Scavengers (25 page)
“You’ve got your phone?”
“Yes, I do. And it’s switched off.” She grinned. “I’ll call you…don’t call me.” She didn’t take time to explain to the deputy why she didn’t want to make the call to Naranjo herself. It was the same stretch of desert, after all…the arbitrary line in the gravel that marked the end of one country and the beginning of another meant nothing to the rocks and plants and critters that lived here—or to the signals from her cellular phone. As she moved steadily south—even though only by a few feet—she wanted to concentrate on every sound, every waft of air, every smell that the Mexican desert had to offer. The last thing she wanted, when she needed absolute silence, was the sudden, jarring warble of the telephone.
Estelle Reyes-Guzman was able to follow the traces of Eurelio Saenz’s tortured crawl for what she estimated was well over two hundred yards before the relatively level desert gave way to a rumple in its complexion. An arroyo swept in from the northwest, cut when a small rivulet started off the flank of the hill just southwest of where the undersheriff’s car was parked.
Standing on the arroyo’s edge, Estelle swung the light to play on the tracks. The arroyo bottom a dozen feet below was cut by another small channel from the most recent rains—a month, two months, maybe six months before. A few deep pockmarks where cattle had stepped caught the light.
When Eurelio had crossed the arroyo, he had been staggering, but he’d been on his feet. He hadn’t crawled across like a wounded lizard. The arroyo bottom was at least fifty feet wide, maybe sixty. The harsh beam of the flashlight made it difficult to judge. The shoeprints meandered like those of a drunken man.
He had reached the northeast side and then had been faced with an arroyo bank of eroded gravel that was twice as tall as he was—an impossible barrier for a man who could hardly walk, and probably could not see.
Estelle stepped as near the edge as she dared and turned the light downward. The tracks turned to parallel the arroyo side, running up a smooth wash of quartz sand. Estelle could picture the young man, one arm out against the rough bank for balance, trying to maneuver his way in the dark, desperate almost to madness from the pain.
Cattle were adept at finding their way down into and up out of arroyos. Once they discovered an easy route, that became their thoroughfare, hooves cutting the trail deep and hard. Eurelio Saenz had stumbled along the arroyo for almost fifty feet before he came upon the cattle trail that would save his life. The trail cut diagonally up the bank, up and out to the desert beyond.
Before descending into the arroyo, Estelle stood and listened. She hadn’t heard Jackie Taber’s county unit accelerate away, but the sound could easily be lost in the rolling hills. She looked up at the vast heavens. A full moon would have been helpful, rather than the little silver remnant that was already fading just above the eastern horizon.
Picking her way slowly, Estelle descended into the arroyo. Mingled with the tracks were copious blood spatters. She followed the tracks across, but even from the midpoint of the arroyo, still twenty or thirty feet from the other side, she saw that there was no matching cattle trail on the other side. Still, the footprints staggered from a spot directly ahead. She reached the southwest side of the arroyo and stopped. The edge above her head was crumbled, some of the edge freshly knocked loose.
On the arroyo floor was a series of imprints, a hodgepodge of impressions. No one had scrabbled down the arroyo side. The loose edge and churned gravel below indicated that at least one person had plunged into the arroyo from above. For several minutes, Estelle stood quietly, working the flashlight over every inch.
Had Eurelio Saenz cringed at the edge of the arroyo above, beaten and barely conscious, caught in the glare of flashlights, until a bullet had bowled him over the side? Had he been unceremoniously kicked over as he lay unconscious and bleeding?
Whatever the circumstances, the thugs had chosen a prime spot—out of sight of the highway, the border fence, any curious, prying eyes. A spring rain would shift and mold the contours of the arroyo bottom, hiding the few bones that coyotes, ravens, and vultures left behind.
Eurelio Saenz had fooled them. His attackers had been convinced that the young man was dead, Estelle was sure. They had taken the time to bury Rafael Smith, but Lolo Duarte had made them angry, and they’d left his corpse for the vultures. Apparently, Eurelio Saenz had made them angry, too.
With no way to leap up and out of the arroyo at that point, Estelle swung her light southeast, following the watercourse. The arroyo ran straight for fifty yards before sweeping around a corner. Estelle walked in that direction, staying on the ground beaten by cattle hooves. Just around the corner, she found a slump in the arroyo bank, and the trail led up on a long diagonal. She climbed out quickly, then turned to walk back along the rim.
She approached the spot above Eurelio’s plunge with care. The vegetation was scant, dotted across the rugged desert, clustered here and there where there was shade or a natural water catchment.
It was the tire tracks that caught the flashlight beam first as she swept it back and forth. A rough cut in the desert, dodging the runty clusters of acacia and cholla, was marked by the occasional passage of vehicles—a rancher, shepherd, hunter, or rock hound, maybe a dozen in a banner year. Still, that was enough to make a permanent scar in the desert. The two-track had to meander eventually toward the main road from Tres Santos to Asunción.
Estelle stood and listened, wishing she was high over the desert in Jim Bergin’s plane. She would be able to understand at a glance the spiderweb of trails and paths. Perhaps the path in front of her was the only thoroughfare in this area. If so, it must wind within shouting distance of the border fence behind the village of Maria, perhaps only a few thousand yards from where Estelle stood.
She stepped as if in slow motion, playing the light under every bush or clump of bunch grass. Twenty feet from the arroyo edge, she found the
azote del espinos
. Except for the pale gleam of the handle, it might easily have been a cactus somehow uprooted by an energetic Mexican steer, eager to tussle something with its sharp horns, not minding a few spines in the process. Estelle felt her pulse pounding in her ears. The cholla was the better part of four feet long, with three heavy branches forking off the main stem, each with its own clusters of branches. The limbs were broken and twisted, the spines bent and torn—or missing.
Reaching carefully, Estelle picked up the
azote
by the base, where several swipes of a machete or large knife had cleaned off the threatening thorns. Even with much of it broken away, the remains of the cholla bush weighed five or six pounds, a stout, vicious weapon.
She bent and laid the cactus fragment on the ground. After the last stroke, the thugs would have tossed the
azote
to one side, but it was heavy and awkward—it wouldn’t go far. And sure enough, less than five paces farther on, she found the trampled ground where Eurelio had fought his attackers and lost.
Estelle stood rooted. How had they held him? An incapacitating, unexpected blow first? Or had they shot him, and then seen that he was still alive. The torn desert extended in a radius of several feet, as if the man wielding the whip had followed his target as Eurelio tried to scramble first one way and then another, frantic to avoid the lashing spikes of the cactus. Had they tied his hands behind his back? A rope around the neck like a dog?
A sharp pain in her left hand brought her back. She had been clenching her fist so hard that a fingernail had cut the palm.
She tucked the flashlight under her arm and shook both hands to ease the tension. The eastern sky was showing signs of life, the inky black overhead still star-studded but fading toward the horizon. Estelle closed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths.
“Okay,” she said aloud. She skirted off to the left toward the two-track, counting the paces from the
azote
as she went. At twenty-two steps, she found the car tracks, a graceful crescent carved in the sand as the tires sprayed gravel and churned their mark. Because the vehicle had been cranked into a hard turn, the imprints of all four tires were distinct. One set was heavily treaded, the others showing scarcely more than a smooth, slightly dished imprint.
The scuff marks of several pairs of boots were clear…not enough to cast or photograph for detail, but distinct enough to mark passage until the next howling desert wind or late winter storm shifting things around again, smoothing the traces.
Estelle stood quietly, looking off to the north, flashlight turned off. Had the smooth rise of the hill not been in the way, she might have been able to see the sodium vapor light in front of Wally Madrid’s gas station in Maria. Over the other shoulder, several miles toward the east, the highway would be visible. Once the job was done, had the thugs opened the back of the station wagon and enjoyed a little tailgate party, oblivious to Eurelio’s agonizing escape?
She stood on her tip toes, trying to calculate the distance that Eurelio Saenz had crawled. Counting the long minutes when he floundered in the arroyo before stumbling upon the cattle trail, his tortured crawl could have taken hours.
If they had remained in the area, Eurelio Saenz’s attackers would have seen the bob and weave of headlights from Noel Jones’ big rig, the Christmas tree of its running lights clear and sharp before the rolling terrain hid it from view. They wouldn’t have seen him hit the brakes, but had they held their breath and listened hard, they would have heard the big truck sigh to a stop. And, had they been patient enough, they most certainly would have heard the wail of the ambulance siren as it screamed down toward them from the north.
There was no reason for them to wait. They would have bailed out of the car, Eurelio Saenz terrified that his ride home wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped. They’d beaten him, flogged him, and then shot him…in unknown order. With the satisfaction of a job well done, they would have heard the sickening thud of his body as it hit the sandy gravel of the arroyo bottom. And then they would have left, driving off to whatever place they called home to celebrate another accomplishment.
Estelle turned the light back on, moved a step, and swept the desert. The light bounced off an aluminum can so bleached by the sun and weather that it was impossible to tell what the original product had been. A bit of rope, no more than three feet long, was half buried in the sand under a cholla that hadn’t won the contest for selection as the
azote
. She pulled it loose, saw that it had been desert detritus for years, and left it in place.
The next instant, she sucked in her breath and her pulse jumped. The single shell casing was so bright in the gleam of the flashlight that it appeared illuminated by its own light source. Estelle looked at it in place for a long time before kneeling down.
“There you are,” she breathed. She slipped the ballpoint pen from her pocket and hooked the point into the casing. It was large enough to slide easily over the pen, and she held it to the light to read the head-stamp. “You’ve become a favorite, haven’t you,” she said aloud, and brought the casing to her nose. The aroma of recently burned gunpowder was pungent.
She carefully pulled the lip of her left breast pocket open and slid the casing inside, then patted the pocket closed. For another long minute, she stood and listened to the air. Then she pulled the radio from her belt. She turned the volume knob off, then advanced it two clicks.
“Three oh one, three ten.”
The reply was immediate. “Three ten, go ahead.”
“Are you in town yet?”
“Negative. I’m still parked here behind your car.”
Estelle felt a flash of irritation. “Who’s with Eurelio?”
“The sheriff said he’d take care of it. He told me to stay down here. He’s on his way.”
“Any word from Naranjo?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. I’ve found the spot. I’d guess that it’s a good three hundred yards from the border fence. Maybe more. There’s a place here where an old dirt road skirts an arroyo. It looks like they stopped here. I found a fresh shell casing.”
“Forty-four?”
“Yes. I’m going to flag the spot somehow and take some photos. I don’t know what they’ll show.”
“Can you see our vehicles from where you are?”
“That’s negative. There’s a small knoll in the way.”
“You be careful.”
Estelle smiled. “There’s not much out here, Jackie. A big open desert with a few tracks. That’s it. I’m going to take some photos, then I’ll head back. I found the whip, by the way. I’m bringing it, too.”
“Ten-four.”
Estelle turned off the radio so there was no risk of a sudden burst of squelch rattling the quiet of the night, and slid the unit back into its belt holster. After marking the spot where she’d found the shell casing with a half sheet of paper from her notebook weighted with a fist-sized rock, she turned to back away from the tracks, camera in hand. She froze. The sound drifted to her, muffled and guttural. Off in the distance, a single glint of amber light flashed. She snapped off her flashlight and dropped to a crouch even though a thousand yards still separated her from the vehicle that was making its way along the dirt trail.
Estelle waited. The vehicle appeared to have a single parking light illuminating its way. In a few minutes she could hear the crunch of tires, and the occasional ping of a stone spitting against the undercarriage. She eased the radio off her belt and turned it on.
“Three oh one, three ten.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s a vehicle headed this way, an older model of some sort.”
The car surged as the driver gassed it over a small rise. The engine was rough, hardly the silky whisper of Naranjo’s government truck. “I’m going to make my way back your way.”
“And quickly,” Jackie Taber said.
“You bet,” Estelle said. “I don’t think I’m going to risk any photos just now.” She holstered the radio. The growing light in the east was doing a fine job of illuminating Texas, but the desert under her boots was a mass of indistinct shapes and hazards. She cupped her hand over the flashlight, trying to direct just a tiny stab of light in the direction of the
azote
. With a sigh of relief, she was able to retrace her steps, and the battered cactus plant felt heavy in her grasp when she picked it up, like a huge, heavy, awkward broom.
Holding it out away from her legs, she walked as quickly as she dared along the arroyo edge until she estimated that she was close to the cattle trail. Without using the light, she was unable to avoid the indistinct shapes as they rose in her path, snagging either her clothes or the heavy cactus. Turning her back to the direction of the methodically approaching car, she turned on the flashlight, holding it close to the ground and shielded with her body. The arroyo edge yawned smooth and sheer in front of her. In the distance, she heard voices. The cattle trail remained hidden. She stopped, flashlight in her left hand. If she had gone too far, the trail down into the arroyo would be to her left. If not far enough, to her right. She crouched again and turned, watching the car.
The driver was using the illumination of a single parking light to wend his way through the scrub. His eyes would be on that little patch of yellow, unable to see far ahead into the darkness. On top of that, the growing light in the east would backlight anything he might see.
They were close enough now that if she stood up and turned on the light to survey the arroyo in front of her, Estelle knew that the occupants of the approaching car would see her. If she took her chances and dropped over the edge, a ten foot fall awaited her–jolting under the best of conditions, crippling if her luck ran out. She remained crouched, watching.
In a moment the car turned east as it chugged around some obstacle in the desert, and Estelle took the opportunity. Releasing her grip on the
azote
, she cupped her hand over the flashlight and turned it on, once more holding it close to her body. Sweeping the light from left to right, she saw that she was still twenty feet from the break in the edge where the cattle trail broke the crown of the arroyo.
She snapped off the light, felt for the cactus and flinched as her hand grazed one of the thorns. She found the freshly cut handle, hefted the cholla to break it from the grip of a small acacia, and crouched low, scuttling along the edge of the arroyo, its core now a dark shadow off to her left.
Something stung her knee as she turned, sliding down onto the trail. A rattle of stones fell away, and she froze, breathing hard. The car was less than a hundred yards away, exhaust note deep and labored. A third of the way down the cattle trail and sheltered by the bank of the arroyo, Estelle turned on the flashlight, directing the beam up the arroyo. Around the corner, the spot where the cows ambled up and out of the cut was a good fifty yards away. She could reach the far side, and scramble up and out of the arroyo. If they saw her, she’d be on the open desert, racing toward the fence—a nice running target for a hunter.
If she stayed, they might not find her. And there was the chance that the approaching car carried someone altogether innocent—a late night check for wayward cattle, or goats, or whatever…even though there wasn’t a single fresh patty or dropping to be seen.
Estelle knew exactly what had happened. They’d dumped Eurelio, and sauntered back to enjoy the rest of their booze under a stunted tree somewhere—maybe in a deserted shepherd’s shack. And then they’d heard, piercing on the night air from miles away, the wail of the Posadas ambulance siren. The coincidence of that had awakened even their booze-fuzzed minds. With the night quiet again, they were returning, cautiously, to make sure that Eurelio hadn’t somehow been resurrected when their backs were turned.
“Ay,” Estelle whispered, and launched herself up the arroyo. She snapped on the flashlight and sprinted as fast as she could, lurching and weaving on the uneven ground. As she rounded the corner and headed upstream, a blast of light swept overhead. The driver had turned on his headlights as he swung around the final corner. They would be looking for their own footprints, moving cautiously. Estelle tightened her grip on the
azote
, kept the flashlight low, and locked her eyes on the cattle trail where it ramped up the side of the arroyo.
As she hit the incline of the trail, she heard a vehicle door open. The voices were low and urgent. She snapped off the flashlight and slowed her pace. The arroyo would shield her from view for a few seconds, and she made her way with careful steps, trying to avoid dislodging rocks. She reached the top and looked over her shoulder.
Behind her, the car was parked with its headlights on, but facing northwest, so the lights illuminated empty desert. A flashlight bobbed and weaved as at least one man made his way toward the arroyo. At one point, they stopped, the flashlight turning. Estelle could see two figures silhouetted against the headlights. Moving slowly, she shrank back away from the arroyo, keeping low.
By the time the two men had reached their side of the arroyo, she had managed to put nearly twenty yards between herself and the bank. She heard the rapid fire Spanish and paused, listening.
“Right here,” one of the men said.
“Are you sure?”
“Certainly. I’m not stupid.”
What followed was a string of volatile curses as they played the light across the arroyo bottom, seeing the tracks where Eurelio had dragged himself. Estelle held her breath, keeping her face turned away. The light stabbed this way and that.
“It’s impossible,” one of the men said. “You saw how he was hit.”
“Let’s find out, Benny,” the other man said. “Let me get another light and the rifle.”
Estelle took a deep breath, turned her head, and waited until the flashlight across the arroyo was headed back toward the car. She clenched the step of the
azote
in one hand, the flashlight in the other. Without the light, a sprint across the desert would be a hopeless demolition derby.
“Okay,” she whispered, and driving as hard as she could, sprinted toward the border fence, keeping the light low. She had managed a good fifty yards when she miscalculated and crashed into a stout clump of greasewood. The cactus tore backward and slammed into her leg even as she pitched hard to the ground, her left shoulder grinding into the dirt. A shout echoed across the arroyo behind her, but she ignored it. She knew that the two men couldn’t cross the arroyo and catch her—she was confident that she could outrun two drunks under any circumstances. But bullets were hard to beat.
She dashed no more than another two dozen steps before the first loud crack of a rifle exploded behind her. A bullet snapped by yards to her right. Another round sang over her head, and she took one last look down the beam of the flashlight and then snapped it off, running on memory. Three more reports and a symphony of shouts pursued her.
And then, breath heaving in painful gulps, she saw a dark figure ahead of her.
“I’m okay,” she shouted. “Go on back.”
She and Deputy Taber rounded the small hill and with a heartfelt groan of relief, Estelle saw the tangle of old barbed wire that marked the border. She stopped, dropped the
azote
, and bent at the waist, hands on her knees.
She felt Jackie Taber’s hand on her shoulder. “You’re all right?”
“Fine,” she wheezed. “Out of shape.” She straightened up. “They came back to make sure about Eurelio. They must have been where they could hear the ambulance siren, and got spooked.” She sucked in a breath.
“And they saw you and tried for a moving target,” Jackie said. Estelle heard the shake in her voice.
“Nah,” she said. “Not to worry. I knew they couldn’t hit me. Not at night, not with a scope.”
“That’s why you ran so fast…nothing to worry about.”
Estelle managed a nervous laugh. “Yeah, well…” She held up the
azote
and turned on the flashlight so Jackie could see it. “I don’t think they know that I have this,” she said in triumph. She pulled at her pocket. “And a shell casing. And a name. They’re dead meat.”
“What’s the name?”
“One of them called the other ‘Benny.’ ” She heaved another deep breath and cringed at the stabbing pain in her leg. “
Por Dios
, but I want to arrest somebody right now.”
