by Jack L Knapp
I wiped the cell phone carefully after disconnecting the call. I hadn’t touched Henderson's car, not even the side window; it was intact, still closed, and the doors were even locked. There was just a dead man in a locked car. Accidental death, of course; what else could it be?
The cell phone went on the seat of my rented car. I got back in, rejoined the traffic stream, and considered the best way to get rid of the phone as soon as possible.
I continued off the Interstate and turned right on Mesa. Parking on a side street, I simply moved the cell phone I had used to the sidewalk; float it out the open window, let it settle to the concrete, then drive on.
Someone would find it. I doubted that the police would even look for the phone, since I’d left no evidence of what I’d done. This was just another traffic accident, and there were no marks on Henderson’s neck to suggest otherwise.
I had thought of destroying the controller if Henderson had brought it with him. Finally, I decided it was too dangerous. What if I accidentally triggered it while I was crushing it? Suicide by remote controller? Darwin would love me. Regretfully, I dropped the idea. Perhaps the controller would go in a box for Henderson’s next of kin or in an evidence container; someone might take it home to try it just in case it would work on his TV. If that happened, they would find the controller wouldn’t work, and it would likely end up in a landfill somewhere east of El Paso.
With Henderson gone, no one was looking for me. The existence of that controller, with no one left who knew what it was for, was no longer a problem.
For me, killing Henderson had been just another combat mission. Some of those I'd gone on in the past had caused me to lose sleep afterwards; this one wouldn’t.
I drove back to the airport. After turning the rental car in, I hiked back to the tire place; I could use the exercise. The Subaru was now finished, four shiny black tires plus a spare, the tires on a vehicle that could use a wash.
#
I thought about packing Surfer’s stuff and moving it out of the apartment; it was our apartment, after all, we’d only allowed him to use it. But I didn’t feel like doing that today. I was drained. The walk had helped a bit, and most of the tension was gone, but it had left me feeling blah.
Henderson had been an anticlimax, after the effort to locate him and then move in behind his car after I found him. The day’s activities, piled on top of everything that had happened last night, had just left me in no mood today to deal with Surfer’s stuff. The cops might even be there by now, if they were bothering to find out details about Surfer.
The Subaru needed washing, so I headed north on Dyer. I knew there was a carwash out there, and I dropped the Subaru at the entrance and went inside to wait. It didn’t take long.
I didn’t expect Shezzie to be back from Juarez yet, and Ray was busy. I was at loose ends, so I decided to just head up Trans-Mountain Road. There was a pullover there, just after the long curve and before the road began climbing more steeply toward the pass. I parked, and looked out over the valley for a while, trying not to think about Surfer and the killing of Henderson. I finally got out and started walking, just looking at the folded and cracked rocks.
The bones of the Earth are revealed in places like this, where the surface has been cut and blasted out to make a roadway. There were narrow channels with minerals exposed on the north wall of the road-cut, ancient cracks across the rock that had filled in with lava before it cooled and hardened. There were also old volcanic dikes in the rock that had been left exposed as the softer rocks weathered away. I walked a bit further. I could see holes, down in the canyon below the trail I was on, where ancient natives had ground grain for their bread and left the holes as a sign of their passing. There were several of them; the people had lived here a long time, while those holes were being rubbed and pounded into the bedrock of the mountain.
The mountains look dry at first glance, but there are springs and seeps and even a few small rivulets that run for a few hundred yards before sinking back into the ground. In the desert, those water sources attract animals and people. So the ancient Indians had lived in these mountains, supplied with enough water to live, and with game and plants they could harvest.
A footpath led around the shoulder of the mountain, so I followed that. The rocks ahead were huge, great rounded things. Many of them were the size of cars. I sat there on a rock and just looked at them for a while.
I was thinking of heading back when the idea occurred to me.
Could I? I had released all my Talent once before, in one wild impulse after Surfer died. I had been driven by anger at that time, but could I now control that much power without the rage to motivate me? I looked around carefully and made sure there was no one in view.
There was a rock ahead of me, perhaps ten feet in diameter, that had slid downhill after some ancient rain. I carefully reached for it.
Moving it presented no real problem, other than getting a feel for the shape and weight. I shifted the huge mass around for a moment to get a better feel for it, then picked it up, the several tons weight of it, and stacked it carefully atop an even larger stone. I wobbled the new cap-rock in place for a moment, letting the weight of it grind into the rock it now perched on. Then I slowly relaxed my control and let the boulder, ‘my’ boulder, settle into its new resting place.
I hadn’t felt the headaches for a while, but I could feel the start of one now. Penance, perhaps, for killing Henderson, or maybe because I had strained my PK Talent. I didn’t know. Maybe there were still buried feelings and impulses, or maybe it was just the strain of pushing myself that I was feeling.
Still, I grinned when I thought about the rock I’d stacked.
College students, even middle-school classes, come to Trans-Mountain road to study the exposed geology.
Some people leave graffiti; there’s quite a bit of it on the exposed rock walls. I left a rock stacked atop another rock. T was here. If no one could read my graffiti, that was not important; I knew.
What might the teachers and professors make of that stacked boulder? I imagined them trying to come up with an answer on the spot. “Mister, how did that big rock get up there?” Think fast, professor; the teacher would be more likely to say, "I don't know", while the prof would feel like he should be able to come up with an answer.
My Talent was still developing. Someday, I might be able to do more, maybe something really worthwhile, but for now, stacking a huge stone on top of another felt very satisfying.
On the way back to the Subaru I simply wiped the graffiti off the rocks as I passed; I flexed the surface of the rock just a bit, enough to flake off the paint. Clearly, my control was improving as well as my strength.
The smile remained on my face as I drove down Trans-Mountain Road.
Chapter Nineteen
I met Shezzie in the motel parking lot and we traded cars.
“I ended up getting new tires all around for your Subaru, even the spare. You should be good for another fifty thousand miles at least, probably more.”
“Really? Well, I have to say that makes me feel better."
She brought me up to date on what she’d found in Mexico, which was essentially nothing.
"I guess I didn’t waste my time in Mexico, even though I didn't overhear anything useful. We needed to know what the police were doing, and the answer is nothing; they've already stopped working on Marisela's case. They've had hundreds of similar murders and her death was no different from what happened to all those other young women.”
“Sooner or later, they’ll work through the gang problems, and maybe then the police can pay more attention to the murder victims. I know they’ve got their hands full, what with all the violence, and too many of their cops are corrupted by the drug cartels. I guess the government simply can't afford to hire enough honest cops and pay them a living wage, and the cartels pay more than the authorities can anyway. So the killings and the kidnappings just get ignored because the few honest cops are overwhelmed by the d
rug wars. They'll get things back under control eventually, maybe by bringing in the Mexican Army, but if they can't, they're likely to have another revolution on their hands. Or maybe the honest citizens will get tired of it and take the law into their own hands; they might start standing cartel members against the nearest adobe wall they can find. They've done it before. The cartels have the weapons, but the people have the numbers on their side.”
Shezzie got a faraway look in her eyes and I decided she was contacting Ray to bring him up to date. I didn’t try to be part of the conversation.
She soon had a half-smile on her face, so I guess she now knew about Ana Maria and Ray. That stuff means more to women than it does to men. Maybe she was happy that their relationship was moving on, while ours was either on hold or maybe even slipping backward. I wouldn’t ask. It had been her decision to get miffed at me, it would be her decision to get over it. Or not.
I decided that I wouldn’t mention Henderson, other than to say that he’d had a traffic accident. Which, of course, was what happened; I felt no need to explain that the accident hadn’t killed him, I had. I also decided I wouldn’t mention the playful stuff I’d done off Trans-Mountain Road.
If she was pulling away from me, I would keep my own counsel. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share with Ray either, not now. The paranoia had returned; I didn't feel I could really trust either of them now, not in the way I had before.
It wasn’t so much that I resented them thinking I was drunk. I’d explained that I can’t really get drunk, and they hadn’t believed me; it was that lack of belief that bothered me the most. I had held back some things, sure, but I had never lied to either of them. We had melded together, an experience that no non-Talent can ever understand; for a short time, we were one person. Now they had shown that they lacked the trust in me that I'd given them, a level of absolute belief such that I couldn't have doubted them if they had told me something.
But I had changed; I wouldn’t tell them anything of significance in future, and then there would be nothing to disbelieve.
I checked us out of the hotel, she went her way, and I went mine.
#
I intended to investigate the gangs in the barrio. The Juarez cops might not care about what had happened to Marisela, but I did; I'd seen too many other young women killed in Afghanistan. Having it happen in Juarez was closer to home than I liked, and maybe I could do something about it.
The graffiti was everywhere, so I thought that meant there were many gangs. Some might be what they called ‘tagger’ gangs, interested primarily in painting their logo on every flat surface where they thought they could get away with it. Not even danger stopped them; they would climb out over the freeway on bridges and paint their gang initials on the underside or on the structural members. They climbed water towers too. Taggers were annoying, but usually didn't engage in serious crimes.
Some of the other gangs were different; they engaged in ongoing criminal enterprises, burglaries and robberies for example, but often their offenses centered around drugs. Some of them grew their own marijuana, others had labs to cook methamphetamines. As for the heroin, cocaine, and crack they peddled, they bought those from cartel agents for resale.
Some of the gangs were believed to engage in murder for hire. They did this not only in El Paso, but according to news reports, some also worked as hit men for the Juarez cartels. I was very interested in those; maybe one of them had taken on the job of killing Marisela.
#
The graffiti scrawled around the city was often unreadable, but sometimes it was quite clear. Los Fatherless used large, bold letters that spelled out the name, while the South Side Locos used initials. I had no idea what much of the graffiti meant, or even what many of the highly stylized letters were supposed to be.
If the barrio gangs were contracting out to the cartelistas, I might be able to pick something up if I could get close enough to overhear their thoughts. I thought it was worth a try.
I cruised the border communities during the rest of the day, just getting a feel for the neighborhoods and gaining a sense of streets and directions.
Neither Ray nor Shezzie commed me. I felt no urge to comm them either. Finally, I gave up and went home.
#
I spent the night in our apartment, the one that Surfer had been using.
He had left surprisingly little of a personal nature behind. A few shirts and trousers, some underwear in a drawer, some personal stuff in the bathroom that was neatly packed into a Dopp kit; that was all there was.
I found TV dinners and similar microwave-ready meals in the freezer compartment; there was also a half-full jug of milk and an unopened bottle of orange juice in the refrigerator section. A cupboard contained boxes of cereal, raisin bran, Rice Crispies, and rolled oats. There was pre-ground coffee too, stored in a canister. Not much to leave behind; he lived, then he died, and there was little to show now that the man called Surfer had ever been here.
I gathered up his clothing and stuffed it into a trash bag. In the bedroom I found a pair of sneakers and threw those in the bag too. It would go to Goodwill or to one of the other charities; there are many such in the border cities. If the police came around to ask what happened to the guy who'd been staying here, I’d just tell them that we’d provided him with a place to stay while he looked for his own apartment.
I set the coffeepot to begin brewing at 7am and bagged in. No Shezzie; I had no idea where she’d gone, and I didn’t feel like contacting her. If she had anything to say, she could call me.
I was alone again, missing the feeling I'd found after I met Shezzie and we began to grow close. Maybe I should get used to the idea. This time, I would try to avoid the depression that had haunted me after what I’d experienced in combat. I wanted no part of the nightmares that had been a part of the PTSD.
At least, I no longer had to worry about Henderson. That was a positive thing. I had gotten through the aloneness and depression and nightmares before, I could do it again.
Finally, sometime after midnight, I fell asleep.
#
The gurgling of the coffeepot woke me at seven. I drank a cup of coffee and had a bowl of the cereal, took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed out.
I was already on the east side of El Paso, so that’s where I began.
There were gangs farther north around Canutillo, where Texas and New Mexico meet, but if I needed to go there it would take a lot longer. The neighborhoods up that way were generally better than those on the south side of the city anyway, the gangs were generally smaller, and I suspected they would mostly stay in their own neighborhood. Roaming outside 'their' turf could get them involved with the gang who claimed that other neighborhood, something that wasn't good business for either group. So I headed for the area near the downtown bridges; I thought there would likely be more gangs and maybe larger ones around those poor neighborhoods.
I followed a simple technique; pick up a quick meal and coffee from a McDonald’s by going through the drive-through, then find a place to park alongside a street with traffic. I rolled the windows down and just let the traffic and pedestrians go by while I ate. I caught fragments of thoughts and most were boring in the extreme. Some were in English, which I understood, and some that were in Spanish mostly escaped me. Still, even if they were thinking in Spanish, I could understand a word now and then. I slowly ate the food and drank my coffee.
I stayed for a while in each case, then moved on a few blocks. I nursed my coffee and waited, sensing, and depended on the PreCog Talent to warn me of danger. All I got was an occasional belligerent look and once a couple of young men flashed me some sort of gang sign with their fingers. I ignored them and they kept walking.
Confidence; I had it, and maybe they could sense it. Or maybe they were just seeing if I would react; I couldn’t tell. But I had no problems.
A cruising cop looked me over but didn’t stop. I would move on before he came by again. I spent perhaps half an hour at
each location before looking for another.
I headed south just before noon, then begin moving north from the area near Riverside High School. From there I went into the neighborhoods around Ascarate Park. I used Alameda Avenue as my primary route and just drove off on the left or right side roads to explore neighborhoods as I passed them.
There were a lot of young men around, unemployed I thought, and probably most of them were ganged up. I was now seeing more of the suspicious and hostile looks from the loiterers. I ignored those too. If you really own this turf, kid, roust me; it might be fun. But they contented themselves with looking.
I found a couple of seedy looking bars and hung out near those for a while. I picked up snippets of thoughts about gangs, but I couldn’t really tell what they were thinking; it was like reading a letter with most of the words chopped out. I was picking up more of the thoughts, as well as sensing mood and emotions clearly, so this exercise was helping me develop this ability.
Some of those bars had part-time girls, working for commissions on the drinks they pushed. If they weren’t hookers, and it didn’t seem like they thought of themselves that way, the men certainly thought they were. Most of the men and all of the girls were Mexican. A few might have been Mexican-Americans, but none of them appeared to be Anglo.
Despite picking up more of their thoughts, I was no closer to locating a gang that took murder assignments across the border. I moved on after a while.
I soon picked up more information on a new group who thought of themselves as BCN. They had developed a very stylish, almost indecipherable logo, and I began to see more of it on the walls. Finally, I hit paydirt.
Several young men were discussing which of them would cross the border tonight; two were displaying increased nervousness and a sense of excitement, so maybe they would be the ones. Two others had been telling the rest of the gang about their last job, and I could sense arrogance and a feeling of satisfaction tinged with relief. Arrogant, because they liked the feel of power they got from what they had done, and satisfaction that their Mexican employers were happy with the results. Relief, because it would be a while before it was their turn to cross the border again. Oddly enough, they spent little time discussing particulars; it was as if doing a crime, even committing murder, meant nothing to them.