The Ninth Day (5 page)

“No. You can speak. They won’t hear.” The path curved left. Through the branches Emma spotted the glint of sun on steel. They were still within the boundaries of the chain-link fence and its razor-wire deterrent.

“I’m Emma Caldridge.”

“Octavio Guzman.” Octavio looked at her with a hint of amusement in his eyes. Emma couldn’t tell if the name was real.

“What do you think is killing these men?”

All amusement fled from his eyes. “I told you, La Valle is cursed. As are all in his radius.”

Emma felt her irritation rise. “I don’t mean to belittle curses, but—”

”But you are a scientist and don’t believe in them,” Octavio shot back.

“
But
I don’t believe that innocent men can be cursed. La Valle, yes. The men and women held on this compound against their will? No.” Octavio stopped walking and turned to her. Emma felt a grim satisfaction to see the surprise in his eyes. “What?” she said. “You expected me to scoff?”

Octavio nodded. “Yes. Scientists, especially Western scientists, have long ago dismissed nature’s ways from their scrutiny.”

“I spend a lot of time in nature. La Valle’s men chased me down while I was scouring the desert for night-blooming plants that might have a medicinal effect. Please tell me what you suspect is happening.”

“You know La Valle doesn’t just deal in drugs?”

The question sounded rhetorical, but Emma answered it anyway. “I presume he traffics humans as well.”

Octavio nodded. “But he also sells human organs.”

Emma stopped walking. “Does he sell them on the black market?”

“There are hundreds of murdered women from Ciudad Juarez, and many are La Valle’s work. He kills men, too, but not for the same reasons.” Octavio blew out a long, slow breath. “In truth, he doesn’t discriminate. He prays to Satan and those prayers have brought this curse upon himself.”

Emma returned to Octavio’s side. The trail widened so that she could stay shoulder to shoulder with him. She clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering in fear: not at Octavio’s claims of a curse, but at his revelation that La Valle was a killer on such a level. If Octavio was correct, Emma’s own chances of survival just went even lower.

“How does one reverse the curse?” Emma said. Octavio halted and faced her.

“You wish to keep Satan’s messenger on Earth alive?” His voice held a harsh note and his eyes sparked with anger.

Emma frowned. “Of course not, but I don’t see any sores forming on the messenger, do you? They’re all forming on his victims. I will stop
that
destruction if I can.”

Octavio’s belligerent stance subsided a bit. “I understand your dismay at the unfairness, but they will all die. None will escape.”

“And you?”

Octavio gave a small nod. “All of us. Even me. It’s fate.”

Emma’s own barely contained anger roared upward. She struggled to regain her composure before she spoke. Anger was a wasted emotion that would cloud her judgment. She needed to remain calm.

“It’s not
my
fate.
Nothing
is fated,” she said, still a little too forcefully. Octavio’s face held a resigned look. It seemed clear that he didn’t believe her, but he wasn’t planning on arguing with her either.

They’d reached a clearing. In the center sat a canvas tepee. Its sides were bleached white in some places, baked yellow in others. The color reminded Emma of the dirty maize of a pair of canvas gym shoes left in the sun to dry.

“A tepee?” Emma said. “Is this yours?”

“It’s La Valle’s. He loves American-Indian folklore. He’s fascinated with it. The tepee is just one of his affectations. The other is the wearing of totems. He believes in their power. Of course, while the real Indian tribes created totems out of rawhide and carved wood, La Valle’s are made out of platinum and encrusted with diamonds. I use the tepee because I don’t want to go near the hacienda.”

“Tell me what you’ve attempted to treat these men with and I’ll begin my own testing.”

“I wash their wounds with a tincture of chamomile, thyme, rosemary, and oregano. They’re sleeping in response to a concoction that I create from valerian and other herbs, and this afternoon I’ll use salvia.”

Emma raised her eyebrows. “The hallucinogen? Well that should be interesting.”

Octavio frowned. “We don’t use it the way those in the North do—just to obtain a temporary high. We use it to illuminate a man’s psyche. Delve into his thoughts.”

“What time?” Emma said. She wanted to be present to watch Octavio probe into the migrant workers’ subconscious. The only time she’d seen salvia utilized, it was at a base camp in a small town in Panama, where the smokers fell into a trance and then to sleep.

“Two o’clock,” Octavio said.

“I’ll be there.”

Octavio gave her a thoughtful look. “What do you think it is? The herbicide?”

Emma considered the question. “The herbicide is getting its share of detractors. Especially in Colombia, where they’ve been using it for years. Neighboring villages are claiming that it causes cancer clusters, skin diseases, and strange maladies, but I haven’t heard of anything on the magnitude of what you’re seeing here.”

“They’re harming nature. Upsetting the balance.”

“La Valle is harming a lot more than nature and he doesn’t really give a damn about human life. Even Serena’s. If he did, he would have taken her to a hospital already. Demanding that I do something is just show. A smokescreen to keep her thinking she has a chance.”

“But you do know a lot about the herbicide.”

“But very, very little about medicine.”

“There’s a field over there.” Octavio pointed to the west. “With a bulldozer. Seventy-two people are buried in that place. La Valle killed them.”

Emma swallowed. She couldn’t imagine seventy-two dead people. Didn’t want to imagine it.

Octavio gave her a sympathetic look and disappeared inside the tepee. Emma glanced up. A camera lens pointed at her from a tree opposite the tepee’s flap opening. Its red eye glowed in a steady stare.

Chapter 6

E
mma found Oz sitting on the path, halfway between the migrant huts and the hacienda, smoking a joint. She yanked four leaves off a nearby tree, stacked one on the other, and placed them on the dirt in front of him.

“Put it out on the ground and wrap it in these,” she said. “Fast.”

Oz gave her a dreamy look. “What? I’m not done.”

“Oh yes you are. Are you crazy? What in the world possessed you to smoke that thing?”

Oz inhaled and blew out a stream of smoke. He gave Emma a goofy smile. “I smoke every day. Have for the last eight years. Since I left MIT.”

Emma let her surprise show on her face. “MIT? What’s your degree?”

“No degree. I quit after the second year. I took physics and computer science,” Oz said.

Now Emma was confused. “Why did you leave? Half the world would kill for a chance to go to MIT.”

Oz nodded. “I know. Well, I know that
now
. It was supposed to be just for a summer, but it was so much easier following the band that I decided to extend my leave for a year.” He inhaled again. “That was seven years ago. I never went back. Just worked the concerts at night and got high all day.”

“So that explains the complete lack of motivation,” Emma said.

Oz rolled his eyes. “You’re one of those.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Oz shrugged. “One of those driven kind of people. I met all kinds of them at MIT. Each one smarter than the last and each one gunning for the other’s back. Racking up degrees and awards just so you’ll feel good about yourself.”

Emma pointed at the leaf bed. “Drop it, Oz. I mean it. You have no idea whether it’s contaminated.”

Oz shook his head. “Nope. This is from La Valle’s personal stash. Serena gave it to me.” He leaned forward. “And it’s excellent, let me tell you. The guy’s an asshole, but he sure knows his drugs.”

Emma crouched down to Oz’s level. “Serena’s got a sore on her finger. Or did you forget?”

Oz froze. He seemed to struggle to concentrate. Emma grit her teeth to avoid snapping at him. She couldn’t imagine how a man so obviously smart could act so patently stupid. Oz tilted his head to one side as he looked at her. Emma noted that his pupils were huge.

“But La Valle doesn’t, and Serena says he smokes every day. It couldn’t be his stash that’s causing the disease in Serena.”

“But it could be. Put it out. And don’t touch any more until I figure this thing out,” Emma said. Oz made an irritated sound and rubbed the joint’s lit end in the dirt next to his leg. He tossed the butt onto the bed of leaves. Emma reached out and started to roll them toward the joint. When she was finished, she had a tightly curled tube with the joint wrapped in the center.

“This situation is so damn frightening, that’s the only way I’m going to get through it.” Oz indicated the leaves.

Emma could sympathize, but not to the extent that she would allow him to infect himself, however unknowingly. She looked up, into the trees. Oz followed her gaze.

“Looking for cameras?” he said.

Emma nodded.

“I took a walk around and counted them.”

Emma settled onto the trail next to him. “So tell me what you learned.”

Oz heaved a sigh. “The entire compound is a thousand acres. It’s enclosed at the farthest edges by a regular wooden-rail fence. No barbed wire, nothing. Fence is only four feet high.”

“The migrant huts are surrounded by chain-link and razor wire,” Emma said.

Oz nodded. “Yeah, but that’s the only place that is. Turns out that the surrounding landscape is impossible to cover by car. There’s only one road in, and one out. You get off that road and even the toughest four-wheel drive can’t manage the terrain. It creates a natural barrier. You’d go miles in any direction before you’d hit a town. The rest of the acreage looks to be like a former working ranch that La Valle bought for himself. He’s even got a farm on the far end, where he has some cattle, horses, and armadillos.”

“Armadillos?” Emma said. “What’s he doing with armadillos?”

“Who the hell knows? Guy’s not all there.” Oz tapped his temple with a finger.

“So what’s keeping the migrant workers here? If they plan it right, once they’re outside of the fortified area, they can just sneak off the ranch over the wooden fences.“

Oz shook his head. “Nope. That’s where the cameras come in. They’re everywhere. Every one hundred feet at the perimeter, four on the outside of the hacienda and God knows how many more inside. Three on the stable’s exterior wall, two interior with a view of the breezeway down the center. One camera sits on top of what looks like a cell-phone tower outside the compound that captures a view of the road leading to the house. Even if these guys managed to get over the fence, they’d have to run a long time to the nearest village, and then they’d probably get turned in by La Valle’s flunkies. He pays everyone in town for their silence.” Oz batted at a fly that landed on his sleeve. “I’m stuck. I’m going to have to deliver that shipment.” His voice held a desolate note.

Emma stood. “You’re not stuck. Something will break.” Oz gazed upward at her. He rose, smacking dead leaves and twigs off his jeans as he did.

“I wish I shared your conviction. What did the medicine man tell you?”

Emma started back toward the hacienda. Oz fell in step next to her. “Not much. He repeated the claims of a curse. He says La Valle dabbles in black magic.”

Oz groaned. “The guy is looney tunes.”

Emma nodded. “The medicine man called him Satan’s messenger.”

“Lovely,” Oz’s voice was dry. “Raoul told me they caught you running in the desert. Just what the hell possessed you to run through the desert at night that close to the border? You had to know that the coyotes were out there, shuttling their humans around.”

“It’s my job,” Emma said.

Oz snorted. “And to think just two days ago I would have killed for a job.” They walked some more. “Raoul also said that you know about herbicides. Do you think the herbicide is creating the disease?”

“I doubt it, but at the same time wouldn’t rule it out. It’s possible the DOD is using a new concoction that I’m unaware of. As it is, the usual herbicide is boosted with so much deadly stuff that some countries are claiming that the residue creates rapid birth defects and cancer cases. But I’ve never heard of a massive, systemic disease on the level of what these men are experiencing.”

As they moved Emma watched the tops of trees for video cameras. They reached the hacienda and reentered the family room. La Valle was there, talking on a small cell phone. Raoul sat next to him, listening to La Valle’s end of the conversation. Emma stayed by the door and waited. She was loath to get any closer to La Valle. When he was finished, he turned his eyes on her.

“I need some equipment,” Emma said.

“What type of equipment?” Raoul said.