I Shall Not Want (12 page)

—sister. Oh.

“What are you doing here?” Russ demanded. “I thought I told Knox and Kevin to take you home after the search.”

She squelched the first reply that came to mind:
You’re not the boss of me
! “Don’t blame them,” she said instead. “They tried.”

The doors to the examination and treatment area clunked open. A white-coated doctor stepped inside, headed for Alta’s desk. He paused when he saw Russ, and opened his mouth, but the chief of police went past him without a second glance and stopped in front of Clare. “Oh, I don’t blame
them
, believe me.”

Clare did a lot of counseling as a priest, and she was good at it. She recognized the weapons of grief: anger, lashing out, keeping the world at bay. She knew the postures of guilt: bending over, ducking away, doing almost anything to avoid confronting the festering wound to the heart. She recognized. She knew. And it didn’t do her a damn bit of good, confronted by Russ Van Alstyne acting as if
she
had somehow done him wrong.

“If you have a problem with me, spit it out,” she snapped. “Otherwise, get out of my face.”

“A problem with you? A problem with you? How about the fact that you’re once more elbowing your way into police business that has nothing to do with you—”

“I am here to visit Sister Lucia! It has nothing to do with you.”

“—despite the fact that the last time you decided to get involved—”

“Don’t you say it.”

“—it ended in a bloody mess, you—”

“Saving your life, you—”

“—idiot woman!”

“—overbearing jerk!”

They both stopped at the same moment, breathing heavily. If this were a movie, they would have grabbed each other, but Clare had never felt less like throwing her arms around Russ Van Alstyne. Unless it was to knock him to the floor.

Someone coughed.

Oh, my God
. She saw realization replacing rage on his face. They had played the whole scene out in front of an audience.

“Chief Van Alstyne?”

Russ closed his eyes for a moment, then turned. The doctor who had come in earlier was looking at them with one hand resting on Alta’s desk phone. Ready to call security, no doubt.

“Dr. Stillman.” Clare could hear him forcing his voice into its normal channels. “Hi.”

“Uh… hi. How’s the leg?”

Russ looked down at his ancient jeans, as if it hadn’t occurred to him before now that there was something holding him up. “Fine. Just… fine.”

“Great. Uh—” The orthopedist’s gaze strayed to Clare. He stared. “Reverend Fergusson? Is that you?”

She smiled weakly. “Nice to see you again, Dr. Stillman.” He let go of the phone and crossed to her, peering at her patches in the same way she had seen him peering at Russ’s X-ray last year. “National Guard? Great! Me, too. What unit?”

“Uhm… the 142nd Aviation Battalion.”

“Are you their new chaplain?”

Russ rolled his eyes.

“No,” she said. “I’m their new Black Hawk pilot.”

“Excuse me.” A new voice, from behind her, startled Clare. She and Dr. Stillman both turned. A very tall and very erect older woman had emerged from the hallway leading to the elevator banks. She had silver hair cut towel-dry short and the professorial air of someone who has been telling people what to do without much back talk for the past forty-some years. “I’m Paula Hodgden, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” She folded her hands over a clipboard. Her measuring gaze took in the whole waiting-room tableau. “Is one of you the sponsoring employer of the nonresident aliens?”

“Oh!” The mustachioed man tore his eyes away from the Russ-and-Clare show. “That would be me. I mean, me and my wife.” He nudged the woman by his side, who was still contemplating the two of them with a look of deep amusement.

“ICE?” Russ said. “Not to be rude, but what are you doing here?”

“And you are…?”

“Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chief of police.”

She flipped her clipboard open and made a notation. “Ah. It must have been your department that handled the accident.”

“An accident in our jurisdiction. Why are
you
here, Ms.—uh—”

“Hodgden,” Clare said under her breath.

“I received a report that a vanload of possible undocumented aliens had been in an accident.”

Russ frowned. “Who reported it?”

Ms. Hodgden looked at him evenly. “I don’t think you expect me to divulge that, do you? I will say it was not, as it should have been, your department.”

Russ crossed his arms, a move that emphasized his departmental hardware and patches. “We don’t go around checking people’s papers here in Millers Kill. It’s not a damn police state.”

Clare had to hide her smile.

“But you and I are in the first line of defense against possible terrorists, aren’t we?” Ms. Hodgden gestured toward Clare and Dr. Stillman. “Surely, we do our job so they might not need to do theirs.”

Russ glanced at Clare, and she knew, without a doubt, what he was thinking:
This lady has read too many official government pamphlets
.

Their mind-reading moment was broken when his sister shouldered him out of the way. “Hi, I’m Janet McGeoch.” She shook Ms. Hodgden’s hand. “Is there a problem with our workers?”

“How do you do, Mrs. McGeoch. Let me ask you, did you use a service to facilitate the H-two A permits?”

Janet glanced at her husband. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”

“It was Creative Labor Solutions,” Mike McGeoch said. “They came well recommended. We went to this seminar about getting workers, over to Amsterdam? Couple folks there had used them before. We’ve kept all the paperwork and copies of everything we signed off on.” He patted his plaid wool jacket, as if the documentation might be hiding inside somewhere.

Ms. Hodgden made another notation on her clipboard. “Creative Labor Solutions. I’m not familiar with them. I’d like to see any correspondence you have from them.”

“Why?” Janet said pointedly.

The ICE agent sighed. “Mr. and Mrs. McGeoch, I suspect you’ve been stung by a not-uncommon employee scam. Obtaining an H-two A permit costs an employment service time and money, and, as it’s designed to do, retards the movement of labor from the resident country to the United States. You follow?”

Janet frowned. Glanced at her husband. “Yeah, I follow.”

“Some so-called employment agencies try to make a deeper profit by charging clients the cost of fully legal H-two A employees and then supplying undocumented nonresident aliens instead.”

“You mean, like a dealer selling a dime bag for a full ten bucks, but giving his customers baking soda?” Russ said.

Ms. Hodgden raised her eyebrows. “That’s not how I would have put it, but yes.”

“And we got the baking soda?” Janet looked from her brother to the ICE agent. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“Two of the three men who were admitted here had forged H-two A permits. Not, I should add, very good forgeries, either.”

“Oh, shit,” Mike McGeoch said.

Janet reached behind her and squeezed her husband’s hand. “And the third?”

Ms. Hodgden consulted the clipboard. “Amado Esfuentes. His employment authorization documentation is correct.”

“Well, there! There’s nothing to say the rest of the men don’t have the right papers, too.”

“Mrs. McGeoch.” The agent’s voice had the professional sympathy of someone used to telling the same bad news, over and over again. It reminded Clare of her insurance adjuster. “Properly documented migrant workers don’t usually flee after being injured in a car wreck. Yes, it’s possible the two who were unable to run away were the only two undocumented aliens, but it’s not likely.”

“What about this Amado guy?” Mike sounded hopeful. “Why would he have papers and the others not?”

“In all likelihood, Esfuentes has worked in the U.S. before. That makes it easier for him to obtain an EAD on his own, rather than through an agency. It’s not uncommon for an experienced guest laborer to serve as a sort of leader or guide for work gangs from his village. I’d be willing to bet everyone in that van tonight came from the same hometown.”

“An experienced worker? The one with the broken arm?” Russ shook his head. “I spoke with him. He was barely out of his teens.”

Dr. Stillman, who had been listening at the edges of the discussion, broke in. “I agree with Chief Van Alstyne. He’s twenty-one, tops.”

Ms. Hodgden made a
well, what can you expect
? gesture. “These people go to work when they’re thirteen or fourteen. You can’t rely on age as a guide.”

“
These people
?” Clare propped her hands on her hips. She opened her mouth. Russ laid a hand on her shoulder. She shut up.

“What does this mean for us?” Janet asked. “Bottom line.”

“It means the two undocumented nonresidents will be returned to their country of origin.” Ms. Hodgden looked back down at her clipboard and frowned. “I’m having some difficulty locating one of them,” she admitted. “No one here seems to know where they’ve placed him. Sloppy work for a hospital.”

Clare studied her boots.

“What about the money we’ve paid to Creative Labor?” Janet asked. “What about us having enough hands to manage our herd?”

“Whether you can recover the fees paid to the agency is between you and that agency.” Ms. Hodgden gave the McGeochs another professionally sympathetic look. “My suggestion would be to contact another, more reliable service and have them get started fulfilling your labor needs.”

“Another six weeks!” Mike McGeoch jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at his boots.

“In the meantime, your other employees’ papers will be examined as soon as they—ah, turn up.” She gave Russ a look indicating this was his responsibility. “Mr. Esfuentes can remain in this country legally, so long as he is employed.”

“Employed by us,” Janet said.

“Yes.”

“As in, paid, and everything?”

Paula Hodgden pierced her with a gimlet eye. “Mrs. McGeoch, one of the reasons we
have
work permits is to prevent employers from exploiting employees from another country.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant”—Janet splayed her hands wide—“he’s got a broken arm! On a dairy farm, that makes him about as useful as… as…”

“Teats on a bull?” Russ offered.

Janet slugged his arm. “How long is he going to be laid up?” she asked Dr. Stillman.

“Four weeks in the heavy cast and another four in a lighter version. After that, another few weeks in a removable brace, just to ensure he doesn’t reinjure it. No weight-bearing exercise for the first month and very mild exertion for the second.”

“Mild exertion? What’s that mean?”

The orthopedist shrugged. “He could pick up a couple of books. His clothing. For most of my patients, it means you can start to perform normal household functions for yourself.”

“We don’t need someone for normal household functions,” Janet said. “We need someone who can unspool thirty pounds of hose and pitch manure and drive a stick-shift truck!”

Stillman shook his head. “You’re talking early July before this young man will be cleared for that sort of work.”

Janet McGeoch’s eyes met her husband’s, and Clare could see them speaking to each other without a word, in the way of long-married couples. Mike nodded.

Janet turned back to Paula Hodgden. “I’m sorry, but we just can’t afford to keep him on the payroll for two months or more.”

“I understand. I’ll arrange for him to return with the other two.”

“Wait!” The word was out of Clare’s mouth before she had a chance to stop it. “What if he gets a job?”

Paula Hodgden looked at her and then at the rest of them, clustered among the JFK-era chairs of the ED waiting room. Clare could see her assigning everyone a status—employers, investigating officer, treating physician, and… woman in a grungy undress uniform.

“I’m sorry,” the agent said. “You are…?”

“The Reverend Clare Fergusson, rector of St. Alban’s Church.”

Ms. Hodgden’s eyebrows went up. She looked at Russ.

“Yeah,” he said. “She really is.”

Dr. Stillman grinned. “I can vouch for her authenticity, too.” He glanced toward the admissions desk. “But that’s all I can do. I see Alta’s waving me down. Excuse me, folks. Reverend.”

Clare raised her hand in something that might have been either a wave or a blessing. Then she zeroed in on Ms. Hodgden again. “What if this Amado had a job for the next two months? A legal, paying job? Could he stay then? And work for the McGeochs after his arm healed?”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “What are you thinking of?”

“We need an interim sexton at the church. Mr. Hadley had open-heart surgery in March, and he hasn’t been able to perform his duties since then. He’s going to come back this summer, we think, but in the meantime we’ve been plugging the hole with volunteers. This guy could take the job.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “It’s perfect.”

“Wait just one minute—” Russ began.

“What do you think, Ms. Hodgden? Would that be legal?”

“Well… if you’re willing to fill out the paperwork.”

Clare turned to the McGeochs. “Would you consider taking him on when he’s recovered?”

Janet and Mike gave each other another speaking look. “Okay,” Janet said.

“Clare. For chrissakes, you’re going off half-cocked again.” Russ shoved his thumbs under his belt and tightened his hands over his rig. “He could be anybody. He could be wanted in three countries, for all you know.”

Paula Hodgden shook her head. “Mmm, no. In order to obtain an H-two A permit, the applicant must have no criminal record in either the originating or the host country.”

Russ glared at the ICE agent, then returned his attention to Clare. “He’s not going to be able to do custodial work with a bum arm. And what if he boosts the silver and takes off?”

“Most of Mr. Hadley’s work is stuff like vacuuming and polishing the woodwork. You can do that with one arm as well as two. As for the silver, I keep it locked away except when it’s in use.” She let her usual light Virginia accent deepen into molasses. “I am a Southerner, after all. We know how to preserve our silver from depredation.”