Fire and Ice (28 page)

“The picture wasn’t in Tomas’s drawer,” Lupe said. “It was in his Bible. Like he had been praying over it. And I thought…”

Tears spilled out of her eyes. She couldn’t go on.

“You thought what?” I asked.

“I thought he was a…” She struggled for a moment before continuing. “A boy someone had used just like those men used those poor girls. And I thought Tomas knew about it and he couldn’t stand it—that he was afraid the same thing could happen to Alfonso and Little Tomas. So when that other man told me the boy was his nephew and he was fine, I was very happy. But now that I know the boy’s mother is dead, I’m afraid—afraid Tomas has done something awful. So afraid.”

With good reason, I thought as she collapsed in tears once more. With very good reason.

Butch caught Joanna’s eye as she returned to the table. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “Everything’s fine,” she said, even though everything wasn’t fine. She found herself wondering how many times her own father and countless others like him had come home from work and told their families that everything was A-OK. She suspected it wasn’t just a law enforcement subterfuge. Maybe it was a grown-up subterfuge. Maybe it was the kind of little white lie adults always tell the people they love.

Dennis was asleep within minutes of being belted into his car seat. On the way home, though, Joanna couldn’t keep all the ugliness locked inside her, and so she told Butch all about the situation at Caring Friends because it was far too heavy a burden to bear alone. When they got home, Butch carried Dennis into his room and put him to bed while Joanna went into the office and inserted the memory card into her home computer.

Norm Higgins was right. The photos were appalling and as graphic as any autopsy photos Joanna had ever seen. Derek Higgins had used a ruler to document the seeping wounds on Faye
Carter’s back and buttocks. One of them was a full three and a half inches wide. Derek had also scanned a copy of the death certificate into the file. Joanna recognized the doctor’s name. Dr. Clay Forrest was the same physician who had pronounced Inez Fletcher’s death as due to natural causes. Sepsis. Again.

Scrolling through the photos, Joanna came face-to-face with the idea that now Inez Fletcher’s remains would most likely need to be exhumed. The evidence in front of her was telling, but it wouldn’t satisfy the requirements of a court of law. Derek’s sworn statement wouldn’t hold up to the demands of maintaining a chain of evidence. Only an official autopsy would do that.

A while later Butch came into her office and stood behind her, staring at the computer screen over her shoulder. Finally he heaved a sigh and walked away. By the time Joanna followed him into the bedroom, he was already in bed.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he said gruffly.

“Somebody has to,” she said.

She undressed and then had to bound over Lady’s prone sleeping body to make it into bed.

Butch reached over and wrapped his arms around her. “You’ll probably have nightmares,” he said. “I’ll probably have nightmares.”

It turned out Butch was wrong about Joanna having nightmares. She didn’t. In actual fact, she put her head on her pillow, closed her eyes, drifted off immediately, and slept like a baby.

Lupe Rivera was still in the interview room when Mel and I went out into the lobby and placed a call to Ross Connors. Once he heard the background he was adamant. “Find ’em a hotel room,” he said, “someplace with a restaurant. Put it on your company
Amex. With this Rios character out gunning for them, you sure as hell can’t take them home.”

So that’s what we did. It turned out that the same Best Western where Jaime Carbajal was staying was the only place that filled the bill as far as sleeping and eating were concerned. But it occurred to me that maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. At least Jaime would know what to do if things got rough.

By the time we took them to the hotel, there weren’t any stores left open. “We’ll come over tomorrow morning,” Mel told Lupe. “We’ll help you pack up clothing and so forth.”

Or buy new, I thought. I found myself wondering how many times Lupe and her sons had actually worn clothing that wasn’t secondhand.

Mel and I had driven over in separate cars, and we went back the same way. “See you at home,” she said with a wave, and then set off out of the parking lot at something just under warp speed.

I took things a little slower, remembering the stenciled sign on Mason Waters’s maroon Kenworth.
DRIVE SAFE. ARRIVE ALIVE
.

I was making my solitary way past North Bend when I remembered Ken Leggett, the heavy-equipment operator who had found Marcella Andrade’s body months after her death. North Bend, Cle Elum, and Ellensburg are all little beads of towns strung on the necklace of I-90. Before today, we’d had only North Bend and Ellensburg. Now we had Cle Elum as well. On a whim, I turned off the freeway and made my way back to Ken Leggett’s place with the Lady in the Dash telling me over and over in the firmest possible voice that I was “off route” and to “make a U-turn where possible.”

No one answered the door at Ken Leggett’s place, but that wasn’t surprising. It was 10:00
P.M.
on a Friday night. Without much worry about being wrong, I made my way to the Beaver
Bar, and there he was—sloshed as can be and slouched in a corner booth.

As I came through the door, the bartender recognized me. “Don’t worry,” he said, nodding in Ken’s direction. “I already cut him off. He’s drinking straight coffee.”

When I sat down opposite him, Ken gave me a bleary-eyed stare. “Who the hell are you?” he wanted to know. “And who said you can sit here? This booth is taken.”

“I’m a cop, remember?” I said. “I’m the one who came to talk to you about that body you found in the woods.”

He stiffened. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” I said. “So let’s talk about something else.”

“What?”

“Who do you work for again?”

“Bowdin Timber. Why? What’s it to you?”

My heart quickened as I heard the name. It was the same company that employed Tomas Rivera.

“Did you ever run into a guy by the name of Tomas Rivera?”

Ken squinted at me over the top of his coffee mug. “Sure,” he said. “I know Tommy. I’ve known him for years. On the crew we all call him Tomba, Tomba, Tomba. Don’t know why.”

“Did you happen to see him today?” I asked.

“Do I look like somebody’s attendance officer?” he said. “Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“I could have sworn I saw his red pickup parked outside my equipment shed as I was leaving, but I remember his crew chief complaining that he never showed up for work today.”

If I could find Tomas’s vehicle, maybe I could start to get a line on where he had gone.

“By your shed,” I said eagerly. “Where’s that? Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Hell, no,” Ken said. “You’d be lost for years. Some elk hunter would find you dead in your car next winter. But I can show you.”

He heaved himself out of the booth. “Come on,” he said.

Ken staggered outside. There was no way I was letting him drive, but when I showed him my Mercedes, he hooted with laughter. “That thing’ll high-center and we’ll end up needing a tow.”

In the end, we took his four-wheel-drive Toyota Tundra. I drove. He directed me down I-90 and off into the woods on roads that made no sense and where I began to believe he was right—that once we got in, we’d never get out. But eventually we rounded a corner and there, in front of us, was a massive metal shed with two sets of huge garage doors. And parked off to one side was a red Toyota pickup truck.

I suddenly felt nervous and wished I were wearing my Kevlar vest. I was there alone, except for Ken, but he was drunk and I knew he wouldn’t be any help if push came to shove. I was going to tell him to stay put and let me go scout around. Before I had a chance, he swung open the door and half tumbled/half stumbled to the ground. Then he righted himself and started toward the shed, swearing under his breath.

I yelled at him to stop, but he ignored me. Instead, he set off in a staggering broken-field trot, lumbering toward the shed. I got out of the Tundra, too. Once I was on the ground, I heard what he had heard. Coming from inside the shed was the low-throated rumble of some kind of heavy equipment.

By the time I caught up with Ken, he had fumbled a set of keys out of his pocket and was opening a door that was set into the side wall of the shed. He reached inside and switched on a light. Then,
after hitting a button that opened the garage doors, he came rolling back out of the shed coughing as a thick cloud of diesel smoke and carbon monoxide billowed behind him and rose skyward in a cloud through the open garage doors.

We waited for a few moments for the air to clear. When Leggett went back inside to turn off the bulldozer, I followed behind. A man sat slumped at the wheel. I knew from the way he was sitting that Tomas Rivera was gone.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Amazed to see I had a signal, I called Mel.

“You’d better turn around at the next exit,” I told her. “We have a problem.”

AS BEST MAN, JOANNA WAS DUE AT THE CHURCH FOR WEDDING
photos at nine. By seven-thirty she knew she was having a bad hair day. After wetting her hair down completely and starting over, she managed to make the grade.

After the fuss Dennis had made during the rehearsal, she and Butch decided to run up the flag to see if Carol could keep him with her rather than having him mess up the ceremony. Jenny wouldn’t be there, either, which meant it would just be Joanna and Butch. If kids did something to wreck the festivities, they would be someone else’s kids and someone else’s problem.

While getting dressed, Joanna had also decided that she would do nothing about the funeral-home photos until after the wedding. Most of the people who weren’t on duty would be at the church.

People need to have a chance to enjoy themselves, she told herself as she sprayed her unruly hair into submission. Besides, since the victims in question had been dead for months, there was no point in putting in a lot of costly overtime to jump-start the investigations.

Butch whistled appreciatively when she finally emerged from the bedroom. “Most of the best men I’ve met aren’t nearly this good-looking,” he said.

They dropped Dennis off at Carol’s place on the way. Once at the church, Joanna started inside for the formal wedding photo ordeal while Butch told her he would wait in the car until closer to the ceremony.

“You’re just going to sit here?” she asked. “You didn’t even bring along something to read.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I don’t need anything to read. You’d be surprised how little time I have to just sit and think.”

She made it through the photo session in good shape. The dove-gray silk ensemble her mother had found was a perfect complement for the tuxes worn by Frank and the ring bearer.

True to Father Rowan’s words, the ceremony went off without a hitch. Well, mostly without a hitch. As the ring bearer, Joanna, and Frank filed into their places at the front of the church, Frank looked nervous and more than a little pale. Joanna worried that if Frank keeled over, she’d have a hard time holding him up. But then LuAnn Marcowitz, the bride, came walking down the aisle accompanied by both her son and daughter. The radiant smile she turned on Frank seemed to bolster him. He straightened his shoulders and a bit of color seeped back into his pallid cheeks.

When Father Rowan asked, “Who giveth away?” LuAnn’s two kids gave a rousing “We do” and then sat down next to their grandmother, who, in true MOTB fashion, was weeping quietly
in the second row. The ring bearer managed to drop the ring at precisely the wrong moment. When it rolled out of reach under the bride’s dress, the ring bearer promptly scrambled under her skirt to retrieve it. He popped up again, holding it triumphantly in the air, and got a hearty round of applause from the assembled congregation. The bride’s spoken vow of “I do” came through loud and clear. Frank’s was a lot quieter.

When it was over and the newlyweds marched down the aisle to the joyous strains of the Wedding March, Joanna followed along behind, realizing as she went that she had made it through the entire ceremony without once thinking about Deputy Dan Sloan.

That was a good thing. It would have been very bad form for the best man to break down and cry, especially if she smeared her mascara.

By the time we left the suicide scene in the woods outside Cle Elum and made it back to Ellensburg, we were very thankful to find that the Best Western still had one room available, a room with two double beds. At home Mel and I sleep in a queen-size bed. Doubles don’t fit us very well. When I woke up the next morning—at ten past eight—Mel was sound asleep in the other bed.

I went into the bathroom, showered with a tiny sliver of soap, and then got dressed in yesterday’s underwear. My mother would not have been amused, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that meant I was more or less likely to be in a car wreck that day.

By the time I came out of the bathroom, Mel was up. I know now what to expect when she hasn’t had a chance to remove her makeup properly. So I gave her a clear shot at the bathroom and told her I was on my way to the restaurant. Fortunately, Detective
Caldwell had volunteered to give Lupe and her children the bad news about Tomas Rivera’s suicide. As I walked from our room to the restaurant through a chill and steady drizzle, I was grateful that I didn’t have that next-of-kin sword hanging over my head.

Once inside the steamy restaurant, I looked around for Lupe and her kids. Fortunately, they were nowhere to be seen, but Jaime Carbajal was. Uninvited, I lowered myself onto the empty bench seat of his booth, motioning for the waitress to bring me coffee as I did so.

I told him what had happened after he left—how we had found Tomas dead, presumably of carbon monoxide poisoning, in a shed with a running bulldozer.

“If the place was locked, how did he get inside?” Jaime asked.

“Ken Leggett, the heavy-equipment operator, thinks maybe Tomas was hiding inside the building—maybe in the restroom—when Ken put the dozer away and locked up for the night. Once everyone left the job site, he hot-wired the dozer and that was it.”

“Did he leave a note?”

“No.”

I think Jaime was as disappointed as I was that Tomas Rivera had croaked out on us without telling us what we really needed to know. It’s one thing to know who did something. I didn’t have a doubt in the world that Tomas was our killer. What we didn’t know was why he had done it or who was ultimately responsible.

“How does Miguel Rios fit into the picture?” Jaime asked.

“He started out as an ordinary street thug, but he’s worked his way up to a waterfront home in a town called Gig Harbor. According to what Tomas told Lupe, he used to be hooked in with a group who smuggle people and goods across the border along with a lucrative side venture into prostitution.”

A thoughtful look crossed Jaime’s face. “Tell me about those smugglers,” he said. “Did she mention any names?”

I hadn’t listened to Lupe Rivera’s entire second interview, but I had heard quite a bit of it. Removing my notebook from my pocket, I paged through the jumble of notes.

“Here it is,” I said. “Cervantes.”

Jaime Carbajal stiffened in his chair. “Cervantes?” he repeated.

I nodded. “When Lupe mentioned the name, I thought she was making a joke. I said, ‘As in
Don Quixote?
’ She said, ‘No, definitely not
Don Quixote
.’”

“That fits!” Jaime exclaimed. He was already reaching for his cell phone.

“What do you mean, it fits?” I asked.

Holding the phone to his ear, he didn’t answer. “Damn!” he said. “Went straight to voice mail.” He glanced at his watch. “She’s probably already gone to the wedding.”

“What’s going on?”

But Jaime was already dialing another number. When there was no answer on that one, either, he tried a third. “Ernie!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad I caught you. You’re not going to believe it. We think the guy who murdered Marcella may have been hooked in with the Cervantes brothers from down in Cananea. I’m hoping you can call up the folks from the Border Task Force and see if they can tell us anything about what’s going on with those guys at the moment.” He paused, then added, “Sure, I understand. Have Tom give me a call. I don’t have a computer with me, but he can fax whatever they send him to my hotel here in Ellensburg.”

I waited until he finished the call. “How about putting me back in the loop?” I said. “Who are the Cervantes brothers?”

“Antonio and Jesus,” he said. “Their father, Manuel, was a good man, a copper miner at Cananea, a mining town just south of the border in Sonora. He got dusted and died.”

“Dusted?” I asked.

“Lung disease,” Jaime told me. “Once he was gone, his two sons
decided they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them—and they were too lazy to work that hard. So they went into business for themselves—drug trafficking, running illegals across the border, you name it. As the bigger cartels started getting taken down, Antonio and Jesus moved in on their territories and in on their businesses, too. Prostitution, protection rackets, you name it.”

The word “prostitution” made me think about Marcella Andrade and those other five murdered girls. She had been taken out because of the money. I wondered if maybe some of the other girls had objected when they’d found out the real price of admission for their ride across the border.

I said aloud to Jaime, “Sounds like the Mafia.”

“It is the Mafia,” he replied grimly. “Mafia Mexican style.”

“But why would Miguel Rios of Gig Harbor, Washington, be dealing with people from—where was it again?”

“Cananea, Sonora,” Jaime answered. “Maybe because they’re all part of the global economy. Once I hear back from the Task Force, we may have an answer on that.”

“We?” I asked. It seemed reasonable to point out to him that this was our case, not his.

“You,” he corrected. “Obviously, if anything important turns up, I’ll pass it along.”

Mel came into the restaurant and made her way to the booth. Even in yesterday’s clothes and with minimal makeup, she looked terrific.

“Morning, guys,” she said, smiling at Jaime. “Mind if I join you?”

The reception was a catered affair in the basement of the Convention Center, a building that had once held the company store, Phelps Dodge Mercantile. The groceries, furniture, appliances,
and dry goods were all gone now—had been for generations—but ghosts of the building’s commercial past still lingered. There was a reasonably good restaurant along with several boutique shops on the main floor, while the basement was devoted to a single large meeting room.

Joanna and Butch walked down the worn terrazzo stairs and made their way through the reception line, greeting the smiling bride and groom and offering congratulations. A local and very enthusiastic mariachi band, Los Amigos, was playing in one corner of the room, next to a table stacked high with wedding presents. Emily Post may have decreed that gifts shouldn’t be brought to wedding receptions, but Frank’s and LuAnn’s friends and relations hadn’t gotten that memo.

Keeping the gifts and gift cards straight isn’t my problem, Joanna thought gratefully. And neither are the kids.

True to form, the twins, still in their wedding-procession finery, were once again at each other’s throats. Joanna knew that if she and Butch had brought Denny along, he would have made a beeline for all the excitement and put his own toddler spin on the proceedings.

Along one wall was a buffet table laden with mountains of Mexican food provided by Chico Rodriguez of Chico’s Taco Stand fame. The restaurant, in Bisbee’s Don Luis neighborhood, was little more than a hole in the wall, but the spread here, pulled together by Chico and an assortment of his female relatives, was nothing less than splendid.

Painfully aware that her hairdo battle had left no time for breakfast, Joanna took her growling stomach and headed straight for the buffet table. She and Butch filled their plates with a delectable assortment of tacos, taquitos, enchiladas, and chips. After locating two seats together at the already crowded tables, Joanna
looked after the plates and places while Butch went in search of punch.

Joanna was still waiting for him to return when Eleanor and George stopped in passing to say hello. George moved on to visit with someone else while Eleanor, eyeing Joanna’s loaded plate, bent over and whispered in her ear.

“Try not to spill any salsa on that gray silk,” she warned. “That stuff will never come out.”

After imparting that bit of wisdom, Eleanor moved on.

“What did your mother want?” Butch asked when he returned a couple of minutes later.

“The usual,” Joanna replied with a laugh. “She was giving me the benefit of her years of experience with silk suits.”

For the next half hour or so, Joanna enjoyed herself immensely. It was fun to see her people—uniformed personnel and not; some active and some retired; sworn officers and not—enjoying themselves together. She knew that on this Saturday afternoon her department was functioning with only a skeleton crew, and she hoped nothing momentous would happen while they were all off having a good time.

A few minutes later, as the bride was gearing up to toss the bouquet, Joanna heard her cell phone’s distinctive chirp. Joanna’s outfit had no pockets and she wasn’t carrying a purse. Butch pulled her phone out of his pocket and handed it over. Caller ID told her the number was unavailable.

“Hello,” Joanna said.

Just then a cheer went up as Deb Howell, looking surprised, stood in the front row of onlookers holding LuAnn Montoya’s bridal bouquet. The band swung into another number, and the accompanying din rendered Joanna’s phone useless.

“Hang on a minute,” Joanna said to her unidentified caller. “I can’t hear a word. Let me go outside.”

Pushing away from the table, she made her way through the crowd and up the stairs. Once she was on the ground floor, she spoke again.

“If this is Sheriff Brady, where the hell are you?” a man’s voice asked. “In a bar somewhere?”

It wasn’t a very pleasant way to start a conversation with a stranger. As far as Joanna was concerned, it was none of his business if she was at a wedding or raising hell in a local cantina.

“Who’s calling, please,” Joanna returned coldly.

“Agent in Charge Bruce Delahany,” he replied brusquely. “What the hell do you people think you’re doing down there? You’re about to screw up fifteen months of work!”

In Joanna Brady’s circle of acquaintance, Bruce Delahany of the Drug Enforcement Agency was a known but none-too-popular addition. Joanna’s department had worked closely and successfully with several of Delahany’s predecessors. In fact, until Delahany had taken charge, Joanna’s department had hosted regular meetings of a DEA-sponsored coalition, the Border Task Force. Delahany preferred to have the meetings held closer to his own bailiwick, preferably at his offices in downtown Tucson.

Joanna had been forced to sit through any number of seminars and meetings where the square-jawed Delahany, often with Arizona’s newly elected governor at his side and with an absolute absence of humor, went on at tedious length (ATL, as Butch called it!) about the importance of interdepartmental cooperation. It wasn’t lost on Joanna that Delahany talked the talk without ever walking the walk. He appeared to be far too focused on creating his own law enforcement fiefdom.