El Gavilan (20 page)

THEN

It was the day Tell had about decided to seek promotion. All he needed was that extra push.

The day seemed determined to give him a shove with both hands.

The morning brought a grisly discovery: a family dead a mile off the roadside.

A man—boy, really—
maybe
nineteen. The young woman found with him might not even be eighteen. A child of perhaps two was with them. Their second child looked newborn, probably out there in the desert scrub. After, the girl would have been in no condition to move, let alone to hike across that alkali wasteland. So they’d all died out there together, lost in the sand and saguaro no man’s land between North and South. There was really no saying how long they’d been there, either. The desert too often made casual calculations of time of death … treacherous.

Tell radioed in his find. The others wondered how he’d found the bodies so far off the road. He told them the truth; he had indulged a hunch and driven out to see what all those big-winged, desert carrion birds were circling out there in the dust.

Later that afternoon, Tell made another grim discovery. He found a dead man and woman—two elderly Mexicans who died in one another’s arms.

The day ended with Tell and Seth getting shot at by some wannabe
narcotrafficantes
.

Over shots of tequila, the two Border Patrol agents wondered aloud to one another what brought them back to work each day.

Later, a bit buzzed, Tell palmed into his driveway, pulling his duty SUV into the shade of their rental’s attached awning. A jackrabbit scampered off in the glare before he doused the headlights.

In twelve hours, he’d have to be up and behind this same steering wheel, headed back the other direction for another potentially hellish day in the desert.

At the moment, that seemed unthinkable.

He saw two distinct paths before him: quit before he burned out far too early, or let himself be bumped upstairs.

Marita met him at the door. She kissed him hard.

He said, “That’s quite a welcome.”

Taking his hat from his head and putting it on her own, Marita held up the home pregnancy test, still in its shrink-wrap.

THIRTY

“Thanks for letting me use your DVD player,” Tell said. “We don’t have one at the station—hell, I’m beginning to think cable TV there is a mistake—and I never got ’round to replacing my own.”

Patricia moved on fast from that last admission—not wanting to dwell on the fire that cost Tell his possessions and so much more. She said, trying for a light tone, “So, it’s a movie matinee. What’s your pleasure? This isn’t porn, is it?”

Tell smiled. Patricia, back from morning classes, was wearing a black T-shirt and black sweats. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail. He said, “You said that with an air of hopefulness.”

“I like some of Vivid’s product,” she said. “You?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tell said.

She smirked. “Sure. So what are we watching instead?”

“A little league game.”

“
Ooh, ah!
I’ll pop some popcorn, maybe.”

“Sounds good.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh.”

“You said that with an air of disappointment, Tell.”

“Sincere disappointment.”

Patricia rolled her eyes. “You have beer back at your place?”

“Yeah, but I’m on duty.”

“I’m not. So go grab me a beer. I’ll make the damned popcorn.”

“Sounds good.”

Patricia said, “This really a little league game we’re going to watch?”

“Afraid so.”

“Why?”

“Clues, I hope.”

“So go get my beer.”

* * *

“I never dreamed baseball could be more boring than I already imagined it to be,” Patricia said. “But I was so wrong.” She was sitting with her legs tucked up under her, an arm resting on his thigh and her head on Tell’s shoulder, munching occasionally on popcorn scooped from the big plastic bowl balanced on his lap.

“I’m watching the background,” Tell said.

“Hard to focus on that this long in,” Patricia said. “How far into this damned game are we?”

“About thirty minutes,” Tell said. He sat up suddenly. “Whoa! Go back.”

Patricia fiddled with the remote control. She rolled the DVD back several frames, then hit Forward, slowing down the speed. “There,” Tell said. “See?”

“Not much.”

“Give me the remote.”

Patricia scowled. “Already we’ve come to this—fights over the TV remote.”

“Please?”

Tell hit Freeze Frame, then Zoom. He pushed arrows on the remote until the portion of the frame he wanted was centered on the television screen. The portion that interested him was badly pixelated.

“Going to have to get the original from the sports photographer, I guess,” he said. “See if some lab can enhance that patch.”

Patricia said, “Whatever kind of truck that is, it’s red. But that’s about all I’m sure of.”

“It’s a Dodge Ram,” Tell said. “Those front ends are very distinctive. And they’re big … a short man’s truck. You know—store-bought muscle. And you’d
need
four-wheel drive to come across that back way.”

“Looks like two men,” she said. “One skinny, and one short and fat. That thing they’re lugging between them,” Patricia said, “the body, you think? That’s Thalia Ruiz they’re carrying?”

“I do think so,” Tell said. “And by my estimates, the timing is just what it should be in terms of the body dump.”

The blurry figures—with the blocky pixelation-distortion they looked like little murderous Lego men—hauled their load straight to the tree under which Thalia Ruiz had been found. Together, they let something roll out of the black blanket or tarp they’d used for transport.

Afterward, one looked as if he slapped the other on the back. They set back off together toward the red Dodge Ram pickup.

Tell felt Patricia shudder next to him. “My God, how callous they were,” she said, disbelieving. “Almost casual. Like business as usual. I’m going to have nightmares tonight.”

“If this is the third or fourth woman to die like that, this is as routine as that sort of thing can ever be,” Tell said. “And sorry I let you see that.”

“It’s very disturbing,” Patricia said. “But at least not graphic. And I’m sorry for that in a way. I mean, unless you find some CSI-level tech wizard, you’re never going to get much identification from that DVD. If it was me on some jury, I’d have a very hard time convicting anyone on the basis of that blurry thing.”

“It’s a start, though,” Tell said. “See those buildings back there, the ones the truck is driving back toward now? There’s a nine-foot security fence that runs along the backs of those buildings and right on around them to their fronts. We never really bothered exploring much on that side back there because of the fences. Conventional wisdom on the part of some uniforms at the crime scene was that the killers more likely came in as we had—across the ball diamonds.”

“While games were underway?” Patricia shook her head. “No way. And that’d be a hell of a long way to carry a body.”

Tell said, “Where were you last Friday morning, Sherlock, when we were bumbling around out there? You up to a trip out to that industrial site, Patricia?”

“I can think of sexier things I’d rather us be doing,” she said. “But okay. I get to be an operative again?”

“More like sidekick.”

“Is that a promotion?”

“I’d call it that.”

* * *

“Outside of going to and from campus, I haven’t driven around much in Vale County,” Patricia said. “If it’s all like this, I guess I haven’t missed much.”

“This is just the industrial quadrant,” Tell said. “It looks like all these sorts of industrial parks look—squalid and weedy.”

Tell badged an elderly security guard loafing in a booth at the front entrance of the industrial park. He quizzed the old guard and learned that each of the industrial installations had a back fence that slid open to afford forklift access to the railroad spur for offloading freight cars.

“And the owners of the installations hold the only keys, I’d guess,” Tell said.

The codger guard shook his head. “No, also the fire department in case of some explosion or fire or rail derailment or the like. Called a key-holder provision. The Vale County Sheriff’s Department also holds sets for other emergency situations.”

Tell nodded. “You have security cameras arrayed around the exterior, I take it?”

“’Course.”

“You recycle those tapes?”

“Once a week or so.”

“Well don’t this time, okay? I need access to those tapes from last Friday.”

The old guard smiled and pointed a bony finger. “Been wondering when someone would get around to that after that body was dumped out back. But you’re kind of out of your jurisdiction, ain’tcha?”

Tell said, “I’ll get the proper court orders, don’t sweat that. Just don’t scrub those tapes for reuse.”

“See what I can do,” the old guard said. Tell wasn’t sure he believed him.

Tell said, “You have keypad codes or some security-card means of monitoring who comes and goes through those gates out back?”

The guard shrugged. “Theoretically, yes. But fact is, we never really figured out how to individually code those cards. So they all have the same access code … same identification signature. No way to tell them apart.”

“I’ll be back with court papers for those tapes,” Tell said.

* * *

“Going to take at least a couple of hours to get those orders from the judge,” Tell said, closing his cell phone.

Patricia squeezed his thigh. “This could solve it all, don’t you think?”

“Don’t want to jinx it,” Tell said. He checked his watch. “I’ll drop you off, then I need to go see your friend about the false driver’s license you’re contracting him for.”

“You up for dinner tonight after, Tell? Figured we could eat at my folks’ place. The restaurant, I mean. Not their house. They both want to meet you, to spend an evening together.”

“Meet the parents already, huh? Okay … but let’s keep it as tentative as we can, Patricia. Way things are moving right now, this day could get away from me in some crazy ways.”

Tell’s cell phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID, then opened it and said, “Julie?”

His dispatcher said, “Hi, Chief Lyon? It’s Julie.”

“What’s up, Julie?”

“I have Sheriff Walt Pierce on the other line. He’s pretty mad. He insisted I give him your cell number, but I didn’t want to do that without your permission.”

“I appreciate it, Julie. Patch him through, can you?”

“Will do, Chief Lyon.”

Walt Pierce said, “You back-stabbing son of a bitch! Courtesy is you contact me, you come nosing around my county.”

“How you doin’, Walt?”

“’Cause I’m still focused on protocol, Lyon, I’m lettin’ you know to ease back on writs and the like. I got them tapes myself, already. I’ll take it from here.”

Tell, trying hard to tamp down his anger, said, “Security guard tipped you, did he?”

Walt said, “He’s retired sheriff’s department. Retired Vale County Sheriff’s Department. And he’s real loyal. A rarer and rarer fuckin’ trait in men.”

He cleared his throat, then Tell said, evenly as he could, “Then you’ll let me know what you find?”

“What the fuck gave you that idea, Lyon?”

Tell closed his phone without saying good-bye. Then he said, “I fucked that up.”

Patricia said, “His voice carried. What an asshole.” She reached across the seat and stroked his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Tell.”

THEN

They celebrated with dinner out: a little family-owned-and-operated Mexican joint on their own side of the border.

Tell had a margarita on the rocks; Marita allowed herself a virgin daiquiri.

After they thought they’d talked out the baby who’d soon be joining them, they talked about Tell’s hellish day. Marita looked stricken when she heard about the shots fired at him.

She made the case for staying and for Tell’s seeking promotion.

Many were the nights later when Tell wished he’d dared to muddy the waters as she argued her position. If he’d only played devil’s advocate, how else might it have played out?

Tell would eventually come to regret not winning a debate he’d never attempted to start.

Marita switched them back to the earlier topic. “A girl or a boy?”

Tell ran his index finger along the rim of his glass, licked salt off his fingertip. He sipped his drink, weighing his answer, and said, “Honestly? I have no preference.”

Marita raised her glass, the straw close to her lips. “None?”

“None whatsoever.” He sipped from his glass again. “You?”

She smiled. “Either way it goes, it’ll be perfect.”

THIRTY ONE

Able had done Shawn a favor when they were talking after the meth-lab raid, jawing as they stripped down and washed off following their tour of the drug shack.

Able told Shawn about a couple of middle-aged Mexican women trained in “custodial rehabilitation” of crime scenes. The Horton County Sheriff’s Department hired the women frequently for cleansing publicly owned crime scenes. The department also recommended them to private parties. When some unfortunate ended up murdered, overdosed, “or otherwise suicided”—as Able had put it—in hotel and motel rooms, they were the ones called. When someone died or got themselves killed in rental units or homes that realtors thought they might still move despite the shadow of violent crime looming over their latest “location, location, location” listing, they called in the Mexican women.

Shawn contacted the specialized cleaning crew, opened his place up to them, then sprinted down the back alleys to the newspaper office to write up his account of the raid of the Morales brothers’ meth-cookery farmhouse while it was all still fresh in his mind.

After he had filed his report with the police regarding the destruction at his apartment, Shawn had sent his publisher an e-mail indicating his exoneration in the Ruiz murder. He’d never received any word back from corporate. Shawn figured, then, he was still on the payroll and free to resume reporting.

Shawn finished his story, read it over once on screen, then printed a hard copy and read it again, finding four more typos. He saved his changes and shut down his computer.