Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Alvar went to his grave believing that neither of them mentioned the white girl again, as long as they lived.

  He was wrong.

  DAY FOUR

  1

  “Barry. I need you to come in here for a minute, buddy.”

  Barry walked through a darkened doorway. Inside a room he hadn’t seen before, Carl Greenwell sat at a table, bathed in the blue glow of a small TV with no signal. “What’s up?”

  “Look at this here,” Carl said. “It’s a DVD I just had burned. You know what that means?”

  Barry wasn’t up on technology—he’d had trouble with the relatively simple application process at Wal-Mart—but he got the general idea. “Sure.”

  Carl fingered a slender remote control. “See, Connie shot some digital video footage earlier tonight. I thought you should take a look at it.”

  “Connie did?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Of what?”

  “Just watch.” Carl thumbed a button on the remote. The TV screen flickered, a black horizontal line broke the picture and scrolled out of the way, then Barry was looking at a small house on a dark night, with a light over the door and lights in the windows. A figure climbed some steps to the door, silhouetted. The door opened. A bright flash, and whoever had opened the door fell away while the first figure turned his face to the camera for the first time, the light from overhead catching him for just an instant.

  “Look familiar?” Carl asked.

  “That’s me!” Barry hadn’t been offered a chair, and he felt like the room was tilting away from him. He grabbed at the edge of the table. “Connie filmed that?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Why? Why would she do that?”

  Carl pressed the STOP button. “Because I asked her to.”

  “You? You set me up?”

  Carl shook his head slowly. “Barry, you know we’re doing important work here, right?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Truth is, I knew as soon as I started talking to you in that bar that you were the guy I needed for a truly delicate job. But I had to make sure you’d go through with it. I couldn’t know, not that fast, what the depth of your commitment to our cause would be. I admit I used you, in a way, in order to guarantee that you’d follow through when the time came. Thing is, the time is coming sooner than I expected. It’s coming tonight, and I need to know that you’ll do what I ask you to. I need to know that you’ll be able to pull the trigger when I say so, not just when Connie does. Make sense?”

  Barry scooted a chair away from the table without asking permission, and sat down in it. Six feet on the ground felt more secure than just his own two. “In a way, I guess. But you could have just asked me.”

  “Barry, I couldn’t take that chance. Not with something like this. And there just wasn’t time to take it any slower.”

  “What is it you’re gonna want me to do, Carl?” Barry asked, biting back his fury. “What’s so important you had me kill a guy for no reason?”

  “There was every reason for it, Barry. You know what the reasons were. He had to die, and you had to be the one to take him out. I did you a favor there, and if you don’t see it now, you will in the long run. As for later tonight, it’ll be the same kind of deal. Like I said, I need you to be able to pull a trigger for me. The people here at the ranch are good people, and their hearts are in the right place, but they can’t be my triggerman.”

  “Why not? Why not them, Carl, instead of me?”

  “Many reasons, Barry. They’re known associates of mine. I know it’s hard to believe, but some of them wouldn’t cross that line for me, for our cause. I believed you would, and I was right. Anyway, I couldn’t even ask them, because if the law—and make no mistake, although justice is on our side, the law isn’t always—if the law questioned them, I couldn’t risk having them know anything. But there would be no reason for anyone to question you about me, because you’re not a known part of our group.”

  Barry sat for a moment, his hands pressing down on the tabletop as if it could keep the room from spinning. What Carl said made sense, in a way. If not for the fact that he had tricked Barry into killing the Wal-Mart guy, he would have had no problem with the logic. The only question remaining was, did sound logic overrule whatever problems Barry had with murder?

  He didn’t like the way Carl just stared at him with those luminous eyes, a half smile like the Mona Lisa’s on his handsome face. He was waiting for Barry to make up his mind, to commit all the way to some act that he had to guess was worse than the one he had already performed tonight.

  Still smiling, Carl tapped the remote. “I know you’re a good man, Barry, with a good heart. I know you love your country.”

  “Course I do.”

  “It it’ll make things easier, I’ll just remind you that this is digital video. It’s not the only copy. With a couple of taps on a keyboard I could put this out on the Internet for the whole world to see.”

  “But you wouldn’t…”

  “Not if you’re the man I think you are. I’m just protecting my own interests, Barry. Just protecting the rights of patriots to fight for their country.”

  That was it, then. Barry was stuck in the middle. If he refused to help Carl—refused to pull another trigger on this worst of all nights—he would go to jail for the rest of his life or get the needle for murder. But if he murdered again, he might go free.

  Didn’t seem to be a difficult choice at all, when he looked at it that way.

  Barry released the table and brought his hands up to the sides of his head, as if he could hide from God and Carl and everything else. “I’m with you, Carl,” he said. “I’m in.”

  2

  They stopped for dinner at Las Humaderas on Calle 3 in Agua Prieta, just a couple of blocks below the Port of Entry into the U.S., and he believed she was sending them straight across. Maybe she would be able to magic up some paperwork for Clemente and Rafael and maybe a fake bill of lading to explain her own presence in the back. He didn’t mind; in fact, Las Humaderas was nothing special, but he had met Carolina in A.P. and that was where their first date had been, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain he felt drawn back to it tonight.

  The other two men happily let Gabriel pay, as he had been paying all the way up the interior. He didn’t mind too much. Having decided that this whole thing was worth the trouble—and he had to think that, after this much time and effort, to have doubts would have driven him toward suicide—he figured it made sense that the only one of the three who had any money at all ought to be the one who spent it. By morning they’d be across the line, and he had a feeling, with no more basis than any of the other feelings that had brought them this far, that it would all be over soon.

  All three of them were nervous. They knew they would cross the line tonight, and who knew how that would go? What if they were turned back at the Port of Entry? They couldn’t jump the fence or slip through a cut in it, not with the truck and the statue in back. There had been drug tunnels from A.P. into Douglas in the past, but if there were any that hadn’t been found out, Gabriel didn’t know where to find them.

  Which meant they would have to drive out of town, into the desert, and look for a place they could drive the truck across. Thinking about this challenge during dinner, he had stayed quiet while Rafael and Clemente joked and laughed—neither, he believed, had ever been inside a restaurant even as nice as the mundane Las Humaderas. Gabriel maybe had a little too much tequila, but when they came out into the night, he still felt together, in control.

  He felt that way right up until he saw Ignacio Bernal, one of Arturo’s lieutenants, staring at him from across the street. In the yellow glow of brightly painted hotel wall, Ignacio stood with a woman—a whore, most likely, with a short skirt and fishnet stockings, bra straps showing under her skimpy top, her black hair teased out and her makeup heavily applied. Ignacio turned quickly when he spotted Gabriel looking at him, and tried to duck behind the woman. She
tottered on her spike heels and had to grab Ignacio’s arm for balance. Ignacio wore a Western-styled dark blue shirt with gold stripes, designer jeans, ostrich boots—his usual uniform, so even just seeing the sleeve the whore held on to gave him away. He had left the shirt untucked to hide the gun no doubt stuck in his waistband.

  “What up?” Rafael asked him.

  “Never mind, let’s get out of here.” They’d parked the truck around the corner on Avenida 2, as close a spot as they had been able to find. They weren’t worried about the statue—she had shown that she could take care of herself. Gabriel grabbed on to both men, as if the tequila had just caught up to him, and tugged them toward the corner, his face turned toward the wall. He didn’t want Ignacio to know for certain that he’d been seen. It would be best if Ignacio never knew for sure that he had seen Gabriel at all.

  The sidewalk rose up near the corner, as if a root from some long forgotten tree had grown underneath it and buckled the concrete. Clemente tripped where two slabs joined unevenly, and Gabriel had to release Rafael to catch the big man. He got a grip under Clemente’s arm and hauled him to his feet. By the time they reached the corner and Gabriel risked a glance back toward the bar entrance where Ignacio had been, he had already left.

  Calling Arturo, Gabriel guessed. Arturo would have offered a reward, and Ignacio, never mind that they had shared blow together off the belly of a Las Vegas stripper in the back of Puerto Peñasco’s El Principal Club, had gone to make the call that would earn him the cash.

  “Come on!” Gabriel said. Clemente really was drunk. He stumbled again, but kept his footing. Gabriel would have thought the skinny one, Rafael, would show the effects first, but except for a stupid grin on his ugly face—Rafael’s usual expression—he didn’t seem intoxicated in the least. “We need to get out of here!”

  “What’s the hurry, mi amigo?” Rafael asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Gabriel said. Agua Prieta looked like a sleepy town, but it was a major transit point for Arturo’s product. The man had a small army here, and Gabriel didn’t look forward to a reunion.

  He practically had to squeeze Clemente into his center seat and then shove Rafael in beside him. “I want to drive!” Rafael complained as Gabriel slammed his door.

  Gabriel ran around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “I’m driving.”

  “He’s driving,” Clemente said. He stifled a yawn. “I’m going to sleep now.”

  Gabriel twisted the key and grinned when the engine caught. A few blocks, that was all they needed to cover, and they would be out of town. Just a few blocks.

  We can do that, he thought. I can do that.

  3

  Lulu stays in the shower until the hot water runs out. As it turns tepid, she cranks the faucet knobs, draws back the shower curtain (green, with yellow daisies) and finds two thick towels left folded on the toilet seat cover. The towels are also green, but a dark green, like pine needles, instead of the lime green of the shower curtain. Green seems to be a theme of this bathroom. She knows Jeannie has remodeled it since moving here, stripping the wood of the sink cabinet and staining it a dark forest green, doing the same to the wood framing the mirror over the sink. The walls have been painted a sage green that Jeannie loves, and small, framed pastoral watercolors in complementary tones are hung on them. Standing in the tub, drying her long hair and luxuriating in the thick softness of the towels, Lulu understands why she went to the trouble. The room connects to the outdoors, echoing a color that she is sure would be visible through the window, in daylight. It’s a pleasant, calming hue. Jeannie believes that surrounding herself with beauty will keep the world’s bad things at bay. There was a time that Lulu might have agreed with her, but that time is past.

  All she is doing, examining the bathroom in such detail, is delaying the inevitable.

  She has to face Jeannie, and Jeannie’s questions. She will have to face the police. She will have to face the fact that at eighteen, she has suddenly become a victim, an orphan.

  Tears threaten to fill her eyes again, and she fights them back, steels herself against sorrow and fear and all the other destructive emotions that might throw her off-balance, break her resolve. Taking her time, she dries herself thoroughly. Jeannie has put a sweatshirt, a pair of faded jeans and some cotton underwear on the counter beside the sink. Lulu swims in the sweatshirt and has to roll up the cuffs of the jeans several times, but Jeannie’s slim waist is close enough to her size that she doesn’t need a belt to hold them up. Jeannie has also left out a box of bandages, and Lulu applies them to the worst of the cuts on her feet. Borrowing a hairbrush and a tube of deodorant, she makes herself look semipresentable, even though she feels like she is rolling on knife blades.

  Trying on a smile in the mirror (it feels forced, unfamiliar) she opens the door into the hallway and follows the light into the living room. Jeannie sits on her sofa with a steaming mug between her hands. A tray on the wooden coffee table holds another mug and a plate of cookies. Mesquite logs blaze in a kiva-style fireplace, scenting the air with a pleasantly smoky aroma. “Is this okay?” Jeannie asks when she emerges. “Do you need something more substantial to eat?”

  “I don’t think I could eat right now,” Lulu says. “Thanks for the shower, though, and that tea will really hit the spot.”

  “I think you should drink it quick,” Jeannie says, indicating a soft chair with a tick of her eyes. “I’ve been trying the phone, but it’s still not working, and I think we need to go into McNeal and call the sheriff from there.”

  “Just…not quite yet?” Lulu answers.

  “When you’re ready,” Jeannie says. “Sooner is better, though.”

  “I understand, Jeannie. Thanks.”

  “Can you talk about what happened? Did you escape, or did whoever had you let you go?”

  “I don’t mind talking about that part,” Lulu says. Part of her wishes that she could have seen his face when he looked in the back of the truck and realized she had gotten away. “He kept me someplace far from here, like in a mountain cabin. But early today he decided we needed to come back here—I’m not sure why—and he drugged me and put me in his truck. I was always kept bound and blindfolded, but for the trip he tied me with rope instead of the shackles and chains that I had at the cabin.”

  “Who is he?” Jeannie asks.

  “I have no idea. Not, like, one of your more talkative guys, I know that much. Anyway, I didn’t inhale whatever it was he tried to dope me with, and it didn’t knock me out for very long. Made me feel sick as shit, but didn’t keep me unconscious like it did that first night. So as he drove, I bounced around in the back and worked on loosening the ropes. I guess he wasn’t a Boy Scout or anything, because I managed to get free of them, and then I could take the blindfold off and look around. I kept the ropes wrapped around me so whenever he looked in back he thought, like, I was still tied up, and I kept the blindfold over my head for the same reason. The worst part was leaving the gag in my mouth, but he had taped that on with duct tape and I knew if I took it off I’d never get it back on right.”

  “Oh my God, Lulu! That sounds awful.”

  Lulu picks up a cookie—chocolate chip—and breaks off an edge. She takes that tiny piece and snaps it again, then puts one of the chunks in her mouth. “That’s an understatement, but it’s in the right direction. The whole thing was just…I don’t have enough words for shitty to tell you. But today I felt better than I had before, because I felt like I was getting somewhere. I had to find the right moment to make my break, when he wouldn’t see me and just catch me again.”

  “Weren’t you scared?” Jeannie asks. She tucks her legs under herself. Lulu notices for the first time that Jeannie has changed out of the Mickey Mouse T-shirt and put on a navy sweater, blue jeans and fuzzy purple socks.

  “I’ve been scared ever since the night he came to my house,” Lulu says. “Nonstop scared. I just kept thinking about how much I wanted to see you guys, and Jace, and how m
aybe I never would…. Tonight was the first time that I felt like maybe I could do something to change my situation. Anyway, I kept on sneaking peeks out the windows, trying to spot familiar landmarks. Finally I did, and then I got nervous all over again, afraid that the closer I got to home, the more cautious he’d be.

  “I could tell we were driving through McNeal on 191. At that market near the intersection with Davis Road, he stopped for gas. I played dead, laying absolutely still like I was still out cold. I guess the rope and blindfold and everything still looked convincing, because he went inside the shop to use the bathroom. As soon as I heard the front door close, I watched, praying. I could see the bathroom area, and when he went in, I opened the back, jumped out and ran for it.”

  “You ran all the way here from McNeal?” Jeannie asks, evidently astonished.

  “Turns out it’s not quite as far if you, like, keep away from the roads,” Lulu says. What would it serve to tell Jeannie about how the wet grass sliced into her bare legs, the mesquite thorns ripped her flesh, the unseen stones shredded the bottoms of her feet, the mud tried to suck her down, the cold wind and rain punished her; or about the aching in her lungs that she had to run though, the terror that knifed into her every time headlights swept by on the road? Her friend feels bad enough for her already, and she doesn’t want to make that worse. “I cut across fields. In the dark, even if he noticed I was gone right away, he couldn’t have found me.”

  “You were taking a big chance, though.”

  “Not as big as staying with him would have been. He would never have let me go alive, I know that for a fact.”

  “Why didn’t you just go to the nearest house and call the police?” Jeannie asks. To Lulu, her expression looks curious, not judgmental.