Borderland

by Peter Eichstaedt

  Dawson stirred, looked around the crowded cabin, then out the window to the familiar, scruffy land. Golden sunlight flashed throughout the passenger compartment as the plane circled and bounced onto the baked concrete.

  When the seat-belt light dinged off, Dawson pulled his bag from the overhead bin and stood in the crowded aisle, impatient to get off the plane. The other passengers seemed to move in slow motion, taking their sweet time to collect their bags and empty down the aisle. He smiled weakly as the stewardess and copilot lingered by the exit door, thanking him for choosing their airline. As if there’s much choice?

  A ripple of excitement propelled him along the concourse and to the baggage claim. It felt good to be back in El Paso. Like he was in another country, free again to move at will. Yeah, he told himself, this was about as close to a third-world country as you could get without leaving America. He felt a smile coming on.

  He joined the other passengers at the rumbling baggage turnstile as bags popped out, clunking onto the conveyor. There was no crowding, no elbowing to get their bags. Yeah, Washington was a long way away. Dawson yanked his bag off the belt, turned, and banged into Raoul Garcia, who was standing behind him, his meaty arms crossed, smiling broadly.

  “Welcome home, Kyle.” Garcia gave him a bear hug, nearly squeezing the wind out of him.

  “Hey, thanks. Good to see you. You’re looking as ugly as ever.”

  “Still prettier’n you. C’mon. I’m parked at the curb.” Garcia grabbed Dawson’s bag. “The traffic cop’s watchin’ my ride.”

  Outside, Dawson took a deep breath of the warm evening air. He felt himself relaxing as he shed his jacket and tossed it on his canvas brief, then slid into the front seat. “It’s good to be back,” he said, as Garcia pulled out of the airport and eased the black SUV into traffic.

  “I’d invite you over for dinner, but I know you got business. When you can, though…”

  “Count on it,” Dawson said. “No one can burn a steak quite like you.”

  Garcia shrugged and smiled.

  Dawson glanced at the familiar sign that directed them north on Interstate 10 and to the turnoff to Rancho la Peña. The gritty landscape lay wide and open. A far cry from the concrete canyons that he roamed these days. He looked at Garcia and flashed on those years at El Paso High School, the Friday night lights on the football field, the late-night drinking parties in the desert, his pickup trucks. Anita in his arms.

  Dawson swallowed hard as he remembered the reason for this trip.

  “Why do you think he was killed?” he asked.

  “Sam? I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know or can’t say?”

  “It’s being thoroughly investigated. Believe me. Everyone’s on the case. Local, state, feds.”

  Dawson shook his head and looked out the window. Not what he wanted to hear. The whole thing stunk. He felt helpless once again, like when he was a kid and Sam had gone to prison, like when his ex-wife had told him she wanted a trial separation. Shit. There was nothing “trial” about it. He fought back the growing sense of loss and desperation.

  “So what are you going to do?” Garcia asked.

  “Find out what happened.”

  “I told you, the police and feds got this one covered.”

  “I don’t trust them. They’ll find out what happened. But I need to know why.”

  “Kyle Dawson, investigative reporter.”

  He looked at Garcia for a long moment. “Not for a story, but for me.”

  “It’s not like D.C.”

  “Jesus, Raoul. I worked in Iraq and Afghanistan. Give me a break.”

  “Have you talked to Anita yet?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You two were something else in the day.”

  “In the day, Raoul. In the day. Times change. People change.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  At Rancho la Peña, the sun still burned hot as it balanced on the horizon, spreading thick orange across the desert, throwing angular, sharp-edged shadows.

  “Are you sure you want to stay with Jacquelyn?”

  Dawson nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be best. Mom has a small place there in Juárez. And she’s always got relatives staying with her.”

  “Yeah,” Garcia said with a sigh. “She does. But—”

  “I’ll see her tomorrow or the next day,” Dawson said sharply. “I’ve got enough to deal with right now.”

  “Don’t get cranky.” Garcia guided his vehicle down curving paved streets that seemed more crowded with houses than before. Each was coated with stucco, topped with tile roofs, and fronted by yards of pea gravel, crushed red lava rock, and spiky cactus. The house that Dawson knew all too well sat on a cul-de-sac, a two-story, stucco-and-tile McMansion. For a moment he felt like a college kid coming home from a spring break. But the feeling faded as he thought about his stepmother inside and how distraught she must be.

  Garcia turned into the wide driveway and eased to a stop. “We need to catch up.”

  “I’ll be around.”

  Chapter 6

  Rancho la Peña, New Mexico

  Dawson watched Garcia back out and drive away, reluctant to face what was next. The call to his stepmother had gone as well as he expected. He’d told her he had some very bad news. “Sam’s body was found this morning.”

  “His body?” Jacquelyn had asked quietly, then fell silent. “That means…” After a moment she groaned and sobbed softly.

  Dawson had listened, then swallowed hard. Despite her sobs, he didn’t believe she really cared if Sam was dead or alive. Over the years, her and Sam’s relationship had disintegrated. Sam’s cowboy charm had worn thin and she came to resent his blustery and rarely truthful talk. She stayed with Sam because she increasingly controlled the development and the country club operations. In truth, calling Jacquelyn to tell her that her husband of thirty years was dead felt like victory. He knew something she didn’t. As he listened to her whimper, he had wondered if maybe she already knew.

  To Dawson, she was his father’s business partner more than a wife, and he thought of her as Jacquelyn, nothing more. Mercedes was his mother, and that would not change—nor would the fact that she lived across the border in Juárez, a different world. Dawson would concede that Jacquelyn had been good for him, though he was loathe to admit it. Her drive to succeed was infectious. She pushed him to get good grades in school and to play sports, however ineptly. She smiled with self-satisfaction when he was accepted at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. But she questioned the value of a liberal arts degree, complaining that it was worthless. Now as he stood at the door, Dawson smiled to himself. That degree had been perfect for him, a natural springboard into his journalism career.

  He paused for a moment to take a deep breath, then banged the door knocker gently. Silence. He waited and tapped it again. More silence. He looked to the evening sky. A couple of black vultures circled, their feathers tinged in red from the setting sun, gliding on the heat currents.

  The door opened. Maria, his stepmother’s maid and long-time companion, looked at him with teary eyes. She spoke softly, “Muy triste. Muy triste.” Very sad. Very sad. Dawson swallowed hard as he put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Oh, child,” cried Jacquelyn as she shuffled across the tiled floor in fuzzy bedroom slippers, wrapped in an embroidered blue silk house kimono. Her thick white hair, once blond, was stacked on her head and held with a couple of black lacquered sticks. Despite routine facials and Botox treatments, she showed her age. Clutching a handkerchief, she mashed herself against him and whimpered.

  Dawson sighed as he hugged his stepmother’s thin, yet vibrant body. She clung to him a moment, then stepped back, dabbing the handkerchief at her eyes.

  “Whatever are we going to do now?” she asked.

  Dawson held her hand and puzzled for a moment. If anyone knew what to do, it was Jacquelyn. While Sam had been the boisterous, back-slapping persona of the Rancho la Peña development, she kept a fi
rm grip on the business operations that kept the development on track. It had been that way pretty from day one.

  Jacquelyn was everything that Sam was not. She attended the University of New Mexico and had gone into real estate sales in Santa Fe when Santa Fe was discovered by the glitterati. Land prices climbed skyward and she’d made a small fortune. She had floated in influential circles, which Dawson later learned included the now Senator Micah Madsen, who was then the state’s attorney general. When Rancho la Peña surfaced, she saw its potential and invested heavily, and met Sam.

  What were they going to do? The question struck Dawson as absurd. He glanced about the large and lavish house. It felt hollow and empty as he realized that never again would he hear Sam banging through the front door, tromping his feet as he did to knock off the dust. Or hear his boisterous, squeaky laugh. Or see Sam’s flushed, sunburned face as he grumbled about the endless march of problems, madness, and mayhem that was his life. Now it was just Jacquelyn and Maria, a woman who had been part of their lives as much as anyone.

  “You must be hungry,” Jacquelyn said.

  “Well, ahh, actually…” He was famished.

  Seated at the small kitchen table, he watched Maria pull a baking dish from the oven, filling the kitchen with the aroma of an enchilada casserole. It rekindled his sense of being home, a feeling that had become foreign. He thanked Maria as she handed him a full plate. He rolled up a warmed tortilla, dipped it into the steaming red chili sauce, and ate hungrily.

  Jacquelyn sat facing him and refilled her wine glass with chardonnay. Lines of worry were etched into her face, her eyes seemed sunken, her cheeks sagging.

  He cleared his throat, trying to chase away Sam’s uncomfortable absence.

  “The funeral home arrangements have been made,” Jacquelyn said, with her typical certainty. “Closed casket, of course. A memorial service. A lot of people will be there, including our good friend, Senator Madsen.”

  “He announced a Senate committee hearing here in El Paso just yesterday. And, he’s in the middle of a presidential campaign. He has time for a funeral?”

  “Of course. He wants to deliver the eulogy.”

  “How convenient.” It grated on Dawson that politicians would use any and all opportunities to shape a public image of being a good guy, a friendly and caring neighbor. Now his father’s death was being used by Madsen. His stomach tightened.

  “Why yes,” Jacquelyn said, smiling as if it should not be a surprise. “He and Sam, as well as me, are on very good terms. You know that. Micah helped your father a lot.”

  “I’d say it was the other way around. Sam was one of his biggest contributors.”

  “Madsen is a worthy candidate.”

  “With Madsen at the funeral, there’ll be lots of press.”

  Jacquelyn nodded knowingly. “It’s only right. Sam was an important man. I don’t think it’s too strong to call him a visionary.”

  “A visionary? Is that what Madsen is going to say?” Resentment gurgled inside Dawson, gnawing at his gut. The chili sauce burned its way down to his stomach. He shifted uncomfortably.

  Jacquelyn shrugged. “Of course.”

  No longer hungry, he wiped his mouth with a napkin. She was turning Sam’s funeral into a circus. A goddamned circus. He got up and went to large, stainless steel refrigerator and got a beer. He pried off the top and took a couple of swallows, trying to calm his anger. “What’s going to happen to Rancho la Peña now?”

  Even as the words came out, he was surprised at his own question. Rancho la Peña was not something he ever thought or cared about. He’d spent much of the past twenty years trying to forget about it. Rancho la Peña was Sam and Jacquelyn’s thing, and it had been Sam’s dream. Now Sam was dead. As he gazed at his stepmother, Dawson realized that his own refusal to be involved in the development project or the golf course had been his way of rejecting Sam, getting back at him for what he’d done to him and his mother.

  “Rancho la Peña?” she asked. “Sam’s passing should not affect anything.”

  Dawson nodded. It was what he expected. Jacquelyn remained in control with or without Sam. He knew Sam didn’t pay much attention to minor details like bills. He only cared if there was enough in his bank accounts to buy whatever he wanted. Jacquelyn wisely had him on an allowance. “He was good at making money, wasn’t he, but bad at managing it.”

  “One has to take the good with the bad,” she said.

  “I suppose.”

  “He did a lot of good. I know you’ve been resentful and angry at him. But he changed. You should accept that. He joined the Mormon church, and he built a temple here at Rancho la Peña.”

  “You know he became a Mormon only because of the business connections.”

  “That’s not true. Why can’t you forgive him?”

  “What about the bar in the house here and in his office? Mormons aren’t supposed to drink.”

  Jacquelyn sighed and looked away, not wanting to pursue the conversation.

  In fact, Dawson had stopped hating the man long ago. Somewhere along the line, he had accepted his father as a man who wanted nothing more than to be a big shot, drive a big car, live in a big house, have all the stuff that showed the world he was a success. With that acceptance, his anger had dissipated like a morning mist in the harsh light of day. He had even been able to laugh at himself for harboring that resentment all those years.

  But now, that emotion was replaced by another, heavier weight: remorse. He never told his father that he forgave him. Sam had died thinking that his son, his only child, hated him. “I forgave him a long time ago,” he said, trying to sound sincere. “Only he never knew it.”

  Jacquelyn eyes opened wide for a moment, then narrowed as she swallowed the last of her wine. “Poor darling.”

  Dawson struggled to contain his desire to argue with her. He resented Sam for dying the way he did and for her being so damned good at covering up and cleaning up Sam’s messy life.

  She cleared her throat. “You asked about Rancho la Peña. If you wanted to leave Washington, D.C., there would be a place for you here, now that Sam is gone. You’d be closer to your children. And, it’s something that Sam would have wanted.”

  Dawson flinched at the thought and let out a long, slow sigh. Such a move was out of the question since it meant he’d be working for her, in effect. “I’m a journalist, not a land developer.”

  She nodded. “How often do you see your children?”

  The question unleashed a gush of guilt. Jacquelyn was good at such effortless jabs. “My kids? Not often enough.”

  “Another reason why you should move back here.”

  Dawson clenched his jaw. “Maybe someday.”

  Chapter 7

  Rancho la Peña, New Mexico

  With his stepmother gone to bed, Dawson wandered the expansive house, surrounded by his memories and the memorabilia of Sam’s bygone days. He took a bottle of tequila from the small liquor cabinet and poured three fingers’ worth into a tumbler. Glancing at his watch, he settled into the curved couch facing a large flat-screen TV, fished the remote control out of a hand-woven basket and clicked it on. The face of the male El Paso television news anchor filled the screen as Dawson took a swallow and swirled the ice-filled glass.

  “As we have reported, one of the El Paso region’s most well-known businessmen, Sam Dawson, was found dead yesterday. The body was discovered not far from the U.S. port of entry that opened a couple of years ago at Dawson’s Rancho la Peña development.” A view of the port of entry filled the screen, showing a long line of trucks stopped while blue-uniformed Border Patrol personnel inspected them, some leading drug-sniffing dogs around them, others opening up the back doors, peering at the cargo.

  “Our own Anita Alvarez is here to tell us about the latest.” The screen was filled with her face. Dawson stared as the memories flooded back. Anita’s deep brown eyes, her sculpted features, her flawless olive skin, her cascading dark hair—more beautiful than
he had remembered. She had matured, her voice now mellow and confident, her face open, accessible. How long has it been?

  In his previous trips back to El Paso, he had seen her broadcasts, but had dismissed her as someone from his past. But now? This time it was different because she was talking about his father. The news was always about other people’s lives, other people’s miseries. Now it was his. Watching Anita, he felt a longing for her that he hadn’t felt for years. He once again wanted to know the soft comfort of her body against his. Dawson sipped again, letting the tequila warm his stomach. He drew a deep breath.

  “Investigators say they have no new details on the case and so far have been unable to identify any suspects,” she said. “This high-profile case has more questions than answers. As you mentioned, Sam Dawson was one of the region’s most well-known personalities, and his sprawling Rancho la Peña development remains by far the biggest project along the entire two thousand miles of the U.S. and Mexico border. The fact that Dawson’s death has all of the characteristics of a cartel killing raises questions about involvement by Mexican drug cartels. But if investigators have any clues as to the killers and their motives, they’re not talking.”

  The camera switched to the anchor. “Thank you, Anita. Meanwhile today, a dozen people were shot to death in Ciudad Juárez, many on the streets not far from their homes and in broad daylight.” The story cut to a video clip of a Juárez street littered with dead bodies, police somberly surveying the scene. “One of the dead, a six-year-old boy,” the anchor continued, “was running from the car where his father had been shot and killed while driving. The boy, a U.S. citizen, was shot in the back. He attended elementary school here in El Paso and had been visiting his father for the day.”

  “Insane,” Dawson said, shaking his head in disgust. He finished the tequila with a gulp, then went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself another. He had been stunned when he first realized that Juárez, separated only by the border from El Paso, was deadlier than Iraq or Afghanistan. He’d been sickened by the internet videos of the cartel killers maniacally sawing off the heads of their enemies. What was the point? To show that they’d lost their humanity, much like the jihadis?