by Glenn Trust
“Word is that was a suicide,” Sole said, his eyes never leaving Dermott’s.
“Sure as hell looks like one.” Dermott’s lips pursed as if he was trying to work out a puzzle. “Thing is, of every person I have ever run across in my life, Claude Brainerd would be the last one I’d expect to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.”
“You said you had questions for me, Paul,” Isabella broke in firmly, her intimidation fading and her annoyance rising. “What are they?”
“Oh, it was mostly about Sandy. You gave me the answers.” He shook his head, a wry smile on his face. “You know, Doyle Krieg said some things.”
“What things?” A knot formed in Isabella’s belly.
“Said he was sure Sandy killed his father. Said Sandy was jealous of them, always had been, and this was the way he got even.”
“Sandy? Kill Someone? Don’t be ridiculous,” Isabella snapped.
“Almost exactly what I told him.” Dermott shook his head. “The boy is crazy and about as mean as his father was.”
He turned for the door, stopped, and turned back to face them. “I’m sorry for the worry I’ve caused you, Isabella. It’s not your problem, it’s just this case is using up all my time. Things aren’t adding up, and maybe I’m pushing a little too hard to figure it out.” He shook his head “Don’t have much to go on. Only pieces of evidence I have are Krieg’s body and the slugs that killed him, and they don’t match any gun I can find. Then there’s the blood I scraped off the barn floor.”
“Blood?” Isabella tensed.
“Yep. Blood in the middle of the barn, not in the storeroom around Krieg’s body. Just got the lab results back this morning.” Dermott ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “Damnedest thing. The blood is not Krieg’s, but it has the same DNA markers in it. The lab report said it came from a relative, but the only relative around was Doyle, and he didn’t have a mark on him.”
They waited, knowing the sheriff was fishing again, hoping for a response. They gave him none. Dermott shrugged and turned to leave.
“Anyway. Sorry again, to have troubled you.” The sheriff pulled the door open and stepped out muttering, “Damnedest thing.”
78.
More Comfortable
While the investigation surrounding the murder of his partner whirled through Salvia County like a tornado, Raul Zabala tried to carry on with their enterprises, for a time at least. He put out the word he was hiring drivers for their produce import business. Apparently, a mass exodus of staff around the time Tom Krieg was murdered left him shorthanded.
The Federales in Mexico were investigating an apparent hijack attempt involving three K and Z trucks and were asking questions about the large number of dead, heavily armed, men whose bodies littered a valley road near Monclova. Coincidentally, the battle in the Mexican valley happened at the same time Krieg and Zabala’s employees walked out on them.
Eventually, Mexican federal investigators contacted the FBI about the abandoned K and Z trucks littered with dead Americans in their country. Agents came to visit Raul Zabala, and he stopped hiring new men long enough to answer their questions. Then he stopped hiring altogether and found himself a high-powered attorney out of Dallas. On the advice of his lawyer, he shut his mouth and stopped answering questions.
During the investigation, The FBI questioned Doyle Krieg about his deceased father’s business. Doyle claimed to have no knowledge about the workings of his father’s activities outside the ranch. The agents that interviewed him were inclined to accept his explanation and reckoned that Doyle Krieg might be the dumbest son of a bitch in Texas. They deduced correctly that Tom Krieg deliberately kept his son on the ranch and away from his other business endeavors because he was an idiot.
Authorities eventually discovered the hidden panels and false walls in the abandoned K and Z trucks. It became clear that Krieg and Zabala had been importing more than tomatoes and avocados.
Prosecutors pondered where they could find living witnesses. Everyone at the ambush site was dead, and the illegal immigrants who had made use of their border-crossing services felt no inclination to step forward and reveal themselves. As for the girls selected for sale to human traffickers in the sex industry, they had vanished so deep into the grimy recesses of that world that they might never be found—if they remained alive at all.
Raul Zabala’s time as a free man dwindled to a few days. Even without the victims, the prosecution amassed enough evidence from the trucks at the ambush site and those remaining on the K and Z lot to bring charges.
Once the legal maneuvering ended, and the appeals settled, the federal prosecutor assigned to the case exuded confidence in a series of public interviews that Raul Zabala would spend years in prison for human trafficking. Even so, he would undoubtedly be more comfortable than his victims.
79.
Side by Side
“Which house?” the man Pepe Lopez thought of as Gordito asked.
They crouched beside a mesquite in the grassland just beyond the fringe of shacks that constituted Creosote’s residential district. He still didn’t know the names of the two scowling security men Garza had sent with him. He simply labeled them Gordito—Fat One, and Flaco—Skinny One. The nicknames were for his reference only, and he never said them to their faces.
The three men had crossed from Mexico earlier in the day at Brownsville, using the false identities on their forged Border Crossing Cards for a brief visit to the States. Garza told them to bring back the gringo, John Sole, alive if possible, or dead if not. Either way, he would be bound and stuffed in the false bottom of the trunk of their car.
“Which house?” Gordito repeated, his tone insistent.
“I brought you here,” Lopez said. “He is in this village, but you can’t expect me to know exactly which house, sitting out here in the middle of the night.”
“We expect you … Señor Garza expects … you to lead us to the man. We will do the rest,” Flaco said, in a menacing bass whisper.
Lopez swallowed. He’d been thinking fast, and mostly on the fly, since the ambush in the valley. There hadn’t been time to come up with a real plan, not if he wanted to live.
Desperate to survive a few more hours, he told them he knew where to find this John Sole they wanted so urgently. He prayed he was right.
This rundown row of hovels was a gathering place for the K and Z men. Even more, the morning before Garza’s men shot holes in him, Stu Pearce told Lopez that Bill Myers—John Sole—was missing and probably with a whore in Creosote where he’d been living the past few weeks.
Lopez figured the odds of finding Sole there at fifty-fifty. Not great, but they were far better than the one hundred percent chance Garza would have had his men slit his throat if he hadn’t come up with some sort of plan.
He had bought time for himself. Now, his brain whirled in overdrive to find a way to buy more.
“Okay, I have a plan,” he whispered.
Flaco snickered, “Your plans aren’t worth much, cabrón.”
Gordito glared at him.
“Just hear me out,” Pepe insisted. “I didn’t realize that we would be here after dark. I thought we would have time to observe during daylight and see which house he entered.”
“This is not a plan.” The threat in Flaco’s tone was clear, and his eyes narrowed like a snake poised to strike.
“Listen to me!”
They huddled under the mesquite while Garza’s men listened. When he finished, they looked at each other for a moment. Gordito shrugged as if to say, sure why not?
Moving along the back of the line of shacks in the dark, they were invisible. It was a little before three in the morning with a forecast of a late moonrise at five o’clock. For now, the only light came from the soft glow of the stars. Flaco held up a hand, and they stopped midway down the row.
“This one will do,” he said.
Gordito tried the back door and found it unlocked. In fact, there was no lock, just an
old rusted knob. If security concerns in rural Texas were relaxed, in Creosote, it seemed they were nonexistent.
The door scraped the floor as they pushed it open and crept into the shack.
“Who’s there?” a voice asked from directly ahead, not ten feet away.
Flaco crossed the space in a second and placed a hand over the old woman’s mouth, his knife at her throat. An old man, her husband, stirred in the bed beside her.
“Mae, what’s wrong?” Carl Chaney rolled on the creaking mattress toward his wife of forty-eight years. “What’s …”
Gordito’s massive hand clamped over his face. Like Flaco, he held a long thin-bladed knife at his victim’s throat.
Pepe Lopez stepped to the foot of the bed and looked down at the terrified couple.
“Do not be afraid. We are looking for someone.” Lopez reached into his pocket and took out the folded paper bearing the photo of John Sole. “Have you seen this man?”
Wide-eyed Carl Chaney nodded. Mae Chaney whimpered. Everyone in Creosote knew Bill Myers.
“Which house is he in? Can you tell us?” Lopez held his breath, his muscles tense, ready to bolt from the house and escape Garza’s killers.
Carl Chaney nodded. Pepe Lopez breathed again and tried not to fall over from relief.
“Tell us.” He put a finger to his lips. “Tell us quietly, and we will not hurt you or your wife.”
Chaney nodded, and Gordito moved his hand away from the old man’s mouth.
“He’s in the big house, last one at the end of the street,” Chaney managed to whisper through his trembling lips.
“Which way on the street?”
“Out our front door and to the left. All the way to the end. Biggest house in town. You can’t miss it.”
“Good. That’s very good.” Pepe nodded and folded the piece of paper.
“Please don’t hurt my wife,” Chaney said, looking into the icy stares of the men with the knives. “Don’t hurt us.”
Pepe smiled and put the paper in his pocket. He turned away without speaking.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a brief struggle. Feet kicked under the bed sheets, frail old bodies twisted to escape. There was no escape. Knives passed over thin, aged throats, and the struggling ceased.
Carl and Mae Chaney, husband and wife for almost half a century, lay side by side, their lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling that had covered their heads for more than half of those years. Pepe Lopez trailed by Garza’s men left the house through the same unlocked back door they had entered less than five minutes earlier.
80.
Under the Stars
Sandy and Jacinta worked at staying out of sight, not always an easy task in the small house. Sole had explained the need for them to remain unseen. The investigation into Tom Krieg’s death would be swirling around the county for many months. He told them that when their bodies had healed, and they were mentally strong enough, they would arrange a homecoming to Creosote, welcoming Sandy and his new bride back to his home.
They even concocted a cover story. Keep it simple, Sole cautioned them. Include too many details, and the holes in the story would be apparent.
For the truly curious, it was simple. Sandy met Jacinta sitting alone in a taqueria in El Paso while he was out seeing some of the world. She had crossed the border illegally with a coyotaje to find her uncle in Houston, but the coyotaje abandoned her.
For the residents of Creosote, the presence of an illegal immigrant would be of no great concern. Like many western states, Texas was full of immigrants crossing the border illegally.
Jacinta was beautiful, and Sandy naturally took an interest in her. They talked. He asked her out, and she accepted. Eventually, they fell in love, and he brought her home to Creosote to meet his mother and friends in town.
That was the story, simple and reasonably close to the truth. There would be no way to prove the connection to Tom Krieg and his human trafficking operations. Once her presence could be revealed, they would begin working to gain her permanent resident status and eventually citizenship.
For now, though and until they could emerge back into the world, healed from their injuries, Isabella told the more curious in Creosote that Sandy had gone to do some exploring and find some adventure. She said she encouraged him because a young man needed to get out and find that there’s more to the world than a backwater west Texas town.
People nodded and agreed. Yes, Sandy was a fine young man. He should go out and see what there is to see, but will he be back sometime? She assured them that he planned to return. Creosote had always been home, after all.
Sandy and Jacinta lived together in his room and spent their days in the house. They slowly recovered from the beatings they had received from Krieg and Brainerd and grew stronger every day.
At night, while Creosote slept, they would sneak out of the back door and into the brush country stretching for miles in all directions. Sandy knew a path, and they would walk for a mile in the dark, with only the moon and stars to light their way.
Sandy always carried a blanket, and Jacinta would bring leftovers from dinner in a sack. There in the dark, they would spread the blanket and lay back, munching the leftovers and looking at the night sky as they talked about their future together.
Sometimes they made love under the stars, the grass swaying over their heads. Other nights, they talked. Always, they returned to the house well before daylight. They waited anxiously for the time when they could arrange their “homecoming” and live together out in the open.
Their bodies and minds were healing. Sandy—Reynaldo as Jacinta called him—said he would ask John and Isabella in the morning if it wasn’t time to plan the homecoming so that they could come out into the open.
But tonight, they lay on the blanket under the stars. They touched and kissed, exploring each other, thrilling each other the way young people do. Nothing else mattered.
81.
No Time
Sandwiched between Flaco and Gordito, Pepe Lopez stumbled through the brush in the dark as they made their way toward the house at the end of the road. Flaco raised a hand, and they crouched to examine the darkened windows. As Carl Chaney promised, it was the most prominent house in town.
Lopez listened as Garza’s men planned. They spoke calmly, conducting business as usual. Clearly, they were not novices at breaking into homes in the night and killing or kidnapping people. Pepe was mesmerized and terrified by their matter-of-fact attitude about what they were going to do.
The man they sought was known to be dangerous, a man who had killed. Flaco and Gordito huddled and decided that a two-pronged attack made the most sense. They would flank him from two sides so he would be unable to defend against them both at the same time. Pepe Lopez remained silent, hoping to be forgotten in the planning.
“You will come with me,” Flaco said.
Lopez nodded his understanding, unable to force words from his mouth.
His stomach churned. This John Sole had already killed two of Garza’s drug dealers, Bernardo in Monterrey, and another in Atlanta the year before.
What was he doing with these men, he wondered? He thought of running away while they were busy trying to capture the gringo, then pushed the thought away. Even if he managed to escape during the turmoil, Garza would find him, a possibility that terrified him more than any other.
Gordito and Flaco agreed that speed was the critical element of their attack. They planned to move rapidly, trying the doors, Gordito in front and Flaco with Lopez in back. If they found them unlocked, they would creep into the house and do what had to be done. If the doors were locked, they would force them open with a kick and overcome the man they sought with sudden, overpowering violence, a tactic that had served them well in past assignments.
Lopez thought he saw a hole in their plan but was not about to interfere. Surely they knew better than he how to kidnap and murder someone. They were the assassins. He was only a simple coyotaje—and seller of women.
Flaco checked his watch, put his hand on the doorknob, and found it unlocked. He pushed it open slowly and stepped into the small kitchen followed by Pepe.
An instant later, they heard a small sound at the front door, followed by an enormous crash. Gordito rushed into the living room and stopped, facing Flaco across fifteen feet of open space.
The failure in their planning, the hole that Lopez had noticed and kept to himself, became immediately apparent. Their target was not trapped between them. He was in a room down the hall, and the noise of their entry had undoubtedly alerted him to their presence.
Flaco and Gordito moved to the hallway. It was about fifteen feet long and narrow. Two doors opened into it, one at the far end, and one midway to the left. The sound of movement came from the room at the end of the hall.
Isabella lay spooning against Sole’s back as they slept. When the front door crashed open, she rose on her hand, startled and started to speak.
“What the …”
Sole rolled off the edge of the bed to the floor dragging her roughly by the arm with one hand, as he retrieved the Colt from the nightstand with the other. When she was on the floor beside him, he pushed Isabella face down and motioned for her to get under the bed.
She hesitated only a moment, feeling she should help him somehow and face the intruders. He pushed her down, and she relented, wriggling and squirming until she was under the bed.
Though their plan had been flawed, Flaco and Gordito were not fools. They were skilled assassins, working for a master assassin.
Flaco got on his belly and began inching forward toward the door. If someone in the room fired a shot, it would have to be aimed at the floor to hit him.