by Don Winslow
The ICE agent takes charge.
“Roberta Strickland?” he asks.
“Is Cal all right?”
“Have you seen him?”
“Tell me if he’s all right.”
“As far as we know,” the ICE agent says. “You mind if we take a look around?”
“Why?”
He explains what Cal did.
“Have you seen him, Bobbi?” Peterson asks.
“You two know each other?” the ICE agent asks.
“We went to high school together,” Bobbi says. “About a hundred years ago. I saw Cal last night.”
“What time?”
“I dunno,” Bobbi says. “Dinnertime.”
“And you haven’t seen him since,” the ICE agent says.
“Nope.”
“So do you mind if we look around?”
“Knock yourselves out,” Bobbi says.
They start in the house.
Don’t see Cal or any sign of him.
“Your brother really fucked up,” Peterson says to her.
“You still trying to get a hand job, Roger?” Bobbi asks. “Or you still helping yourself?”
They go into the barn.
Bobbi follows them so they all see Cal’s truck together.
“That’s his,” Peterson says.
“No shit,” the ICE agent says, looking at the plates. “Any other vehicles here?”
“Just mine,” she says, pointing out to her old Chevy.
The ICE agent steps outside and looks down. “There are other tire tracks coming out of the barn. And they’re not from that 150.”
Bobbi shrugs.
“Ms. Strickland—”
“Benson,” she says. “I was married for about fifteen minutes. It didn’t take.”
“Mrs. Benson,” the ICE agent says. “Your brother kidnapped a child. If you withhold relevant information from us, you are aiding and abetting a federal fugitive and obstructing justice—you could do twenty years. I’m only going to ask you once more: What vehicle did he take out of here?”
“I’m searching for the words,” Bobbi says. “Oh, yeah—go fuck yourself.”
He’s weighing whether or not to put cuffs on her when his phone goes off—they’ve picked up cell-phone pings. Strickland is between Las Cruces and Lordsburg, New Mexico, headed west on the 10 at eighty per.
“We’ll be back,” the ICE agent says.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” Bobbi says.
The ICE agent and the BP boss go, but they leave Peterson at the end of the road to watch the place.
Ila Bennett, the woman who runs the motel, watches Fox News.
Pretty much 24/7.
The guy they said took the girl checked in this morning.
And he was washing a little girl’s clothes.
She knows she should call the number, but on the other hand she don’t want to get involved.
Ila writes down the number, though, and thinks about it.
They set up a roadblock on the 10 west of Lordsburg and stop every vehicle.
Then a check of vehicle registrations in El Paso County show that a Dale Strickland registered a red 2001 Toyota pickup, plate number 032KLL.
Except that no red Toyota with those plates appears on the 10, even though the phone keeps pinging that way.
Helicopters fly the freeway and the off roads.
Nothing.
“The son of a bitch put his phone in a different vehicle,” the ICE suit says.
So if Strickland picked a westbound vehicle, she thinks, he headed east.
She redirects the chopper searches east of Clint.
Twyla sits in her apartment glued to CNN.
Every fifteen minutes there’s “breaking news” on Cal, which is generally that there’s no news at all.
In fact, it’s mostly old.
They show Cal’s high-school yearbook picture.
A photo of him in his football uniform.
They’ve dug up his military records and say that he served in Afghanistan and was honorably discharged. A panel of “experts” on a split-screen give background on the family-separation policy, the crisis at the border, the conditions at the holding centers. One of the experts speculates whether Calvin Strickland suffers from PTSD, although he doesn’t say if he meant from Afghanistan or Clint.
None of them talk about Luz Gonsalvez.
They don’t name her.
She’s just “the missing girl.”
No calls come in with a sighting of Strickland.
“We have to turn the heat up,” the ICE suit says.
He has Fox News on speed dial and uses it.
The announcer looks into the camera and says, “There is a troubling development in the Clint abduction case. Authoritative sources tell Fox News that there is legitimate concern that Calvin Strickland, the rogue Border Patrol guard who kidnapped the six-year-old girl, might be a pedophile and that the girl is in extreme danger. Authorities ask the public to please call if they have any information. . . .”
Twyla clicks from news channel to news channel and gets on her laptop.
A story is emerging from mainstream and social media that Calvin John Strickland is a potential child molester possibly mentally unbalanced from his time in Afghanistan.
On Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, calls are going out for vigilantes to comb the area. Some say that Strickland should be shot on sight, while others say that shooting is too good for him.
Cal sees the news, too.
Luz is still sound asleep on the bed as he sees his face plastered on the screen and hears the word “pedophile.”
He digs through his pockets and finds a card.
Goes to the motel phone and dials the number.
Dan Schurmann answers. “Hello?”
“Mr. Schurmann, this is Cal Strickland. I ain’t got much time.”
Strickland tells him the whole damn story.
How ORR lost contact with the girl’s mother (“It’s Gonsalvez, by the way, with a v”), how he found her, how they was going to put the girl up for adoption anyway, how he took her, that he’s going to take her back to her mom.
“Where?” Schurmann asks. “When?”
“I guess I said too much already,” Cal says.
“You can trust me.”
“Can’t trust anyone,” Cal says, and clicks off.
Schurmann writes the story and calls his editor.
The question is whether to put it out right away or save it for print in the morning.
“We should put it out now,” Schurmann says, “for Strickland’s sake. People down here want to kill this guy.”
It goes out online.
An Amber Alert goes out to every smartphone in the general El Paso area. Gives the make and color of the Toyota and license-plate number.
Ila sees the news report.
It tips the scales.
The sick son of a bitch has that little girl in one of her rooms right this very moment, and God only knows what he’s doing to the poor dear thing.
She calls the 800 number.
The yahoos are out in force.
From El Paso to Socorro, Lubens to Clint to Fort Hancock, all the way down to Laredo and McAllen, the pickups are rolling. U.S. flags stream from their beds as the boys look for Calvin John Strickland, the kidnapper, the pedophile, the child molester.
Down on the border, along the Rio Grande, the vigilante groups are out in their four-wheelers, their Jeeps and ATVs, with their radios and night scopes, their assault rifles and all their toys, ready to keep a fugitive from doing what so many try to do, cross the river to the other side.
They’re all on the lookout for a Jap pickup truck with a dirtbag behind the wheel.
Cal pushes the curtain aside and looks out.
They know about the truck, he thinks, I’m over twenty miles from where I need to cross the border, and they’ll be covering the roads in all directions.
He hears the helicopter rotors.
Up there with spotlights searching for the truck.
I’m trapped.
He sees the motel manager come out the office door and look in his direction. She quickly turns and goes back when she sees him.
She knows, Cal thinks.
Luz is sitting up, looking at him.
“We have to go,” he says.
Where, he thinks, is another question.
He gets Luz into the truck and fastens her seat belt.
“¿Adónde vamos?” she asks him.
Where are we going?
“Para ver a tu mami,” Cal says.
To see your mama.
Cal knows an old dirt farm road that leads off Fabens Road before it hits the 10.
If he can reach that before they come down the road, he has a chance. He races the truck up Fabens, expecting to see flashers coming down the other way. The choppers have moved off, scanning to the south. But Cal drives north, spots the old road and turns.
Cal sees the police cars coming up on the 10, flips his headlights off and stops underneath the overpass. Then he relies on the full moon as he crosses under the freeway and then into the high, sparse brush country. He’s going in the opposite direction of where he needs to get but knows from working these ranches back in the day that this road will connect with a cattle road running southeast down toward Fort Hancock.
A collection of cop cars—sheriffs, Border Patrol, ICE—roar into the motel lot.
Ila is out front of her office.
“He left!” she yells. “You’re too late!”
The Times article blows up the narrative like a hand grenade.
As any good reporter would, Schurmann had his tape recorder going for the phone call, so not only are Cal’s quotes in print, they’re sound bites in twangy good ol’ boy on the audio.
“I ain’t no pedophile.”
“The girl is a helluva lot safer with me than she was in Clint.”
“Hell, they was just going to give her away like some glove in the lost and found at Walmart.”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder? I was a supply-room guard at Wagram. I ain’t got post-traumatic stress disorder, pretraumatic stress disorder or current traumatic stress disorder.
“You know who’s got stress disorder? Them kids we got locked up, taken from their folks.”
“Hell yes, they’re cages. Call ’em what they are, not what they ain’t.”
“I ain’t no bleeding-heart lefty liberal either. Hell, I voted for the man. But I sure as shit didn’t vote for this.”
And the kicker—
“These colors don’t run,” Cal says. “But . . . maybe they weep.”
The whole story of Esteban, Gabriela and Luz Gonsalvez comes out, the fact that a widowed mother is waiting in Mexico for her child, and even when Cal finishes with, “I guess I said too much already,” most people don’t agree, and most of them have no doubt about what he intends to do.
Now a big part of the public is on his side.
It’s, as they say in the media, “polarizing.”
Depends which side of the great divide you’re on.
Ten miles down the cattle road, he gets caught.
Cal was driving slow on the bumpy road with only the moon for illumination. Last thing in the world he needed was to run into a ditch and damage a tire or the suspension or something.
He was out there with the mesquite, the sage and the real coyotes, one of whom ran across the road in front of him and then stopped to look in surprise, like, What the hell are you doing out here?
It was quiet.
Except for Luz talking.
“¿Dónde está mi mami?”
Cal points ahead. “Down there a ways.”
A little silence, then, “Mi papi está muerto.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Los hombres malos lo mataron,” she says.
The bad men killed him.
“¿Hay hombres malos aqui??” she asks.
Cal thinks a bit before answering. Then he says, “Sí, there are hombres malos here. Pero . . . no dejaré que te . . . lastimen.”
I won’t let them hurt you.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, the spotlight hits him, almost blinding him, but he can make out a pickup truck pulled sideways along the road, blocking his way. A man is standing behind the open door of the truck, pointing a rifle at him.
“Cal Strickland!” the man yells. “Don’t be thinking about reaching for that rifle! Come out of the car, and keep your hands where I can see them!”
Cal doesn’t reach for the rifle, or for his service weapon, an HK P2000 pistol in a holster at his hip.
He don’t want to kill anybody.
“Be careful where you’re aimin’!” Cal yells. “I have a kid in here!”
“I know that! Get out of the truck!”
Cal looks at Luz. “It’s going to be all right.”
Although he don’t know how.
He slides out and keeps his hands high in front of him. The man steps out from behind the door, rifle raised and pointed. He’s an older man, squat and thick, wearing a gray Resistol. “You’re trespassing on my land.”
“I didn’t have much choice, Mr. Carlisle.”
“You’re Cal Strickland?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t you used to work for me?”
“For a little bit,” Cal says. “A long time ago now.”
“You were a good worker, as I recall,” Carlisle says. “But not much of a cowboy.”
“Why I gave it up.”
“You’re famous, son,” the man says. “Seems like the whole country’s looking for you. They got a twenty-thousand-dollar reward on your head.”
“Most I’ve been worth in my life,” Cal says.
“First I heard you was molesting that little girl,” Carlisle says. “Then I heard you was taking her back to her mama. Which is it?”
“Taking her back.”
“To Mexico?”
“If I can get her there.”
Carlisle thinks it over. Then he says, “Well, you ain’t gonna get her there in that truck. Every good ol’ boy this side of the Red River’s looking for that vehicle. I guess you best get in mine.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t need their darn money,” Carlisle says. “I’ll take you down to the end of the road. Will that do you?”
Cal goes back to the truck to collect Luz and his rifle.
The girl is pushed flat against the seat, afraid. “¿Es un mal hombre?”
“No, he’s a very good man,” Cal says. “Come on.”
He carries her to Carlisle’s truck.
“Hello, young lady,” Carlisle says.
“Hello.”
They drive down from the high country.
Bullets strike metal.
Flames crackle, then roar.
Balled up on the bathroom tiles, Twyla clamps her hands over her ears, but the sound is coming from inside her head and won’t fade.
It only gets louder.
So loud she can’t hear herself cry.
“Is the girl hungry?” Carlisle asks. “I got some sandwiches in back of the seat. Beef, I think.”
“¿Tienes hambre?” Cal asks.
Luz nods.
He reaches back and finds a brown paper bag, takes out a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper and hands it to her.
“I’m a little hungry myself,” Cal says.
“Help yourself.”
“You sure?”
“Don’t ask me again.”
The sandwich, beef with mustard and jalapeños, tastes damn good. A few minutes later, Cal asks, “Mr. Carlisle, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you doing this?”
He knows that Carlisle is a die-hard Republican who probably thinks that “Democrat” is just a code word for “Bolshevik.”
There’s a silence, and then Carlisle says, “Well, I got a lot more days behind me than ahead of me. What am I gonna tell my Lord and Sa
vior? You read the Bible, son?”
“Not much.”
“‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for Me,’” Carlisle says. “Matthew 25:40.”
Then they see headlights in a valley down the road, maybe half a mile off.
“Shit,” Carlisle says.
“What are they?” Cal asks.
“I dunno,” Carlisle says, “but I think it’s one of them vigilante groups. I think you and the girl had better get in the back.”
They get out and lie in the bed of the truck.
Carlisle pulls the cover over it.
It’s tight in there.
Close.
Cal feels like he can’t breathe.
Luz puts her index finger to Cal’s lips and whispers “Cállate.”
Silence.
Cal has a feeling she’s been in this situation before. He holds the rifle tight against his chest and feels for the trigger. He don’t know if he’s going to have to use it or even if he would, but at least it’s ready.
Ten minutes later he feels the truck come to a stop and hears Carlisle ask, “What are you boys doing out here this time of night?”
“Looking for that bastard Strickland.”
“Well, I just come down this road, and I ain’t seen anybody.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to search the truck, Mr. Carlisle.”
“Well, don’t be afraid, son,” Carlisle says. “But you ain’t searchin’ my truck. Last I checked, this was still the United States of America, and it sure as heck is still Texas, so you ain’t gonna stop and search me on my own ranch. Which, by the way, you are trespassing on.”
“Gonna have to insist, Mr. Carlisle.”
“Son,” Carlisle says, “I take orders from one man, and you ain’t Him. Now, I got places to be, so move your little toy Jeep out of my way before I forget I been born again and go all Old Testament on you.”
Five long seconds.
Then, “Well, Mr. Carlisle, you probably are the last person who’d be hiding a child molester. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Cal hears an engine start, cars move, and he feels the truck go forward.
It stops a few minutes later.
The cover comes off and Carlisle says, “I guess it’s safe now.”
“That was close,” Cal says.
“Not really,” Carlisle says. “Them vigilantes are generally more hat than cattle.”
A few miles down the road, he says, “You know they’re going to have people watching your place.”