The naked edge

16

The dust cloud hovered. All Cavanaugh could see was a vague figure leaning out the far window of the car, opening the mailbox.

"Steady," Rutherford said into the walkie-talkie. "This could be somebody putting an advertisement or something into the box."

A young woman-jeans, leather jacket, blond ponytail-stepped from the car. She walked to the gate, unhooked its chain, and swung the gate inward. Then she got back into the car and drove up the lane toward the house, the sound of her engine receding.

"Not yet," Rutherford said to the walkie-talkie. "Wait until we see what happens."

The car reached the house. Through his binoculars, Cavanaugh watched the woman get out. She stepped onto the porch and tried the front door but found it locked. She looked through the windows. She proceeded around to the back, out of view.

Listening to an earbud linked to the walkie-talkie, Rutherford reported what the other watchers were seeing. "She's trying the back door. It's locked, also."

Now the slender woman came back into view. She tried to get into the barn, tried to get into a shed, then gave up, returned to her car, and drove back toward the road.

"Go! Go! Go!" Rutherford shouted into his walkie-talkie.

Abruptly, the countryside was in motion. Camouflaged men with rifles rose from tall weeds near the house. Vehicles that had been hidden on a nearby farm sped from that property and raced along the road, hurrying to block the lane. A faint drone became the growing rumble of two enlarging specks on the horizon: helicopters speeding toward the farm.

The woman's startled face was visible through the windshield. Shocked by the sudden appearance of the camouflaged men, she urged the car forward.

Armed men blocked the lane. The woman swerved into a field, desperate to veer around them. But now a dark van arrived, blocking the open gate. As the men with rifles converged on her, the car's wheels got stuck in the field. Tires spun. Dirt flew. Through his binoculars, Cavanaugh saw that the woman had her hands to the sides of her head. She was screaming.

"Hell of a start to the day," Jamie said.

Standing, they brushed dirt from their outdoor clothes. From lying on the cold ground, Cavanaugh's knees felt stiff. A long time since I was with Delta Force, he thought.

"You take the car, John." He pointed toward the back of the hill, where their vehicle was parked. "I need some exercise."

"So do I," Jamie said.

Rutherford considered them for a moment, then nodded.

Descending through stiff, brown grass, Jamie told Cavanaugh, "And maybe you need a little more time to get used to coming back to this farm."

"That too."

The crunch of his footsteps seemed to come from a distance as Cavanaugh gazed ahead: past the cars at the entrance to the property, past the blue car and the men searching the distraught driver, toward the house, the barn, and especially the building next to the barn. He remembered being in the passenger seat as his mother drove him and Carl up that lane for their weekly lessons. Then Cavanaugh's memory was shattered by the roar of the helicopters landing where his mother had always stopped near the barn. Instead of two boys getting out of a car, men with rifles leapt from the choppers and scurried among the buildings.

Wordless, he and Jamie reached the lane at the same time Rutherford arrived with the car. They stepped aside for a van that sped past them toward the house. Squinting in the cold stark morning sunlight, Cavanaugh watched the van stop next to a leafless oak tree, men hurrying out with dogs.

Cavanaugh pointed toward the woman. She was outside the car now, slumped against a fender. "Jamie…"

There were no other females on the team.

"Yes, I'll talk to her," Jamie said.

Taking the opportunity to postpone going up the lane, Cavanaugh watched Jamie speak to the armed men. When they stepped back, she went over and leaned against the car, mirroring the woman's slumped posture. The woman wiped away tears. Jamie approximated that gesture by pushing a few strands of hair behind her ears, using imitative body language to establish rapport.

Amid the chaos around them, they spoke for several minutes. At first, the woman talked haltingly, but soon the full torrent of her distress poured out, Jamie listening sympathetically, guiding her with questions, nodding, at last pressing a hand on her shoulder.

She returned to Cavanaugh and Rutherford. "Her name's Debbie Collins. She's a nurse in a doctor's office in Iowa City. Lives here in West Liberty. The rent's cheaper. Every morning, she checks if Bob Loveless-actually she calls him: 'Robert'-has any mail."

"What was she doing with the doors and looking in the windows?" Rutherford asked.

"That's part of her routine. She makes sure nobody's broken in, that everything's secure. In winter, she uses a key and goes inside to check that the furnace keeps the interior at fifty-five degrees and that the pipes haven't frozen."

"She does this every day?"

"For the past three years," Jamie answered. "Except when she visits her parents in Des Moines or if she takes a vacation. But she's never away for long, and she always arranges for someone to substitute for her."

"They must be lovers," Cavanaugh said.

"No."

"Then he pays her, right?"

"Sort of. A hundred dollars a month."

"What? For doing this month in and month out for the past three years? That's hardly enough. You're sure they're not lovers?"

"The opposite. He never tried to touch her. She wonders if he might be gay."

"Then I don't understand."

"A little over three years ago, Debbie was in a bar in Iowa City. Saturday night. A few beers after seeing a movie with some girl friends. Early December. The group stayed until midnight, then split up to go home. It started to snow. Debbie was parked on a side street. She hurried to get to her car so she could drive home before the weather turned worse. One moment, she was fumbling in her purse to find her car key. The next moment, two guys grabbed her while a third pulled up in a van. She struggled. They punched her. They dragged her into the van, and before the first guy could close the side hatch, his buddy was already using a knife to cut off her clothes. The driver started to speed away when all of a sudden another guy lunged through the half-closed hatch. The stranger knocked the first attacker senseless. When the one with the knife attacked, the stranger pulled out a knife of his own. Debbie says she can still here the scream when the stranger slammed into the guy, did something with the knife, and threw the guy out into the snow. Meanwhile, the driver stopped the van, jumped out, and ran away before the stranger could get to him."

"Duran," Rutherford said.

"Who, as far as she knows, is named Robert Loveless," Jamie continued. "The men reeked of whiskey. The knife they used makes her think they might have killed her after they raped her."

"Then what happened?" Rutherford asked.

"The stranger managed to get her to calm down enough to tell him where her car was. Her overcoat was in shreds. Her clothes were half cut off, so he wrapped her in his own coat and carried her to her car. Her purse was in the snow by the driver's door. The key was where she'd dropped it. He unlocked the car, put her in the passenger seat, got the car started so she'd be warm, and then told her he was taking her to the hospital. 'Not hurt,' she told him. She was thinking about being brought into the emergency ward half-naked. 'Then I'll drive you to the police,' he told her. She didn't want that, either. She'd still be half-naked, people staring at her as she clutched his coat. She'd been drinking. The police would probably think she'd asked for it. Suddenly, an engine roared. While they were distracted, one of the attackers had come back and escaped with the van. The two other men had run off. So now there wasn't any way for the police to investigate the assault. 'I want to go home,' she managed to say between sobs. 'All I want is to go home.' The stranger told her he'd drive her, but she was suddenly afraid to be alone with him. She told him that where she lived was too far, that she didn't want him to go out of his way. She kept insisting she could drive, so finally he got out of the car, and despite the storm, she did manage to drive home to West Liberty. The next morning, she discovered how bruised she was and fully realized how close she'd come to possibly being killed. She also discovered that she still had the stranger's overcoat."

"Then what?" Cavanaugh asked.

"Around noon, a car pulled into her driveway. A lean, lanky man got out and knocked on her door. The temperature was almost zero, but instead of a coat, he wore a sweater. Debbie was afraid to answer the door, but finally she couldn't bear watching him stand out there freezing, so she opened a window to talk to him, and that's when she discovered he was the man who'd helped her the previous night. It turns out he was so worried about her that he got in his car and followed her home, making sure she didn't have an accident or slide into a ditch. If she didn't mind, he'd like his coat back. Well, of course, she had to invite him in and offer him some coffee. He kept a respectful distance, taking care not to make her feel nervous about having a stranger in the house. She thanked him for going out of his way. That made him smile, and when she asked him why, he said he was surprised to find that they were practically neighbors. He lived two miles down the road."

"Imagine that," Cavanaugh said.

"When he reached to take the coffee cup from her, Debbie noticed the fresh bandage on his wrist. The man with the knife had cut him."

"Imagine that," Rutherford said.

"So they became friends," Jamie continued. "He kept treating her with respect, never making a romantic move, although she wished he would. Eventually, he told her he needed to leave the farm for a while. He was a construction worker, but because of the cold weather, he'd been unemployed for a while, and now he'd learned that his father, who lived in Miami, was sick with emphysema, so he was going to Florida to find work and take care of his dad."

"But would she please watch the farm for him, forward his mail, little things like that? He'd be glad to pay her," Cavanaugh said.

"After all, it was the least she could do," Rutherford added.

"So you get the picture?" Jamie asked.

"Classic recruitment," Rutherford concluded.

"Almost makes me proud of him," Cavanaugh said bitterly. "The guy's a natural."

"Does she realize it was all a set-up?" Rutherford asked Jamie. "Duran scouted the West Liberty area, spotted her, found out she was single, followed her, learned her habits, and then paid those three guys to pretend to attack her."

"She hasn't the faintest idea."

"Nice to be innocent," Cavanaugh said.

"I wrote down the Miami address where she forwards the mail." Jamie handed Rutherford a piece of paper.

"And from where a drug courier probably forwarded the mail to Colombia," Rutherford said. "The question is, where is Duran's mail being forwarded now." He pulled out his cell phone, pressed numbers, and began reading the address to someone.

"The woman says Duran came back here yesterday," Jamie said. "He told her he needed to leave something for a friend."

Cavanaugh stared up the lane toward the building next to the barn. For several moments, he didn't seem to breathe.