An American Outlaw (32 page)

“You thought about what you'll do?” he says.

I glanced across at him. In his blue eyes, the slightest of smiles.

“I mean, if we don't make it...”

I let the thought work, a thought already working the last few days.

The look in his eye was familiar, a look I knew. No self-pity.

It was a door we'd both looked in.

If it had to be, it had to be—no-one in this world I would've rather been with.

I didn't answer him.

But in my heart, I already knew.

CHAPTER 33

Lajitas.

Dust blows in choking clouds across the airfield strip. Whicher dials the number for Houston, ATF field division. 

Behind him, in the dark hangar, the A-star pilot runs post-flight checks in the helicopter, sitting out of the storm. 

Whicher listens to the ring-tone. It's picking up.

“Cornell? It's Whicher.”

“Hey, cowboy. Where are you?”

“Lajitas. Right on the border.”

“What the hell are you doing down there?”

“Category one severe weather event.”

“You're doing what?”

“We got a major league dust storm. We've been searching by helo; we're grounded. Tell me you found Orla Childress?”

“No can do.”

“You can't find any record?”

“I've been looking everywhere...”

“Y'all tried Lafayette police? What about the inquest?”

“Given address for Orla Childress is her father's house. I called there, he said she left, took the kids.”

The marshal stares at his boots.

“The father doesn't know where she went. Or if he does, he isn't saying. They're not missing, she's not wanted by law enforcement...”

“Not yet she ain't.” 

Whicher thinks of a widow. Two young children. 

“Listen. I'm going after James and Tyler. I think they could be with the Labrea girl, somewhere down here...”

“If you find them, you better watch your ass.”

“Yeah. I'll do that.”

Whicher rubs his eyes, clicks off the call.

In front of the airfield hangar, a black Ford Ranger truck reverses—backing up toward the hangar doors. 

The driver leans over the passenger seat. Pops the door. Sergeant Baker.

Whicher steps forward. “Y'all get my message?”

“Yes, sir. Looks like you only just made it in.”

 “Didn't plan on coming.”

The marshal climbs into the cab. He pulls the door closed against the wind.

“Pilot told me he had to put down. No choice. Visibility dropped to less than three kilometers...”

Baker squints out the window. “It's more like fifty yards, now.”

“Guy's an Iraq vet, used to dust storms,” says Whicher. “But the engines can't take it, what he told me.”

“Lot of guys coming back from there.” 

The marshal takes out the Ruger revolver. “Rogue vets is the only ones make the news.” He thumbs the cylinder release, opens it, pushes on the extractor. And dumps the six brass-jacketed rounds. “No sign of anyone up at the Labrea place, Sergeant?”

“We sent a vehicle up again, after you radioed.”

“You impound that F150?”

“The truck got towed away, Thursday.”

“Y'all don't think they'll be coming back here, do you?”

The sergeant blows the air from his cheeks.

Whicher spins the empty cylinder, feels its smooth rotation. Still empty, he closes the cylinder to the battery, points the six-inch barrel to the floor between his western boots. And dry-fires the pistol. Three times in double-action. A long double. Three times in single, cocking the hammer. It clicks sharp and crisp.

From behind the wheel of the Ford Ranger, Sergeant Baker looks at him. 

“Everything alright, Marshal? Fixing on doing some shooting?”

Whicher reloads the .357 Magnum rounds. The feel of the rosewood grips smooth against his palm. He points at the dust storm through the windshield. “We step out in that, things is going to stop working on us. This better not be one of 'em.” He hefts the big revolver back into the shoulder holster.

“Where do you want to go, Marshal?”

“Head down to Lajitas.”

Baker shifts into drive. He steers the truck down the link road to the highway.

In the mud gray light the visibility's right down. Whicher feels the strangeness of the desert—not a living soul, only looming shapes, the blunt mountains. 

“Y'all see a thing like that in your life?”

“Dust storm like that? Not so much.”

“If any illegals were trying to jump the border today, how y'all going to stop 'em?”

Baker reaches the turn from the airfield to the highway. “It's the answer to a mule's prayer.”

He swings the truck onto the deserted road, engine humming underneath the hood.

Whicher eyes the empty highway. Sand-blown—grit drifting across its edges. Road and land becoming one. Air and earth and light disappearing.

Lajitas. A border post. Where to look? 

Labrea ranch checked out empty. “Y'all had anyone take a look at Joe Tree's?”

“Same vehicle that went up to the Labrea ranch called in there. No sign at either location, Marshal.”

No sign, no word, no lead. Nothing but a feeling. 

The Labrea girl had a daughter out there, somewhere. He thinks of the ranch, the burned up wall, signs of a break-in. Leon Varela. Standing in a freight yard. Telling him to get to hell.

“What about Varela?” says Whicher. “We could call in. At his yard?”

“What for?”

“I don't know. Yank his chain, see what happens.”

Up ahead, among the clouds of dust, shapes of buildings are emerging.

“His haulage yard is off to the right, sir.”

“Go ahead, make the turn.”

There's not another vehicle, nothing moving as Baker drives towards the fenced-in yard, its gates closed up. 

The sergeant stops the truck. Both men stare into the yard—a site office, empty step-deck, no rig. Chain and padlock on the gate.

“Nobody here, sir.”

Maybe Varela was out on a job. He could've left before the storm blew in—he could be miles away, anywhere.

“That teacher friend of yours? Guy you had me meet in that bar...”

“Jed Reynolds?”

“Right. According to him, Tennille Labrea would never leave her daughter behind.” 

Whicher thinks of Lori, his own girl. He pushes the thought away. 

“Anybody seen this kid? She has to be someplace.”

Baker shakes his head.

Jed Reynolds. The bar, the beer-drinking goat. If anybody heard anything or knew anything, it'd be a place like that. Local bar. They may as well ask.

“Head on down to that little trading post, Sergeant.”

Baker turns the truck around. He steers away from the river, back onto the highway. Drives a hundred yards, both hands on the wheel, foot hovering above the brake.

Scattered buildings lie ahead—their outlines scarcely visible. How to find somebody in a dust storm a man could barely see in? 

Whicher peers through the windshield. Block shapes of cars are parked in front of the trading post. He tries to make them out. A metallic SUV. A rusted truck. Panel van. A red Camaro.

“Varela drives a pony car, don't he?”

“That could be it.”

The Camaro's lights are on. Dim red tail lights. It's backing out. It flicks round.

It's pulling out onto the road.

“That's him, Marshal.”

Already the Camaro's disappearing up the highway, a set of tail lights in the press of dust. 

An estranged wife wanted for armed robbery. Hiding his daughter from him. The guy
must
be thinking on his daughter.

“You want to go after him?”

“Yeah. Do it.”

They could rattle his cage.

Baker pushes down on the gas. “This truck's out of the unmarked pool,” he says. “No light bar. I can't flash him down.”

Twin red pinpricks show in the dirt gray light.

“Don't lose the son of a bitch...”

Baker accelerates harder. The pick-up lurches forward. Sand covers half the road—no horizon—only a broken yellow line marks the center of the highway.

“Y'all got your lights on Sergeant?”

Baker checks. “No, sir.”

“Keep 'em off.”

Grit blasts against the pick-up sides. A raw sheen. A dust storm this bad, Varela couldn't be headed out anyplace—he had to be going home.

“Where's he live. Y'all know?”

“Terlingua. Ten miles east.”

The Camaro slows. It's stopping, turning from the highway. In profile, sleek and low.

“Keep back...” Whicher searches the highway's edge—flat scrub, rising to barren rock. 

The Camaro's moving, heading north, into the desert.

“The hell's up there?”

Baker shakes his head. “Nothing. Just a track.” He stops the pick-up. “That's the badlands...”

The Camaro's almost out of sight, the point of vanishing. Bare specks of red in the dirt-filled air.

“Keep following,” says Whicher. “But stay right back.”

Baker hits the gas again. The Ranger pick-up rumbles forward.

“Feel like a stranger,” says Whicher. “In a strange land.” He shifts his arm. Feels for the shoulder holster. “This all is their country. Not mine.”

The Ranger bounces over the stony track in the lee of the bare mountain. Burrograss dancing in the wind. They head north, deeper into desert.

“The hell is this going?”

“Old mining trail, Marshal. Lone Star mine.”

The track's running along a flat pass, the outline of the mountain hardly visible.

Up ahead, the tail lights glow a point brighter. The Camaro's braking.

Baker stares. It's turning to the left. “Okay...”

“Okay what?”

“Up there's mountain country. Dry mountain...”

Whicher runs a hand over his face. Maybe it was a waste of time. 

They could get back on the highway, forget Varela, turn around, head for Terlingua. James and Tyler—Labrea and her girl, they'd head for the border—south. Varela was headed north, whatever he was doing.

“Where's it end up? This trail?”

“There's a homestead. Esteban's place...”

“Say again?”

“Esteban. Segaro.”

Whicher thinks of the name. Somewhere, he knows it, he's heard it before.

Baker drives slow, keeping distance. Only the lights show Varela's still up ahead.

“What are y'all thinking Sergeant?”

“I'm thinking I want to know where he's going...”

Esteban.
Somewhere he's heard the name. Terlingua, was it? He thinks back to the afternoon he first came. He'd driven down to meet the guy that owned the diner. Big Lem Stinson.

Lem reported seeing Gilman James. Told him about a power outage, the day of the Alpine raid. And told him about an Indian finding the F150 truck. Joe Tree, Tennille Labrea's neighbor.

There was another guy that day. At the diner. Hispanic. Carpenter or a builder.

“This guy Esteban. He a carpenter feller?”

The sergeant rubs at his short khaki sleeve. “Yeah...”

“Buddy of Joe Tree's?”

Baker glances at him. “Matter of fact. I think he is.” He turns back to peering out the windshield. Eyes trying to stay on the dim lights ahead.

“If he's buds with Joe, he's bound to know Tennille Labrea.”

The sergeant doesn't answer.

“Hispanic community's tight. Everybody knows everybody. We know Joe Tree's been in helping her.”

“How's that, sir?”

“It was his Dodge Dakota they took off in. To rob Jackson Fork.”

“He can say they took it. Without him knowing.”

Whicher looks at him.

“Joe goes walk-about for weeks at a time...”

“You and I both know he had to be helping 'em.”

Baker stares straight ahead. “You think Esteban could be involved?”

“What if he were helping hide the daughter?”

They steer on in the worsening light.

“This place got a name, son?”

“It's called Casa Piedra.”

Red Hill.

The dust storm was worsening, visibility right down. Signal on the GPS in and out. 

We kept the pick-up headed west. Working the terrain, through gaps in the hills—across the flats, a score of tracks, mining trails. Somehow, there had to be a way.

A canyon on the river. That was what she said. 

Nightfall. Santa Elena.

First, she'd have to wait it out, with her daughter, Maria. She had to be with her.

Her place, the ranch, would be no go. The law looking for her. A husband trying to get her kid.

The homestead was our best chance at finding them, that's what I told Michael—the place she'd shown me, after Connie'd taken him in. 

We were crossing the last stretch of desert, my guess. I knew we had to be getting close, despite the storm. We'd watched it, towering in the southwest—fifteen hundred feet from sky to ground. Iraq, we'd seen them, back in the sandbox, dust storms that could stop an army. 

By the time we hit it, it was too late to turn around or change our minds. We had to keep on going. 

Supposing we couldn't find the place, we'd try to cross the border on our own. We'd have a shot, we at least had cover. The storm was set.

We found a rail line, driving across a plateau—a disused line.
Texas Pacifico Transportation
. I remembered it passing nearby the homestead.

We followed it north bound, wheels barely on the outline of the track. Edging across the desert, slow. But there could only be one line.

Michael lay back in his seat, propped against the window. “You should've never brought the damn gun...”

I looked at him.

“That M9 Beretta of yours.”

He stared unfocused at the swirling light through the windshield. 

“Back at Connie's, tripping off that boom—I figured it out.”

“You figured what?”

“How come you lost it. To Steven.”

I nodded.

“It was after we hit the airport,” he says. “Lafayette. We crossed the state line. Checked into that motel. Off of Bay Town.”

I thought about the cheap room we stopped in. A post-hit high, the three of us pumped. The pain of Nate's death seemed to fade in those first few short hours.