Scavengers (26 page)
“In here?” Sheriff Robert Torrez’s voice was muffled by the examining room door, followed by a rap of his knuckle. The door swung open before Estelle had a chance to say “come in,” and she pulled the flimsy hospital gown into a semblance of modesty.
The physician’s assistant, Jolene Oliver, looked up and turned on her stool to glare at Torrez. “Do you mind?” Jolene carried her two hundred and thirty pounds on a five-foot-two frame, fourteen inches shorter than the sheriff. In contrast, she possessed hands so dainty they might have belonged to an eight-year-old. Her electric blue eyes peered at the world through gold-rimmed granny glasses whose lower rims nestled in deep troughs under her eyes. She pursed her heavy lips with disapproval and pulled an edge of Estelle’s gown down to cover the area of thigh on which she had been working.
“You decent?” Torrez asked. He blocked the doorway with his body, holding the door against himself with his right hand. “You’ve got company.” His eyes drifted to the stainless steel pan and the welter of stained gauze pads on the tray beside Oliver, the cotton swabs, the topical anesthetic, the antibiotic—and then to the long forceps in Oliver’s hand.
“We could just sell tickets,” Jolene Oliver snapped. “Now close the door, preferably with your bones on the other side.”
Torrez grinned and pulled the door still closer to his own body as he leaned against the jamb. “Captain Naranjo is out in the hall,” he said.
“Look,” Jolene said with the withering patience of someone talking to a thick-headed twelve-year-old. “We’ve dug out thirty-six of these little bastards.” She nodded at the stainless steel pan and its collection of cactus thorns. “And we’ve got at least another dozen to go, some of ’em hiding in pretty interesting places. So give us a break. Go find yourself a cup of coffee or something.”
Estelle reached out and touched Jolene on the shoulder. To the sheriff she said, “What’s the word on Eurelio?”
“Still in surgery. The gunshot wound was a raker. Broke two ribs, blew some bone chips where they’re not supposed to be, and then took a chunk out of his triceps. No major vessels cut, though. He’s lucky. I’m sure it
looked
like they’d killed him. The damage from the cactus is the hard part.”
“I can sympathize a little bit,” Estelle said.
“A
little
bit,” Jolene sniffed. “Sweetheart, you’re a mess.”
Estelle managed part of a laugh until Jolene approached another thorn with the forceps, and then she sucked air through her teeth in anticipation. “I really need to see Naranjo, though, Bobby.”
“Well,” and he turned his head, leaned backward, and looked down the hall. “He’ll wait. He’s too much of a gentleman to come in now.”
“See?” Jolene said. She pointed an accusatory forceps at Torrez. “Out.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be in the coffee shop, Estelle.” A frown darkened his broad face. “And I’m sure you’ve done dumber things than this border-jumping stunt. I can’t remember exactly when, though.” He started to close the door but thought better of it. “By the way,” he said, “some interesting developments with the Popes. Jackie said you told her that you really wanted to arrest somebody? You might get your chance. I’ve got a meeting with the district attorney this afternoon.” He saw the curiosity lift Estelle’s eyebrows and grinned. “I’ll tell you all about it when you’re thornless,” he said, and closed the door.
It was nearly an hour before Estelle Reyes-Guzman was thornless. She slipped into a set of clean clothes that Jackie Taber had delivered, consigning the ripped, pierced, and thorn-studded blouse and slacks to the hospital incinerator.
Tomás Naranjo saw her as she entered the coffee shop and immediately rose from his seat, his dark, lean face bearing a broad smile touched with sympathy. He stepped to one side and pulled out a chair for Estelle. “And what a night you’ve had,” he said.
“Not as bad as Eurelio Saenz,” Estelle replied.
“Of that I’m sure,” Naranjo said. “Perhaps something to eat, then? Coffee?”
Estelle shook her head. “No, thanks. I don’t have much appetite.” She glanced at the thing that Torrez had been eating, a small, damp, and gooey creation that the menu optimistically called a breakfast burrito.
“Ah, perhaps later.” Naranjo placed both hands around his Styrofoam coffee cup. “Tell me what you were able to discover.”
“For one thing, I saw and heard the car. It’s an older Ford station wagon, just like Paulita Saenz said. Only one parking light works, on the left side. It’s the kind with the parking lights right on the end of the fenders, outside of the headlights.” She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and rapidly drew a front view of the car. “Like that,” she said. “Its fenders look like cheeks, sticking out past the headlights. The headlights are stacked, not side by side.”
“’Seventy-six Ford Crown Vic,” Torrez said.
“With a bad muffler and bald front tires,” Estelle added. “One of the two men called the other ‘Benny.’ Paulita said that she thought the two men
might
have been Benny and Isidro Madrid. I have the piece of cholla cactus that they…or someone…used as a whip on Eurelio.”
“I saw that,” Naranjo said softly.
“I’m sure there’s enough blood on it that a DNA match won’t be hard,” Estelle said. “It’ll either be Eurelio’s or mine. And I found an expended shell casing, recently fired, of the same caliber as the one found earlier in Eurelio’s truck. I’m sure it carries some prints.”
“I saw that,” Naranjo repeated, nodding.
“It won’t be hard to do a match,” the sheriff said. “We already looked at the primer indentions under the stereoscope. I’d be willing to bet they’re the same. We’ll see what the state lab says. We lifted a couple partials as well.”
“But we do not have the rifle,” Naranjo said.
“No, we don’t.”
“Deputy Taber tells me that she heard at least four shots.”
Estelle nodded. “That’s correct. I was running across the open, and they shot at me several times. Four sounds about right.”
“That was a considerable risk,” Naranjo said.
“I guess so. Not as much of a risk as it would have been if I’d let them catch me.”
“You had no weapon?”
“No. Well, that’s not true. I had the
azote
. That would have been good for a swing or two.”
Naranjo grimaced. “So tell me…do you think that this young Mr. Saenz will be able to identify his attackers? Are we sure they’re the Madrid brothers?”
“Yes.”
“He’s still in surgery,” Torrez said. “A real mess.”
“And whether he will talk to us or not is another question,” Estelle said. “He was pretty stubborn before.”
“But the
azote
is a great motivator, don’t you think?” Naranjo said.
“Certainly.”
Naranjo idly turned his coffee cup, marking the rim with his fingernail as he did so. “Let me tell you what I have been able to establish since I saw you last. The Madrid brothers live in a small apartment in Asunción, but were nowhere to be found. Although there are many neighbors, I hesitated to talk with them just yet. Once you express an interest, you see…you understand how it goes. But the Madrids know that Eurelio Saenz is in your hands now. They know they have made a mistake. He can identify them. So…” He spread his hands. “They’re going to be most careful. I would not expect that they will remain at their home, waiting for us to knock on the door.”
“If they were smart, they’d be in Texas already,” Torrez said. “Get rid of the car, cut their losses, and split.”
“If,” Estelle muttered. “But there’s one other thing.”
“And that is?”
“They don’t know that Mexican authorities suspect them of anything. You spoke of the murder of Juan Carlos Osuna. If the Madrids were involved in that, and faked their way through the interview with your officers, then they think that they’re home free.”
Naranjo nodded. “Unfortunately, the officers discovered nothing of suspicion.”
Estelle nodded. “My point is that
if
it is the Madrid brothers who are involved with the homicides both north and south of the border, they have no way of knowing that we’ve made the connection…that we’re working together.”
“In fact,” Naranjo said gently, “your little incident last night might help in that regard. That was not the sort of thing that a joint task force would undertake.”
“They couldn’t know for sure who I was.”
“No, I’m sure they don’t.” He pushed the Styrofoam cup away. “It appears that our first order of business is to find the Madrid brothers, no? Have a little chat with them.”
“More than a little chat,” Torrez said.
Naranjo flashed a humorless smile. “A manner of speaking. We’ll begin to tighten the net around their apartment in Asunción, and see where that leads us.”
“I want to go along,” Estelle said quickly.
Torrez’s face remained expressionless, but Naranjo tilted his head with interest. “I don’t need to tell you that in Mexico, you’re a welcome visitor…but you carry with you no official capacity.”
Estelle sighed. “No, Captain, you don’t need to tell me that.”
“But perhaps there might be some advantages in our cooperative venture,” Naranjo said, and shrugged. “Perhaps so.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re eager, then?”
Estelle nodded. “Yep.” She picked at the corner of one of the small bandages on her right forearm, a fierce frown darkening her face. She turned to Torrez. “I meant what I said, Bobby. They’re not going to get away with any of this.”
The plan was simple enough. Sheriff Robert Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Guzman would drive one of the county units as far as the border crossing in Regál, leaving it and their weapons behind as they accompanied Capt. Tomás Naranjo into Mexico. Torrez was skeptical about going anywhere unarmed, but both he and Estelle knew it was an understatement when Naranjo reminded them that his Mexican troopers had “weapons enough for everyone.”
Estelle was grateful to Naranjo for extending the invitation—it certainly was not required of him. In fact, if the Madrid brothers could be implicated first in the death of Juan Carlos Osuna in Asunción and then in the attempted murder of Eurelio Saenz on the Mexican side of the border, the arm of Mexican justice would bury them so deep that extradition to face charges in the deaths of the two woodcutters in Posadas County was probably neither a possibility nor a necessity.
As they drove south on Grande Boulevard, Estelle noticed that the normally reticent Robert Torrez was even more quiet than usual. Perhaps he also had been mentally enumerating all the things that could go wrong when two American peace officers strayed south of the border. Whether by invitation or not, the arrangement was an informal one, depending entirely on the strength of Tomás Naranjo’s word.
“I’d like to go through Maria,” Estelle said as they drove through the interstate underpass.
“Regál is almost an hour faster to Asunción,” Torrez said. He glanced over at Estelle, then into the rearview mirror at Naranjo’s Toyota.
“I know. But we can cross at Palomas just as easily, and then catch Route Two back toward Janos.” Torrez had already started to slow for the intersection with State 56, the highway west toward Regál. “I just have a feeling,” Estelle said.
“All right.” Torrez said. He passed the intersection and drove south on State 61. Naranjo followed, a discreet hundred yards behind. “So what’s the feeling?”
“
Mamá y Papá
is the feeling,” Estelle said. “We haven’t talked to them. Francis and I stopped in Lucy’s place for a few minutes whenever it was, but other than that, nothing. I’d be interested to hear what they have to say. Things have tumbled so fast, I haven’t had the chance.”
“I think they’d be the first ones to say that their boys are on their own,” Torrez said. “It’s Benny and Isidro who chose to live in Mexico. Their folks didn’t force them that way.”
Estelle sighed. “But they’re up here all the time. That’s what’s bizarre.” After a minute, she held up two fingers a quarter inch apart. “We were this close, Bobby.”
“To what?”
“If those two had followed me across the arroyo, and then just a few yards farther into this country, we’d have had them. Dead to rights.”
“The dead part is probably true,” Torrez said. “And hopefully it would have been them.”
“We were so close.”
“And now…” Torrez said, and stopped in mid-thought.
“And now what?”
He accelerated the unmarked Expedition up to eighty to pass a pickup pulling a livestock trailer. “And now you’re hoping that Isidro and Benny might slip back across the border to find out from Mama and Papa just what’s going on. Try to find out what we know?”
“I would if I were them. Then maybe take off for some place that’s a little cooler.”
“For instance?”
“Guaymas, Guadalajara, Mexico City…somewhere out of the state, that’s all.”
“Or even Denver or Coeur d’Alene,” Torrez said. “Or Central America someplace. Hell, with some money, they can go anywhere.”
“We know they have a little,” Estelle said. “The money from Osuna, the money from the woodcutters. At least that much.”
“Nickel, dime,” Torrez said. “We’re not exactly talking about masters of the big haul here. I’m surprised that they haven’t put the touch on the old man or the old lady yet.” He turned and glanced at Estelle, the figurative lightbulb coming on over his head. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it.”
She nodded. “And their aunt,” she added.
“Paulita?”
“Why not? The
taberna
probably earns a pretty good bundle. Easy pickings. And after last night, they’re not just going to sit around and wait for something to happen. They don’t know if someone just dragged Eurelio’s body away, or if he’s still alive.”
“Except for the ambulance siren on our side of the border. And they know that Mexican authorities aren’t involved. Nobody chased them. They saw a figure running in the darkness—that’s all.”
“That’s right. If Eurelio is alive, the Madrids have to assume that this time, he’ll talk. But he’s on our side of the border, and that makes for a nice, convenient complication that works in favor of the Madrids. I think that they beat Eurelio to scare him silent. Maybe he sold them that rifle in good faith, as a favor to a relative. Maybe they coerced it out of him. They figured a good beating would convince Eurelio to keep his mouth shut. And then one of them changed his mind and shot Eurelio, almost as an afterthought…one of them is trigger-happy.”
“Not smart, but trigger-happy,” Torrez said. He thumped his index fingers on the steering wheel in a fast drum roll. “A great combination.” As they passed the dirt road that followed the power lines northward, he slowed the car. “Paulita is at the hospital with the boy?”
“Yes. And Jackie’s with her.”
“Okay. That’s one out of the way then. I told Tony Abeyta to stay there until he heard otherwise.” They rounded the sweeping curve that led into Maria, the red tile roof of the
taberna
visible on the right, and several abandoned, slumping buildings on the left. Torrez slowed the vehicle to an amble.
From the other direction, a large RV sporting white Texas license plates appeared, a small SUV hitched to its back bumper. The rig blinked its directional signal and turned into Wally Madrid’s gas station. The RV was certainly taller than the small adobe building, and probably more square feet on the inside.
Torrez turned left in front of the gas station, drove far enough up the lane that he passed Lucy Madrid’s restaurant and another abandoned building. Just ahead was a cluster of five homes, situated helter-skelter with lot lines that would have made a surveyor groan. Dominating the north end of the village, at the end of J Street, was la Iglesia de Santa Lucia, a low, flat-roofed structure plastered a rich rosy pink.
The dusty margins of the lane opened a bit so that Torrez didn’t need to drive all the way to the church’s parking lot to turn around. He swung the truck in a U-turn, idling back the way they’d come. Torrez pulled to a stop where a curb would be if Maria had sidewalks, just beyond view of the little café’s front window. As they stopped, they saw Tomás Naranjo drive by on the state highway.
“I’ll check the station,” she said. Torrez sat with his chin resting in his left hand, gazing at the front door of Lucy Madrid’s restaurant. Estelle climbed down out of the unmarked Expedition and strolled past the café, her hands in her trouser pockets. She continued up the lane to the service station. She rounded the corner in time to see the driver of the RV peering through the front door, his hand up to shade the glass.
“Don’t guess they’re open,” he said when he saw Estelle. A smile split his round face. “You from these parts,
señorita
? ” His voice carried the twang of west Texas. His eyes ran appreciatively up and down Estelle’s trim figure.
“Yes, sir,” Estelle said. “But they don’t sell diesel here, anyway.”
“They’re missin’ a good bet,” he said. Estelle smiled pleasantly. The Texan was right, of course. But it was just one of many good bets that Wally Madrid had passed on over the years. “Probably should have filled up in Columbus, then,” the man said. “What’s the closest westbound, you happen to know?”
“Posadas is sixteen miles,” Estelle said. “There’ll be a big station on your left, just after you go under the interstate. They’ll fix you up.” She glanced toward the RV and saw a white-haired, plump woman peering out the door. The man appeared to be in no hurry to break off his conversation, perhaps happy to have found a native who spoke English in complete sentences. “You folks have a good day,” Estelle said even as his mouth opened to say something else.
He nodded. “You too, young lady.”
Estelle walked past him, glancing inside the front window as she did so. Wally Madrid’s cluttered desk was visible in the far corner. If each piece of litter that constituted the landfill of his desk represented a successful business deal, Wally Madrid would have been a millionaire. The single overhead light was off.
She glanced down the street and saw that Naranjo had turned around and stopped at the curb fifty yards away. He lifted a finger off the steering wheel in salute, but stayed in the vehicle. Unlike Estelle and Torrez, Naranjo was in uniform.
The station, one room with a bathroom off the side, had been built onto the original adobe house nearly half a century before. Estelle walked around the side of the station, pausing at the door of the restroom. The door was ajar, and she pushed it open with her toe. The door cleared the commode with an inch to spare, revealing a dark, dank interior where the white porcelain of the sink and toilet had long ago stained to match the adobe walls. The fragrance was deep and pungent, and Estelle couldn’t imagine stepping into the tiny room and actually closing the door on the flow of fresh air from outside.
She continued toward what appeared to be the front door of Wally Madrid’s home. Two cinderblocks served as a front step, both loose in the dirt and waiting to tip should an unwary foot be planted wrong. She knocked on the door and waited, then knocked again. The blue porcelain doorknob included no provision for a lock. She turned it and pushed. The door opened effortlessly. The air inside was cool, and she could see an old sofa with an afghan on the back, a television with the round-cornered screen of the ‘sixties black-and-whites, and a coffee table piled high with magazines.
“Mr. Madrid?” she called. The house was silent. From where she was standing, she could see the rump of the owner’s red International Carry-All parked beside the house. She called his name again, a bit louder. With no response, she stepped inside and quickly walked through the house, taking no more than thirty seconds to tour all five rooms.
By the time she walked back outside, glanced inside the Carry-All and then rounded the front of the station, the huge Texas RV had trundled back out onto the highway, a plume of diesel hanging behind. She glanced back at Naranjo and shook her head, then walked back the way she had come, ignoring the restaurant.
“What did you find?” Torrez asked when she returned to the Expedition.
“Nothing. The station’s closed and locked, his house is wide open. The coffeemaker’s on in the kitchen. His truck is parked outside. Engine’s cold.”
“So. Maybe he’s in his wife’s café, having breakfast.”
“He hasn’t talked to Lucy in a dozen years. I don’t think so.”
“Want to go ask?”
“I certainly do.”
Torrez opened the door, then hesitated. “Where’s Naranjo?”
“Parked just down the street.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?”
“Not a soul, other than the Texan tourists.”
“I was hoping that we’d see a big yellow Ford station wagon parked in the shade somewhere,” Torrez said.
“They’re not going to be that stupid, Bobby.”
He shrugged. “And why not? Why change what works?” He stepped out of the vehicle, and then he and Estelle walked to the front door of Lucy Madrid’s café like two curious tourists. Lucy’s was open for business, the fluorescent bulbs in the single ceiling unit providing just enough light for customers to be able to find the saucer with their cup.
The first person Estelle saw was Wally Madrid, sitting at the same table she and Francis had used earlier in the week.
