He wiped his mouth and put down the napkin. “What do you think? Anything to worry about?”
“Hard to say. I’ve never had anybody rez up on me like that before, but it’s been a long time since I was down here.” Hector gave me a quizzical look, and I explained, “Most of the full-bloods I knew back in the day were fine with outsiders, but some still hold a grudge against white people.”
Hector’s eyebrows went up. “They consider you white?”
“I am white,” I said. “I wasn’t raised on the reservation or in any tribal traditions. Blood’s not what makes you Indian.”
My phone rang. It was Norma.
“Got some info for you,” she said, sounding a little breathless. “Bronson says that Rachael was supposed to be starting a job with the O’odham women’s shelter this week. They’re having a committee meeting tonight.”
“It’s almost ten,” I said, looking at the clock on the buff-colored wall.
“They meet late,” Norma said, “and they almost always run past midnight.”
“Did he say for sure that she was here?”
“Not in so many words, but that’s the impression I got.”
“Score,” I said to Hector, then, to Norma, “Where?”
CHAPTER 28
The women’s shelter was a stand-alone building on the opposite side of town from where we’d come in. It looked a little bit like a school gymnasium from the outside: a big concrete-block rectangle with a strip of tile running all the way around it, halfway up. Like most of the buildings in Sells, it didn’t seem to have much age on it.
There were lights on and maybe a dozen cars in the parking lot. Hector pulled the Suburban to the curb on the opposite side of the wide street and turned off the motor. His open window framed the building, painted a glowing orange in the blue-black darkness by a single pole light.
“So how are we gonna work this?” he said.
“Let’s just wait until they come out. If we see her, we can follow her home.”
“And then what? We knock and ask politely if she’d like to come with us?”
“No,” I said, keeping my eyes on the building. “We’ll have to wait until she’s somewhere out in the open and alone.”
“Even then, I don’t like our odds,” Hector said. “Not after what she did to Maines.”
I lifted the hem of my jeans to remind him I was armed. “Plus yours, in the glove compartment. We’re strapped.”
“So was he,” Hector reminded me.
“He didn’t know who he was dealing with. We do.”
“I am not liking any of this,” Hector complained. “We’ve already attracted unwanted attention, now we’re gonna try and grab this woman off the street? It’s asking for trouble.”
I knew he was right, but I wasn’t ready to give up. “Let’s just wait and see what happens. We might get lucky somehow.”
Hector pressed his lips together and sat back, not saying anything else.
It was almost eleven when people finally started leaving. Hector turned toward me so that it would look like we were talking while I watched them walk to their cars and pull away. I didn’t see “Rachael.”
The cell phone in my shirt pocket rang, nearly sending me through the roof of the Suburban. I’d forgotten all about it.
I grabbed it, my heart hammering. “Jesus. What?”
“Thanks for not locking the keys in the trunk,” Benny said. He sounded like he was smiling.
Not sure what I was in for, I played it safe. “Uh, you’re welcome?”
“You’ll never guess what I found.”
“I hope it’s a gross of tranquilizer darts,” I said, keeping my eyes on the people leaving the women’s center, “and that you can overnight it to me.”
“Just for laughs I ran all the fingerprints I got off Rachael’s stuff from the hot springs, while I’m waiting for the DNA, and an ID came back.” I heard him tapping a computer keyboard. “Mikela Floyd, thirty-two. She was a receptionist at Darling’s clinic, so it’s not weird her fingerprints would be on Rachael’s stuff. But get this: Mikela disappeared on December 12, the day after Rachael’s surgery.”
I shifted my eyes to Hector’s face, my eyebrows up. Benny kept talking. “Here’s the part you’ll love. She and her older sister are wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism.”
“Holy shit,” I said, unable to suppress a wry laugh. “Well, I guess the feds’ll be interested now.”
“Fuck ’em,” Benny said. I could practically see him squaring his shoulders. “I’m gonna love calling them up and rubbing their face in the fact that this ‘wetback loser’ got one of theirs.”
“What’d the sisters do?”
“Shot and killed a cop during a May Day protest against the border fence last year, near Juarez. Mikela lay low for a month, then took the job with Darling in June. They’re not top ten, but they’re both on the list. Sister’s name is Jennifer Floyd, she’s thirty-six.”
“I wonder if she bought herself a new face, too.”
“Actually, there’s a rumor Jennifer’s dead, but nobody’s been able to confirm. The Mexican cops found a body that matches her description among the feminicidios, but they—”
“The what?”
“You’ve seen it in the papers. This rash of female workers from the maquiladoras—factories in the free-trade zone—being murdered around Juarez and El Paso. It broke into the news for a while and then faded away, although the killings haven’t stopped.”
“So why haven’t they been able to identify Jennifer?”
“‘Able’ isn’t the word,” Benny said. “Nobody’s trying. The Mexican government’s position on the feminicidios is that the cartels are doing it, but they’ve got much bigger problems than identifying all these women, so the ones that aren’t claimed immediately by the families—they just write them off as anonymous collateral damage in the drug wars. Since Mikela was on the lam when they found the body we think might be Jennifer, she wasn’t anxious to step up and make an identification.”
“What happened to it?”
“No idea,” Benny said. “They found her on June 10, so it’s been almost exactly a year. My guess is that they just went ahead and buried her when nobody stepped up to claim her.”
“So we don’t know for sure that she’s dead,” I said.
“Right,” Benny replied. “But nobody’s seen her since. So … ya know.”
He cleared his throat and went on. “Anyway, even if the feds did figure out that Mikela stole Rachael Pestozo’s identity—which would be really tricky, between Rachael dying in Mexico and Darling’s shady clinic operation—trying to extradite anybody off an Indian reservation is incredibly difficult.”
“So, really, we’re doing them a favor,” I said, grinning.
“It’s not funny,” Benny said, his voice solemn. “Mikela Floyd is no sweet young thing. She killed a cop, and domestic terrorism charges aren’t something the feds just throw around. So if she’s gotta come home in a bag, I won’t cry, and neither, probably, will our government friends.”
You won’t catch me defending the law on my worst day, but that startled even me. “Jesus, Benny.”
“Christ, I’m not telling you to kill her,” he said. “Just know that you’re dealing with someone who won’t hesitate to take you out if she feels like she has to. Don’t let her get around behind you.”
Hector nudged me. “Rachael” had appeared in the parking lot.
“Speak of the devil,” I muttered.
Benny made a puzzled noise, and I said, “Just clocked her. I’ll call you back.”
Our quarry went to one of the two cars remaining in the parking lot—a late-model Mustang with a homemade paint job—and opened the trunk. She retrieved a rucksack and went back into the building. I looked at Hector’s watch. It was 12:45.
“You gonna give me the 411?” he said.
I told him what Benny had learned.
His eyes widened. “Holy shit.”
“Y
eah. But kind of nice to know that we’re on the right side of the law, if anything goes haywire.”
“What do you mean?” Hector said warily.
I gave him a knowing look, and he shook his head emphatically. “I’ve seen enough killing. I’m not going to be party to any more of it, legal or not.”
“Even after what she did to Maines?” I asked him, my face turning hot. “I almost wish she’d killed him. The life he’s got ahead of him is worse than being dead.”
“One more body isn’t going to change any of that,” Hector muttered.
I was angry now, but I didn’t know why. “If you could get your hands on the guys who hacked up your mother and sisters, you wouldn’t be tempted to pay them back in kind?”
“Yeah, I’d be tempted to, but I wouldn’t do it.”
I made a skeptical face at him.
“Not because of them,” he said. “Because of me. Because I couldn’t live with it.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I shut up and went back to silently watching the women’s center. Nothing was moving over there. It was getting on my nerves, along with Hector’s moralism.
“All right,” I said finally, leaning down to get the little Glock off my ankle.
Hector watched me, looking alarmed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I got out of the Suburban and took the safety off my gun. “I’m a woman. It’s a women’s center.”
He started to laugh, but it wasn’t all humor. “You’re fucking insane.”
“OK, we can sit here all night debating situational ethics.” I stuck the gun in the back of my waistband. “I, for one, do not have that much patience.”
“I knew you’d find some way to drive this thing off a cliff.”
“Relax,” I told him. “I’m just going to take a look, that’s all.”
Hector started to answer, but I’d already gone around the front of the Suburban.
“I’d tell you not to do anything stupid, but I know better,” he whisper-called at me as I crossed the street.
The building had a recess in the front where a pair of glass doors looked into a large room, with several doors in each wall. There was an intercom to one side of the entrance with a notice above it: PLEASE RING FOR HELP, 24 HOURS.
I watched through the glass doors, from a distance, for a little while, but didn’t see or hear anything. Then I circled around the back side of the building to have a look in the windows.
At the third one down from the front corner of the building, I hit pay dirt. There were shadows moving across the window-sill. I crept up and stood flat against the building wall, inching toward the window opening. When I was close enough, I craned my head carefully forward, inching it ahead until a person’s back came into view.
The person wore a long denim coat and had a thick black ponytail. Considering where we were, the ponytail could signify either gender, and I couldn’t tell from this angle whether it was a man or a woman. I held still, waiting, and heard voices, but the person didn’t move. I risked leaning farther forward, and caught the edge of a naked leg, sitting in a chair. It looked male. Another inch forward, and I saw that “Rachael” was standing between the chair and the window with her back to me; I recognized what she was wearing. The rucksack she’d just retrieved lay on a folding table to her right, surrounded by a collection of tools: hammer, ice pick, vise grips, utility knife. It only took me a second to understand what she was using them for.
Feeling slightly nauseous, I backed quickly away, around to the parking lot, and ran across the street, getting the cell phone out of my pocket.
“What’s up?” Hector asked as I came within range.
“They’re in there torturing somebody,” I said, dialing the phone. When the 911 operator answered, I told her what I’d seen without giving her my name.
“That was the most sensible thing I think I’ve ever seen you do,” Hector said as I got into the Suburban.
He started the motor, and I said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m not anxious to make the acquaintance of any of the local cops, even if they do approve of our mission,” he said. “I know this is a sovereign nation and all, but it’s still the U.S. as far as I’m concerned.”
I put my hand on the door handle. “I’m not leaving until I see that broad facedown on the pavement, in handcuffs.”
Hector tilted his head toward the road behind us. “Let’s go watch from the rise back there. Then we don’t have to blow our cover unless we want to.”
I nodded, and we pulled away from the center, drove a few hundred yards, and nosed the Suburban across the shoulder and into the brush. Hector turned off the lights, and we got out and walked up onto a low hill where we could see down into the women’s center parking lot. There was a clear view of the front door.
Fifteen minutes went by with nothing happening. No sirens, nothing.
I looked at Hector’s watch again. “What the hell is taking them so long?”
“Heads up,” he said.
The denim-clad person I’d seen through the window had come out of the center. It was the tall woman who’d questioned us on her way out of the cafe a few hours earlier. She’d put on the long coat over her Huichol blouse and skirt, but wasn’t wearing her hat now.
She was talking into a cell phone, pacing back and forth in front of the door and looking around. Another ten minutes went by, and then headlights appeared from the direction of town. A tribal cop car turned into the parking lot, and the tall woman went over to it. She held a short conference with whoever was inside, and then it slowly pulled away and went back in the direction it had come.
“What the hell?” I said, under my breath.
I got my phone out and punched in 911 again. When the dispatcher answered, I said, “You guys need to be way more suspicious.”
“Your name, please?”
“That woman your guys just talked to is helping the other one put the screws to their victim,” I said.
“I’ll need your name, ma’am,” the dispatcher insisted.
The needle on my radar jumped. I turned off the phone and threw it out into the brush.
“We need to get out of here,” I told Hector. “Fast.”
CHAPTER 29
We took a different route out of the reservation than we had taken in, so that when we crossed into the desert again, I had no idea where we were. Fortunately, that seemed not to matter. Hector made a call, and our armed escort appeared as if by magic.
We hadn’t said much on the way, both of us tensely scanning for police cars or any other sign of the law, and probably praying silently to our respective gods. When we passed through the fence into Mexico and saw the black SUV, I let my breath out and put my head back, eyes closed, wondering how we’d escaped the unofficial border patrol. Coming in, I hadn’t seen any sign of them until they’d magically appeared behind us. I couldn’t imagine that they’d suddenly decided to take the night off. Maybe they were like the crossing guards between Presidio and Ojinaga—they only cared who came in, not who went out.
The driver’s-side window of the SUV rolled down to reveal our friend with the cigar. He saluted Hector and turned south into the darkness. Hector geared down and followed.
“So what are we looking at here?” he said to me, after a few minutes.
“I have no idea,” I said, “but I don’t like any of it.”
“Maybe that woman is a cop and they were doing something official in there,” he suggested.
“If that’s how the cops around here conduct business, we’ve got bigger problems than Mikela Floyd,” I said, then shook my head. “If she were a cop, I’d know. I can smell them coming for miles.”
Hector nodded grimly. We were quiet again while he focused on staying glued to our lead, winding over the rocky ground ahead of us.
There was still a fire going at the encampment, and Cigar gestured us to join the circle around it, after leading us in.
�
�Let me use your phone,” I said to Hector, before I sat down.
He gave me a guarded look. “Why?”
“I need to let Benny know the local law is rotten before he sends them anything about Mikela Floyd. I don’t want her going to ground before we can get a crack at her.”
Hector said something to Cigar in Spanish, and the gangster gestured across the fire at the stout woman with braids who’d stopped our caravan earlier to examine the dead body. She stood up and passed him a flip phone, which he gave to me.
I stepped away from the fire and dialed Benny’s number. When he answered, I told him what had happened, and he muttered, “The plot thickens.”
“Something is certainly rotten in Denmark,” I agreed.
“Good thing I sent you. If I’d tried to go the official route, I’d have gotten completely stonewalled.”
“If Mikela’s got the local law on her side, I don’t see her walking quietly out of here,” I said.
There was a pause on the line, then Benny said, “I know you hate the idea, but I’m going to deputize you, right now, and backdate the paperwork to Friday. That way, if anything bad goes down, you’ll be protected from prosecution, since you’ll be acting as an official arm of the law.”
“And by bad, you mean…?”
“Do what you gotta do,” Benny growled. “Just get her.”
I gave a few seconds’ thought to how I’d navigate that with Hector, then said, “Listen, you may not hear from me again before I get back. I had to ditch my phone.”
“Pick up a burner. I’ll reimburse you.”
“I’ll try. But if not, I’ll see you when I see you.”
“Yep,” Benny said, and the line went dead.
I went back over to the fire and took a lawn chair, handing Cigar back the phone. He turned it off, slid out the battery, and threw the phone into the fire. A surprised look appeared on his face as he reached inside his jacket to pocket the battery.
“Santa Maria,” he chuckled, bringing out a dark oblong. “I thought I’d smoked all these up.”
Hector, perched on a tree stump next to him, reached over and took the cigar. “Goddamn. That’s a real Cuban.” He glanced at me, humor in his face.
South of Nowhere: A Mystery (A Julia Kalas Mystery) Page 12