When debris had stopped raining down, Buck forced himself to his feet and walked up to where the others had stopped. The sun was out in full force, the only clouds a few wispy high ones that wouldn’t hold enough water to release it. Buck looked back once at the torn fence with the two trucks on the other side of it. Near where the truck had broken through, a black plastic garbage bag fluttered on the wire as if a barb had snagged a migrant’s shadow when he crossed over.
“You suppose we’ll ever know who the guys in those other trucks were?” he asked when he reached the group.
“Looked like drug dealers to me,” Scoot said. He had walked up and looked them over, peering about anxiously as he did, in case Mexican authorities came out of the bushes. “Fancy clothes, expensive jewelry, those nice four-by-four trucks. They had Mac-10s, what they killed them other Mexicans with.”
“The ones who drove the statue up,” Oliver said, “I wonder who they were.”
“We’ll try to identify them,” Buck promised. He had moved the bodies away before blowing up their Toyota pickup. Other men and a couple of women in camo gear had shown up a while ago and identified Carl Greenwell, Connie McKay and Marc Craig, whose body had been found on the hillside. No one seemed to know the last name of the guy Buck had obliterated, Barry something. They said they were from the American Pride Ranch, which Buck recognized as one of the border watch groups Nellie had mentioned, and that Carl was the leader of their group and owner of the ranch. They were solemn, and when Buck said the bodies would be released as soon as the investigation was finished, they agreed and went on their way. He figured they had broken all kinds of laws, running military-style maneuvers on the border with their automatic weapons, but he had enough on his plate at the moment without worrying about them.
Lulu’s nose was red from crying, her eyes puffy, and some vomit still flecked her lips from throwing up after Carl had been killed and she was released from whatever trance she’d been under. “I…I can’t help feeling like this is my fault,” she said. “All these people—”
“It’s not,” Jeannie interrupted. She took Lulu in her arms again. “Maybe it all centered on you in some way—that statue did look an awful lot like you. But that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, or you could have done anything to stop what happened. You’re the victim here, baby, not the cause.”
“Jeannie’s right,” Oliver said. Jeannie released Lulu and took his hand, holding it in both of hers. The love they shared was palpable, Buck thought, envious. “You’ve been through a horrible ordeal, Lulu. We’ll do whatever we can to help you get past it. And to start with, we’re not going to let you blame yourself.”
She blinked away tears and smiled at them, showing her teeth, then turned and beamed it at Buck as well. He felt bathed in a warm light. Something special about that girl, he thought. Can’t deny that.
Like Oliver said, she’ll have a lot to get over. The murder of her family, her own kidnapping, everything she witnessed this morning.
He had a hunch she would be fine.
Rest of us’ll have nightmares for a long time to come, but she’ll get through it okay. Resilience of youth, and all that.
He glanced at Oliver and Jeannie again, leaning into each other, supporting each other. They’d never been through anything like this, but they’d be okay too, he believed, as long as they had that bond.
“Thanks,” Lulu said, aiming that smile all around. “Thanks to all of you. I…I don’t know…Ah, damn, I’m gonna cry again. Shut up.”
Buck stifled a yawn. He wanted to sleep, wanted to lie down beside Tammy and feel her comforting, yielding flesh, like he had in the old days. But God, the paperwork that waited for him back at his office. Raul. All this.
For once, he was glad the press had the Lippincotts to obsess over. Sirens neared, and Ed Gatlin would have to hear about what had happened here—some of it, not counting the parts that Buck couldn’t begin to explain in any way that wouldn’t wind up with him on some psychiatrist’s couch for the next three years. With any luck, the media, and the rest of the world, never would hear about it either.
Buck sure as hell wouldn’t be telling Gina Castaneda about it.
15
Before they leave the scene, Lulu stops, turns, taking one last look behind. The flames have died down, and amid the twisted, blackened steel she thinks she can make out the bed of the truck, or something like it, hard anyway, and ridged.
That’s the truck bed, she believes, that carried the white girl to her, across space and time, up the underside of the continent, for a meeting that ended before it really began.
And now, after all these years and all these miles, the white girl is in pieces, little chunks, few of them bigger than her fist.
She saved one, tucking it in her pocket when no one was looking. She puts her hand on the outside of the pocket now, feeling its shape, pressing on it so that the jagged side bites through the borrowed jeans, into her thigh.
Lulu has no idea why she took it, why she thinks it might be worth having.
No idea….
Missing White Girl Page 29
