Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  I relieved him of his rifle and glanced at the two dead men on either side of me. The mules were crow-hopping, scared but still restrained by the hobbles, and Adan was holding one of the Kalashnikovs, the muzzle still smoking.

  * * *

  —

  “They would have killed you.”

  We dragged the bodies and lodged them against the rocks in an upright position and then gripped the one I’d knocked in the head. The mules had settled, and Adan had begun reloading the packsaddles with the armament, keeping the AK for himself. “We have to move quickly—they will have heard the gunfire from the monastery.”

  “Will they send another patrol, do you think?”

  “Who knows? With these people weapons are like firecrackers, and with the celebration of the dead there is a lot of shooting.”

  I gestured toward the bodies. “But these three will come up missing.”

  “At one point, yes.”

  I rolled the second teenager over and nudged the American soccer team ball cap from his head and examined the goose egg just behind his ear. “What do you want to do with this one?”

  “Cut his throat.”

  I looked at the kid. He was maybe fifteen. “I can’t do that.”

  Adan aimed the AK. “Then I’ll shoot him.”

  “No.”

  “Ah, right—better not make more noise.” He looked toward the precipice that we had just climbed. “We can throw him off the cliff—less noise.”

  “No.” He stared at me as I gestured toward the unconscious young man. “He’s a kid.”

  “And he’s the one who would’ve likely shot you first.”

  “Maybe.” I studied the teenager. “Back in my county he’d be bird-dogging chicks and saving up to buy a car.”

  “And in my country, he is selling poison and killing people and then skinning their faces and sewing them on soccer balls.”

  I stared at him. “They do that?”

  “Yes.”

  Still holding the knife, I stepped between them. “Well, I can’t let you kill him. It would be the same as doing it myself.”

  “A sin of omission?”

  “Something like that.”

  Adan shook his head and continued loading the weaponry onto the mules. I kneeled and slapped the kid’s face a few times before his hand came up to brush mine away. He groaned, his eyelids fluttering, and then his eyes settled on me.

  “Howdy.”

  He started to move but stopped when I scratched the side of my neck with the point of the Bowie knife. “Habla usted inglés?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He accented the second syllable. “Iván.”

  “Iván, we’ve got a problem here, but I’m thinking you and I want the same thing.”

  He glanced around, getting the lay of the land, his eyes staying on his two dead companions. “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to keep you alive. . . . Do we agree on that?”

  His eyes came back to mine. “Um, yeah.”

  I pointed at Adan. “He wants you dead, and he’s made a pretty convincing argument.”

  The kid was silent.

  “You know who I am?”

  He nodded. “The gringo, the Ranger from el norte.”

  “Sheriff.” I cleared my throat. “You know why I’m here?”

  He paused. “No.”

  “You lie to me again, and I’ll kill you myself.”

  He nodded. “They have your daughter.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “No, they keep her in the monasterio, upstairs, guarded in the central room on the second floor. Two at the doors of the plaza, two at the stairs, and two at the door where they are keeping her. One of them fell asleep two days ago, and they killed him.”

  Figuring I’d check some of the information I’d gotten from Culpepper, I questioned him a bit more. “How many men?”

  “I don’t know, I only started working with these guys three days ago.”

  I nodded. “When does the party start?”

  He shrugged. “There is no time, it will just build and happen and then go on through tomorrow.”

  I met his eyes and stayed there. “Your English is very good, Iván.”

  He smiled for the first time. “I have an aunt who lives in Tucson, and I spent two summers in your country doing landscaping.”

  I reached out and took hold of his chin, turning his face toward his two companions. “You should’ve stuck with the landscaping.” I released him, and he slowly turned back to me. “I want you to think about something that’s going to be hard for you to understand. These guys are dead, dead and not coming back. There’s no reset, no do-over, there’s nothing, they are gone.” I gestured toward the bodies. “And if they could talk, they would tell you only one thing, that it’s better to be alive—you got me?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared into his eyes, looking for a comprehension that wasn’t there. “No, you don’t, you think you are invincible.” I shook my head and gestured for Adan to come closer. “Doc, the face-skinning thing, how do they do it?”

  Leading one of the mules, he kneeled down next to me, tracing a finger under the kid’s jaw and taking the Bowie from my hand. “It truly is an art form. You start by making an incision at the top of the head where you punch through tissue but hit the bone of the skull rather quickly. When you meet the bone you cut down to the neck, which makes a horrible scraping noise but you get used to it.” He reached around behind the young man and touched the base of his skull with the knife. “Then you jam your thumbs under the skin and begin unwrapping.”

  Iván tried to move back, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Then you peel the skin over the forehead and begin dispatching the eyelids, which is something of a gooey mess, but nothing compared to the nose, because you have to take some of the cartilage to keep the shape.” The knife blade came up, tracing the kid’s face. “The mouth is tricky because it’s hard to retain the shape there too, you know?”

  The kid heaved, just a bit.

  “Then you have to decide how much of the scalp you want, but that depends on the soccer ball. . . .”

  The kid gagged.

  Adan nodded. “For most faces a full-size soccer ball is too big, so they tend to use the balls they make for juniors.”

  I examined Iván’s head. “Do you do it before or after they’re dead?”

  “Depends. You can do it with them alive, but you need a couple of men to hold them down.” He gestured with the big knife. “I can show you if you would like.”

  “We’ll wait.” I took the Bowie and turned back to the kid. “The way I figure it, we can let you go down the trail we just came up, never to come back here, and you move on to a better life, or you can have some random kids in some nameless village scoring goals with your face.”

  He stared at me.

  “Which is it going to be?”

  He took a moment to speak, and his voice was a little shaky. “I will go down the trail.”

  “Smart choice, but remember, don’t turn back.” I stood along with Adan, and we looked down at him. “There are men in the village you just came from who are going to die in the next twenty-four hours, and you don’t have to be one of them.”

  He wanted to stand, and I let him. He was careful not to step on his comrades. “Okay.”

  I hid the stag-handled knife. “One more thing, Iván.”

  “Yes?”

  “Throw your buddies off the cliff.”

  * * *

  —

  “Do you believe he had the nerve to ask for one of the mules?”

  We shared the last of the canteen water and watched as the kid disapp
eared down the trail we had come up. “You don’t think we should’ve given him water?”

  Adan shook his head and hung the canteen over his shoulder. “There’s a river—I don’t think he can miss it.”

  “You can lead a teenager to water . . .” Letting the words trail off as I gathered my mule and walked her back toward the outcropping, I looked up at the sun and saw the image of two women, one of them all dressed up for her senior prom being twirled at arm’s length by her mother in our tiny rented house—the moment so brilliant I was sure that like looking at the sun, I would most certainly go blind.

  “Are you all right?”

  I turned to look at Adan. “What time would you say it is?”

  He glanced at his wristwatch. “Two.”

  “How long before they send out another patrol to look for this one?”

  Adan got his own mule as I rounded up the two pack animals, preparing to pony them behind me. “Who knows?”

  “Think we can work our way down the trail they came up and get behind the wall that leads to the monastery before dark?”

  “Not without being seen, but with the amount of people arriving it is possible we can approach without appearing too suspicious.”

  We walked to the precipice and looked down where more vehicles were parked and the streets showed a little more activity. Adan pointed to the round building. “There’s some activity there also, but if we can get past those two spots, it could be done.” He looked again. “We can’t get the mules over the wall, so they will have to stay near the sale barn, but they are mules, so no one should question their presence.”

  I climbed on my ride and patted her withers. “I’m beginning to like my gal.”

  Adan climbed aboard his mule and swung around to look at me. “Hopefully you will see her again tonight when we are making a quiet and leisurely escape with your daughter.” He looked past me, and I turned, hoping I wouldn’t see that the teenager was stupid enough to be coming back, but the trail was empty.

  “Today is the Día de los Inocentes, so you have done your part.”

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  The look he gave me told me he was not so sure. “But tomorrow is the Día de los Muertos—it would be nice if we did not have to join their ranks.”

  Gigging my mule, I road past him toward the village below. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How come you know so much about skinning the faces off of human skulls?”

  He studied me for a good long time. “Well, from first-year medical school basic anatomy class.” He smiled. “The rest I made up.”

  8

  The mules wouldn’t go near the walls with the signs plastered on them that read NO FUMAR, and when I climbed up one of the buttresses, I could see why. I lowered myself and stepped back from the crumbling edifice and stood there just trying to breathe.

  “Are you all right?” Adan, holding the skittish mules, stood a little away. “What is it?”

  I shook my head and looked over the hill. “We’ll tie them off to that hitching post behind the sale barn. I doubt anybody will mess with them all the way back there.”

  Adan took the mules over. “Then we go over the wall and make our way to the monastery?”

  Tying off Rucia and the pack animals, I took another breath.

  It was then that a young couple came around the barn, kissing on each other and probably looking for a secluded spot. Adan froze but then reached for the canvas packs.

  “Get the hell out of here!”

  They stood there.

  “Did you hear me?” I moved, advancing toward them. “I said to get the hell out of here now!”

  Adan yelled, “Váyanse!”

  The young couple tripped over themselves and disappeared.

  Shaking with anger, I turned and looked at Adan. “What do they think this place is, Disneyland?”

  He finished tying off the mules. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What is wrong with this country, with these people?” I gestured toward the tiny village. “These people are monsters, murderers—you don’t associate yourself with these kinds of animals.”

  He waited a moment, petting the rump of one of the mules before responding. “I think you are being unfair to the animals.”

  “You’re damn right I am.”

  He nodded toward the wall. “What did you see?”

  “Men, women, children . . .” I shook my head. “Bodies, dozens of them tied up and piled in the space between the wall and the cliffs. They’re just lying there, some of them hacked up like a charnel house sliding off the edge.”

  He glanced at the wall. “Why can we not smell them?”

  “Residual sulfur from the mines, and they threw lime on them as well, which means that some of them were butchered recently.” He stared at me. “Arms, legs, torsos, heads . . .”

  “Was . . . ?”

  “Not that I could see.” I reached out and stroked the sweat off the back of the mule. “Why do they do that, cut them up?”

  “Each dismemberment stands for a different punishment in the narco culture. The hands are for thieves, the legs for attempting to escape, the heads for betrayal or territorial influence.”

  I laid an arm over the back of the mule.

  He nodded and then looked at the wall. “I can disguise myself enough to get to the monastery on this side, but I’m afraid the only way you can get there is to go over the wall, my friend.”

  I accepted the inevitable. “Do we have to worry about that couple?”

  “No, they’ll be too scared to remark on their interaction with us—afraid of who we are and that they might be killed.”

  I nodded. “I just work my way to the left and then what?”

  “The walls are staggered so when you get to the monastery you can climb over—but be careful, I’m not sure what’s on the other side. If there are too many people, simply wait for me to find you.”

  I nodded, pulling the canvas bags from the packsaddle. “You want a weapon?”

  He patted the small of his back. “I have one.”

  “I’ll take the rest.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stash them somewhere?”

  Slipping the straps of the canvas bags onto my shoulders, I studied the distance to the monastery. “No, I want them with me in case anything happens.”

  “We won’t be able to find out much until this evening, but I can roam around a bit and explore the area; maybe talk to some people and see if I can get more information on exactly where she is.”

  I started toward the graveyard. “Be careful.”

  I put a foot on the buttress and pushed the canvas bags on the top of the wall. Bellying up, I swung a leg over and glanced around, but the only other person I saw was Adan as he climbed the small hill and disappeared around the stone building.

  Concentrating on the work at hand, I leaned down and lowered the two bags to the ground where there was a clear space and then rolled off the top, landing heavily but avoiding the macabre footing.

  As I looked more closely, I could see that the body parts were not simply dumped in this small canyon but that they stretched around the bulge ahead, lining the way as far as I could see.

  The smell of decay was strong on this side of the escarpment, and I pulled the bandana from my jean pocket and tied it around my face. I started off with the bags and stumbled along the uneven ground and the rocks, trying to avoid stepping on anything human and keeping my eyes to the left where I wouldn’t have to look at the bodies.

  I’d done pretty well until I slipped on something. I fell against the wall but was able to catch myself. I just stood there. Under my boot was a hand, the skin desiccated and the bones broken.

  Breathing shallowly, I started off again.

  * * *

&
nbsp; —

  “I killed the son of a bitch.”

  I scooted my chair closer to the hospital bed in hopes that she wouldn’t raise her voice any more. “You shot him, yes . . .”

  “Fourteen times.” She raised a hand to run fingers through her raven hair, the IV trailing along with her arm as one tarnished golden eye focused on me. “No sign of him at all?”

  “Nothing.” We’d searched every exit way in the canyon in an attempt to find some sign of Tomás Bidarte but had found nothing, not even a drop of blood. “Henry checked everywhere, and he doesn’t miss anything.”

  “I hit him, I know I did.” She dropped her hand and winced, then lifting it again grazed the spot where the stiletto knife Bidarte had thrown had entered her body, depriving her of the ability to ever have a child and killing the child who had been there. “You know?”

  “I do.”

  * * *

  —

  After a while, I could hear people talking. I wasn’t sure how far off they were, but it sounded like more and more of them were gathering on the other side of the wall. I’d passed through the killing field and sat in the shade of the rough stone.

  The back side of the monastery was sheer rock with only a few windows overlooking a crevasse. It had been a few hours into my sojourn, and I’d taken off my hat. Swiping the sweat from my forehead with a shirtsleeve, I watched as a large woman started stringing some laundry on a line hanging from one of the windows. She’d been unable to see me, considering the vantage point, and once again it made me feel better seeing somebody doing something normal amid all the abnormality I’d witnessed in the last few days.

  I’d watched until she’d ducked back inside and then slipped my hat back on before realizing it was Alexia Mendez.

  I immediately stood and looked at the laundry line, which was tied to a sturdy young pine holding on to life and a rocky purchase at the base of the cliff. Yanking the binoculars from the bag, I focused the M19s on the window, but I was too late.

  To get to the tree where the pulley was attached, I’d have to get frighteningly near the drop-off and would be in plain sight of the half dozen or so windows. I hadn’t seen any activity other than my daughter’s housekeeper, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t somebody in them, looking out.