by Chris Fabry
Seeing that car finally made the pieces fit—the reason the man had found them in Benson, how the two men had driven the road to the well on Slocum’s farm, and how the black car with tinted windows had showed up here.
“How’s it hanging today, J. D.?” Karl said. He flashed his normal smile and crusty laugh and shook J. D.’s hand like he was fitting pipe.
J. D. kept one eye on the car and took a step away from the barn. “I need your help, Karl.”
17
THE ROAD WOUND AND PITCHED toward the mountains, and Muerte thought he had seen this setting in a movie. The saguaros grew statuesque and dotted the hillside like soldiers in their own military procession. A green militia moving in step down the rocky crags of the national park. He wanted to slow and take it in, but the prospect before him of finding the girl and eliminating her fueled him and he accelerated.
He had enlarged the program on his phone and now it pulsed and beeped as he drew closer. His mind numb from lack of sleep, he ran over the events of the previous hour and smiled. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing the trail he was leaving was untraceable, even though he had left many bodies in the wake of his movement north. The police officer was the most unfortunate and the one he wished he could have back. His death would only heighten the interest for the American law enforcement community. They held each other in high esteem and violence toward one was violence toward all. But they were soft. Their anger would lessen and they would all go back to their football games and American Idol or whatever television show was hottest. And he would continue his mission and slip away unnoticed. If they thought the death of a police officer was tragic, they had seen nothing.
The authorities would not make the connection between the officer and the doctor in Benson for some time, or ever, and it would probably be several days before anyone noticed the two he had left in their car in the hospital parking garage in Tucson. He was firing as he climbed into the backseat, shooting downward, taking them by surprise and diminishing the blood spray. He then arranged their bodies to make it appear they were merely sleeping. They would be seen by passersby as two more Mexicans exhausted from their day labors and trying to rest before they visited a sick loved one. He had made sure the windows were up to keep the flies away and diminish the death odor. He did not envy the investigators who would be called to the scene.
Muerte pulled into the farmers’ market and slowed to a crawl on the graveled lot. Though he was not at 100 percent, he was invigorated by the fact that he would be able to sleep the rest of the day if he simply took care of business. It needed to be a clean shot, however. The last thing he wanted to do was mow down a dozen market vendors. He would if he had to, of course. But he knew it was in his best interest to provide a single shot each to the head and chest and leave. That was his goal.
He had spoken with the men before stepping into their car, receiving information about what they had seen in the desert. He had assumed they were lying or simply didn’t understand how the electronic gadget worked. But the description of the desert encounter sounded plausible. Perhaps the girl had retraced her steps to find the satchel she had stolen and ditched. Perhaps she was hiding nearby and they hadn’t seen her. Whatever the reason, she was now here and he would put an end to the chase.
He parked on the opposite side of a fence enclosing the parking lot, where he could see all the trucks and cars pulling in and backing up to the tent. He enlarged the phone application. She was just outside the barn, headed inside. He chambered a round in his Glock, concealed the gun in his jacket, and strode toward the building.
The area was a beehive of activity with adults and children preparing for the day’s sales. The smell of freshly brewing coffee hit him as soon as he rounded the corner. He passed a booth selling tortillas, water, and soda. The young girl there didn’t look up as he walked past. Maria was somewhere inside the barn, but as he stepped inside, there were too many people carrying and moving things. He struggled past a man holding deer antlers and checked his phone again. She was outside now and moving through the vendors.
In the sunlight he smelled the cooking beef brisket and bratwurst and wiped away sweat from his forehead. He shielded the phone’s screen from the light, then ran through the gauntlet of vendors under the canopy. He surveyed the lot but didn’t see the familiar black hair cascading down her lovely back. For the first time since he had begun his search, he had the feeling that he could be the hunted one.
“Care to try some fresh honey?” an older woman said.
Muerte glanced at her and shook his head before returning to the tracker. Maria was now stationary near the front of the barn.
He strode along the graveled road, determined, as a truck rumbled past advertising gyro sandwiches. Then an old Suburban pulled by him, dust funneling. When he reached the playground area, children were gathered around a goat tethered to a crudely fashioned climbing structure. He moved past it, then checked his phone again only to see Maria was behind him. He grasped the gun in his right hand and turned. There were only children there. He walked to the road again but there was no one.
He heard a commotion in the parking lot. Someone shouted. But Muerte could only stare at the goat. On the chain around its neck was the ring. Something gave way in his stomach.
“Mister, is that your car over by the fence?” a man said. He was older and wiry, white-haired. “That lady doesn’t like people parking on her property.”
A siren screamed in the distance and Muerte hurried to his car, cursing his luck. Maria had figured out the tracking device and was mocking him by using the goat. She would pay for her insolence.
He was met by a middle-aged woman wearing hospital scrubs, hands on hips, fire in her eyes.
“Is this your car?” she yelled. “This is private property—can’t you see the signs?”
Muerte had his hand on the Glock and had picked out the spot above her right eyebrow where the bullet would enter her brain. Contrary to what most believed, he did not enjoy killing. It was a necessary part of his profession, like a garbage collector dealing with smelly plastic bags each day. But for a person like this, he felt an almost-irresistible urge to inflict pain along with the kill shot.
As he judged the many witnesses behind him and the screaming siren that was approaching, he simply smiled and nodded. “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he said in his best American voice. “It’s my first time to the market. I’ll move right away.”
“I’ve told you people you can’t park here! I called the tow truck and he’s coming.”
When she said you people, he could tell she wasn’t lumping him in with all the vendors. He had a knife in his boot and if he knelt before her, he could perhaps bring it into her chest and leave her in the dirt without anyone noticing.
A sheriff’s cruiser screamed into the parking lot, throwing gravel and kicking up dust. Muerte smiled at the woman, stepped into his car, and pulled away.
18
J. D. PASSED THE SHERIFF’S cruiser as it screamed toward the market. He drove toward I-10, winding his way around the back roads, keeping his air-conditioning off to conserve fuel until he reached a Fry’s. He used the entire twenty Dot had given him and then cursed himself for not saving some for food. But every drop of gas counted in propelling him forward, so better to have an empty stomach than an empty tank.
With the fog in his brain he tried to focus as the numbers whizzed by. He had to do two things. Find Maria and get his money, not necessarily in that order. Wait, three things. Stay away from the police. Four, if you counted avoiding that crazy Mexican guy. He thought of the Monty Python routine about the Spanish Inquisition. But he couldn’t raise a smile.
He could go back to the gas station where he’d left her and try to track her from there, but it felt like a dead end. Had she gone to a house or apartment nearby? Had someone picked her up behind the store?
Then another thought struck him. She had given him the ring. Had she known it would lead the killer to him? He could
n’t help feeling set up, but she had kept the ring all the time they were being chased, so maybe she didn’t know.
He shoved the thought from his head and tried to recall her conversation on the phone. He wished he had listened instead of buying donuts—maybe he could’ve picked up a few more words or even a location. But he remembered something she’d said in the car about a church that helped her village. He tried to come up with the name.
He went back inside and asked the kid at the counter if he had the yellow pages. The young man looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“A phone book.” The Internet had taken over the world. There was no doubt about it.
The kid pulled a dusty phone book from under the counter and handed it to him.
Tucson Evangel Tabernacle was a tiny building a few blocks away from Miracle Mile, in a rough section of town. The main road was lined with seedy motels and bars, and the church fit right in with the rest of the neighborhood. The building looked more like a house, and parking was limited to a few spots directly in front of the worship center and along the street. Something was going on inside when J. D. pulled up, which seemed odd for a weekday.
He walked in as a man with large tattoos on his arms was speaking to about fifty people who had spread out in the sanctuary. There were four pews and the rest of the place was filled with folding chairs.
“Come on in and have a seat, brother,” the man at the front said. “Everyone is welcome.”
Everyone meant street people. Some wore biker jackets. Others had eyes so red it looked like Christmas. Some of the ladies had short skirts and looked like they might have been working overnight, but they were nodding and agreeing with everything the man in front said.
“We’re talking about spiritual warfare,” the man said. “We’re talking about the enemy of your soul who wants you to fail at life. We’re talking about someone sent here to kill, steal, and destroy. That’s what your enemy wants to do with you. But I want to introduce you to someone else named Jesus.”
There was a smattering of applause throughout the room. “Yes, Preacher! You tell it! Speak that name.”
“Jesus,” he said again. “Hay-zuus. Yeshua. The name above every name.”
Some in the audience yelled the name at the top of their lungs.
“He is King of kings and Lord of lords. Immanuel. God with us. Savior. Lord. Friend of sinners. Prince of Peace.”
With each phrase the crescendo rose from the crowd until people were standing and clapping, encouraging the man to continue. But as soon as he finished, another man took his place and opened a Bible.
“Six of the best words in the Bible come from this passage,” the man said. “Six of the most wonderful words in the English language. ‘And such were some of you.’”
“Amen, Teacher.”
“Preach it.”
“Tell us, now.”
“‘And such were some of you.’ Did you get that?”
“Tell it again, Teacher.”
“‘And such were some of you.’” The man emphasized each word and J. D. was captivated by the command he had over the small crowd.
The first speaker wandered through the sanctuary carrying a Bible heavy enough to be a ship’s anchor. He made eye contact with J. D. and smiled.
“Could I have a word with you outside?” J. D. said.
“Certainly.”
The man followed J. D. out of the room to the front porch, which served as a concrete vestibule.
“This your first time here?” the man said.
“It is.”
“What do you think?”
“Pretty impressive turnout for this time of day,” J. D. said. “But I didn’t come to get religion; I came looking for somebody.”
“What you’re really looking for is in that room. The Bible can help you change from the inside out.”
“I know about the Bible. Learned it a long time ago. But let’s just say God and I don’t see eye to eye on a few things.”
“I can understand that. Been there myself a time or two.” The man reached out a hand. “Ron Barfield. One of the pastors here. I’m the most messed-up, sobered-up, tattooed-up pastor you’ll ever see, but I love Jesus. He’s made all the difference in my life.”
J. D. shook his hand.
“Who are you looking for?”
“A Mexican woman. Just came over the border.”
“You’ve just described a lot of females in Tucson.”
“Yeah, but this one is special. Her name is Maria.” J. D. watched for any reaction from the pastor that would give him away, but he saw none. “Have you heard anything about her?”
“We have a lot of people come through the church needing help. A lot of Mexican people looking for a place to stay. And a lot of people like myself. Lost. Lonely. Meth addicts. Heroin addicts. Alcoholics. People who need God to reach down and pull them out of the sewer. What do you need?”
“I need to find this girl before the men looking for her do.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“More than you can know. She met up with some people last night over on the east side. Maybe I’m grabbing at straws to come here, but it was the only thing I could remember. She talked about a church that came down to her village in Mexico.”
“And how did you find out about us?”
“A friend of mine said you folks go down that way every now and then with food and clothes.”
The man nodded. “We do. Who is this friend of yours?”
“I met this young lady at sunup yesterday in the desert. Tried to help her. She was half-dead. More like three-quarters. I got her to the doctor and that man got killed. You may have seen it in the news.”
“I did. Terrible. The police are looking for her and you, too, I suspect.”
“I guess they want to talk to me. But I don’t know a whole lot more than they do. All I know is that girl is in danger.”
“Have you ever thought that if you can’t find her, maybe those other men can’t either? Maybe she’s safe.” He said it with a knowing look, like he was trying to communicate with more than just words.
“I hope that’s true. But I have information for her. Something I found out that she doesn’t know. And my guess is she’ll want to.”
“Well, I haven’t talked with your Maria.”
“Maybe somebody else in the church has. Could you ask around?”
“I can check, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. People who go underground usually stay there.” The man looked hard at him. “I have a sense about people, an inner compass that tells me when somebody needs help, and my sense is that you’re in as much need as Maria.”
J. D. took off his hat and wiped his brow. “I’ll admit I’m hungry and just about dead tired.”
“We can help you. Is there anything else?”
The man’s care and concern didn’t surprise him. He’d had people touch his life. His mother was both the wordsmith and caretaker of the family. He had inherited her love of words and how they shaped a life. How many times in his teenage years had he been low and unsure and she had picked him up with a touch and a kind word? And there had been a teacher, early on, who seemed to free his heart to touch something bigger than the little town they called home. But to have a stranger look at him like this choked him up. Those rheumy brown eyes with dark pinpoints seemed to bore a hole through him. It was like this broken man could see through all of his calloused pain to the hurt that festered and burned and had nearly eaten him alive.
If he began talking right then, he knew the dam would burst and it would all come pouring out and he would be no good for a day or a week or maybe the rest of his life. So he held back, kept the water tight inside.
“I just need some rest and something to eat.”
Ron nodded. “Do you want to bring anything in from your truck? This is not the best neighborhood.”
“No, I’ll take my chances.”
The bread was just north of moldy and the coffee tepid, bu
t the chicken and beans and salad filled him and he felt like he could live again. He learned that the church received several tons of food each day, which they distributed to ministries throughout southern Arizona and into New Mexico and then south of the border. Some of it was hard as granite, like the cupcakes and fruit pies, but most of it was edible. The effort fed the homeless and some battered women and children who had nowhere else to go, many of whom were on the street in the heat all day.
They served him food on a Styrofoam plate, and the plastic fork he used broke when he stuck it into a sliced carrot. The evening meal wasn’t until six, but the pastor had them serve J. D. early. Then another man who knew very little English showed him to a cot in an office at the back of the building. He fell asleep as soon as he hit the pillow and descended into a black hole of questions and finally nothingness.
She came to him again through smoke and clouds, parting cobwebs before her in the attic of her youth. She was his first sweetheart and this place was where they had first kissed. They were flanked by a gathering of furniture and trunks from another country. A musty smell of old leather and cast-off clothing discarded like bad memories. Dust-covered magazines stacked in corners, marked with tracks of spiders and mice and covered again by time and the settling of a century. Wallpaper curled.
She sat before a sheet-covered couch, crisscross applesauce, wearing a skirt and long socks and penny loafers. A floral print. Grass stains from a game of tag in the field during recess. They had both made childhood promises they would never be able to keep.
She tucked her hair behind one ear like a schoolgirl ready to read her first poem, and he remembered. Her reading a speech by someone. Martin Luther King Jr.? “I Have a Dream”? It was the content of his first song, written in childhood—red hills of Georgia and free at last. Eternal themes repeated by children but not fully understood.
She let the left side of her hair hang straight like a veil, a curtain that couldn’t be parted though he tried to reach it. He saw only profile, but her profile was beauty squared, and even in the muted light of memory, she made his heart ache with longing. Given all the words and music in the world, all the languages, all the notes on the scale, all the instruments ever conceived, he could never capture her. Never hope to.
