Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel) (24 page)

“I’m agent Peyton Cote with US Customs and Border Protection. I’m here to ask a few questions about your son.”

“What kind of questions?”

“May I come in?”

“What kind of questions?” he repeated.

“Regarding his adoption.”

“You’re not with INS.”

He knew the difference between Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol. Had he dealt with this issue before? Between them, the screen door was still closed. His arms hung loosely at his sides. A tiny scar near his right eye pulsed. A nervous tick?

Daycare employees had told Perry that, according to the Ramsey family, Matthew Jr. had been born in North Carolina four years earlier. Shortly after, Dr. Ramsey and wife Christine adopted him. They’d moved to Reeds a year ago when the doctor accepted his current post as an ER physician at St. Mary’s Hospital.

“Doctor Ramsey, may I come in?”

“What do you want? Is there some sort of problem? I’ve spoken to someone from your office already.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know the agent’s name. Can’t you people get your records straight?”

“I’d like to see Matthew’s birth certificate and any adoption papers you may have.”

“Did you hear what I said? A different Border Patrol agent already did that.”

She had run the names. There was nothing on file.

“They weren’t from my office, Dr. Ramsey.”

She figured, as with birth parents, the Ramseys might have a birth certificate and Social Security card floating around the house. Parents of an adopted child would also have an adoption decree. However, once an adoption is finalized, the birth certificate takes the place of the decree. The adoption forms may then be sealed, requiring a court order to retrieve them. Since the adoption had taken place out of state, in North Carolina, she figured getting paperwork would require divine intervention. But he surprised her.

“Wait there. I’ll get the papers.”

He closed the door and walked away, taking his cell phone from his pocket. By the time he rounded a corner and moved out of sight, the phone was to his ear. Calling his lawyer?

Not two minutes later, he opened the screen door, stepped out into the brisk early evening air, and extended a manila folder to her. It was rare to find parents that kept paperwork on their kids handy, even parents of adopted children.

“We keep everything,” he said. “We waited a long time for a child. I never want him taken away.”

“Who did you call?”

The folder held a North Carolina birth certificate, a passport, and a Social Security card. She looked the forms over.

“Were you looking in my windows?”

“You were on the phone before the door closed, Dr. Ramsey. Who did you need to call?”

“Look, the adoption decree is with an attorney in North Carolina. Now, my shift begins at six in the morning, Agent”—he looked at her name tag—“Cote. What exactly is this about?”

“Is your son a US citizen?”

“You’re holding his birth certificate, aren’t you? What does it say?”

“Born or naturalized?”

“Born—at St. Luke’s Memorial Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. What exactly are you doing here?”

“Just a routine check. May I take these and make copies? I can get them back to you tomorrow.”

“That’s out of the question. Those are our only copies.”

A slender blond woman appeared behind Ramsey. Peyton smiled at her.

“What’s going on, Matt? Who’s this?”

“This is Agent Cote. She’s asking about Matty. Go back to what you were doing. I can handle this.”

“Just a document check,” Peyton said. “Routine stuff.”

“We waited years for a baby,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “What exactly do you want?”

“I’ll handle it, Christine.”

“You’d better.” She shot him a look and left.

Ramsey watched his wife walk away and turned back to Peyton, sizing her up. “Have you heard of
harassment
, Agent Cote?”

“My questions are routine,” she said. “Sorry for any incon-
venience.”

He took the folder back and closed the door in her face. Peyton thought immediately of her brother-in-law. Jonathan Hurley’s paranoia had spawned a lack of cooperation, which led to a thorough background check.

Ramsey just earned the same treatment.

TWENTY
-
EIGHT

P
EYTON LEFT THE
R
AMSEY
home with plenty of time before her shift. She figured to be back at Garrett Station before 8 p.m. to drop off the Expedition, get her Wrangler, and check on Elise.

Route 1 was wet with a light snow. She hoped Tommy would awake to six inches of light powder, but the stuff hitting her windshield was heavy, a wet snow-rain mix of icy precipitation that was good for nothing. Traveling fifty-five miles an hour, northbound on Route 1, she hadn’t yet activated the four-wheel-drive when two brown patches outlined in fur appeared not thirty feet away.

Reacting on instinct and seven years away from winter driving, she jammed the pedal and locked the brakes.

The truck fishtailed, and as the rear tires crossed into the other lane, she felt a sickening weightlessness and heard a scream that she vaguely recognized as her own. She swerved into the other lane and felt the rear of the SUV kick the other way. She was tossed toward the empty passenger’s seat before the simultaneous restriction of her seatbelt choked off her momentum. A pain shot through her rib cage, and her shriek was cut short. The tires didn’t even screech on the wet pavement. Her hands left the steering wheel, instinctively rising, forming an X in front of her face. The collision of the two-ton SUV and a thousand-pound animal sent a jolt through her twisted body. It wasn’t until much later that she realized the sound she’d heard wasn’t her, but rather the moose—a low huff, like a giant having the wind knocked out of him. What followed was a heavy rain of glass and a sound like sheet metal being twisted.

When her truck came to a stop, she was blocking the oncoming lane with the vehicle nose down in a ditch. Peyton didn’t move for several seconds. She felt like she was rocking and heard a long hum. She realized the rear tires were spinning and the hum was an unfamiliar noise coming from the engine. She turned off the ignition and tried to process what had happened. Had she been rear-ended? Had an on-coming car not had its headlights on and caused a collision? Was she injured?

Her ribs hurt, and her back felt like someone had snapped her spine in two. She held her hands out in front of her. No blood. Slowly, she removed her seat belt and leaned to her left to open the door. The first step sent a pain from her back down her leg.

The moose lay near the rear tire, wailing like a sick cow. Good God: she’d never really seen the moose.

She tried to gather her thoughts. What was protocol?

Shuffling, she set out flashers to stop traffic. She moved slowly, trying to ease the stiffness out of her back. The moose was big for a female; Peyton guessed well over eight hundred pounds. The sound of the animal’s cries made her shiver. She limped to stand several feet behind it. The animal was on its side, its breath coming in long huffs. The moose raised its head as if in a spasm and let out a piercing three-second yelp. Peyton’s stomach did a cartwheel. The animal’s hindquarters were out of line, one hip higher than the other. Its left hind leg was broken at the shin, jutting out at a forty-five-degree angle.

A warm bead of perspiration rolled down Peyton’s cheek. Her hot breath mixed with the thirty-degree air, forming tiny clouds.

She knew discharging her service weapon meant paperwork, but the animal was suffering badly. She carefully pointed her pistol at the animal and slowly squeezed off a round.

With the bullet’s momentum, the moose seemed to lurch away from her, then lay still. Peyton moved closer. The SUV’s dome light cast scant light over the animal, but she saw the small bullet hole beneath its right eye. Thick dark blood ran down the moose’s snout.

She exhaled. It was over. She holstered her pistol.

The Expedition’s cabin hadn’t made contact with the moose. But the same couldn’t be said for the back half of the SUV, which looked as if it had been compacted. The impact crumpled the bed and tore it free from the rear axel. The passenger’s side jutted upward at an angle.

The silence was shattered by another long, agonizing yelp.

She turned to see the animal attempt to struggle to its feet, rolling onto its belly as if to crawl to safety. Its broken leg scraped painfully on the slush-covered pavement.

She felt a warm stinging sensation in her throat as vomit rose. “Jesus Christ!” She drew her weapon again, pointed, and fired four more rounds into the moose’s huge head.

When it was done, she staggered to the woods and vomited.

She was in the damaged vehicle, wet and cold, as the slush hit the windshield. October in Aroostook County could be mistaken for February three hundred miles south in Boston, and temps were already below freezing. Tommy would wear long johns and a sweatshirt beneath his Halloween costume.

Blue lights in the distance grew brighter until a state police cruiser pulled to the side of her truck. Leo Miller got out, walked to the moose, leaned over to examine the dead animal, then approached Peyton.

She got out before he reached her door.

“Want to shoot it one more time?” He smirked. “Five bullets? Afraid it would bite you?”

Her eyes narrowed, brows dropping to form a straight line. “It’s been a long night already,” she said. “Don’t push me, Leo. I took it out of its misery.”

“You okay? Hell of a lot of damage to the truck.”

“I’m fine. I was lucky the back took the brunt.”

The first set of headlights appeared in the southbound lane.

“You’re limping, and you’re soaked. Get back in. I’ll direct traffic. Tow truck on the way?”

She shook her head. “I can drive back.”

“You think so?”

“I turned the engine off,” she said. “Tires are fine. The bed is probably totaled, but the station’s only a mile away.”

“What are you going to do with the moose?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you hit it. You get to keep it.”

“Keep it?” she said.

“The meat.”

“Oh, I don’t want it.”

“Well, I was thinking that maybe I …”

“It’s all yours, Leo.”

He beamed. “That’s”—he looked at the animal, appraising—“shit, that’s close to four hundred pounds of meat. Moose steaks, moose meatballs, moose hamburgers …” He saw her expression. “What? You a vegetarian?”

“Ever see
Forrest Gump
?”

“No, actually.”

“Forget it,” she said. He offered his sincere thanks, which she shrugged off. “No problem. You all set here?”

“Sure. Let me get my flashers. I’ll do the paperwork, maybe drop it by for you to review.” He looked down almost shyly as he said it, then up quickly, checking her reaction.

She wondered if his obnoxious first impression had been nerves or an effort to impress Hewitt. There was no earthly reason for a Border Patrol agent to review his accident report. But he was cleaning up the mess for her and taking the eight-hundred-pound carcass off her hands. She said nothing, got in the SUV, and cranked the heater. It took two tries, and she had to engage the four-wheel-drive low setting, but she got the vehicle back on the road.

She was on Route 1 heading back to the station when Bruce Steele’s voice broke over the radio.

“Requesting backup from any unit.” His words were rapid-fire, adrenaline-driven bursts. “High-speed pursuit in progress at the Garrett border crossing.”

Whatever was happening was big. Steele had called for help from anyone—Border Patrol, local cops, and sheriff’s department.

She swung the battered vehicle around and headed to the nearby border, lights flashing.

Had Steele caught a break in the Jimenez shooting?

TWENTY
-
NINE

T
HE ENGINE WAS STILL
whining, but Peyton was traveling fifty miles an hour in four-wheel-drive, the SUV’s rear end rising and falling with a clatter against the frame.

She grabbed the radio, gave her location, and said, “Bruce, where are you?”

“Heading right for you, chasing a white Aerostar van.” He read the plate number to her. “Set up a road block, Peyton.”

“Bobcat Fifteen,” Agent Pam Morrison said, “coming as backup.”

This stretch of US Route 1 was narrow, tree-lined, and ran parallel to the Crystal View River. Peyton had driven the road before and knew marshes lined the sides.

She did half a U-turn and left the Expedition straddling the checkered line on the straightaway. Her back pain wasn’t steady, but she moved slowly, getting the flashers and lining them six across the road, north and south of the truck.

The van would be coming from the north. When she heard sirens, she scurried to the side of the road and stood, radio in one hand, flashlight in the other.

The sky continued to spit icy pellets. Radio communications indicated Steele was leading two Garrett Police units, which had given chase when the van ran the Canadian Customs checkpoint. The Canadian Border Patrol wouldn’t follow the vehicle into their American counterparts’ territory.

Mike Hewitt’s voice broke over the radio. “Peyton, what’s your status?”

“Here they come. The Aerostar is going too fast. The roads are icy.”

Steele’s brake lights flashed. He was backing off.

“This guy’s not going to make it,” his voice broke through the static. “Peyton, look out!”

She ran farther from the road and watched as space lengthened between the van and the pursuit vehicles. Inexplicably, the van accelerated as it hit the line of orange flashers, crushing two, while Steele and the town cops fell behind.

The van swerved to the right, inches from her truck.

However, the game ended quickly.

The van’s brake lights never even flashed.

Maybe the driver’s realization had come at the moment of impact. Or maybe the driver was high or drunk. She’d never know. But the icy road made it impossible to pull the van back once it rounded her truck.