Cross the Line (Alex Cross 24)

We walked past the forward semi and looked to the Mustang and the two dead men lying in the field with tape up around them and a crew of FBI criminalists documenting the scene. Figuring we’d better not disturb them, we walked back to the rear semi, the only one without a truck grille up against its rear bumper.

Deputy Max Wolford, who’d discovered the massacre, was waiting with the bolt cutters.

Sampson said, “How much do you want to bet we don’t find radishes and baby greens in here?”

“I vote for drugs and money,” Mahoney said, and he nodded to Wolford, who centered the lock shackle between the cutter’s blades and snipped it off. Sampson worked the lever and threw up the door.

A cloud of cold humid air billowed from the refrigerated unit, and sunlight poured inside. It wasn’t what we’d expected. Not at all.

“Jesus Christ,” Sampson said. “I didn’t see that coming.”

I swallowed my reaction, drew my gun, held up my badge, and climbed in.

Chapter

48

Four blue corpses in underwear were laid out on tarps on top of stacks of wooden produce crates marked CUCUMBERS, TOMATOES, and LETTUCE. Three of the dead were young women, late teens and early twenties. The fourth was a young boy, maybe a year older than Ali, no more.

Beyond the bodies and the crates, far back in the container, I could see the shoulders, heads, and fearful eyes of at least thirty people of various races and colors, mostly young women and a few young boys dressed in ragged winter clothes, all pressed tight together, teeth chattering, trying not to freeze to death.

“Move the trucks so we can get the other containers open,” I told Mahoney. “We’ve got to get emergency medical crews in here.”

“And a lot more support,” Mahoney said, pulling out his cell phone.

I pulled off one of the tarps, gave it to Sampson, said, “Cover the Viper. They don’t need to see that.”

He took it, and I started clearing a path through the produce boxes.

“I’m with the police,” I said. “We’re getting you all help.”

They stared at me either shyly or blankly.

“Any of you speak English?” I asked.

A few of them shifted their eyes, but not one replied.

When I reached them, some were crying, and some shrank from me, would not look at me, as if they were both afraid and ashamed somehow. I tried to smile reassuringly and gestured toward Sampson. At first, no one moved.

Then a pretty young woman with black hair wearing a gray snorkel parka broke from the group and hurried past me. A stream of them followed. Only a few glanced at the corpses on the way out.

Sampson helped them off the truck, and they lay down in the grass in the baking sun beyond the shrouded Viper, weeping, hugging, and consoling one another in at least five languages.

State troopers brought jugs of water and boxes of PowerBars, which they tore into ravenously. After the cabs of the other trucks had been photographed, we had the miserable task of removing the dead and placing them on the plank floors of the drying sheds.

In the other two containers we found a total of five corpses and sixty-seven survivors.

“We have no idea how long they’ve been in there,” Sampson said, frustrated as the scope of the situation sank in. “We have no idea where they came from or who all these dead guys are. There’s not a stitch of identification on any of them.”

We were standing to the side, watching as EMTs and disaster-relief workers began to arrive. I noticed the girl who’d left the container car first, the one with the dark hair who’d scurried past us in the gray snorkel parka. She’d stripped off her heavy coat and pants, revealing shorts and a long-sleeved pink T-shirt with silver sequins spelling out GODDESS. She was within earshot and as we spoke, she kept glancing our way.

I smiled and crooked a finger at her. Goddess acted like she didn’t understand. I went over and crouched next to her.

“You can stop pretending that you don’t know any English,” I said.

She looked at her lap.

“We’re here to help,” I said. “But we need your help in return.”