No, Frankie couldn’t risk that.
The woman was drunk. She was a vicious twat, but she was smart. She’d realize that getting the sixty grand was the most important thing, once he reminded her. It caused Squires to wonder if maybe he should offer the woman some kind of deal ... which is when he heard an engine start in the distance.
A second later, a truck loaded with men came fishtailing out from behind the trailer, the truck’s lights blinding him and the girl. In the same instant, a Mexican voice from behind Squires said, “Hey there, jelly boy! You stand real still or I’ll blow your damn head off.
Squires turned.
Christ! There was Laziro Victorino, grinning at him with his gold teeth. And pointing a shotgun at him—a Browning Maxus 12-gauge that Squires had kept locked in the trailer gun closet.
Victorino and Frankie together?
It took Squires a slow, stunned moment to realize what had happened. Yeah ... it had to be. Frankie and the gangbanger had teamed up. That was the only explanation. Frankie had somehow hooked up with the V-man, probably today at Red Citrus. After the woman had discovered the money missing, she would have been in the perfect mood to seduce someone like Victorino, a guy who could help her get what she wanted.
Even so, this surprised Squires, because Frankie was the most racist person he’d ever met. But here it was, staring him right in the face. And the two of them had been at it for a while, sharing some fun together, judging from the confidential looks Victorino and Frankie were now exchanging. Both of them drunk and probably cocaine crazy.
Squires had seen the woman like this many times. And the V-man was no different, he guessed—probably worse. Drunk as they were, neither one of them gave a damn about what they did or the consequences. They wanted the cash. But the V-man probably wanted Tula more or he wouldn’t have wasted his time—a girl Tula’s age was worth a lot more than sixty thousand to a business shark like him.
And they would kill him, Squires realized. They had to. Use the shotgun, but, more likely, Victorino’s box cutter. He’d do it slowly to impress Frankie, a woman probably twisted enough to video the whole thing.
That made Squires feel sort of queasy. Then he felt worse when he realized that, no, Victorino and his gangbangers would be the ones to video his murder. Get it all on their iPhones and add another snuff film to their collection.
This was all shocking information for Squires to process. He didn’t expect loyalty from Frankie, but he didn’t expect her to help a Mexican dude murder him, either. He and the redhead had spent more than four years together, most of it either screwing or screaming at each other, but they’d had some good times, too. Could Frankie let go of all that so fast?
Squires got his answer when Frankie called to Victorino, “Don’t shoot him now, dumbass! Get them in the cookshack, I’ve got the camera all set. Hurry up, it’s almost midnight!”
Cameras in the steroid shack—this was another surprise to Squires. Why not the trailer, where they had already built a porno set complete with lights and a computer?
The V-man was wagging an index finger at Tula as he pointed the shotgun at Squires, saying something in Spanish to the girl—probably ordering her into the steroid shack—before telling Frankie, “What’s the rush, now? Bring some duct tape. I’ll hold the gun on your boyfriend while you tape him.”
The woman replied, “The greaser genius giving orders again,” sounding sloppy drunk now. But still sober enough to remember that Victorino enjoyed killing women, because she added, “Duct tape. Check. I’d love to tape that worthless piece of shit.”
Squires watched the redhead walk toward the RV but then stop near the steps, where she reached down into a box. When he heard Tula scream, “Don’t you touch that!” he remembered the fledgling bird the girl had saved. Could the thing still be alive?
Yes, it was. The egret was squawking and flapping its bare wings as Frankie held the bird up in the light. The woman was grinning as she said to Victorino, “Do you Mexicans like to eat squab? I think we’ve got a bottle of champagne around her someplace.” Before the man could reply, though, the woman said, “Ouch! The little bastard just bit me!” and hurled the bird hard against the aluminum siding of the RV.
Tula gave a little shriek and swung her head away, but Victorino thought it was pretty funny, the hard-assed redhead getting bit by a bird.
Staring at Squires, the V-man grinned as he said to Frankie, “See? We’re having ourselves some fun now. What’s the hurry? Come back with the duct tape, then we gonna have more fun making movies. Hell, this dumbass probably has the money on him, maybe stashed somewhere inside his truck. It won’t be hard to find.”
As Tula sobbed, Squires was thinking, The hell it won’t.
He’d built the hidden compartment himself, using a cutting torch and the help of a magic mechanic friend of his. Frankie didn’t know about the compartment, because while she sometimes drove his Ford Roush, she never messed with his hunting truck.
More pressing on Squires’s mind was the fact that Victorino and Frankie had planned this out together. Cameras and duct tape? Those were the principal props in the few snuff films that Squires had seen. They were sickening things to watch, although he’d never admitted that to Frankie, who always had a glassy, heated look on her face by the time one of those videos ended.
Thinking about it caused Squires’s heart to pound, a slow fury building in him. Victorino would use that shitty hardware-store knife on him. He felt certain of it. And then he and Frankie would have more fun together by raping the girl, probably filming that, too.
Then an even worse scenario flashed into Squires’s mind: They would video what they did to Tula first, just to piss him off. Make him watch the whole sick business before they got around to killing him.
Again the question came into Squires’s mind: Why the cookshack, a room that was all chemicals and propane tanks but no bed?
A moment later, Victorino’s gangbanger buddies were jumping out of the truck—a Dodge Ram—as it skidded to a stop, running toward Squires and Tula. The V-man took a few quick steps, his eyes still fixed on Squires, and scooped the girl up in his left arm.
Tula screamed for help, yelling, “He has me, make him let me go!”
Squires took a step but then stopped, frozen by the gun and what was happening.
Now the girl was hollering to her invisible friend, “Jehanne! I need your help, Jehanne!” as she slapped at Victorino with her hands. Then the skinny girl shot a heartbreaking look into Squires’s eyes, pleading, “Don’t let him hurt me. All I want is my mother!”
Without even thinking about it, Squires began limping toward the V-man. Slow at first, then faster, taking long strides despite his bad hamstring.
Squires knew that the shotgun was loaded with bird shot, which was what he and his buddies used to hunt dove and quail. Little tiny pellets half the size of match heads. Hell, he’d been hit by more than a few of those pellets when he and his drunken buddies shot at birds in a cross fire. They didn’t hurt much, and it took almost a direct hit to break the skin.
Not that it mattered, because inside Squires’s brain something had snapped. He felt an invincible cerebral combustion surging through him. It caused the steroid oils, and the D-bombs he’d swallowed, to engorge his monster face with blood.
Laziro Victorino screamed a warning as Squires moved toward him, dragging his right leg with every step. The gangbanger screamed again as he hurled the girl to the ground, pointed the shotgun and this time pulled the trigger.
Squires jolted, grunting at the stinging impact. But that didn’t matter, either. The giant stumbled, regained his balance and kept coming.
Arms outstretched, Harris Squires was hell-bent on getting his fingers around the V-man’s neck because now the little saint was calling for his help again, screaming, “Please, please, Harris! Don’t let these men take me away from you!”
THIRTEEN
THE REASON I TURNED EAST, TOWARD WHAT TURNED OUT TO BE Harris S
quires’s hunting camp, was because after touring Immokalee, seeing a helicopter and a half dozen cops parked outside a church, I decided that my detective friend might be wrong when he told me that Squires and Tula had left Immokalee and were now on their way back to Red Citrus trailer park.
It was 11:20 p.m. when Leroy Melinski called my cell to give me what he believed was the good news. I had cruised Immokalee’s slow streets and then headed out of town, occasionally glancing at the satellite aerial that showed Squires’s four hundred acres of what was probably saw grass and cypress trees.
“The girl wasn’t kidnapped,” the detective explained when I answered. “She told a bunch of people—including a priest and one of her aunts—that Squires volunteered to drive her around and help her find her mother. So there you have it, Doc. Turns out your kidnapper is just being a Good Samaritan.”
The reception on my phone was fuzzy, so I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. Say that again.”
Melinski told me, “Harris Squires and the girl stopped at some church, a pretty big one, so there’s confirmation on all this. A couple hundred people listened to her give a speech or a sermon, whatever you call it. Squires got out of his truck to listen, but he didn’t come inside.”
I said, “People on the scene told you this?”
The detective said, “Squires even made nice with some gangbangers who gave him a hard time. Not Latin Kings. Probably MS-13 from Guatemala, who are bloodthirsty little shits. But even they must have been convinced.”
I told him, “This just doesn’t mesh with what I know about Harris Squires,” as Melinski talked over me, saying, “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve heard enough to be convinced. So you can relax, okay? Go back to your test tubes or have a beer. I’m going to bed.”
I said, “Some minister lets a thirteen-year-old girl, a stranger, get up in front of the whole congregation? Why?”
“It happened,” Melinski replied, sounding impatient, “that’s all that matters. I talked to the priest myself. He’s worked in Immokalee for nine years, which means he’s heard every possible combination of bullshit story. According to him, the girl walked in and said she had something important to say, so he let her talk. He described her as happy and relaxed, which is not the way a kidnapped kid acts.”
“The priest,” I said.
“Along with several local women, too. They offered her a place to stay, but the girl refused. Squires may have something to do with the dead body we found, who knows? But the girl’s with him because she wants to be with him. End of story.”
I said, “Harris Squires wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone—not unless he expected to get something out of it.”
Melinski told me, “We’ll find out more when they get back to the trailer park. The girl told the priest that was their next stop, so we’ve got some uniforms there waiting.”
I had to ask, “Did your hostage-rescue people call his cell?”
“That’s the only part that bothers me,” Melinski told me. “They tried but no answer. Reception’s bad around Immokalee, which could explain it. The priest said, at first, he didn’t like the idea of a Guatemalan girl being with a gringo guy that age. He tried to talk her into staying, but the girl was so sure of what she was doing, he decided it was okay. At least for the hour or so it takes them to get back to the trailer park. Red Citrus? Yeah, Red Citrus. Maybe a little longer because the girl told the priest they might get something to eat first.”
“What time did they leave?” I asked. “I hope you have cops checking the local restaurants.”
Melinski told me, “They pulled out at little before eleven, so they should be at the trailer park in half an hour or so.” With exaggerated tolerance, he then added, “Have you heard anything I said? You can stop worrying. The priest told me some pretty wild stuff about the kid. So, finally, I maybe understand why you’ve taken an interest. You didn’t tell me the Latinos consider her some kind of saint or something.”
“The priest said that?” I asked.
“The guy sounded a little in awe of the girl, in fact. He said there were women crying, people waiting in line to ask the girl’s blessing. ‘God has taken the girl by the hand’—this is the priest talking, not me. But the man was serious. So there’s no need to worry, according to him. The priest’s exact words almost, and more than nine years he’s been working with immigrants.”
I said, “If God took missing girls by the hand, there would be a lot fewer missing girls. Please tell me you’re not buying into this baloney.”
I was relived that Tula and Squires had been spotted. But I was also feeling too restless to allow myself to be convinced. I didn’t admit this to Melinski, of course, and pretended to be satisfied when he promised to call when he got word the girl was safely back at Red Citrus.
After I hung up, I checked the luminous face of my dive watch: 11:25 p.m. I was approaching the intersection of Immokalee Road and what I guessed was Route 846, where Squires owned the four hundred acres. Continue straight and I would take yet another lap through Immokalee, then north to home—or maybe Emily’s place, if I could get her on the phone. Make a right, I would have to drive at least forty miles, round-trip, out of my way—and probably for no reason.
In my mind, though, I suddenly pictured the Mayan girl looking through the window of Squires’s trucking, seeing a sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES, then texting the information to Tomlinson, a man she trusted. The image was so strong that I actually shook my head to get rid of it.
As I neared the intersection, I hesitated, my intellect telling me one thing, my instincts telling me something else. Normally, that’s seldom a cause for indecision—which is why I was a little surprised when I found myself following my intuition. I turned right onto the narrow two-lane that vectored eastward into the Everglades.
Something else my intellect and instincts argued about was whether I should call Tomlinson. If he had gone to Red Citrus, as expected, I should tell him to wait there to make sure Tula arrived.
It only made sense that I call him, but I had settled into a comfortable cocoon of solitude, focused laserlike on finding the girl. For me, that cocoon is a place rarely enjoyed when I’m Florida and I didn’t want to leave it.
It had to do with my shadow life. Solitude is what I enjoy most about it. I travel alone to Third World countries, to Everglades-dark places, and I find people. I then track those people. I become familiar with their schedules, their habits.
For the period of a week—sometimes two, depending on the importance of the assignment—I charted the subtle movements and interactions of a stranger’s life. I did it invisibly, with a laboratory precision that in the end allowed me to segregate that person from his surroundings as effectively as using tweezers to remove a bee, undetected, from its colony.
That was my specialty—my genius, Tomlinson might have called it, had he ever learned the truth. What I do, however, doesn’t demand genius. I have no illusions about my own gifts, other than to acknowledge that, since I was very young, I have had an obsessive need to identify, then define, orderly patterns in what most would dismiss as chaos.
We all have our quirks.
That’s my job when out of the country: to discern order in the chaos. To create a precision target. As creator, I am also tasked with finding the most effective method of displacing that target from his surroundings.
I am good at it.
After wrestling with the decision for a mile, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with Tomlinson. Instead, I pulled over long enough to send a text:
Tula and Squires to arrive at Red Citrus by midnight, cops waiting. Let me know. If you’re drinking, stop now. Don’t piss off cops!
After a moment of thought, I added, Is Emily safe? then sent the text with a slow Whoosh! that told me reception was getting worse.
I got out of the truck long enough to urinate, then got back in, but left the dome light on. Out of long habit—or, perhaps, just to reestablish my
focus—I took inventory of my equipment bag. First, I popped the magazines of both pistols to make certain they were loaded, although I knew they were.
I am not a gun fancier or collector, but the precision tolerances of fine machinery appeals to the same sensibilities that cause me to linger over a fine microscope. It was true of my Sig Sauer P226 pistol. The Sig was one of the first issued after the Joint Service Small Arms test trials of 1985, and I have trusted my life to it since that time. I had recently purchased a new magazine that held fifteen rounds instead of only ten. I had also added Tritium night sights, which I had yet to try on a range.
I held the Sig’s magazine in my hand, testing the mobility of the rounds with my thumb, the odor of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun solvent spreading a lingering sweetness through the cab of my truck. It reminded me of Tomlinson’s crack about smelling gun oil in the lab whenever I felt restless. An inside joke? Or was it a veiled reminder that, one way or another, my relationship with Emily was doomed as long as I continued to live my shadow life.
Whether a dig or a warning, what he’d said was true: When I get restless, it shows. After a month or two without a new mission, I find myself studying maps. I find myself at night sitting within easy reach of my Trans-Oceanic Radio, recleaning my weapons as if that private ceremony was an incantation that would bring a call from my handler.
After inspecting the Sig Sauer, I took the much smaller, lighter Kahr pistol in hand. It was black-matte stainless, comfortable to hold. After so many years trusting the Sig, it was tough to admit that this was now my weapon of choice. It wasn’t as tiny as another favorite—a Seecamp .380—but the Kahr slipped just as easily out of the pocket. And it could be hidden almost as completely in the palm of my hand. Firing the Kahr, though, was a pleasure, and it had more stopping power than the Seecamp.
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