I PUSH PAST Scotty, using my flashlight, and besides the frightened woman in front of me, there are other people as well, men and women, boys and girls. They blink and hold up their hands against the flashlight beams, and they all appear to be Hispanic.
I quickly count off eight, and there’s no First Lady back there, just cots, a few buckets with dishes and soiled clothes, a hot plate and laundry hanging from a clothesline in the rear. There are two men, two women, and four boys and girls from toddlers to preteens.
Tanya grabs Mrs. Westbrook by the scruff of her robe and pushes her in. “Is this what you’re hiding, you bitch? Cheap migrant labor? Paying them next to nothing for the privilege of shoveling out the shit from your million-dollar horses?”
For a small woman she’s pretty tough, and she easily breaks free. “No, it’s not that, not at all.”
“Then what is it?” Tanya demands.
Mrs. Westbrook ignores her and speaks in soft Spanish to the two families, and they nod and a couple try to smile as they settle back on their cots. One of the men has a bandage wrapped around his left wrist. It comes to me that this is what they’re used to, being in rough quarters and knowing that at any moment of the day or night armed men and women from the government could break in.
“There,” she says, looking back at me. “You’re in charge here, are you not?”
“I am.”
“Then let these people be.”
“I want an explanation,” I say.
“You’ll get it…just as soon as you give these people their privacy.”
I gesture to Scotty, Pamela, and Tanya, and we step out, and with the rising sun, everything is becoming more visible. Not more clear, no, not that, but definitely more visible. Scotty closes the door and picks up the broken doorknob, looks around with some embarrassment, and drops it to the ground.
“You…people,” she begins, with her old and strong voice. “You think you know everything.”
She bundles her robe tighter about her slim frame. “For more than three hundred years my family has lived here, and raised generations here, and yes, for a while, kept slaves. That’s our enduring shame, that my family, at one point, owned human beings. You can read the old journals and old stories about my ancestors, and how proud they were that they treated their property well. But it was still an abomination. No matter how many years have passed, it was still an abomination.”
I say, “You’re making penance.”
“For once, miss, you’re making sense.” A fierce nod. “Yes…this farm, this place, was never an Underground Railroad stop back in the day. But it is now. Those two families…they have jobs, a new life waiting for them up north. All we do is make sure they get there, without being harassed or arrested.”
She stares at me. “Are they going to be arrested?”
“No,” I say, holstering my pistol. The others follow.
“Am I going to be arrested?”
Tanya mutters something about what she’d do if she were in charge, and I say, “No, Mrs. Westbrook, you’re not going to be arrested.”
“Are you and your…people, are you done here?”
Then it hits me like a slow-moving yet large and wide tidal wave, an overwhelming sensation of being utterly exhausted, bone-tired, and worthless. The sun is coming up. The ransom will probably be paid, and we’re through here. A few minutes ago, it seemed like success was within reach, just past that wooden door, just past that trash bag with bloody bandages.
So damn close and yet so damn far.
Scotty looks around and says, “Where the hell is Brian?”
“Good question,” I say. “Pamela? He belongs to you. Where did you last see him?”
“I didn’t,” she replies, rubbing at her cold hands.
Tanya says, “I saw the kid go back and grab his laptop from the Suburban. He said he wanted to check something out.”
“And you let him do that?” I demand. “This was a hands-on search, not a—”
There’s shouting coming from the direction of the parking lot. As one, our little group turns, and in the better light, I see Brian running in our direction, carrying a laptop under his arm.
More yells and then I make out his words:
“I know where she is! I know where she is!”