Fatal Divide (23 page)

FORTY-NINE

Wanda had fallen into a restless sleep, after being admitted to the hospital the night before for exhaustion and dehydration. The typical noises of a busy hospital woke her on Sunday morning. Frustrated that she was tethered to a telemetry unit and couldn’t get up for the bathroom, she pressed her call button.

A smiling teenager came in a few minutes later with a breakfast tray, which she set on the bedside table. She greeted Wanda in O’odham. Even in the midst of her distress, Wanda took the time to be happy that the girl was conversing in the language. It was disappearing among the young ones. She returned the greeting in kind.

A moment later, a nurse came in to ask what Wanda needed.

“Can you unhook me from all this? I need the bathroom.”

“No, you don’t. You have a catheter. The doctor wanted to be able to evaluate your output.”

“Oh,” Wanda replied. How did she not remember that? “But, I want to be unhooked anyway. I need to see my husband.”

“Eat your breakfast, and then we’ll see, after the doctor has seen you.”

“But...”

“Mrs. Lopez, the fastest way to get to see your husband is to do as we ask. We’re trying to take care of you, too. Please let us.”

Defeated, Wanda submitted to the will of the nurse. She didn’t have much choice. She could hardly waddle down the hall with her bag of urine slung over her arm. “How is he?” she asked.

“He’s holding his own,” the nurse answered. It was uninformative, but at least Wanda knew he was alive. That would have to do for now. She ate her breakfast, surprised at how hungry she was.

The teenager had disappeared. It was too bad; Wanda wanted to talk to her more in O’odham and judge for herself whether the girl had a real grasp of the language, or just the superficial conventions of hello, goodbye, please, and thank you. It wouldn’t hurt to practice her own rusty skills, either.

It seemed like hours later, and Wanda had gone to sleep again from sheer boredom, when a hand on her wrist woke her. The resident from last night was there to check her, and pronounced her as good as new. As soon as he left, the nurse came in to remove the catheter, as well as the telemetry leads. She wouldn’t be discharged yet — that would take a little while — but she was permitted to go see Hector.

The two sheriff’s deputies outside her door surprised her. Thurston was serious then, about the warrant. A flash of anger made her stumble a bit, and one of them steadied her. Wanda snatched her arm from his grasp, sent him an ungracious scowl, and made her way to her husband’s room, with the two deputies following.

Wanda was dismayed at Hector’s appearance. He was a peculiar shade of gray, and was sleeping or unconscious. She bit back a cry, and went to stand beside him, picking up his limp hand. “Oh, Hector, what is wrong? What did they do to you, my husband?”

Wanda didn’t know whether to sit and pray or go to find a doctor to explain to her why Hector seemed worse, not better. She opted for the latter and turned to leave the room, almost running into one of the deputies as she did.

“Will you two back off?” she cried, piqued beyond her ability to be nice. “I’m not going anywhere while my husband is in here. You don’t need to be on my heels all the time.”

“Sorry, Wanda,” the other deputy, who had hung back, said. “We’ll try to stay out of your way.”

The first gave him a sour look, but backed away so Wanda could pass. “I have to follow you,” he said. “Orders.”

“Fine. Do it from ten feet back, or I swear I’ll hurt you,” she said. He backed away, no doubt remembering her performance with the scalpel yesterday. Her people didn’t take scalps, like their enemy the Apache used to, but maybe this man didn’t know that.

With her way cleared, Wanda started down the hall to the nurses’ station, where she asked for a doctor to check on Hector and help her understand his condition.

“Yes, ma’am,” the nurse replied. “Why don’t you go back and sit with him. I’ll send a doctor as soon as I can.”

Wanda did as suggested, scooting the chair near the bed again so she could hold Hector’s hand. His hand was so cold. She bit her lip and coughed as heartburn started, her breakfast sitting uneasy.

At least Jimmy was well away, if she could rely on Dylan, and she was certain she could. Maybe Dylan would make the trip over to Sells and bring her up to speed. She settled in to wait, falling asleep again, almost immediately.

FIFTY

Thurston took the drive to Sells again on Sunday, hoping to get more information from Wanda on what she was doing on the reservation, and maybe what she thought Chaves was doing last night. They seemed to be in cahoots, those two.

He couldn’t figure out exactly how they were connected to the murder of the old man in the national monument, which was his primary case, why Chaves would murder the old guy, or why Wanda and her husband had ended up the captives of one of the cartels. He hated to admit he was in over his head, but Tucson was on his back for results. If he didn’t deliver something soon, he’d have the brass over here meddling in his town again.

He went to the room where he’d last seen Wanda, to find it empty and clean, as if she’d been discharged. From there he raced to Hector’s room. Almost skidding around a corner, he slowed down when he saw his deputies down the hall.

Wanda must be there with her husband. Well, she was going to have to come out and talk to him, husband or no husband. When he got to the door, he made enough noise to wake her, earning a glare from both Wanda and the nurse who was walking past the room.

“Keep it down, sir, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Thurston shrugged and walked into Hector’s room. “Wanda, I need to talk with you some more. I’ve got your little playmate in jail. If you want to see him anytime soon, it’s time to come clean. I know you’ve been holding back.” It satisfied him a great deal to see her visibly startle at his words ‘in jail’.

Wanda glanced at her unconscious husband, squeezed his hand, and then walked past Thurston out of the room. “Let’s go to the cafeteria. I need some coffee.”

Thurston signaled his men to stay behind and followed Wanda. When they’d obtained their coffee and sat down at the table, Wanda spoke first.

“Just who do you mean by my little playmate, and why do you have him or her in jail?”

“Don’t try to play cute with me, Wanda. Dylan Chaves. He followed me to the Stars and Garters last night, cased my position, and then fled the scene. What was that about?”

Wanda was looking at him like he had two heads. “What are you talking about?”

Okay, so maybe Chaves was acting on his own. He still needed to know what was going on here on the reservation. He switched tacks and asked that question.

Wanda hesitated. Either she was working on her story or she was still puzzling over the first question. Thurston would have laid odds on the former.

“Kevin, you are making about as much sense as a two-year old reading a book upside down. I have no idea why Dylan would have followed you to that bar, or why you would have gone there yourself, but I’m sure whatever explanation he gave is the correct one.

“As for what’s going on here on the rez, I’ll tell you, but rest assured that I’m going to speak to your superior officer about you. You should already know, and if you don’t, you’re either incompetent or complicit. If I decide the latter, I’m calling Lt. Wells today.”

Thurston blanched at that threat. It was Wells who’d backed up the Wards and Wanda’s demand for a state police investigation into Alex’s kidnapping last summer. There was no love lost between them. “Tell me, then. What is it I’ve been so blatantly missing?”

“Only a cartel war going on under your nose, not to mention the fact that virtually every young troublemaker on the reservation has joined one of them. There’s a thriving heroin trade going on. My grandfather was murdered for hiding a brother — you would say cousin — of mine from the Kings,
Los Reyes del Desierto
. He went to negotiate with an enforcer to leave Jimmy alone, and was killed for his trouble.”

Thurston was thunderstruck. Of course he’d known that the border was like a sieve. But most of the young O’odham men? Could it be that widespread? That was the question he started with.

Wanda shook her head. “How much do you know about my people?” she asked.

“What everyone knows, I guess. I grew up around here.”

“You must not have been paying attention. I hear your department refer to ‘Latinos’ or ‘Natives’, as if there is a big difference. There isn’t, not here. The indigenous population of Mexico, just south of the border, are my people. Your border cut us in half. Didn’t you ever stop to wonder why so many of us have Latin surnames?”

“No. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s because we married among our villages. Some of us have Anglo names, and some Latino, but we’re all O’odham really.”

“So?” Thurston interjected.

“So now we can’t pass back and forth. No one cared about that border, until 1930 or so. We were free to mingle with our relatives and in-laws in both directions. Good God, we’ve been telling the government for several years now what was happening! No one does anything except tighten the border and build a fence. That made it worse!”

“Worse, how?”

“Worse, as in our young people are now turning to drug and human trafficking, just to survive economically. Your government shoots down proposals that would bring jobs to our communities, and our people either leave the reservation and diminish our numbers, or turn to illegal activity so they can afford to stay.”

“So, are you saying this relative of yours, this Jimmy, was one of them? Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. Dylan got him away from the reservation, for his own safety, after they found me with the Gilas.”

“So Dylan is Gila?”

“No, you idiot. Jimmy took Dylan with him to confront the Gilas that he suspected had Hector and me.”

“But they didn’t kill your grandfather?”

“No, that was
Los Reyes
.”

“Woman, you are making no sense at all. Where were you held? I need to pick those people up and start making sense of this whole thing.”

“Well, stop interrupting and I’ll make it make sense for you. There’s a piece I haven’t told you yet.”

Thurston pushed his chair back and paced around the table, making a show of pulling his hair out. Wanda sat impassively, which irritated him even more. When he finally calmed down, he sat and picked up his coffee, as if nothing had happened.

“Are you done?” she said.

He ignored her. As if there had been no interruption, Wanda picked up her narrative again. “Jimmy said he had a few ideas about where I was. It was just lucky that the first one paid off. I’m not sure how he talked them into giving me up, but he and Dylan brought us to the hospital. That’s the last I’ve seen of either one of them. If you want to talk to the Gilas, you’ll have to get one of them to take you there.”

“And you don’t know who killed your grandfather?”

“Not specifically, no. Now that I know who Jimmy was running from, I assume that group killed Herman. But I don’t know a specific name. Chances are, he’s from across the border and beyond your reach now. That’s how they operate. It’s possible Jimmy could tell you.”

“If I can get immunity for him for all cartel business he’s been involved in until now, do you think he’d come in and talk to me?”

“Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on if he thought he could trust you to keep him safe from
Los Reyes
. Probably not. But, he may talk to you by phone. That would be up to him.”

“And if I charge Chaves with assisting a known criminal to escape?”

“Good luck making a case against Jimmy for anything. You didn’t even know his name, until I told you. Without a case against Jimmy, I doubt you can make a case against Dylan. If I thought you could, I wouldn’t have involved Dylan in the first place.”

“So you admit Dylan is involved?”

“Only with rescuing Hector and me, and giving Jimmy a ride to wherever he was going. Otherwise, he knew as little as you, until I told him.”

Thurston shook his head. It looked like he was going to have to make a deal with the devil to clear the murder. The rest he’d wash his hands of; it all took place on O’odham land as far as he knew. Let them deal with it.

FIFTY-ONE

Sunday Afternoon

To distract herself from waiting on Rick’s call, Alex had finally decided to work on her blog. Naturally, as soon as she started, the call came in. Thurston was out of town, and the deputy in charge of the holding area was willing to let visitors see Dylan. She had to admit that part of her reason to see him was curiosity. She’d never been inside that portion of the sheriff’s department building.

Rick told her to get there as soon as possible, before Thurston came back and put a stop to visitation. He’d been there already, and agreed with Dylan that the charge was completely bogus and possibly not legal. They were considering a false arrest complaint to Tucson, but there was still nothing to be done about Dylan being in jail until Monday.