The Names of Our Tears (22 page)

Orton nodded grimly. “But until Robertson called and told us about your Ruth Zook and Fannie Helmuth, we didn’t know where the drugs ended up. As it is, sending suitcases north on Amish buses might be just one of the routes they use.”

“Did Robertson tell you the latest about Fannie Helmuth?” Ricky asked.

“Said she ran.”

“Well, took a bus to Charlotte, anyway,” Ricky said.

Orton stood and led Ricky up the rear staircase to his office on the top floor. From a metal filing cabinet beside his desk, Orton pulled a case folder of handwritten notes. He directed Ricky to a chair and sat behind his desk. From his notes, he read a summary of what Robertson had told him on the phone, and asked, “That about cover it?”

“Except that we think Fannie Helmuth got on a Greyhound bus in downtown Charlotte.”

Orton shook his head and closed his folder. “She thinks she can run from these people?”

“She’s with a friend. Howie Dent, about her age. Lives on a neighboring farm.”

Orton leaned forward and planted his elbows on his desktop. “Robertson says he thinks this organization will close the Ohio route and ‘clean up loose ends.’”

“Right. They may also fix problems down here. But we don’t think they know yet that we have their identities. Rachel is especially good with computers, and she got their descriptions pretty fast.”

“Rachel called earlier this afternoon,” Orton said.

“Where does it stand, then?” Ricky asked.

“Customs wants the boat, and I think they’re going to salvage the two wrecks we were able to locate.”

“DEA?”

“Rachel called them, too, with the information about the Molinas. They’re searching known addresses. Combing through criminal and civil records. It helps that they know now who we’re looking for.”

“Coast Guard?”

“They’ll get involved again if we get a lead.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

Orton shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t really have any jurisdiction off the beaches. None outside of Bradenton Beach.”

“How about Jodie Tapp?”

“I think she needs to be in protective custody.”

“Can you do that?”

“If she’ll cooperate.”

“The Brandens have asked her to come out to your beach house,” Ricky said. “They called from the restaurant while I was driving up here.”

“They told her about Ruth?”

Niell nodded.

Orton stood behind his desk. “If I know Jodie, she’ll take this hard.”

“She did,” Niell said. “She left work early, to follow the Brandens up to your place.”

*   *   *

Niell followed Orton’s Jeep across the drawbridge over Longboat Pass after sunset. A half mile farther south, Orton pulled into a sandy rectangular parking lot in front of a set of three narrow houses positioned lengthwise on a patch of sand that fronted dunes and the beach beyond. The leftmost house was sided with weathered boards, and in front of that house, a single rental sedan was parked with its nose pointed out toward the road. Once the two men had switched off their headlights, the lot fell into complete darkness, as did all the approaches to the beach. Orton threaded a path in the dark to the far side of the beach house and spoke back over his shoulder, “We keep all the lights out this time of year, because the turtles want to come in to lay their eggs.”

Niell followed the sergeant down the length of the house, wondering how anyone not familiar with the property would find their way in the blackout.

At the back of the long house, Orton knocked on the glass of a patio door, and Professor Branden pulled long slat drapes open, flooding the patio with light. Orton slid the glass door open and led Niell inside. Then the professor closed the heavy drapes.

Caroline rose from a low sofa and laid her book on a glass-topped coffee table, as Niell looked around at the decor of ocean
paintings, shell collections in glass jars, and rope-and-anchor furniture. He took a seat in a wicker chair and asked, “How would anyone know we’re at the beach?”

Orton laughed. “Sorry. It was my mother’s house. She liked it this way when she came down from Chicago. I just haven’t done anything with the place.”

Caroline crossed behind the breakfast bar and pulled a pitcher of tea out of the refrigerator. The professor lined up four tumblers, and once Caroline had filled them, he carried two at a time out into the living room. As they took seats, Orton asked, “Jodie still here?” and Caroline said, “She’s resting in a front bedroom.”

Ricky’s phone rang with Robertson’s tone, and he stood and asked, “Can I take this on the patio?”

Standing, the professor said, “I’ll get the drapes. We have to leave the lights out.”

Niell went out into the night and answered the call. From the other side of the dunes, he heard the rush of surf coming ashore. A stiff onshore breeze was lifting a mist of salt and sand off the dunes, so Ricky turned his back to talk to the sheriff. “Niell,” he answered. “We’ve got Jodie Tapp here, and she’s safe.”

“Where’s that?” Robertson asked. “And what about the bus drivers?”

“We’re at Ray Lee Orton’s beach house, with the Brandens. Jodie’s sleeping right now. I came north to see Ray Lee after interviewing the bus drivers, and now we’re at Ray Lee’s.”

“Anything on the Molinas?” Robertson asked.

“Not that Ray Lee knows.”

Letting impatience sound in his voice, Robertson asked, “What’d you talk about?”

“We went through the boat that they found capsized. Scuttled, really. Hole blown out in the hull.”

“Does Ray Lee think they’ve got any chance of catching these pirates?”

“He thinks Rachel’s information is going to help the DEA. They’re the ones running it down, now.”

“They know about our BOLO?”

“Rachel will have given them everything,” Ricky said.

“I don’t like playing second fiddle, Niell.”

“I know, Sheriff. I thought I’d contact the DEA tomorrow morning.”

“You planning on sleeping, Niell?”

“Thought I would.”

“Kidding,” Robertson said. “Really, I’m just kidding.”

In the background, Niell heard Missy Taggert say something curt to the sheriff, and muffled, he heard the sheriff say, “I’m not being bossy.”

Niell waited through the exchange and asked, “You get anything on the Helmuth caravan, Sheriff?”

“They’re already down south of Zanesville,” Robertson said.

“Then they went south, not north?”

Robertson harrumphed into the phone. “Highway Patrol found them camped beside the road at about eight o’clock. Said the Helmuths told them they had left home voluntarily. Said they didn’t want to stay in Holmes County anymore. Called it a lawless frontier.”

“So they just picked up overnight and moved?”

“That’s what they say, Ricky. They’re not coming back. They gave a general description of the woman who came to look for Fannie, but that’s all we got from them.”

Ricky shook his head in the dark but didn’t speak. The sheriff asked, “You still there?”

“Yes, sorry. I was thinking. The Molinas can easily have changed their plates.”

“Right.”

“And the boat Fannie says she was on with Jim and John—that can easily have been another stolen boat.”

“I know, Niell.”

“So, if the DEA can’t tie the Molinas to an outfit down here, and if Fannie Helmuth can’t ID a boat for us—or even if she could and it was stolen and then scuttled like these others—then we’ve got nothing.”

“We’ve got Tapp, Niell,” Robertson barked. “That’s half of why I sent you down there.”

“She’s scared, Sheriff. And I don’t blame her. What if she’s like Fannie? Just wants to get away from this.”

“I don’t know,” Robertson said, frustrated and sounding it. “If I can’t find Fannie and convince her to come back, then Jodie Tapp is our only lead. You need to find out what she knows.”

“She’s sleeping, Sheriff.”

“Then wake her up! Look, Niell, she’s all we’ve got right now.”

“I know. I know. I’m just sick of thinking about young Amish women putting it on the line for a job we should be able to do without them.”

“They’re in the mix, Niell. We didn’t do that. And we need Tapp to tell us what she knows. If my BOLO on Fannie gives us nothing, then Tapp is all we’ve got.”

Wearily, Niell turned back for the sliding door and said, “I’ll wake her up.”

“I want to know about that boat, Niell,” Robertson said. “Even if it was stolen.”

“Right,” Niell said, and switched off.

He knocked on the glass, and Branden let him in. Caroline was at the counter pouring more tea. To Niell she said, “How’s Bruce? No improvement, I’ll wager.”

Niell smiled, shook his head. “He wants us to talk to Jodie tonight.”

“She’s sleeping,” Caroline said. “I don’t want to wake her up.”

Ray Lee stood in front of the sofa and finished a last swallow of tea, saying, “I didn’t see her car. She ride with you?”

“No,” Branden said as he closed the drapes. “She parked beside us.”

Orton came forward around the glass coffee table. “Her car’s not out there.”

Caroline turned and started down a long hallway in the center of the house, the men following. She pushed open the last
bedroom door, switched on the lights, and led the men inside. Although the covers had been disturbed, the bed was empty.

At the window, Orton said, “The latch isn’t locked.” He lifted the sash, and night air flooded in from the front parking lot. The screen was lying outside on the ground.

BRANDEN AND Niell rode in the back of Orton’s Jeep. They raced over the bridge and past the long and deserted parking lots at Coquina Beach, ran through dark and sleepy Bradenton Beach, skidded to make the turn at the intersection in front of the Cortez Bridge, and slowed on the other side of the long bridge to make a sharp right turn down off the bridge approach into Cortez. Orton passed one little trailer-park lane and then a second. He turned left at the third lane, with only his headlamps to light the way. When he pulled up in front of the narrow end of a single-wide aluminum trailer, the parking spot was empty. Orton popped out of his Jeep and marched down a thin strip of concrete walkway to a side door on the trailer. While Niell and the professor extracted themselves from the backseat of the Jeep, Orton rapped on the screen door and called out, “Jodie, it’s Ray Lee.”

Then he tried the knob, and the door pushed open. As he entered the dark trailer, he called back over his shoulder, “She always leaves it open.”

Niell and Branden came up the sidewalk. A light switched on inside, and Orton waved them in. “She always leaves it open,” he said again. He was standing beside a slender black lacquer floor
lamp in the front living room. All the rest of the trailer was dark inside.

Orton stepped past a hammered-copper cube-shaped coffee table and switched on a floor lamp at the other end of a gray leather sofa, and Niell and Branden got their first good look at the rest of the room—decorated in sleek tones of black, gray, platinum blue, yellow, and white.

“She’s a decorator?” Niell asked.

“A good one,” Branden offered.

“Jodie’s a bit of a puzzle,” Orton said. “Mennonite and modern.”

“It looks as if she watches a lot of HGTV,” Niell said. He lifted a stack of decorating magazines from the coffee cube and started reading covers. “A lot of HGTV,” he said again.

Orton turned to cross through a kitchen-and-table nook, and he stepped into a back hallway. A light came on in the first of two bedrooms, and he called the men back.

In the first bedroom, the hand of a dedicated modernist was evident again, the theme being black and crystal, with silver accents and plum drapes. On a carefully made bedspread with a light rose and bamboo silhouette pattern, two old leather-strapped suitcases, nicked and scratched from hard use, were laid out beside each other, one opened and empty, the second closed and strapped. Orton undid the straps, pulled up the lid, and found it empty, too. Both old suitcases were lined with blue satin and lace.

Branden said, “Those are the only vaguely Mennonite things in the whole place.”

“Like I said,” Orton mumbled, but didn’t finish his remark.

“I’m not comfortable being in here like this,” Ricky said.

Distracted, Orton said, “She’s a good friend.”

“Still,” Ricky said, “we shouldn’t be inside.”

Orton turned and left the bedroom frowning. “She’s running,” he said. “She’s scared, and she’s running.”

Niell followed Orton to the front door of the trailer. Branden turned out the bedroom light and came back into the living area.
“If she was thinking about packing both of those suitcases, then she had it in mind to stay away for quite a long while.”

“I’m getting tired of losing witnesses,” Ricky said.

“You’ll need to call Bruce,” Branden said.

“Maybe in the morning,” Ricky said. “Maybe she’ll just turn up at work tomorrow.”

“This isn’t right,” Orton muttered. He pulled out his phone and opened the door. “Need to call some people.”

Branden switched off one of the lamps and followed Orton. Ricky turned off the other light and came out through the door behind Branden. Orton was propped back against the side of his Jeep, talking on his phone.

“Look, Danny, everybody needs to know,” Orton was saying. He listened with an impatient expression and said, “OK, but DEA especially.” Then he pocketed his phone.

Standing at the front of the dark trailer, Orton said, “She’s not safe like this, on her own.”

“Two empty suitcases,” Ricky said. “That means she’s still here.”

“Or, they’ve got her already,” Orton said. “She was going to pack, but they’ve got her now.”

“Who’s Danny?” Branden asked.

“Night dispatcher over at the station,” Orton said. “He’s going to make some calls.”

“You have any idea where to look?” Ricky asked. “Know where she’d go, now?”

“The beach,” Orton said. “Work, the beach, that’s all she does.”

“Then I don’t see that there’s anything we can do tonight,” Ricky said. “Maybe she’ll go in to work tomorrow.”

After a pause, Branden said, “Caroline and I can go over first thing in the morning. But, Ricky, there’s one thing you still should do tonight.”