Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) (17 page)

Maria said, “He was shot in the stomach while in the mountains on a raid and he lost a large section of his intestines.
 
The Army discharged him after he recovered.
 
But he never really fully recovered.
 
He had a soldier’s gaze my whole life.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s just a fact,” Maria said.
 
“America was backing the El Salvador government, so my father was given a chance to come here.
 
It was an easy choice.”

“We love this country,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
 
“That’s why my son joined the Army.
 
He was a proud American.”

Their conversation went on like this for another ten minutes, but Lester didn’t learn anything new.
 
He was, however, more determined than ever to find the person who had killed Marco Alvarez.
 
The man had been a patriot and had been shot in the back of the head and left for dead along Cantina Creek.
 
He would find the killer.

Lester thanked them both for their help and went back to his rig.

He was nearly shaking from his need for nicotine.
 
Almost immediately after shoving a pinch of tobacco under his lower lip, he settled down somewhat.
 
Lester thought about his first impression of his victim that night along Cantina Creek.
 
He had assumed the man was homeless based on the guy’s clothes and the smell.
 
It turned out that the clothes were not even owned by Marco Alvarez.
 
Someone had either bought or stole them from a homeless man and put them on Marco.
 
Why?
 
To make him care less.
 
To make him not look too hard for the killer.
 
Initially that tactic had worked.
 
The sheriff had given the case to Lester, who had never investigated a murder before.
 
But no matter what happened, he vowed to find the truth.

18

Without actually saying anything, Ben’s Air Force friends had nevertheless given him direction.
 
Besides doing his normal chores that were never ending on any ranch, he spent a lot of time over the next couple of days on the short wave.
 
Maybe that was for a couple of reasons.
 
Perhaps he didn’t just have suspicions.
 
He could have been finally reaching out beyond his meager existence to other humans.

Late Wednesday afternoon, while he sat in his living room listening to classic rock and drinking a cup of tea, he heard a car coming up his driveway.
 
He really needed to set up a wireless camera at his gate powered by solar with a backup battery.

He went to the door and saw the black BMW.
 
Maggi got out and smiled at him.
 
She was wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots.
 
Not exactly work clothes.

Ben opened his front door and said, “What’s up?”

“We need to talk.”

He let her in and she sat on the bench by the door to take off her boots.

Then she stood up and said, “Do you have anything stronger than tea?”

Smiling, he nodded his head toward the wet bar.
 
He found the aged rum and poured each of them a glass.
 
Then they moved into the living room.
 
Ben turned off the music and took a seat on the sofa with Maggi.

Something was obviously bothering Maggi, he could tell.
 
“What happened?” he asked.

“A few days ago my brother finally called me,” she said.
 
Then she took a quick sip of rum and continued.
 
“He said everything was all right and not to worry.”

“But that’s not what big sisters do.”

She nodded.
 
“Right.
 
I tried.
 
But then I got a visit from my girlfriend in the FBI.”

“Booty call?” Ben quipped.

Shaking her head, she said, “Anyway, she warned me that something was going on down here.
 
She couldn’t tell me what, but she made it clear that this sedate little valley was not quite as it seemed.”

“No shit!”

Maggi scrunched up her nose and cocked her head to one side.
 
“What do you know?”

He ignored her question.
 
“This FBI friend didn’t clarify?”

“She said she couldn’t.
 
But she was concerned about Tavis.”

“What did he say he was up to?”

“Tavis said he was working in the mountains, picking mushrooms.
 
This week he was hunting truffles.”

“Crap.”

“What?”

“Our resident Bigfoot expert also happens to be the biggest supplier of truffles in Oregon,” Ben said.
 
“I’m guessing your brother works on one of Marlon Telford’s crews.”

“It’s not like they’re making meth.”

“I know.
 
But Marlon is a weird dude.
 
I’ve been up in the mountains with him.
 
But I just thought he was a quirky professor type.
 
My neighbor thinks the man is seriously flawed.”

Maggi put the glass to her mouth and downed the rum.
 
Then she let out a long breath and waved her hand in front of her mouth.
 
“That warms all the way down.”

Ben gazed at her anew.
 
She was still concerned, he could tell, but he wasn’t sure if her concern was based on solid evidence, or if she was prone to overreact in unsure situations.
 
He wasn’t about to mention to her that a couple of his old friends in government had done some background investigations for him.

“What do you want to do?” he finally asked.

“I’m on comp time the rest of the week,” she said. “The result of long hours of negotiation with a nursing union.
 
If you don’t mind some company, we could look into this further until Monday.”

Ben smiled and got up, shifting his head for her to follow him.
 
“I’ve got to show you something.”

She reluctantly set her glass on the table and got up.
 
“Is this where you get naked and see how I react?”

“Lawyers,” he mumbled.

He brought her into his master bedroom and pointed at a desk in the corner.

“You have a laptop,” she said.
 
She looked closer and said, “Internet?
 
When did you get that?”

“I had a guy hook up satellite internet this morning.”

“Seriously?
 
Next you’re going to tell me you ordered a flat-screen TV online,” she said.

“I don’t have time for that.
 
We have to figure out what’s going on with Tavis McGuffin.”

“Where do we start?”

“Bigfoot.”

•

The last couple of days had been a total crap sandwich for Deputy Lester Dawson.
 
First, his boss had taken him off of the Marco Alvarez murder case.
 
It turned out that once there was a name to the deceased, and he wasn’t just another dead Mexican, Marco deserved the best of detectives.
 
Lester had also found out why Marco’s finger prints had not shown up in the military database.
 
They had never been run.
 
At least not until after Lester had found Maria at the Bingo parlor and she had identified the murder victim.
 
Then the detectives had quickly run the prints and found the match.

Before getting dumped from the case, Lester had checked out Marco’s Army record.
 
It turns out the man had earned a Bronze Star with Valor during his last deployment, along with a Purple Heart from an incoming mortar attack to his forward deployed unit.
 
This fine soldier didn’t deserve what he got on that cold, rainy night along Cantina Creek.

Then Lester found out that his ex-wife was getting married again—to a state police officer.
 
Lester guessed she had traded up.
 
The silver lining was that the new husband lived close by, so he would still be able to see his daughters every other weekend.

With Lester officially being pulled from the murder investigation, he had no real way to complete his promise to Maria Alvarez and her mother to find the person who had killed Marco.

But what Lester did have was too much vacation time on the books.
 
He was at the point of use it or lose it, so he decided to use it now.
 
Instead of going somewhere warm and sunny, which any normal Oregonian would do at this time of year, Lester would stay at home and investigate Marco’s murder.

He had no direction, though.
 
What he did have was a strange feeling that everything wasn’t right in Cantina Valley.

During the last couple of days he had gone over his notes again, trying desperately to find something he had missed.
 
Finally, he got to his talk with Mrs. Alvarez and the photo of Maria and Marco’s father as a young man in El Salvador.
 
None of that was suspicious in itself.
 
Yet, he couldn’t get the facial expression of Mrs. Alvarez out of his mind.
 
That period in her life was painful.
 
Almost as much as the loss of her son.
 
What could cause that?

When he looked into the Salvadoran Civil War between 1980 and 1992, he was horrified to find out that 75,000 people died in that country during that short period.
 
How did he not know this?
 
El Salvador was just a short flight from America.
 
The atrocities of that civil war seemed to have been committed on both sides.
 
America had backed the Salvadoran government with arms, intelligence and training, along with a heavy dose of CIA activity.
 
And the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), were backed by Nicaragua, Cuba, East Germany, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union.
 
Those smart enough to flee, like the Alvarez family, survived the atrocities.
 
The UN had charged the Salvadoran government with death squad activities, where their troops would go into remote villages suspected of FMLN affiliation and kill anyone with a pulse, including women and children.
 
Was Marco’s father one of those Army soldiers?
 
There was probably no way of knowing for sure.