Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (18 page)

Anyway,
Matt sneaked in and choked the lookout guy out cold.  Then he walked through that camp and shot all six of the other men in the head with a silencer.  None of them woke up.  He could have called in and told the authorities where they were.  He could have just followed them until the military arrived to arrest them.  But he didn’t.  He killed them in their sleep, one after the other, all but one.”

Jim
stared in shocked disbelief, but said nothing.

“He lost it,” she said, much quieter, almost a whisper to herself as she shook her head remembering, “. . . totally lost it.”

“What about the last one?” came a voice from the door.

Jim and Catherine had been so caught up in their conversation they hadn’t heard Amy’s footsteps.  She was standing at the door and had apparently been listening for a little while.

“Amy,” said Jim.  “I thought you were resting.”

“I heard some loud noises,” she said.  “I thought I better check on you.”  She looked like a husk of a body, her eyes circled in weariness.

Jim looked around at the mess he’d made.  “I could break everything in this house right now, but I don’t think it’d make me feel any different.”

She looked at him numbly.  She felt it, too, only it manifested differently with her, Catherine knew.  Where Jim was volatile and on the edge of his rage every moment, Amy was detached and distant.  Numb.  Numb was worse.  Catherine knew numb once.  It ate people up from the inside out.

“Your friend,” Amy asked with a distant expression.  “Did he kill that last one, too?”

Catherine looked at Jim who could only shrug.  Amy had as much right as he did to be in this conversation, and if she wanted to hear old war stories, then who were they to tell her no?

She figured she’d told them this much, she might as well finish the story.  She would never have started telling it to begin with if not for the drink, but now that she was telling them, it felt good to get it off her chest.  It was helping her put things in perspective in an odd way.  It made the prospect of seeing him again soon less intimidating.  “No.  He left him alive so he could spread the word.  Matt wanted to scare any other extremists so bad they’d never think of kidnapping anyone else again.  He also knew they were very superstitious people, so decided to use that.

Matt tied the guy to a tree.  Then he used a machete and decapitated the ones he’d killed, just as they had done the hostages
, and placed their heads in front of the man to see when he regained consciousness.”  Jim looked a little set off by the thought, but Amy stood impassive.  “I don’t know how long it took the guy to free himself from the tree, but it was probably morning when he finally did.  That’s a long time to sit and stare at Matt's parting message.”

“How do you know all this?” Jim asked her.

“He told me,” she said, “after I was given a report on what the government had found in the jungle.  They wanted to know just what kind of madman we had let loose in their country.  It was a real nice mess.  Matt was in serious trouble looking at spending a few decades in a South American prison.  What he did down there is the kind of thing psychopaths do.”

“Damn,” said Jim.  “Guy sounds nuts.  He actually did that and didn’t go to prison?”

“Yes, he did.  And no, they didn’t arrest him, although they certainly wanted to.  And as to his being nuts, well, I thought so, too,” said Catherine.  “That’s why I ended it.  I’d asked him what happened out there . . . I wish I hadn’t because he told me the whole story beginning to end.  It was more than I was ready to deal with.  I did what I could to help, but I couldn’t stay with him after that.  The country’s government wanted to file charges on Matt for murder and the company he was with was going to hand him over.  They weren’t going to lose future contracts because Matt lost it.  But I threatened to expose the whole thing if they did.  It cost me my contract, but I didn’t care.

The government had known who those extremists were and did nothing before the attacks to stop them.  They forced that company to hire someone like Matt by their inaction.  And the company knew the kind of people they were hiring.  These were war-worn vets that were sent out, sometimes alone like Matt, to handle the kind of job that would terrify most normal human beings.  He’d definitely gone too far, but would never have been there if the government had done their job and protected those workers in the first place, or if his company had given him more support instead of sending him out there alone in the jungle with no link to sanity.  It was a perfect recipe for disaster.”

“What happened to the rest of the extremists?” Amy asked.

“I don’t know,” said Catherine.  “But as far as I know they never
attacked the pipeline or its workers again. Matt had accomplished that much.”

Amy just stood at the door, staring ambivalently.  “I don’t think what he did was so crazy
," she said.  "If he stopped them, then he did the right thing."  She stood a moment longer in ponder, an eerie silence about the room, then turned and walked away.

“She doesn’t look well,” Catherine said, watching Amy shuffle quietly back upstairs.

“I know.  I’m worried about her, but her folks are here helping me keep an eye on her.”  They finished their drinks during a quiet moment of thought.  “So this guy, Matt.  You really want him with you down there?  Contrary to what Amy might think, I think someone like that is a loose cannon.  What if he loses it again with you in tow?  He sounds dangerous.”

She had asked herself that same question and thought long and hard before calling Matt.  She knew it would be difficult for anyone who didn’t know Matt like she did to reconcile what he’d done with the other side of Matt, the caring and loyal side she’d fallen for so many years ago.  It was something she’d never quite been able to do herself.  But despite that, she
was going with her gut on this one.  “He is dangerous, but not towards me.  I trust him.”

“And he’s the one watching the boy for you?” Jim asked, worriedly.

“He’ll be fine,” assured Catherine.  “Matt’s a bit of a kid himself, sometimes.”

Jim found that hard to believe.  “If you say so.”  He wondered what their old friend David would have thought about Catherine’s ex-flame.

“Where is she!?” cried Miss Lydia.

The girls were all lined up in the yard as usual, except this time there was no customer waiting.  There was Miss Lydia, flanked by Jose and Hector.  Arnulfo stood off to the side shaking his head. 
She’s really done it now,
he thought.

“I’m not going to keep asking!” warned Miss Lydia.  “I want to know where that little bitch went!”

“She obviously ran away,” said Imelda, always the feisty one.

Miss Lydia scurried up to her like an angry crab and knocked her on her head, something that Imelda was entirely used to by now.  “I can see she’s run away!  I want to know where!”  None of the girls spoke.  “You!” she cried, charging over to Silvia, “What did she tell you?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” said Silvia.

Miss Lydia knocked her on the head as well.  “Don’t you lie to me!  You tell me what she said.”

“I swear, she didn’t tell me anything!”

“Liar!” she screamed.  “You’re all a bunch of liars!  Every last one of you!”  She turned to Jose and told him, “Put them in the hot box!”

“All of them?” asked Arnulfo.

She wheeled around on him.  “Yes, all of them!  They’re all in this together.  Ungrateful little whores, the lot!”

“She didn’t tell us anything,” said Evelyn.  “I swear Miss Lydia, not a single word.”

“Even if she didn’t, someone here still knows where she went.  Who?”

Nobody said anything.  Silvia had an idea of where Yesenia might have gone, as did Evelyn.  They’d seen the way Armando had been looking at her and heard their whispers in the dark.  They also knew what would likely happen to Armando and Yesenia if Miss Lydia found them.  “I don’t know,” said Evelyn.

Miss Lydia glared at her.  “Hot box!  All of them!”  And Jose and Hector herded the girls towards the hot box.

“This is such shit!” said Imelda.  “I don’t even live in the same house as her!  How would I know where she went?”

“Well, maybe you’ll figure it out after you spend a while thinking about it,” said Miss Lydia.  “Maybe you can talk to your little friends here because someone is lying.  Someone knows.”

After the girls were locked in the hot box Miss Lydia had a meeting with the men.  “I can’t believe you let this happen,” she scolded them.  “What do I pay you for if you can’t keep an eye on these girls?”

“What are we going to do, Mama?” asked Jose.  “She knows what happened to that trooper.”

“And whose fault is that, too?  Eh?  It’s your fault.  You two idiots got pulled over.  And you were the one who shot him and you’re the ones who just slept away while that girl waltzed right out of here, free to tell the world what she saw.  She knows who we are, where we are, everything!  I’ve told you time and time again to take shifts.  Someone has to be awake at all time around here.  You know that.  Who was supposed to be awake?”

“I was awake,” said Hector.  “But it was raining this morning, so I was inside.”

She hit him on the head.  “
Pendejo
!”

“How was I to know?” He asked.  “The dogs are supposed to bark, but I didn’t hear a thing.  She must have been so quiet not even they heard her.”

“Tsssh!” the old woman spat.  “A lot of good you all are, deaf dogs and blind men.  It’s a wonder every girl we’ve had hasn’t run off.  Who would notice?  Not you idiots.”

“Should I search the woods again?” asked Arnulfo.  “She might be hiding out there somewhere.”

“Yes, go look again,” she told him.

After he left, she told Jose and Hector, “If that girl goes to the police, we’re all finished, not just you two.  We’ve had a good thing going here and made good money doing it, but she could ruin it all.”

“What do you want us to do, Mama?” asked Jose.

“I want you to find that girl.  That boy she was with last night, he was taken with her.  He couldn’t stay away, could he?  I knew it was a mistake letting him pick her again.  He was too smitten by her, too vulnerable to that girl’s charms.  He’s helped her, I know it.”

“What can we do if he did?  We don’t know where he lives or how to find him.”

“We know some,” she told him.  Miss Lydia had sharp eyes and noticed even small details about people, including the community college parking sticker on the boy’s truck when he pulled in.

“But how can we find them?”

“Leave that to me,” she told them.  “I might know how to find the boy.”

“Then what?” asked Hector.

“If we find him, I want you to follow him and see if she’s with him.”

“And if she is?” asked Jose.

She seemed to think some more.  “Get rid of her,” she finally decided.  “She’s too much of a risk to keep around here.  She’ll just keep trying to run away and we can’t risk her ruining everything.”

“And the guy?”

“If she’s with him, then get rid of him, too.”  She waved her hand as she tried to think through the possible consequences.  “I don’t like all this killing business.  It might raise far too much attention, but we can’t risk everything.  If they’re together, then she might have told him too much already.”  She looked at Jose and then patted his head like he was one of the dogs.  “You have to listen to Mama this time and do as she tells you.  If you find her with him, make it look like he walked in on a burglar.  Don’t leave any sign that she was ever there.  I want you to take her out to a field somewhere and do what must be done.  Burn her so there’s nothing left to recognize.”  She gave him a knowing look, “You know what to do.  She won’t have any fingerprints or dental records, so we don’t have to worry about such things.  Just make sure about that young man she’s with.  There can’t be any link between him and us.  Everyone has to believe he walked in on a robbery.”  She took a deep breath.  “Let’s clean up this mess and be done with it.”

“Okay, Mama,” said Jose like a good little son.

But Hector looked peaked.  Miss Lydia glared at him, “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” she asked him.

Hector looked up.  Jose and Miss Lydia were both eyeing him.  “No,” he said.  “It’s them or us.”  Miss Lydia smiled.

Matt stood upon the balcony looking out at the ocean.  It was another clear day and he enjoyed the view.  Three stories directly below him were a couple tanning themselves by the pool.  He watched the man get up and dive into the deep end of the pool below him. 
It’d be nice to go for a dip on a day like this,
he thought,
if I wasn’t babysitting.

Julio sat on the bed unwrapping his leg
just as Catherine had shown him.  He’d been told to replace the bandage three times a day.  Matt came back in the room and sat next to him, watching the cartoons the boy had turned on in amusement.  He was getting a kick out of listening to Hank Hill talk in Spanish.  “
Ay, Bobby!  Que hace?
”

When Julio had all the dressing removed Matt leaned over and took a peek at the wound.  It was healing nicely.  “That’s going to be a good one,” he told Julio, who looked at him as though still unsure of the man.  He’d been a little leery of Matt ever since Catherine had introduced him the day before.  After Catherine had told him more about Taylor’s murder, Juan’s murder, and the attempt on both Julio and Catherine’s life, all Matt had said was, “You should have called me sooner.”

  “Here, check this one out,” Matt rolled up his pant leg revealing a quarter-sized scar on his calf muscle.  “AK-47,” he told Julio, “went right through.”  He showed him the other side of his leg, which had a twin scar.  “Got that in a coca field in Colombia a while back.  It’s actually pretty nice down there except for all the gangs and drugs.”

“Same here,” said Julio.  That made Matt laugh.  “We didn’t used to have gangsters, but I guess we do now.”

Matt nodded, “That’s how it goes.  It’s like fire.  It starts off small some place, but if you don’t put it out fast, next thing you know it’s everywhere.”  That seemed to make Julio a bit sadder and Matt wished he hadn’t said it.  “Want to know how I got shot?” he asked.  Julio only shrugged.  “There was this little old lady pulling weeds at dawn, just the most innocent looking old granny you ever saw.  I was hiking out of the area and accidentally ran into her.  I didn’t think twice about her, which was my mistake.  I just told her to be quiet and went on my way, but the next thing I knew she picked up an AK she had stashed nearby and took some shots at me.  I took off running but she got me right here.”

Julio looked at the scar.  “Did it hurt?”

“Did yours?” asked Matt.  Julio nodded his head.  “Well, there ya go.  Feels like a hot poker held against your skin, even hours later, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it really hurt.  Mine got infected, Miss Catherine says.  She popped it and a bunch of pus came out of it.”

“Sounds gross.”

Julio nodded again with a smile.  He saw another scar on Matt’s leg, a long burn mark.  “What happened there?” he asked.

“Oh, that,” said Matt, a little embarrassed.  “Well, speaking of burning sensations,” he was almost laughing.  “I was camping on a beach in Saipan and had a little too much to drink.  I accidentally tripped and fell in the campfire.”  He touched the rubbery scar with his finger. “Smelled like chicken.”  Julio wasn’t sure whether or not it was okay to laugh, but when Matt smiled he did, too.  “People taste like chicken, ya know?” Matt told him.  “If you cook’em right.  I’ve had to eat one or two in my day.  Not really that bad once you get used to it.”  Julio’s smile disappeared in an instant and Matt let out a laugh, “Na, I’m just messin’ with ya, kid,” and he ruffled Julio’s head.

Julio smiled the biggest smile yet.  Mr. Matt, as he’d been told to call Matt, was funny, but in a morbid sort of way that still made Julio a little uncomfortable.  “You’ve been to a lot of places, huh?”

“Yeah,” Matt said, “quite a few.”

“How come you go so many places?”

“Well, that’s my job.  I travel around a lot.”

“What do you do?” Julio asked.

Matt thought about it a few seconds.  “I teach people how to keep themselves safe.”

“Oh,” said Julio.  “So that’s why she called you.  I guess that’s good, then.  She’s done a pretty good job so far, though.  I mean, I’m not dead or anything yet.”

“Yeah,” said Matt, “That’s always a good start.”

“When is Miss Catherine going to come back?”

“Oh, probably tomorrow.”  Matt got up and retrieved a beer from the little fridge.  He’d removed all the hotel’s sodas and little liquor bottles and replaced them with beer, sandwiches, and some of his own sodas from the store.  “You want one?” he asked Julio.

The boy looked at him skeptically, but curiously, “Okay.”  Matt tossed him a beer.  “Is it any good?” Julio asked.

“Try and see.”

Julio cracked open the beer and took a sip, his face squinting in uncertainty.  “Did it go bad?” he asked.

“Why?” asked Matt, chuckling.

“This tastes like something in a dumpster after it’s gone bad,” he told him.

Matt just laughed some more.  “Well, maybe you should give it some time.  Beer’s like girls.  You might not like them now, but in a few years you’ll constantly be trying to get your hands on one or the other, both if you can.”  He walked back to the fridge and retrieved a Dr. Pepper which he tossed to Julio.