“I’m sorry,” Katie said. “I wasn’t looking for them or anything. I just sort of stumbled across them.”
“How big was the field?” Aunt Mary said.
“Big. Really big.”
The three of them were silent for several seconds. Katie wondered what her aunt and Lottie were thinking.
“How’s Luke?” Katie said, hoping to get the focus off her ordeal.
“He’s sleeping like a little angel,” Lottie said. “He missed watching cartoons with you yesterday.”
“I missed him, too,” Katie said. She began to pull her pack off.
“Katie,” Aunt Mary said, “do you know where this marijuana field is? I mean, could you tell someone how to find it?”
“Sure, I know exactly where it is.”
“Miss Mary, I want you to slow down just a bit now,” Lottie said. “We don’t need to be getting involved in something like this. You know they got the sheriff in their pocket.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the sheriff,” Aunt Mary said. “I was thinking about maybe the DEA. They’re always on the news making big drug busts. I’ll bet they have an office in Knoxville. Maybe they’d be interested. It’s time somebody put a stop to this nonsense.”
“I don’t know,” Lottie said. “I don’t believe in meddling in other folks’ business. Nothing good ever comes of it.”
On Monday afternoon, as soon as Aunt Mary got home from work, she and Katie drove to Knoxville. The DEA offices were housed in the rear of a nondescript shopping center off Kingston Pike. Aunt Mary told Katie that she’d called that morning and spoken to an agent. He asked her if she could come in immediately and bring Katie with her.
There was a security keypad on the door and a dead bolt lock. Aunt Mary knocked on the door, and a few seconds later it opened. A young man with short dark hair was standing on the other side. He was medium height, muscular, and wearing a shoulder holster that carried a pistol. Katie immediately noticed a deep cleft in his chin. “Butt chin” was what the kids at school called it.
“I’m Mary Clinton,” Aunt Mary said, “and this is my niece, Katie. She’s the one I told you about on the phone.”
The man introduced himself as Agent Rider and led them through a large, open room filled with desks. There was no carpet on the floor, and the steel beams that framed the building were exposed. The space was very much like a warehouse, with several people milling about, talking on telephones, talking to one another. Most of them were men, and nearly all of them were armed. They passed a cabinet filled with rifles and came to a small office with paneled walls and a fake fern in the corner. On the wall behind the desk was a map of East Tennessee. Agent Rider motioned for them to sit down.
“So, Katie, right?” Agent Rider said. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
Agent Rider folded his hands in front of him on the desk. His fingers were thick and leathery, and the veins running down his arms looked like rivers and streams on a map.
“Your aunt tells me you may have some in formation.”
“Before we get into that,” Aunt Mary said, “I want assurances that there is no way this will ever come back on us. I don’t know whether you know it or not, but the sheriff protects these people. He knows what’s going on. If you tell him where your information came from, he’ll tell them. I don’t know what they might do, but I don’t care to find out.”
“The sheriff doesn’t have anything to do with this operation,” the agent said. “We’re a federal agency. We have people from state and local agencies on our task force, but we share information on a need-to-know basis only. The sheriff certainly doesn’t need to know. We’ve been aware of his activities for quite some time now. We just haven’t been able to make a case against him yet. But I assure you, if we make any kind of move based on information you or your niece provides, we won’t be talking to the sheriff about it.”
“You’re positive,” Aunt Mary said.
“It takes a lot of courage for people to do what you’re doing right now, Ms. Clinton,” Agent Rider said. “We need people like you, and we take great care to protect our witnesses.”
“Witnesses? You’re not saying that Katie will have to testify in court, are you?”
“No, ma’am. You indicated over the phone that your niece has information regarding a large field of marijuana. The chance of our actually catching someone during the raid is minimal. What will most likely happen is that we’ll cut down the marijuana that’s there and burn it on-site. If it’s as big as you indicated, it’ll cost the grower hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. We’ll be hitting them where it really hurts. Right in the pocket.”
“Do you know who this grower is?” Aunt Mary asked.
“I have a pretty good idea, but the less you know, the better.”
“All right, Katie,” Aunt Mary said, “tell him what you saw.”
Katie spent the next half hour telling Agent Rider about her experience hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and how she happened to come upon the marijuana field. Then, using a map of the park she’d brought along with her, she showed him the exact location of the field.
“Five acres? Are you sure?” Agent Rider said when she’d finished.
“Pretty sure. Maybe a little smaller, maybe a little bigger,” Katie said.
“This is impressive. Looks like we’ll have to go in by helicopter because of the terrain, which means they’ll hear us coming, but this will be one of the largest marijuana seizures we’ve ever made around here.”
A few minutes later, Agent Rider led Katie and Aunt Mary back through the room full of desks and people and to the door. Katie could feel eyes on her, and as the agent thanked them one last time at the door and said good-bye, she couldn’t help but wonder who was looking at her, what they might find out about her, and what they might do.
26
I wanted to check on what was happening with my son and Tommy Miller, but after my meeting with Ramirez, my first phone call is to Sheriff Bates.
“We need to meet,” I say. “Someplace private.”
“Where are you?”
“Just leaving the jail.”
“You know Highland Church?”
“Yeah.”
“Parking lot. Ten minutes.”
He’s waiting when I pull in. I get out of my truck and climb into the BMW. I tell him about the meeting with Ramirez.
“He said it was a girl who works in our office,” I say. “He knew how long she’d been missing. Before I left, he said somebody wants her dead. He said he might know who it is.”
Bates considers the information silently for a minute.
“I reckon the first question we gotta ask ourselves is how,” he says. “How does Ramirez know? It ain’t like it’s been in the papers. Hell, we just found out about it a few hours ago. So since he knows she’s gone, and he says he knows where she is, he has to be involved somehow, right?”
“I’m thinking maybe he had some of his guys kidnap her and he’s holding her for ransom. We let him out; he lets her go. That’s the deal he wants.”
“Is that what he said? Did he say he’d let her go?”
“No. He said he’d tell me what he knows. But he did say, ‘Ticktock,’ which makes me think she’s still alive.”
“Wishful thinking, Brother Dillard.”
“Do you really think she’s dead? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”
“It ain’t good.”
“How do you think Ramirez is getting his information? He’d have to get it either over the phone or through a visitor. I don’t think Ramirez would take a chance on them listening to his phone conversations at the jail, and it’d be risky to talk to a visitor about something like this.”
“For a smart hombre, you sure can be naive sometimes,” Bates says. “Open your eyes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Who’s the only person he can he talk to without having to worry about anybody listening?”
It hits me. Stinnett. His lawyer. Stinnett is his information courier. That’s why he was acting so strangely.