He and Mel knew what they really meant.
* * *
• • •
THE MEETING ITSELF WAS MADE UP of federal, state, and local cops. The HIDTA—High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area—program was created by Congress to support drug-related operations and initiatives with federal money. For a small sheriff’s department like Chris’s, the West Texas HIDTA meant desperately needed funding, but it came with certain strings, one of which included this quarterly meeting. Although the money was good, Chris found it was the chance to meet other members of the law enforcement community—to share ideas and intelligence—that proved most useful. He was the youngest sheriff by far, and responsible for one of the largest regions in the state, one notorious for its outlaw history. All the reading and research in the world would never teach him what some of these men had learned in a lifetime of police work.
That’s why he’d brought on Harp, and kept an eye out for others like him who might be willing to come down to the Big Bend. Yet he struggled, knowing that Harp’s lifetime behind a badge and gun brought its own burned-in prejudices and attitudes.
Action versus reaction, the first always wins.
There are wolves in the world, Chris. Criminals . . . outlaws . . . bad men, whatever you want to call them . . . sometimes we gotta be wolves, too . . . we just do.
Maybe, maybe not. He often asked himself if that was how it had started with Sheriff Ross and Duane Dupree. Had they been wolves so often, for so long, that they couldn’t turn back anymore, or had it been something else entirely? Sheriff Stanford Ross’s shadow still hung over Murfee and the Big Bend like the Chisos Mountains, large, immovable, unknowable. The sheriff had never explained himself, even when Chris had begged him to know why at the point of a gun.
So Chris tried hard to be a different kind of lawman, nothing like Sheriff Ross. He wanted to bring his department into this century, leave its past behind, but was afraid he’d never quite get out from under that other man’s shadow; damn worried each day, the longer it went on, that he might forget he was even walking in its darkness at all.
It didn’t help that he had to see Sheriff Ross’s face every time he came to these meetings. He’d won Texas Lawman of the Year five times, and all of his award pictures were still up on the wall. Each one looked exactly the same—the creased uniform shirt, the sheriff’s tanned face smiling tight beneath a razored brush cut, the hair just slightly gunmetal gray.
And those eyes: piercing and somehow young and old at the same time, the color of moonlight reflected off the barrel of a gun.
Colleen Worrel, the HIDTA secretary, told Chris that each picture had been taken new when the sheriff had won the award. But they all sure looked similar, even though some of them were taken years apart.
He just never seemed to get old, never seemed to change much at all, she told him. I wish we all were so lucky.
* * *
• • •
UNLIKE THE PICTURES OF SHERIFF ROSS, Garrison had changed even over just the last two years. There was more salt-and-pepper in his goatee, and now some had found its way to his temples. He’d put on a little bit of weight as well, visible in his face and around his gut. His tie was a little too tight and he was quick to loosen it, leaving his neck red. Chris had seen him wear a wedding ring before, but not today, and he didn’t know what that meant, if anything at all.
They weren’t close in the way he felt comfortable asking, so he didn’t.
They picked up a cup of coffee after the meeting at a little place downtown near the freeway, and then drove separately to the Concordia Cemetery, within sight of Ciudad Juárez and the border. The cemetery was fifty-two acres of stone and concrete markers and rotting wooden crosses, a bullet hole in the heart of El Paso. It looked like an abandoned movie set, the tilted headstones just props. Garrison told him that it had been in use since the 1800s, and more than sixty thousand people were buried somewhere under the scrub, although no one knew the exact number. The cemetery had its share of bald patches and worn areas, seemingly empty, but far from it, where the old cheap crosses had given way to time, dust, and storms. One epitaph Chris passed started with The Good and the Bad . . .
“They say the place is haunted, particularly in the children’s section. No one knows how many kids are buried here. They run ghost tours all the time, and they do a big thing for Día de los Muertos,” Garrison said, reading the sign along with Chris. “I live here in El Paso and I think I’ve only been out here twice, but there is a lot of history buried beneath our feet.”
“Including the gunfighter John Wesley Hardin, right?”
“Yeah, he’s some of that famous history.”
“Okay,” Chris said, walking through dust. “Let’s find that headstone.”
* * *
• • •
IT WAS MORE THAN THAT—a stone and barred iron enclosure that reminded Chris of a jail cell, protecting a stretch of empty dirt topped with the marble headstone and a raised marker sporting the seal of Texas. The peaked roof had a metal sign cut out with the initials JWH, over which hung two six-shooters. The guns looked like wings, flying those initials heavenward, and it was only when he got closer that Chris could tell how much they resembled the guns tattooed on Jesse Earl’s forearms. He read the marker through the bars:
John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853–August 19, 1895). Born in Bonham, Texas, John Wesley Hardin was named for the founder of Methodism. “Wes” Hardin grew into a family man, cowboy, and outlaw who claimed to have killed more than 30 men. An unusual sort of gunslinger Hardin considered himself a pillar of society who killed to save his own life. Hardin served 15 years in state prison for murder, was pardoned, then opened a law office in El Paso in May 1895. He was killed 3 months later by John Selman, an El Paso City Constable.
“I read somewhere that the constable, Selman, shot Hardin in the back of the head. Hardin never saw it coming, never had a chance.” Garrison shrugged. “Selman himself was no saint, spent equal time as both a lawman and an outlaw. He was later shot by a U.S marshal and is supposed to be buried out here, too, somewhere in the Catholic section. His grave was unmarked and it’s never been found.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who’d read this much Texas history,” Chris said.
“Yeah, and you don’t strike me as someone who is comfortable wearing that gun. I think you’re the one better suited for a book than a badge, Chris. No offense.”
“None taken. God knows I feel that way some days. But you know that saying, you break it, you buy it? For me, that’s Murfee and the Big Bend County Sheriff’s Department.”
“You didn’t break anything, Sheriff Ross did. You’re picking up the pieces, and if you ask me, you’ve done your part. You can walk away anytime. There is no glory in any of this, trust me.” Garrison shook his head. “Anyway, you’re not here for a lecture. You asked me to look into FBI Special Agent Austin Nichols, and I did.”
“And?”
“And he’s based out of their Dallas field office, an up-and-comer. He went to law school in Georgia before becoming an agent. Our guys in Dallas haven’t worked with him because he’s always been assigned to gang stuff and domestic terrorism, not really drug cases. But I have to ask, is this also related to that traffic stop that you e-mailed me about a couple of weeks back, your deputy getting run down?”
“No, not that,” Chris said. “At least I don’t think so.” Chris had been reluctant to call Garrison after the Avalos incident, not wanting the inevitable discussion that he knew would follow, the familiar outlines of an old argument. Garrison saw everything through his own particularly dark lens, and couldn’t get past the killing of one of his agents in Murfee and the near-fatal wounding of another. He took special issue with America Reynosa and he took it personally; he absolutely thought Chris had made a mistake bringing her on as a deputy. Amé’s brother Rodolfo had been an informant and a drug sm
uggler and not particularly good at either, and either one more than enough to draw Garrison’s antipathy. Rodolfo’s activities had cost him and others their lives; he was tainted and everyone associated with him was as well. The DEA agent could go on endlessly about all of his intel about the extended Reynosa family across the river; about his informants and his finely honed agent instincts and experience, all of which, to him, made Amé an equally bad bet. But Chris knew it was more than Amé, it was Murfee itself, it was the place he couldn’t trust, and never would.
So Chris had sent him a short e-mail instead, and the reply had been equally terse. The DEA had no information on Azahel Avalos.
Garrison continued. “Like I wrote you then, we ran the driver in our indices and didn’t have anything on him, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something. He’s not speeding through your town and running from your deputies for no reason.” And by your town and no reason, Chris knew that Garrison was referring to Murfee’s drug-smuggling history.
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“And your problem, Chris, is you want to trust everyone. Life doesn’t work that way, and this job sure in the hell doesn’t.”
“You sound suspiciously like one of my deputies.”
Garrison watched dirty clouds move across the sky. “Speaking of deputies, how’s Ms. Reynosa?”
Here it comes.
“She’s doing very well.” There was a long, uncomfortable silence that neither man seemed ready to fill.
Finally: “I’m glad to hear that,” Garrison said.
“No, let’s be honest, you’re surprised to hear it. And we both know you don’t believe it or mean it.”
“It is what it is. I just want you to be careful, that’s all.”
“She was a young girl when all that went down with her brother. It’s a non-issue for her, so it has to be for me.”
“She’s still a young girl now . . . a girl with an extremely complicated past.”
“Given what happened with Sheriff Ross, the same could be said for me.” Chris turned away from Hardin’s grave, looked squarely at Garrison. “What remaining family she had in Murfee is gone. She never crosses into Ojinaga as far as I know. She lives by herself, works her ass off, and wants to be a good cop. I need her help with all the Hispanics in our community. They trust her in a way they don’t trust me and the other deputies, and that means something. Whatever you and your people think you’re hearing about her or her relatives, it’s nothing.”
“You should know better than anyone that it’s never nothing.”
“We’re done talking about Ms. Reynosa. I mean it.”
“Got it, we’re done. And I just said I wasn’t going to lecture you.” Garrison went back to counting the low clouds in the sky. “So what is the deal with Nichols? Why does he matter?”
Chris turned back to Hardin’s grave site. “It has to do with a man named John Wesley Earl.”
* * *
• • •
CHRIS TOLD GARRISON EVERYTHING; he stood silent the whole time, listening. When Chris finished, the DEA agent checked his watch, pretending to care about the time, collecting his thoughts.
“I’ve had my guys work prison cases before, big-time crooks moving considerable weight both inside and outside. They get iPhones smuggled into them and make calls and arrange deals right in their cells. We had a Mexican snitch in Lynaugh who told his fellow inmates that he knew a guy on the outside who could drum up twenty, thirty kilos at a time. The snitch would pass a number we’d given him, and sure enough, his ‘guy’ on the outside, actually one of my agents acting undercover, would get a call out of the blue. Next thing you know, we’d have some Black Disciples from Chicago in a Motel 6 with two hundred fifty thousand dollars in the back of a rented Toyota Camry. It’s a new world order, Chris. These gangs have all gotten so big, their criminal networks and activities extending so far beyond the prison walls, that they have to work together, inside and outside. Moving drugs, carrying out contract killings, whatever.”
“Nichols said as much.”
“Right, so this op he’s running is dicey, edge-of-the-seat stuff. High risk, high reward.”
“Would you do it?” Chris asked.
“He’s looking to tear the heart out of the ABT leadership, and take a shot at a piece of work like Thurman Flowers? That’s big game.”
“Big enough? These people are in my backyard and Nichols let them in.”
Garrison scanned the graveyard, remembering. “Well, speaking of backyards, about ten years ago, ICE, when there was such a thing before it was folded into Homeland Security, had an informant working right over there in Juárez.” Garrison pointed across the freeway, where the nearby border ran past them. “He managed something they called the ‘House of Death’ where the Carrillo-Fuentes cartel carried out numerous killings, burying the bodies, naturally, in the backyard. This informant drove the victims there, handed weapons and tools to their killers, and even recorded one of the murders and played it over the telephone to his ICE handlers, who listened to the whole thing and still kept using him. He fucking held down a man’s legs while they killed him, and they made a conscious decision that it was worth looking the other way while he did that. They ‘handled’ it by telling him never to do that again, but of course he did, over and over. He was credited with sixty arrests and was paid over a quarter of a million dollars for his efforts helping the government, but no one knows exactly how many people he also helped murder. Was it worth it? It was not one of federal law enforcement’s finer moments.”
Garrison turned to start walking back to their cars and Chris fell in step with him. “But this is what we do, Chris, these are the risks we take. I’ve flipped some very bad men and put them right back out on the street to work, and I was holding my breath the whole time. We have a lot of rules and protocols for handling them and they’re there for a reason, both for our protection and the informant’s. Still, you can’t watch them every minute of the day. So, like I said, you end up holding your damn breath. No matter how much a piece of shit they might be, you don’t want them to get hurt, and more importantly, you don’t want them hurting anyone else. Not on your watch.”
“Like Rodolfo Reynosa.”
Garrison’s jaw clenched. “Right, like Rodolfo Reynosa.”
“But you still didn’t answer my question.”
Garrison stopped. “Yes, I did. I told you . . . this is what we do. Look, as far as Earl is concerned, I’m not saying I would, I’m not saying I wouldn’t. But if I did, I would be very, very careful about it and I’d want to make sure this Thurman Flowers was damn well worth it. Given what you’ve told me and how it’s playing out, that’s a long damn time for anyone to hold their breath.”
“And what about Danny Ford? What if he was one of your agents and was now in bed with the Earls because of some misplaced sense of duty?”
“Or vengeance? Because that’s really what we’re taking about, right? That’s a tough one, too. But right or wrong, once they’re mine, they’re always mine. You never let the guys who work for you go, particularly if they get hurt, or worse, if they get killed. Most importantly, if it happens on your watch. You have to talk to the wife, have to talk to the kids. You have to help them make sense of it, try to explain to them why it happened, and why what their daddy did was important enough to die for.”
“Is it? Is it that important?” Chris knew that Garrison was talking about Darin Braccio and Morgan Emerson, the agents Duane Dupree had attacked.
Garrison started walking again, turning his back to Chris. “Again, it’s what we do. And that is a question I can’t answer for you. Only you can. And you need to, every day you put on that badge.”
* * *
• • •
GARRISON WAS NOW GONE, and Chris was left sitting in his truck, staring at the crosses and headstones. He’d tried counting the ones he could s
ee but kept losing his place, starting over again.
Again and again.
The Good and the Bad . . .
He needed to start the long drive back to Murfee, but had one other thing he wanted to do, something for Mel. Something he’d been thinking about for weeks now. He called her first to check in and she was outside, letting the new dog run, and he could hear him in the background, barking at the wind.
She told him she’d repaired the bathroom doorknob he’d pulled off the other morning.
Then he called Harp, who answered on the seventh or eighth ring, and sounded preoccupied, tired. Chris asked him what was going on in town, worried that maybe his encounter with Earl had kicked up a hornet’s nest, but Harp said all was quiet. Boring was the word he used. He said it slow, hesitant, and Chris thought for a moment he was going to add something else, but he didn’t. Whatever was on his mind could obviously wait, so that decided it for Chris. He told Harp he was going to stick around El Paso then for a while longer to get some errands done. Harp told him to take all the time he needed, and if things stayed quiet, he and Amé might go out later and put holes in some paper out at Chapel Mesa.
Harp told him to take care before he hung up and Chris did the same.
Starting his truck, Chris checked the clouds—the sort that could threaten rain—wondering if they’d follow him all the way back to the Big Bend. But then the sun broke through, and he reached for his sunglasses.
He drove out past the crosses casting long shadows behind him.
37
I get there as the sun is hooked on the horizon; everything beneath it still bright, the sky above it slowly going dark. I’ve heard of this place that Deputy Reynosa texted to meet, the Murfee Ghost Lights, but there isn’t much to it—a gravel drive and a small pavilion and some benches just off the freeway, all of it looking out over a whole bunch of nothing, just rolling caliche and creosote. When I get there, another car is just leaving—some parents and their two kids, a small blond boy and his sister. Their license plate says they’re from Arizona and the whole family looks at me as I roll past them into the lot.
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