Sulfur Springs

by William Kent Krueger

  I saw another rooster tail of dust rising in the west, the direction of Sulfur Springs. Lord, give me a break, I thought.

  Then, in that quiet after gunfire which always seems so immense, I heard the sirens.

  * * *

  “You actually had the presence of mind to note the license plate on the pickup that took off?” Sheriff Carlson’s brows met each other in a deep V of consternation. Or, more probably, doubt.

  “I made a mental note of it as they passed,” I said. “Kind of a habit, especially in circumstances like these.”

  He sat back. We were in his air-conditioned cruiser.

  “Sheriff once yourself, I understand,” he said. “Back in Minnesota. I talked to a colleague of yours this morning. The current sheriff there, Marsha Dross.” His tone had changed, taken on a note of collegiality. Two guys who’d worn the same kind of badge, chewing the fat. “She said you go by Cork. Okay if I call you that? She vouched for you. Lucky. Because from where I’ve been standing, you’ve looked ass deep in the business of the Rodriguezes.”

  “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  The paramedics were carting off the two men I’d shot. They weren’t dead, but neither was in good shape. I’d explained in detail what had occurred. The assault rifles, the expended shell casings, the torn-up yellow rock that had given me shelter, all lent credibility to my story.

  “How’d you know to come running?” I asked.

  “Got a call from Border Patrol.” He nodded toward my pickup; Agent Sprangers and the DEA agent Jesús Vega were carefully searching the vehicle inside and out. The sheriff laid his arms over his steering wheel and peered up at a couple of vultures that were circling high above us. “Where were you headed, Cork?”

  “The Sonora Hills Cellars,” I said.

  “Business there?”

  “Peter Bisonette worked for them. I just wanted to ask a few questions.”

  “We already interviewed them.”

  “I’m sure you know from your own experience it pays to cover the same ground more than once. Given a little time, people remember things.”

  He nodded, as if allowing that could be true. “I was thinking you might be headed to Robert Wieman’s place. Maybe for another sightseeing trip.”

  “I might have been considering it.”

  “And where, if you might have been considering it, would you have had him fly you?”

  “Big county. Lots to see, Chet.” I gave him a collegial smile.

  Agent Sprangers walked to my side of the cruiser. Vega stood looming huge beside him like a wrestler waiting to be tagged into the ring. I slid the window down. Sprangers held out his hand. In his palm was the tracking transmitter.

  “Somebody was very interested in where you might be going, O’Connor,” he said.

  “Where’d you find it?”

  “Under your back bumper. No telling how long it’s been there. But it explains the men who ambushed you.” He eyed me from the shade his hat brim cast across his face. “And you say all they asked you was ‘Where is he?’ ”

  “That’s it.”

  Sprangers looked past me at the sheriff. “Peter Bisonette.”

  “Lucky you had that Winchester,” Carlson said.

  “And that you were so accurate with it,” Vega added.

  I knew that tone, all deep and weighty with cop incredulity. I understood the why of it completely. But the thing was this: If that transmitter wasn’t planted by Sprangers, how the hell had he tracked me to the El Dorado Mine? And if it was true, as Carlson had said, that Border Patrol had alerted him about the ambush, how did Sprangers know?

  Suspicion and secrets. We were mired in them.

  “If I were a betting man,” Sprangers said, “I’d bet the men you shot are Las Calaveras. They work for Carlos Rodriguez. And I’d also bet they’re responsible for the tracker under your bumper.”

  “Am I free to go?” I asked.

  “After a shooting? Oh no, Cork,” the sheriff said. “You’re following me back to the department. We’ve got paperwork to do.”

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  They kept me at the Coronado County Law Enforcement Center until well after noon. We went over the same territory again and again. One of the things they hammered on was Rainy’s cell phone. The last call she’d received had come around the same time she vanished. It was a number that appeared several times on her call log since she’d arrived in Arizona, both incoming and outgoing. Did I recognize the number? I swore to them I knew nothing about it.

  “This new wife of yours seems to have kept a lot from you, O’Connor,” Sheriff Carlson observed.

  Agent Sprangers said, “Chet, if you ever get married, you’ll probably keep secrets from your wife. All married people do. What’s important is the nature of the secret.” He gave me a pointed look. “Some secrets can get you killed.”

  Amid all the questions, they offered me a piece of information. They’d found an abandoned Jeep parked south of Jocko’s ranch. It had been reported stolen in Nogales. They didn’t know what it might have to do with whatever had happened at Jocko’s place, but they worked me pretty hard to find out if I might. When they got tired of asking, they finally gave up, and let me go.

  The first thing I did was drive past Grace Church. No ribbon on the angel’s uplifted finger. I was hungry, so I pulled into a little drive-in joint called Burger Billy’s and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. While I waited for the food, I turned my cell phone on and tried Old Turtle’s number. When he answered, I explained my delay. He said he’d be waiting for me when I arrived.

  I also had a text from Jenny with Rainy’s blood type. I called Sheriff Carlson and let him know.

  I ate on the road. The food wasn’t nearly as good as what I served my customers at Sam’s Place back in Aurora. The fries were limp and greasy, and the burger tasted like grilled leather. It made me homesick, the thought of Sam’s Place, of Aurora. I wanted to be somewhere that I understood and that understood me as well. But because I had no idea what the hell was going on in Coronado County, I had no idea when I’d get home.

  After a lot of discussion, Sheriff Carlson had allowed me to keep the Winchester, which was near at hand. I’d shot two men that day. They weren’t going to die, but it was a form of violence that I’d tried to step away from a long time ago. In Aurora the night Peter called, Rainy had asked me about the men I’d killed across the course of my life. I didn’t tell her, because the truth was that I’d been involved in a slaughter once. In one terrible moment, I’d been part of the killing of a lot of men. I wasn’t wearing a badge then, and it was an action completely outside the law. I’d like to say that they were men who deserved to die, but in truth I knew none of them. I’d told myself it was necessary, but it had sickened me. It had sickened my soul. I’d put away my firearms. Forever, I thought. Now the Winchester sat at my side, and there was blood on my hands again.

  There is a word in the Ojibwe language: ogichidaa. It means “one who stands between evil and his people.” Long ago, Henry Meloux had told me I was born ogichidaa. It was my purpose and my fate. I couldn’t escape it. As I drove toward Jocko’s ranch house, with one eye constantly on the rearview mirror, I knew in my heart I was prepared to kill again, if it came to that, not just to defend myself but to protect the people who were my family, the people I loved.

  I was also thinking about that damn tracking device Sprangers had blamed on Las Calaveras. It explained the ambush well enough, but left the question of Sprangers’s uncanny awareness of my location and situation a mystery. Unless, of course, he’d been lying and had had a hand in planting the device and had pulled it only because he suspected that, as a result of the ambush, I would check the pickup myself. Which left the possibility that, now I believed I was safe, another device had been planted somewhere else.

  As soon as that thought hit me, I pulled onto the next side road and scoured the pickup thoroughly. I found nothing, which meant either that
I was safe or that they’d been more sophisticated in planting it this time around. Either way, I didn’t have much choice except to continue to Jocko’s place.

  He wasn’t alone when I arrived. Frank Harris was with him. They came from the little ranch house and Frank shook my hand. “Glad you’re still with us, Cork.”

  Jocko slapped me on the back. “Nice shooting, pardner. You and my Lena, a match made in heaven.”

  “Lena?” Frank said.

  “The Winchester I gave him. Still got it, Cork?”

  “In the truck.”

  Frank said, “Jocko told me you might have a lead on Peter.”

  “It’s just a possibility, Frank. Probably a remote possibility. But it’s worth checking out. You still okay with flying me, Jocko?”

  “I’ve got her all gassed up and ready to go.”

  “Where exactly?” Frank said.

  “I’m going to hold on to that piece of information,” I told him. “I think Peter was right. The less those involved know, the safer they are. I’d feel bad if I thought I put you and Jayne in any more danger than I probably already have.”

  “What about Jocko here?”

  “Don’t worry about me, Frank. I was a pilot in World War Two. Been itching for a good fight for sixty years.”

  “Just a sense of where you’re headed, then,” Frank said. “If things go south, I’d like an idea where to start looking for you two.”

  I weighed the advisability of telling him against what I felt was his sincere concern for our safety.

  “I think Peter may have made for the Santa Margaritas,” I finally said. “It’s a long shot but the only lead I have at the moment.”

  “How’d you come by it?”

  “Turned over enough rocks until I found something. It’s what I do.”

  I grabbed the Winchester and cartridges from the pickup, and we walked to Jocko’s waiting biplane.

  “Be careful, you old coot,” Frank said and gave Jocko a gentle slap on the back. “Jayne would kill me if I let anything happen to you.” He shook my hand. “Good luck, Cork. Call me when you’re back. Let me know that you’re both safe and how it went.”

  He returned to the ranch house, and I watched until he headed off in his F-150. Then I pulled out the slip of paper on which Sylvester had written the coordinates for the Lulabelle Mine. Jocko took a look at them, climbed into the cockpit, and came out with a map, which he spread on the wing of the plane. He checked the coordinates, studied the map, and finally laid a finger down.

  “Got it,” he said. “But what the hell is it?”

  “An old mine where Peter might be holed up.”

  Jocko nodded as if that made sense. “These mountains along the border, they’re all riddled with old tunnels and shafts. The drug smugglers, they know about ’em.”

  “This is one they might not be so familiar with.”

  “Well, then, let’s give ’er a shot.”

  Jocko climbed into the plane again, stowed his map, and when he came back out, carried a pair of field glasses, which he handed to me.

  “I fly. You look,” he said.

  He took his place at the controls, and I settled into the seat behind. We put on our headsets, he got us rolling, and once again we headed west.

  As nearly as I could tell, we followed the same route we’d taken before. We edged past the Coronados and flew just south of Sulfur Springs. Because I knew what to look for now, I used the field glasses and spotted the abandoned El Dorado Mine. I wondered just how many more old diggings might riddle those mountains and what, in this struggle along the border, they might hide.

  We stayed north of Nogales, and I could see the suburban streets spreading out into the desert like tendrils from some greedy plant. We skirted more mountains and flew over rolling desert hills empty of any sign of habitation, and kept flying west. The sun was dropping in the sky, and I knew time and darkness would eventually become a concern. We passed yet another long ridge of mountains, Jocko banked north, and we dropped and flew a few hundred feet above the western foothills. I understood these were the Santa Margaritas and now Jocko was working on locating the Lulabelle Mine.

  At last he gave me a thumbs-up, and we began to circle.

  Although I trusted Jocko’s navigation, I could see nothing below that was as easily identifiable from the air as the workings of the El Dorado. The hillsides were covered with scrub, desert growth, and great rock outcroppings like red carbuncles. Even with the field glasses, I couldn’t make out anything remotely hopeful. Jocko circled half a dozen times, widening the arc of our search a little each time.

  “Anything?” he asked over the headphones.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  The sun was touching the tops of the next range of mountains to the west when Jocko held up a finger.

  “One more time around, Cork,” he said. “That’s all I can give you.”

  The constraints of fuel and time, I figured. He banked, and we made a wide loop.

  Then I saw it. The flashing of sun off a mirror. Three flashes, separated by three short spaces. Then a flash, and a long lapse before the next. Then it was gone. Not random. An attempt at an SOS, I was certain.

  “There, Jocko,” I said.

  He turned and saw where I pointed, and he banked and circled back.

  Again the flashing, and this time Jocko spotted it, too. It came from a tight fold between two steep ridges, a place Jocko couldn’t possibly fly into. If this was, indeed, the Lulabelle, I could understand why Sylvester, at his age, wouldn’t want to try mining it. Getting in and out looked rough. But it might be a reasonable sanctuary, a good place to hide if that’s what you were after. I scanned the spot with the field glasses, but couldn’t see anything definite.

  We made another high pass. This time there was no flashing of light.

  “Where’d it go?” Jocko asked.

  “I don’t know. But it was there and it was definitely a signal.”

  “Peter?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  Jocko made a wide loop for another pass. Against the sun, low in the west, I saw a hovering vulture. But there was something not right about it. I used the field glasses and could see that it wasn’t a vulture or any other bird.

  “Chopper, Jocko. At three o’clock.”

  He turned his head and nodded.

  “Border Patrol?” I said.

  “Got me. But I’m guessing that’s why whoever’s down there below us stopped signaling. I think we’ve seen all we’re going to see here today.”

  We cleared the southern end of the Santa Margaritas and headed east. I tried to spot the chopper again, but either it didn’t follow us or it was so far back that even with the field glasses I couldn’t get a visual.

  When we touched down on Jocko’s landing strip, Frank and Jayne Harris were there to meet us.

  “Jayne figured you’d be back before sunset,” Frank explained. “She insisted on having supper ready for you. It’s warming in your oven, Jocko.”

  “Well?” Jayne said as we walked to the ranch house. “Anything?”

  “Something,” Jocko said. “But what exactly we can’t say. Border Patrol helicopter chased us away before we could confirm anything.”

  I told them about the mirror signal.

  “Who else could it be but Peter?” Jayne said.

  “That’s pretty much my thinking, too,” I said. “I need to get over there and check it out.”

  “If it’s in the Santa Margaritas,” Frank said, “you’ll never make it before dark. And you don’t want to get lost in that desert at night.”

  “When was the last time you ate a decent meal?” Jayne said. “Have some supper. It’s lasagna. One of my specialties. And some of our best wine.”

  We stood at the door to the ranch house. I could smell the lasagna, and my stomach was making a pretty good argument for staying. But I had to get back to Cadiz and tie a ribbon on the angel’s uplifted fing
er. Rainy needed to know.

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  It was dusk when I hit Cadiz and drove past the church. The angel’s finger was bare. I stopped at Cadiz Corners to fill the tank of the pickup truck. Inside the convenience store, I bought a pen, a notepad, and a little spool of red ribbon. I parked on the main street across from the Wagon Wheel Café, cut a small section of ribbon, tore a page from the notepad, and wrote on it: I found him.

  To be sure I wasn’t being followed, I walked a winding route back to the church. Inside, I put the paper slip beneath the cross on the altar. I left the church, spent a few seconds tying the little red ribbon around the angel’s finger, returned to the pickup, and drove to Burger Billy’s. I took the leathery cheeseburger I bought, and the greasy onion rings and the grainy milk shake, back to the parsonage and settled in to wait.

  Which is always the hardest part.

  The demons that plague you are patient horrors. You may think that you’ve dealt with them, driven them out with logic, put them to rest with prayer, but they’re never really gone. They’re always with you. And why? Because they’re not things separate from you. They are you.

  I chewed on the idea of Rainy with Gilberto Mondragón. There was history between them, significant history, a life they’d created together. And children. There’d been love, fire, passion, dreams, everything that melds two souls, makes two people marry, compels them to commit to walking one road together for the rest of their lives. When Rainy fled Arizona, it hadn’t been because she wasn’t in love with Mondragón. She’d run for the safety of her children and herself. The separation afterward and the divorce hadn’t come because they’d fallen out of love. Over the years, they’d remained in touch. Rainy had shared photos of the children as they grew. Probably she’d shared stories. When she’d come to Cadiz to help in Peter’s rehab, she’d asked Mondragón to be a part of that, to share the burden of its great cost and perhaps the emotional burden as well.