Scorpion Rain

by David Cole

  Big mistake.

  5

  “Laura?”

  Kamesh tugged the hem of my flannel nightshirt.

  “Laura, wake up. There’s somebody outside.”

  I thumbed at my eyes to clear the sleep film, sat halfway up. My bedroom faced the driveway, and I could see bubblegum police lights flickering. Two men stood in the high-beam headlight shafts, one of them with what looked like a shotgun. Fumbling open my nightstand drawer, I took out my Glock. Kamesh winced as I racked a shell into the chamber.

  My front doorbell chimed, again and again. Passing through the kitchen, I flattened against the refrigerator as a shadow flickered across the window. I moved through the darkened house to the front door just as somebody rapped loudly on the door, three times, then three times again.

  “Miss Winslow?”

  Behind me, I saw Kamesh in the hallway, already getting dressed. He hated guns, hated whenever I left one lying around the house.

  “Miss Winslow! I’m Captain Cruz. INS.”

  Yeah, well, I’m Donald Duck, I thought.

  Anybody can pretend to be anybody.

  “Miss Winslow? Please come to the door. I have a phone call for you from Michelle Gilbert.”

  I punched in my alarm system code and opened the door.

  “Cruz,” he said. “Border Patrol. Take this.”

  He held out a cell phone to me, his right arm fully extended, his body slightly leaning away from me when he saw the Glock with the hammer back.

  “Ma’am, please don’t point that weapon at me.”

  I took the cell phone, shut the door with Cruz still outside.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Gilbert. About those other names you gave me. All four of the people are missing. I don’t have much time to talk with you, but Captain Cruz will leave one of his men with you. In the morning, when I’m back in Tucson, I’ll be at your house to look at whatever you’ve got on your computer.”

  “I won’t be here.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  “I have a contract job tomorrow,” I said. “I can’t cancel out.”

  “That’s why Cruz and Gonzalez are there. Protection.”

  “I’ve got protection. I’ve also got a job in the morning.”

  “Something you can do from your house?”

  “I have to be in Phoenix at four A.M. At the Perryville prison.”

  “When will you return home?”

  “Early afternoon. Four, at the latest.”

  “All right.” She sighed. “I’m so busy, I probably could use the time down here. Will you be at Perryville all day, in case I need to reach you?”

  “No. Going from Perryville to Nogales, then back here. All four are gone?”

  “No trace. But none of the families are talking. I think they’ve paid ransoms and are just waiting to get the person back. But these money people have rules of their own.”

  “It was Margaret Admiral? The body?”

  “Yes. It was her. But it wasn’t a body.”

  “The TV story about mutilation…was it bad?”

  “I really don’t know. All we found was a hand.”

  She paused, uncertain how much to tell me.

  “What?” I said. “What else did you find with the hand?”

  “A note,” she said finally. “The hand was left so we could take fingerprints. But we’d never find anything else, any other…body parts, never find Margaret Admiral. She was dead, the note said. We have no way of knowing if that’s true or not, no way of knowing if it’s just a ploy for a bigger ransom. Gotta go.”

  Gilbert told Cruz that I’d be leaving the house at three, which was only an hour away. Kamesh tried to drive off in his ’63 Corvette, but Cruz held him until Gilbert said it was okay to let him go.

  A hand. All they found of Margaret Admiral was a hand.

  I made up my mind right then. Do this last job with Meg, close up my house, move somewhere else. A long, long way from Tucson, far enough away so I’d never again have Hannibal Lecter leaving me messages.

  victorio

  sestrichka,

  we are in place, waiting…when i say we i mean the usual contracted arrangements…this time, a major drug cartel in Sonora, just across the border…they have the men, the guns, whatever, mostly, they care little for who they slaughter so i avoid their plans to the point of know how as long as i know where.

  got email message that you’d verified receipt of the Admiral woman’s materials…she was difficult…terrified…when we approached her with the nurse in an operating room gown and mask, she knew and she fought…the nurse finally slashed a carotid artery, unavoidable but blood spurted like a fountain, like a scarified goat…down here, Chac Mool smiled at his Mayan memories, he enjoyed the blood…i don’t like having him with me, but he is merciless, psychopathic, and entirely desirable to run the campo de sequestration…we were afraid that the blood loss would damage some of the organs, the cerebral materials, the brain…that’s why some of the body parts were not in the ice-packed shipment.

  now very early morning…radio contact with the cartel, everything in place, more later.

  in her memory,

  v

  6

  The Perryville State Prison complex was in Goodyear, Arizona, butting up against the western edge of Phoenix. At four o’clock, a thermos of triple-roast espresso nearly empty, I waited for Meg in the early dawn light.

  The parking lot in front of the administration building was almost empty, the U.S. and Arizona State flags hanging limp and furled around thirty-foot-high poles.

  Meg’s Chevy Tahoe Z71 came into the lot. She parked beside my Honda, got out clutching a handful of papers, and nodded at me without speaking before going into the building. I finished my coffee, got into the driver’s seat of her Tahoe, and adjusted the seat and the mirrors, especially the mirrors. With the seventeen-inch tires, the Tahoe stood high off the ground. I like that, I liked being above most everything when I drove, I like to see what’s happening all around me.

  Meg came out of the building with two people and waved for me to drive over. I figured the older woman was LynnMay Martinez, but the man surprised me. I thought it would just be the three of us, and I got worked up about that, Meg not telling me everything. I was on the edge, what with my Ritalin and the espresso, and I wanted to control all the information. No surprises.

  Sandy hair, eyes blue as the Arizona sky, slim and muscled in his sleeveless sweatshirt and ragged cutoff shorts. Young, late twenties at most.

  “Hello,” he said, ducking into the third row of seats.

  I couldn’t place his accent, something English. But then, I really didn’t care. He carried a long, brown leather duffle bag and was unzipping it. LynnMay Martinez, barely five feet tall, squat and heavy, with short legs, so with her long skirt she seemed to glide across the pavement as she maneuvered into the passenger’s seat next to me.

  “She gets carsick,” Meg said, climbing into the middle row of seats. “She wanted to ride up front, with you. LynnMay, this is Laura.”

  “Buenas,” LynnMay said, carefully fixing her seatbelt and taking out a rosary.

  Her hair had been trimmed very short, almost a man’s haircut. I knew little about her other than the daily stories in the Phoenix and Tucson newspapers. For several years she’d been the lead forensic investigator in Nogales, Mexico. LynnMay often identified bodies from little more than chunks of bone and teeth. The irony of this wasn’t lost on me, with the discovery of Margaret Admiral’s hand. It suddenly dawned on me why there was a hand. Fingerprints. Positive identification. I wasn’t thinking very clearly about any of this.

  In the rear, the man pulled out two weapons and handed one to Meg.

  “Kyle Callaghan. Laura Winslow.”

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked.

  “Protection.”

  Meg had a funky-looking new shotgun and was already assembling it, a box of shells balanced on her knees. Callaghan was slot
ting a high-power scope on top of an automatic weapon I’d never seen. A long, thick, black barrel, pistol-grip in the middle, front grip, the butt short and compact. He saw me looking at it and smiled.

  “Styer AUG,” Kyle said. “Great to meetcha, Laura.”

  “Why is he here?” I asked Meg.

  “Last night, somebody flicked a playing card through the meal slot of LynnMay’s hotel room. The Jack of Spades. The Assistant U.S. Attorney immediately contracted me, said LynnMay was being moved directly from the courtroom to a protection cell here at Perryville until I could transport her to my safe house in Sonora. Once we get there, somebody else will take her to another safe house in San Luis Potosi.”

  I knew that LynnMay had just finished two weeks’ testimony against one of the Peraza drug cartel operating in Sonora, just below the border. She’d been in maximum protective custody, moved from one hotel to another every night, but the death threats always came the next morning. Elaborate drawings of a bark scorpion, the Peraza cartel’s logo. Somehow these scraps of paper would be pressed into her hand at some point between waking up and going to the courtroom. She was terrified, but she stuck by her testimony.

  “What’s the route?” I said.

  “Quick,” Meg said. “Straight down 10 to 19. I’ve got federal clearance for whatever speed you want to travel, but keep it safe. The state boys, the sheriffs, there are a lot of bored cowboys out there this time of morning, looking to make a quota, looking for anything unusual.”

  That’s also why I was usually anxious driving for Meg. Getting there, getting to Nogales, no matter that Meg had guaranteed safe travel, I knew nothing was guaranteed. Since I’d given up riding horses, driving was my only way to speed, to go places, to do something mindless that took me away from my computers, away from thinking and into a different kind of routine. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, I did it for Meg because she trusted me.

  Trust is a big thing with me.

  I trust almost nobody.

  “Ready to roll, mates,” Kyle said. “Ooops. Not too brilliant, that. I’m so used to weapons with my crew. All men. My mates.”

  “Women aren’t mates?” Meg said with a smile.

  “Not where I come from.”

  “Where’s that?” I asked, turning on the engine.

  “New Zealand.”

  I shifted into Drive, immediately shifted back into Park, and turned to Meg.

  “Tell me again. Why is he here?”

  “Protection.”

  “You’ve never wanted anybody else on these trips, Meg. What else?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you. No need to tell you.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Meg. Tell me what?”

  “Kyle is a kidnap and rescue expert. Like that Russell Crowe movie. He’s got a client, a very rich and very determined client who says she was kidnapped in Mexico. She escaped. She wants to find the kidnappers.”

  “But why is he here?” I asked Meg.

  “There’s a connection,” she said.

  “An extra gun?”

  “No no no no no.”

  No more explanation. I knew her well enough, when she didn’t want to talk, whatever, she’d tell me or not.

  “Cut their bloody balls off,” Kyle said. “That’s how she put it.”

  “Great,” I said, shifting into Drive. “Just count me out of everything.”

  We pulled out of the parking lot, turned onto Citrus Road, and left Perryville.

  7

  All skies should be so blue, all deserts so carpeted with spring flowers, all promises so complete. Nobody dies.

  Look there!” Meg shouted from the backseat, pointing toward Picacho Peak. Mexican goldpoppies and blue lupins flooded the meadowland around the RV park.

  “Once in thirty years we get desert flowers like that. Fantastic!”

  I fumbled two more Ritalin from my blouse pocket, popped them into my mouth, and took three long slugs from the Evian bottle next to the gearshift. The Chevy Tahoe wobbled off center when I looked sideways to find the cup holder.

  “Watch that stuff,” Meg said.

  Easy for her to say. She had her own meds, she just didn’t think I was doing very well and she was right. But it was her fault anyway, it was…that’s a copout…I’ll explain that part later…

  How it wasn’t really her fault, but…later, I’ll tell you later.

  A Sky Harbor airport shuttle van came up fast behind us in the left lane.

  “Forget the flowers,” I said.

  Nervous. Anxious.

  “Say what?” Meg shouted from the backseat.

  “Nothing.”

  “You going to tell me about it?”

  “What?”

  “Something’s bothering you, Laura.”

  “Not connected to you.”

  “Your call,” she said. “Just don’t let whatever is bothering you get in the way. Keep checking the mirrors.”

  I looked briefly at the speedometer, making sure I wasn’t over the speed limit, then raised my eyes again, straight ahead, getting in the dead center of the right lane. All the windows were triple-tinted, which made it difficult for anybody trying to see who was inside, but made looking out great in heavy sunlight.

  I went back to checking all my driving mirrors.

  When I’m driving, I check my mirrors every minute.

  It’s a compulsion.

  It’s an obsession.

  Six in the morning. Six hours into the day, I’d already taken five Ritalin pills.

  laura

  Five! Five!

  A month ago, I’d reduced intake to no more than two or three a week…it was the paranoia, I know you don’t believe me, you think paranoid is a state of psychotic whatever…but I tell you, no matter what it’s called, paranoia is anxiety…

  Flowers…desert rain last fall was just right, the flowers were magnificent…I saw so many, in all my years in Arizona, I’d never seen this fantastic bounty of rainfall that descended months before.

  Gorgeous…I am talking into my head mike, recording this on my new digital toy…

  Mexican goldpoppies, blue phacelieas, large pink and many-leaved flowers on some beavertail cactus, lupines, owl clover, brittlebrush, coral-tinged globemallows, and my favorites, the ocotillo, long spiny green branches growing every which way and tipped with red flames.

  Five pills…I have to keep track of this for my therapist, she will not be pleased…neither am I.

  I wish I’d explained my random bank account checking to Don, I wish I’d pulled the computers from the back room at the restaurant, I wish…I wish…

  A van speeding toward me from behind.

  Focus. That’s why I’m addicted to these Ritalin, they help me concentrate, they help me focus.

  8

  LynnMay Martinez braced her hands against the dashboard, breathing heavily. Meg unlocked her seatbelt to swivel sideways as she rearranged the SPAS 12 shotgun across her lap, muzzle now pointing left.

  The Sky Harbor van came up fast on my left, accelerating as it passed.

  I tried to see inside the van’s tinted windows, but it flew past at nearly ninety miles an hour, the sign painted across the rear doors a momentary blur.

  Forgeus Airport Shuttle

  Phoenix—Tucson—Nogales

  1-800-103-4827

  “See anything else?” Meg asked a few minutes later.

  “Two vans were behind us. A ways back, there were two.”

  Meg looked out the rear window, banging the shotgun muzzle against the overhead. I was sure that another van had been following since Casa Grande. A dark color, the silhouette sharp against the morning sky whenever the van topped a rise.

  But I couldn’t see it in the outside mirrors, couldn’t see anything in the central mirror except the shotgun barrel.

  “Just lay that gun on your lap,” I said. “Okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  She slid forward on the leather seat for a moment, her face just behind mine,
so close I could smell cinnamon on her breath. I could hear her breath whistle through an allergy-clogged nose. Sitting back abruptly, she racked the shotgun slide repeatedly.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “I’m loaded with deer slugs. I don’t want them.”

  The slugs hit my seatback with enough force to make me lean away.

  “Empty now,” she said. “Make you feel better?”

  Already thumbing double-ought buckshot shells into the feed tube.

  I caught her eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “I’m cool,” she said, smiling, stretching out the smile so wide that her white teeth gleamed like blank dominos.

  “The other van,” Kyle said loudly. “You’re sure? You saw it?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All clear now,” Meg said.

  “All clear,” I said to myself, waiting for the Ritalin rush, waiting to get focused. “It’s cool. I’m so cool. It’s all cool.”

  The Ritalin smacked my senses.

  Hard, brilliant.

  I smiled, focusing on US 10 traffic, checking my mirrors every thirty seconds.

  “Oh yeah,” I said to myself. “We are cool.”

  9

  “Why do you keep talking to yourself?” LynnMay asked.

  “Say what?” I hadn’t even realized I was talking out loud.

  “Sometimes, you talk into that gadget. Sometimes, you just talk to yourself.”

  “Habit. The gadget, it’s a contract.”

  “Talking to yourself? A contract to talk to yourself?”

  Without looking, I pointed at the Fujiyama prototype computer.