Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Instead, he retrieved his phone and turned it on. By the time it powered up, it had started ringing. The display told him that the caller was Gina Castaneda. He pressed the button to answer. “Gina?”

  “Buck, thank God. I’m sorry to call so late; I hope I’m not waking you or anything.”

  “No. What’s going on?”

  “I’m probably on your shit list, huh? I really did want to do a bigger story on your missing girl, but my producer wouldn’t let me. He thinks the Lippincott girl is what everyone’s interested in.”

  “What I figured.” He didn’t want to be short with her, but at the moment he had other things on his mind.

  “The reason I’m bothering you now, Buck, I’m trying to confirm a rumor we’re hearing. I’ll tell you up front, Sheriff Gatlin’s office won’t comment yet. I don’t need you to go on the record, just to let me know if it’s worth trying to chase this down.”

  “I’ve been busy with my own case, Gina. Haven’t really heard much about the Lippincott one, but I’ll help if I can. What’s your rumor?”

  “That Vic Lippincott really did leave a note,” Gina said. “Or if not a note, then financial records—I’ve heard it both ways. Either way, what it amounts to is that Lippincott was laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel through his bank. I guess the implication is that something went haywire and Elayne got snatched as a result. All this time he must have been trying to negotiate some kind of deal, but I’m guessing it didn’t go. Maybe they showed him what happened to her, I don’t know. But he killed himself rather than face what he’d done.”

  Buck gave a low whistle. “I haven’t heard any of that, Gina. Like I said, I’ve had quite a night going myself.” He ran through the night in his head, trying to see if he could tell her anything. He couldn’t, though; except for losing one of his best officers and having to squeeze buckshot out of his own face on the ride down the valley, he was pretty much back where he’d started.

  “I’ve got it from two sources, but like I said, nothing official. I also have a source inside the bank who confirms that there’s something funky about some of their records. Word is the FBI is coming in to go through it all. I don’t have to tell you what it would mean for a local news organization to beat out the big networks on this, Buck.”

  “Makes sense,” Buck said. “I wish I could help you, Gina, but—”

  His phone made a double beep, telling him another call was coming in. “I should take this, Gina. I get anything solid, I’ll let you know.” He disconnected and answered the other call. “Buck Shelton.”

  “Lieutenant, thank God I finally got you. It’s Jeannie Bowles.”

  “My phone’s been off, Jeannie. What can I do for you?”

  “We have Lulu,” she said.

  He thought he’d heard correctly, but needed to make sure. A flash of lightning illuminated Scoot’s anxious face, gaze fixed on the road ahead. “Say that again?”

  “Lulu escaped and came to our house,” Jeannie said. “She’s fine. Physically, I mean.”

  “She’s there now?”

  “No, we’re on our way down to the border. It’s complicated.”

  Complicated? Sounded damn near impossible to Buck. “You can’t do that,” he said. “She’s got to get medical attention. I’ve got to—Can I talk to her?”

  “Sure, hang—”

  Buck heard Oliver say something, then the man’s voice came over the phone. “Buck, it’s Oliver. I’m glad you’re back in contact. This whole thing has gotten just a little strange.”

  “A little? Your wife tells me you’re taking Lulu to Mexico.”

  “Not to Mexico, just to the border.”

  “The Port of Entry in Douglas?”

  “No,” Oliver said. “East of town.”

  Buck wished that Star Trek’s transporter was reality so he could teleport through the phone and throttle somebody. “Mind telling me why?”

  “Lulu insists. It’s all part of what I’m talking about, part of the strangeness. I don’t think trying to explain over the phone is going to work. Can you meet us down there?”

  “If you think you’re taking Lulu Lavender anywhere near the border without me crawling up your ass, you’re powerfully mistaken, Oliver.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Buck.”

  “Meantime, unless you’re worried about roaming minutes or something, why don’t you try explaining anyway?”

  He heard a loud sigh. “I assume you’re sitting down?”

  “I’ll be on my ass until you see me walking toward you,” Buck said. “So start talking.”

  8

  Instead of going to the border crossing, Gabriel piloted the Toyota truck out of town, heading east. The turns seemed to be plotted in his head, like a map that hovered just in front of the windshield. The streets were dark out here, black with water that ran across them in sheets. Although the rain had let up, he kept the wipers going to bat away the spray that blew up onto the glass.

  For the first couple of minutes he thought he had left Ignacio—or whichever of Arturo’s soldiers drove a dark blue Lexus SUV—far behind. But as he skidded around corners and gunned down the straightaways, he caught sight of headlights behind them. Sometimes they fell back, but then they charged on. After a couple of fast turns they were still there, and he knew it was no coincidence.

  “They’re chasing us,” he said.

  “Who is?” Rafael asked.

  Clemente woke mid-snore, gave a snort and coughed wetly. “What?”

  “Some people who work for the man I used to work for.” He wrenched the wheel to the left, swerving around a mangy dog that had stepped suddenly into the street and spraying a plume of muddy water onto a steel fence. “He’s pissed at me.”

  “What will he do?”

  “To me? I don’t want to know. It won’t be pleasant, and it’ll end up with vultures picking my bones clean out in the desert somewhere. He doesn’t know you two, so you might get away with a clean shot to the back of the head.”

  Rafael swore softly while Clemente said something Gabriel couldn’t understand, probably in whatever Indian tongue was his native language. Gabriel knew the only thing keeping him alive was the statue in back, showing him the turns he had to take before they came up. If he’d had to try to find his own way out of the city, he would certainly have run into a dead end by now, or turned into traffic, or had his way blocked by a truck or slow-moving tractor or cart. Instead, each road he came to was open before him, with small exceptions like the dog he had so narrowly missed.

  They had left downtown A.P. behind and passed through a suburban neighborhood. Large, luxurious homes stood cheek by jowl with tiny ones, and on one large lot a half-finished mansion stood like a corpse with half its skin flayed off. Mexico’s economy was fucked, Gabriel believed, and as long as the cartels ruled the courts and the police and huge swaths of the government, as long as a tiny percentage owned most of the nation’s wealth and hid from their own countrymen inside walled compounds, it would likely remain that way. He had just hoped to get a piece of it while he could, and then he’d given up that dream for a new one in which transporting a statue could somehow help all his people.

  Those headlights rose up behind again, the Lexus’s better tires and four-wheel drive finding purchase that the old Toyota couldn’t on the wet road. He tried to squeeze more speed out of it, stomping on the accelerator, lifting his butt from the seat and leaning forward as if riding a balky mule. Gabriel thought he heard a shot, but it might have been thunder; the muzzle flash in his mirror could have been distant lightning.

  Then another, unmistakable because a bullet slammed into the truck. Probably hit the tailgate, Gabriel thought, but he couldn’t be sure. He heard the impact, felt it like ice on an exposed dental nerve.

  “They shot at us!” Rafael said. Gabriel believed the stupid grin had finally vanished from his face, but in the dark it was hard to tell.

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. He clenched his teeth and
twisted the wheel sharply left, launching the truck into another skid-sliding turn. Unrolling the window, he fished the nine-mil from his shoulder holster. To aim at the Lexus, he had to hold the gun across his chest and out the window, since the statue in back would block any shots through the rear window. He got off one shot, but then the truck lurched over an uneven spot in the road and the gun flew from his hand. He swore and rolled the window back up.

  The map that he saw in his mind’s eye changed, confusing him for a moment. He had thought he’d stay on this road, twisty as it was, until he was past the residential neighborhood. Instead, the map directed him to do the impossible: to drive through a ramshackle trailer/shed combination. “Crazy,” he said.

  “What?” Clemente asked.

  “This.” Gabriel had no interest in arguing with the lady in back of the truck. If she wanted to smash into someone’s home, that was her privilege. He waited, holding his breath, until the time came. Another shot sounded, this one missing. Finally, he made another hard left, leaving the road, lurching over a yard of broken concrete and loose gravel.

  “Aieee!” Clemente shouted, grabbing at Gabriel’s arm. Gabriel shook the man’s grip loose—the last thing he needed just now was the fool pulling him off course. He corrected slightly. The trailer, once white with a brown slash across it, but now sun-faded, weathered and dirty, rose up immediately ahead of them. Then his lights picked up what the map in his head hadn’t shown clearly—a gap between the trailer and the wooden shed, maybe six feet wide. A single board slanted from the shed to the trailer, connecting the two. Another minute correction. He could thread the needle, but he couldn’t miss the board. At seventy, he plowed through it, splintering wood against the top of his windshield. Then he rocketed through the gap and out the other side, onto another muddy road. The map told him to turn right, and he did.

  Behind them, the shed—apparently held up by the board linking it to the trailer—collapsed into the gap, just as the Lexus tried to fit through. The driver of the Lexus must have instinctively twitched his wheel to the right, because Gabriel heard an impact and actually saw the trailer shudder on its blocks when the SUV hit it.

  Gabriel heaved a great sigh. His internal map showed the border not too far away now, and with Arturo’s soldiers out of action there shouldn’t be anything preventing him from making it there.

  Then he glanced up and saw the two full-sized pickup trucks barreling his way.

  9

  “Stop!”

  Oliver punched down on the brake pedal, and the Outback came to a skidding halt. Lulu had called out in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Through clouds that had thinned and parted in spots, an edge of moon shone onto a rugged, boulder-strewn landscape of spiky yucca plants, tangled mesquites, shorter shrubs and grass. Geronimo Trail was dirt—mud now—and barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other without scraping sides. Oliver hoped the car didn’t sink into the muck while they were stopped here.

  “Where are we, Lulu?” Jeannie asked.

  “I have no idea. All I know is this is where she wants me to be. Or as close as we can get on the road, anyway.”

  “So what?” Oliver asked. “We get out and walk?”

  Lulu opened her door. The dome light came on, and in its glow he could see that she no longer looked afraid, or sad, or lost, all of which she had when he found her in his house. Instead, her gaze was steady, her forehead wrinkled in the middle above her nose, and she worried at her lower lip with her teeth. Her long hair had been tied back in a ponytail that had flopped onto her left shoulder. He found the expression familiar, and realized that it was the one she wore in class when she felt particularly sure of an answer or easily whipped though an exam. Confidence, determination, drive—these played across her face, replacing those other, less helpful emotions. “I’m walking,” she said. “You guys don’t have to come.”

  “Of course I’m coming,” Oliver said quickly, unwilling to let her out of his sight now that she had come home. “You can stay with the car, Jeannie, to tell Buck which way we went when he gets here.”

  He and Jeannie had been together long enough that when she gave him her sidelong you-must-be-kidding look, he didn’t have to ask for translation. “Tell him yourself,” she said. “Leave a pile of rocks or carve notches in the trees or something. Just don’t imagine you’re leaving me alone in this car out here, because if you do, honey, you’re only fooling yourself.”

  There remained, Oliver knew, a killer on the loose, who presumably wanted to find Lulu again. Oliver didn’t think they had been followed—and if the killer had known she was at the Bowles house, he would probably have made his move before they took off.

  Unless, he thought as a tickle ran up the back of his neck, whatever it is that Lulu thinks is drawing her here is what he’s really interested in.

  Lulu perched on the edge of the seat, her legs hanging out, anxious to go. Moths, drawn by the dome light, flitted excitedly around the ceiling. “If we’re going, we should go,” Oliver said.

  Lulu didn’t hesitate another second. She jumped into the mud and slammed her door. Jeannie’s gaze caught Oliver’s for a moment, but this time he couldn’t begin to read it. When she turned away, he felt rebuked, as if there were something he should have said or done but failed to. Then they were both out of the car, and he slipped across the road and into the desert on the other side, following the women.

  Lulu seemed to know where she was going, although she didn’t explain how. She struck off cross-country, then found a wide, sandy wash with three-foot banks, leading vaguely southeast, and took that. A trickle of water ran along the wash’s bottom. Oliver knew there was a risk that the trickle could become, with very little notice, a torrential flash flood. As long as the banks were low, they could scramble out when it came, but if the wash led into the rocks or cut deeper into the earth, he would have to recommend that they hike alongside it, just in case. Plenty of potential existed for a bad outcome to this night’s adventure—he didn’t want to add the avoidable drowning in a flash flood to the list.

  Without the rain, the night seemed quiet. The wind rasped through branches and leaves, and he heard the occasional flutter of a bird, startled by their approach, even thunder crackling off to the north and east. But in the car in the rain for so long he had become accustomed to the steady percussion, and without it the air felt still even though it patently was not.

  “Where are we going?” he asked after they had walked for a while.

  “I don’t know,” Lulu said. “I’m just going where she says. And before you say I’m nuts, I know it sounds crazy. I can’t explain how I know what she wants. I just do.”

  “Well, we’re following you,” Oliver pointed out. “So even if we were inclined to cast aspersions on your mental health, we wouldn’t have much ground to stand on.”

  “And what ground there is is soaking through my Reeboks,” Jeannie said. At least she wore jeans and sneakers, Oliver thought. He hadn’t changed since his trip, and still had on dress slacks and shirt, his navy blazer and three-hundred-dollar leather Mephisto shoes, all of which were being torn by thorns and caked in mud.

  He thought it best not to mention his sartorial distress. Instead he said, “We must be getting close to the border.”

  “Seems like it,” Jeannie agreed.

  A steep hill loomed in the west, blocking the moon-marbled sky in that direction. Farther south Oliver could see the shadowed outlines of others, but the wash led into a broad valley that sloped gently south, with the larger hills only at its edges. He guessed he was looking straight into Mexico—the far mountains were definitely over the line, and the one to his left probably straddled it. Here, the water had mostly soaked in or run off; hard, pebbled earth crunched under his shoes.

  Ahead, Lulu stopped. She stood tense, poised, as if listening to something. Voices in her head, Oliver thought. But after a few seconds he heard it too—the growl of motors, coming toward them. Coming fast. And something else, that
at this distance sounded almost like coughs. Is that gunfire?

  “We’d better get down!” he said. He pushed past Jeannie, grabbed Lulu’s arm. “Lulu! Let’s take cover until we know what’s going on here!”

  “But…”

  He dragged her back to Jeannie, then took her arm as well. “Behind that mesquite,” he said, pointing with his chin. “Let’s just hunker down there and see what’s what.”

  They went along with him, and the three of them took cover behind the spreading, twisted branches of a big, old mesquite. Anyone who trained a light right on it would see them, but he hoped it would provide sufficient cover otherwise.

  They huddled there while the engine sounds grew louder, sometimes whisked away by gusts of wind blowing from the east, clacking the branches and swishing the grass, but when the gusts died the noise returned, more distinct than before. In another few minutes, three sets of headlights hove into view. Oliver didn’t think they were on a road; the beams lanced up into the sky, then down, right and then left, like the skis of an acrobatic skier twisting and turning in midair. The first set was a good distance ahead of the two others. Bright flashes of light came from the rear vehicles, accompanied by more of those coughing sounds.

  “Someone’s being chased,” Jeannie said.

  “By somebody with guns,” Oliver said. “This is not good at all. Are you sure this is where you’re supposed to be, Lulu? Those could be drug smugglers, being chased by the federales or something.”

  “I thought the federales worked for the smugglers,” Lulu replied. “More likely the local police being chased by federales. Or coyotes being chased by all of them.”

  “Either way, they’ve got guns and they’re using them. I think we should get out of here while we can.”

  “You guys go,” Lulu said. “I have to stay here.”

  “We don’t go anywhere without you,” Oliver said. “So just put that out of your head right now.”

  He felt Jeannie’s gaze on him but still couldn’t read it. Was she surprised at him? Angry? Impressed? It could have been any of those, or all at once. He kept his own eyes locked on Lulu, trying to discern if she was thinking this through clearly. If she was in shock, hallucinating, he wanted to know it now while they could still hope to get away.