Chapter Seven
Snowflake had set up camp in the shade of a large, white box trailer behind the hotel. Seated in a folding chair, with headphones on, he looked every bit the tourist. As he saw Manuel round the corner, he flipped open the little Coleman cooler at his feet and retrieved a can of beer, tossing it to the tired detective as he approached. Manuel let go of one of his forearm crutches, snagged the beer out of the air while putting all his weight on the other arm. Snowflake smiled at him from behind his wrap-around sunglasses. “Well, it looks like things went better than I was expecting.”
“Well, your expectations must have been pretty low.”
Snowflake shrugged and took a pull on his beer. “I figured you’d get arrested, at least. Maybe shot. It doesn’t even look like they roughed you up.”
Manuel tucked the sweating beer into his jacket pocket and made for another folding chair on the far side of Snowflake. “How disappointed you must be.”
Before Manuel could sit, his friend waved him away from the chair. The sparkle in his eyes should have been a warning, but it wasn’t. “Hold on. I have something to show you.”
Manuel had been covering too much ground by foot already, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He looked skeptically at Snowflake, but his friend wasn’t to be dissuaded. “Ok. I’ll bite. What do you have for me?”
Snowflake stood, smiling cryptically. “Not out here.” He motioned towards the travel trailer with a discreet tip of his head. “In there.”
It had been a long time coming. Manuel had tried getting away from his past, from the life that had chosen him. But time and time again, it had been made abundantly clear. He may have given up on Gato Loco, but no one else had. Katherine, Snowflake, the Tesla kids Xander and Tamika, even Donegal who had known for months but had never said anything. None of them was ready to give up on a part of him that he wasn’t even sure existed anymore.
But he had only seen one way to do this, to get his cousin out without causing a ruckus. Esther had pretty much scuttled that plan. If not Gato Loco, then what? Take on the systemic corruption of Mexican law enforcement, like Esther wanted him to do? She had no idea. She had been fighting the beast from the outside looking in, but had never done any lasting damage. A pinprick here, a pinprick there, but it was never much more than an inconvenience for the system.
He had gathered information to take down a corrupt department before. Just gathering the information had taken a year, from the inside. And even then, the actual prosecution dragged on forever and ultimately didn’t change much of anything at all.
Manuel had neither the luxury of time nor the advantage of political alliances. No. Esther’s way wouldn’t work.
And that left him with Gato Loco. Damn. “Ok. Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”
Any concerns Manuel might have had about the security of the trailer were quickly dismissed when he saw the set up Katherine had no doubt insisted upon. Besides a standard high grade padlock, a concealed panel housed a full retinal and voice scan security suite. He was directed by Snowflake to look into the light and say the word, “Shadow” - the name he had given to his old cycle. A quiet click, and the door popped open half an inch.
They casually glanced around to confirm that no one was watching, but Snowflake had done an excellent job parking the trailer. The wide door was close to the windowless back wall of a small western wear shop, and thus visible from only one narrow angle around the corner. With the floor of the trailer very low to the ground, stepping up into it was easy for Manuel, and it only took them a few seconds to climb inside without anyone seeing them.
The interior had flickered to light when the pass code unlocked the door, and Manuel was so stunned that it fell to Snowflake to close the door after them.
Set dead center in the 15’ trailer was his bike. Some changes had been made, yes, but they were minor and he had little doubt that they were improvements on the original design. The suspension alone was state of the art, and the power cell battery could only be more powerful than the prototype model the original Shadow used. Sleek and black, this café-racer style bike had more in common with Japanese animation than Harley Davidson, but that was the way he liked it.
His helmet hung on a rubber coated S-hook on the equipment wall. The high density fiberglass had been molded to resemble a yowling cat head, with stylized three-dimensional teeth framing the smoky visor and two eyes painted above, one tiny, one huge. The ears on the helmet were folded flat, in anger, and also for aerodynamic purposes.
“I don’t see the suit.”
Snowflake pulled out a key ring and pressed a button on a small remote. A seemingly innocuous tool chest unfolded, and held within was a new set of leathers – the new skin of El Gato Loco. “Xander figured that since he was more or less starting from scratch, he might as well make some minor fashion changes while still keeping the basic look.”
Manuel worked his way over to the wardrobe locker and inspected it more closely. Instead of boots and a one piece body suit, kid genius Xander Tesla had gone with boots, sleeveless body suit with what looked like a very breathable mesh top, and a heavy jacket with the signature Gato Loco yowling cat head emblazoned across the back. A close inspection showed the bio-synthetic muscle implants which were standard issue in Xander’s designs in the thighs of the body suit. A power pack in the lining of the jacket connected to the pants and the helmet with retractable cables to give power to onboard systems and the stage field generator which he sincerely hoped was in place.
One of his few edges in the war against crime was the stage field generator, originally designed with the purpose of keeping him safe in a high speed cycle accident. It generated hundreds if not thousands of weak, molecule thin force fields around his body that sapped kinetic energy. It was his own kind of personal air bag, and it had saved his life numerous times. It had saved him when the bike blew up, as a matter of fact. It brought up a curious conflict of emotions in him. On one hand to hate the technology and on the other knowing that it would keep him alive when nothing else would.
Snowflake seemed to sense his mood and kept back, watching Manuel take it all in. Eventually his eyes turned away from the skin of who he used to be and who he would have to become again, and took in the rest of the trailer. Whoever had designed the interior space had been ingenious, finding ways to store tools and spare parts, including two different sets of optional tires for the bike, as well as creating some lab and work space. “You said the tests on the suit were positive?”
“The simulations and the tests with the dummy showed that the stage field generators are flawless. Xander tried to calibrate the musculature as best he could, but without you coming in for fittings and tests, a lot of it ended up being guess work.”
“So it might not work.”
“And it might snap your thigh bones like a twig the first time a muscle impulse runs through it. No way of knowing.”
“Comforting.”
“We pays our money, we takes our chances.”
Manuel nodded ruefully. Well, it was better odds than he had given himself earlier in the day, so it wasn’t all bad. “Who else has access to this?”
“You, me, and Katherine has limited access in an emergency.”
Snowflake’s voice sounded grim, and it prompted a concerned look from Manuel. “What constitutes limited access and an emergency?”
“Um, an emergency would mean that you and I both were dead or arrested and someone tried to access the trailer. And limited access means that she could activate some of the security systems remotely.”
“Such as?”
“She could fry the locks, sealing it entirely closed. And if the outer shell is breached after that...” Snowflake pointed to a rectangular box on the ceiling of the trailer. It was the size of a bag of concrete and painted red. Just looking at the box made Manuel nervous.
“That looks dire.”
“It’s a shaped charge. Incendiary too, I think. I don’t know the details, and I don’t want to know. But nothing in this trailer is going to survive a close scrutiny, and neither is anyone within ten or so feet of the door when this thing goes.”
“Drastic.”
“Or we could let corrupt Mexican cops or drug lords or whoever get access to an advanced energy cell cycle, synthetic muscles, and a bullet-proof force-field body suit.”
The question for Manuel suddenly became not if Katherine should have rigged the trailer, but if she used enough explosives to do the job. He sat on the work bench and opened the beer that had been sweating in his jacket pocket. “So, there’s a new plan.”
“And that involves you coming out of retirement?”
Manuel was already too tired to fight about it so he nodded. “This afternoon, I should compile a list of places to check out more thoroughly after dark. So that means Pegasus Motors and their executive suburb. I would like to get a look at the shanty town and ask some questions.”
“I’ve told you that it’s dangerous for gringos around there, right? Just want you to know why I won’t be going with you on that one.”
Manuel saluted Snowflake with the beer can. Truth be told, he figured the locals would open up to him more without Snowflake there anyway, so he was going to suggest the panda stay behind and get some rest. “I know where the victim’s sister is supposed to be staying, so I would like to try and track her down and talk to her. Maybe she knows a little more about what’s really going on here. And then I hit anything that looks promising late tonight, including the arroyo where Aldovar met us this morning.”
“Anything you’d like me to do in the meantime?”
“Get a little rest, try to distance yourself from me in case I make worse enemies than I already have. And if you get a chance, switch out the tires for the studded off road models over there and adjust the suspension. I might not take it off road, but the roads around here aren’t the best, and I would rather be prepared.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it ready by evening easy. I can even get in a nap if I want.”
Manuel finished his beer then stood. He knew he needed his forearm crutches, and even though he felt like he was using them just as much as always, somehow he felt stronger as well. It was a strange feeling. “Get rest when you can. From here on out, I don’t think either of us will be getting a good nights sleep.”
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Monday, November 14, 2005
Buena Rosa Chapter Six
Chapter Six
They managed to find the place Flip had told them about without any problem. Little white crosses and bouquets of marigold marked the spot better than police tape could. Snowflake pulled over to the opposite shoulder and threw the truck into a rumbling idle. Manuel slid out, then went around the front of the truck to the arroyo. He looked back the way they had come, then around the horizon, squinting against the sun.
He crouched and looked at the small crosses. “Muriel” was written on two of them in magic marker. Manuel looked back towards the factory, the smokestack and southern wall clearly visible around the side of a hill. “This isn’t the place.”
Snowflake looked skeptical. He was well versed in looking skeptical. “Isn’t this where the kid said they found the body? Do you think maybe he was lying to you?”
Looking closely at the memorial revealed marigold petals strewn all over near the site, scattered by the breezes. The flowers had been there several days. “You see this?” Manuel pointed to the petals. “These are cempasúchil petals. It’s a species of marigold, and these have been here a while, probably since the body was discovered. The Aztecs used them to remember their dead, thinking they would guide the spirits of their dead loved ones to their altars or home and then to the afterlife. A lot of people in Mexico still grow them just for use as offerings. Around el Dia de los Muertos, these things are everywhere.”
“So, this was where people were, um, told the body was found, then?”
Manuel looked down the steep embankment to the bottom of the arroyo six feet below. It narrowed there, and a sand bar created a tight bend. The body snagged there. That’s why it was found here. “No, they found it here, but it was dumped somewhere else. Didn’t you say they found it after a big rainstorm?”
“Yeah, the next day.”
“Then we need to look upstream from here.” Manuel looked towards the factory tower and adjusted the topography in his head to make the hill line up with the plume of smoke. “It might be a ways. Maybe a mile down the way we’re already pointing.”
“Boss, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but there isn’t any creek to be downstream on. Its just a ditch.”
“It might just be a ditch now, but the night of the rainstorm it was a river, at least for a few hours. Then when it stopped raining, the water had either run off or been absorbed back into the ground. If someone buried the body close to the edge of the arroyo, then the water could have broken the body free, or coyotes could have dug it out prior to the rain. Either way, we aren’t going to find any clues here. We need to go back to the source.”
Snowflake sighed, recognizing that he wasn’t the detective of the two and it was best to let Manuel do what he did. But it frustrated him that the great detective wasn’t even watching the road and instead had his head turned back towards Buena Rosa until he called a sudden halt just over a mile later in an utterly unremarkable location. With little except scrub brush, dirt, and cactus, this stretch of road offered nothing distinctive, nothing worth notice, but Snowflake was along for support and pulled over as instructed.
Hopping out of the cab nimbly Manuel forgot that his legs couldn’t hold his weight in that way anymore, and he had to grab the door to keep from pitching into the sagebrush. He felt it as soon as the factory disappeared behind the hill, the darkness spreading beneath the soil. It was almost overpowering, and he knew this was it. This is where the dead spilled their secrets. This is where he had seen Muriel the first time, in that vision back at his desk in far off Cobalt City.
The scent of sun-baked dust, sagebrush, and piñon was unmistakable. A glance up the road showed a narrow bridge, allowing vehicle access to the vast emptiness. From his vantage point on the other side of the road, Manuel could see the burned down foundation of a small house, all but lost in an overgrowth of shrubs. It was a perfect dump site. Close, but with limited access, and in an area where no one was likely to discover the body for some time.
If not for the coyotes or rain or any number of random, unpredictable events that could have led to Muriel being found, she would still be out there.
Manuel made his way to the other side of the road with Snowflake at his side. “Look out over there and tell me what you see.” Manuel indicated the other side of the arroyo with a tilt of his chin.
Snowflake looked long and hard, opening his mouth a few times to offer an answer then stopping. Finally he had to trust his first instinct. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“A good place to hide bodies.”
Snowflake’s eyes narrowed. “You think there are more people buried out there?”
“This town has an awful lot of missing people. Some of them might have headed for the border, tried to make it to America. But if that were the case, I don’t expect that their families would want to draw attention to it by putting up fliers.”
They started walking up the side of the road towards the small bridge, Manuel watching the ground closely for any kind of tracks or other clue. Other than coyote and white-tailed jackrabbit, he wasn’t seeing much of anything.
“How many people, do you think?”
Manuel couldn’t answer. He wanted to think it was maybe a dozen, two dozen at most. But he had no way to know how long this had been going on. And his feeling was that the number was much, much higher. They had reached the bridge, and there in the dirt over the bridge were tire tracks, no more than a few days old.
“Those are standard all terrain tire treads for the Pegasus Motor trucks and SUV’s,” Snowflake said with authority. Manuel raised an eyebrow as if to question him. “Trust me. You know Mexico, I know tires. I’m not a mechanic for nothing, you know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Snowflake’s attention had been drawn up, back towards town and his mouth tightened into a hard smile. “Speak of the devil. We have company.”
Directing his gaze casually back up the road, Manuel could clearly see the Buena Rosa sheriff’s vehicle rolling towards them through the heat haze on the asphalt. “Do you have a cover story you’ve been using?”
“Made a small fortune in investments, looking to retire somewhere cheap and buy some property.”
Manuel had to admit, that was a good cover. He wondered, however briefly, if Katherine had taken a hand in concocting it. “Good call. I just ran into you at the hotel and you agreed to be the Good Samaritan and drive me around, but you wanted to look at some property on the drive.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Now, smile big for the creepy police man.” Snowflake waved widely at the green and white converted SUV as it pulled to a stop behind his truck.
Manuel was not overly surprised to see Deputy Aldovar step out of the cab and walk across the road towards them. “Car trouble, gentlemen?”
Snowflake smiled. Nothing he ever drove would have car trouble, not as long as he had worked on it recently. “No, far from it. I was hoping to find out who owned this little parcel. I’m looking to buy some land and this little stretch has a lot of potential.”
Deputy Aldovar’s eyes went from Manuel to Snowflake and back again. He never lost his polite smile, but that same smile somehow failed to reach his eyes. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”
Undeterred, Snowflake went on. “Oh, everything is for sale at the right price. Do you know who owns it? Maybe I could get in touch with them and make them an offer.”
“I afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know who owns this parcel. It has been vacant for some time.”
“But you know it isn’t for sale.”
Detective Aldovar’s eyes grew flinty and dark. Manuel took the cue that his friend was so clearly missing. “I’m sure someone at city hall might know, Mr. Snow. I don’t see the potential, but I’m not the investor I guess.”
Deputy Aldovar gave Manuel his full attention. “No, you are a police officer, aren’t you, Mr. de la Vega.”
“I’m taking some time off to write a book, but yes, I’ve recently been a police detective.”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I was looking for you.”
Snowflake licked his lips, trying to contain a nervous glance in Manuel’s direction. To his credit, Manuel kept his cool. He had been expecting something like this eventually, and it was good to get it out of the way early. “Well, I’m glad you found me. What is this about?”
“About? It is about your cousin of course. You can speak with Esther today. I have arranged it with Sheriff Bragga. I can give you a ride back to the station if you like.”
Every fiber in his body was screaming “No”, that this was a setup. But a turtle never got anywhere without sticking out his neck first. Manuel offered Snowflake his hand in a hearty thank-you and good-bye shake. “Good luck, Mr. Snow. I hope you find the owner without too much digging in public records.”
“Of course. And if you get tied up with your cousin, I’ll understand. Just beep me or whatever and we can get together some other night for dinner.”
Snowflake was in the truck heading back towards town in minutes, while it took a little longer for Manuel to get across the street and buckled in. He ran his fingers across the leather interior. “Very nice for a police vehicle.”
“It was donated by the manager of the Pegasus Motors plant. I think he meant to encourage faster response time to his hacienda.”
“Does he frequently need a fast response to his hacienda?”
Deputy Aldovar shrugged and started the truck. “I don’t know. He’s never called us. He has his own security to handle most of his police needs.”
That was somewhat of a surprise for Manuel. Two sets of cops meant double the fun and double the possibilities for corruption. This just kept getting better.
They arrived at the police station quickly, with Deputy Aldovar cutting through several side streets to a parking lot tucked behind a high wall topped with razor wire. The deputy indicated the security with a casual wave of the back of his hand. “Motor pool. If we parked on the street, these cars would be gone by morning. There are people here who have no respect for law. You should understand. I imagine it was the same in Mexico City.”
“There are similarities. Car theft wasn’t such a big priority, but it happened, certainly. Not to police vehicles so much.”
“Hm...maybe it is just here in Buena Rosa that they steal our cars or strip our tires?”
Manuel felt the urge to cry out, Maybe if you did your job, but a sense of self-preservation prevented him from saying anything. They pulled into a painted space alongside the building and stepped out onto the sun-hot asphalt of the parking lot. Already, a deputy that Manuel didn’t recognize was rolling the gate closed before retreating to the shade of his sentry booth. Whether it was a trap or not, they certainly had him where they wanted him.
The deputy selected a key from the mammoth key ring on his belt and unlocked a heavy, blue painted steel door at the back of the building. Manuel set his shoulders and propelled himself along after the deputy into the cool white interior of the police station jail. He followed Aldovar down several short halls, filled with solid doors with no windows, no bars – a jail full of solitary cells.
Shortly, they came to an interview room, the chipped avocado green paint of the walls more at home on an old refrigerator than in a police station. A broad mirror was along the left hand wall, and only an idiot would think it was actually a mirror. A pair of durable steel chairs was bolted to the floor on either side of a similarly secured steel table. A flickering fluorescent light fixture provided an intermittent, sickly light through the detritus of insect husks scattered inside plastic fronted light fixture.
His cousin, no surprise, was nowhere to be seen.
“Take a seat, please.” Deputy Aldovar indicated one of the seats and Manuel sat in the other one because he was feeling contentious. If this bothered the deputy, he didn’t react, which disappointed Manuel somewhat. He was relieved, however, that the visions didn’t come over him again. With some of the horrible scenarios running through his head already, the last thing he wanted to deal with in the face of a potential adversary was a vision of evil or pain. It felt that a vision like that couldn’t help but undermine his confidence, and that was one of the few things he felt he came into the room with.
“And my cousin Esther is where, exactly, Deputy Aldovar?”
The deputy sat in the opposite chair, a languid smile spreading across his broad face like spilled blood on linoleum. “Oh, she’s on her way. She should be here any second. I don’t suppose you would mind answering a few questions while you’re here?”
“I’ll play along for now, but if I don’t like the questions then the interview is over. Comprende?”
“Si.”
The deputy leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table before him. Manuel couldn’t help but notice that there was no stenographer, no cassette recorder, no note taking of any kind, which could mean two things: this “talk” was completely off the record, or the room was very well miked. He was leaning towards the latter.
“You left the Mexico City Police department three years ago, is that correct?”
That sent Manuel thinking. He did the math in his head and found that it had indeed been a long time since he left for Cobalt City. “Not quite three years, but pretty close.”
“What made you decide to leave the police force?”
“I didn’t leave the police. I merely left Mexico City. I was offered a job as a detective in Cobalt City, in America.”
Aldovar sucked at his teeth, a slight show of discomfort over Manuel’s answer. The detective decided then and there to remember the deputy’s reaction, treating it as a “tell” as though he were a poker player. Whether it ever paid off, only time would tell, but he wasn’t being thrown many bones. And in a pinch, he had learned to make due with what he had. “Cobalt City? Well, you must be very...”
“Proud?” Manuel ventured, knowing it wasn’t the word the deputy was looking for, but calculating it was the one which might irritate him more.
“I was going to say talented. It isn’t every Mexican police officer who is offered such opportunities in the U.S.”
Manuel leaned into the table as well, his hands crossed before him in a deliberate attempt to strike Aldovar’s same posture. “Well, I am very good at what I do.”
“And what is it that you do? What department have they put you in? Certainly not narcotics. Gang unit, perhaps? Vice? Internal affairs?” the last one said slowly, Aldovar’s eyes boring into Manuel.
So he had done his homework, Manuel thought. It was his cooperation with a major corruption investigation that helped finalize his decision to leave Mexico City. And it was more than simple finger pointing. Manuel had been building a case for well over a year, documenting every pay off, every drug transport with cops working security, everything. And then when he felt he had enough to send some people to jail, he took the file to the State Police, to someone he could trust.
There was no way he could ever be a cop in Mexico again. And not only because it wasn’t safe anymore, no, Manuel was a traitor. For all the public scrutiny on police corruption, all the big talk about cleaning up the department, it was just too widespread. There wasn’t a station that would hire him south of the border once they got his transfer paperwork.
“You might be surprised by this, but IA doesn’t have quite as much work to do in Cobalt City as it does in Mexico. So I work in homicide.”
Aldovar didn’t blink, his dark eyes locked on Manuel, his tone when he spoke utterly devoid of inflection. “Homicide. How exciting.”
“Yes. I catch killers, Deputy Aldovar. Real ones.”
The air between them reached a fascinating balance between ice cold and electric for a long moment, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. Aldovar stood while the door swung open, revealing Esther Vega wearing an orange jumper, her hands cuffed before her. Deputy Attencio stood behind her, towering a good foot over Manuel’s hunch shouldered cousin.
Esther’s eyes brightened into sparks when she saw Manuel, but then nervously shifted to the deputies in the room. She was led to the chair and she sat without being directed to do so. She nervously licked her lips, forming the words “Thank you” without making a sound.
“Deputies, if I could have a few minutes alone with my cousin, please?”
Attencio sneered, then turned and sauntered out. Deputy Aldovar began to shake his head in protest. “I’m afraid that regulations state that she has to be accompanied at all times except when she is with a priest or lawyer.”
It was a show. Manuel could tell. “I assure you, deputy. My cousin and I won’t go anywhere. I think its probably okay to for me to talk to her, don’t you?”
Aldovar sucked on his teeth, looking at the two of them. It was more of the act, of course. Manuel was a cop in Mexico. He knew how it was played. Don’t leave your “suspects” the impression that you gave up too easily then leave, allowing the people in the room to talk freely. That was where the microphones and probably recording equipment became very handy, and Manuel had already established that the room was most certainly miked. And he knew that Aldovar would suspect that he knew. The dance was far too complicated for both of them to keep up for long, and in the end the deputy fell back to routine, and left with a satisfied nod of his head.
Once the door was firmly closed, Esther allowed a nervous smile to surface. “Manny...I can’t believe that you are actually here.”
“I was going to say the same thing.”
Fear blossomed in her eyes. “I didn’t do it, I swear, I didn’t even know what I was signing a confession for.”
“Then why did you sign it?”
The dam broke, and Esther started choking back sobs. Manuel wanted to get up from the chair and go to her, but he was afraid they were watching on the other side of the glass, afraid that Aldovar and Attencio would sweep in at the first sign of contact. “I thought they were going to kill me. God help me, Manny, I thought I was going to die. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
Manuel tried to catch his cousin’s eyes. “Hey. Look at me, okay?” He waited until she raised her tired, sunken eyes to his, he indicated the double-sided mirror on the wall with a slight twist of his head, and watched to make sure she got it. When he saw comprehension flicker in her eyes, he continued quietly. “Don’t say anything, but I need to know. Did they hurt you?”
Esther nodded so slightly he almost didn’t see it, but the look in her eyes was sufficient. They had dressed her in a long sleeved jumper. Any bruising, burning, scaring, whatever they did to her, it wouldn’t be visible. And anything that turned up later as evidence of torture would be dismissed as self inflicted anyway.
Manuel wanted to know how she had contacted him, who sent him the postcard that brought him here. But he couldn’t think of a way to ask Esther that wouldn’t give away that person’s identity to the police also. And when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if she would even know who passed the information along. If she had been locked up in one of the solitary cells, it was probably jail staff. The other, far more likely possibility was that she had a friend in town who knew about him. In the end, he decided to save that mystery for another day.
“You trust me, don’t you?” He asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to try and get you out.”
Esther’s eyes grew wide, this time with a potent alchemy of fear and hope. “How...”
Manuel spoke clearly, and in just enough of a stage whisper that he hoped the microphones could pick it up. “I have access to some money. It isn’t a lot, but it’s all I have. A few thousand dollars - U.S. dollars. I can get it here in a day, maybe two. I might be able to convince the police that this is all a misunderstanding and get them to let you go. But you’ll have to leave town and never speak of this again.”
There, he thought. The bait was out in the water. He could suggest a bribe in such a way that most anyone inclined to take it would hear the offer. He didn’t need the entire department to be crooked. He just needed one person. And finding a crooked cop in Mexico was easier than looking down and seeing ground.
But he was not prepared for the expression on Esther’s face. And he realized that he had badly, badly miscalculated how to play this game.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“I want you to forget this ever happened.”
It was too late. This was why he had always loved his cousin Esther. She was passionate. She believed in causes, usually ones she couldn’t ever win. They were her bread and butter. It drove Uncle Chui crazy. It drove everyone in the family a little crazy.
Everyone except Manuel de la Vega, that is. He was always supportive of her fire, if for no other reason than he felt she was a kindred spirit. And deep down, he believed that if enough people went tilting at windmills, then the world would be a better place.
Only now it was likely to get her killed.
And there was a better than good chance that he was going to get killed right along with her. “Please, Esther, just don’t say anything else.”
“Be quiet? Forget about it? I thought you got it, Manny! I can’t forget about this! Someone killed Muriel Cruz. She wasn’t a friend of mine, but I knew her, and she’s dead.”
“Please...”
Esther would not be deterred. “If I forget about this it all goes away. She goes away. And her death doesn’t matter. I can’t let her be one more silent victim. I need my day in court! I need you to help me expose...”
Manuel stood quickly, pulling himself up with the table for support. His voice hissed out from between clenched teeth, and he knew, he just knew, it wouldn’t do any good. It was too late. “For the love of God will you just shut up?”
With his dramatic movement, the show was over. They could both hear footsteps in the hall. Esther looked up at her cousin with the wretched expression of an animal in a snap-jawed trap. Somewhere in there, she realized what she had just done. Manuel told himself that. He had to, just to keep from hating her for the slightest second.
As the door opened, he leaned in close to her and whispered tightly in her ear so that the microphones couldn’t hear it. “Ok, so much for plan A. Sit tight and say nothing. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”
Attencio and Aldovar were joined by two fresh deputies whose nametags read “Chavez” and “Ortega”. Manuel was separated forcibly from Esther, but he didn’t put up a fight. It looked like the fight had gone out of his cousin too, and as she was dragged slack-jawed from the room, he could only guess what she was thinking. What was the “hard way?”
Manuel sighed inwardly. He had really hoped he could avoid doing things the hard way, but that option had been snatched from his fingertips.
No. Manuel de la Vega had played his trump card and found it lacking.
It was time to see what Gato Loco could do.
They managed to find the place Flip had told them about without any problem. Little white crosses and bouquets of marigold marked the spot better than police tape could. Snowflake pulled over to the opposite shoulder and threw the truck into a rumbling idle. Manuel slid out, then went around the front of the truck to the arroyo. He looked back the way they had come, then around the horizon, squinting against the sun.
He crouched and looked at the small crosses. “Muriel” was written on two of them in magic marker. Manuel looked back towards the factory, the smokestack and southern wall clearly visible around the side of a hill. “This isn’t the place.”
Snowflake looked skeptical. He was well versed in looking skeptical. “Isn’t this where the kid said they found the body? Do you think maybe he was lying to you?”
Looking closely at the memorial revealed marigold petals strewn all over near the site, scattered by the breezes. The flowers had been there several days. “You see this?” Manuel pointed to the petals. “These are cempasúchil petals. It’s a species of marigold, and these have been here a while, probably since the body was discovered. The Aztecs used them to remember their dead, thinking they would guide the spirits of their dead loved ones to their altars or home and then to the afterlife. A lot of people in Mexico still grow them just for use as offerings. Around el Dia de los Muertos, these things are everywhere.”
“So, this was where people were, um, told the body was found, then?”
Manuel looked down the steep embankment to the bottom of the arroyo six feet below. It narrowed there, and a sand bar created a tight bend. The body snagged there. That’s why it was found here. “No, they found it here, but it was dumped somewhere else. Didn’t you say they found it after a big rainstorm?”
“Yeah, the next day.”
“Then we need to look upstream from here.” Manuel looked towards the factory tower and adjusted the topography in his head to make the hill line up with the plume of smoke. “It might be a ways. Maybe a mile down the way we’re already pointing.”
“Boss, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but there isn’t any creek to be downstream on. Its just a ditch.”
“It might just be a ditch now, but the night of the rainstorm it was a river, at least for a few hours. Then when it stopped raining, the water had either run off or been absorbed back into the ground. If someone buried the body close to the edge of the arroyo, then the water could have broken the body free, or coyotes could have dug it out prior to the rain. Either way, we aren’t going to find any clues here. We need to go back to the source.”
Snowflake sighed, recognizing that he wasn’t the detective of the two and it was best to let Manuel do what he did. But it frustrated him that the great detective wasn’t even watching the road and instead had his head turned back towards Buena Rosa until he called a sudden halt just over a mile later in an utterly unremarkable location. With little except scrub brush, dirt, and cactus, this stretch of road offered nothing distinctive, nothing worth notice, but Snowflake was along for support and pulled over as instructed.
Hopping out of the cab nimbly Manuel forgot that his legs couldn’t hold his weight in that way anymore, and he had to grab the door to keep from pitching into the sagebrush. He felt it as soon as the factory disappeared behind the hill, the darkness spreading beneath the soil. It was almost overpowering, and he knew this was it. This is where the dead spilled their secrets. This is where he had seen Muriel the first time, in that vision back at his desk in far off Cobalt City.
The scent of sun-baked dust, sagebrush, and piñon was unmistakable. A glance up the road showed a narrow bridge, allowing vehicle access to the vast emptiness. From his vantage point on the other side of the road, Manuel could see the burned down foundation of a small house, all but lost in an overgrowth of shrubs. It was a perfect dump site. Close, but with limited access, and in an area where no one was likely to discover the body for some time.
If not for the coyotes or rain or any number of random, unpredictable events that could have led to Muriel being found, she would still be out there.
Manuel made his way to the other side of the road with Snowflake at his side. “Look out over there and tell me what you see.” Manuel indicated the other side of the arroyo with a tilt of his chin.
Snowflake looked long and hard, opening his mouth a few times to offer an answer then stopping. Finally he had to trust his first instinct. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“A good place to hide bodies.”
Snowflake’s eyes narrowed. “You think there are more people buried out there?”
“This town has an awful lot of missing people. Some of them might have headed for the border, tried to make it to America. But if that were the case, I don’t expect that their families would want to draw attention to it by putting up fliers.”
They started walking up the side of the road towards the small bridge, Manuel watching the ground closely for any kind of tracks or other clue. Other than coyote and white-tailed jackrabbit, he wasn’t seeing much of anything.
“How many people, do you think?”
Manuel couldn’t answer. He wanted to think it was maybe a dozen, two dozen at most. But he had no way to know how long this had been going on. And his feeling was that the number was much, much higher. They had reached the bridge, and there in the dirt over the bridge were tire tracks, no more than a few days old.
“Those are standard all terrain tire treads for the Pegasus Motor trucks and SUV’s,” Snowflake said with authority. Manuel raised an eyebrow as if to question him. “Trust me. You know Mexico, I know tires. I’m not a mechanic for nothing, you know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Snowflake’s attention had been drawn up, back towards town and his mouth tightened into a hard smile. “Speak of the devil. We have company.”
Directing his gaze casually back up the road, Manuel could clearly see the Buena Rosa sheriff’s vehicle rolling towards them through the heat haze on the asphalt. “Do you have a cover story you’ve been using?”
“Made a small fortune in investments, looking to retire somewhere cheap and buy some property.”
Manuel had to admit, that was a good cover. He wondered, however briefly, if Katherine had taken a hand in concocting it. “Good call. I just ran into you at the hotel and you agreed to be the Good Samaritan and drive me around, but you wanted to look at some property on the drive.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Now, smile big for the creepy police man.” Snowflake waved widely at the green and white converted SUV as it pulled to a stop behind his truck.
Manuel was not overly surprised to see Deputy Aldovar step out of the cab and walk across the road towards them. “Car trouble, gentlemen?”
Snowflake smiled. Nothing he ever drove would have car trouble, not as long as he had worked on it recently. “No, far from it. I was hoping to find out who owned this little parcel. I’m looking to buy some land and this little stretch has a lot of potential.”
Deputy Aldovar’s eyes went from Manuel to Snowflake and back again. He never lost his polite smile, but that same smile somehow failed to reach his eyes. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”
Undeterred, Snowflake went on. “Oh, everything is for sale at the right price. Do you know who owns it? Maybe I could get in touch with them and make them an offer.”
“I afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know who owns this parcel. It has been vacant for some time.”
“But you know it isn’t for sale.”
Detective Aldovar’s eyes grew flinty and dark. Manuel took the cue that his friend was so clearly missing. “I’m sure someone at city hall might know, Mr. Snow. I don’t see the potential, but I’m not the investor I guess.”
Deputy Aldovar gave Manuel his full attention. “No, you are a police officer, aren’t you, Mr. de la Vega.”
“I’m taking some time off to write a book, but yes, I’ve recently been a police detective.”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I was looking for you.”
Snowflake licked his lips, trying to contain a nervous glance in Manuel’s direction. To his credit, Manuel kept his cool. He had been expecting something like this eventually, and it was good to get it out of the way early. “Well, I’m glad you found me. What is this about?”
“About? It is about your cousin of course. You can speak with Esther today. I have arranged it with Sheriff Bragga. I can give you a ride back to the station if you like.”
Every fiber in his body was screaming “No”, that this was a setup. But a turtle never got anywhere without sticking out his neck first. Manuel offered Snowflake his hand in a hearty thank-you and good-bye shake. “Good luck, Mr. Snow. I hope you find the owner without too much digging in public records.”
“Of course. And if you get tied up with your cousin, I’ll understand. Just beep me or whatever and we can get together some other night for dinner.”
Snowflake was in the truck heading back towards town in minutes, while it took a little longer for Manuel to get across the street and buckled in. He ran his fingers across the leather interior. “Very nice for a police vehicle.”
“It was donated by the manager of the Pegasus Motors plant. I think he meant to encourage faster response time to his hacienda.”
“Does he frequently need a fast response to his hacienda?”
Deputy Aldovar shrugged and started the truck. “I don’t know. He’s never called us. He has his own security to handle most of his police needs.”
That was somewhat of a surprise for Manuel. Two sets of cops meant double the fun and double the possibilities for corruption. This just kept getting better.
They arrived at the police station quickly, with Deputy Aldovar cutting through several side streets to a parking lot tucked behind a high wall topped with razor wire. The deputy indicated the security with a casual wave of the back of his hand. “Motor pool. If we parked on the street, these cars would be gone by morning. There are people here who have no respect for law. You should understand. I imagine it was the same in Mexico City.”
“There are similarities. Car theft wasn’t such a big priority, but it happened, certainly. Not to police vehicles so much.”
“Hm...maybe it is just here in Buena Rosa that they steal our cars or strip our tires?”
Manuel felt the urge to cry out, Maybe if you did your job, but a sense of self-preservation prevented him from saying anything. They pulled into a painted space alongside the building and stepped out onto the sun-hot asphalt of the parking lot. Already, a deputy that Manuel didn’t recognize was rolling the gate closed before retreating to the shade of his sentry booth. Whether it was a trap or not, they certainly had him where they wanted him.
The deputy selected a key from the mammoth key ring on his belt and unlocked a heavy, blue painted steel door at the back of the building. Manuel set his shoulders and propelled himself along after the deputy into the cool white interior of the police station jail. He followed Aldovar down several short halls, filled with solid doors with no windows, no bars – a jail full of solitary cells.
Shortly, they came to an interview room, the chipped avocado green paint of the walls more at home on an old refrigerator than in a police station. A broad mirror was along the left hand wall, and only an idiot would think it was actually a mirror. A pair of durable steel chairs was bolted to the floor on either side of a similarly secured steel table. A flickering fluorescent light fixture provided an intermittent, sickly light through the detritus of insect husks scattered inside plastic fronted light fixture.
His cousin, no surprise, was nowhere to be seen.
“Take a seat, please.” Deputy Aldovar indicated one of the seats and Manuel sat in the other one because he was feeling contentious. If this bothered the deputy, he didn’t react, which disappointed Manuel somewhat. He was relieved, however, that the visions didn’t come over him again. With some of the horrible scenarios running through his head already, the last thing he wanted to deal with in the face of a potential adversary was a vision of evil or pain. It felt that a vision like that couldn’t help but undermine his confidence, and that was one of the few things he felt he came into the room with.
“And my cousin Esther is where, exactly, Deputy Aldovar?”
The deputy sat in the opposite chair, a languid smile spreading across his broad face like spilled blood on linoleum. “Oh, she’s on her way. She should be here any second. I don’t suppose you would mind answering a few questions while you’re here?”
“I’ll play along for now, but if I don’t like the questions then the interview is over. Comprende?”
“Si.”
The deputy leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table before him. Manuel couldn’t help but notice that there was no stenographer, no cassette recorder, no note taking of any kind, which could mean two things: this “talk” was completely off the record, or the room was very well miked. He was leaning towards the latter.
“You left the Mexico City Police department three years ago, is that correct?”
That sent Manuel thinking. He did the math in his head and found that it had indeed been a long time since he left for Cobalt City. “Not quite three years, but pretty close.”
“What made you decide to leave the police force?”
“I didn’t leave the police. I merely left Mexico City. I was offered a job as a detective in Cobalt City, in America.”
Aldovar sucked at his teeth, a slight show of discomfort over Manuel’s answer. The detective decided then and there to remember the deputy’s reaction, treating it as a “tell” as though he were a poker player. Whether it ever paid off, only time would tell, but he wasn’t being thrown many bones. And in a pinch, he had learned to make due with what he had. “Cobalt City? Well, you must be very...”
“Proud?” Manuel ventured, knowing it wasn’t the word the deputy was looking for, but calculating it was the one which might irritate him more.
“I was going to say talented. It isn’t every Mexican police officer who is offered such opportunities in the U.S.”
Manuel leaned into the table as well, his hands crossed before him in a deliberate attempt to strike Aldovar’s same posture. “Well, I am very good at what I do.”
“And what is it that you do? What department have they put you in? Certainly not narcotics. Gang unit, perhaps? Vice? Internal affairs?” the last one said slowly, Aldovar’s eyes boring into Manuel.
So he had done his homework, Manuel thought. It was his cooperation with a major corruption investigation that helped finalize his decision to leave Mexico City. And it was more than simple finger pointing. Manuel had been building a case for well over a year, documenting every pay off, every drug transport with cops working security, everything. And then when he felt he had enough to send some people to jail, he took the file to the State Police, to someone he could trust.
There was no way he could ever be a cop in Mexico again. And not only because it wasn’t safe anymore, no, Manuel was a traitor. For all the public scrutiny on police corruption, all the big talk about cleaning up the department, it was just too widespread. There wasn’t a station that would hire him south of the border once they got his transfer paperwork.
“You might be surprised by this, but IA doesn’t have quite as much work to do in Cobalt City as it does in Mexico. So I work in homicide.”
Aldovar didn’t blink, his dark eyes locked on Manuel, his tone when he spoke utterly devoid of inflection. “Homicide. How exciting.”
“Yes. I catch killers, Deputy Aldovar. Real ones.”
The air between them reached a fascinating balance between ice cold and electric for a long moment, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. Aldovar stood while the door swung open, revealing Esther Vega wearing an orange jumper, her hands cuffed before her. Deputy Attencio stood behind her, towering a good foot over Manuel’s hunch shouldered cousin.
Esther’s eyes brightened into sparks when she saw Manuel, but then nervously shifted to the deputies in the room. She was led to the chair and she sat without being directed to do so. She nervously licked her lips, forming the words “Thank you” without making a sound.
“Deputies, if I could have a few minutes alone with my cousin, please?”
Attencio sneered, then turned and sauntered out. Deputy Aldovar began to shake his head in protest. “I’m afraid that regulations state that she has to be accompanied at all times except when she is with a priest or lawyer.”
It was a show. Manuel could tell. “I assure you, deputy. My cousin and I won’t go anywhere. I think its probably okay to for me to talk to her, don’t you?”
Aldovar sucked on his teeth, looking at the two of them. It was more of the act, of course. Manuel was a cop in Mexico. He knew how it was played. Don’t leave your “suspects” the impression that you gave up too easily then leave, allowing the people in the room to talk freely. That was where the microphones and probably recording equipment became very handy, and Manuel had already established that the room was most certainly miked. And he knew that Aldovar would suspect that he knew. The dance was far too complicated for both of them to keep up for long, and in the end the deputy fell back to routine, and left with a satisfied nod of his head.
Once the door was firmly closed, Esther allowed a nervous smile to surface. “Manny...I can’t believe that you are actually here.”
“I was going to say the same thing.”
Fear blossomed in her eyes. “I didn’t do it, I swear, I didn’t even know what I was signing a confession for.”
“Then why did you sign it?”
The dam broke, and Esther started choking back sobs. Manuel wanted to get up from the chair and go to her, but he was afraid they were watching on the other side of the glass, afraid that Aldovar and Attencio would sweep in at the first sign of contact. “I thought they were going to kill me. God help me, Manny, I thought I was going to die. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
Manuel tried to catch his cousin’s eyes. “Hey. Look at me, okay?” He waited until she raised her tired, sunken eyes to his, he indicated the double-sided mirror on the wall with a slight twist of his head, and watched to make sure she got it. When he saw comprehension flicker in her eyes, he continued quietly. “Don’t say anything, but I need to know. Did they hurt you?”
Esther nodded so slightly he almost didn’t see it, but the look in her eyes was sufficient. They had dressed her in a long sleeved jumper. Any bruising, burning, scaring, whatever they did to her, it wouldn’t be visible. And anything that turned up later as evidence of torture would be dismissed as self inflicted anyway.
Manuel wanted to know how she had contacted him, who sent him the postcard that brought him here. But he couldn’t think of a way to ask Esther that wouldn’t give away that person’s identity to the police also. And when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if she would even know who passed the information along. If she had been locked up in one of the solitary cells, it was probably jail staff. The other, far more likely possibility was that she had a friend in town who knew about him. In the end, he decided to save that mystery for another day.
“You trust me, don’t you?” He asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to try and get you out.”
Esther’s eyes grew wide, this time with a potent alchemy of fear and hope. “How...”
Manuel spoke clearly, and in just enough of a stage whisper that he hoped the microphones could pick it up. “I have access to some money. It isn’t a lot, but it’s all I have. A few thousand dollars - U.S. dollars. I can get it here in a day, maybe two. I might be able to convince the police that this is all a misunderstanding and get them to let you go. But you’ll have to leave town and never speak of this again.”
There, he thought. The bait was out in the water. He could suggest a bribe in such a way that most anyone inclined to take it would hear the offer. He didn’t need the entire department to be crooked. He just needed one person. And finding a crooked cop in Mexico was easier than looking down and seeing ground.
But he was not prepared for the expression on Esther’s face. And he realized that he had badly, badly miscalculated how to play this game.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“I want you to forget this ever happened.”
It was too late. This was why he had always loved his cousin Esther. She was passionate. She believed in causes, usually ones she couldn’t ever win. They were her bread and butter. It drove Uncle Chui crazy. It drove everyone in the family a little crazy.
Everyone except Manuel de la Vega, that is. He was always supportive of her fire, if for no other reason than he felt she was a kindred spirit. And deep down, he believed that if enough people went tilting at windmills, then the world would be a better place.
Only now it was likely to get her killed.
And there was a better than good chance that he was going to get killed right along with her. “Please, Esther, just don’t say anything else.”
“Be quiet? Forget about it? I thought you got it, Manny! I can’t forget about this! Someone killed Muriel Cruz. She wasn’t a friend of mine, but I knew her, and she’s dead.”
“Please...”
Esther would not be deterred. “If I forget about this it all goes away. She goes away. And her death doesn’t matter. I can’t let her be one more silent victim. I need my day in court! I need you to help me expose...”
Manuel stood quickly, pulling himself up with the table for support. His voice hissed out from between clenched teeth, and he knew, he just knew, it wouldn’t do any good. It was too late. “For the love of God will you just shut up?”
With his dramatic movement, the show was over. They could both hear footsteps in the hall. Esther looked up at her cousin with the wretched expression of an animal in a snap-jawed trap. Somewhere in there, she realized what she had just done. Manuel told himself that. He had to, just to keep from hating her for the slightest second.
As the door opened, he leaned in close to her and whispered tightly in her ear so that the microphones couldn’t hear it. “Ok, so much for plan A. Sit tight and say nothing. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”
Attencio and Aldovar were joined by two fresh deputies whose nametags read “Chavez” and “Ortega”. Manuel was separated forcibly from Esther, but he didn’t put up a fight. It looked like the fight had gone out of his cousin too, and as she was dragged slack-jawed from the room, he could only guess what she was thinking. What was the “hard way?”
Manuel sighed inwardly. He had really hoped he could avoid doing things the hard way, but that option had been snatched from his fingertips.
No. Manuel de la Vega had played his trump card and found it lacking.
It was time to see what Gato Loco could do.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Buena Rosa Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Manuel’s dreams were troubled, but he would have been kidding himself if he had expected anything else. The arroyo was back, and the body at his feet was not that of his cousin. He knew that now, based on what he had found about the circumstances of her arrest. Additionally, there was no tattoo on the base of her spine, butterfly or otherwise. No, this was the victim. And she had something to say, something she was screaming in a voice that he couldn’t hear, but which made the hair on his arms stand up.
Bodies didn’t disturb him. He had been a homicide detective for too many years, had seen too many horrible things. Yes, they affected him, but not disturbed. This body, this...girl, her death just seemed like such a waste. And at the same time, there was something strangely familiar about it.
Taking his eyes from the victim, he turned instead to the scenery, trying to place where he was, hoping that it was some real location, imparted to him through the vision. In the distance, smoke from the factory rose from over the hills. A pitted two lane blacktop stretched through the arid waste nearby, but there was nothing distinctive about right there, nothing that would tell him definitively that he had found the right spot. He considered asking Deputy Aldovar to take him out to where the body was found, but suspected that the local lawman could not be trusted.
Manuel knew he would have to take a look himself, and rely on the vision to guide him to the right spot. He would have to get as much help as he could from the factory smoke and the road in finding the spot. It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible, either.
The other dream which haunted him was far less lucid. What little he could remember of the dreams involved him being chased through dark streets which became increasingly narrow and hard to navigate. He spared one look over his shoulder and saw a figure made out of darkness pouncing towards him. And for the briefest of seconds in a moment of cry-inducing vertigo he was both the hunter and the hunted. He awoke drenched in sweat, which was as much a fault of the dream as it was the oppressive heat that refused to let up even after dark.
When the sun came up, Manuel gave up trying to sleep. Instead he maneuvered himself into the bathroom and filled the tub for a much needed bath. He had been thankful that the hotel had tubs instead of showers. If he had been stuck with only a shower, he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t be handicap friendly. Things down in Buena Rosa were going to be tough enough without having to ask Snowflake’s help showering.
Looking at his legs through the water distorted the details, blurred the scars enough that he was able to disconnect a bit and think of them as belonging to someone else entirely. Long claw scars covered his back and both forearms. There was a long burn scar on the back of his left hand from a super-heated muffler, and his hip still had bits of Mexico City asphalt imbedded beneath the skin from a long ago cycle accident. He felt like Frankenstein’s monster. “You’re a piece of work, Manuel,” he said quietly to himself in the dawn light, “a broken, freak of a man.”
He took the early morning silence of the street below as affirmation.
When the water became too close to body temperature to be comfortable, Manuel pulled the stopper, letting the water drain languidly out. Summoning up the strength to face the day, he hoisted himself up to a sitting position on the tub’s edge and reached for a towel to dry off. He was interrupted by a soft knocking on the door.
Manuel froze, towel halfway to his scarred body. A few seconds passed then the knock came again, followed by Snowflake’s distinctive voice, allowing Manuel to release the breath trapped within his chest. “Boss. You awake yet?”
“I’m indisposed, but I’m awake.”
“Cool. You ready for breakfast in ten minutes?”
Contemplating the task of drying, grooming, and dressing, ten minutes was pushing it, but seeing as how he had skipped dinner the night before, breakfast sounded awfully good. The grooming could wait until after food, he decided. “I’ll meet you at the truck.”
“Solid.”
A quick towel dry, a brush through his thick, dark hair that he had let go long enough that it was starting to bother him, and then jeans, boots, and gray cotton western shirt, and he was ready to go with a minute to spare. Snowflake was waiting with the truck idling at the curb when Manuel stepped out into the still morning air. The sun was already burning away pink ribbons of clouds on the eastern horizon, enough to give a hint of the day to come without being quite hot yet.
Manuel clambered up into the truck and belted himself in. “So I take it I wasn’t followed last night?”
Snowflake shook his head and nosed the truck smoothly out onto the road heading for the intersection which would take them south. “One of the deputies, the tall one, he left with a woman about five minutes after you left and locked the door behind him.”
“That would be Ray Attencio. He might be trouble, but I’m not sure what kind of trouble yet.”
“The woman with him was completely drunk, he practically had to carry her to his car. She was wearing a blue skirt and sort of puffy white shirt...”
“And she had a small blue purse.”
The panda man nodded, obviously impressed by Manuel’s deductive skills. “The deputy was carrying it, but yeah, a small blue purse. It sparkled in the street lights. You saw her?”
“I saw the purse when I was in the station. It was covered in sequins. Which direction did they go?”
“West, towards the shantytown and factory.”
“And what’s south of here?”
“Other than breakfast, there isn’t anything for miles. There used to be some ranches, I hear, but the cattle got sick a few years ago, so there isn’t much of that going on anymore.” Snowflake was silent for several blocks, watching Manuel out of the corner of his eye. “So do we have a schedule for today?”
“The sheriff doesn’t show up at the station until ten, so we have several hours to kill. I’d like to take a look at the factory and the shantytown, and Perseus Glen if I can. And time permitting, I’d like to try and find out where the body was discovered.”
“You think they missed something when they found the body? Some kind of clue, maybe?”
“That would imply that they were trying. It isn’t like they have crime-scene teams out here. I don’t imagine they even have a medical examiner. No, I think they found a body, decided it was murder because no one would be out there on their own accord, and just picked someone convenient to finger for it.”
“They can’t do that.”
“No. But they did.” Manuel stared out the truck window as houses and storefronts rolled by beyond the glass. “They do it all the time.”
How long had I been a part of the system, Manuel asked himself. How many years did I try to reconcile myself to the corruption, try to justify that one honest cop could balance out ten dishonest cops? And when I went to America with the dream of making a difference, did I abandon my own people or embrace my own potential? And were the two concepts mutually exclusive?
Snowflake could tell that his partner had a lot on his mind and remained silent for the rest of the relatively short drive to the Casa del Ranchero. It was still early, but there were already a handful of vehicles in the lot, all dusty but new Pegasus Motorcars vehicles, with security stickers in the back window. Snowflake noticed Manuel looking. “The locals, most of them don’t drive. And this place is popular with the Pegasus crowd, so you won’t see many locals around anyway. I’m not sure where the locals eat.”
“The locals probably cook.”
“Savages.”
The interior of the Casa del Ranchero was air conditioned, and other than the staff, the only Hispanics there were Manuel and a burly man with handlebar mustache and significant acne scaring on his cheeks. He was wearing a short-sleeved white oxford shirt with a Pegasus Motors logo on the breast and narrow red tie. Company man, through and through, Manuel figured.
The stranger watched Manuel and Snowflake from the moment they entered to the moment they took a seat at the counter. Even with their backs turned, Manuel could feel the pair of coal black eyes boring into his back. “I think we’ve been spotted.”
“Yeah.” Snowflake hunched his shoulders. “I’ve seen him in here a few times. I heard his name is Mr. Contralles. I don’t know what he does for the company, but he’s kind of scary so I’m leaning towards lawyer or security.”
“Lawyers don’t body build like that.”
Snowflake shrugged, catching sight of the subject of their conversation in a reflection on the napkin dispenser. “Gay lawyers might.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“So you think he’s security, then.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
Shortly, they either got used to the evil eye or he stopped watching, because the chill was gone from their spines by the time the waiter came to take their breakfast order.
Manuel was impressed with the selection, but found the food catered more to north of the border tastes than he would have liked. After conversing with the waiter for a few minutes, he was assured that his huevos rancheros would be authentic and not gringo. The waiter’s name was Flip and claimed to have grown up in the area. Manuel chatted him up casually about the town in general, careful not to touch on any hot button topics like the missing person flyers, the factory, the police, or his cousin’s incarceration. By the time the check came and most of the Pegasus crew had left, he and Flip had managed to build a foundation of trust important in any detective / informant relationship.
Not that Manuel mentioned that he was a cop, of course. He had decided to pass himself off as a novelist. It was innocuous enough and had the tendency to get people to open up. He had found that there was nothing like the prospect of being in a book to get the stories flowing.
As Manuel was paying for breakfast, he made sure to catch Flip’s full attention, and spoke to him in subdued Spanish, in case any lingering Pegasus employees overheard. “The desk clerk at the hotel said that there was a murder in town recently, is that true?”
Flip looked nervously out over the dining area, but was quickly reassured that no one was listening to them. Even Snowflake went over to the postcard rack near the door, well out of earshot. “Si. A week ago, maybe more.”
“Did they catch the person who did it?”
Flip was on the spot and he knew it. He shrugged, and began counting out change. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Where did they find the victim? I might be able to use the information for my book.”
Flip looked out at the dining area again, then back at Manuel, his eyes refusing to settle anywhere for long. He was scared. Hell, he had a right to be, Manuel thought.
“West of town, just before the workers camp, there is a road that goes south into the desert. They found Muriel in an arroyo, four miles south, just where the road bends.”
Manuel was surprised to hear Flip know her name. His understanding was that the victim was not local, and that only Pegasus management types ate here, but clearly there was more to Flip than he knew. “You knew the girl?”
“I had talked to her a few times. She let me buy her a soda once and we talked about things a few times.”
“Things like what?”
“Like the factory, and the town, and family and things. Nothing special. Just talk. And her sister stopped in a few days ago after work and talked to me about Muriel for a while also.”
“Do you remember her sister’s name or where I might be able to find her? I’d like to be able to talk to her too, if I could.”
Flip had already clearly established that Manuel wasn’t with the police. The company he kept was a dead giveaway, for one thing. And the nasty stares he had received from Mr. Contralles had cemented that status. But now he began to suspect that there was more to Manuel than a simple novelist. Manuel could see the gears turn, each scenario getting more fanciful in his head the longer it went on. Internal affairs, or maybe state police, or the Presidente’s personal police, or, even better, CIA operatives, all scrolled past on the list of possibilities. He found himself giving in to the mystery, unable to deny Manuel anything just to be allowed to be a part of whatever was going on. “Her name is Anita. I don’t know where she is staying, but she might be at her sister’s place.”
“In the workers camp?”
“No, Muriel was a floor supervisor, she could afford an apartment. She lived in the Torrerro Court between the work camp and town. I don’t know the apartment number.”
“That’s okay. I can find it. Thank you Flip. Keep the change.”
The large tip vanished into Flip’s apron pocket so quick it almost looked like a magic trick. “If you need to know anything else, I am here until two every day.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Snowflake preceded him out into the parking lot. They still had several hours to kill and no desire to go back to the stuffy hotel rooms.
“So, we go looking for where the body was found before it gets too hot?” Snowflake said, starting up the truck with a smile.
Manuel squinted into the rising sun, already a white hot pinprick in the azure sky. “And before someone gets out there to try and destroy evidence. And then we take a look at the factory and maybe, just maybe, we track down the victim’s sister.”
“Ah, the femme fatale!”
Manuel shook his head slowly, but couldn’t help but smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you read too much?”
“All the time, my brother. All the time.”
The truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust as it left the parking lot, and within seconds they were speeding down the ill-repaired asphalt on their way to find an unmarked grave.
Manuel’s dreams were troubled, but he would have been kidding himself if he had expected anything else. The arroyo was back, and the body at his feet was not that of his cousin. He knew that now, based on what he had found about the circumstances of her arrest. Additionally, there was no tattoo on the base of her spine, butterfly or otherwise. No, this was the victim. And she had something to say, something she was screaming in a voice that he couldn’t hear, but which made the hair on his arms stand up.
Bodies didn’t disturb him. He had been a homicide detective for too many years, had seen too many horrible things. Yes, they affected him, but not disturbed. This body, this...girl, her death just seemed like such a waste. And at the same time, there was something strangely familiar about it.
Taking his eyes from the victim, he turned instead to the scenery, trying to place where he was, hoping that it was some real location, imparted to him through the vision. In the distance, smoke from the factory rose from over the hills. A pitted two lane blacktop stretched through the arid waste nearby, but there was nothing distinctive about right there, nothing that would tell him definitively that he had found the right spot. He considered asking Deputy Aldovar to take him out to where the body was found, but suspected that the local lawman could not be trusted.
Manuel knew he would have to take a look himself, and rely on the vision to guide him to the right spot. He would have to get as much help as he could from the factory smoke and the road in finding the spot. It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible, either.
The other dream which haunted him was far less lucid. What little he could remember of the dreams involved him being chased through dark streets which became increasingly narrow and hard to navigate. He spared one look over his shoulder and saw a figure made out of darkness pouncing towards him. And for the briefest of seconds in a moment of cry-inducing vertigo he was both the hunter and the hunted. He awoke drenched in sweat, which was as much a fault of the dream as it was the oppressive heat that refused to let up even after dark.
When the sun came up, Manuel gave up trying to sleep. Instead he maneuvered himself into the bathroom and filled the tub for a much needed bath. He had been thankful that the hotel had tubs instead of showers. If he had been stuck with only a shower, he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t be handicap friendly. Things down in Buena Rosa were going to be tough enough without having to ask Snowflake’s help showering.
Looking at his legs through the water distorted the details, blurred the scars enough that he was able to disconnect a bit and think of them as belonging to someone else entirely. Long claw scars covered his back and both forearms. There was a long burn scar on the back of his left hand from a super-heated muffler, and his hip still had bits of Mexico City asphalt imbedded beneath the skin from a long ago cycle accident. He felt like Frankenstein’s monster. “You’re a piece of work, Manuel,” he said quietly to himself in the dawn light, “a broken, freak of a man.”
He took the early morning silence of the street below as affirmation.
When the water became too close to body temperature to be comfortable, Manuel pulled the stopper, letting the water drain languidly out. Summoning up the strength to face the day, he hoisted himself up to a sitting position on the tub’s edge and reached for a towel to dry off. He was interrupted by a soft knocking on the door.
Manuel froze, towel halfway to his scarred body. A few seconds passed then the knock came again, followed by Snowflake’s distinctive voice, allowing Manuel to release the breath trapped within his chest. “Boss. You awake yet?”
“I’m indisposed, but I’m awake.”
“Cool. You ready for breakfast in ten minutes?”
Contemplating the task of drying, grooming, and dressing, ten minutes was pushing it, but seeing as how he had skipped dinner the night before, breakfast sounded awfully good. The grooming could wait until after food, he decided. “I’ll meet you at the truck.”
“Solid.”
A quick towel dry, a brush through his thick, dark hair that he had let go long enough that it was starting to bother him, and then jeans, boots, and gray cotton western shirt, and he was ready to go with a minute to spare. Snowflake was waiting with the truck idling at the curb when Manuel stepped out into the still morning air. The sun was already burning away pink ribbons of clouds on the eastern horizon, enough to give a hint of the day to come without being quite hot yet.
Manuel clambered up into the truck and belted himself in. “So I take it I wasn’t followed last night?”
Snowflake shook his head and nosed the truck smoothly out onto the road heading for the intersection which would take them south. “One of the deputies, the tall one, he left with a woman about five minutes after you left and locked the door behind him.”
“That would be Ray Attencio. He might be trouble, but I’m not sure what kind of trouble yet.”
“The woman with him was completely drunk, he practically had to carry her to his car. She was wearing a blue skirt and sort of puffy white shirt...”
“And she had a small blue purse.”
The panda man nodded, obviously impressed by Manuel’s deductive skills. “The deputy was carrying it, but yeah, a small blue purse. It sparkled in the street lights. You saw her?”
“I saw the purse when I was in the station. It was covered in sequins. Which direction did they go?”
“West, towards the shantytown and factory.”
“And what’s south of here?”
“Other than breakfast, there isn’t anything for miles. There used to be some ranches, I hear, but the cattle got sick a few years ago, so there isn’t much of that going on anymore.” Snowflake was silent for several blocks, watching Manuel out of the corner of his eye. “So do we have a schedule for today?”
“The sheriff doesn’t show up at the station until ten, so we have several hours to kill. I’d like to take a look at the factory and the shantytown, and Perseus Glen if I can. And time permitting, I’d like to try and find out where the body was discovered.”
“You think they missed something when they found the body? Some kind of clue, maybe?”
“That would imply that they were trying. It isn’t like they have crime-scene teams out here. I don’t imagine they even have a medical examiner. No, I think they found a body, decided it was murder because no one would be out there on their own accord, and just picked someone convenient to finger for it.”
“They can’t do that.”
“No. But they did.” Manuel stared out the truck window as houses and storefronts rolled by beyond the glass. “They do it all the time.”
How long had I been a part of the system, Manuel asked himself. How many years did I try to reconcile myself to the corruption, try to justify that one honest cop could balance out ten dishonest cops? And when I went to America with the dream of making a difference, did I abandon my own people or embrace my own potential? And were the two concepts mutually exclusive?
Snowflake could tell that his partner had a lot on his mind and remained silent for the rest of the relatively short drive to the Casa del Ranchero. It was still early, but there were already a handful of vehicles in the lot, all dusty but new Pegasus Motorcars vehicles, with security stickers in the back window. Snowflake noticed Manuel looking. “The locals, most of them don’t drive. And this place is popular with the Pegasus crowd, so you won’t see many locals around anyway. I’m not sure where the locals eat.”
“The locals probably cook.”
“Savages.”
The interior of the Casa del Ranchero was air conditioned, and other than the staff, the only Hispanics there were Manuel and a burly man with handlebar mustache and significant acne scaring on his cheeks. He was wearing a short-sleeved white oxford shirt with a Pegasus Motors logo on the breast and narrow red tie. Company man, through and through, Manuel figured.
The stranger watched Manuel and Snowflake from the moment they entered to the moment they took a seat at the counter. Even with their backs turned, Manuel could feel the pair of coal black eyes boring into his back. “I think we’ve been spotted.”
“Yeah.” Snowflake hunched his shoulders. “I’ve seen him in here a few times. I heard his name is Mr. Contralles. I don’t know what he does for the company, but he’s kind of scary so I’m leaning towards lawyer or security.”
“Lawyers don’t body build like that.”
Snowflake shrugged, catching sight of the subject of their conversation in a reflection on the napkin dispenser. “Gay lawyers might.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“So you think he’s security, then.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
Shortly, they either got used to the evil eye or he stopped watching, because the chill was gone from their spines by the time the waiter came to take their breakfast order.
Manuel was impressed with the selection, but found the food catered more to north of the border tastes than he would have liked. After conversing with the waiter for a few minutes, he was assured that his huevos rancheros would be authentic and not gringo. The waiter’s name was Flip and claimed to have grown up in the area. Manuel chatted him up casually about the town in general, careful not to touch on any hot button topics like the missing person flyers, the factory, the police, or his cousin’s incarceration. By the time the check came and most of the Pegasus crew had left, he and Flip had managed to build a foundation of trust important in any detective / informant relationship.
Not that Manuel mentioned that he was a cop, of course. He had decided to pass himself off as a novelist. It was innocuous enough and had the tendency to get people to open up. He had found that there was nothing like the prospect of being in a book to get the stories flowing.
As Manuel was paying for breakfast, he made sure to catch Flip’s full attention, and spoke to him in subdued Spanish, in case any lingering Pegasus employees overheard. “The desk clerk at the hotel said that there was a murder in town recently, is that true?”
Flip looked nervously out over the dining area, but was quickly reassured that no one was listening to them. Even Snowflake went over to the postcard rack near the door, well out of earshot. “Si. A week ago, maybe more.”
“Did they catch the person who did it?”
Flip was on the spot and he knew it. He shrugged, and began counting out change. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Where did they find the victim? I might be able to use the information for my book.”
Flip looked out at the dining area again, then back at Manuel, his eyes refusing to settle anywhere for long. He was scared. Hell, he had a right to be, Manuel thought.
“West of town, just before the workers camp, there is a road that goes south into the desert. They found Muriel in an arroyo, four miles south, just where the road bends.”
Manuel was surprised to hear Flip know her name. His understanding was that the victim was not local, and that only Pegasus management types ate here, but clearly there was more to Flip than he knew. “You knew the girl?”
“I had talked to her a few times. She let me buy her a soda once and we talked about things a few times.”
“Things like what?”
“Like the factory, and the town, and family and things. Nothing special. Just talk. And her sister stopped in a few days ago after work and talked to me about Muriel for a while also.”
“Do you remember her sister’s name or where I might be able to find her? I’d like to be able to talk to her too, if I could.”
Flip had already clearly established that Manuel wasn’t with the police. The company he kept was a dead giveaway, for one thing. And the nasty stares he had received from Mr. Contralles had cemented that status. But now he began to suspect that there was more to Manuel than a simple novelist. Manuel could see the gears turn, each scenario getting more fanciful in his head the longer it went on. Internal affairs, or maybe state police, or the Presidente’s personal police, or, even better, CIA operatives, all scrolled past on the list of possibilities. He found himself giving in to the mystery, unable to deny Manuel anything just to be allowed to be a part of whatever was going on. “Her name is Anita. I don’t know where she is staying, but she might be at her sister’s place.”
“In the workers camp?”
“No, Muriel was a floor supervisor, she could afford an apartment. She lived in the Torrerro Court between the work camp and town. I don’t know the apartment number.”
“That’s okay. I can find it. Thank you Flip. Keep the change.”
The large tip vanished into Flip’s apron pocket so quick it almost looked like a magic trick. “If you need to know anything else, I am here until two every day.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Snowflake preceded him out into the parking lot. They still had several hours to kill and no desire to go back to the stuffy hotel rooms.
“So, we go looking for where the body was found before it gets too hot?” Snowflake said, starting up the truck with a smile.
Manuel squinted into the rising sun, already a white hot pinprick in the azure sky. “And before someone gets out there to try and destroy evidence. And then we take a look at the factory and maybe, just maybe, we track down the victim’s sister.”
“Ah, the femme fatale!”
Manuel shook his head slowly, but couldn’t help but smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you read too much?”
“All the time, my brother. All the time.”
The truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust as it left the parking lot, and within seconds they were speeding down the ill-repaired asphalt on their way to find an unmarked grave.
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