Dark Moon Crossing (6 page)

“That’s scary.”

“No kidding, but here’s the rub. The forensics team found only his
fingerprints on the weapon and they couldn’t find anything to prove that he
didn’t
take his own life.”

“Well, it
is
a pretty sophisticated science now, you know
that.” I wondered if he was reading too much into the situation considering
his personal involvement. “They’re not often wrong.” Silence met my ears.
“Tell me, Walter, did your wife’s cousin leave a note of explanation?‌”

“Sort
of.”

“What
does ‘sort of’ mean?‌”

“It
was unfinished. The FBI found a notepad on the seat beside him. It said,
I
can’t do this anymore,
but get this, he never signed his name.”

“Any idea what he meant by that statement?‌”

“Considering
all the circumstances?‌ Yeah, I might.”

And the circumstances proved to be interesting indeed. Walter confided
that Bob Shirley, along with three other agents and a Customs Inspector, were
about to be indicted for alleged involvement in a major cocaine trafficking
ring based in Tijuana, Mexico. Theoretically, that was the reason he’d chosen
to take his own life.

“I thought I knew the guy pretty well and I’m having a hard time
grasping that he’d be involved in anything so…so unsavory,” Walter grumbled.

“He wouldn’t be the first agent to fall from grace. Just a few months
ago, I read about four or five others who were arrested for simply looking the
other way when the loads were brought across. And these were people with long
and distinguished careers. Supposedly they’d pocketed in a few months what
they’d normally make in a year’s time. That has to be pretty tempting for some
people.”

“I never voiced it to Lavelle, but don’t think the thought didn’t cross
my mind.”

“Walter, tell me something. Do you know if he was having financial
problems?‌ What does a Border Patrol agent make a year anyway?‌”

“I gathered things were tight, but I think they were doing okay. He’d
just gotten a promotion a few months prior to his death and I think Lavelle
said he was up to forty-seven, maybe forty-eight grand a year. Nowadays, that’s
probably not a whole hell of a lot considering he was supporting three kids, a
wife and his mother-in-law. But still….”

“Did he strike you as the kind of a person who’d be involved in
something like that?‌” I asked.

His short silence was telling. “Boy, you think you know someone and
then find out you really didn’t.” He went on to divulge that following the
agent’s death had come the revelation that he had apparently been linked to one
of the many White power groups operating in the area the past few years. It
was alleged that he’d even been spotted at a rally. This additional fact had
added to Lavelle’s burgeoning humiliation and spurred their hasty departure.
But my interest level really shot through the roof when Walter added as an
aside that Bob Shirley had also been the apprehending agent in the case of the
Mexican migrant found in Morita, the one claiming to have witnessed the UFO
abduction.

“Hmmmm. Now,
that
grabs my interest. What’s your take on
that?‌”

His
deep sigh hissed in my ear. “Probably just a coincidence, but I never got to
pursue that angle because Lavelle wanted to get the ‘hell out of Dodge’ when
this all came down.”

“Did
you talk to his widow about it?‌”

He
snorted, “Loydeen?‌ That netted me a big fat zero.”

“Why
do you say that?‌”

“Every
time I tried to talk with her about Bob’s death, including just a few weeks ago
when we drove over there to tell everybody goodbye, she flat refused. The
strange part is she wouldn’t discuss it with Lavelle either and she seemed….”

A
crackling buzz obliterated his answer and I only caught bits and pieces of his
conversation for the next few seconds before the line went dead this time.
Rats. I tried several times to dial him back, but the ‘no service’ message
continued to blink back at me. Oh, well, I’d call him later. I had enough
information for starters.

Food was uppermost on my mind when we arrived on the outskirts of
Tucson. I pulled up beside Lupe again and pointed to my mouth. She got the
message and took the next exit. Within minutes we were seated at a booth
inside a noisy coffee shop crowded with truckers, uniformed Hispanic workers
and boisterous groups of tourists all decked out in shorts and brightly-printed
shirts. A harried-looking waitress wearing a stained blue apron slapped menus
on our table, asked if we wanted coffee, and then sprinted away.

“Are you hungry?‌” I asked Lupe, perusing the menu with interest.
Everything looked yummy, especially the Grubstake Special that included juice,
a short stack, eggs, grits and homemade biscuits.

“A little. I guess.”

I looked up at the expression of utter misery reflected in her jet
black eyes, and my heart went out to her. In addition to suffering the loss of
her mother, how would I feel if my brother and uncle had disappeared under such
bizarre circumstances?‌ I probably wouldn’t have any appetite either. When I
broached the subject, she shot me a warning look and inclined her head towards
two middle-aged men at the adjacent table. I edged them an unobtrusive
glance. Who did she think they were?‌ Undercover Border Patrol agents?‌ It was
possible. Okay. I’d fill her in on Walter’s conversation later.

Hoping to take her mind off her troubles, I filled the void with
chatter about work and then lightened the conversation with a few details about
my upcoming vacation with Tally. Apparently I failed miserably, as she had
shredded her paper napkin into a pile of confetti. We ordered our food and
went over the roadmap again. Besides a few sparsely situated towns which
included the ghost towns of Oro Blanco and Ruby, vast empty stretches of land,
including the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation west of Sasabe, was all that
awaited us. Only then did it hit me what a monumental task I had undertaken.
What had I been thinking?‌ What were the chances of me finding anything concrete
in such a huge area in three short days?‌

“Just in case we get separated,” I said, sliding her a sheet of paper,
“how about giving me specific directions to the mission.”

She sketched out a simple grid and handed it to me just as the waitress
slid a plate of
huevos rancheros
in front of her. My breakfast was
piled high on a platter big enough to hold an entire turkey. Wow! If my
younger brother Shane had been there with me, he’d have hooted with laughter
and accused me as he always did of having an appetite like sumo wrestler. As
always, thoughts of my family sent a pang of homesickness shooting through me.
But at least I had Christmas to look forward to. During the last conversation
with my parents, we’d agreed that I would host the family for the holidays.

Lupe’s depression appeared to deepen with each passing moment and she
seemed jumpy and distracted, picking listlessly at her eggs while I managed to
polish off every bite. When I asked, she whispered, “It makes me nervous to be
so close to the…uh, you know, so close to Mexico. Until this thing happened, I
did not want to risk coming down here at all.”

“I see.” It was after eleven by the time we left the restaurant,
gassed up and dumped a quart of oil in her car. Mellow music from a favorite
tape provided a relaxing environment for me as I followed Lupe south on I-19
towards the border town of Nogales—all virgin territory to me. The Santa Rita
Mountains, a massive cathedral of rock cloistering a host of shadowy canyons,
was a commanding presence to the east while the peaks to the west were
partially obscured by drab gray mesas of slag deposited by the local copper
mining company.

“Same to you,” I muttered under my breath as yet another irate
motorist, who apparently didn’t think 65 miles per hour was fast enough, honked
and roared past while issuing me the famous one-fingered salute. Enough.
Weary of Lupe’s dawdling pace, I pulled in front of her and checked my rearview
mirror periodically to keep her in sight.

To my delight, a fleecy film of white clouds appeared on the horizon,
bringing to a close seven straight weeks of pristine blue skies. But the
rising wind was presenting a problem. Tawny dust devils, having siphoned up
sand, leaves and other debris from the bone-dry desert floor, performed a
dizzying ballet in traffic, splattering their gritty contents in all
directions. If it kept up, we might be in for a full-blown dust storm, which
would make driving even more hazardous, I thought as three eighteen-wheelers,
apparently in a race to see who could reach the border first, rumbled past. I
was relieved to see the sign announcing that only twenty miles remained until
our exit. Good. Armed with the additional information provided by Walter, I
was anxious to get started on my sleuthing. For Lupe’s sake, I prayed that the
little boy at the mission would be able to shed some light on the puzzling
disappearance of her relatives. Knowing just the little I did about this
intriguing case galvanized my senses. Was Tally right?‌ Was I an adrenaline
junkie?‌ If so, how was I going to change that?‌ Did I even want to?‌

Thinking of him spawned a twinge of disappointment. Obviously Ruth had
never told him I’d phoned, but why hadn’t he taken the initiative to call me?‌
No doubt he was still annoyed about my decision to help Lupe. Couldn’t he see
past his own pigheadedness?‌ Couldn’t he grasp that I’d had no option but to
pursue this situation as best I could?‌ My thoughts roamed back to Ginger’s
evasive behavior last night. It galled me to no end to know she was sitting on
inside information concerning Tally and some other woman. What was behind her
roundabout references that I took him for granted?‌ The tiniest ember of doubt
flickered inside me. Now that I really thought about it, there had been times
these past few weeks when he’d been distant and rather withdrawn. I had
attributed it to ongoing problems at the ranch, but I’d been so immersed in
putting out fires at the office that I hadn’t really pressed him for details.
I vowed right then that I would give him one hundred percent of my attention
next week and amply demonstrate the depths of my feelings for him. I grinned
to myself. The new skimpy two-piece bathing suit should set the stage nicely.

At Arivaca Junction, I pulled over and signaled for Lupe to take the
lead again. Other than the Cow Palace Saloon and the Long Horn Grill that
sported a gigantic steer’s head complete with long white horns, there wasn’t
much to the place, just a few scattered businesses and some ramshackle houses.
The streets seemed mostly deserted.

We waved goodbye to a smiling young Mexican girl sitting in the bed of
a pickup truck selling bunches of dried red chili peppers, and drove onto a
well-maintained road flanked by palo verde trees, prickly-pear cactus and thick
clusters of mesquite and ironwood. Secured inside miles of range fence, herds
of cattle grazed peacefully on the soft contours of golden grasslands sweeping
westward towards the eye-catching Baboquivari Mountains. I thought the jagged
peak piercing the now mostly cloudy skyline looked a little like an enormous
brown shark’s tooth.

The road gradually deteriorated into a series of sharp turns and sudden
dips that had my stomach doing cartwheels. As the car rattled over yet another
cattle guard, I decided that this particular route would be inadvisable for
anyone prone to carsickness. There was very little traffic other than an
occasional pickup or SUV. After a few miles of breathing the blue curtain of
oil-laden smoke from Lupe’s car, I dropped back behind her. Why risk an asthma
attack?‌

I have to admit that what happened next was totally my fault. Yes, I
was gawking out the window at the breathtaking scenery. Yes, I was thinking
about a hundred different things and I was most certainly driving too fast. As
I rounded a sharp curve and descended into a wash, it took a second for the
dark image ahead to penetrate my foggy brain. “Sheeeeit!” I floored the
brakes and skidded to a stop mere inches from a gigantic black bull. Shaking
and gasping for breath, three things occurred to me in quick succession. I had
not hit him, I was not hurt, and the bull hadn’t budged one single inch.
Instead of fleeing in terror, he just stood there, chewing, flicking his tail,
and staring straight at me with a wicked gleam in his dark eyes. This imposing
beast bore no resemblance to the gentle doe-eyed cows that my brothers and I
had petted on visits to dairy farms when we were kids. I shuddered to think of
what would have happened had I plowed into him. I would have been dead meat.

My sudden stop had killed the engine, so I turned the key, hoping the
noise would scare him. It didn’t. Should I risk getting out to try and shoo
him away?‌ I surveyed the sharpness of his horns and decided that would be a
dumb move. No way was I a match for what looked to be three thousand pounds of
beef on the hoof. When I laid on the horn, he lowered his head and pawed the
ground as if in challenge. Now what?‌ There was not quite enough room to drive
around him without hitting the road sign, so I shouted out the window, “Okay,
big guy, move it. Now!”

His response to my demand was to shake his head and snort a
gross-looking gob of bull snot onto my windshield. “Jesus!” Apparently pleased
by his performance, the bothersome bovine turned his rump towards me and
decided to treat me to more of his bodily functions by depositing an enormous
pile of dung in the road. Some of it dropped onto my hood and front bumper.
He turned back to me, nostrils flaring, and I swear he wore a look of smug
triumph on his broad face. I moaned in disgust, rammed the car in reverse and
backed to the top of the rise, hoping that I would seem less of a threat.

I looked in all directions. The range fence on either side of the road
appeared to be intact, so where had he come from?‌ In the distance I could see
a ranch house and a few outbuildings, but no other signs of life. No people,
no cars—nothing but a few red-tailed hawks gliding in the steady wind. Surely
by now, Lupe had noticed that I was no longer behind her, so why hadn’t she
doubled back?‌

Wait, I had my cell phone! I grabbed it, then paused. Who was I going
to call?‌ Tally?‌ And tell him what—that I was being held hostage in the middle
of nowhere by a cantankerous bull?‌ He would laugh himself sick. But, the more
I thought about it, the less humorous the situation became. What if another
driver happened upon him at night?‌ Perhaps the sheriff’s office could notify
the rancher or animal control?‌ I dialed information but got dead air. The ‘no
service’ notice blinked at me again. “Stupid, useless phone,” I muttered,
stuffing it back into my purse.