Borderline Insanity

by Jeff Miller

  They were driving to Dayton because Harborman wouldn’t talk with Dagny, but he’d agreed to talk with Diego again through the protected filter of confession. This meant that Diego would have to do all the talking. “We need to run through scenarios,” she said. “How good is your memory?”

  “I forget,” he replied. Then, after waiting for a laugh she wouldn’t give, he added, “Good enough, I think.”

  Good enough wasn’t good enough. Anyone can ask a question; the art of interrogation is knowing what to ask next. She had attended numerous lectures about interrogation at Quantico. Sometimes a seasoned agent imparted his or her lifetime of knowledge through the recounting of an anecdote. Sometimes a psychologist summarized vaguely scientific studies. Sometimes a professor showed video of his students answering questions in exchange for money. Treatises had been written about the art of questioning, and Dagny had read many of them. They were good, mostly, for inducing slumber. In the end, the only way to learn about interrogation was to do it several hundred times. After that, you started to get the hang of it.

  But Dagny couldn’t give Diego this experience. After an hour of instruction, she tried to boil it down for him. “There are two things to remember to chase in an interview. First, you have to chase the things they are trying to say. Second, you have to chase the things they are trying not to. This means asking the follow-up questions the subject is begging for while remembering to go back to the questions they are dodging.”

  “Dagny, I do this for a living. It’s confession.”

  “No, Diego. Confession is where people bare their sins. Interrogation is where people hide them.”

  “What’s Harborman trying to hide? Do you think he’s involved in the killings?”

  “Probably not. But his career is placing undocumented workers into illegal employment. In my experience, that’s not a background conducive to candor. Everyone has secrets, Diego. You probably haven’t heard a completely honest confession in your life.”

  When they parked in the lot behind Saint Paul’s parish, Dagny noticed his grip tighten on the wheel. “You nervous about Harborman?” she asked.

  “No, I’m good.” His eyes drifted to the back door of the church, and she realized that it was the place, not the person, that was making him anxious. His exile in Bilford wasn’t just about community outreach. Something had driven him away.

  He led her through the back door and then shuttled her down a hallway. There were offices on each side, and every face in them looked up as they flew past. “Diego?” someone shouted, but he ignored the call. They pushed through a series of doors, the last of which opened into the cathedral. The majesty of it overwhelmed Dagny. As a girl, she had attended a reform temple in the suburbs of St. Louis. It had drop-panel ceilings and wall segments on tracks, which let them expand the sanctuary to accommodate the part-time Jews that only came to temple in September and October.

  Diego tugged at her arm. “After a while, it just becomes another place.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” she said. “Show me where you’re going to talk to him.”

  He led her to a confession booth on the other side of the sanctuary. “This seems pretty old school. What happened to Vatican Two?”

  “People can confess face to face if they wish, but a lot of them prefer it this way.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so they don’t have to look me in the eyes. Want to try it?”

  Diego slid open the curtain on one side of the booth, and Dagny slid in. He took his place on the other side.

  “What do you think?”

  She saw the appeal of being walled away from her confidant and wondered if Dr. Childs would go for a similar arrangement. “So, this is confession,” she said.

  “Anything you’d like to confess?” he said from the other side.

  “That I find this ridiculous.”

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve confessed your first sin.”

  “Would it be a sin if you called me so I could listen in while Harborman is talking to you?”

  “Very much so, I would think.”

  “Will you do it anyway?”

  He paused long enough to draw out the suspense. Unable to see his face, she couldn’t tell which way he was leaning.

  “Okay,” he said.

  This surprised her. “You will?”

  “Sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing to do. Let me find a place to hide you.”

  Dagny followed him to an empty office at the back of the church. “It used to be mine,” he said. “For a while, they kept my name on the door. Then, one day, they decided to take it down. Now, it’s a visiting office.”

  She sat at the desk, pulled her phone from her pocket, and checked the time. Harborman would be there any minute. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” He left to wait in the confessional.

  She looked around the office. Bare shelves, empty drawers, blank walls. What had it looked like when Diego had been there? Did pictures hang on the walls? Of whom? Family? Did he have any? What books lined the shelves? All theology? Maybe books on car restoration? What else? She knew so little about him that she couldn’t even imagine any details to fill the office. And yet she was trusting him to interrogate an important witness in the biggest case in the country.

  Her phone rang. She answered it, put her end of the call on mute, and held it to her ear.

  “Father Vega?” a man said.

  “Yes. Is that you, Ty?”

  “When I talked to you before, I had no idea that anything like this was going on.”

  “I assure you I didn’t, either.”

  “We were already dealing with the sheriff, and now we have five million federal agents swarming around. I don’t want my business to be swept up into all of this, Father.”

  “I don’t think it will be, Ty.”

  “I have no work now. I’ve got no income. You understand that? I am stressed out.”

  “If we can catch whoever did this, then the investigation ends, and everything goes away.”

  “Nothing is ever going to be the same again,” Harborman said. “Something like this doesn’t wash away.”

  “I need your help, Ty.”

  “You’re going to share everything I say with the investigators, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You will. You will.”

  “No. I’m going to protect you. I’m going to give them your information without identifying you as a source.”

  The lie sounded convincing to Dagny, but Harborman stayed silent.

  “Please,” Diego implored.

  Harborman sighed. “What do you want?”

  “I need you to look over another list.”

  Dagny heard the rustling of paper as Diego passed it to the other side of the booth.

  After a minute, she heard Harborman say, “Christ, they’ve got a lot of information.”

  “And yet no way to make sense of it,” Diego replied. “I know you work with coyotes. Maybe some on the list?”

  “Where is that?”

  “Last column.”

  “Got it.”

  A minute passed. Dagny heard him flip through the pages.

  “Christ.”

  “What is it?”

  “This is bad.”

  “What, Ty?”

  “The guys you have listed are all guys I’ve worked for. Delgado, Sanchez, and Erickson—I’ve placed folks for all of them. I mean, there are a couple of names you’ve missed. Like, right here, Alberto Sanchez. He came in with Erickson. And Roberto Rico, he was Delgado. Then you’ve got some folks who came in with a group called Mario that I recognize, but none of that matters because—”

  “Would you mind writing in their names?” Diego asked.

  “I’m not putting my handwriting on anything. Look, there’s one group that’s brought in more people than all the other outfits combined, and they aren’t on your list. All of their customers, as far as I can tell, have some
how managed to avoid this massacre. I don’t think that’s by chance.”

  “Who?” Diego asked.

  “Diablo Rico.”

  “Diablo Rico? Have you done any work with them?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re like the mafia. There’s no honest dealing with them.”

  “And they send people near Bilford?”

  “They send people everywhere. Even to Bilford.”

  “But none of the folks on the list came from them?”

  “I couldn’t tell you for sure. I just know they’ve brought a lot of people, because I’ve had employers tell me they didn’t need anyone from me because they were dealing with a guy from Diablo Rico.”

  “What employers?”

  There was a long pause. “I’m not going to tell you that. If someone starts asking them questions and it comes back to me, I’m a dead man.”

  “Diablo Rico is that dangerous?”

  “They aren’t just evil. They are insane.”

  “Who is Diablo Rico? Who runs it? Do they have a headquarters?”

  “No idea. It’s a name to me and nothing more.”

  “How do you know they are insane if you don’t know who they are?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Ty, I’m not giving you up. I’m not giving investigators your name. I believe in the sanctity of this confession. I believe in the judgment of God. Please help me.”

  Harborman sighed.

  “A few years ago, a big client told me they didn’t want my services anymore. Said I’d been underbid. I drove out to meet with the guy, to see if I could offer better terms and entice him back. It was a good meeting, and he agreed to come back to me. When I got home from the meeting, my dog was lying on the kitchen table, hacked to pieces. A note on the counter said, ‘You lost the contract. Leave it alone.’ Signed, ‘Diablo Rico.’ You consider that evil?”

  “Speaking as a priest, I would say so,” Diego said. “Who was the client?”

  “Nope.”

  “But they could lead me to Diablo Rico.”

  “And then we’d both be dead men. If you want them, you’ve got to find them on your own.”

  There was a long pause. “Okay,” Diego said. “How can I find them?”

  “You can’t. You’re a priest.”

  “Then the FBI. How could the FBI find them?”

  Harborman sighed again. “I guess I’d send a Mexican agent across the border and have him pose as a migrant headed for the USA.”

  “Where in Mexico?”

  “Any border town would do.”

  “And do what, exactly? How would I get to them?”

  “I don’t know. Find a café full of old men and discreetly ask where you could find a coyote.”

  “Would I mention Diablo Rico by name?”

  “You, Father?”

  “I mean, the agent.”

  “If you mention Diablo Rico by name, they’ll figure you know too much. Just make it known you need the best protection you can get, and that money is no object. Be hazy on the details. They will assume you are running from the law.”

  “And then, what would I do?”

  “Father, you keep talking like it’s you that’s going to do this.”

  “Humor me. Suppose I did.” It was possible that Diego was simply asking a hypothetical question that would be helpful in case the Bureau sent an agent down to Mexico to pose as a coyote customer. But Dagny inferred from his tone that his question was not abstract, and he was, in fact, thinking of going to Mexico himself.

  “With all due respect, Father, you can’t pass for a Mexican. They’d smell too much America on you and be suspicious.”

  “What would I do to be less suspicious?”

  Harborman groaned. “You’d need to look naive.”

  “That won’t be hard. I am naive.”

  “No, you’ll look scared. And that means to them that you know enough to look scared. Which means you aren’t naive. And then they’ll know you aren’t who you say.”

  “And if they think that?”

  “They’ll butcher you like they butchered my dog.”

  “Well, then.” Diego paused. “I guess it would be best to appear naive. What should I say about money?”

  “Tell them you need to go to America and that you’ll pay anything. They’ll give you a number that won’t sound like that much to an American, but it would be impossible for someone like you. You need to seem shocked at the amount. You’ll have to ask if that’s the lowest they can do. You need to do it in a plaintive, submissive way. They may lower the number a bit; they may not. You will need to say that you don’t know if you can do it, but that you’ll try. You’ll need a week to try to get the money together. If they buy your performance, they’ll give it to you.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you leave.”

  “But I haven’t learned anything.”

  “I was telling you how to survive the meeting. I don’t know how you get the information you want.”

  “I understand.”

  Dagny had another hundred questions for Harborman, but Diego let him go. A minute later, he joined her in the office. Sitting across from her, he opened his palms to her and said, “Hear me out.”

  She shook her head. “The answer is no.”

  “Just hear me out,” he repeated.

  The drive back to Bilford was one big argument. Pleading was met with exasperation; passion battled logic.

  “We don’t even know that Diablo Rico has anything to do with this,” Dagny said.

  “They’re the biggest supplier of Mexicans to the region, and not one of them ended up in the silo. Harborman’s right: either they’re involved in the killings or they know the killer, and the killer is afraid of them.”

  “Or Harborman has no idea what he’s talking about.”

  “I think he does.”

  “Or Harborman himself is involved.” She pulled the car onto the shoulder of the highway. “Give me your phone.”

  Diego obliged. She called up Harborman’s contact information and texted his phone number to the Professor. See where this guy was during the abductions, she wrote. She handed the phone back to Diego.

  “I’m going to do it, Dagny.”

  “There are more than nine hundred Hispanic special agents in the FBI, and every one of them is better trained and better suited for this than you. Why in the world would I ever let you do this?”

  “Because the FBI can’t investigate in Mexico without the consent of the Mexican authorities, right? I’m betting that takes time and diplomacy and negotiations, and then, even if they let you conduct the operation in Mexico, someone in their bureaucratic channels is probably on the payroll of Diablo Rico, and they’re going to tip them off. Right? This whole gambit only works if it’s off the grid.”

  He was right. If the Bureau were going to investigate in Mexico, it would have to get the approval of Mexico’s Federal Ministerial Police, and there was a good chance someone there would pass news of the operation to Diablo Rico. A rogue operation in Mexico stood a better chance of success than an official one.

  That didn’t mean that Diego should do it. “They will kill you, Diego.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why would you risk that?”

  “What else do I have to live for?” He said it plainly, but it was the bleakest thing she had ever heard.

  “For every moment of life you have yet to live,” she replied.

  “Those moments will be filled with nothing but regret and shame if I don’t do this.” Diego’s phone chirped. “The Professor texted back.”

  “What does it say?” Dagny asked.

  “‘Nowhere near the abductions. Don’t use Diego’s phone for Bureau business.’ See? Harborman’s good.”

  “The fact that his phone wasn’t near human abductions doesn’t mean he’s good or that he had nothing to do with the abductions. It just means his cell phone wasn�
�t there.”

  “I’m going to Mexico, Dagny.”

  “You wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to navigate it, Diego. You’d have no chance of surviving.”

  “Then come with me. You could navigate me through it.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, first, I would need to explain why I’m leaving Bilford for two days during the height of the investigation.”

  “You don’t have to say you’re going to Mexico. Say you’re going to Texas border towns to ask around about channels of migration.”

  “We already have agents down there who could do that.”

  “Then say you’re going down to brief them on the case and give them instructions.”

  “You’re asking me to lie to the Professor?”

  “Yes.”

  Lying to the Professor was wrong. Leaving Bilford on a wild-goose chase at the height of the investigation was wrong. Helping a priest try to outwit a murderous crime organization was wrong. Everything about it was wrong.

  Sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing to do.

  CHAPTER 51

  The Professor sat on top of the gym teacher’s desk, with his legs dangling, his fingers pointing, his bald pate sweating, and his veins pulsing. Dagny, Victor, and Brent stood in front of him, dodging errant saliva. For fifteen minutes, the Professor cataloged their failings, listing all of the things they did not know and assessing their limitations, both physical and cognitive. Normally, Dagny would have interrupted him to stipulate to their shortcomings in order to move things along, but she had a con to pull, and deepening his foul mood was not going to help it succeed.

  “We live in an age of ubiquitous surveillance, geopositional tracking, and DNA forensics. It is inconceivable that this man is eluding us!” he shouted with the stilted cadence of a German dictator. “Performance to date is simply unacceptable. If we don’t catch the man within the week, my credibility is shot, and this entire enterprise will collapse upon itself. Resting upon our success is not merely the lives of those lost but the very future of the Bureau! We will either make history or we will be it!”

  It was a lot of hyperbole, but meeting with the president had raised the stakes. For good or bad, the president would judge him on the resolution of this case. If Brent was right and he wanted to be Director, he needed to catch the unsub, and he needed to do it soon.