River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  The abbreviated visit allowed her to get to her desk early. The downside was that Gretchen Fuchs, who had haunted her dreams, making for a restless night, lingered at that desk—in spirit, if not in fact. She seemed to be hunched over Molly’s computer, waiting for Molly to reach conclusions about why she couldn’t be there in the flesh.

  Molly was immersed in Google listings, having searched for Gretchen’s name just to see what turned up, when Frank startled her by touching the back of her chair.

  “Sorry,” he said when she wheeled around. She figured she looked like she’d been kicked. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Maybe I just scare easily when I’m digging around in the pasts of murder victims.” She hadn’t quite forgiven Frank for assigning her to this story.

  At the same time, she couldn’t deny that a certain fascination with it was setting in.

  “Funny you should mention murder.”

  “Oh God, Frank, what now?”

  He pulled a chair over from an unoccupied desk and rolled it close. He smelled like coffee and a hint of some citrus shampoo or soap. “Three men were killed, late last night or this morning. Two of them had their throats cut. The third…well, it sounds like the killer tried to push him through a chain-link fence. Not through a hole in the fence, through the fence.”

  Molly wasn’t able to quite picture it, but the image she got was bad enough. “Oh my God. Who were they?”

  “Migrants, it looks like. They were still wet from swimming across. You ever been to La Hacienda, that Mexican restaurant by the river, just east of downtown?”

  “Off Highway 85. Sure.”

  “They were killed in that little park there.”

  She pictured a grassy swath with a few mesquite trees around it, the little circle of plaques that she had read once and then completely forgotten, the mud and gravel parking lot, mostly mud during the summer storms and this time of year. Then she envisioned the fence at the back, through which Mexico was just a stone’s throw. Visualizing that fence in her mind allowed her to get a better sense of what someone might look like after having been pushed through it. Kind of like garlic going through a press, she imagined, only with blood and organs and lots and lots of pain.

  “Last night?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Border patrol found them a little before midnight.”

  “You don’t want me to work this into my story about Gretchen Fuchs, do you? Because I’m sure these aren’t related. I don’t see how they could be, anyway.”

  “No, Molly. This is a separate story. But it’s one I’d like you to think about, when you’re finished with the Fuchs piece and while you’re not otherwise pumping your friend Wade for his escape story.”

  “Fine,” she said, suppressing a sigh. Boosting circulation was fine, but she had never been—nor wanted to become—a crime reporter.

  Molly sometimes wore a pink Ni Una Vida pin. “Not One Life” referred to the unexplained murders of hundreds of women in Juárez over the span of a decade or so. More than four hundred bodies had been found, and hundreds of other women were still missing. The killings had tapered off—some people claimed they had stopped altogether, that the killer had died or been imprisoned on some other charge—but this presumed there was only one killer for all those women, which seemed impossible. Every now and then another body turned up, sexually assaulted and brutalized.

  Everyone who had lived in El Paso during the worst of it knew that only a thin strip of water and a tall fence stood between the killers and them. Some even speculated that the killers were Americans, crossing the border to satisfy their psychotic urges.

  Gretchen Fuchs hadn’t been raped, and the three migrants had been men, so those murders didn’t match the Juárez killings. Still, the idea that four people had been murdered in the space of twenty-four hours disturbed her.

  She thought about the little park again, with the lights of Mexico across the way. The men must have stood on that side, looking at the lights of the United States, with hopes of coming here in search of a better life.

  And then she remembered the muddy parking lot, how when she had eaten at La Hacienda, she’d had to wash her car the next day because she’d got mud halfway up her door.

  This reminded her of Wade’s rental car, and the mud she had seen on it at the hospital.

  Mud he couldn’t have picked up between the Hilton Garden Inn and the hospital, all of two or three blocks apart on paved roads.

  Frank stared at her. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Just…nothing. I need to make some calls, that’s all, so I can get moving on this story.”

  “Make the magic happen, Molly,” he said as he wheeled the borrowed chair back to its original home. “That’s what you do best.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Millicent Wong was, in fact, full of demands.

  The worst was the ballroom dancing, and that was the one that had nearly made Truly rescind his plea for her help. Having agreed to it, though, the others seemed minor in comparison.

  The next most egregious demand was that she would only fly as far as Denver. Truly understood that one. The flight from Hong Kong was plenty long enough, and the last thing she would want at the end of it was to climb onto a puddle-jumper down to Alamosa. It meant driving her halfway across the state, but he could manage. And the ballroom dancing options were more numerous in the Denver area than elsewhere in Colorado. That night, she would dance, and the next day they’d drive to what remained of Lawrence Ingersoll’s house.

  In Michigan, Truly had arranged a quick lesson. He would be no Fred Astaire, but he might be able to avoid crushing Millicent’s tiny feet if he was forced to dance. When she deplaned in Denver, resplendent in a red outfit—all red, hat, coat, dress, shoes, purse—he realized that the pictures he’d seen in her files, and the statistics he’d read, didn’t quite do her doll-like appearance justice. She was just under five feet tall. She might weigh ninety pounds, attired as she was at the moment. Her features were delicate, her hands miniature. She could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty, but her file said she had been born in 1922.

  He had taken her directly to the Hotel Monaco, where he’d reserved rooms for both of them, and she had a bath and a couple hours’ sleep. Truly was sure she would rather not dance immediately after flying, but they didn’t have a choice. They would be spending the following night in a decidedly less luxurious motel in Alamosa, and the day after that he had to get her to Denver International by noon for a two o’clock flight home.

  He had promised her dancing, and that’s what she’d get. Not his problem if she was too worn out to enjoy it.

  When it was time, he called her room and told her he would meet her in the lobby, which had the feel of a Turkish mosque designed by someone who’d spent a little too much time with the hookah. He was staying in the Grace Slick suite, all stripes and modernity, while she had opted for a Mediterranean suite, perhaps out of a general distaste for rock (and jazz, another option was the Miles Davis suite).

  She stepped into the lobby and he found himself astonished all over again. She looked radiant. She had exchanged the red traveling clothes for a red silk dress cut snugly over a body that was petite but surprisingly curvy. Her dress flared just below her knees. Her red coat was draped over one arm. Truly didn’t know how she would be able to dance in her spike heels, but she walked with confidence. She had bathed and made up her ageless face, and he couldn’t detect a hint of weariness in her.

  “James,” she said, taking one of his hands in both of hers. She seemed as light as a bird, hollow-boned and about to take flight. Looking into his eyes, she added, “You don’t have to dance, you know.”

  “No, it’s fine, Millicent,” he said.

  “Remember who I am.”

  Who she was, was the most powerful sensitive the CIA had ever turned up. Calling her a mindreader wouldn’t have been too far off th
e mark, except that it understated her gifts. “You’re right,” he said. “I kind of wish you wouldn’t do that, but it’s true, I’m not really much of a dancer, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’re virtually screaming it. One wouldn’t have to be sensitive to know that you don’t want to dance with me.”

  “I guess that’s probably true, too.”

  “You’re an open book, Mr. Truly.”

  “So I’ve been told. Shall we go?”

  “By all means.” Grinning, she hooked her arm beneath his and let him lead her to the rented Escalade waiting in front of the building.

  The dance was held in the second-floor ballroom of a Lakewood hotel. The place was on the seedy side, which made Truly glad he had chosen the luxurious Monaco to stay in. But nicely dressed couples, and some singles, headed into the place from the parking lot and milled around the lobby. Truly and Millicent climbed a wide, carpeted staircase with inexplicable sticky black spots on it, emerging onto a mezzanine full of people who had come for the dance. In the ballroom a small orchestra played. Truly didn’t recognize the song, but he doubted that he would know many of the songs he heard tonight. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, and he hoped his own lack of enthusiasm wouldn’t bring anyone down.

  He needn’t have worried.

  During their first two hours in the ballroom, Millicent probably spent about forty seconds without a dance partner. Those were the first forty seconds, when she walked in behind Truly and he hadn’t yet moved out of her way. Once she became visible to the room, the men seemed to sniff out a superb dancer and pleasurable companion. They flocked to her, and she disappeared into someone’s arms.

  Truly sought out the bar.

  A couple of times, as he observed from the sidelines, women approached him and asked him to dance. He declined all invitations. He hadn’t come to dance, or to meet anyone, although from the vibe in the room he doubted that it was much of a pick-up spot. He made an effort to keep an eye on Millicent, while trying not to stare at his wristwatch. They would have to get an early start in the morning, and he hoped, without actually believing, that she would get bored quickly and they could return to the hotel.

  For the second hour, most of her time was dominated by one man. He had a stern face with a flat nose, a jutting chin, and short salt-and-pepper hair. His jaw was firm, his build solid, and he danced with an economical grace that made Truly think he was a powerful man. He wore a black suit that strained at the shoulders, with a narrow tie and plain black shoes that reminded Truly of military dress shoes.

  At the bar again (he was drinking slowly, interspersing glasses of club soda with the alcohol), he had to wait while a young woman ordered a vodka and Coke, which sounded repulsive to him. Truly went with club soda again. He drank a nice fourteen-year-old Scotch when he drank at all, and he wondered how people mixed colas with clear liquor, or Red Bull with anything.

  While he was at the bar, a couple had taken over the table he’d been hogging most of the evening. The man had his shoes off and was massaging his feet. Truly decided not to sit there again, at least not right away.

  That was when he realized he hadn’t seen Millicent in quite a while. Holding his drink, he cruised the floor, trying to feign gracefulness and not spill on anyone. He couldn’t find Millicent anywhere.

  “You looking for that Asian lady?” a man asked him as he stood by himself on the dance floor, no doubt appearing hopelessly lost.

  Truly focused on the man. He was short and would have been called portly once. Truly didn’t know if that word was still in common use, but it described this guy perfectly. “Yes, have you seen her?”

  “I saw you come in with her. She’s a heck of a dancer, I gotta say. Heck of a dancer. We don’t get her kind in here very often.”

  “Have you seen her?” Truly asked again.

  “Few minutes ago.” The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a balcony overlooking the parking lot. Truly had gone out there once, for a minute, found it mostly full of smokers willing to risk the cold for their nicotine fix, and he hadn’t given it another thought.

  Millicent didn’t smoke, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t accompanied someone who did.

  “She was with some guy,” the man continued. “Big bruiser, not someone I’ve seen here before. Anyhow, I was thinking about asking her to dance again, but she hasn’t come back in.”

  “Thanks,” Truly said, already moving away from the man. He burst through the glass door and out onto the balcony. As before, a handful of dedicated smokers huddled near the door. Millicent wasn’t among them, and neither was the big man in the dress shoes.

  Truly pushed through the smokers. The night was bitterly cold, the kind of cold that makes you think your lungs will freeze and crack open if you breathe too deeply. But the balcony angled around the building, and he had to check the area he couldn’t see in case the couple had gone in search of privacy.

  Around the corner, he found Millicent.

  She was crumpled against the solid wall of the building. Her head lolled at an unnatural angle. Her unseeing eyes were open, blood trickled from her mouth and ran, due to the angle, into her left nostril.

  His lungs hadn’t frozen, but Truly thought maybe his heart had.

  She had been as nice as anyone he’d ever met—dedicated to her passions, but so what? She had been willing to fly all the way from Hong Kong to help him. She was, it seemed, one of the most popular players in the subculture of the occult, and with good reason.

  And she’d been able to read minds.

  Still, someone—the guy in the dark suit and shiny shoes, Truly was certain—had been able to lure her outside, where he snapped her neck like an iced-over branch.

  He was supposed to work with these people, and, to the best of his abilities, to take care of them. Now he’d lost two, in less than a week.

  Lawrence Ingersoll hadn’t been his fault.

  Millicent Wong was. No question about that.

  He would be in the shit over this, and it would fly from every direction. And he would deserve it. Not only had he failed to make his own mark, he had been responsible for the death of a good woman.

  He went back inside to find the club’s manager. On the way he stopped by a table where Millicent and the big man had sat and talked between dances. There were still two empty glasses on it, one with Millicent’s crimson lipstick staining the top. Truly lifted the other one with a cocktail napkin and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

  He hadn’t been fully invested in this whole business before. It had been a distraction from his personal issues, something to break up the boredom of his nowhere job.

  Whoever the big man was, he had changed this by killing Millicent Wong. Now Truly was on board. He would ferret out the gray-haired man’s identity, and that man would pay. Truly owed his network at least that much.

  And he owed himself, too.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Molly knew it was stupid.

  It was stupid because she knew Wade. Had known him since they were kids.

  At the same time, she hadn’t seen much of him for the last ten years or so. And he’d been through a traumatic experience recently, held captive by Iraqi insurgents. Who knew what that could do to a person? How could he come out of it not messed up even a little?

  Still, it was stupid.

  It was all circumstantial evidence. That’s what they would have called it on a TV lawyer show, right? She had no physical evidence, nothing the CSI crew could stick under a microscope, unless they could match the mud on Wade’s rented Ford to that from the parking lot outside La Hacienda. And from the other killing, Gretchen Fuchs, she didn’t even have mud. Just the knowledge that Wade, who hadn’t spent much time in El Paso over the last decade or so, hadn’t known where to park at the mall, and Gretchen’s home had been near where he had parked. Out the mall exit, left at the light, and you were practically to her house.

  Molly had spent all day on the phone
and at the computer, and what she had come up with was this: nobody on earth had any reason to kill Gretchen.

  She was universally liked. Even the people who had been laid off from the travel agency, where she had kept her job, hadn’t blamed her, and they’d all said they would miss working with her. Gretchen didn’t have the greatest luck with men, and she was not, at the moment, dating anyone seriously—or even frivolously, that Molly could determine—but the men she had dated still liked her. Nobody had anything to gain from her death. Nobody profited. Nobody wanted to see her dead.

  Which made the murder a crime of opportunity. She had been killed because she had been available, outside in the backyard at the time the murderer happened to be there. He hadn’t been stalking her—he had just seen her and taken his shot. The police, utterly without clues, agreed.

  Wade had just flown into town. He would have had no opportunity to stalk anyone.

  Could he, in the intervening decade, have become some sort of psycho killer? Wouldn’t there have been signs in his youth?

  Well, there were, of course. She didn’t know much about killers, but if genetics were a component, he’d be a natural. She’d never known Wade to kill anything bigger than a trout, but maybe that didn’t mean anything.

  Thinking about it—about sitting across from him at The Greenery, about him spending time in Byrd’s room—made her stomach churn and ache.

  She had thought there was something strange going on when he had said that unfamiliar word, then denied saying it. Kethili. Or had she been the one who said it? She couldn’t remember anymore. They had both needed rest, no doubt.

  Still, she had to know for certain.

  After work, instead of going home, she drove to Oregon Street and managed, with patience and some aggressive driving, to get a parking spot on the street from which she could see the exit for the hospital’s public lot. When Wade left, she would see him, even if he had walked over, because the route from Providence Memorial to his hotel would also take him down Oregon.