Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Yes,” the man said. “And your fists are clenched, your teeth gritted in such a manly way, your face flushed. All good indicators of rage. If you were going to kill me, though, you’d already have made your move.”

  “You haven’t threatened her yet,” Oliver reminded him. He didn’t like the quickie psychoanalysis the guy had thrown down, especially since it seemed unfortunately accurate. Already the urge to jump the man, to knock him to the ground and pummel him to death with a rock, had begun to pass.

  “There’s rage, and then there’s calculation,” Jeannie said. “Turn around and get out of here before you find out which one I’m all about.”

  The man shifted toward Jeannie, his left hand coming out of the pocket and rubbing his furry right arm. “Oh, yes. I can see that you might actually do it. Or try, anyway.”

  “Count on it,” Jeannie said. Oliver had never heard her sound so cold.

  “I’m afraid that Lulu and I have unfinished business, though,” the man said. He inclined his head ever so slightly toward the first truck. “Down there.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Oliver said.

  “I have to, Oliver,” Lulu said, her voice quivering. “He’s right. She’s waiting for me there.”

  13

  “The fuck?” Scoot Brown asked.

  “Got me there,” Buck said. “Busy night at the border.”

  He and Scoot had worked their way within about fifty yards of the front truck, the one that had been taking all the fire at first. He couldn’t see how many dead there were—they had fallen into the tall grass and brush—but no one moved there anymore. In a way he was relieved. If the gunmen got back in the other two trucks and drove back into Mexico, then he’d have some unsolved homicides on his hands, but not a firefight.

  Before they could, though, someone else started shooting, from off to Buck’s right. Whoever the newcomers were, they fired at the men with the guns, at the back two trucks. The gunmen shifted their attention to the newcomers, and the gun battle that had looked to be winding down heated up again.

  He and Scoot watched from behind a creosote bush about five feet tall and the same across. When people started shooting at them, its spindly branches would offer no protection at all. “Get on your belly,” he told Scoot. “Keep your weapon up and pointed at those trucks, just in case they shoot. I’ll take those guys up the hill.”

  Scoot did as he was told, flattening himself on the ground, his sidearm held in both hands, elbows in the mud supporting it. Buck crouched, readying the shotgun. He brought his finger inside the guard, resting it lightly on the trigger. “Cochise County sheriffs!” he shouted as loud as he could manage. “Everybody cease fire!”

  The shooting continued. Buck waited a few seconds, then repeated his warning. This time he punctuated it with a shot into the air. When its boom faded, he added, “Drop those weapons!”

  He threw himself down as the first answering slugs zipped through the creosote bush where he’d been standing. Scoot returned fire toward the trucks. “Guys’re good,” he said.

  The shooters coming down off the western rise kept firing at the trucks, and after a few seconds the ones there returned their attention to them. Buck saw one of them go down, then heard a wail of pain from the trucks. It looked like there were still three working their way off the hillside, and they kept up their barrage against the trucks, aided by Scoot’s .45 rounds.

  Where the hell is the Border Patrol? he thought. Where the hell are the federales ? He should’ve called for backup from Douglas as soon as Oliver told him where they were headed, but getting to Lulu had been his only priority. And where the hell is she?

  In another minute, the worst of it seemed to be over. The men at the trucks were all down—wounded or dead, he guessed. At any rate, they had stopped firing. The ones who had come over the hill had never fired at him or Scoot, confining their fire to the shooters at the trucks. Maybe they were BP, after all.

  The sudden silence startled him. His ears still rang from the gunfire, but otherwise the night was still, even the wind giving up. In the east the sky had turned gray, a glint over the hills indicating that the sun would rise soon.

  “Come on,” Buck said. Scoot forced himself up out of the mud that caked his entire front. “Let’s see just who the hell those people are.”

  He and Scoot walked toward them as they came toward the trucks. He saw uniforms, camo. Were they Guard troops? Marines?

  “Buck,” Scoot said.

  “What?”

  Scoot pointed. From behind a big mesquite stepped four more people. In the growing light he recognized three of them as Oliver and Jeannie Bowles and Lulu Lavender. “That the girl?” Scoot asked.

  “That’s her.”

  It took a minute to place the fourth one, a man. Buck had never seen him in person, but as he stared at the guy, he remembered the videos from Geronimo! Internet Cafe and the picture he’d been sent of Henry Schaffer, aka Dana Fortier.

  The man whose booby trap had killed Raul. The man who he believed had kidnapped Lulu and killed her family.

  On instinct, he raised the barrel of the shotgun. He couldn’t fire, though. From this range he’d spray all four of them.

  “That man in the back?” he whispered to Scoot. “In the polo shirt. That’s Schaffer, the guy whose cabin we went to tonight.”

  “Where Raul…?”

  “That’s right. If he tries anything at all, kill him.”

  “Be my pleasure,” Scoot said.

  Buck realized that he was walking stiff-legged, suddenly nervous about the coming confrontation. Even though it seemed the shooters at the trucks were out of play, he believed the real trouble had just begun.

  The paths of the three groups intersected at the front truck, a little blue Toyota with as many holes in it as a colander. In the bed, partially covered by a shredded green tarp, stood something white.

  Each group stopped about twenty feet away from the truck. Three bodies lay close to it, riddled with bullets. They were all male, and looked Mexican. The other two trucks had stopped on the far side of the border, but this one had torn right through the fence, barely making it into the United States before it had stopped.

  This close, in the glow of dawn, Buck saw that the people from the hill were not Border Patrol or National Guard. Two could have been soldiers, a man and a woman, both fit and wearing military-style garb without insignia, but the third was an older man who looked like a rancher. Buck was sure he’d seen the guy around but couldn’t place him.

  He turned his attention toward the other group. “Lulu,” he said. “You okay?”

  She sniffled. She looked like she’d been crying. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “That the guy?”

  “That’s him,” Oliver said.

  “I’ve got my own beef with you,” Buck said, catching Henry Schaffer’s gaze. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Raul Bermudez.”

  “First things first, Lieutenant,” Schaffer said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Our business here is far from done.”

  Lulu broke away from her group and walked to the back of the truck. Her motions were almost trancelike, as if she moved through some invisible, viscous liquid. Nobody moved to stop her. At the truck, she peeled away what remained of the green tarp. The truck’s cab blocked Buck’s view, so he stepped closer, trying to keep a clear line between himself and Schaffer.

  What she had uncovered was a statue of a girl, carved from some gleaming white stone. It looked as clean and bright as if it had been finished yesterday. Buck remembered the story Oliver had outlined for him. The statue had to be the “white girl” from Lulu’s blog. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Lulu said.

  Henry Schaffer stepped out from behind Oliver and Jeannie. He had his hands in his pockets and he sauntered toward the truck like a man taking a Sunday stroll.

  “That’s far enough, Michael,” the man who looked like a soldier said. He pointed his automatic rifle at
the man Buck knew as Henry Schaffer and Dana Fortier. “But then, that’s probably not the name you’re using these days, is it?”

  “Are you still Kale?” Henry asked. “Or is it some other variant of Charles?”

  “It’s Carl. I’m happy with my identity; I don’t need to change it every ten minutes.”

  “I take it you men know each other?” Buck interrupted.

  “Oh, forever,” Henry said. “Or does it just seem that way, Carl?”

  “Long enough,” the one called Carl said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here. A little outgunned, however. And definitely outclassed.”

  The old guy with the two soldiers looked just as confused as Buck felt, his head whipping back and forth between the two men as if he had unexpectedly found himself at a tennis match.

  “Outgunned, maybe,” Henry said. “I think outclassed is an exaggeration.” He gestured toward Lulu, who caressed the white statue, ignoring everything else. She looked like a sleepwalker. “After all, I am the one who brought her.”

  “Maybe there’s something to be said for delegation, for letting others do the dirty work. Anyway, I could have sworn you found her hiding behind a tree,” Carl said.

  Henry’s calm demeanor slipped for a moment. “You have no idea what I’ve been through with her in the last week.”

  “The last week doesn’t matter,” Carl said. “Only what happens now matters. And you don’t get to spill her blood on the statue, because you’re just out for yourself. I’m the one who recognized the very real threat she poses.”

  “You think because you believe your cause is pure, you get to win?” Henry asked, scoffing. “The world doesn’t work that way. Need I remind you that if either of us takes possession of that statue, her own desires mean nothing? So for all your highhandedness, you and I have the exact same goal in mind—excepting, of course, which of us benefits most from the girl.”

  “Hold on, both of you,” Buck said. He wasn’t sure who to point the gun at, but the soldiers, armed themselves, seemed like the more imminent threat, so he settled on them. “Any more blood gets spilled around here, it’ll be me doing the spilling.”

  “You don’t know what you’re—” Carl began. He cut himself off with a wave of his hand. “Barry, just shoot them. Everyone but the girl.”

  Barry—the old guy—raised his M-16, his eyes widening in terror, like he couldn’t believe what he was about to do. His finger tightened on the trigger. Buck didn’t wait for him to squeeze it, but twitched the Remington toward him and fired. The charge hit the old guy in the upper chest, neck and face, tearing skin and cutting bone, sending a spray of blood and brain into the air behind him. Buck pumped another shell into the chamber.

  Instead of falling, Barry kept bringing his rifle up into position. He squeezed off a burst. One of the bullets struck Scoot, blowing him backward to the ground. Another slammed into Buck like a punch from a sledgehammer. He went down, firing his second shell. This one hit Barry too, or what was left of him. After the second shot, not much remained of Barry from the chest up. Still, as he finally fell, he kept squeezing the trigger of the automatic. Its muzzle flash competed for brightness with the sun, which had just pushed up over the eastern hills.

  Through blurred eyes, Buck saw Oliver Bowles push Jeannie down and throw himself on top of her. Biting back agony, he pushed the shotgun away and clawed his .45 from its holster. There was no one he could shoot, though—the two men had rushed to Lulu’s side. Wounded, shaky, Buck couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t hit Lulu, and he couldn’t take that chance. The female soldier stood to one side, watching, but she held her gun at her side as if she knew it wouldn’t do any good. He could shoot her, he supposed, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything except making him feel better.

  Watching the two men, Buck was pretty sure he had started to hallucinate. Their outlines seemed to shift and change: human one moment, something else the next, the lines and edges strobing so fast the eye couldn’t follow. They didn’t exactly fight, but they stared at each other, and they both trembled with effort. It looked to Buck like two men arm wrestling without touching each other, all their power and focus put instead into mental combat of some kind.

  “Hell, I can kill her,” the woman said. She shrugged. Buck tried to level his .45 at her just in case she raised it.

  “No!” Carl said. “It has to be a man. It has to be me!”

  “Not a chance,” Henry said. “I earned it. I found her.”

  “Earning has nothing to do with it,” Carl replied, his voice strained with effort. “It’s about power; you should know that by now.” He leaned forward sharply, lunging without moving his hands toward his opponent. Whatever he did worked, though, knocking the other man to the ground. Henry struggled to rise, but Carl raised his hands and made a pushing motion, and—six feet away—his foe flattened as if a great weight smashed down on him. Blood bubbled from Henry Schaffer’s mouth, then geysered up, drenching him and the mud around him, and he was still.

  Carl tossed a wan smile to the soldier woman and reached for Lulu. From somewhere he had drawn a knife, slender-bladed, shining in the sun’s first rays.

  No time left. Buck raised his sidearm, aimed with eyes that could barely see. Squeezed the trigger three times.

  The bullets flew true. Buck saw the impacts against the man’s body, saw dust puff from his shirt. No blood blossomed there, and though Carl grimaced, he didn’t fall or stop what he was doing.

  He had Lulu’s arm in one hand and he shoved her up against the statue. With the other, he brought the knife to her throat. Buck wanted to shoot again, but his hands trembled, weak. He could barely lift the gun and she was too close….

  Oliver’s body flashed across Buck’s field of view, charging into the man with the knife. He surprised Carl, and they both went down, landing in a low mesquite. Thorns tore at their clothes and skin as they wrestled, Carl trying to get the knife into Oliver and Oliver fighting to knock it from Carl’s grip. From the corner of his eye, Buck saw the soldier woman lifting her M-16 toward them, and he managed to squeeze off one more shot. It hit her in the temple and blew out the top of her head, and she crumpled in a heap.

  “Buck.” Scoot had crawled up behind him. His face was pale and drawn. “Fuckin’ body armor, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Buck said, glad they hadn’t stopped to change after their assault on the cabin. The bullet hadn’t penetrated the Kevlar, although the pain was intense and he thought he’d cracked a rib. Apparently Scoot’s armor had stopped the slugs he’d taken too. “Can you walk?”

  “I think maybe.”

  “Kill that bastard,” Buck said. “The one in the camo, who Oliver’s fighting with.”

  For the second time that morning, Scoot said, “Be my pleasure.” He lurched unsteadily to his feet and walked toward the struggling men.

  Buck caught Jeannie’s gaze as she looked on, imploring. There was nothing left he could do except hope Scoot could kill Carl without hurting Oliver—and before Carl killed Oliver himself. He seemed to have the upper hand—kept getting his knife hand free and slicing at Oliver with it. To his credit, Oliver, whom Buck had believed to be a pacifist, was able to keep Carl down on the ground with him, and away from Lulu.

  Catching sight of her, Buck felt a momentary sense of disbelief snag him like a thorn. Her skin seemed to have turned white—not quite a radiance, but almost as if she had been dusted by marble from the statue. For a second he thought it was moonlight reflecting off the sheen of her skin, but the moon had been dipping toward the horizon and ducked behind a cloud.

  Scoot staggered up to the two men, past Lulu, who still leaned on the white statue, and shoved the barrel of his service weapon up against the back of Carl’s head. Carl tried to jerk his head out of the way, but all he succeeded in doing was moving it so that if the bullet passed through, it wouldn’t strike Oliver. At the last moment, Lulu released the statue and spun around, putting her hands on Scoot’s shoulders. The same white near-radia
nce that pearled Lulu’s skin spread to Scoot just as he pulled the trigger.

  The bullet did pass through Carl’s head, with a spray of gore and skull fragments. Carl’s body briefly went limp, but then he rolled off Oliver and sliced at Scoot with the long knife. With Lulu gripping his shoulders, Scoot fired again, then twice more. All head shots, at close range.

  Finally, Carl stopped moving. Scoot lost his balance, sitting down hard next to Oliver. Oliver struggled to his feet, looking at Carl, at Lulu. He extended a hand to Scoot, helping him back up, then turned to Lulu. He wrapped his arms around the girl, who was crying now, really weeping, the pearlescence gone, as if whatever spell had been binding her to the statue was broken at last. Jeannie joined them, and Buck watched the three of them hugging one another, holding one another tightly, three people who loved one another.

  If there’s any magic there, he thought, it’s the good kind.

  14

  Even after dumping the contents of a plastic gas can from one of the trucks stopped across the border all around the statue, it took most of the second clip in the woman’s M-16 to hit the right combination of gasoline and spark—and Buck worried that he was a bit too close to the action, but he really didn’t have the stamina to do it from farther back, where he’d have to aim more carefully—but when it worked, it worked. An explosion scorched his face, sent a gout of flame like a fiery jellyfish into the sky and lifted the truck off the ground. Buck dropped the gun and curled into a ball, his arms flung over his head. Bits of burning tire and white-hot sheet metal and, most satisfying, chunks of clean white rock that had once been carved into the shape of a girl who bore a remarkable resemblance to Lulu Lavender crashed to the ground all around him, but nothing bigger than one hubcap actually hit him.

  Lulu had objected, wailing and trying to put herself between him and the truck. She still wanted to save the white girl, still thought there was some reason—some good reason—that the white girl wanted to meet her at the borderline. Oliver and Jeannie tried to convince her that whatever the white girl had in mind (if such a term could be used at all), it wasn’t for anything healthy or clean, and the white girl couldn’t be allowed to have her way. As they talked, they maneuvered Lulu out of the way and up the gentle slope, toward the road.