by Chris Fabry
“Take me back to that man’s house,” she said. Jaw set. Eyes wild. “The one who speaks Spanish. I didn’t ask you to help me.”
“I know you didn’t ask me, but that’s what people do. You need a hand; we try to help.”
“Take me back.”
He threw it in gear. “Suit yourself.”
They were nearing the turn when he saw the Escalade. The driver was glancing down at something when he passed, and J. D. ran through the Stop sign and gunned the engine. A car honked from behind and flicked its lights. Seconds later the Escalade returned to the T in the road and raced toward them.
The car following hugged his tailgate. Behind it but gaining was the Escalade. A semitrailer ahead of them was going fifty. Double yellow. He swerved left to see three oncoming cars and a dip in the road. When the three cars passed, J. D. mashed the accelerator to the floor. He shot around the truck as the semi lost steam uphill, then passed just before another semi met them head-on.
“This bad man—what does he want from you? Money? Drugs?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Maybe we should pull over and have a talk with him.” He said it as a joke, but she didn’t smile.
“You don’t talk with madmen. He will kill you just like the doctor.”
“How do you know he killed him?”
“I know it because I know this man.”
When they got to St. David, J. D. kept the accelerator mashed, hoping they might get stopped by the local police, but for once there was no cruiser waiting behind a rock wall or some shady tree. Just his luck. The semi they’d passed was behind them, but he saw no Escalade, and when they reached the interstate, J. D. headed east, trying to lose the car in the desert.
They pulled off at the next exit, halfway to nowhere, and sat on the shoulder where they could see the interstate. “I think we lost him,” J. D. said.
“He will find us.”
“How’s he going to do that?”
She shrugged. “He just will.”
“Where did you learn English?”
She looked out the window.
“You sound like you could have gone to school on this side of the border. I wish my Spanish was as good as your English.”
“Do you have a gun?” she said.
“Slow down, Annie Oakley. I know we’re in the Wild West, but you can’t go shootin’ up the place.”
“If he catches us, he will kill us.”
She turned to him with those brown eyes that made him wonder again about this mess. It had to be more than just an illegal looking for a better life. She looked as innocent as a schoolgirl. But her head worked differently than a schoolgirl’s.
“We need a gun or we have no chance.”
“Let’s head to Walmart for the prescription, and you can pick me out a nice Remington with some pink shells.” He smiled, hoping for some crack in her stony face, but there was none.
He parked behind the blue-and-gray building near a line of cars jockeying for an oil change or tires. The truck wouldn’t be seen from the street. They walked through the automotive door and he told her to find what she wanted while he got the prescription, but she stayed as close as a baby calf to its mother.
They walked to the front, where his Coke and the clothes he’d picked were still sitting on the pharmacy bench. He paid for them as well as the antibiotic and bottle of Percocet.
“What is J. D. short for?” she said. “What are the names?”
“John David,” he said.
A woman rang him up, and he slid his credit card and signed. He took Maria by the produce section near the front, opened the white bag with the antibiotic, and popped out a couple pills. “Go in the bathroom and change. And take these while you’re in there.”
“Will it make me go to sleep?”
“The Percocet will, but not the antibiotic.”
She grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not coming in the ladies’ room with you. Now go on. I’ll be right here.”
A lady at the customer service desk eyed them and he tipped his hat. “We paid for the sweats already.” She glared as he leaned against a display of red, white, and blue cupcakes. They were getting a jump on the July 4 holiday.
The front door opened and closed with each new customer, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed the maroon Escalade roll past the door and stop in the fire lane.
How in the world did this guy find us?
J. D. walked to the women’s room and opened the door an inch or two. “Maria, time to go. We’ve got a visitor.”
She was already dressed. “I told you.”
To the right was an emergency door that would sound an alarm. He took her hand and led her back through the produce and around frozen foods.
“You should buy a gun,” she said.
“Yeah, if we had an extra hour to shop, maybe I would. You have to fill out forms and get cleared. I’ve seen it before—they escort you up front to check out. I guess we could load it at the cash register, but it doesn’t seem like a good plan. Your friend will be waiting.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“Yeah, I know.”
They made it to automotive, looking back down the long aisle to the entrance. He couldn’t see the Escalade.
J. D. scanned the parking lot, then waved her out. He drove over the curb, across a trash-strewn field, and through the ditch, onto the same road as the doctor’s office. Maria kept watch behind them and didn’t react when they passed the office. Yellow tape was up at the front and back doors, and an ambulance sat with its lights off.
“That doesn’t look good,” J. D. said, expecting her to say, I told you so.
He continued on the road, figuring it would lead farther away from the Escalade and toward a cross-street that intersected the main road, but it only took them back in the scrub brush to a housing development. He wound around for twenty minutes, keeping an eye on the gas gauge. The last thing he wanted was to be pumping gas when that old boy found them.
He made it to the interstate. There was a Kentucky Fried Chicken to their left and she stared at it, so he went to the drive-through and ordered her a three-piece meal, the wind kicking up and blowing heat like a hair dryer each time he rolled down the window.
She wolfed the chicken and potato wedges and biscuit without so much as a thank-you, but he was glad to see her eat. That was a good sign. Her fingers were greasy and she wiped them with an alcohol-soaked napkin she found in the packet with the plastic fork.
Maybe it was the chicken, maybe the alcohol, or it could have just been the sight of her. His mind returned to another drive-through and another beautiful girl. As far away as it seemed from here, from the front seat of his truck, it was as close as his own beating heart. He turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the water in his eyes.
5
MUERTE WAS ON THE PHONE as he reached the border and waited in line at the crossing, keeping up on the progress, or lack of it, with the girl. Some things you had to do yourself. He had no control over the broken plan from the night before, but the mess at the doctor’s office could have been avoided. It only drew attention, and this attention was not what he needed.
After showing his papers and enduring the trained dogs and the inept search of his vehicle, he immediately drove into Nogales to a nondescript three-bedroom stucco with a garden full of sunflower plants. A nice touch, he thought. Suburban. Familial. Just one of a cluster of homes that looked like the rest. There was a covered patio in front where a man and his family could sit in the evening and no one would know what happened inside.
The garage opened as he arrived, and a man named Ruiz waved in welcome as Muerte pulled into the cavernous, empty space. There were wheeled dollies and boxes in one corner. Otherwise it was a clean slab.
The man shook his hand and led him inside the house. The floors were travertine and wood and his footsteps echoed. Two bedrooms had air mattre
sses shoved in corners with sleeping bags thrown on top. There were children’s toys scattered about and a few books tossed in milk carton crates. Ruiz and his wife and children made this their home. The only computer in the house sat on a table in the dining room.
The third bedroom had a television on the wall and a pool table perfectly placed in the middle. But Ruiz asked Muerte to help him move the table to the side and removed the sixteen-by-sixteen tile underneath to reveal the mouth of a tunnel connecting to another home 120 feet away on the other side of the border. Muerte had okayed the digging of the tunnel but had never seen the elaborate construction. It was impressive in design. He’d pictured some dirt-strewn entrance, but the wood and concrete were remarkable.
“You’ve told no one I’m coming, correct?” Muerte said.
“Absolutely no one. Even my wife does not know.”
“She is where?”
“She took the children to school and then went to work. At the hotel.”
Ruiz seemed nervous and excited to have such a distinguished guest and offered something to eat, which Muerte politely declined. Then Ruiz demonstrated how they unloaded packages that came from the tunnel into trucks that fit into the extended garage. It was all done under the cover of the home, in the dead of night. It had been their most successful distribution point, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the tunnel would be discovered. That put Ruiz and his family at high risk, but the man trusted Muerte’s connections. He and his family could be out in minutes, and they were willing to sacrifice the potential discovery for their short-term financial gain.
“I need an extra weapon,” Muerte said.
“I have a TEC-9,” Ruiz said.
“That will do nicely. And the grenades? The C-4?”
“In a box in the garage. Are you sure you are not preparing for a war?” Ruiz laughed.
Muerte stared at him. He needed an alternative if he didn’t recover the weapon. “The rifle. It has not been found, correct?”
The man looked at the floor. “I did not have anything to do with the transfer.”
High-powered rifles and AK-47s had been sold by undercover agents in the US with the purpose of tracking their route into the hands of the Mexican cartel. It was a sting operation gone horribly wrong for the Americans, but deliciously right for the cartel and even better for Muerte. Heads had rolled in Washington after a Border Patrol agent had been killed with one of the rifles in 2010. But Muerte did not want the discomfort to end there. The next target would pay for the ineptitude and pay dearly. In fact, the whole country would pay.
First things first. He had to take care of the girl and retrieve the satchel before putting his plan into action.
Muerte put a hand on Ruiz’s shoulder. “I’m not accusing you. You have nothing to fear. I’ve put out the word about it. We’ll recover it or one like it.”
Ruiz relaxed and led him to the box in the garage. He unzipped several bags to show him the cache and Muerte examined the TEC-9.
“Please put the rest in the trunk for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Muerte loaded the weapon and took a garage door opener from a shelf. Ruiz stored the boxes and bags. When he turned, Muerte shot him once in the forehead, and the man fell backward at an angle. Muerte dragged him a few feet to the side so he wouldn’t back over the body. Then he stacked boxes at the garage entrance to block the view from the street. He backed out, hit the button to close the door, and drove toward Tucson.
6
J. D. HEADED TO the Winslow farm. He knew Slocum would be full of questions about the Mexican girl with all those bandages. Plus, Win had offered Maria a place to stay.
Something gnawed at the back of his mind about this woman. Like a song without a chorus. An unresolved melody. Something he couldn’t chart on the chord progression of the day.
The radio news had already picked up on sketchy reports about a doctor shot and killed in Benson. He knew the speculation was that it was drug related. Waves of doubt crashed onto the shoreline of his life along with a sickness that wound around his soul. Would the police find surveillance video of him and Maria at the office? He hadn’t seen cameras in the building, but he hadn’t been looking. Did the doctor have a family? A wife? Children? Grandkids? What about his patients, the “everymen” of Benson?
He slowed as he neared the Winslow farm. A plane passed overhead and he watched it slip through the sky. How many were inside that metal tube? How many people were hurtling hundreds of miles an hour above the earth with not a care in the world as to how they would get back down? They had put their lives in others’ hands they didn’t even know. There were parallels to his own life there, but he shook off the thoughts and focused.
“I think we need to call the police,” he said as they pulled into the Winslow driveway.
“No police.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t just say something like that and then shut up. It doesn’t work that way.”
The truck got hotter as they slowed and the gas gauge neared empty. He had watched it dip like water running out of a bucket. And with the price of gas, it was an expensive bucket.
“Why didn’t you tell me you spoke English?”
“I didn’t know if I could trust you. I was afraid.”
“Fair enough.”
“And it was fun to hear you try to speak Spanish.” She glanced at him with a hint of a smile. “I like watching you figure out the words.”
“I’m glad you got a kick out of it.”
A hawk flew past them and circled over prey. There was silence again, nothing but the hum of the motor and the whir of the hot air through the vents.
“We need to call the police.”
“No police.”
“It strikes me that you’re the kind of person who doesn’t get told what to do. Am I right? Your mama give you whatever you wanted? Your daddy not able to tell you no once in a while?”
She looked toward the barn and the chickens surrounded by wire mesh that ran all the way up to the coop. Because of coyotes, you couldn’t just put up a fence. You had to protect the birds because all they did was peck at the dirt. Just waiting to be grabbed by something hungry with sharp teeth.
“I don’t know how they treat people where you’re from, but that doctor helped you and it cost him his life. And it’s probably going to cost mine before this is done.”
She bit a fingernail and studied the chickens. “I didn’t ask you to help me.”
“True, but I’m here. I’m mixed up with you. I think I deserve to know what’s going on. I want to help you, but I have to know who I’m helping. And why you’re in this mess.”
He stared at her silky black hair and slender arms. She was an uncommonly beautiful woman, but it seemed every time he looked at her, there was some discovery, like each angle brought out something new he hadn’t seen. Hauling her back from death had been like picking up a wounded rattlesnake. Sooner or later the fangs and venom had to appear. But that wasn’t right either. With a rattler you only had to deal with one head. This girl was a hydra, and there was no telling how many heads were on their way.
“Suit yourself,” he said. He grabbed the door handle and put a foot on the hot gravel.
“Wait.” She clutched his arm—a strong grip, unlike her handshake, and with it came a shock and a tingle echoing like his first electric guitar. An uncle had given him the Fender knockoff and an old amp with a frayed power cord. If he was holding the guitar when he plugged it in, electricity radiated up his arm.
“I will tell you what I know,” she said. “But there are things I don’t know.”
“You mean you lost your memory?”
“No, I remember too much.” She took her hand away and leaned forward to follow the hawk.
He sat and closed the door, staring at her profile.
She turned, her eyes misty and full of hurt. “I did not want that man to die. He was very kind. He comfo
rted me. He did nothing but help me, and I was the reason he was killed.”
“Well, you didn’t pull the trigger, so you can’t blame yourself.” It was the best he could do at consolation. “How do you know the guy who shot the doctor?”
“I don’t know him. I know of him.”
“Why would he want you dead?”
“Because of who I am.”
“Who are you, the queen of Mexico?”
She smiled, and the flash of white took his breath. “I am not a queen. I am a woman who wants to live.”
“There’s a lot of women who want to live that don’t have a guy with an Uzi following them. Why does he want to kill you?”
“Because the man who hired him ordered it.”
“And who’s that?”
“His name is Muerte.”
Now he was getting somewhere. Names. Reasons. “What does Muerte have against you?”
She stared at her hands and so did he. Soft and delicate and unaccustomed to hard work. When she didn’t answer, he said, “How did the guy with the gun find you? How did he know you were at the doctor’s office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, the more you talk, the less I feel like I know. But we know that doctor is stone-cold dead. And if you really care and you’re sorry about what happened, we should call the police. They’re the only ones who can help us.”
She rotated the black ring on her pinkie. “You don’t understand.”
That’s for sure. “Most people who come across the border are looking for a better life. But it strikes me that you’re not here to get a job and send money back to the family.”
“I live near a small town, and there are many who want to come here to work. But I had a passport. No longer—I lost it last night in the desert.”
“Really? How do you lose a passport?”
She didn’t answer.
He tried again. “What brought you to the Slocum place?”
She furrowed her brow.
“The farm where I found you is owned by a man named Slocum. It’s where I work. Why’d you choose that farm?”