No answer. He checked the clock: one A.M. She must have the ringers off. But her answering machine hadn’t kicked on, either.
Jesus. Patricia had moved on quickly, the bitch.
Shawn surveyed his options.
Wait?
Run?
Maybe take himself out before they put him in jail?
THIRTEEN
Tell was bent over, his hands on his knees, panting.
“It’ll come back,” Patricia said. “You’ve just been a while away from it. This is only day three.”
But Tell’s lungs were on fire. He had stitches in his sides. He stood up, heart pounding and sides aching. He squinted up at a billboard planted on New Austin’s western-most borderline. Arresting gray eyes stared off across the Horton County landfill above a warning:
Beware Illegals!
El Gavilan
is watching you!
Bathed in sweat, ripe and dark and beautiful to Tell’s eyes, her hand still resting on his shoulder, Patricia said, “Suppose someone had to take that space after old Doc Eckleburg finally officially turned up his toes.”
* * *
Shawn paced his room again. He was going to have to cover the story of the woman’s death for the next edition of his own weekly. No way around that as a one-man band at the New Austin Recorder.
But what might that trumped-up, loaded story mean for him later? What could it cost him—writing a news story about a woman brutally attacked and murdered probably just minutes after Shawn had left her bed? After he had left his DNA sprayed inside her most private places?
* * *
Able called the county coroner and leaned hard into the old man again.
“I get first word, right, Doc?”
“Begging your pardon, Sheriff, but it was a New Austin crime, according to all paperwork sent me,” Casey Parks said.
“That’s an open question, Doc,” Able said. “This happened at the Three Corners. Hell, Chief Lyon agreed with me at the scene we’d have to hire a fucking surveyor to determine precisely whose jurisdiction this fucking abominable discovery was made in. For all I can tell, this case may really belong to Sheriff Walt Pierce and Vale County.”
“Perhaps Pierce should get first call then?”
“Don’t play games, Doc. Start of business day, when you know, I get that first call. Otherwise, I remind you that I have a long memory and a wicked imagination.”
EL GAVILAN
THEN
Tell, barely two weeks on the border and already deeply disturbed by what he was seeing, was in a south-of-the-border bar with Seth Alvin the night that Tell met the woman he’d marry.
Seth was a Bush One–era veteran … “Desert fucking Storm” as Seth was given to putting it.
The cantina they’d selected for their post-shift drinking that night was stocked with familiar faces—ones who’d tried to bribe “cherry” Tell and Seth to allow them across. More of those whom the pair of Border Patrol agents had caught and sent back, and some of those more than twice. There was already enough of the latter ilk that Tell was beginning to think it was high time to commence confining after-hours carousing to the other, safer side of the border.
About the time he was contemplating that, a covey of comely Latinas drifted in, setting heads to turning. There were three of them, all young and pretty. They looked like college girls who’d decided to stray across the line for a look at wicked old Meh-hi-co … at the distant homeland that was in their genes but far from their actual experience. They struck Tell as treacherously fetching prey for a certain kind of man.
Seth whistled low and stood and cracked his back. He said, “The one in the little black dress, with her hair up? She needs to meet me, now.”
Tell shook his head, tearing at the damp label on his sweating bottle of Modelo Negro. He watched Seth make his approach on the young woman and her slumming friends.
Willie Nelson on the jukebox: “Across the Borderline.”
The girl in the little black dress seemed all too receptive to Seth’s company. One of the other young women, one with a tattooed rose on her ankle, was soon enough talking with another off-duty border patrolman. That left the last of the trio—by far the prettiest to Tell’s mind, and certainly the most reserved—standing between her flirting friends, looking alone and very uneasy. A target of opportunity for every man in the place.
She saw Tell watching her and frowned. He held up a hand and smiled. Tell came out of his chair as he saw two hard-looking men starting to drift her way. He scooped up his white Stetson from beside his beer bottle and placed it on the seat of his chair to hold his place.
Tell approached her, smiling. He said, “Listen, ma’am, this bar—this town—is not the best place for tourists. You should talk your friends into leaving, right now. Failing that, if you need quiet, secure company until your friends are, er, free? Well, I’ve got plenty of room at my table. Might at least spare you some approaches from those others.”
Those others: more Border Patrol agents and feral civilians. Men waiting to see if she’d shoot Tell down and so give them an opening. Tell could see she was thinking the same thing.
He hesitated and said, “My name’s Tell Lyon. I’m only offering some company and conversation until your friends are ready to push on. If you’d prefer an escort back to the other side right now, I can get you back there too. Just a friendly offer … with no strings.”
Tell smiled again and returned to his seat.
The young woman took another look to either side, evidently decided her friends were committed, and sighed. Shaking her head, she approached Tell’s table and said, “I think I’d better take you up on that offer for a place to sit.”
Tell rose and half bowed. “Absolutely. What are you drinking?”
She thought about it, looked at his beer, and said, “How about a tequila sunrise?”
He called out her order and they sat back down. She said, “You said your name is Tell?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that short for something?”
“Nah, just some character in a series of Western novels my old man favored.”
“I’m Marita Delgado.” She hesitated and said, “How’d you know I’m not native Mexican?”
“The sense I had. And nobody dresses like you and your friends are dressed to come to places like this one. You’re all dolled up for a Saturday night in Austin, or San Diego or someplace like that. Not for this dive, and not even for this corner of Mexico.”
“Good point. We crossed on a silly whim. Never have seen it, though I’m first-generation American. You’re Border Patrol?”
“Yeah, coming off duty.”
Marita nodded at their server and combed a wave of black hair behind one ear. She sipped her drink and said, “And how is that work?”
Tell didn’t hesitate and he didn’t couch it. “Mostly brutal. I’m fairly new to it, but feel like I’ve been here for years already. Hard to see some of the things we do. And, hell, if I lived here, in these conditions, I’d want to run North too. There are at least seven in here tonight I’ve sent back across the line in the past week.”
Marita looked around, bit her bottom lip. “Yes, it’s not like back home at all, is it?”
“Nothing at all like home,” Tell said.
* * *
The wooing of Marita’s friends was continuing apace—looked headed to some certain end. Blushing, and appearing a bit put out by what she was seeing, Marita squeezed the bridge of her nose and sighed. She said, “Think I might need that escort back across you offered. We left a bachelorette party that was going nowhere fast.” She nodded at the two young women she’d come in with. “They’re from out of state. I hardly know them. Sorry I let myself be dragged along, now.”
Tell said, “I’m ready to head back across too. You should tell your friends, such as they are, that you’re leaving. Then I’ll see you across the border.”
Marita nodded, managed a half smile. “The line going
both ways is a pretty long one tonight. Will your uniform help speed that crossing?”
Tell smiled, said, “Like nobody’s business.”
She nodded at the two women she’d come in with. “Will they be safe?”
“They’re with armed American law enforcement officers,” Tell said evenly. “In that sense, anyway, they’ll be safe enough.” That was about as good a way as he could put it, he figured.
* * *
The walk back toward the border checkpoint stretched into a dinner invitation: Marita asked Tell if he was hungry.
They stopped in an Americanized version of a Mexican restaurant. Lowly lit, it provided maybe more the romantic atmosphere than Marita had bargained for. Tell took it easy, until, emboldened by a couple of Texas margaritas on the rocks, he let his hand drift, closing over the back of hers. Her silky skin was two shades darker than Tell’s own tanned hand. Marita’s black eyes searched his, then she smiled and turned her hand under Tell’s hand so their palms were touching. She squeezed his hand back and began moving them in time to the music: Marianne Faithful’s cover of Kristofferson’s “The Hawk.”
Marita’s parents, she confessed, were both teachers; became legal in the early 1970s. Marita was close to completing her own degree in English literature and, “Trying for the life of me to figure out what on earth I’ll do with that.”
A bit tipsy, Marita scooped up Tell’s white straw Stetson and put it on; the tips of her ears kept the cowboy hat from falling down over her eyes. She pushed it back a bit on her head and said, “What do you think?”
Tell reached across and tilted it to a slightly more rakish angle and said, “I think anything would look perfect on you.”
She smirked and took a last sip from her straw. “It’s getting late, Tell Lyon. We should cross that line now, don’t you think?” Her voice was naturally husky; he couldn’t tell yet if she meant it in more than one way.
“Sure we should.” Tell settled up and took her arm. They were hardly twenty paces out the front door when the man with the knife fell upon them.
* * *
Later, Tell would learn the man was named Enrique Zambada, a Lerdo-born scrap of nastiness suspected in the death of at least two Mexico City whores.
The bastard hadn’t asked them for money, hadn’t asked them even to raise their hands.
No, Enrique had just come at them, taking a slashing pass at Tell’s throat with a fearsome buck knife while reaching for Marita’s purse with his other hand.
Tell fell back, reaching for his gun and knowing a positive shit-storm would ensue if he shot a Mexican national on the south side of the border. Tell’s being off duty and greased with tequila wouldn’t help matters any.
Thinking all that in an instant, Tell stopped reaching for his gun and instead drove his boot’s toe deep and hard into the fat man’s crotch. As Enrique doubled over, gasping, Tell got a handful of hair and drove his knee up into the man’s face once, twice, a third time. Each time, Tell heard bones or cartilage crunch.
Gawking passers-by kept moving; knew better than to get dragged into this scene.
Tell bent over the unconscious man, took his wallet out and grabbed a couple of cards that carried their attacker’s name. He slid those in his pocket, then got out plastic handcuffs and secured the man’s wrists around a rusting, old iron light fixture.
Marita was still wide-eyed. She said, “He might have killed us!”
“Don’t think he’d have given it much thought otherwise,” Tell admitted. “Are you okay?”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Marita said. She took his hand and pulled him up to her.
* * *
She was still shaking when they reached the lobby of her hotel. “I think I need a last drink,” Marita said.
Tell looked toward the hotel lounge. A woman was closing out the register; a waiter was setting chairs up on tables to clear the floor for the cleaners. It was past midnight. It was raining.
“Looks like we just missed last call,” he said.
“Why God invented room service,” Marita said, studying his face. “Do you have an early day tomorrow, Tell?”
“It’s my day off,” he said softly. “That’s why I was able to drink earlier this evening.”
Marita nodded slowly, then reached for his hand. “Let’s talk more upstairs.”
FOURTEEN
Wednesday morning. Tell logged off Able Hawk’s blog. He said, “Damn. Why not just post a bounty on the bastard’s head for Thalia Ruiz’s murder? I had no idea that Hawk was running his own blog.”
Patricia shut down her computer. “This entry is relatively tame in some ways,” she said. “Hawk’s usually much more political. More divisive. So, Chief Lyon, when are you going to launch your blog?”
“Never.” He accepted her offered cup of black coffee. “I can’t conceive of doing what Hawk and I do and writing a blog.”
“Too bad about your ankle,” she said. “I feel stir crazy.”
Tell had wrenched his leg running with Patricia. Patricia said, “Any news yet on Thalia Ruiz’s murder?”
He was about to answer when his cell phone rang. Tell checked the caller ID panel: the coroner’s office. Tell flipped open the phone and said, “Casey? You have something for me?”
“You called me, Chief, if this comes up later, you got that? If it becomes an issue, I’m saying. You pressed me for these results. Are we agreed on that point?”
“We are, Doc. But hell, I’m owed those results.”
“There are two county sheriffs who’d strongly beg to differ. At least in terms of you getting first peek.”
Tell held up a finger at Patricia and limped out into the common hall of their apartment complex. “What’s this cryptic stuff about, Doc?”
“Able Hawk has pressed me for first word on the DNA results,” Parks said. “I’m going to follow his instructions to the letter. The business day doesn’t start for a few more minutes. I’m giving you that much head start, Chief. You should also know that I released the victim’s name to the press late last night—I did that well past print deadlines.”
Tell said, “Much appreciated—this ‘head start,’ Casey. What have you found?”
“The semen is from one man. But we also found traces of condom lubricant and latex in her mouth, vagina and rectum. As to which came first, the naked shooter or the one wearing the rubber, I can’t definitively say. Oh, and someone slipped her some flunitrazepam.”
“Help me out, Doc. What the hell is that?”
“Trade name is Rohypnol. You know, the date rape drug.”
“That name I know. Okay. So to the DNA match—that’s fast matching. Who is it?”
“Crazy thing,” the old doctor said. “This guy was doing a story on DNA and talked your predecessor and me into typing him for background to his piece. Only way he’s in the system. You know us with stuff like that—we never throw it away. We logged the luckless bastard—filed him with CODIS.”
“So who the hell is he, Doc?”
“The reporter—editor—of the New Austin Recorder, Shawn O’Hara.”
Tell nearly fell back against the wall. Jesus! Of all people—Jesus Christ!
Tell could just duck his head back inside Patricia’s apartment and ask for Shawn’s address. But that would likely spiral in so many potentially treacherous directions that he couldn’t tally them all. He said, “Don’t suppose you know where O’Hara lives?”
“Anticipated that,” the coroner said. “I have it.”
Tell scribbled down Shawn’s address on his service notepad. He checked his watch. Getting closer to “start of business day.” Normally, Tell would already be in the office, but he’d accepted Patricia’s invitation for breakfast.
He said, “Thanks very much for the heads-up, Doc. I’ll remember this. And I owe you.”
Tell closed his phone and slipped back through Patricia’s door, red-faced and uncomfortable. “Something’s come up and I’m really racing the clock,” he said
.
Patricia kissed him. He kissed her back, then dipped his head, ashamed. She maybe confused his shame for shyness, because she tipped his head up, pressing her closed fist to his chin and handing him a brown paper bag with the other hand.
“Made you lunch, Tell. In case you don’t have time to get something later.”
“Thanks very much. It does look like that kind of day.” She kissed him again and he felt his body responding. He said, “A man could get used to this.”
“A man better,” Patricia said, leaning in for a last kiss.
Tell wondered if they’d still be talking by day’s end.
FIFTEEN
An emphatic banging on his door startled him.
The only people who ever knocked on Shawn’s door were his women.
But Shawn was between bedmates. No way was it going to be Patricia.
And it sure wasn’t going to be Thalia Ruiz. Her ruined face dogged his dreams.
The journalist pulled back the mini-blind from his storm door’s window and slid straight into panic.
There he stood: Tell Lyon, looming outside, grim-faced in his black uniform. Tell said loudly through the glass, “I’m giving you a break, Shawn. Come away with me now, just us, and tell me about Thalia Ruiz. Otherwise, in about fifteen minutes, a mountain of grief is going to fall on you, and I won’t be in any position to maybe help you anymore.”
* * *
Shawn’s stomach churned and his hands and legs were shaking. Tell stopped for two coffees at the Tim Horton’s on the edge of town and thrust a cup into Shawn’s trembling hands. When Shawn tried to talk, the New Austin chief of police simply cut him off. “Not yet.”
El Gavilan Page 9
