South of Nowhere: A Mystery

by Minerva Koenig

  Hector bowed his head in thanks, then took the band off and held the end of the cigar into the fire for a minute, puffing it every now and then to get it going. As he sat back with it clenched in his teeth, grinning, my blood went cold. He looked just like his father. His long hair and trained musculature had obscured the resemblance before. I wondered if Cigar’s bunch knew who Hector was. Looking at him now, it seemed hard to miss.

  I’ve never cared much for the odor of smoking, but the contraband cigar scented the air with a rich, woody perfume that was in a completely different category than cigarettes or our host’s local stogie. I took a deep breath. It was like eating a piece of cake. Hector held the cigar toward me, but I shook my head.

  “Too bad,” he said. “There’s nothing like these.”

  “So,” I said to Cigar, “are the cartels really behind this feminicidio thing?”

  Hector coughed, shaking his head. Cigar gave me a hard look and said, “Perhaps you should ask them.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  He made a negligent motion with one shoulder, looking off between the shacks into the chill darkness. “I can only speak for my own group. We do not kill innocents.”

  “Then who’s doing it?”

  “It’s possible the cartels are responsible,” he admitted. “But I doubt it.”

  I gave him a quizzical look, and he explained, “Those guys kill people other than their enemies for only two reasons—as a warning, or as revenge. None of these women had any connection to them. It would be foolhardy and a waste of resources on their part to do such a thing. The federales blame them only to cover their own incompetence.”

  “It is somewhat incredible that over three hundred women have been killed with no more plausible suspects on the radar than some nebulous group of bad guys,” I agreed.

  Cigar tilted his head back and blew a slim stream of smoke into the air. “Were I investigating the matter, I would consider who might want these particular women dead. They are young, single, attractive. If not for their jobs, they would be considered very marriageable.”

  He said this last word with a peculiar emphasis. I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  Cigar took a silent draw from his smoke, not replying.

  Hector said to me, “Mexico is still a very traditional, macho culture. Women go up against it at their peril.”

  “So, what, some sexist psycho—or psychos—are offing these women because they have the temerity to get jobs instead of stay at home and take care of the menfolk?” I said. “You’re getting into tinfoil-hat territory there.”

  Cigar and Hector exchanged a look.

  “Perhaps you should visit the less-traveled portions of Mexico some time,” Cigar said.

  The woman with the braids had been listening to this conversation impassively, and now I lifted my chin at her. “What do you think?”

  She adjusted the AK between her knees and pursed her lips, looking away from the fire. “I dunno who’s killing those girls, but they better be careful. People all over the country are really disgusted by the government’s lack of protection from organized crime.” She ran her eyes around the fire circle. “We’re not the only group taking matters into our own hands.”

  “My bad,” I said, surprised. “I thought you guys were mules.”

  Hector gave me an incredulous look. “You think I’d associate with those fuckers?”

  “Why do you speak in such a disrespectful manner?” Cigar asked me. “It is not wise.”

  He sounded scary, but nothing in my alarm system went off, and a thought shot across my consciousness: Out here, sitting under the stars with a bunch of outlaws, I felt in my element in a way I never did elsewhere. I’d always assumed that I gravitated toward these kinds of people because I was somehow naturally criminal, but it didn’t follow. Real thugs—lifers—are like Cigar: hard, slow, and methodical. People like me, who pop off at the drop of a hat, usually end up underground by the time we’re thirty. It’s natural selection. I knew this; I’d known it since I was fourteen. So why did I persist in behaving the way I did?

  “Aho,” someone shouted from outside the circle of shacks, to the north.

  Faster than I would have believed possible, the group around the fire shouldered their weapons and dissolved between the buildings. Hector and I were alone in seconds flat.

  I got my little Glock out and crept to the edge of the firelight, squinting to see where our hosts had stationed themselves. I heard a hiss and spit and looked back to see Hector crouched next to the fire, pouring the contents of the coffee pot onto it.

  “You got that white girl from Texas in there with you?” the voice from the north said. It was throaty and androgynous and seemed to expand in all directions.

  My eyes had adjusted and I could see Cigar, lying on his stomach in a narrow valley between buildings, his eye to the sight on his AK. He didn’t reply to the voice, just held still, waiting. I crouched and scurried up behind him, keeping the Glock in front of me. He glanced over his shoulder at my approach, making a sign to keep quiet.

  We held like that for a long while, the dark desert silence ringing in our ears. The smell of wet wood smoke washed over us. There was a moon, so I could make out the broad strokes of the landscape in front of us. There was nobody on it.

  Hector crept up next to me, a shotgun in one hand. I gave him a surprised look and he gestured behind us.

  “Leftover,” he whispered.

  As I turned back to watching the perimeter, there was a muffled scuffling noise, and two figures appeared over a small sandy rise about thirty yards away. They drew closer, and it became apparent that the one in the front was a man, covered with some kind of light-colored sack down to his shoulders. He was naked below it, pale and skinny, covered with blood and wounds that did nothing for his modesty. The figure behind him kept shoving him forward, and he stumbled and jerked along until they were within speaking range.

  The figure behind gave him a final hard shove, sending him to his knees in the sand, and said, “You may watch me kill this piece of shit, or I will trade him.”

  It was the tall Native woman. She was still wearing the long denim coat over her skirt and Huichol, and had added her flat-brimmed hat, despite the darkness. She held a large automatic rifle in her left hand; I couldn’t tell, in the dark, what kind.

  I nudged Cigar, but he waved me off. The tall woman reached forward and yanked the hood from her victim. It was Finn.

  She prodded him with the rifle and he lifted his head. His bright owl eyes flashed in the darkness. To my surprise, there wasn’t much fear in them. His mind seemed to be elsewhere.

  I poked Cigar again and made a circling sign, indicating that I was going to try and creep around behind them. He shook his head with a frown, but I ignored it.

  Hector followed me through the dark compound and out between the shacks on the other side. I stopped before I stepped out from the cover of the buildings and said to him in a low voice, “Listen, I’m the loose cannon here. You don’t have to be.”

  He indicated that I should proceed, looking annoyed. I crouched down and took a quick peek around the corner to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped quickly out and skittered silently to the nearest clump of brush.

  I could hear the low rumble of a man talking, and realized that Cigar was engaging with the tall woman, to cover us. I heard her reply, which gave me a location. I headed around behind it, keeping my eyes wide to take in as much as possible in the dark.

  Hector was holding position at the edge of the circle of shacks, with the shotgun aimed in the direction of the tall woman’s voice. I doubted he could see much from where he was, but the gun was a Benelli—a military-class toaster that would level anything within fifty yards. Including me, if I wasn’t careful.

  I moved in a wide circle so that I would come in directly behind the tall woman, and then started closing, very slowly. Ten paces; stop, crouch, listen. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  Four rounds of
this brought me up at the foot of the low rise. There was a rim of rock there, over which I could just see the top of the tall woman’s head. I raised up a bit, and my heart jumped like a startled horse; a row of women squatted about twenty yards away, with their backs to me. I counted eleven of them, most with long guns propped at their side.

  The third from the end was wearing the same jacket I’d last seen Mikela Floyd in, a brown leather blazer. I held still, keeping my eyes on her until she turned her head to glance at the woman next to her. It was indeed our girl.

  I lowered back down, thinking. My count around the fire had been six, including me and Hector. All were armed to the teeth, but so were the eleven women I’d just spotted, from what I could see.

  I slunk back the way I’d come and between the shacks into the clearing. Hector turned in behind me.

  “We’re outnumbered,” I told him, keeping my voice low and putting the Glock back in my ankle holster. “Mikela’s out there, about twenty feet behind, with ten others. All armed.”

  Hector’s mouth compressed, his eyes lighting.

  “Let me see your phone,” I said. He gave me the usual suspicious look, and I assured him, “I’m not gonna call anybody with it.”

  He reached out the tiny flip phone and handed it over. I set the ringer on silent and slid it down the front of my shirt, under the center of my bra where the cups met.

  “Call Benny,” I said. “He can track it.”

  Realizing what my next move was, Hector dropped the shotgun and tried to grab me, but I was already around him. I sprinted between shacks and out in front of Finn and his captor.

  “Ready when you are,” I said.

  The tall woman raised her gun, and an odd thrill ran up from the soles of my feet. Finn looked over at me, and I could swear he smiled. Shock, probably.

  The woman grabbed the back of his left arm and pulled him up to his feet, then gave him another shove. He stumbled forward a few steps, looking at me again. I took a step toward the woman, whose eyes were lifeless caverns under the brim of her hat. Her gun barrel shifted down, and she beckoned me to keep coming.

  I walked toward her, watching Finn. He wasn’t navigating well because of his injuries, but managed to ambulate in the general direction of the shacks, and within a few seconds had disappeared from my peripheral vision. I quickly covered the last couple of feet between me and the tall woman, who turned and indicated that I should walk past her over the rise. I wanted to look back and make sure Finn had made it, but I didn’t want to see Hector’s face.

  As we came over the rise, the tall woman muttered a command for me to pick up the pace, and the waiting eleven arose and began moving quickly north, away from the encampment. Mikela made sure that I saw her raise her rifle. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t shot me on sight, but realized that I’d gambled on it. The radar had told me she wouldn’t. I put the brain to work on why.

  A few minutes’ trek through the desert and we came upon two old Chevy vans parked on the sand. Mikela handed her weapon to one of the other women and approached me. She gestured for me to turn around and put my hands up on the side of the van, which I did without complaining. She felt up both sides of my legs, along my pockets and the waistband of my jeans, patted and squeezed my sides and stomach, then up under my breasts. I tensed my abdominals, praying to whatever gods might be listening that Hector’s phone would pass for part of them, or of my industrial-strength bra. The higher powers were on duty; she missed it.

  The tall woman opened the back doors of one of the vans, and three of the women, including Mikela, climbed in. Boss Lady indicated I should join them and slammed the doors behind us.

  Mikela took the bench seat directly across from me, her AK between her legs. I wanted to sass her, feeling cocky about the phone, but I knew it was a bad idea. I kept my mouth shut.

  The van jerked forward.

  CHAPTER 30

  When we stopped and got out about half an hour later, the landscape looked exactly the same. Big sky frosted with stars, shoulders of dark hills in the distance, pale rocky sand stretching out in all directions. If not for the derelict house the women were walking me toward, we might as well have driven in a big circle.

  I tried to figure out what had possessed the builder to put the house where it was. There were no signs of anything else nearby—no ruins of a town, a road, or even fences. It looked like it had just grown up out of the sand by accident, a farmhouse seed dropped by some stray bird. It looked like it had been recently lived in, and was in fairly good shape for its age; I guessed that it had been built in the late 1800s, from the proportions and simple floor plan—it was just one big room with a porch across the front. A small laugh leaked from my mouth as we clomped up onto the wood porch. I’d probably be cataloging the architectural style of my gallows while they put the noose around my neck.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d faced death, but it was the first time I’d noticed what I was thinking while I did. I was acutely aware of every physical sensation: the dusty dry smell of the house, the chill of the desert night prickling up my arms, my light, fast breathing. It was almost as if I were anticipating, with some sort of pleasure, what might come next. That’s what was strange—the sense of anticipation. I wasn’t afraid, or even nervous. I was hungry for something that I couldn’t name.

  Some dilapidated furniture loitered inside the house: an old sofa, a painted wooden table with three mismatched chairs, a sagging mattress on an old iron frame. There was a TV, unplugged, on the floor next to the bed, which had a stained blue sheet draped over it.

  The two women who weren’t Mikela came inside with me. She and the tall woman remained on the porch, speaking to each other in low tones. It sounded like Mikela was trying to talk her boss into something and failing.

  After a few minutes, Mikela came in, and one of the two women with me went out onto the porch with the boss. The remaining one, a petite young bottle blonde whose eyes and skin tone put the lie to her hair, pulled one of the chairs over to a rear window, where she sat side-on, looking out. Mikela took the sofa and indicated the bed was mine.

  After a minute, the lookout on the porch, the short woman with salt-and-pepper hair, came back in with an open bottle of soda in her hand. She looked over at Mikela, who nodded to her, then propped her rifle in the corner and came over to give me the bottle.

  “Drink it,” she said.

  I don’t argue with firearms. I did what she said, then lay down and closed my eyes. Almost immediately, I became aware of the furious pace at which the wheels behind my eyes were working. I turned my attention off and let them do their thing until the drugs took hold.

  CHAPTER 31

  The cold end of an AK nudged me. I opened my eyes to sunrise, my head a swamp. However, the eight hundred-pound gorilla on my chest had gone on a crash diet, which surprised me. Given the circumstances, I’d expected my morning suffocation to feel more oppressive than ever. Maybe the drugs they’d given me had something to do with it.

  Dye Job was absent. It was just Mikela and me in the dry heat of the big room. Only now my right wrist was handcuffed to the bed frame. A quick glance out the window showed Salt-and-Pepper still sitting in the folding chair on the front porch.

  I was pretty foggy, but gradually the brain came back online, along with the work it had done before I’d passed out the night before. Somehow the tall woman had gotten wind that the white girl she’d taken a dislike to in the cafe was looking for Rachael Pestozo, and that presented a threat worth kidnapping me for. What I couldn’t figure out was why it had gone down the way it did.

  First of all, if I was the target, why had she grabbed Finn and then gone to all the trouble and risk of making a swap? I was right here in Sells, and Finn had been up the border some one hundred miles. Granted, I’m not that easy to grab, but there were other, better targets closer by, if the idea was to get someone I’d be willing to trade myself for—Norma or Hector, for instance.

  Secondly, why did the mere fac
t that I was looking for Rachael rate an operation of this magnitude? I hadn’t said that I was looking for Mikela Floyd. I had told the tall woman that I was from Texas, though, which might have been enough, if she and her minions were somehow involved in the whole identity-theft thing.

  That was about as far as I had gotten before the dope hit me. Sometimes I’ll go to bed with a problem and wake up with an answer, but I hadn’t gotten that bonus this time.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked Mikela, stretching and sitting up as best I could with my new restraints.

  “Nalin will be here shortly,” she replied, lighting a cigarette from a pack on the side table next to her.

  “Who?”

  “The boss,” she said.

  “And then what?”

  She didn’t answer me, just took a long drag off the cigarette and sat back into the sofa.

  Annoyed, I turned to needling her. “Why’d you do it?”

  She looked at me, and I watched her expression shift around while she decided what I meant. She finally settled on, “He’s a man, isn’t he?”

  “That’s a hell of a reason to try and kill somebody.”

  “It’s the only reason I need.” She observed the dubious look on my face and said, “Still drinking the Kool-Aid, huh?”

  Not entirely sure what metaphorical beverage she was referring to, I threw her a frown.

  “You’re a fucking sheep,” she said. “Men run every single aspect of your life. They always have, and unless you fight back, they always will.”

  Well, that was interesting. It was also borderline insane, but I didn’t argue. If I let her rant maybe she’d tell me something useful in the process.

  “Look at what you’re wearing,” Mikela ordered. “The neckline of that shirt was designed by a man to show off your tits. The fabric it’s made from came out of a deal made by men with other men, and it was made in a third-world sweatshop owned by a man, by a teenage girl selling herself to the highest bidder. Those jeans emphasize your ass—”

  “Maybe in your size,” I interrupted. “I can’t find the ones that do that for asses my size. Everything above a ten is basically a denim girdle.”