Andrew Gross: No Way Back: Part 3 of 3

“The other person in the room … who Hruseff allegedly shot,” Harold said. “I think his name was Kitchner …”

“Curtis Kitchner.” Sabrina Stein nodded.

“He was a journalist. As it happens, he was looking into Eduardo Cano at the time of his death.”

“Into Cano?” She began to walk him to the door. “How would you possibly know that, Mr. Bachman? I never saw that come out anywhere.”

“Because he visited Lauritzia Velez. In the hospital, just a few days before his death.” Harold picked up his briefcase. “I was merely pointing out how this Cano seems to have his imprint everywhere. And how the two cases might be related.”

There was a moment of silence between them. Drawn out long enough to take on a shape, hard and stony, and even a pro like Sabrina Stein couldn’t hide how she was working to put it all together.

That was the moment Harold first thought she might be lying.

“Eduardo Cano continues to be a dangerous man, Mr. Bachman. A fact that I think you found out for yourself, firsthand. But to your point on Agent Hruseff, we all seem to cross paths in this business if we stay in long enough. Scratch any of us, and I suspect that’s what you’ll find. And now I’m afraid I have to move on …” She stopped at the door. “Once again, I feel like I haven’t been altogether helpful.”

“No, you have. I want to thank you for your time. But if you don’t mind, just one more quick thing. Any chance you ever come across someone named Gillian who was connected with this case?”

“Gillian?” Stein blinked at the name.

“Maybe someone connected to Hruseff? Or possibly another agent?”

“Gillian. No, I’m sorry. Where did that name happen to come up?”

“No matter.” Harold shrugged. “Just something this Curtis Kitchner seemed to have on his mind.”

“I see. Once again, I feel I haven’t been very helpful to you. Anyway, it’s been a pleasure meeting with you again, Mr. Bachman. Please keep me informed of what you find.”

She opened the door and they shook hands.

“I like your pin,” Harold said, noticing her lapel. “Looks Aztec.”

“Yes, it is,” Sabrina Stein said. “I actually got it while down there.”

Almost involuntarily she seemed to adjust it on her lapel—a turquoise and silver grasshopper.

The Amtrak express train rocked gently back and forth, speeding to New York City.

Harold sat in the quiet car and took a sip of his vodka.

Mexico is an excellent place to commit murder. He thought of what Sabrina Stein had said. Because you will surely get away with it.

He had no proof, nothing he could share with anyone. Nothing that would make someone think he was doing more than just grasping at straws.

Just that Hruseff was part of Stein’s DEA team back in El Paso. And that it was he who killed Curtis at the hotel. Curtis, who was looking into the deaths of Dean and Rita Bienvienes, who were in El Paso at the very same time, and who was sure he had found something. Something that led him to Lauritzia Velez.

Which may well have been that the Bienvienes were murdered in Culiacán by Eduardo Cano—and with the complicity of the U.S. government.

Why?

Look them up, Wendy Gould had begged him. Harold recalled her pretty but desperate face disappearing behind the closing elevator door.

They’re all connected. All of them.

That phrase kept on coming back.

All of them.

As soon as the train pulled out of Union Station in DC, Harold had googled the other agent who was with Hruseff at the hotel.

Alton Dokes. The agent Wendy claimed was framing her for her husband’s death.

He couldn’t find much of a history on him, only a ton of recent articles that quoted him as lead investigator on the manhunt for Wendy Gould. But he did find one linking him to an article from the San Antonio Express-News , from back in 2008, a year before the Bienvienes were killed.

As a DEA agent, Dokes had been implicated in the shooting of a seventeen-year-old Mexican crossing the border from Juárez. The boy ended up being a drug mule, and the shooting was ultimately ruled justifiable. Dokes was fully cleared.

“Sabrina Stein, Senior Agent in Charge of Operations out of the DEA’s El Paso office, commented, ‘We are glad this episode is behind us and a dedicated agent is able to resume his duties … ’ ”

Harold took a sip of his vodka. So Dokes was there too.

All of them.

He was sure Sabrina was hiding something. But what could he possibly prove? This wasn’t enough to cast even the slightest suspicion off of Wendy. Even if he handed what he had over to the authorities, he knew it wouldn’t go further than the person he told. That two government agents had been in the same place years ago at the same time two fellow agents were murdered in Mexico? That, years later, they’d both had some connection to a journalist who had been killed? A journalist who was looking into that very story.

Scratch any of us, Sabrina Stein had told him, you never know what you will find …

The train’s rattling brought him back from his thoughts.

You’re crazy to get involved, Harold told himself . Look what it’s already cost you. You made a vow. To protect your kids. You’re all they have now. This was over. He’d already seen what could happen. His wife’s desire to protect Lauritzia had cost them everything. They had nothing now, except themselves …

Harold finished his drink and gave the woman sitting across from him a pleasant smile. As he went to shut the lid on his laptop, he fixed on his screen saver, a photo of Roxanne. Her arms around Jamie and Taylor in their backyard, their sunny faces promising everything beautiful in life.

He could shut the computer a thousand times, but it wouldn’t shut it out.

Not completely.

There was one person who would know all this, Harold realized. Who might hold all the secrets.

Curtis had gone to see Lauritzia in the days before he died. It was time to know what he had told her.

I was down to my last few dollars. Hiding out in parking lots and business parks after dark, catching bites to eat at drive-thru windows. I realized that the first time I hit up an ATM, my location would be given away. Not to mention a photograph taken of how I looked.

But I was getting to the point where I really didn’t care.

I’d been in the same clothes for five days now. I also knew Jim and Cindy were probably up in Vermont by now, and there might well be a national APB out on the Explorer at this very moment. Every time I saw a flashing light, or a police car randomly drove by, my blood froze and I came to a standstill, sure that it was the one car that had closed in on me.

So far one hadn’t. But I knew I was on borrowed time.

Driving out of Stamford, I passed a tiny lodging on Route 172 in Pound Ridge, just across the New York border, called the Three Pony Inn. It looked quiet and empty. Just what I needed. I just said the hell with it and pulled in. I desperately needed a shower and to wash my clothes. And to sleep in a bed. The place was a family-run B and B, and the proprietors’ teenage son was manning the front desk when I came in, doing his math homework. I paid for a night at $109 with a Bon Voyage gift card I found in my wallet—one of Dave’s advertising accounts, which I knew to be completely untraceable. But my funds were running out.

The first thing I did in the small but cozy room was run the shower. It was amazing how just letting the warm spray stream down my body revived me with the feeling that I could get through this and that everything would somehow be okay.