Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (36 page)

She felt anxious, ready for this operation to be over. If David could get Carlos to say on the wire that the “cargo” David was to pick up in North Carolina consisted of people, the AUSA said he'd go to the grand jury with it. Get an indictment. Push the case against Hector Lopez and Carlos Cienfuegos.

Then the games would begin. Turning one suspect against the other. Getting witnesses to confirm what they'd suspected. Negotiating plea bargains with some of the underlings so they could nail the suspects they really wanted to nail: Cienfuegos for trafficking, Lopez for Bob's murder. And someone for the murder of the beach child.

Tonight could be the beginning of the end of her case. Oh, Kit was ready!

“Everything's all set,” Chris said, coming up behind her. “It won't be long now.”

Absolutely, she thought. This had to end soon.

Jason and his recording equipment filled one small room in the house. He'd be monitoring the wire. The small transmitter on David was very short-range—the radio signal would only carry about one hundred feet. Plus, Jason had other bugs in the
building itself, cleverly hidden in light fixtures, heat ducts, and behind vents.

Roger stood right next to Jason. Kit would be listening with headphones, too, so she could give the go-ahead once they had what they needed. Chris and Steve and six other agents completed the team in the house.

Of necessity, the group had to keep the house completely dark, working only with tiny red lights. Any appearance of activity could alert Cienfuegos to their presence. They had to be very careful.

At Kit's insistence, they had practiced what they were going to do early on Sunday morning at the offsite. Although David had teased her, she was determined to do everything she could to make tonight go well. If that meant pushing the team, that was fine.

They'd even constructed a list of admissions they needed him to get out of Cienfuegos and/or Lopez. There were four of them, and she'd made David memorize them.

Kit looked at her watch: 8:55 p.m. Any moment now . . .

“All set?” Steve Gould appeared at her side. He had parked with the others, a mile away, at the old church, and Chris had driven him in, and hidden his car behind the house.

“Yes, sir.”

“Nervous?”

She swallowed. “We've worked very hard to get this right, but yes, sir, I am.”

He nodded.

Kit's bureau cell phone vibrated. She answered it. It was the Coast Guardsman from Norfolk.

“I don't see those reports, ma'am. I've looked everywhere.”

“Nothing on the body found on Assateague?”

“No, ma'am. Not a thing. I'll keep looking, but I went through all of our files. Nothing from CPO Sellers. Nothing at all.”

Had Sellers lied to her? Kit pursed her lips.

But there was no time to worry about Sellers now. Headlights in the drive leading up to the tomato processing plant announced someone was arriving. Kit trembled in anticipation.

David pulled his SUV into the parking lot of the tomato processing plant and parked it nose out, about thirty feet from the building. Staging his car for a quick getaway remained an old habit. He wiped his hands on his jeans, pulled the key out of the ignition, and stepped out of the car. He glanced toward the house where he knew Kit was working.

The night sky was nearly dark. A half-moon, shrouded by clouds, hung overhead. From somewhere, an owl hooted. Then David heard another engine and Lopez pulled up in a box truck with C&R's logo on the side. Was it Bob's truck, now disguised? He suspected it was.

“Buenos noches,”
Lopez said, leaving his vehicle. He grinned like a cat standing over a fresh kill, and David wondered for a second if he was being set up.

But no, he reassured himself, Lopez was just like that. He nodded in response, and breathed a silent prayer.
Please, get me through this one more meeting
. Lopez made his skin crawl. David touched the iPod in his pocket and prayed that the transmitter would not fail. That Jason would record what they needed. That tonight would be the last of it.

Cienfuegos arrived at 9:13 p.m., driving a pickup truck, not his Escalade. David had never seen it. He parked the truck, acknowledged David and Lopez, and then Cienfuegos
unlocked the door, and the three men walked in, their boots loud on the concrete floor. Cienfuegos wore jeans and a white Western shirt and black, alligator skin Western boots. Not the sort of thing you'd wear if you were going to do something messy, like kill somebody. That reassured David.

They walked through the building to the area where the tomatoes were sorted. There, Cienfuegos stopped, leaned up against a conveyor belt, and smiled. “So, Señor Castillo, you have been doing a good job?”

“You tell me,” David responded. The white cinderblock walls and strong overhead lighting made the sorting shed as bright as noonday. He smelled a faint odor of bleach. Stacks and stacks of empty packing boxes lined the walls. In the back corner, a faucet with a hose connected was dripping . . . dripping.

Cienfuegos kept talking. He had a gun in his belt. “You do a good job. You get the trucks back, you not get stopped, you not ask questions . . . we like that, eh, Hector?”

Hector Lopez grinned and spit off to the side.

“So now, we make you another offer. A bigger job. For bigger pay. How you think about that?”

“You tell me what it is. And I'll tell you if I'll do it.”

In the house, Jason pressed the audio headphones to his head, and concentrated on what he was hearing. The transmitter remained at full strength. He gave a thumbs-up to Kit, who nodded. She had just one headphone pressed to one ear, so she could hear Roger or Chris or Steve if they said something. Chris was doing the same thing. Together, they'd decide when they had enough information to make an arrest.

“My job is to help farmers get workers for their fields,” Cienfuegos said, continuing, “and to help poor Mexicans get dollars to send to their families back home. It is a public service, really, a good thing. Bringing workers and work together. But sometimes, you know, the red tape, it keeps the good from being done. I have some workers coming to North Carolina from Mexico.”

“They're illegal?”

“They need to come here. To work. For that, I need a driver I can trust.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Take a load of tomatoes to Norfolk. Then keep going, to North Carolina. And bring back my load of people.”

“In the truck?”

“S
Í
, yes. Without getting stopped, you know?”

“What about the weigh stations.”

Cienfuegos smiled. He rubbed two fingers together. “You know the right people, you find out when they are closed. I get you that information.”

David shifted his weight on his feet. “These people, they are men, eh? Pickers?”

“Some, some . . .”

“Women, too?”

“We supply a lot of different kinds of labor, no? Field workers, domestic help, cleaning people. There are lots of needs in America.”

“No green cards? Passports?”

“Some have passports.”

“Where in North Carolina?”

“What does that matter?”

David narrowed his eyes. “I got reasons not to go in some parts.”

Cienfuegos nodded, accepting his answer. “Hickory. In the Western part.”

“And where do I bring 'em to?”

Hector Lopez grinned. “Casa Cienfuegos.”

Carlos frowned and looked at David. “We have rooms for them.”

“And where is that? Around here?”

“Yes. Close by here. You take the job, I tell you where.”

David rubbed the back of his neck. “How much?”

“
5,000.”

“Man, I get caught, those are federal charges.”

“Don't get caught.”

David paced away, frowning. Then he turned quickly and looked at Cienfuegos. “I read in the paper, when that cop got shot, they found a broken-down white box truck.”

Cienfuegos cursed. David's statement had caught him off guard. “That driver was stupid, eh? You, David Castillo, are a smart man. That would not happen to you.”

“5K isn't enough. They'll be looking at white box trucks.”

“All right, then, seven.”

“Make it 10K and I'll do it.”

Cienfuegos looked at Hector Lopez. “This man drives a hard bargain.”

“Let's just kill him.”

Cienfuegos laughed. “No, no. I said he is smart. So OK, Señor Castillo, we pay you an outrageous 8K.”

“I want the money up front.”

“Half up front, half when you deliver.”

David nodded. “When do we do it?”

Cienfuegos's eyes sparkled. “Now!”

K
IT LOOKED SHARPLY AT
C
HRIS
. T
HEY
'
D BEEN MONITORING EVERY WORD
. “Do we have enough? Can we move?” she asked him.

Steve Gould was standing at a small window nearby. “Kit, who's this?”

She got up, set down her headphones, and joined him. She could see vehicles using only their parking lights approaching the other end of the building. Her heart began beating hard. “I don't know!”