Head Wounds

by Michael McGarrity

  High in the Sierra Madre Oriental Range, Harjo had found his way to Los Ladrones, a string of stone-and-stick shacks clinging to the side of a steep canyon hidden deep in the mountains. A perennial stream furnished clear water, the surrounding forest supplied wood, and crops grew in the rich strips of bottomland.

  Thirty-seven men, women, and children lived there, all of them indigenous. Harjo thought perhaps they were descendants of a party of Seminoles who’d crossed into Mexico in the middle of the nineteenth century. Supposedly all had returned to Texas before the start of the Civil War. But his attempts to question them about their origins were met with polite silence. Nor would they tell him how Las Ladrones—The Thieves—got its name or where their money came from. They seemed to always have enough to buy essentials and necessities.

  They only spoke Spanish around him, but once in a while he caught snatches of a guttural language he didn’t understand. They were handsome, brown-skinned people, small in stature. They dressed in a combination of handmade simple loose-fitting attire and store-bought clothing, mostly muted colors.

  Harjo had learned of Las Ladrones years ago from a grateful CI who’d been born there. He’d helped Harjo take down a drug dealer running a string of prostitutes in Juárez and El Paso. In appreciation, Harjo got the man legally into the States and away from the remaining sex-ring gangsters trying to kill him.

  For three months Harjo had been staying in Las Ladrones with the CI’s oldest sister, Felipa, and her family. In her late sixties, Felipa was short but with such a straight posture that she seemed taller than her five-feet-two-inch frame.

  The family called him “The Bald One.” Every day he went to work with the men of the village, cutting and hauling wood from the forest, hunting game that roamed the high mountains, and quarrying rock used to repair and rebuild the small houses, which were prone to damage from occasional landslides that cascaded down the steep canyon walls.

  He learned how to secure loads of firewood onto the burros, dry-stack stone walls, and cut rock with a hammer and chisel. Soon he was climbing out of the canyon without needing to pause and catch his breath, and easily kept up with the men as they moved quickly through the forests. He lost weight, gained muscle, and had regained his endurance and energy from a decade ago. He never felt better.

  Frequently, one or two of the men packed up tools and bedding and disappeared from the village for weeks at a time, returning with money and sometimes semiprecious stones used for barter and trade. There was no mention of where they’d been or what they’d done, but Harjo had a suspicion they were mining gold and selling it.

  Once a month, Felipa, her oldest children, and several other families trekked across the mountains to a remote one-room schoolhouse where vendors from the nearest town, over twenty miles away, came to sell food, clothing, and supplies to the Las Ladrones. The traders were not allowed closer to the village. Those who tried were forever barred by the villagers. Harjo wanted to go on one of the treks but knew better than to ask. No outsider could know of his presence.

  He slept on the floor of Felipa’s house in the corner of the single room covered with a thin mat. He continued to shave his head, grew a beard, which he kept neatly trimmed, and worked sunup to sundown with men who rarely spoke to him. Except for Felipa, the women of the village also shied away. Only the younger children were free to be with him, often following him around or including him in their favorite stick-toss game. One fourteen-year-old girl, Rosita, eyed him speculatively. Harjo tried to stay away from her, but she always seemed to be patiently waiting nearby after her chores were done. He figured she was simply curious to learn more about the outside world, but she never approached him to ask.

  After his fourth month, Harjo was asked by Guerrero, the oldest male in the village, to join him for dinner. Over eighty years old by Harjo’s guess, he lived alone in the largest house in the settlement. Harjo figured him to be the tribal leader, but nobody showed any deference to the old man. And as far as Harjo could tell, Guerrero never gave any orders or seemed interested in village affairs. He took a lot of long naps in the sun on a stool outside his house.

  Guerrero cooked and served a meal of beans, tortillas, and coffee, and they ate in silence until the last bit of food had been wiped clean from their bowls.

  “You must leave,” Guerrero said. Legs crossed, he lit his pipe and leaned back against the wall. “Tomorrow.”

  “Have I behaved badly?” Harjo asked, somewhat surprised.

  Guerrero shook his head. “No, Rosita is much too interested in your world, and that cannot be allowed to continue.”

  “She hasn’t asked me a thing,” Harjo said. “We’ve only exchanged greetings.”

  “You are a distraction. She is of age to marry and it is Felipa’s wish that you depart.”

  “I didn’t know Felipa was Rosita’s mother.”

  “She’s not. Felipa leads us all. She has in mind a husband for Rosita. Tomas, whom you know.”

  Harjo nodded. Tomas was no more than sixteen. “A fine young man.”

  “You will stay here tonight with me and be guided out in the morning. Your belongings have been left outside my door.”

  “I must thank Felipa for her kind hospitality,” Harjo countered.

  Guerrero waved off the request. “She knows of your gratitude. You will stay here until you depart.”

  “As you wish,” Harjo said.

  “We have come to enjoy your company,” Guerrero said.

  “I give many thanks to all for allowing me to stay so long.”

  “You saved my son’s life, for which we will always be indebted.”

  Surprised, Harjo responded with a smile.

  At dawn after breakfast, Harjo was led away from the village by Julio, an armed guide, and his large, tail-wagging black mutt called Perro. They followed a trail hidden deep in the forest Harjo had not spotted. For two days they hiked and camped in the mountains until finally late in the third day they reached a summit that looked over a wide desert valley cut by an empty paved road.

  Julio pointed north. “Walk one day and you’ll come to a small town. Take Perro with you. When you get there, send the dog back to me. I’ll wait here for him to know you arrived safely.”

  “What if Perro doesn’t want to leave me?” Harjo asked jokingly.

  Julio smiled through his broken teeth. “Then I will find him waiting for me next to your dead body. But do not worry, you’ll be safe. You look like a poor Mexican. No one will ever suspect you’re an American policeman.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.”

  “What will you do now?” Julio asked.

  “Settle an old score,” Harjo answered.

  Julio smiled again and offered his hand. “A good thing to do. Buena suerte.”

  “Adios.”

  Julio whistled once and pointed at Harjo. Perro raised his ears and wagged his tail in acknowledgment. By the time Harjo and the dog were halfway down mountainside, Julio had disappeared into the tree cover.

  It had not been easy for Trevino to negotiate with Ricardo McCabe Gabaldon. The descendant of a nineteenth-century New Zealand immigrant who’d recently bought over a quarter million acres that bordered Estavio’s ranch, Ricardo acted as if he were a Spanish aristocrat. Not only did he snub those he considered inferior, which included the Kickapoos, he had denied the men of the tribe permission to hunt on his land. For those two reasons alone, Trevino disliked being in Gabaldon’s company.

  Looking to expand his empire, Gabaldon had twice approached Trevino offering to buy his land. Twice, Trevino had turned him down. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for a third offer, which came a month after his return from New Mexico. Unfortunately, it took two months of Gabaldon’s nitpicking to reach an agreement on a purchase price and closing date.

  With the deal completed and money in hand, Trevino put his personal possessions in storage, moved out, gave his workers substantial severance pay, turned over the hacienda keys to Gabaldon’s ranch man
ager, and temporarily returned to live at Colonia de los Kickapoo as a guest of Caballo Galindo.

  He brought Consuelo, his Mexican housekeeper, with him. She would live with her sister, who was married to a tribal member.

  Soon after his arrival, he told Galindo that he’d decided not to adopt Jose Hernandez’s son.

  “That will please Jose,” Galindo said. “Does he know?”

  “Not yet. You haven’t asked me why.”

  “It is clear you are starting something new.”

  “It is good to shake off the dust of the past,” Trevino agreed.

  He explained that with the sale of his land and money he’d invested from his work, the purchase of the San Rodrigo Hunting Ranch was about to go through. The land would become part of the colonia and would be owned by the tribe.

  “There are many deer on the ranch,” he added with a smile.

  “Welcome news for all of us,” Galindo said happily. “When the time comes, we will have a fiesta at the San Rodrigo to celebrate. Will you continue to live here with us?”

  “I’ve no plans to go away again,” Trevino replied. “There is a comfortable cabin on the San Rodrigo. I will live there as the caretaker.”

  “As chief of the hunt,” Galindo corrected. “Will there be no more need for murderer’s ceremonies?”

  “That is my hope,” Trevino said.

  “I am glad to hear of it.”

  In the morning, Trevino approached Hernandez outside his house. “Little Bear Den Near Cattails will stay with you. There will be no adoption.”

  Hernandez smiled with relief, his eyes tearing. “Thank you. I had a dream that you had turned into a black bear and would not take him away.”

  “What else did you see as your spirit wandered?”

  “Nothing bad. Eat with us tonight.”

  “Gladly.”

  Trevino went to his father’s old house, long empty and closed up, where he’d stored everything from the hacienda he didn’t wish to keep. He opened the door and began carrying out various dressers, tables, chairs, lamps, small appliances, dishes, pots, pans, and glassware. He manhandled a sofa through the door and the desk from his library. He dragged out a large rug and unrolled it on the ground. By the time he’d finished emptying the house, people were already picking through the offerings of the impromptu free flea market, smiling and chatting as they carried away their new possessions.

  As he went to his truck to drive to town, the sight of it gave him a good feeling.

  Clayton was at his desk when Frank Rodney entered the bullpen with a stranger. A younger guy, obviously a cop, who looked Native American. He was tall, fit, and carried himself with an air of confidence. Clayton guessed he was Navajo and some kind of Fed.

  Rodney stopped at Clayton’s desk. “This is Special Agent Danny Fallon.”

  Clayton stood and shook Fallon’s hand. “I was supposed to team up with you in Mexico to capture El Jefe.”

  “A fine and admirable venture,” Fallon said sarcastically. “Flawed but workable.”

  Clayton smiled at his flippancy.

  Rodney remained stone-faced. “He wants to look at your file on El Jefe and visit the crime scene where the Otero County deputy and rancher were gunned down. I’ve cleared it with the Otero County SO and the state police. An officer will meet you there.”

  He looked pointedly at Clayton. “You’ve got one day to assist Special Agent Fallon.”

  Fallon sat in the chair at the side of Clayton’s desk. “I’m sure that’s all the time I’ll need.”

  “Then I’ll leave you two to it.” Captain Rodney walked away.

  Clayton grabbed a thick file from a desk drawer. “Is this about El Jefe or Agent Harjo’s disappearance?”

  “Both.”

  “Official or unofficial?”

  “I’m on leave, but I didn’t tell your captain that.”

  “What makes you think Harjo’s alive?”

  “He’s too big a fish to kill without making some noise about it. And he’s hard to kill. If he were dead, his body would have been dumped where it could have been easily found and we would have heard about it. It’s less showy than the way they gunned down Agent Sedillo in daylight on the crowded Piedras Negras bridge, but it’s the same narco-trafficker code. Be a Norte Americano federal agent in Mexico and we will kill you.”

  “There are a lot of different ways Harjo may have died.” Clayton handed over the file. “None of them so attention-grabbing. Take all the time you need. I’ll answer what questions I can.”

  Fallon zeroed in on the shooting at the Mescalero village and the early morning ceremony Clayton’s mother had witnessed days later.

  “Why do you think it was El Jefe that your mother saw?”

  “It was clearly an indigenous ceremony. Not unlike what we do in Mescalero to send someone safely on his way to live among his ancestors.”

  “That doesn’t mean El Jefe performed it.”

  “Stay with me on this,” Clayton urged. “After the CIA took over the case, they wanted a second forensic look at the body, which had been sent to a funeral home for cremation. Instead, it had been claimed by someone posing as a family relative. The funeral director never reported it to the police. He’d falsified some documents to make it look legit, but finally admitted he’d been bribed to do it.”

  “How does this connect to El Jefe?” Fallon inquired.

  “Granted, the dead man was the son of the murdered German couple, but it’s not unusual for non-natives to be adopted into a tribe. The Kickapoos, like many others, do it.”

  “You think El Jefe adopted and raised him as his son,” Fallon said.

  “Perhaps after killing the couple, although that’s just a guess. How the boy came to him, I don’t know, but tell me how else a German raised as a Mexican would be sent, locked and loaded, to follow the exact route Nautzile and Goggin took on their way to Las Cruces?”

  “There are other plausible scenarios,” Fallon countered. “The most obvious, he was El Jefe’s servant. Bribing the funeral director for the body was just another example of covering his tracks. Part of his MO.”

  “That’s possible,” Clayton replied. “I read up on Kickapoo burials. If he had been adopted into the tribe, custom required that he be buried in a cemetery with family members. It is still a common practice among all the Kickapoo nations.”

  “Have there been any recent burials at the Mexican tribal cemetery?” Fallon asked.

  “Cemeteries,” Clayton corrected “There are three. But to answer your question, I don’t know.”

  “Was it El Jefe who claimed the body?”

  Clayton shook his head. “The description of the man provided by the funeral director doesn’t match what we think El Jefe looks like, but it could have been a disguise. Personally, I don’t think so.”

  Fallon paged through the file and stopped at the section that dealt with the newspaper article out of Oklahoma reporting a warrior healing ceremony for two returning tribal veterans conducted by a highly decorated Kickapoo veteran known only as “Bear.”

  Fallon held up a copy of the article. “What’s this?”

  “Remember, Harjo told us El Jefe’s nickname was Bear. There’s a Bear Clan in the Kickapoo tribe. That could account for the nickname. I spoke to the reporter who wrote the story. She told me the tribal leaders would not let her photograph or interview the healer. I followed up and got the same rejection. Maybe it’s about keeping the outside world at bay, or maybe it was El Jefe protecting his identity.”

  “He’s a warrior-healer,” Fallon speculated. “I didn’t think of that. So we need to find an ex-combat veteran Kickapoo healer nicknamed Bear who just might be El Jefe. That’s a huge chunk of research to tear into, but a damn good idea.”

  “I’ve ground to a halt,” Clayton said. “Partially because I’ve been ordered to, partially because I promised to, and partially because I’ve gotten nowhere.”

  Fallon cocked an eyebrow.

  “Okay, I s
till poke around every now and again,” Clayton confessed.

  Fallon put the article back in the file folder. “I can’t let go of it, either. You ready to take me to the crime scene?”

  Clayton stuffed the file in the desk drawer, called the state police district office to say they were on their way, and stood. “Let’s go.”

  Sergeant Carla Olivas, recently promoted and transferred out of criminal investigations back to patrol, was waiting for them at the old ranch ruins. Clayton had once been her boss. He congratulated her on the promotion and introduced her to Agent Fallon.

  Carla grinned and shook Fallon’s hand. “I’ll walk you through what we know, if you like.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Fallon replied.

  “You saw the burned-out pickup truck coming in,” Olivas said. “Did you stop?”

  “We did,” Fallon replied. “Was forensics able to collect anything worthwhile?”

  “No, but several weeks ago a highway maintenance crew found the Marlin rifle that was used to kill the deputy and the rancher’s cell phone in a culvert ten miles away. They were both wiped clean.”

  She took them to four evidence markers placed on the ground that formed a rectangle. “This is where the perp slept, out in the open, for one night only. We know this because nothing indicates he used a tent and he left very few footprints.”

  Olivas stepped to a marked circle of rocks. “He wore very expensive hiking boots, made by a company in Mexico City. Size nine, medium. He kept a cold camp. He didn’t gather wood and used a small propane camp stove. Forensics found a small piece of foil probably torn from a single-serve coffee or freeze-dried meal packet.”

  “Did you locate a latrine trench or a pit?” Fallon asked.

  “No.” Olivas guided them to evidence-marked tire tracks. “This is where our perp parked his vehicle. Size, type, and make of the tires are consistent with a high-clearance four-by-four. Wheel-to-wheel measurements match nicely with a Jeep Wrangler, like the one Detective Istee’s mother saw at the tribal museum.”

  “This was the camp of no ordinary hunter caught trespassing out of season,” Fallon said.