"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."