Head Wounds

by Michael McGarrity

  The overhead lights in the café dimmed.

  The kid hovered nearby. “I’m closed. You have to leave.”

  Fallon held out another twenty. “Give me half an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  He was close to handing over another twenty when he found a website search for local rooms to rent. He entered the URL and smiled. It was for a dump with Photoshopped pictures near the airport that rented four beds in a dormitory room and two adjoining private rooms. All shared a bath. He wrote down the physical address.

  “You know where this is?” He read the address to the kid.

  “Sí, the man you’re looking for asked me for directions there. It’s a bad place, lots of drunks and bums and crazy people.”

  “Perfect,” Fallon replied. “How do I get there?”

  Harjo was in his room eating spaghetti out of a can when Fallon walked in.

  “Sorry for barging in,” he said. “Your door doesn’t have a lock.”

  Harjo looked at him without expression. “Do you have any money? Weapons? A vehicle?”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Fallon replied. The room was the size of a big closet with a twin bed, a straight-backed armless chair, and a small side table with a lamp, the only light in the room.

  “You’re looking well. I like your digs.”

  Harjo dropped the empty can in the wastebasket. “How?”

  “The Internet café.”

  “Figures.” Harjo waved at the chair. “It was the first time I came up for air. Sit, if you’re here to help. Otherwise leave.”

  Fallon sat.

  Harjo smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Because I have money, guns, and a car?”

  “That, too.”

  “I’m assuming you have a plan.”

  Harjo perched on the edge of the bed. “Half of one, or maybe not.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Do I kill just one of the brothers or double down and kill them both?”

  “You said Lorenz had to go.”

  “He may be the hardest one to get to. The two tunnels from the safe houses to the basement room at Longwei’s restaurant are under constant surveillance. Police headquarters is a virtual fortress, and Lorenz lives surrounded by his favorite thugs and assassins.”

  Fallon made a time-out signal. “Back up. You’re talking about things I know nothing about.”

  Harjo grabbed his bag and his coat. “Not here. You’ve blown my cover. We need to find another place to stay.”

  They broke through the fence on a moonless night deep in the darkest hours, multiple vehicles thundering down both ranch roads, police radio traffic confirming that Trevino was sealed in and trapped. He burrowed as far as he could underneath the brush cover that concealed him, listening to the handheld through an earphone. Had Lorenz sent the whole damn police department plus his cartel assassins and thugs to kill him? If so, should he consider it a great honor? Or was it a farce put on by bullies?

  He’d expected the attack. Earlier in the day, he’d been tailed from town to the ranch. On the dirt road leading to the ranch there had been fresh signs of frequent vehicle traffic. Late in the afternoon a helicopter had flown over the cabin. It was enough of a warning. There was nothing he could do but wait it out and hope to remain undiscovered. As he listened to Juan barking orders, he wondered if Lorenz had put him in charge of the operation, or if he’d volunteered. Trevino figured the latter. To be able to brag that he’d killed El Jefe would be irresistible to Juan, even if it took a hundred men to help him do it.

  The handheld was a godsend that fed him fresh information of Juan’s strategy. Juan had established his HQ at the cabin with two bodyguards to protect him. Teams of four men each had been sent out on foot searches in the four major compass directions. Cops were stationed on the ranch perimeters a thousand yards apart with orders to shoot to kill. A five-thousand-dollar bounty would be paid to the lucky cop who got him. Same for the sixteen men stumbling around the ranch in the dark, their flashlights bobbing in the night.

  A shot rang out a good half mile away. Juan and his bodyguards converged on the action only to discover the shooter had killed one of their own. A second shot exacted justice for the blunder. Surely, Juan pulled the trigger, a jefe’s prerogative. Given enough time, Trevino wondered if they just might kill each other off.

  Several times, searchers came close but were called back when a concealment site was located, and everyone was ordered to search in another direction. It skewed the hunt far enough away from Trevino for him to consider making a run for it. But as an open target it would be too risky. He’d decided to stay put.

  Time passed. Trevino relaxed and cleared his mind. He worked best with a calm and steady hand. He patiently waited for the inevitable attack, hoping to take more than a few with him. But as the terse radio exchanges dwindled, with Juan occasionally snapping orders redirecting his troops and demanding updates, Trevino sensed a diminished danger.

  At daybreak, Juan called everyone in and soon the growling of engines filled the air, dispersed by the sudden arrival of windblown rain that quickly turned into a torrent. Trevino didn’t move until all he could hear was the rain.

  Slowly, he pushed aside the soaked layers of brush that had covered him and stood in the downpour, scanning for targets. Two startling explosions roared like rolling thunder. Smoke and flames rose from the direction of the cabin.

  He bent low and zigzagged to the edge of the small pasture near it. Roofless and fully engulfed in flames, it sizzled and smoked in the pouring rain. Nearby, his truck was nothing more than twisted, red-hot metal and melting rubber, licked by dwindling flickers of burning gasoline.

  No longer calm and steady, Trevino turned and retreated into the woods. His rage didn’t subside until he reached Colonia de los Kickapoo.

  CHAPTER 19

  After Danny Fallon left for Mexico, Clayton kept hoping he’d call with news about Agent Harjo. Days of silence followed, and although there was nothing he could do about it, the situation gnawed at him. His call to Fallon resulted in a message that his voice mail was full. Twice more he got the same result.

  He wanted Fallon to know, since he’d raised the question, that he’d accessed a recent satellite image of the Mexico Kickapoo village that clearly showed a recent burial in one of the three cemeteries. If El Jefe was back on his home ground, he and Clayton might be able to make a plan.

  During shift hours his caseload kept him busy. He cleared a road-rage incident where a seven-year-old girl had been shot in the head and killed by an angry driver cut off in traffic. Eyewitnesses supplied the suspect’s license plate number and his ex-wife provided the name of his current girlfriend.

  With SWAT backup, Clayton arrested the man at the woman’s trailer in Radium Springs, a small town in the northern part of the county. It had been a quick-and-easy one-two-three investigation capped by the suspect’s voluntary confession. But Clayton got no satisfaction from the bust. He couldn’t shake the image of the blood-covered little girl slumped over in her car seat. It had been an epically senseless, stupid crime.

  His sporadic efforts to find El Jefe through websites, chat rooms, and social media sites proved to be beyond ridiculous. The delusion that he was computer-literate became more obvious with each failed attempt to navigate through the various website security roadblocks that restricted access to pages he wanted to surf for information. Rather than drop it completely, he solicited the help of the department’s one-man cybercrime unit, Deputy Alex Pruitt.

  A former university soccer forward who had a master’s degree in computer science, Pruitt stood six-three. He spent his free time pursuing a doctorate part-time and competing in regional triathlon events.

  Clayton bought Pruitt lunch at a popular burger joint near the university and briefed him on his pathetic online efforts to find El Jefe. He gave him all the case information he’d accumulated, including the initial investigative reports and his handwritten notes, and pleaded for some help
.

  Pruitt smiled sympathetically at Clayton’s dismay. “You’ve got to understand how to surmount the little tricks coders and web builders use. I bet gaining back-door access to the Internet sites you’ve pinpointed won’t be hard.”

  He paused to squirt more mustard on his green-chile cheeseburger. “I’ll create a fake identity and build a creditable profile. Give me a day or two to put it together.”

  “What about government websites?”

  “Tougher,” Pruitt acknowledged. “But there are other ways to tap government data.”

  “I really appreciate this,” Clayton said.

  “No problem. I’ll give it what time I can. How do I log my hours?”

  “The Goggin-Nautzile homicides.”

  “Is Captain Rodney in the loop?”

  “I’ll mention your involvement to him.”

  “That’ll work. I thought the Feds yanked the case away from us.”

  “Not the case, just the investigation. It happened on our turf and since the murders remain unsolved, I’d be negligent to stop working it.”

  Pruitt smiled. “I admire your persistence.”

  Clayton shrugged. “Thanks, but it’s more a genetic defect than a positive attribute.”

  Pruitt laughed. “I think I suffer from the same preexisting condition.”

  Early in the investigation while he was still working the homicides, Clayton subscribed to a Piedras Negras news website. He’d fallen into the habit of checking it daily, hoping something pertinent would pop up highlighting drug cartel operations or police corruption reports—anything that might dovetail with the case. No such luck.

  Local Mexican journalists knew to keep away from such stuff to avoid assassination. Consequently, the website concentrated on benign local news with occasional op-ed pieces about the pressing problem of illegal immigrants from Central America pouring into the city trying to cross the border. Clayton scanned through the articles quickly, always disappointed.

  Except for a predawn Saturday morning at Isabel’s house where the immediate family had gathered for the weekend. Clayton rose early, made coffee, and accessed the news service website on his phone. A headline story jumped out at him.

  Suspicious Fire at Recently Acquired Kickapoo Hunting Ranch

  An unoccupied cabin and late model pickup truck were destroyed by fire at a hunting ranch recently purchased by the Colonia de los Kickapoo tribe. A spokesman for the Coahuila state police confirmed the cause was suspected arson. Only heavy rains in the area kept the fire from spreading. Tribal representatives in Eagle Pass and at the colonia declined to comment. The investigation is ongoing.

  No surprise there. The Kickapoos could be as closemouthed as Apaches. Generally, Clayton approved, but this time he wished they would have been a little more forthcoming. Why was it torched? What was the motive? Somebody knew something.

  Photographs released by the Coahuila state police showed the burned-out, partially collapsed shell of a building and the twisted metal frame of the truck. It took a lot of heat to contort forged steel.

  He surfed for more information about the fire and found a blog devoted to news, commentary, and opinion about Mexican drug cartel operations. It included a forum where members could anonymously report accounts of cartel roadblocks, shoot-outs, murders, kidnappings, and other atrocities. On it was a seemingly benign posting about a convoy of twenty-five cartel and Piedras Negras police vehicles seen leaving the city the night of the fire.

  A second posting by a different source noted the discovery later that night of a Piedras Negras police officer who’d been lynched and left dangling from a railroad trestle. The body had been removed by a squad of Coahuila state police called out to investigate the fire near the Kickapoo colonia.

  Too many coincidences, Clayton thought as he closed the blog and looked up to see his sleepy-eyed son Wendell appear at the table and slide into a chair. It was his first trip back from Albuquerque since the new year break from med school.

  He nodded at the drip coffee maker on the counter. “Did you make the coffee?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because then I can have some.” Wendell rose, poured a cup, and returned to the table. “Grandma’s is pure poison.”

  Clayton laughed. “Don’t you let her hear that.”

  “Never. You’re up early.”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Clayton replied. A strange dream had yanked him awake. He’d been floating above the tribal museum looking down on the lifeless body of the man he’d shot. He had no idea of what to make of it. Had the ceremony Isabel witnessed been a Kickapoo ghost sickness spell cast on him for the shooting?

  Maybe he needed to seek Blossom Magoosh’s counsel. Ghost sickness he didn’t need.

  Thinking about Blossom made him think about Lucy. She’d given Blossom money for the girls, promised to fix her roof and buy a new stove. And Lucy had told her old high school teammate, Houzinnie, that she wanted to return home, start fresh, and make things right with the casino. Only two hundred thousand dollars would’ve solved that problem.

  Ruling out the obvious was a basic tenet of good police work. Had he dropped the ball by believing a stolen two hundred K was sufficient reason to have a sicario mutilate and kill Goggin and Nautzile? That was a disconnect Clayton needed to reconcile.

  It suddenly hit him it had been a recovery mission that had led to the shooting outside the museum. That’s why the man had followed Lucy and Goggin’s exact route from Eagle Pass to Mescalero. But for what? It had to be the million dollars.

  “Earth to Dad,” Wendell said, shaking Clayton out of his preoccupation. “Come in.”

  Clayton stood up. “Sorry. Thinking about work. How about we bust out of here and get some breakfast?”

  “Won’t Grandma be upset?”

  “She’ll handle it. We deserve some guy time together. I’ll leave a note.”

  “I’m game,” Wendell said.

  Oscar’s Diner on the highway north of Ruidoso served the best breakfast in the county. Clayton and Wendell arrived early enough to grab a window table with a view of the grassy valley enclosed by steep pine-tree-covered hills. The diner was a former vacation cabin and the walls were filled with homey sayings carved on wooden planks, along with a gallery of framed photographs of the resident cats that had prowled the premises over the past three decades.

  They both ordered Oscar’s famous scramble, a combination of whipped eggs, ham bits, chopped onions, and diced peppers all mixed together with hash-brown potatoes.

  They ate, dawdled, and talked, mostly about Wendell’s highs and lows in medical school. The classes he loved, the demanding professors who sometimes vexed him, the hours spent in the library devouring hundreds of pages of text, and a pretty classmate he’d taken to studying with.

  Clayton didn’t press on the pretty study mate, and Wendell didn’t elaborate.

  “Will you and Mom ever move back to Mescalero?” he asked.

  “We think about it,” Clayton replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem real settled in Las Cruces.”

  “We moved there for you and your sister.”

  “And your job.”

  “That, too. Think we’ve become too urbanized?”

  Wendell laughed. “In Las Cruces? Impossible. But you must know Mom and Grandma want the family to move back to the rez.”

  “Will you and Hannah be coming along?”

  “That’s not fair,” Wendell replied with a slight grimace. “I’ve a long way to go before I’ll have the freedom to decide where I can wind up. Same for Hannah.”

  “I take it back.” Clayton waved at the waitress for the check. “Want to go treasure-hunting with me?”

  “For what?”

  “I have my suspicions. While you were packing away breakfast, I remembered something somebody said that I want to follow up on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Clayton paid the bill. “The Old Ladies Village.”

  Houzinnie�
��s mother had lived at the edge of a cluster of houses sequestered away from the tribal center. No longer did old ladies live there alone in the failed government attempt to destroy the Apache culture. It was neither picturesque nor tidy but had a particular Apache informality about it that Clayton loved. Dogs lazed about, trucks were up on blocks awaiting repairs, and unfinished house additions open to the elements weathered unattended. It existed on Apache time, more rhythmic, less methodical.

  The front yard of the vacant house was filled with windblown litter that clung to a riot of overgrown dry weeds. A pile of old rotted-out porch railings stood stacked at the side of the gravel walkway. On the roof, a television antenna attached to a tall pole flapped precariously in a gusty breeze.

  The front door was locked, but a kitchen window at the side of the house was unlatched. Wendell volunteered to crawl through it.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked as Clayton hoisted him up.

  “Anything that doesn’t belong,” Clayton replied.

  “That’s a big help.” He clambered through the window and opened the back door.

  The house was dark, dusty, and smelled of mildew and dead mice. The electricity had been shut off, so Clayton used his flashlight to inspect the refrigerator, an older-model wood cookstove, and all the kitchen cabinets. There was a small, locked freezer on the enclosed back porch. He pried it open and got a strong whiff of ammonia. Everything had been cleaned and emptied.

  The yellow wall-mounted telephone next to the kitchen door had Wendell shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s an antique.” He picked up the receiver. There was no dial tone.

  “They didn’t have phone service here until the 1990s,” Clayton explained.