Death at the Black Bull (29 page)

Virgil shook his head, uncrossed his legs, winced a little, then set his hat in his lap while he fingered the brim.

“I guess it all began to come together when Jimmy happened to mention old Bob and that beam that knocked him senseless, and how he put most of this place together before you came along. Then all of the pieces of the puzzle started to fit. You know how it is. You got a bunch of little parts, but you need that one thing to see how everything is related. How it all fits together. Well, Jimmy did that for me when he reminded me about how old Bob was distantly related to the Talbots. How he had no close kin and was sitting in some nursing home somewhere, trying to figure out how he got there. That got me thinking. Again, you know how it goes. One thought leads to another. Even though I didn't want to go down that road.”

Virgil stopped fingering the brim of his hat, once again crossed his legs, and perched the Stetson on his knee.

“You don't have to go there, Virgil.”

He looked at her. She was as beautiful as ever, and he could reach across and touch her like he had so many times. Smell her sweet smell. Feel her soft skin.

“Yeah, I've got to,” he said. “For both of us. When something dies, you can't move forward until you bury it. I came to realize that whoever gave Micah the money to build that factory was going to keep an eye on that investment. That wasn't Wade. I knew that. It all came together when Micah told me the night he tried to end his connection, Wade went into the Black Bull and came back later with the refusal. The Black Bull. The centerpiece of this whole puzzle. Everything came together. Old Bob, who was nobody's father, Cesar telling me that your Mex was more fluent than your English. I heard it myself when you talked to the workers in the kitchen, but denied what my own ears heard.”

He stopped. Their eyes locked.

“It was you,” he said.

“You don't understand, Virgil. You don't understand.”

He shook his head, then put his hat on the edge of the desk and stood up. He walked around the edge of her desk, reached down, and pulled Ruby to her feet. He could feel her stiffen in his grasp. The ache to crush his lips into hers was overwhelming. He took a step back, but still held her.

“You're right. I don't understand. Probably never will. Are you two different people? I mean, you oversaw, hell, maybe even okayed murder, traded in body parts. What kind of a person does that?”

Ruby wrenched herself out of his hold. She stepped back to the opposite end of the desk.

“Two people. Yes, I guess that could describe me. You want to know? I'll tell you. My mother was a picker coming across the river with all the others. She ended up outside of Las Cruces in the arms of a rancher's son who kicked her to the curb when she became pregnant. I was born there. She had no support, no way of making it on her own with me, so she went back. An uncle took her in, but she was broken. Broken at seventeen. Her dreams of a better life were shattered. Before I was five, she was dead of an overdose, and my uncle did the best he could with me. He saw that I got an education, but as I grew I came to realize I wasn't like the other kids. My mixed race made me an object of contempt for some people. Racism doesn't stop at the river, you know. But for other people it made me stand out. When he died, I got caught up in the life. I felt desired. Special. I didn't realize I was looked on as just a commodity. When I finally did . . . Well, this was the only way out. They needed somebody over here, and I had something they could use. I was an American by birth and looked more like a gringo. I was intelligent and educated. They even had an English tutor for me. They told me they would set me up here. So I became a kind of broker between them and what Wade did. They said they would even let me stay here and eventually buy the Black Bull. That was probably all lies, but I wanted to believe it.”

“Wait, go back. What Wade did? He was part of a system that harvested kidneys. Body parts that were sold to the highest bidder.”

“When was the last time you walked across the bridge into Juárez, Virgil? It's the third world over there. In some parts worse. These people that gave up a kidney got more for that than they'd earn in a year. So don't get moralistic on me.”

“That may be, but where does the morality come in when it comes to killing? Buddy Hinton and the two young kids who came here, just like your mother . . . They didn't deserve to end up like they did. They had dreams, too. You sacrificed their lives for yours. Which you didn't have to do. You could have come to me, but then, like I said, we never were real to begin with.”

Ruby slumped back down into her chair. When she tried to speak, nothing came. Virgil finally turned and walked away. Before he reached the door, he heard her.

“I had no choice. No choice.”

He opened the door. Then he turned to face her.

“There's always a choice, Ruby. There are a couple of agents outside waiting for you. This is out of my hands now.”

“Virgil, you have to believe me. This started off as one thing, me keeping tabs on you, but it became something else. We weren't a dream. I swear. It was real.”

Her words lingered long after he left the office and walked to his car.

*   *   *

Jimmy was waiting for him when he got to Hayward Ranch. Virgil could see how juiced he was from his experience, and he related it blow by blow. When he started to tell him the third time, Virgil said it was time to get back to the office. Micah asked if he should go with them, but Virgil said it wasn't necessary. He would be questioned by federal agents to determine if there was any complicity on his part, or if any federal or state laws governing transit or money laundering had been broken.

As Virgil turned away, a voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Try to take better care of yourself, Sheriff. After all, we have a lot of catching up to do.”

Virgil looked at the girl who had come to stand alongside Micah. He wanted to respond, but the words would not come to him. So he just nodded to Virginia, touched the brim of his Stetson, then got into his car.

They rode in silence for a while.

“Sorry, Sheriff,” Jimmy finally said.

“No need to be.”

“It's just that I've never felt like this before. This was the first real serious police work I've actually been in the middle of and I . . . I mean . . .”

“It's okay. It's the adrenaline flowing. It's something you can talk about, but until you actually experience it . . . Well, let's just say it's nothing you can prepare for.”

“Do you get used to it?”

“Not really.”

“Virgil, how did you know they weren't smuggling drugs?”

“Well, first, the dogs. They didn't pick up on anything and they hardly ever miss. But the clincher was the ice cream truck. I knew the semis weren't refrigerated, so whatever was in that small space had to be kept on ice. Maybe a combination of ice and dry ice. When it was unloaded, whatever it was had to go into refrigeration right away. Kinda sad to think that giving up a kidney can make the kind of money that tops drug running, but I guess if you're desperate enough you'll pay a lot for something that's going to give you a second chance at life.”

The rest of the trip into Hayward was pretty quiet. Virgil pulled into the parking lot. All of the lights were on. When they stepped inside, Virgil saw that all the deputies, some of the agents, and Rosie were there. There was a shout of greeting and then they were engulfed. Kyle Harrison pulled Virgil aside.

“Good day's work, Virgil. Your instincts made it happen. I think you can expect some federal job offers coming your way. This was big. Real big.”

Virgil watched for a few minutes as people intermingled, telling war stories to one another. He was trying to make his way to the door when Jimmy waylaid him with one more question.

“Virgil, that girl Virginia . . . When you walked in and she saw what had happened to your face, and she said you'd better take better care of yourself because you have a lot of catching up to do. What did she mean by that?”

A slight hint of a smile showed at the corners of Virgil's mouth.

“You know, Jimmy, I've been wondering the same thing.”

*   *   *

The early-evening sky was already showing a few stars, blinking in and out between the thunderheads. There was a sliver of light on the horizon. A lone figure sat on the tail end of an old pickup, silhouetted against the barely visible landscape. An errant breeze brushed the hair that escaped the Stetson on his head. He shifted his weight and crossed his legs, inadvertently hitting the tailgate. The metallic clank was followed by the sound of an owl hooting.

“Glad to know you're still here. Kinda nice to know some things don't change.”

Virgil looked down at a darkening world that had always been his anchor point. Some things
had
changed. The house still needed paint, the cottonwood that stood just off the front porch still caught the air currents, but there was a gaping space where the barns no longer stood. At least Virgil didn't have to look at the burnt and twisted wreckage. It had been nice to see the cleared footprint when he returned, and to begin to imagine what would go in that space. The horses were moving in the field that ran along the road. They were slow shadows until their rhythm was broken by the sprint and buck of one shadow a third the size of the rest, but with twice the energy. Virgil smiled when he heard the squeal of the foal as it ran.

Beyond the field, the ribbon of road was broken by the headlights of an oncoming car. Virgil had a sudden sinking feeling as the car slowed at the entrance to the ranch.

“No, not tonight,” he said to the owl. “I don't need any more trouble.”

Then he breathed a sigh of relief as the engine caught and the car continued down the road.