River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “I’d guess alive, if you saw him in Colorado.”

  “Me, too. But there’s a difference between being alive, and being officially alive as far as the government is concerned. I just don’t get why an army captain’s history is so hard for an agency operative to access. Every avenue I try to take to find out more, I run into a roadblock.”

  “There’s army, and then there’s army,” Loesser said. “They have their spooks too, right? Maybe he’s one of them.”

  “Maybe. You’d never know it from the file.”

  “Hardly surprising.”

  “So what, Ron? You think me digging around trying to find out more about this guy has got people agitated here?”

  “I don’t see any other reason. Your Moon Flash operation isn’t making waves anywhere else, is it?”

  “I don’t think so. Ever since Ingersoll’s death, this has been consuming all my energies.”

  Loesser finally put the pencil down. He’d been hanging on to it like a life preserver. “Well, that’s going to end.”

  Dizziness swept Truly, as if he’d been picked up and suspended him upside down over Loesser’s desk. “Meaning…?”

  Loesser’s tone changed. He leaned forward, a frown creasing his forehead. “They’re shutting it down.”

  “Shutting down…?”

  “Your whole operation. Moon Flash. It’s history, James. Wave bye-bye.”

  “You’re kidding.” The suspended feeling vanished, replaced by the sensation of falling from the ceiling into a subbasement.

  “I’m not kidding. Effective immediately. You know as well as I do that it’s all a bunch of horseshit, James. All that psychic crap. It’s a gigantic waste of taxpayer dollars, all for a ridiculous holdover from the Cold War. Oh no, the Russkies have mindreaders—we need them, too!”

  “It’s not quite like that,” Truly said. He realized that he bit the words off, snapping at his boss, and it surprised him. He had shared that basic sentiment the entire time he’d been running the program. Now that it was being taken away seemed like an odd time to develop a sentimental attachment.

  “It is like that. Those are the roots of it, anyway. And can you honestly say the program has made a quantifiable contribution to the American intelligence effort since, I don’t know…ever?”

  Truly had held the same argument with himself a thousand times, and he always came up with the same answer. “Not really. Not quantifiable in any real way. It’s always been more about potential than actual benefit, like the missile defense shield.”

  “That’s a low blow.”

  “But it’s true. If the idea is that we might face possible threats of various natures and we should have defenses in place to counter them, then Moon Flash makes as much sense as anything else.”

  “If you happen to believe in things like ESP.”

  “Do you happen to believe that al-Qaeda has the capability to launch ICBMs?”

  Loesser grinned and placed his palms down on his desk. “Point taken.”

  He was silent for a few moments. Truly couldn’t stand it anymore. “So that’s it, then?”

  “You’ll be transferred into an analysis post. It’ll be better for your career, anyway. Same for your staff. You’ll all come out of this fine.”

  “We will,” Truly said. “But what about Lawrence Ingersoll and Millicent Wong? What about the rest of the psychics?”

  “They’re on their own, like they’ve always been. What do you want, for us to give them gold watches? We can’t admit we were ever in bed with them, James. You can make a few phone calls, let them know what’s going on. That’s about it.”

  Truly nodded slowly, but his mind was already racing.

  A few phone calls.

  That, he would definitely do.

  * * *

  He started with one to his father.

  “I’m going to need a favor,” he said after the usual formalities had been dispensed with. “Maybe several favors.”

  “Tell me,” Willard Carsten Truly said. His tone was flat, neutral. As a United States senator, he had been asked for a lot of favors. Some he had done, others he’d turned down. Favors were the politician’s stock in trade—that, and campaign cash—and Truly’s father understood how to play the game as well as any politician in recent American history. Truly would never believe that the man couldn’t have been president, if he had decided to run. In the end, he had been happy with a long career in the Senate, during which he had wielded plenty of power.

  It was that power that Truly counted on, even now, more than a decade out of office.

  “The agency is killing Moon Flash.”

  “In what way?”

  “Defunding it, shutting it down, closing the doors. How many ways are there to kill an intelligence program?”

  “More than that,” his father said. “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “Well. It’s about time, I must say. You’ve been chasing those ghosts quite long enough.”

  Truly started to formulate an argument—something about how chasing ghosts wasn’t the job—but decided not to bother. They’d had the debate plenty of times, and as when he argued with Ron Loesser, he couldn’t put his full weight behind his own position because he agreed too readily with theirs.

  “What is it you want from me?” Willard Truly asked. “Will you finally be needing a new job?”

  “No, that’s not it. The agency’s going to shuffle me to some other post.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’m going to make some waves, I’m afraid. I’m in the middle of something, and I want to finish it before I ride off into whatever sunset they have lined up for me. But it’s going to piss people off. Including people who live upstairs from Ron Loesser.”

  “That’s a fairly elevated address, as I recall.”

  “That’s right. They’re the ones applying downward pressure, making him close my shop.”

  “I see.” Truly detected a note of enthusiasm in his father’s voice. He was intrigued by this, as he always was by the gamesmanship of government.

  “So what I’ll need is some major ass-covering when things hit the fan. I don’t want the plug pulled in the middle of what I’m about to launch. And I don’t want to be killed.”

  “Son, the agency doesn’t—”

  “I’m not one of your constituents, Pop. I’m me. Save it.”

  “You so rarely call me that anymore. I quite like hearing it.”

  “So you’ll do it? You’ll run interference for me?”

  “To the best of my abilities, son. Happily. I must tell you, I’m pleased to see you showing this kind of spine. Going to give those hidebound intelligence bureaucrats fits, eh? Count me in.”

  “I’ll try to keep you posted, Pop,” Truly said. “But just in case, it wouldn’t hurt to keep your ear to the ground so you can listen for trouble when it starts.”

  “I always do, James. I always do.”

  Truly hung up, pleased with his father’s reaction. All these years later, he had finally done something that made the man proud, and all it took was a promise to disobey a direct order from his immediate supervisor at the CIA.

  Maybe I should have done that sooner, he thought. He picked the phone up again, to reserve a flight to El Paso and a rental car. Still, better now than never.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Molly drove her own car that night, because Wade would immediately recognize the Xterra after their trip to Malo Duro in it. She owned a grayish, decade-old Toyota Camry that even she didn’t recognize half the time. She sat outside the Hilton Garden Inn, watching Wade’s Focus as she had the other night. This time, she was determined not to lose track of him. She had downed two cups of coffee, and she had a third with her. Although the trip had exhausted her—not nearly as much as it had Byrd, who’d they’d had to pile into a wheelchair just to get from the car to the hospital door)—she meant to stay awake, no matter what. Anyway, the excursion had reminded her how effective
surveillance of a killer could be.

  Wade emerged shortly after eleven. He had changed into black jeans, a dark sweater, and a denim jacket. A black Braves cap was pulled low over his brow. He didn’t look around, didn’t seem particularly concerned that anyone might see him. He simply walked to his car, got in, cranked it up and switched on the lights. Molly gave him a few lengths and followed.

  He headed straight down Oregon Street. For a few minutes, she wondered if he would go to the freeway and drive back to Palo Duro. He had given that woman his number, after all. And he was a TV star, at least in certain circles. The woman had claimed never to have seen him, but maybe that was just a line to lure him in. Maybe she had called, and he was headed for the Palo Duro Motel for a late-night assignation.

  But he drove past the on-ramp and into downtown. Here, the traffic was thicker despite the hour. She stayed a few cars back, hoping he wouldn’t lose her at a light. He didn’t seem to have a specific destination, but cruised El Paso, Santa Fe, Sixth, Seventh—the port of entry area, where most of the shops would have been at home on either side of the line. Piñatas dangled from window overhangs, as did net bags of soccer balls and bright paper flowers. Garish statues of Elvis Presley and the Blues Brothers stood in front of Dave’s Pawn Shop, and Molly could hear “Hound Dog” blasting from the store’s speakers over her car stereo.

  Most of the people out on the streets—and even at this hour, there were quite a few—were Hispanic. Some had obviously just crossed over the border and were carrying shopping bags with purchases from Mexico, others were emerging from bars or heading inside them.

  Wade navigated these streets slowly, deliberately, like someone looking for a particular address. Or a particular victim, Molly thought. She scratched the back of her left hand. In Palo Duro, her skin hadn’t been so dry and itchy, but it had started up almost as soon as she was back in town.

  After about twenty minutes, he drove up Santa Fe toward the convention center. Traffic was lighter here, the dark sidewalks largely empty. Molly had to stay farther back. When Wade suddenly pulled into a parking spot, she was already committed to the block—on which she saw no other available spaces—and she had to drive past, turning her head away and down as she did so.

  Another block up, she found a spot. Not a legal parking place, but she didn’t plan to leave the car. She could see Wade’s Focus, illuminated by a lonely streetlight, in her rearview. He was still sitting in it, hands tight on the wheel.

  It wasn’t until she looked past his car that she saw what must have made him stop in the first place. Two people trudged up the sidewalk on the far side of the street, burdened with shopping bags. One of them was probably in his forties, Hispanic, short and squat. The second was younger, midtwenties, maybe. She could have been the first one’s daughter. And she was soon to be a mother herself, her swollen belly bulging out between the flaps of her winter jacket.

  Mesmerized, Molly watched them close in on Wade. They chatted wearily as they climbed the gentle slope. The young woman laughed at something the man said, teeth catching stray light and flashing white in the darkness. Molly wanted to warn them, to leap from her car and shout something that would send them running the other direction.

  But she didn’t.

  When they were even with his car, Wade threw his door open and jumped out. The pair screeched in surprise—startled, not truly frightened yet. When he dashed across the street toward them, the real terror began.

  The older one let out a loud cry for help. The pregnant one dropped her bags, holding on to her purse and swinging it at Wade by its shoulder strap as he charged them. It bounced off his shoulder without effect. He went for the older one first, bulling past the shopping bags. Wade drove the butt of his palm into the man’s chin. The blow snapped the man’s head back and he went down.

  The pregnant woman faced Wade, legs apart for balance, the purse strap clutched in her right fist. She looked strong and determined, a lioness defending her unborn cub. Molly thought Wade had a fight on his hands.

  He didn’t waste any time getting into it. He ducked down and scooped up some of the stuff that had burst from a dropped bag, hurling it toward her face. When she threw up an arm to block it, he attacked.

  He drove into her midsection, shoulder-first, barreling her to the ground. There he straddled her, ignoring her blows, and wrapped his hands around her throat. As he choked her, he forced her head up and down, slamming it against the pavement. Molly watched, thinking it would be over within seconds, but the woman kept struggling and Wade strangled her and bashed her over and over and over. Finally, the woman’s arms and legs spasmed and relaxed. Wade rolled off her.

  Molly watched the attack with her fist clenched excitedly. It was like the night’s darkness had erased everything but Wade and his victims spotlit for her voyeuristic pleasure, a ballet of violence and terror with only one inevitable conclusion.

  The man was up on his hands and knees now, pawing inside his pocket. He brought out a cell phone just as Wade reached him. Wade slapped it from his hands, grabbed his head, pressed his knee against the man’s spine and yanked his head backward, toward him. Molly couldn’t hear the snap from where she sat, transfixed, but she could imagine it.

  Wade didn’t stand around enjoying his kills, but hurried back to his car, slammed the door, and drove away. Molly ducked when he passed her, just in case. After he was gone, she found she couldn’t follow. Her legs vibrated from excitement; her back and sides were drenched with sweat. She wiped damp hair from her brow.

  She sat like that, gripped by a bizarre, undeniable thrill, until she heard the first siren. As if that had released her, she started the Camry and drove off, leaving the fresh corpses alone in the night.

  * * *

  Wade woke up—that was the best way he could phrase it—while driving east on Interstate 10, in the right-hand lane, near the Zaragosa exit. He had no idea how long he had been driving—didn’t remember even leaving his hotel room—but the rental’s clock said it was 12:32. Fortunately traffic was light, and whatever had possessed him to go out sleep-driving, if there was such a thing, at least seemed to be in control of the car. It wasn’t until he jolted into consciousness that he swerved out of his lane. A speeding pickup blasted its horn and Wade snapped the car back into place.

  The rumble of his tires on the roadway spoke to him in words he could almost understand.

  Hands trembling, he pulled off the highway, onto the frontage road, and into the first parking lot he came to. There he killed the engine and sat, his body quaking as adrenaline drained from him. He felt weak, nauseated. What the hell was that about? he wondered, resting his forehead on his knuckles.

  A bolt of unexpected pain lanced through him. He yanked his head back, reached up, flipped on the dome light.

  His knuckles were raw, scraped and bruised.

  He didn’t remember damaging his hands in Palo Duro. Maybe if they had tried to go into the cave, he would have, but he didn’t, and

  pregnant

  and if anything else had happened to them, he couldn’t bring it to

  kethili

  bring it to mind.

  Images flashed through his head, unfamiliar yet somehow not. A pregnant woman, on her back, struggling for breath. A man, carrying bundles, screaming in horror.

  In the light from overhead, he examined his hands more closely. Brown-red stains on the sides looked like blood, but not his. Was he

  kethili-anh ra nia tapotec istryllium kethili

  was he losing it, somehow? Hallucinating, or worse?

  He started the car again, turned the radio on, punched the tuning buttons looking for local news. A few minutes later, he found a station and listened, his breathing shallow and strained.

  “Two people were reportedly killed tonight near the convention center, in what a police spokesman is describing as an especially brutal double homicide. Detectives are—”

  Wade snapped the radio off.

  This couldn’t be hap
pening.

  He had spent the day reliving memories of his father. His father, the murderer, whose killing spree had been stopped only by Byrd and that strange, glowing liquid in the cave.

  His father, the madman.

  Could madness be hereditary? Brutal, homicidal madness?

  Brent Scheiner had been a bastard, an abuser, a man who preyed on the weak, but until after his fight with Byrd, until he suddenly snapped, he had never been a killer.

  Hallucinatory nightmare scraps swam in Wade’s vision, splashes from memory’s current. Two people on a darkened sidewalk. Blood pooling under the pregnant one’s head. The crack of the other’s spine, his body suddenly limp, the stench when he voided himself. Kethili-anh ka nakastata ne gasta. A lipstick tube, price tag still affixed to its lid, rolling off the curb and into the street.

  He touched his shoulder, sore, maybe bruised—

  Where she hit me with her purse.

  Oh, fuck me, he thought, tears springing with sudden urgency to his eyes, a moaning sob escaping his lips, where she hit me with her purse.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Molly sat with a cup of coffee, cream, no sugar, and a single slice of buttered toast. The TV was on. Matt and Meredith were sparring behind their Today desk when her phone rang. Early morning calls were rare, and she worried that it was the hospital—that yesterday’s jaunt had been too much for Byrd. With a trembling, reluctant hand, she lifted the phone. “Hello?”

  “Molly, it’s Wade. I’ve got to talk to you. Can you meet me for breakfast?”

  She swallowed the bit of toast in her mouth, brushed crumbs off her lower lip. He sounded awful, like he hadn’t slept and was coming down with something. “Sure. Is everything okay?”