s gaze was unwavering and the circles under his eyes minimal, and for a moment Nicole allowed herself a flare of envy for the resilience of youth. She was beginning to fray around the edges from lack of sleep.

  “You know I’m good,” he said.

  “I know you’ve been up around the clock,” she returned. “And I need you at your best.” She glanced at her watch. “I should be back by five. I want you to go home then and sleep. Plan to be back here at seven AM tomorrow.”

  “I’m on patrol shift tomorrow.”

  But Nicole shook her head. “Not anymore. Not for the duration of this investigation.”

  He smiled big. He was exactly where he wanted to be, and if they had the budget for it, it was where he would stay.

  “You’ve got a friend in me.” His voice lifted with the tune, and Nicole smiled.

  “Keep me happy, friend,” she said, and walked off to pull a deputy who would join them for the door-to-door canvass.

  9

  There were more than two hundred houses, including cabins and vacation rentals, along the Lake Road. Nicole had arrived with Agent Calder five minutes before. Lars was already there and they were waiting on her deputy, who had stopped at Montana Highway Patrol to pick up an extra hand. The strength of the afternoon sun was waning as it moved ever westward. They had less than six hours of daylight left. Enough to finish the job.

  She had called MacAulay to check on him. “You get anymore sleep?”

  “I’m going to take a nap right now,” he’d promised.

  “Try to get a little more than that,” she suggested.

  “No can do,” he said. “I have fluids to collect from the ice man at five thirty.”

  “After that,” she said. “It’s back to bed.” She needed a ME who was well, who could tackle the bodies collecting in his morgue.

  “Meet you at midnight?” he said, and she could tell the NyQuil was already kicking in—MacAulay was a lightweight when it came to antihistamines and was a little loopy. “A romantic rendezvous, bedside of DOA number one.”

  Nicole chuckled. “I like you like this, MacAulay.”

  “Will you ever call me by my first name?” he asked.

  “Do you have one?”

  Of course he did. It was unforgettable. Morrison. Named after the front man of the Doors. Nicole had a hard time reconciling the two. MacAulay was responsible, steady, even predictable, and Jim Morrison had been anything but.

  “You know,” MacAulay continued, “they never did an autopsy on him. Shame, really. His COD forever a mystery.”

  “I thought it was a drug overdose,” Nicole said.

  “Yes, maybe. But we’ll never really know. Not for certain. And did he die in his bathtub, or was he moved there? Was it heroin? Was the drug tainted? Who was with him? He was a man who did not like to be alone …” His voice drifted. “So many stories told about his last day, the characters and plot changing …” He yawned and exhaled heavily. “I was born on the twelfth anniversary of his death, did you know that?”

  “You mentioned it,” she said.

  “Hard to live up to a reputation like that.”

  And Nicole burst out laughing. “You’re good for me, MacAulay.”

  “Well, in that regard, at least, I am succeeding. My namesake was known to please the ladies.”

  Nicole heard herself laugh with the memory, and that pulled Lars’s attention toward her.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You sharing?” he asked.

  Nicole felt her face warm and hated the reaction. She wanted to lower her chin and hide behind—anything—but wouldn’t allow herself. She met Lars’s gaze and said, “You probably wouldn’t find the humor in it.”

  “One of those relationship funnies,” Calder said.

  Lars didn’t know about Nicole’s romance with the ME. No one did at this point, except Jordan. While there was no code against such a relationship, she was an elected official and constantly aware of her vulnerability in that position. She was wrestling with the how and when to come out with the news, which was progress. Until a week ago, she’d refused to believe that it would ever come to that kind of permanency.

  “Let’s talk bodies,” Nicole suggested. “Because that’s the best of what we have.” That and the party barge, which didn’t fit the rest of the tangle. One of these things just doesn’t belong … and yet it was there, a piece of the puzzle.

  “How’s Doc going to do the autopsies?” Lars asked.

  “Divide and conquer,�
�� Nicole said. “He already removed samples from the placenta and sent them to the lab in Billings. He won’t go back to that until the autopsies are completed. First up is the GSW.”

  “Straightforward. That’ll take a couple of hours.”

  “He completed prelim on the vic already”—and the body had been free of tattoos and other deliberate blemishes—“but he wants to compare tissue from the body to the DNA in the placenta.”

  “Establishing a connection, if there is one.”

  “Tandy’s was a slow no,” Nicole said. The midwife had taken her time about it. “She pointed out similarities, and I think it’s worth a closer look.” Perhaps a familial connection between the baby’s father and the DOA. “The man from the lake requires special handling,” she continued. “A slow melt while evidence is collected through the process.”

  “Does he have the equipment here to do it?”

  “He says yes. What he needs is an assistant.”

  “Agreed.”

  “He’s reaching out to universities, hoping to get an intern or two.”

  “Good thinking,” Calder said. “Cheap labor in return for experience.”

  “But it will take time,” Lars said.

  Nicole placed another look at the budget on her mental to-do list. Living quarters and a stipend; how much could that run? And the county would be lucky to get such an arrangement.

  Her deputy drove up then, the MHP officer riding shotgun. Nicole had already divided up territory, and they stood in a circle around the map. She and Lars would take the older neighborhood, the houses with lake access. She was sending the others into the McMansions set farther back in the hills.

  “Three hours,” Nicole said. They couldn’t afford any more time than that. “If you get a hit, alert the rest of us.”

  * * *

  Nicole rolled her shirt sleeves up, but that gave her little comfort. She’d shed her jacket and changed from her boots to sneakers earlier, pulling from a store of clothing she kept in a box in the back of the Yukon. Still, sweat gathered at her hairline and curled around her ears. She was approaching her thirty-seventh house and spoke the address into her smartphone as she kept the list going. She had made anecdotal notes along the way as well, indicating the homes where there had been no answer and homes that had sheds and barns where a woman on the run could have taken refuge. For each of those, she had accompanied the owner to take a look inside. So far, nothing. Twenty minutes before, Ty had called. The BP skiff was on the trailer and on its way to forensics. They had gotten lucky there. The boat had settled on a sandbar some twenty feet below the surface of the lake. Divers had used inflatable scaffolding to lift the skiff and tow it to shore. Green had crowed about wanting possession but caved fairly quickly. Ty had been prepared to climb aboard and stake a physical claim and had seemed a little disappointed that it hadn’t been necessary.

  Nicole pocketed her phone and walked up the gravel driveway. There was a truck parked in front of the garage and a small compact beside that. The garage was detached, with a bank of dusty windows that reflected rather than allowed a peek inside. She walked past it and up the paved sidewalk to the front door.

  There was no answer to her knock. She waited a long moment, gazing at the front of the house. It was well kept, with new paint on the siding, a pale gray, and black shutters at the windows. Someone had begun spring gardening, turning over the soil in the beds and clearing them of weeds. The windows were open and the breeze stirred the curtains. The mail hadn’t been collected. A grocery ad and several white envelopes stuck out the top of the box. They’d used block letters on gold stickers to place their name, EMBRY, on the lid. It wasn’t yet four o’clock, and possible the owner was at work. She tried again, rapping hard on the solid wood door. When there was no answer, Nicole turned and walked over the pavers, stopping at the driveway. She opened her phone to make a note—someone would have to come back later—when she heard a soft female voice tangled in the breeze. Singing. Crooning almost, and in a language she didn’t recognize. She heard wind chimes too, a soft clattering of shells maybe, and beyond that, perhaps the mewing of a kitten. Only that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the cry of a baby, although Nicole’s mind played with the possibility. A newborn’s cry was distinctive but not feral.

  She followed the noise to the back of the house.

  A long expanse of yard, a wide porch with deck chairs, blueberry brambles framing a worn path to the lake. This was prime real estate, with pocket views of the water, and beyond that, some ninety miles distant, the Glaciers, still heavily dusted with snow.

  A rack with several kayaks was set up under the shade of a lodgepole pine. Beside it, an older man stood with his back to Nicole. He had a manual tree trimmer in hand and was leaning against the five-foot pole. Several cut limbs littered the grass. She noticed a phone’s docking station and speakers on the patio table. The song that had caught her attention emanated from it and was winding to a close.

  “Hello,” she called.

  There were twenty yards between them, but he heard her fine and turned, startled. The trimmer fell from his hand. He bent to pick it up as Nicole walked toward him.

  “Sheriff Cobain, Mr. Embry,” she said. “We’re going house-to-house.”

  He was upwards of sixty, with silver hair trimmed close and a compact stature that moved fluidly. He met her about halfway. “What for?”

  “Looking for a young woman and a newborn baby.”

  He took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Mostly, this is a wellness check,” Nicole said.

  “Sometimes you hear of a stolen baby.”

  “Not the case here,” Nicole assured him. “But needing medical attention.” And protection. But from what? Were the intruders after her traffickers? Or something else entirely? “And we’d like to ask her a few questions.”

  “Is this about the missing agents?”

  “There could be a connection.” She nodded toward the path. “That lead to a dock?”

  “Yes. We don’t put in as often. More when the grandkids come.”

  “Do you own a party barge, Mr. Embry?”

  He shook his head. “Been a long time since we had one of those.”

  “Have you noticed any unusual activity on the lake? Anything amiss?”

  “Nothing yet,” he said. “I’ve heard they’re coming. Immigrants. Mostly from Syria and Sudan. Can’t say I blame them.”

  Nicole nodded. “It’s a long walk from here to the border. And dangerous.”

  “About seven miles, if you can make the climb, get through the brush.”

  “I suspect a lot of them can’t,” she said.

  He held her gaze and nodded.

  “The missing agents,” he said. “You’re thinking illegals are involved?”

  “I think several passed through during the night and the agents were following.”

  Passing over Lake Maria cut down on time and visibility. Walking the road around the lake, even in the shadows of the trees, added two or more hours, exposure to the elements, and greater chance of discovery.

  “Even after last week’s drowning?”

  “Even then.” Freedom was worth the risk. Behind them, many undocumented aliens left death and sometimes worse.

  “The woman you’re looking for, is she an illegal?”

  “We don’t know.” She gave him the description, the dark hair and build, and told him the baby was a boy named Matthew.

  But he shook his head. “Haven’t seen them, but I haven’t been out of my yard yet today.”

  “You’ve been busy,” she said, nodding toward the garden beds. The ones back here had been tended to as well. “You do the yard work yourself?”

  “Most of it. Hire out twice a year to have the trees and bushes around the perimeter and lake path trimmed.” He planted his hands on his hips and looked up at the house. “Just finished up the painting last week. I hired someone to do the sanding; that’s the har
dest part. Didn’t care for the reach”—he nodded toward the peaked roof—“but I got a fresh coat on. Figure it’ll be the last time I have to do it.”

  “Mrs. Embry inside?”

  “No. She’s on a run into town. Grocery shopping and the like.”

  “Mind if I go down to the dock?”

  “Help yourself,” he said. “Okay if I stay up here? I was just about to take a break.”

  “No problem.”

  “You come back up, I’ll have iced tea on the table.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Embry, but I’ve got to move on. A lot of houses along the lake.”

  She moved toward the path but stopped and asked, “You have any animals, Mr. Embry?”

  “No. Our retriever passed a few years ago, and we haven’t had the heart for another just yet.”

  “Thought I heard some kittens,” she said.

  “There are a few of those around,” he said. “Hear them myself sometimes, out in the woods. Feral cats, they come into the yard, rumble around down by the lake too.”

  She nodded. Another song was playing, a throaty torch piece accompanied by piano and guitar.

  “What language is that, Mr. Embry?”

  “Arabic,” he said. “That’s Verdi’s Aida. Goes all the way back to 1871.”

  “Doesn’t sound like opera.” Which Nicole thought was more booming than crooning.

  “This is a modern version of Verdi,” he said. “I like it better than the classical.”

  “You have an interest in the culture?”

  “I lived in Cairo as a young man,” he said.

  The voice rose dramatically but was deep rather than soprano. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Calming, and powerful, and many things.”

  She turned and headed toward the dock.

  The path was hard-packed dirt, pale from use and the recent freeze. It was wide enough to fit two shoulder to shoulder, and dense foliage grew beside it. The leaves were full and vibrant shades of green with silver underbellies. Deciduous mixed with evergreen, the sudden, golden-tipped tamarack among the saskatoon, their white blooms just emerging. Spring was new. By summer, passersby would feel crowded by the growth, and Nicole could see why Embry had the way cut back. There was no fence line.