The unmarked car flashed through Maria in the span of two heartbeats. Estelle leaned forward, eyes straining to see beyond the walls of the light tunnel through which her car flashed. The highway swept up through a series of graceful chicanes, cutting through the first limestone hint of the San Cristóbals and then, after crossing a rumpled section of prairie cut by a dozen small arroyos, shot straight east. As her car crested a rise, she could see the running lights of the big rig’s trailer along the south side of the highway.
Estelle slowed, planting the car dead-center on the dotted line. As she approached, she saw a single figure silhouetted by the rig’s headlights. He stepped out and walked the length of the truck to meet her as she pulled in behind it.
“He’s right over there by the fence,” he said. The trucker looked too small for his rig-almost frail in build with the light breeze plastering his T-shirt against washboard ribs as he shrugged into a down jacket. The bulk of the truck’s trailer blocked Estelle’s view, and she pulled the car in reverse until the spotlight beam blanketed the shapeless lump by the highway right-of-way fence off to the right. “I seen him, and hit the brakes,” the man said. “Then I backed up here on the shoulder so I could keep him in my lights.”
“Okay,” Estelle said, and picked up the mike. “PCS, three ten is ten-ninety-seven.”
“Ten-four, three ten.”
“Three ten,” Deputy Taber’s voice announced, “three oh nine copies. ETA about ten minutes.”
Estelle clicked the mike twice, collected her flashlight, and swung out of the car. The trucker turned slightly sideways as she approached, stepping back toward his rig.
“I’m Undersheriff Guzman,” Estelle said. “What’s your name, sir?”
He fell in step beside her as she walked the length of the truck. “Noel Jones,” he said. “I’m out of Emmetsburg, Texas.”
They rounded the cab of the big truck. Its engine idled gently, a deep, guttural pulse.
“Would you shut down your truck, sir? It’s difficult to hear over it.”
“I guess I can do that.”
“Thank you. And then I’d appreciate it if you’d remain here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Estelle waited a moment as the man climbed back inside the unit. In a moment, the engine died. “Ya’all want me to leave the lights on for a minute?”
“Yes.”
The man added something about his batteries, but Estelle was no longer listening to him. She walked along the shoulder of the road, flashlight illuminating the ground. The light from her patrol car’s spotlight forced harsh shadows behind each clump of grass. At a spot directly opposite the lump of rags, she turned toward the fence. The four strands of barbed wire were tight, rigidly braced every eight feet with vertical stays. The fence was strung tightly enough that a man could clamber over it while the wires supported his weight.
As Estelle drew near, she saw a hand lift ever so slightly, the arm thrust under the fence but caught on the bottom wire. The man, barefoot but wearing a denim work shirt and blue jeans, was lying on his back. His eyes were closed, mere slits in a face puffed and swollen nearly round.
“We’re here,” Estelle said as she knelt down beside Eurelio Saenz. “Don’t move anymore.” She could see that the wire had torn the young man’s arm in a dozen places, and then, moving the flashlight quickly to assess his injuries, saw that he was a mass of blood, flecked from head to toe. The front of his shirt was torn and blood-soaked. A groan of agony escaped his lips and his head jerked to the right. She saw that the gold ear stud in his left ear had ripped free. His hair, no longer shiny and well-oiled, was encrusted with the desert across which he’d crawled.
Taking his hand, she pulled the wire barbs out of his forearm to release him from the fence, and each touch brought another moan. He tried to flex one leg at the knee, but even that motion was impossible. The light caught the back of his hand, and Estelle saw the long cactus barbs embedded in his skin. She moved the beam and felt a swell of nausea as she saw that the young man’s entire body appeared to be an enormous welter of cactus spines, as if he’d rolled through a patch, unable to stop until every inch of his skin had been stabbed and pinned.
“Oh my God,” he managed through swollen lips, and one leg kicked feebly.
“Just lie still,” Estelle said. “We’ll get you out of here.” She pulled the handheld radio off her belt. “PCS, three ten. We have one subject down, unknown multiple injuries. Expedite that ambulance.”
“Ten-four, three ten.”
Estelle turned and looked back toward the rig. “Sir! I need you over here.”
He approached none too eagerly, stopping a dozen feet away.
“I need to get fencing pliers to cut these wires. Stay with him for a minute.” The man hesitated. “Just for a minute. Talk to him. Tell him who you are.” Before the man had a chance to protest, Estelle sprinted past him. At the county car, she scrabbled for the electric trunk release. In the trunk’s cavernous interior, she found the canvas roll, flipped it open and pulled out the heavy fencing pliers.
With that and the large first-aid kit, she raced back. The trucker was bent over, hands on his knees. He straightened back up immediately and stepped away. “Here,” Estelle said, forcing the fencing pliers at him. “You can do this ten times faster than I can. I need all four wires cut. Right at the post here. Then roll the strands way back out of the way.”
“Highway department ain’t going to like that,” Jones said. He bent down, and Estelle put her arms over the injured man’s face and turned her own head away, grimacing with closed eyes in anticipation as Jones clamped the pliers around the wire. The strand parted with a musical twang, curling back to the first vertical stay. One by one, Jones worked his way up the post until all four wires snaked back in a snarled jumble.
With the wires gone, she could crouch directly beside the victim.
“You’re going to be all right, Eurelio,” she said. The flashlight beam caught the stubble on his face. The cactus spines looked like large, coarse chin whiskers.
She bent down until she was just inches from his ear. “Who did this to you, Eurelio?” But all she got was a whimper in response.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Eurelio Saenz breathed as if each tiny motion drove a pitchfork through his body. The continuous, feeble flexing of his limbs just made matters worse. He could not squirm away from the assault. After a moment, it seemed as if he was responding to Estelle’s voice even though he didn’t open his eyes. His hands stopped their aimless spasms and he lay still.
“Somebody hit him with a car, or what?” Noel Jones asked. He kept his distance, hands balled into tight fists.
Estelle didn’t reply. Keeping the light out of Eurelio’s face, she played the flashlight down the length of his body. His clothing was studded with cactus spines, but even the thousand barbs didn’t explain the mass of blood that soaked his shirt front around a long, ragged hole. The barbs pegged the shirt to his skin as if he’d been transformed into living Velcro. When Estelle touched the fabric of the shirt, she felt his body tense.
“No, no,” he whispered, and she could hear the panic in his voice. One eyelid flickered.
She turned to the first-aid kit and found surgical scissors. “Mr. Jones!” she called. “Come here.” She heard his tentative advance behind her. “Hold the flashlight so I can see.” He gingerly took the big aluminum light. “Closer, please.” He took a step forward and aimed the light as if it were a fire hose, holding it with both hands at arm’s length. Estelle could see that the jagged rip across the left breast of Eurelio’s shirt was more than just a gash from a barbed wire prong. Blood welled up, and she took her hands away. “It’s going to be all right, Eurelio,” she murmured, knowing that it obviously wasn’t going to be all right. She wanted to at least pad the gaping wound until the EMTs arrived, but there was no way to press a gauze pad over the field of heavy cactus spines without driving them farther into his flesh. There was no spurting of arterial blood,
no deadly sucking sound of a hole punched through into the lung, and she hesitated to inflict any more damage. She sat back on her haunches.
“Christ,” Jones said. “He took himself a header somewheres.”
In the distance, they heard the wail of a siren. “Just hang in there,” she said. She spread the pad out like a handkerchief and let it drift over the wound with just its own weight.
“Keep the light out of his face,” she said, and Jones twitched the light back, grunting an apology. Crouched by the young man’s side, Estelle waited with her back to the spotlight. Jackie Taber’s unit arrived in the lead, with the ambulance less than a hundred yards behind.
Taber parked ahead of the truck, swinging wide to the left and then turning tightly so that she could catch the area in both headlights and spot. The ambulance stopped on the highway shoulder, and the first EMT out of the ambulance was a young girl who looked to be not much more than a teenager. Estelle stood up to meet them.
Reaching out a hand to take the young woman by the upper arm, Estelle bent close, her voice no more than a whisper. “Somebody’s beaten him with cactus,” she said. “There’s another injury there, too, but I can’t tell what it is yet.”
“Oh my,” the EMT said, and hesitated, turning to her partner.
“Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said. They knelt by the victim’s side for a few minutes. Estelle bent forward until she could read Sam Ortiz’s name tag.
“I don’t think this is a sucking wound,” Estelle said. She removed the light covering and the EMT, a heavyset man with a cleanly shaven bullet head, moved in close.
“Nah,” he said as if he saw people rolled in cactus spines on an hourly basis. “No sign of anything broken?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to touch him. But I don’t think so. Everything is straight and points where it’s supposed to point.”
“Let’s find an open spot and get an IV started.” He examined Eurelio’s left arm, fingers poised. “Well, shit,” he said. “Young fella, you sure got into it, didn’t you.” He bent back and fast-drew scissors out of his belt holster. With deft motions he cut through the shirt sleeve. “No, no, you can’t pull it off,” he said as his partner started to pull the severed sleeve away. A little high-pitched yelp emerged from Eurelio. “Just leave it.”
He glanced up at Jackie Taber. “You might get the gurney,” he said, and Taber nodded. “He ain’t going to want to be rolled over,” Ortiz added, and Eurelio moaned again, stabbed a hundred times just by the thought. “That’s all right, now,” the EMT soothed. He motioned to Jackie as she approached. “We’re enough hands here that we can just levitate him on board,” he said, holding his hands out flat. “Sheriff, you at his head. Jackie, you and me at his shoulders. Emma,” and he stopped, looking around. “There’s another one around, ain’t there?”
Noel Jones had faded back toward his truck, hand at his mouth.
“Sir, we’re going to need your assistance,” the EMT shouted at the trucker.
“His name’s Jones,” Estelle said.
“Mr. Jones, you and Emma are going to be at his hips. One hand on his hip, one hand right at his knees. She’ll show you how. Think you can do that?”
Jones took a deep breath and shrugged. His face was flat white, and despite the cool night air of late February, Estelle could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead in the glare of the lights.
When Sam Ortiz was satisfied with all five sets of hands spaced to his satisfaction, he turned to nod at Estelle. “We want that head to stay real still, sheriff. Don’t know what’s going on inside, you know, or what that neck of his looks like. But he’s studded enough that if I strap on a cervical collar, I’m just as apt to drive barbs right into all the wrong places.” He shot a quick look at the other EMT and Noel Jones. “Now everybody just kind of work your hands in until you’ve got support.”
He nodded, and almost immediately shook his head, making a sharp sucking noise against his teeth. “Easier said than done.” Eurelio jerked once and then was quiet. “All right, he’s passed out, so let’s get it over with,” Ortiz said. “On three.” And on three, they lifted Eurelio Saenz out of the sand and transferred him to the waiting gurney.
“No straps,” Ortiz said when his partner started to stretch one of them out. He shook his head. “Kind of like handling a porcupine,” he said, and actually managed a smile at Estelle. “How’d this happen, you know?”
“No idea,” Estelle said, although she could clearly picture exactly what had happened. “We’ll meet you at the hospital.” She turned to the trucker. His face was puckered up in a grimace, and he was digging at the palm of his hand in the glare of the ambulance headlights. “You all right, sir?”
“I got a spine in my hand,” he said. “Jesus.” He straightened up, sucking on his hand. “Got it, I think.”
“Do you want one of the EMTs to take a look at it?”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “That’s not necessary. I got it.”
Estelle extended her hand. Jones’ grip was perfunctory. “Thank you, sir. We appreciate your help,” she said.
“Need me for anything more?”
“No, sir. Let me jot down a couple things, and then you’re free to go.”
“I’ve got it, sheriff,” Deputy Taber said. Her notebook was already in hand.
Estelle waited by her car, fingers drumming on the roof, until the ambulance had left and the big rig had pulled away, a cloud of dense, sweet exhaust hanging on the air. In a moment, the stout figure of Jackie Taber joined her.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Jackie said.
“Azote del espinos,” Estelle said.
“A what of thorns?”
“Azote. A whip of thorns,” Estelle replied. “My Uncle Reuben once told me about something similar happening light-years ago, when he was a teenager. He remembered hearing about some guy being surprised in the act by a jealous husband. Instead of shooting him, the husband chased the man down, caught him, and then while some of his compadres held the guy, the husband went and cut off a cholla cactus plant at the ground.” She made chopping motions with her hand. “He took his time, trimming off the spines at the base with a couple neat swipes of the machete so he’d have a clean handle, then whacked the cactus off at the ground.” She held the imaginary cactus plant in her hand. “A cholla has all those neat limbs and prongs on it. Makes an efficient whip.”
“Oh, you’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. I wish I was. You talk to any of the old-timers, and they’ve probably heard the story.”
“So somebody beat Eurelio with a cactus? That’s what you think happened?”
Estelle nodded. “And then my guess is that they shot him for good measure.” She stood with her hands on her hips, looking south. “I don’t think he was pitched out of a vehicle from this highway. Most of his body was on the other side of the right-of-way fence. It looked like he’d been trying to crawl through somehow. Maybe under it. He got caught up in the wire. That’s when the trucker happened by and found him.”
She returned through the welter of boot tracks to the point where Eurelio had been found, and then played her flashlight on the sandy gravel. The scuffed, blood-flecked trail through the stunted desert growth was clearly visible. “What do you want to bet,” Estelle said, and stepped carefully across the fence line.
“From the border, you think?”
“Sure. The border fence is about a hundred yards away at this point. That little hillock there makes it impossible to see it from the highway where we’re parked. If there’s a border fence there at all, it’s just going to be a few strands of barbed wire.”
Jackie snapped on her flashlight, and the two made their way carefully through the spotty vegetation. Only once did they lose the trail where Eurelio had been forced to work his way around a dense clump of greasewood. “I can’t imagine this,” Jackie said.
“That’s the whole point,” Estelle said grimly. A splotch of blood drew th
em back to the trail. “The misery of being flogged is only the beginning if you survive. Then you have to have all the spines removed. And each one has that nasty little barb on the end. And the spines are big enough, large enough in diameter, that they’re lethal-not just little nuisances like those you might get off a Christmas cactus or something. And about ninety-five percent of the time, the wound becomes infected.”
“Why didn’t they just kill him and get it over with?”
“Well, they probably did, in the end,” Estelle said. “Maybe the gunshot-if that’s what it was-was a touch of mercy shining through. Put him out of his misery.”
“That didn’t work, then.”
“No, it didn’t. At least not yet.”
They followed the trail as it wended its way south. Eventually, as they skirted the rise, they saw the narrow dirt path that was the border road. It paralleled a ramshackle fence, the steel posts bent and rusted. At one point, a single strand of wire drooped between two posts, the others snarled and rusted on the ground.
Estelle stepped to the nearest post, standing right at its base. She carefully played the flashlight on the ground, trying to imagine how the myriad of scuffs and digs in the desert had been made, splotched in several places with fresh blood. “There’s no doubt he came through the fence right here, then.”
“No doubt at all.” Jackie played her light south. “But where from here, that’s the question.” She stepped over the wire and stood several paces firmly in Mexico, then turned and looked at Estelle. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think that I want to let them go. I think I really want to arrest somebody.”
“I hear that,” Jackie Taber murmured.
Estelle took a deep breath. She knew that her friendship with Capt. Tomás Naranjo was built on a foundation that included Naranjo’s respect for her family’s padrino, Bill Gastner, thirty years undersheriff and then briefly sheriff of Posadas County. Estelle had met Naranjo a dozen times over the years in job-related encounters. She knew that the Mexican officer’s good-natured, flirtatious hints earlier in the day had been just that. He had no authority to simply throw open the Mexican border to American law enforcement officers…and probably wouldn’t, even if the authority were his to do so. Estelle knew that for her and her deputy to chase off into the Mexican desert, armed and official, was to invite a long vacation in a Mexican prison.
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