by Robert Greer
They’d watered and saddled the horses just south of Costilla, a mile west of where they’d turned off Highway 522 and less than a mile from the rushing waters of the Rio Grande. Billy had pulled out the dog-eared, leather-bound New Mexico topo map he’d been using for years, checked the distances and contours of the terrain they were about to butt heads with, patted his horse, Maggie, just below the swell of her neck, and said, “Don’t want no shit outta you here today, Maggie.”
They traversed arroyos and crossed cactus fields, sagebrush nobs, and marshy springs as they negotiated their way deep into the mountains. Instead of following a jeep trail into the mountains, as Celeste had probably envisioned with her carefully placed yellow dot on the map, they were approaching from the southwest and on horseback.
The terrain became steeper and rockier, and the horses labored in the heat as they worked their way south. Duel scabbards housing two over-and-under Berettas and Remington and Winchester 30.06’s hung angled across the horses’ hindquarters. Each horse carried a saddlebag jammed with road flares and the two M16s, which had been broken down and oiled. Billy’s 4H announcer’s bullhorn made a lump like a melon in one of the saddlebags.
“Whatta you think, Billy? A couple of miles farther?” asked CJ, rubbing Butch behind the ear.
“More or less,” said Billy, his West Indian accent becoming more pronounced with each new mile, as it always did when he was getting edgy. “I’m thinkin’ maybe I should’ve brought my sawed-off shotgun,” he said as they began their ascent of another rocky hillside.
“I’m hoping there won’t be a need to get that close,” said CJ.
“Don’t count on it.”
CJ didn’t answer. He was too busy thinking about Mavis, wondering if she was okay, whether she was holding her own. He hadn’t asked Celeste’s drugged-out, slow-thinking twin brother to transport stolen art objects or unregistered guns and fireworks across state lines, and he hadn’t forced Celeste to kill the man who had hired him to track down Bobby. But the game had started with Bobby, and now they were about to finish it.
As the winded horses trudged uphill, he couldn’t help thinking that Mavis had been right all along. Right about the way he lived, right about the futility of the job he went to every day. And right about the bottom-feeding people who provided his living. Maybe he could be happy peddling Western memorabilia and antiques. Maybe it would give him, and now Mavis, a shot at a much longer life. He wasn’t sure, but he’d reached the point where it was at least worth considering.
He didn’t realize they’d reached the top of the hill until Billy drew Maggie to a halt. Butch did the same without need of a command.
“Guess we get to see the wizard’s place now,” said Billy, pointing down toward a structure peeking out from the tall grass in the valley below. CJ pulled a set of binoculars from his Wrangler vest and spotted in on the structure, a low-lying rectangular shack with a mud roof and walls of rotting timber. A corral made from welded oil pipe rose out of the dirt, just south of the shack. A pickup sat inside the corral.
“How the hell did she get a truck down there?” asked CJ.
“I’d put my money on that dried-up creek bed,” Billy said, a set of binoculars to his eyes. “She probably followed it up from the south. Gotta know the territory to play the game, CJ. She’s one up on us when it comes to that.”
CJ glanced back toward the sun, now hidden beneath the edge of the Taos Mountains. “She’s probably inside that line shack,” he said. “With Mavis.” He dropped his binoculars back around his neck. “Looks to me like it’s pretty close to sunset. Time to set things up.”
“You gonna set up the way we planned?” asked Billy.
“Just like we said on the way down.”
“What if Mavis ain’t inside?”
“Then we’ll have to find her.”
“Think the woman will tell us where she’s stashed?”
“If she ends up still alive.” The look on CJ’s face turned solemn. “No more talk, Billy. Time to set up camp.”
Chapter 20
CJ was counting on the fact that he was the one Celeste wanted to see dead. Mavis was only the bait, and he had a hole card: Billy. He and Billy had hobbled the horses on the west side of a hogback that sat between them and Celeste, then slipped over the hogback to set up camp in a dense clump of aspens a hundred yards from what they could now clearly see was an old line shack. They’d eaten the two ham sandwiches they’d bought in San Luis, waited for sunset, and scouted to within forty yards of the line shack before inching their way back to their base camp.
Billy had slipped close enough to the shack to see that it had four windows and a back door of warped plywood. Fear of being spotted had stopped him from moving closer, but he had seen a woman’s shoe and a set of drag marks leading across the dry, grainy soil to the shack’s back door.
Celeste came out of the teetering building and headed for her truck just before sunset, binoculars slung around her neck, a 30.06 in one hand. She looked chunkier, shorter, and older than CJ remembered, and she moved without any of the grace he recalled from her court appearances half a decade earlier. He thought about shooting her on the spot, but Billy reminded him that not only would it be murder, but if he missed, he’d be endangering Mavis. Putting a damper on his temper, CJ watched Celeste retrieve a folder and a pistol from the truck and quickly return to the shack.
Although they hadn’t seen Mavis, just before 10:30 CJ decided to go with his plan. Over the next several hours they set everything up, caught a couple of catnaps, and never once saw the cabin lights go out.
At 4 a.m. the buzzer on CJ’s watch went off. He’d been awake since 3, watching a night sky filled with stars and a bright three-quarter moon. There was an early-morning mountain chill in the air as he slipped a lightweight poncho over his shoulders and whispered, “Billy, time to move it.”
“I’m on it,” said Billy, already awake.
“As soon as you hear me, set off the flares.”
“Gotcha.”
“And Billy, remember, scream like somebody’s whipping your ass.”
Billy nodded and took off into the darkness.
Walking in a half crouch, CJ began his trek toward the shack, his progress hidden by a three-foot-high growth of timothy and brome. Fifteen yards from the front of the shack he stopped just short of the line of flares he and Billy had planted in the ground earlier. Giving Billy the time he needed to slip into place behind the shack, CJ crawled along the ground adjusting the twenty-five-foot wax stringer cord Billy had earlier laid across the tops of the flares, checking to make sure the cord was still in place. Relieved that it was, he slipped a match out of his pocket, struck it on the heel of his boot, and touched it to the cord. The flares dazzled to life, erupting in a bright yellow glow.
Hoping that Celeste would take the bait, uncertain whether she had cops, the FBI, CJ, or a madman outside her door, he shouted into Billy’s tinny-sounding bullhorn, “Celeste Deepstream, come out! Come out now, unarmed.”
The next second automatic-weapons fire erupted from behind the house, punctuated by the sounds of Billy screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs as CJ repeated into the bullhorn, “Celeste Deepstream, come out; come out now!” There was no movement from inside the house until four shots rang out from an open window. The shots took out several flares as Celeste slithered through the open window, dropped onto the ground, and broke for her pickup. CJ snatched his 30.06 out of the grass, took aim, and briefly hesitated, aware that he was about to shoot at a woman. That hesitation gave Celeste time to turn and, in the approaching light of daybreak and flare flash, squeeze off three well-aimed rounds from her GLOCK. One round caught CJ in the fleshy part of his right arm. “Fuck!” he screamed, returning fire, but Celeste had already reached her truck. The pickup’s engine erupted, and the truck, pointed south toward the dry creek bed and safety, broke out of the corral. CJ fired at the fleeing pickup, realizing as he did that the bullets pinging off the metal tai
lgate matched the sound of small-arms fire dinging the shell of his navy patrol boat, the Cape Star. Two of his rounds shattered the rear cab window, and as the pickup momentarily fishtailed out of control he thought one of his shots might have struck home. But the truck continued to buck and dance its way across the rutted grassland toward the creek bed until suddenly, as if swallowed by the earth, it dropped out of sight.
“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed CJ, shaking his head, realizing only then that he’d broken into a cold sweat and his arm was bleeding badly. He was shaking, his heart racing in a rush of fear and anticipation.
When he heard Billy scream, “Clear!” CJ raced toward the house. The only thing on his mind was Mavis. Several feet from the house he thought he heard someone yelling from inside. He stopped and duck-walked his way slowly toward the front door as Billy slipped up in a half crouch beside him. The yelling became louder. As they worked their way up the rotting porch steps, the shouts became a mantra: “Don’t come in! Don’t come in!”
“It’s Mavis,” CJ said.
“The place is booby-trapped!” Billy yelled. “Shit! How the hell are we gonna get in if she wired it?”
“Stay put.” CJ rushed back down the steps, breaking off the edge of a rotting timber, and raced for the window that Celeste had climbed through to get away. As he wriggled through the window, and Mavis’s shouts faded to a raspy plea, CJ dropped onto the floor in a nosedive. He was on all fours when he saw the iron lung. Realizing that Mavis had to be inside, he wondered whether it too was wired.
“Mavis?” he shouted.
“CJ?”
“Yes.”
Mavis’s voice was barely audible. “Be careful. I think she booby-trapped the place.” Dehydrated, afraid, and quivering, Mavis began to hyperventilate. CJ scanned the room, trying to determine what Celeste had planned. When he stood, he realized that blood was dripping from his fingers. He clamped his hand around his wounded arm, but the flow of blood didn’t stop. He could see Mavis’s head poking out from the opposite end of the iron lung. A hospital gurney holding half a dozen blazing candles sat next to the lung. Across the room, spread along the wall on either side of the front door, four perfectly aligned twenty-pound propane tanks, the kind used for backyard grilling, sat kissing one another. Four-foot lengths of rubber garden hose ran from the propane tanks across the floor, stopping just short of the gurney.
CJ walked over, blew out the candles, and shouted for Billy to come in. “She was gonna blow the place up,” he said, uncertain whether he was speaking to himself, Billy, or Mavis. His thoughts drifted to the distant ghosts of war. “But she didn’t have the patience,” he whispered to himself.
As he moved toward Mavis he could see that her forehead was a solid patch of dark, crusted blood. His eyes widened as he realized that her face was swollen and pale as cream and that her eyes were sunken in her head. He swallowed hard, choking back his anger when he saw that her nostrils were plugged with clotted blood. “Fuck!” he shouted.
Eyeing the propane tanks, Billy came cautiously toward him. Blood trickled off CJ’s fingertips and splattered into an ink blot next to his right foot. “CJ, you got hit!” said Billy, eyeing the floor.
“I’m okay,” said CJ, looking down at Mavis. Teary-eyed, he whispered, “You okay?”
Her answer was barely audible. “Yes.”
“I’ll kill her.”
Her eyes pleading no more, Mavis said only, “Please.”
CJ kissed her softly. He stroked her hair, caressed her cheek, and tried not to cry. It was the same way he had forced back the tears the day his Uncle Ike had died, and swallowed his tears the day he came home from Vietnam.
Wendall Newburn was parked, legs crossed, on the front porch of CJ’s office at 7:30 a.m. He was seated in a weathered, turn-of-the-century-style bench rocker that had occupied the same spot since CJ’s Uncle Ike had placed his wife’s favorite piece of furniture outside, in the fresh air and sunshine, to ease the pain of his grief after she had died unexpectedly from a Labor Day heart attack when CJ was barely seven.
Flora Jean didn’t see Newburn until she walked up the porch steps to the office, her arms loaded down with a caffe latte, a Danish, and a large book bag. Startled, she said, “Guess it ain’t gonna be my lucky day.” She set her book bag down, slipped her keys from her pocket, and opened the door.
Newburn rose from his seat. “Wouldn’t count on it.” As tall as Flora Jean but thinner and several shades lighter, the slightly stoop-shouldered lieutenant followed her inside.
Flora Jean wondered for the hundredth time what Mavis had ever seen in Newburn as they walked through the dimly lit foyer and into her tiny, stale-smelling office. She placed her coffee, Danish, and book bag on her desk, punched the start button on her computer, looked at Newburn, and said, “Why do I have all the good fortune?”
Newburn pulled up a nearby pressed-back chair, spun it around so the seat was facing him, sat down, leaned forward, elbows on the chair back, and said, “Good karma, I guess.”
Flora Jean considered saying I didn’t offer you a seat but thought better of it.
“Where’s Floyd?”
“Outta town.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Don’t think you’re someone he’d want me to tell.”
“No matter. I’m here to see you.”
“And you didn’t bring roses.” Flora Jean batted her eyelashes. “Damn, sugar. I’m brokenhearted.”
“Cut the shit, Benson.”
Flora Jean planted herself on the edge of her desk so that instead of being at eye level with Newburn, she was towering over him.
Looking frustrated, Newburn said, “You’ve been busy, Sergeant Major,” calling Flora Jean by her former military rank, his tone intentionally condescending. “Really busy—harassing people, threatening them, disrupting their work in their place of business.”
Flora Jean flashed Newburn a well-rehearsed look of surprise.
“Can the I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about look. I’ve got a whole slew of complaints.”
“About moi?” said Flora Jean.
“Don’t fuck with me, Benson. I can take this whole process to another level. Make it a lot more formal.”
Flora Jean had had enough of playing cat-and-mouse. “The hell you can. If you could, you wouldn’t be here playing kissy-face. Say what you have to say, Lieutenant, and shove off.”
Newburn thought for a moment before responding. Over the years he’d had dozens of head-butting sessions with CJ, but this was the first with Flora Jean. Certain that it was her MI background that made her such a tough nut, he decided on a more straightforward approach. “Le Quan and his daughter say you’ve been harassing them.”
“Bullshit.”
“The daughter said you threatened her.”
“Don’t think so.”
Newburn shook his head. “She described you to a T: six-one, black, female, African bracelets on both arms.”
Flora Jean eyed the chain of bracelets on her arms without responding.
“Got some advice for you, Benson. Quan’s son is an assistant attorney general down in New Mexico, and he’s got friends who have friends, if you know what I mean. I’d lay off the shoe salesman if I were you. The bigger question is why you were bothering the man in the first place. He says you called him a communist and asked him about Peter Margolin.” Newburn looked at Flora Jean for a response. When he didn’t get one, he said, “Margolin—murder—congressman—now, that’s serious shit. Hope you and Floyd aren’t working some kind of angle.”
Sidestepping the Margolin issue, Flora Jean said, “Last I heard, Lieutenant, it wasn’t against the law to call somebody a communist.”
“It’s not. But like I said, it’s the Margolin murder I’m concerned about. You and your boss stick your hand in that fire, and it is likely to get burned off. If you’ve got something I should know about, better spit it out now.”
“I got nothin’ for you, sugar.”
“Nope,” said Flora Jean, poker-faced.
Unable to decide whether she was telling the truth, he said, “Hope you’re not lying.”
Flora Jean answered with a shrug.
Conceding that he wasn’t going to get much else out of her, Newburn decided his next step would be to go see Le Quan. Rising from his chair, he said, “Tell your boss I hated missing him. And don’t go near Le Quan again. Next time he complains, there’ll be paperwork.”
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Lieutenant,” said Flora Jean, watching Newburn depart.
Slipping off her desk, she walked to the door and watched Newburn move down the sidewalk and out of view. “Damn!” She headed back to her office, wondering when CJ and Billy would be back, whether they had found Mavis, and if Mavis was okay.
Taking a seat at her computer, she called up her e-mail, uncertain of whether she’d done enough to stonewall Newburn until CJ’s return.
The tiny New Mexico village of Questa is little more than a stoplight, a couple of cafes, two barbershops, and several gas stations at the intersection of state highways 522 and 38. The only real things the sleepy village that sits within point-blank range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains has going for it are its proximity to the Red River state fish hatchery and the fact that it has the only regional community health center between the Colorado border and Taos. That fact, emblazoned in red on one of Billy DeLong’s topo maps, was why CJ, Mavis, and Billy had showed up at the squat, mud-brown adobe health center a few minutes before 9 a.m. looking for help.