Артур Порджес - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 121, No. 2. Whole No. 738, February 2003

I eased open one of the rear doors, and sunlight flooded in and illuminated the interior of the trailer. I noticed the smell first. An antiseptic smell such as you encounter in a hospital. Somebody’d been swabbing the place out with something that had hypochlorite in it. Then I saw the cage. Not really a cage, I guess, but a chain-link barrier three-quarters of the way down the trailer. It had a padlocked gate and, inside, tier after tier of wooden shelves, each with about a foot and a half of space in between. I noticed something else. A white plastic drum with a lid on top. A chain ran around it and then through the links of the barrier. So it won’t topple over, I thought.

Then a hand shot past me and slammed the door shut.

I had to jerk my hand back to keep it from getting crushed.

It was Maude Blaney, and she went eyeball-to-eyeball with me.

“What were you looking in there for?”

“I wanted to see if there was any interior damage.”

“Well, there wasn’t, and we didn’t claim any, so you just keep your nose out of there. You damned insurance people — they ought to horsewhip the bunch of you.”

“I’m just a gofer, Miz Blaney.”

“Well, how about you go for the gate and leave us alone.”

I took the hint and eased on out of there. Rufus raised up out of the truck engine and watched me as I went. Of the two of them, I think I would’ve rather tangled with him than his wife.

I asked a few questions in Rollsville. Everybody I talked to knew the Blaneys, but nobody had much to say about them. One old boy got a funny smile on his face when I mentioned Maude, and I wondered if, when he was younger, he hadn’t enjoyed her favors in the back of a pickup truck somewhere.

I also asked about the black SUV. I got pointed in the direction of one, but it turned out to be a Toyota Land Cruiser.

I drove on back to Lexington, drinking Coke out of a can and puzzling about the cage I’d seen in the back of the trailer. Animals? Did they haul caged animals in that thing? But I knew that wasn’t it. The plastic container proved it wasn’t.

Damn, I thought. They’re hauling people, and that container’s so they’ve got a place to relieve themselves.

I went into Lew’s office as soon as I got back to BGI, but he was on the phone. He waved me into a chair, then slid a sheet of paper across to me.

It was a printout from the Louisville Courier’s Web site, and it was headed News from Indiana. Louisville sat right across the Ohio from Indiana.

I read a story about a small-town police scandal. I read a story about a school bond issue that was about to be voted on. And finally I read the story about the dead Chinaman who’d been found at a rest stop off I-64.

Bang. Tilt. That pinball machine in my head just about went ape.

The rest stop had no facilities. It was just a place for truckers and car drivers to pull off if they had to. And it was surrounded by National Forest land.

Some traveler from Missouri had gone back in the woods to relieve himself. He’d just zipped open his fly when he looked down and saw a naked foot sticking out of a pile of leaves. He’d raced back to the car and told his wife to call the cops on her cell phone. When the cops had finally cleared away the leaves, they’d found a naked body underneath. An Asian, probably a Chinese. And when they’d autopsied him, there’d been a balled-up handkerchief stuffed halfway down his throat.

Lew put down the phone.

“You find out anything?” he questioned.

“They’re hauling illegal immigrants. I saw the cage in the back of the truck where they put them. Then they probably pile a legitimate load in front of it to hide it.”

“Damned right that’s what they’re doing,” Lew said.

“How’d you figure it out?”

“A lot of ways. One was getting a copy of the statement Rufus Blaney, the driver of the truck, made to the state police when he got back to this area. He said he was hauling finished goods to an outfit in East St. Louis called Mangrove Tropical Sportswear."

“I saw one of their invoices on Maude Blaney’s desk.”

“What’s a garment factory doing in East St. Louis, Bill? All the garment factories in this country have picked up and moved to Guatemala or somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s just a warehouse,” I ventured. But I knew it wasn’t.

“You visit that place and I bet it’s got a wall around it with barbed wire on the top. And if you managed a peak over that wall, I bet you’d see a guard with a big revolver on his hip and a pit bull for company.”

“Sounds about right for East St. Louis.”

“Sounds about right for a place where they’re bringing illegal aliens and then making them pay for their trip from China by working them eighteen hours a day at a sewing machine. They probably got a dormitory somewhere in the building with boarded-up windows and sleeping mats on the floor. And the food’s probably rice with a little pork in it and all the weak tea you can drink. And there won’t be any other buildings close-by, and those that are will be so dilapidated that even the rats’ve deserted them.”

“What do you think happened to that Chinaman, Lew?”

“While you were futzing around down in Rollsville, I’ve had time to think this thing over, and this is how I put it together. They pick these people up somewhere remote — maybe a creek in the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina just off the Inland Waterway. Then they take them to where the truck’s parked and dope them up somehow. Maybe they give them doctored food or something. That’s to keep them from making any trouble during the trip. Then they load them up like cordwood and take off. Farther along they probably give them another dose of dope.

“Now here’s what probably happened. That Chinaman that got himself killed came to a little early. Maybe he didn’t get enough dope in him, or maybe he threw it up. Anyway he wakes up in the back of the truck and it’s pitch black and everywhere he feels around him there’s nothing but inert bodies. So he huddles there and he gets more and more frightened and finally, after hours and hours, the truck pulls over. He stays where he is waiting for something to happen. Then the truck engine starts, and he knows they’re not going to let him out. So he starts screaming and here’s what probably comes out: They’re all dead! Everyone but me! Get me out of here!"

I said: “And just by chance Mrs. Li’s standing right outside.”

“And since she grew up in Taiwan, she understands every word. The truck pulls out. She runs for her car and takes out after it. Probably she wants to get the license-plate number so she can call it in to the police.”

“But there’s a black SUV riding shotgun,” I said.

“Yeah, and I’d guess Maude Blaney was driving it. She’s seen this Chinese woman standing beside the truck, and then the Chinese woman starts running around like she’s nuts and Maude puts two and two together. So she catches up. She sees Mrs. Li has a cell phone in her hand and knows she’s got to stop her right now. Well, this Maude’s probably a pretty slick driver. Anybody that can handle a big truck can sure handle an SUV. So she moves on up and kisses bumpers and then steps on the gas and runs Mrs. Li right into the back of the trailer. Probably she had no intention of killing her. She just wanted to stop her using the cell phone. But she whacked her all right and almost whacked three other people in the bargain.”

“What about the Chinaman? How’d he end up dead?”

“Figure it out, Bill. First chance they get they pull over someplace quiet. Then they climb into the back of the truck with a couple of pistols in their hands and hogtie the Chinaman. Stuff a wadded-up handkerchief in his mouth and slap a piece of duct tape over his lips. No more screams out of that fellow. Then, a couple of hours later, they stop over in Indiana and check on him and find he’s choked to death on the handkerchief. So what do they do? They strip him naked so his clothes won’t be a giveaway, and as soon as the coast is clear they haul his body out in the woods and cover it with leaves.”