Head Wounds

by Michael McGarrity

  Her tablet, department smartphone, and the camcorder were seized for examination and analysis. They withheld the results of the mandatory lie detector test she’d been forced to take. They took her sidearm. She was advised to seek legal counsel. She had not been body-searched, so the memory card with the copy of the interview remained tucked inside the waistband of her slacks.

  Pending further review, she was to be returned to Eagle Pass with orders to carry out administrative duties only. A senior agent with narco-trafficking experience would be detached to supervise all ongoing fieldwork. Internal Affairs would be dispatched.

  There weren’t too many different ways to look at the farce. Either the Lorenz drug cartel had penetrated deeply into the Houston office, or career-building was more important than crime-fighting. Realistically, it was likely to be some of both.

  The fixed-wing turboprop took off into the night sky, moonlight shimmering on the water below. She’d text Harjo on her personal cell when she got home, give him a heads-up, and ask if he’d be interested in her next, and possibly last, scheme.

  Harjo woke up, showered, and looked in the bathroom mirror. Tiny fuzzy hairs showed on his bald head. He looked decidedly strange and vowed to grow his hair back ASAP when he got home to El Paso.

  He ran his electric razor over his skull, shaved, dressed, and crossed over to Ciudad Acuña to have breakfast at his favorite Northern Mexico restaurant, El Patron’s Comida. The house special of chilaquiles was his favorite. Done right, the fried corn tortillas covered in red chile with cheese, sour cream, and sliced onion along with a side of beans couldn’t be beat.

  He finished his meal and a second cup of coffee before turning his phone on. Sedillo’s text message popped up. She was home after being shafted by Houston. Was he interested in one more extracurricular activity, this time in Piedras Negras?

  The phone rang as soon as he put it down. Samantha Hodges wanted a word.

  “Harjo?”

  “What can I do for you, Samantha?”

  “Don’t come back to El Paso and don’t go to L.A. Lay low for a while. Not satisfied with taking control of the Las Cruces double homicide, the CIA has assumed oversight of the Lorenz cartel investigation. They say Mexico is their turf, not ours. They’re looking for you and Agent Sedillo, supposedly for follow-up questioning.”

  “Did you watch the Juan Garza deposition Maria sent you?”

  “Yes, and I don’t know how you and Sedillo will get out of the mess you’ve created. Washington is screaming for your heads.”

  “At the time, taking down a narco-trafficking kingpin didn’t seem such a bad idea. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Harjo disconnected and sent a text to Maria on the burner phone he’d bought at the Del Rio Walmart last night. He asked if she knew the CIA was on her tail and where she wanted to meet.

  Her response was brief. Yes, but she’d eluded surveillance. Look for her in the immediate area outside Gilberto Garza’s Plaza Mercado.

  What did she have in mind? he wondered.

  Fallon and Istee had left voice messages asking for elaboration about the El Jefe information he’d sent by text. Using the burner phone, he called them individually with additional details about Estavio Trevino’s tie-in to the Lorenz drug cartel and Sammy Shen’s family.

  “Be careful,” he warned them both. “Langley has taken over again. I’ll be in touch when I resurface.”

  On his way to the Pontiac he crushed his cell phone under his heel and threw it into the bushes behind the parking lot. He’d be a little harder to trace, but not by much.

  Federal Highway 2 from Ciudad Acuña to Piedras Negras was a heavily traveled major road along the border. Hopefully he’d make the drive without too many delays and backups.

  Gilberto Garza’s Plaza Mercado was off Zaragoza Street in an older area of the city close to the river. It was popular with tourists and Americans seeking cut-rate medical and dental services, including low-cost prescription drugs. An unimposing concrete block warehouse in origin, the mercado had been given an antiquated look with thin exterior brick facing and a slanted red tile roof with a portico that extended over the sidewalk. Inside were vendor stalls and booths offering Mexican arts and crafts, colorful clothing, handmade leather goods, hats, trinkets for the tourist trade, and imported goods from Central American countries and the Far East. Photographers, guitar makers, weavers, and potters hawked their wares. Several food booths serving Northern Mexican cuisine were popular breakfast and luncheon spots for locals and visitors alike.

  Bright banners hung from fabricated ceiling beams, and high windows, punched through the block walls, allowed sunlight to pour inside. Slowly rotating old-fashioned ceiling fans created a cooling breeze.

  There were booksellers, music vendors, toy makers, and jewelers. At a low-cost electronics stall, Harjo bought two cheap burner phones. Everything was designed and staged to look festive and bright. It was about as authentic as a Hollywood movie set.

  To familiarize himself, Harjo wandered through the mercado twice before circling the neighborhood in the Pontiac. He spotted Sedillo parked in her personal vehicle several blocks away, beeped his horn, and motioned her to get in.

  “Nice wheels,” she said, giving the Grand Prix a critical once-over. “And I love the new haircut.”

  “I’m upping my game, hoping for a promotion,” Harjo said as he pulled into an empty parking space. “You doing all right?”

  Sedillo nodded.

  “What happened in Houston?”

  She laid it all out. When she finished, Harjo briefed her more fully on Samantha Hodges’s warning about the CIA’s latest move. “We’re in it up to our necks,” he added. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I want to search Garza’s office. If we can find physical evidence connecting him to the Lorenz drug cartel, that could get us off the hook.”

  Harjo smiled. Although it would be an illegal search, the idea had instant appeal. “What if we’ve been compromised and he knows that he’s been outed?”

  Sedillo shrugged. “Then he probably knows I’ve been stripped of my police powers, you’re on suspension, and the CIA wants to talk to us. He just might be complacent enough to think everything is under control.”

  “And just how are we going to do this?”

  “Every weekday when he’s in his office he goes home at two for his main meal of the day and returns at four p.m. He stays for an hour or two and then often joins friends for a drink or stops at the cathedral to visit with the monsignor. Frequently, he’ll make a quick trip to the fast-food restaurant in Eagle Pass he co-owns or visit his grocery store. He’s home usually by seven.”

  “Why not do it when the place is closed?”

  “After hours, there are four heavily armed security guards on the premises and two city cops on permanent stakeout outside. When the Mercado is open, only Garza is there, as far as I know.”

  “How do we get in?”

  “His office is at the rear of the building. It has an exterior door to the parking lot. We’ll wait for to him to leave and be gone before he returns.”

  “If we want a clean in-and-out we have to recon everything. Lookouts, CCTV cameras, bodyguards, security devices.”

  “I’ll do the search, you stand lookout.” Sedillo opened the car door. “We better get started.”

  Harjo touched her elbow to hold her back. “What if you find nothing?”

  “Plan B is under way,” she replied. “We can’t trust DEA or the CIA to do what’s right, so I decided to go elsewhere for help. A classmate of mine at the academy left DEA several years ago to take a criminal investigator position with Treasury in the Office of the Inspector General. I got in touch with her and asked if she’d be interested in shutting off a narco-trafficker’s laundered money spigot. She jumped on it.”

  “How is she going to do that?”

  “Garza’s partial ownership of the Eagle Pass fast-food joint gets her foot in the door. With the facts I gave her, she’s started
a tax-filing search on Garza, including corporate and individual taxes, offshore accounts, and foreign investments. She’ll freeze whatever money she finds and go after his property as well.”

  “That will take some time to accomplish,” Harjo noted.

  “It’s not my preferred solution,” Sedillo conceded.

  “We could just wait for Garza to return and shoot him.”

  Sedillo laughed. “We don’t have a get-out-of-jail card for that.”

  “We don’t have a legal leg to stand on for any of this,” Harjo corrected.

  “After we do this, I’m resigning.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “And you?”

  “If I can get to him, I plan to have a nice chat with Juan’s uncle Luis.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No, you won’t.” He handed her a burner phone. “Use this. Let’s go to work.”

  They split up on foot, staying in contact by cell phone. Harjo wandered in and out of nearby buildings, checked rooftops where he could, poked around stores, and walked down alleys. He studied the parked vehicles, the pedestrians, the local cops loitering at an intersection. He looked at second-story windows for suspicious activity, inspected lampposts for cameras, and bought some over-the-counter painkillers at a pharmacy.

  Sedillo browsed the Mercado, noting the distinctive glass-domed ceiling-mounted CCTV cameras, the electronic locks on the office, supply closet, and janitorial room doors. She waited until it was unoccupied and visually swept the woman’s bathroom. She casually studied the vendors located close to Garza’s office, looking to spot any telltale sign they might also be muscle or protection. She bought a Virgin of Guadalupe medallion on a chain and a pair of sterling silver hoop earrings. At one of the food booths, she had a cheese taco, a small bowl of posole, and chatted with the cook.

  After two hours, they switched, and spent the day watching until Garza left to go home to eat. They reconvened in Harjo’s Pontiac.

  “What’s this?” he said, taking the shopping bag from Maria’s outstretched hand.

  “An accessory for the car and a pair of earrings for you, to complement your new look.”

  Harjo chuckled as he peered inside. “For me? You shouldn’t have.” He hung the Guadalupe medal on the rearview mirror and put the earrings in the empty ashtray. “I’ll wear them later.”

  “Can you get me into Garza’s office?” Sedillo asked.

  “Absolutely. He met somebody outside the rear entrance. Using my phone camera, I recorded him entering his door access code after he’d finished talking. He looks and acts exactly like the upstanding, law-abiding citizen he pretends to be.”

  Sedillo watched the recording with interest. Agency photographs of Garza were at least five years old. He was stocky, thick in the waist, with a receding hairline and bushy, unruly eyebrows. His features were benign, soft. A large diamond-studded Knights of Columbus ring sparkled on his right-hand ring finger. “Not very villainous-looking,” she agreed.

  They exchanged reconnaissance information. Nothing inside the Mercado appeared worrisome. None of the vendors looked like masquerading thugs. On the streets there were no signs of sentries or lookouts. Rooftops and second-story windows were clear of activity. Toughs weren’t lounging in parked cars. Cops didn’t seem jittery or on edge.

  Harjo checked the time. By now Garza was at home sitting down for his comida. “Let’s do this.”

  Garza’s car was gone from the Mercado parking lot, and there were fewer vehicles than previously. Inside, foot traffic had fallen off.

  Sedillo and Harjo scanned customers and vendors as they passed by the stalls and booths. Some were unoccupied, with bins full of unwatched merchandise easy pickings for the nimble-fingered. Outside, the street seemed unusually quiet. There were no cars at the intersection waiting for the light to change. A stray cat wandered out of an alleyway and padded slowly down an empty sidewalk. There were no customers visible through the drugstore window across the street. The cop car that had been parked at the corner all day was gone.

  “Something’s wrong,” Harjo said. He took Sedillo by the arm and steered her away from the Mercado. “It’s a no-go.”

  “There’s nobody after us,” she protested.

  “Yet,” Harjo replied, pulling her along in the direction of her vehicle.

  Out of a building half a block down the street, two punks emerged, closing quickly with semiautomatics in hand. Behind them, two more popped out of a dentist’s office, similarly armed.

  Harjo pulled his weapon. “I hope you’re carrying.” He glanced over to see a Colt Pocket 9 in her free hand. “On the count of three, drop prone and start shooting at the punks in front of us. I’ll take the boys to our rear.”

  They hit the pavement simultaneously. Sedillo put one down. Harjo killed one and his buddy fled. Sedillo was reloading when Harjo shot the approaching gunman in the face.

  He yanked Sedillo to her feet. “To your car. Let’s go.”

  They ran full-tilt, the sound of an approaching vehicle making them sprint even faster. They turned the corner with Sedillo’s car in sight a block away. The sound of screeching wheels made them duck into a recessed doorway. They listened for a long minute. There were no footfalls, only the low grumble of an idling engine.

  “Does your car have a remote start?” he asked in a whisper.

  Sedillo nodded and pressed her vehicle transmitter. The blast blew the car off the pavement onto its side and sent glass shards flying halfway up the block.

  “That’s what I figured,” he said.

  “Damn it, I liked that car!” Sedillo complained, fire in her eyes. “The Pontiac?”

  Harjo shook his head. “Too risky. Let’s head for the bridge before Garza’s goons realize we’re not dead.”

  They used the black smoke from the explosion as cover and made it through the neighborhood to the Gran Plaza, the gateway to the city that bordered the Rio Grande. A modern, well-maintained open space with large sculptures, benches, walkways, large shade trees and grassy meadows, it teemed with people strolling the grounds, photographing each other, and enjoying the cool late afternoon sunshine along the river.

  They stopped briefly to look for pursuers before joining a line of pedestrians entering the adjacent walkway of the old two-lane international bridge that crossed the Rio Grande.

  They moved as quickly as possible, sidestepping around much slower walkers and parents plodding along with dawdling little children. As Harjo began to ease past an older man with a cane, the man’s head erupted in blood and brains. He collapsed against Harjo, who caught him just as a second bullet tore into Maria’s chest.

  He dropped the old man to the walkway, pulled Sedillo behind the body for cover, and tried to shield her as best he could, waiting for the next round that would take him out. The sniper was firing from Eagle Pass, but Harjo had no idea where.

  “Don’t.” Feebly she tried to push him away. “Go. Go now.”

  People were screaming, running, crouching, prone on the ground, squeezing past, stepping over the dead man on the walkway. The shooting had stopped.

  “I’ll get you across. You’re going to be all right.” To move him out of the way, a young man kicked Harjo hard as he ran past. Harjo wanted to kill him.

  “I’m all right,” she answered with difficulty, patting his hand, smiling. “This is better than doing chemo. I hated that idea.”

  “You can make it.” They were on the American side of the bridge. He could see the emergency lights and hear the sirens of a fire rescue vehicle on its way, weaving across both lanes of traffic.

  Sedillo shook her head and coughed up blood. “Too much damage. I’m hemorrhaging inside. I’ll be dead before the medics get here. Leave, Harjo.”

  He cradled Maria’s head in his lap. “I’m staying here with you.”

  “That’s a very nice thing for you to do,” she said sweetly, before she died.

  When the paramedics arrived, Harjo told them he didn’t know
either of the victims and retreated to Piedras Negras before any cops appeared asking questions. Half dazed, he walked to where the Pontiac was parked, expecting to see a burned-out hulk. Except for four flat tires and destroyed wiring in the engine compartment, it was intact. The Guadalupe medallion was missing, but the earrings were still in the ashtray. He fished them out. Inside a manila envelope left on the front seat were photographs of Gabriela and Catherina, naked and stretched out on tarps with their throats cut. Harjo couldn’t tell if they’d been scalped, but he guessed they’d been raped multiple times.

  He popped open the trunk. His bag with personal items and extra clothing was missing, but under the spare tire he recovered a second handgun, extra clips of ammunition, and a much-needed packet of emergency money.

  He threw the car keys in the trunk, slammed it shut, and walked away. It was time to disappear. Buying a bottle of whiskey and finding a place to stay would be easy. Overcoming his anger about Sedillo’s assassination and the brutal murder of Gabriela and her daughter would be the challenge.

  To survive and be effective he had to chill, and he knew it.

  CHAPTER 14

  The citizens of Las Cruces and Doña Ana County rarely committed murder. When they did kill each other, the clearance rate was astronomically high, simply because most of the victims and perpetrators knew each other. Sometimes very intimately, sometimes only in passing, but well enough to let the police connect the dots.

  While any garden-variety murder investigation short of a voluntary confession is filled with the normal yet demanding routine of interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence, it quickly falls off the front page until an arrest returns it to the spotlight. But the gory murder and ritual scalping of two victims at a local hotel and the killing of the night manager who’d reported it had captured national media attention. Sensationalism sold, and it was a big news story, not about to go away.

  Thrown-together television specials anchored by investigative journalists aired nationally; ex-FBI talking heads on cable news shows pumped out criticism about flawed investigative police work; local and state politicians called for larger law enforcement appropriations to combat crime; and the Chamber of Commerce scrambled to remind everyone that Las Cruces was a wonderful, warm, sunny retirement haven for boomers.