by Greg Mantell
The two sergeants stopped just a few feet in front of him. They trained their rifles at his head. The man slowly raised his hands to shoulder height.
“Don’t move! Down on the ground!” Dowd shouted.
“Do not move in.” Jen’s voice came over the radio again. “Can you hear me? Do not-”
Barrish twisted his head away from the unit to make sense of the noise in his right ear.
“I’m looking for Mike Barrish,” the man shouted over the helicopter’s patter. “You here, Mike?”
“Down on the ground!” Dowd yelled again.
“That’s him,” Michael heard on the radio. “That’s our man in Mexico. Do not apprehend him.”
“I’m looking for Mike,” the man repeated. Michael turned back toward the unknown male.
“Down, asshole!” Dowd flicked the safety off his rifle. Michael quickly stepped up behind the two sergeants and motioned at them lower their firearms.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I’m Detective Michael Barrish. Who are you?”
“Joe told me I’d be working with you over here.”
“What’s your name?” The man gradually put one hand down and reached for his back pocket. Both Dowd and Blaylock took another step closer and retrained their rifles at his head.
“Don’t move! Hands where I can see them.”
The man pulled out a few folded pieces of yellow paper and extended them to Michael.
“The first thing I need is to get across the border.”
Michael took a few cautious steps forward and snatched the papers out of the man’s hand. He unfolded them and read over the Spanish text on each page. Government seals appeared in the upper left corner of each page. The man’s name did not appear anywhere on the documents.
“I’m need some I.D. U.S.-issued I.D. And I need-”
“You’re looking for Julio.”
“What?” The noise from the helicopter drowned out their shouting.
“You’re looking for Julio de la Cruz.”
“I can’t give you that...I can’t give you any information.”
“Please get him what he needs,” Jen radioed again. “If he needs to get across the border-”
“Push him back,” the staff sergeant yelled in Michael’s ear.
“I need you to step back and identify your-”
“I talked to Julio. Had a good chat with him this morning. He told me you got a van in holding. I need to get to that van. There’s something in it I need. Once I get it, it’ll lead us to the people who actually did this. I get you Julio, you get me to the van. Deal?”
“I’m not making deals.”
“Then you’re not getting the guys who did this.”
The unit stared blankly ahead. Peters and Garcia looked at one another for a second, then trained their sights back on the unknown man.
“Listen to what he says.” Jen’s voice buzzed in Barrish’s ear again, followed by a distorted transmission of the staff sergeant’s invectives. Michael reached down to his waist and turned the radio off. The ringing in his hearing aid persisted.
“All right. You’re going to have to pass security and you’re going to have to walk around the site. You hear me?”
“Uh huh.” The man nodded. He lowered his hands and took a few steps forward.
“Hands up!” Dowd aimed his rifle back at the man. He immediately threw his hands back up.
“All right, all right, all right. Chill.” Michael took a step behind Dowd and directed the man around the site.
“You need to walk toward the far left lane and that curtain there. The green one.” Michael headed back toward the security tents. The unknown man and the guardsmen trailed behind him. Dowd and Blaylock continued to aim their rifles at the man. Michael stopped and turned around. “What’s your name?”
“Guy.”
“Guy. Guy what?” The man was silent for a moment. He looked down and scratched his upper lip.
“Sool.”
“Soul?”
“Yeah. Sool.”
Michael looked at him puzzled. He continued his walk back toward the border crossing. He passed a brown Kia Soul on his right. Drea got out of her cowered position and followed the unit back toward the canopy.
The helicopter stopped circling overhead. The ringing in Michael’s hearing aid abetted. Forty minutes elapsed since they handed Sool’s papers to security. A bead of sweat rolled off Michael’s forehead and dribbled down his eye protection. The rest of the unit stood in the shade of the canopy a few yards away green curtain. Dowd and Garcia stood with their heads cricked to the side. Their rifles hung from their necks. The private whined that it was worse than the airport.
A citrusy smell hit Michael’s nose. A heavy stench of smoke irritated his nostrils. He turned around and noticed Sool standing a few feet away smoking a cigarillo. He walked around two abandoned vehicles and up to the smoking man.
“Hey, you’re going to contaminate the scene. Go over there if you’re going to smoke.” Sool sauntered away from the curtain and continued to huff on the small brown cigarette.
The green canvas finally opened, and Jen stepped out.
“You can remove your suits,” she said. Michael, Dowd and Garcia immediately reached for their hoods and threw them off. They each inhaled in deep breaths as they removed their masks, hair nets and googles. Jen turned toward Sool. The man in the black jacket threw the cigarillo on the ground.
“Okay, lead the way,” Jen instructed.
The holding area lay just beyond the collection of emergency vehicles. Sool removed his sunglasses and wiped away the sweat that had formed on this brow. He traipsed around the first responder vehicles. His eyes were trained on the ground.
They rounded a white panel truck. The holding area just a few dozen feet away. Sool maintained his leisurely gait toward a brown conversion van with no license plates. Its rear doors were open wide. Five blue, plastic oil drums appeared in the shadows of the van’s rear. Three drums stood upright. Two were on their sides. The lids of the overturned drums were removed. Some liquid pooled on the van’s carpeted floor.
“We’ve cleared this with bomb techs, right?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” Jen replied.
“Okay, I want another sweep of this van. Drea, can we get-”
“Hey,” Drea screamed in Sool’s direction. He climbed into the back of the van, reached down and dripped his fingers into the puddle at the base of the barrel. He raised his fingers to his nose and took a whiff.
“Still kind of warm.” Sool jumped out of the van and peered in Jen’s direction. “Border patrol didn’t nab anyone covered in gas last night, did they?”
Drea stormed over to him. Michael jumped after her.
“Forensics hasn’t touched that yet,” she screamed. “You’re gonna ruin the fucking scene.” Sool craned his head over the diminutive Drea.
“Jen?”
“I don’t know. All I know is they lost the driver.”
“Right,” Sool brushed his way passed Drea and toward the guardsmen.
“You guys got a tracking dog or something?”
“Yeah,” Blaylock replied. “Bronco can track.”
“Good. Let’s get it here and see if it can find a trail somewhere.”
Sool strode back toward the green curtain. The guardsmen followed his lead. Drea stepped in front of Sool’s path and put a finger in his chest.
“Hey, asshole, did you hear me? You just fucked up our forensics. Now I have to take your samples. You take one more step, I’m gonna rip your fucking-”
Michael quickly jumped in, grabbed Drea by the shoulders and yanked her away.
“Hey!” Barrish stood face-to-face with her. “Take a walk if you’re going to talk like that. You got another job to do. Find out who was in the driver’s seat, okay?” He pointed toward the curtain. Drea stormed back toward the encampment on the U.S. side of the border. Jen and the guardsmen continued their slow march toward the curtain. Michael drew a long breath
through his nose and ran his right hand through his short gray hair.
“Chris Harris,” Sool muttered. He inserted another cigarillo in his mouth. “It’s Chris Harris. That’s the guy in the van.”
He lit the cigarillo and sauntered back toward the curtain.
“She’s right, you know. You can’t mess up forensics like that.”
“Okay. I’m gonna keep plowing ahead at my pace if that’s all right with you.”
“I know you and Joe are under a lot of pressure to get guys fast, but-”
“Don’t worry. I already got them.”
“Got what?
“Suspects.”
“You can’t have suspects already.”
“I can when I do my job right.”
“You got any witnesses? Reports? Anything to back that-”
“I told you, I spoke with Julio this morning. I’d say he was a pretty good witness.”
“That’s it? That’s what you’re going off of?”
“Partly, yeah.”
“Hey.” Michael stepped in front of him. “If you have suspects, you need to tell me.”
“When you need to know, I will.”
“Who are they?”
“You need to know now?”
“Yes.” Sool took another drag on the cigarillo.
“Dos hermanos. Two brothers. Those are our guys. You wanna know more, just ask.” He stepped around of Michael and continued his stroll toward the encampment.
Now dressed in tan fatigues, the guardsmen formed a semi-circle around the rear of the conversion van. Michael, Jen and Sool waited a dozen feet behind them. Blaylock clutched Bronco’s leash. The dog sat on its haunches.
Dowd approached the van with five fabric swatches in his hand. He dipped each swatch into the puddle of gasoline and passed them over the dog’s nose. Bronco immediately yanked on the leash and barked at the northeast exit of the port. Through the glass doors of the bus depot appeared a deserted plaza, parking lot and sheltered benches for the trolley line. Bronco dragged the sergeant through the depot and into the plaza.
“We should get the truck,” Jen said. “This could take a while.”
With the MTVR and two police cruisers idling on Otay Mesa Road, Bronco skulked around the barren hills just north of the border crossing. The unit lined up behind Blaylock and the dog on a sandy path surrounded by decaying, waist-high grass. Each member scanned the area around the path.
A dozen yards down the path, Sool faced the border fence. His back was turned to the unit. The decaying grass at his knees rustled in the wind. A neighborhood of ramshackle homes sat perched on a steep hill visible over the fence. He wore his large reflective sunglasses. Two black earphones were stuffed in his ears.
Michael and Jen stood in the shade provided by the MTVR. Jen looked down at her phone. She clutched a pen and notepad in her other hand. Michael leaned against the vehicle with his arms folded. He glared up at Sool.
“What’s his name? Really?”
“He’s been ‘Guy’ as long as I’ve known him.”
“You see how he spells it?”
“I don’t know, detective. After years of service, I feel like you earn the right to call yourself whatever you want.”
“I feel like he got it off a-”
“You check hospitals?” Michael twisted his head and saw Sool looking down at him and Jen from the hill. He held one of his earphones aloft in his right hand.
“Sorry?” Michael shouted back.
“Check hospitals. See if they’re treating anybody who didn’t burn to death last night.” He inserted the earphone back into his ear and turned toward the border fence.
“I’d like to see where this guy gets his information.”
“Joe and I would like that too.”
“You got a lot of faith in him if that’s the case.”
“He’s right about a hundred percent of the time.”
“About?”
“He...” Jen stopped cycling through her phone and looked north up Otay Mesa Road. “He’s had a few dropped balls here and there, but he’s effective. His performance is exemplary.”
“He’s already contaminated the scene and withheld information from us. I don’t think we’re off to a great start.”
“He’s not C.S.I. He’s good with witnesses. That’s what we need.” She resumed looking at her phone. Michael stepped out of the van’s shadow and turned to face Jen.
“I’d like to speak to de la Cruz now if that’s possible.”
“It’s not. We have to limit radio comms.”
“I want to see what he told him.”
“We’ll be at the consulate later this afternoon. We can talk to him then.”
“I thought I was in charge this investigation.” She looked up from her phone.
“You are heading this investigation.”
“Then I’d like to talk to him now.”
“With all due respect, detective, I’ve been investigations like this one. And once we finish with this lead, we can-”
“Do you argue with Joe this much too? You know me and him go way back.”
Jen unleashed an exasperated sigh. She tucked her phone under her arm and jotted down a few numbers on her notepad with the pen. She tore out the page and handed it to Michael.
“That’s the security code. Don’t use your phone. It’s an insecure line.” She handed him her phone.
“Thank you.”
“Joe and Melanie divorced nine months ago by the way.”
Michael’s eyes fell to the note. He cleared his throat.
“Okay. Sorry if, uh-”
“I get it. We’re all angry. But we have to stay together on this.”
Michael took a few steps down the sloped road and dialed the number on the small piece of paper. He recited the code and his full name. The other line droned in his right ear for a full minute.
“U.S. Consulate General Tijuana. How may I help you?”
“Yes, this is Detective Michael Barrish with the San Diego Police Department.”
“Yes, sir. How are you?”
“I’m, um...fine, thank you. How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks. Are you asking about your dispatch here?”
“No, I was hoping to speak to somebody in your custody.”
“Oh...we don’t have anyone in custody at the moment.” Michael peered back up the hill at Sool. He was still standing in the long grass with his gaze locked southward. A fly buzzed around his head and landed on his chest. He did not seem to notice it.
“I’m sorry. I’m looking for a Julio de la Cruz. He was in your custody this morning.”
“Oh no, he wasn’t in our custody.”
“I was told he’d be at the consulate?”
“I’m not sure.” Michael heard her rifle through papers on the other end of the line. “I think I heard his name before. I don’t know much about it. They told me they were taking him to the hospital before turning him over to us.”
“Did anyone else come between the bombing and now?”
“Oh yeah. Tourists. Lot of tourists. Some local law enforcement. A few ex-pats. And a special agent with the, uh...you know, I don’t know what agency he’s with.”
“Do you know his name?”
“You know, I can’t remember. I’ve seen him around before. He’s been in and out a few times. He’s real nice.” The fly flew off of Sool’s chest.
Michael heard the words “‘atta boy” exclaimed behind him. He spun around and saw Bronco yanking at his leash, dragging Blaylock over the crest of the hill and toward a planned community at the end of the street.
“Okay. Thank you for your help, Ms., uh...”
“Oh my name’s Tonya Agee. I’m the administrative assistant here.”
“Okay. Thank you, Ms. Agee. Have, uh...have a nice day.” Michael hung up and walked back up the hill. He handed the phone back to Jen. The MTVR’s engine bellowed as it began to crawl up the road.
The ten guardsmen crested over a
small ridge and made their way down a loosely packed trail and onto pavement. Bronco led them across the vacant thoroughfare and onto Eagle Drive. They marched passed a stone sign with the words “Obsidian Hills” carved into it. The MTVR trailed the unit nearly one hundred yards back.
The unit stalked up a block of identical, mauve-colored homes. Each house featured a two-car garage and a tiled, hipped roof. The sidewalks and streets were devoid of people and vehicles.
Bronco lifted his nose from the pavement. He turned toward the house numbered 1575 and began barking wildly. Blaylock pulled the dog back and patted his side, abating his yelping. The guardsmen lifted their rifles to low ready as they fixed their attention on the house.
The driveway was empty. No cars sat on the curb outside. The mailbox by the front door was overflowing with envelopes and catalogs. The curtains were drawn over every window.
Sool removed the earphones from his ears and approached Michael.
“They on vacation or what?”
“Huh?”
“They on vacation? I thought this was your beat.”
“We don’t keep track of everyone’s vacation time.”
“If that’s your excuse. Let’s see what’s going on.”
Both Peters and Garcia sprinted down a gravel path behind 1575 Eagle Drive. The path traversed a ridge overlooking the backyard. They fell to their stomachs and trained their rifles at the rear windows and doors. Peters removed an infrared sensor from his fatigues and directed it at the house. The heat of the late afternoon sun scrambled any clear signatures. He radioed that there was a fair amount of heat coming from a plastic toolshed sitting in the corner of the backyard.
Starr took position atop the MTVR’s cab. Her vision inside the house was limited. The residents in the surrounding homes gathered by their windows and gawked at the operation outside. A few hundred yards down the road, a smattering of news vans started to gather near the stone sign.
Michael was standing beside the MTVR when the ringing in his left ear returned. He looked skyward. A black police helicopter moved in from the southwest. Three more media helicopters hovered above it. The detective deactivated his hearing aid. He opened the passenger door of the truck, removed his sidearm from the compartment under the dashboard and clipped it onto his belt. He approached Jen with his hand firmly placed again his firearm.