by Frank Zafiro
“I know,” I said, and I did.
Pete sighed heavily. I gave his shoulder a squeeze. He turned and went back inside Tres Estrellas and I went back on patrol.
“Sam-25.”
I jumped. Molly’s voice from the radio surprised me. I’d been parked near the edge of town with my door swung open, staring up at the desert sky. The huge expanse of stars let me dream a world of possibilities and the clean desert air washed away some of the bar stink.
“Sam-25, go ahead.”
“Carl, you need to head over to the Tres right away. We just got a call about some arguing going on.”
I keyed the ignition and started the engine. “Talbott’s wife come by looking for him?”
“No,” Molly transmitted. “It’s Pete Trower.”
I cursed and hit the lights.
I skidded into the parking lot in a cloud of dust, jumped out of the police Explorer and ran toward the door. As my fingers wrapped around the handle, I heard two loud bangs. Gunshots.
I cursed again, released the handle and drew my.45.
The screaming started as soon as I went through the door. The shrill sound came from Miss Twenty-two. I moved deliberately in that direction, my gun at the low ready. Two steps further in, I encountered Jack pulling Miss Twenty-two along. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream and she jabbed her finger wordlessly toward the main bar room.
“Son of a bitch shot him!” Jack yelled on his way past.
As soon as I cleared the entryway, I saw the mess. Right in the middle of the bar room, a cowboy lay flat on his back. Isabella and the cowboy’s New Mexico partner knelt beside him. The partner held the wounded man’s head in his hands. The cowboy’s jaw was slack and his partner bore a look of disbelief while he muttered comforting words.
I scanned the room. No Pete. The back door beside the bar stood half-open.
“What happened?”
Isabella turned toward me, her expression tight but without any tears. “El lo mato,” she said simply. “Pete shot him.”
I didn’t need to ask why.
“That way?” I pointed to the open back door.
She nodded.
“Call an ambulance,” I told her and hurried to the back door.
I nudged it open carefully. I didn’t think Pete would shoot me, but I wasn’t so sure he’d recognize me in the doorway.
“Pete?”
I was answered by the sound of a dirt bike engine kicking to life about a hundred yards away. The sound came from the stockyards.
I ran around front just in time to see Pete’s blue denim jacket flash past me in the parking lot. I made a frantic grab for him, but he leaned away and gunned it, throwing a spray of gravel on my legs as he sped away.
I got in the Explorer, punched the lights and headed after him.
“Molly?” I said into the mike. “Get an ambulance over to the Tres.”
“Copy. What kind of injuries?”
“Gunshot wounds. I’m in pursuit of Pete. He’s on a dirt bike and wearing a blue denim jacket. We’re westbound from the bar.”
“Copy.”
Pete must have seen my lights and known that he couldn’t outrun the Explorer on the road, because he turned sharply north off the roadway and cross-country.
I slowed, and followed, keeping sight of the shadowy rider as he lanced through the night. I chased him with my spotlight. Unseen rocks and dips in the ground tossed the Explorer around and jostled me in the cab.
“This is bad,” I muttered.
For twenty minutes, I followed Pete, barely able to keep a visual on him. The spotlight bounced and jiggled as I drove over the terrain, and the red and blue rotators cast a surreal light onto the desert night. Pete used every obstacle that came along to his advantage, putting it in my way by going over it. As we neared the rocky foothills, I knew it was only a matter of time before he got away. My only hope was that he wiped out long enough for me to catch up to him and grab on.
It didn’t happen.
Molly called out the Chief and two other officers and kept feeding them my grid coordinates. When I finally lost sight of Pete, I stopped driving and waited for them.
The Chief arrived first. I filled him in while he stood rocking on his heels, hands resting on his precious silver-studded gun belt, and alternately spitting tobacco and wiping his drooping mustache. His.45 revolver hung low on his right side like an old-style gunslinger.
“I’ve been on the phone with Earl,” he said, when I was finished. “He’s at the Tres securing the scene. Apparently, Pete didn’t take too kindly to them New Mexico boys flirting it up with Isabella.” He gave me a hard look. “Says you were in there earlier tonight when a fight almost started.”
I swallowed. “Yes, sir, I was. I thought I handled it.”
The Chief spit and drew his sleeve across his mouth. “’Parently not.”
We stood in silence for a long while, staring out in the direction Pete had gone. The only sounds were the desert at night, the ticking and cooling of our vehicle engines, and his occasional spitting. As we waited, the first shimmer of pre-dawn light appeared in the eastern sky.
“Where the hell can he go?” the Chief finally muttered. “Nothin’ but desert and rocky steppes to the north, now. I ’spose he could cut east or west and backtrack, but does he even have enough gas in that thing to make it anywheres?”
I didn’t answer.
The Chief sighed and we waited some more.
Thirty minutes later, Wes Perez and John Calhoun rumbled up in the big Ford truck, hauling the horse trailer.
I blinked. “You’re kidding.”
The Chief glanced at me. “’Bout what?”
“We’re going after him on horseback?”
“Listen, rookie,” the Chief said, “you think you can follow his trail in the Explorer? He ain’t gonna git far on that dirt bike. When that craps out, he’ll be on foot. I want to get him before the sun does.”
I’d been a cop in our little town for three years, but the Chief still considered me a rookie. I figured that wouldn’t change until he hired someone new. Maybe never, seeing as how I wasn’t a son of La Sombra.
Wes climbed out of the truck and headed for the trailer. John exited the passenger side, moving gingerly. His iron gray hair was combed impeccably and even his jeans were sharply creased.
“Give Wes a hand,” the Chief ordered. “Unless you want to stay here with the trucks and I’ll take John along.”
I shook my head and walked away. Riding in the heat wouldn’t do old John any good. I didn’t dare suggest we give El Paso PD a call or the County Sheriff or even the Texas Rangers. The Chief didn’t believe in outside help.
John put on his hat and tucked it into place. “Carl,” he nodded.
“Mornin’, John.”
“Fine day for a posse.”
I gave him a weak smile and went to the back of the trailer.
Wes led the Chief’s white gelding down the ramp. He met my eyes and nodded his hello. His deep brown skin seemed almost black in the pre-dawn light.
Wes and I unloaded all three horses, saddled them and made sure the canteens were filled. The Chief’s saddlebag contained a GPS device and a cell phone. When we were finished, I led my red roan and Wes led his mount and the Chief’s to where the Chief and John stood, engaged in palaver.
The Chief took the reins from Wes without a thank you and looked around at all of us. “They took that cowboy to the hospital in El Paso. It don’t look like he’s gonna make it.” He had himself a spit while we mulled that over. Then he continued, “John will stay here with the vehicles. He has the other cell phone. We’ll follow Pete’s trail. Simple as that.”
Nothing was simple on the border, but I couldn’t tell the Chief that any more than I could tell him that four-wheelers would do the job better than horses.
We swung up into our saddles. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon. I figured Pete had a good two-hour head start on us.
The trail w
as easy enough to follow. The knobby tires of the dirt bike tore up the desert ground. Wes rode in front, appointed as scout. I don’t remember him ever saying anything about having special abilities in tracking, but he was at the front anyway. The Chief was in charge of this expedition, so he wasn’t going to do it. And I was the rookie, so that left Wes.
The morning sun crept over the horizon and within an hour, my shirt was soaked through with sweat. We fanned out instead of riding in a column so that we didn’t have to eat the dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves, but desert sand still lightly caked my face. Wes rode silently, his head tilted to the left and watching the ground.
The Chief followed, ignoring me. When his cell phone chirped, his gelding whinnied and started, so he had to bring the horse under control before he could flip open the phone.
“Yeah?” Silence. Then, “All right.” He turned off the phone and replaced it in his saddlebag. “That New Mexico cowboy didn’t make it,” he said, not looking at either one of us.
No one replied. I took a slug of water from the canteen. It was already warm and brackish.
We found the dirt bike an hour later, dumped unceremoniously in a shallow arroyo. By then, a light wind had kicked up and the footprints leading away from the Kawasaki were partially wiped away.
The Chief uttered a curse and looked at his watch.
Wes turned in his saddle and looked at me. “How tall is Pete?”
I shrugged. “Five-ten or so.”
He pointed at the footprints. “He’s got a powerful stride here. It’s controlled, too. He’s not panicking.”
“How the hell can you tell that?” the Chief asked. “Or are you part Apache, too?”
I winced a little. The Chief considered me a rookie, but I think he considered Wes a necessary evil, a concession to the Hispanics in town.
Wes ignored the jibe. “I can tell from the distance between his steps.”
The Chief glanced down at the sandy bottom of the arroyo. “Maybe he’s running. Maybe he’s frantic.”
Wes shook his head. “The footprints look different when someone runs. There’s a more powerful impact with the ground. The print is more ragged at the heel and the toe. And there’s more distance between the steps.”
The Chief eyed him and the footsteps a moment longer. Then he spit, wiped and shrugged. “Walking or running, won’t be long ’fore we catch him now.
“Unless the tracks disappear,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” the Chief asked me.
“I said, unless the tracks disappear.”
The Chief grunted and spurred his horse forward.
Twenty minutes later, we came across a small waterhole. Wes dismounted and walked around, eying the bank carefully. He spotted something and pointed. “Alla. Someone knelt in the mud next to the water.”
I walked my roan over. Two shallow impressions were in the mud, right where he pointed.
“How long ago?” the Chief asked.
Wes shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like I’m Apache or something.”
The Chief scowled. I hid my smile behind my horse’s broad neck.
Wes knelt and sniffed the water. “It’s good.”
We watered the horses and rested a few minutes. Wes and I wandered around the water hole until we found Pete’s tracks.
“Still north,” I muttered. “Where’s he going?”
Wes shrugged. “If we called El Paso, they might be able to get us a helicopter. Maybe from the Army or something. Then we’d find him quick.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and if manure were music, we’d have a mariachi band.”
Wes grinned beneath his mustache.
“Let’s mount up!” the Chief barked at us.
We rode for another hour, but the wind kicked up, erasing the footprints in front of us. The Chief spurred us to a trot, but we couldn’t outrun the wind.
Wes finally reined up to a stop. “No good,” he told the Chief, squinting.
The Chief grunted a curse and spit. “He’s been heading due north. We could just ride.”
Wes shrugged. “We could. But if he hooked to the east or west-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” the Chief waved his comment away, then cursed again.
I scanned the horizon. There was naught but desert and hills, arroyos and ravines. A man could go anywhere out here and get nowhere.
“We’ll need to be relieving Earl back at the Tres, anyway,” I said, trying to mitigate the turn of events. “the crime scene has to be processed.”
The Chief said nothing.
We waited until the Chief had stewed long enough to spit, wipe, and curse again, before wheeling his horse around and heading back to John and the trailers. Then we followed.
Some small towns are boring enough that stories about a barroom murder would be on page one of everyone’s mind for months or years. In La Sombra, miles from the Rio Grande and old Mexico, death was common enough to brush the news aside after a few weeks. Ranchers shot and killed illegals crossing their property pretty regularly. The DEA and Border Patrol put a violent end to drug runs. Coyotes packed their human luggage too tight in the heat and lost a few poor souls on almost every smuggling trip. Death was everywhere. So after a month or so, people stopped talking about Pete and the cowboy from New Mexico. But they didn’t forget.
Neither did the Chief. He and John sat at the station, boots kicked up on their respective desks, and chewed on the topic almost daily. Wes and I kept fairly quiet about it.
“Musta died out there,” John said, every chance he got.
“Maybe.”
“Not enough water, ’specially this time of year. And him on foot?” John shook his head. “Naw, he’s buzzard food.”
“He coulda found water. Or come across somebody,” the Chief said. “Coulda circled around and gone ’cross the Rio.”
“Never make it.”
“He coulda.”
Then they’d fall silent and think on it a while, both chewing and spitting.
Turned out the Chief was right.
I knew I’d be the one to get the call. Call it God’s way of giving me a second chance, or call it fate, but as soon as we turned our horses away from Pete’s disappeared trail, I knew in my gut that I’d see him again.
The night was clear and still. I’d parked out on the edge of town and swung my door open wide to take in the wide expanse of stars above. Isabella’s dark eyes were on my mind, when Molly’s voice erupted through the radio.
“Sam-25!”
I keyed the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Carl! Get over to the Tres! Pete Trower’s back, and he’s got a gun!”
I pulled the door shut and started the Explorer.
“Carl! You hear me?”
“On my way,” I told her.
“Copy. I’m calling the Chief.”
I made it to Tres Estrellas in less than a minute. Four Mexican men burst through the front door as I jumped out of the truck. Jack Talbott hurried behind them, hauling a strawberry-haired waitress by the arm.
“That sumbitch is crazy, Carl!” he hollered at me.
“Who else is in there?”
“Hell if I know! Everyone bolted as soon as he pulled the gun.”
I pushed past him and went inside.
Isabella stood behind the bar, stock-still and staring straight ahead. Her eyes were flat and her face impassive. Pete stood on the opposite side of the bar, a small revolver leveled at her.
I eased my.45 out of my holster and took up a position behind a four-by-four post. “Pete,” I called to him, keeping the sharpness out of my voice.
Pete didn’t turn away from Isabella, but I saw his eyes shift in the large mirror behind the bar.
“Ain’t your business, Carl,” he said in a flat tone.
“Maybe not mine,” I said, “but it’s police business.”
“Have it your way,” Pete replied, and turned his eyes back to Isabella. “I wish it could have been different between you and me.
”
Isabella didn’t reply. Her eyes didn’t soften.
“Because I would have treated you right,” Pete said, his voice thick with emotion. “I would never have treated you like a whore. Not like those guys did. Not like all of them did.”
I raised my barrel slowly, drawing a bead on Pete’s upper back, aiming center mass.
“Could you have loved me?” he pleaded with her. “Ever?”
I didn’t want her to answer that. I didn’t want him to hear the truth if she said no, and I didn’t want to hear the truth if she said yes.
Isabella shook her head slightly. “Lo ciento, Pete. I’m sorry.”
Pete’s gun hand wavered. In the mirror, I saw tears spring to his eyes. Huge drops rolled down his cheeks.
“Pete…” I tried to get his attention.
“Gitana,” Pete croaked. “Gitana cara.”
The blast exploded from the barrel of his gun and Isabella disappeared behind the bar. I fired immediately after, double-tapping. The force of my rounds hurled him into the bar. His gun clattered to the floor. Pete slid down the side of a barstool.
The biting odor of cordite stung my nostrils. I approached Pete carefully. He lay motionless.
“Senorita? Are you okay?”
No answer.
“Isabella? It’s safe.”
“?Seguro?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Isabella rose from behind the bar and her eyes scanned the room. “Pete?”
I didn’t answer.
Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks. She ran around the end of the bar to where Pete had fallen. I started to stop her, but with Pete’s gun outside of his lunge area, I let her go. While she touched his face, I secured his weapon.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Isabella, wondering if she were really grieving for a man she just told she could never love. “I didn’t have a choice.”
She ran her hands across Pete’s forehead, smoothing a lock of his hair. I stood silently, listening to the slowing trickle of alcohol dripping from broken bottles behind the bar and the wail of sirens in the distance.
Isabella stood and pushed her own jet-black hair back. I waited for her to turn to me for a comforting embrace, to thank me for saving her life. Instead, she shot me a glance of pure venom, turned and stalked away.