Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (35 page)

“It's not too late for that,” he said softly.

“It feels like it.” She sobbed.

David shook his head. “It's not.”

Kit stared at him.

David's jaw shifted. The sun glinted off of his hair. “I don't understand why you got hurt. Or why Bob died. Or why God allows bad things. But Kit, I figure I've got a choice . . .”

Her face grew hot.

“Trust God or walk away from him.” He looked up at her. “And I'm not walking away again.”

She swallowed. She had a huge lump in her throat. “I'm afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Afraid that . . . that Eric will be off the hook. That all the pain I went through will mean nothing.”

“You think God was OK with you getting hurt?”

“I don't know!”

“Well, can you trust him on that?”

A deep chill ran through her. She dropped her head into her hands.

“Let it go,” he said softly. “Just let it go. Connie's right. Let it go, and fight for joy.” He approached her, gently put his finger on her chin, and lifted her head. David must have seen something in her face, some change, because his jaw relaxed, and his lips parted, and he leaned down and kissed her, and their kiss was a sweet, sweet moment of surrender, like a leap into a rushing waterfall, or a ride on a cresting wave. He wrapped his arms around her, and as Kit relaxed into his embrace, she let go of the double weight that had threatened to drown her.

Rick Sellers watched the couple through his binoculars. “I wonder how long that's been going on?” he muttered to himself. Bringing the binoculars down, he turned and walked back to his truck. He started the engine and pulled slowly down the road, rolling over and over in his mind the implications of what he'd just seen. How could he use it?

The next week seemed like a blur. David made three more runs for Lopez without incident, unless you counted the toll it took on the nerves of all the people involved. Particularly Kit.

The team had gone over the photographs from the funeral, the license plate numbers Roger had collected, and photos taken by Jason. They found nothing out of the ordinary. Those present at the funeral seemed like normal island folk.

Kit consulted with Chris. “Maybe we'd better set up surveillance on Cienfuegos's house,” she suggested.

Chris shook his head. “Hard to do, as isolated as it is. Too labor intensive. We'll need more people than Steve can spare right now.”

Kit frowned. “Something going on?”

“The president is going to be in Norfolk tomorrow, christening a new aircraft carrier. So Steve has his hands full.”

“When did you talk to him?”

“We talk nearly every day,” Chris said.

What was the deal with that? Kit wondered. Was Chris reporting on her? She avoided talking to Steve as much as she could!

She swallowed her paranoia. “So, how do we move ahead?” she asked.

Later, David provided the answer. “Lopez told me Cienfuegos has a longer job for me. ‘No more tomatoes.' That's what he said,” he told her.

“What's he talking about?” Kit asked.

“I have no idea. I just know he asked me if I could drive to North Carolina. I asked him what part. He asked why, so I told him I have reasons not to go in parts of that state. That shut him up.” David shoved his hands in his pockets. “He said ‘Western.' That's where Hickory is. So, I think we're getting our break. I think this is it, Kit. I think we've got him.”

T
HE REST OF THE TEAM SEEMED THRILLED
. T
HEY CHEERED, EVEN, WHEN
K
IT
told them. Kit felt her anxiety sinking deeper into her soul.

David showed up at the offsite later to brief everyone. “He wants me to meet him and Cienfuegos at the tomato processing plant on Wednesday night at 9 o'clock.”

“Why there?” Chris asked.

“He said he'll have a new truck for me. It's got C&R's logo on the side, but it's not theirs. He said the owner is always busy on Wednesday nights, and won't notice the activity.”

“We have to provide perfect backup,” Kit said to Chris. “It's got to be perfect! And David, you've got to blow it off if they try to move the location.”

He nodded.

“Let's go, then.”

On the grounds of the tomato processing plant sat a small, one-story house. At one time, the plant manager had used it as a residence; now its main function was storage. Kit obtained permission from Sam Curtis to use it. He didn't ask for what,
and she didn't tell him, but she did verify he'd be in church on Wednesday evening.

They'd had just two nights to set up the place for surveillance. To minimize their presence, they worked in the middle of the night using flashlights. Jason planted bugs in the processing plant itself. He would also wire David, so they'd be alerted in case Lopez and Cienfuegos tried to force a change in locations as they had before.

Meanwhile, Kit and Chris worked out contingency plans. They calculated the manpower they'd need, decided how the arrest would go down if David was in immediate danger, and had even asked for a member of the AUSA's office to be on call if they had a question about the adequacy of the evidence they were getting. They knew if they acted prematurely, they'd blow the case; if they waited too long, they'd put David at unnecessary risk.

“Any chance they'll check David for wires?” Chris asked.

“They haven't been that careful lately.”

“Then certainly they won't check the building for bugs.”

“No way. Besides,” Kit said, “Jason swore they'd be invisible.”

“Oh, did I tell you?” Chris said. “Steve is coming to watch this go down.”

“No, you didn't tell me that. Why?”

“Why is he coming? The president is gone. I guess Steve has the time.”

Kit didn't necessarily buy that.

For the rest of the afternoon, Kit worried. Why was Steve coming? She was the case agent, so why hadn't he informed her?

He did inform her . . . when he was on the way. She kept her irritation suppressed, her conversation crisply professional. But she dreaded facing Steve. Why did he have to come up now?
Sometimes she wondered why he had hired her. Had he been told by some higher-up that he had to take her?

She checked her watch. It was a quarter to four. David would be here soon to get wired up. She would have to be brutally professional with him. Cold, even. Hopefully, she'd have a chance to explain. Hopefully, she'd . . .

Her cell phone rang. She looked at the number. It was from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ramsfeld?

Indeed. What did she want?

“Kit, I need to tell you something.” Ramsfeld's voice was almost a whisper. “He creeped me out, I'm telling you. Really creeped me out.”

“Who, Brenda?”

“Do you know that Coast Guard guy, Rick Sellers?”

“Yes.”

“He approached me at the beach. Started asking all kinds of questions about you—did I know you, had I seen you, that sort of thing. I felt like he was stalking you or something.”

“I assure you I haven't given him any encouragement.”

“It's weird. Actually, it's more than that. Like when he asked me about this other guy, David, that you're seeing.”

“What?”

“He seemed to know a lot about him, and a lot about you. Pressed me for what I knew. It was so weird. About your case, too. I'm telling you, he gave me the creeps.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing! Just that I knew you on a professional basis.” Ramsfeld sighed. “You know he's friends with Joe Rutgers?”

Joe Rutgers? That was curious. They didn't seem to be anything alike.

Kit tried to blow off that phone call. She had other things to worry about. Still, Brenda Ramsfeld's words bothered her. What was the connection between Rick Sellers and Joe
Rutgers? Friendship only? And why was Sellers asking all those questions about her? What was he up to? Was it merely a personal interest in her? Or something else?

And if Rutgers was the white man who asked Martinez to hold the backpack with meth in it, was Sellers connected to that?

A sudden thought crossed her mind. Sellers had initially failed to tell her about the Coast Guard's use of IOOS, the current tracking system that could have told her approximately where the beach child had been dropped into the ocean. Later, he apologized and filed the reports she'd asked him to file . . . he'd even given her copies. A call to the Coast Guard's Search and Rescue headquarters in Norfolk would confirm whether he was being up front about that.

Curious now, Kit tracked back through the information on her Bureau phone, found the number of the Norfolk Coast Guard Office, and called. She'd left the copies of the reports Rick had filed at the cottage in Chincoteague, but maybe, just maybe, they'd have a way of tracing them.

A bored receptionist transferred her to an enlisted Coast Guardsman who listened carefully to her questions. “I'll check the status of those reports, ma'am, and call you back,” he said.

The small house near the tomato processing plant would serve as a bunker from which she and her team would monitor David's meeting with Carlos Cienfuegos. She wondered why anyone driving by at 9:00 on a Wednesday night wouldn't wonder about activity in the plant. But David had said that Carlos had specifically picked that time, because he said the owner, Sam Curtis always attended church on Wednesday nights, and then he and his wife went with friends to a nearby
diner for a late dinner. The routine stayed the same, week after week, and Carlos was going to take advantage of it.

The moon was up, a beautiful half-moon, silvery and shrouded by wispy clouds. Kit could see it through the trees, and she thought about how even now it was shining down on her grandmother's house on Chincoteague, and on the waves on Assateague, and on Bob Stewart's grave. The moon had been shining down on the little beach child, too, as the ocean gently rocked him until it laid his body on Assateague. Would she ever find out who had killed him?