by Mark Dawson
“Yep.”
Shepherd could predict the interdepartmental grief that piece of news was going to cause. She had worked a murder last year for which Delgado had been suspected, but they hadn’t been able to make the charges stick. He was Mexican and reputed to be connected to one of the groups from down south. Delgado was suspected of being responsible for a good chunk of the product that came into the city, and had recently extended his interest to take in prostitution. There were at least another three unsolved killings that he was pegged for, too.
Shepherd went to the fourth victim. He was on his back, his eyes closed, his body untouched by the birds and the coyotes. She knelt down next to him and reached her hand into his open jacket for anything that she might be able to use to ID him.
The man coughed, loudly and suddenly, and sprayed blood all the way up her arm.
“Motherfucker!” She leapt to her feet and took a step back.
Salazar hurried over, his gun aimed down.
“Agua,” the man croaked.
Shepherd aimed the Glock down at him, but the man didn’t move.
“Agua, por favor.”
The man opened his eyes, squinting at the blast of light. He groaned and tried to raise his head.
“Stay down,” Salazar warned.
“Agua.”
The man lay still, his mouth hanging open. Fresh blood speckled the skin around his lips. His shirt was stiff with dried blood that looked as if it belonged to him.
Shepherd kept her gun trained on the man.
“Call it in,” she said to Salazar. “We need an ambulance down here.”
65
Milton drove nonstop to San Diego, following the interstate through Barstow, Riverside and Beau Baxter’s hometown of Escondido. It was an easy run with no traffic to slow him down, and he arrived in plenty of time.
He left the Porsche in the short-term parking lot and made his way into the terminal. The airport was large, but not so large that it was impossible for him to observe the comings and goings of the passengers. He quickly reconnoitred the building, finally settling for a seat at a table outside a Starbucks where he was able to observe the arriving passengers before they split off to approach their individual check-in counters.
If the Russos were going to catch a flight from here, they would have to pass right by his table. He arranged himself so that the Ruger in the waistband of his jeans didn’t press up against his coccyx when he leaned back in the chair. He didn’t think that he would need it—or that he would be able to use it in a public place like this—but being unarmed was not an option. Mason Russo had already shown himself to be a ruthless killer, and Milton suspected that his sister would be similarly pitiless in the event that her own back was put to the wall.
And the threat went deeper than the family; Milton knew that sicarios who killed in the name of the cartel would wipe them all out if the chance presented itself. Jessica had been cunning, but Milton had deduced their escape route. And if he could do it, then the cartel would be able to do it, too. Richard Russo had been questioned by Delgado and had revealed the location of the stolen money along with who knew what else. Was it possible that Delgado had extracted the family’s plans from him? Could Delgado have told anyone else before he had been murdered at the exchange?
There was no way of knowing, but the bump of the pistol against Milton’s back was a reassurance.
He settled down to wait.
66
The press started turning up twenty minutes after the additional officers and the ambulances had arrived from the city. Shepherd was leaning against the wall of the building when she saw a van with the KVVU-TV logo park on the other side of the road from the gas station.
Wonderful.
She made her way over to it as Carly Jacobs got out of the van. Her crew climbed out and followed her down to the road. Jacobs worked for the station; Shepherd had been interviewed by her several times. She was tenacious to the point of irritating, and she wouldn’t easily be put off. She was thorough, too, and Shepherd knew that as soon as she had confirmation that this was going to be a big story, she would be on the phone to the station so that they could send the news chopper over for overhead coverage. The cordon was only going to be a temporary impediment. They would have to work fast.
“Shep,” Jacobs said, “four?”
“I can’t comment on that,” she said.
“I heard it’s four.”
“Sorry, Carly. Not yet.” Shepherd adjusted her shades.
“What can you give me?” Jacobs pressed.
“Multiple homicide. That’s all I’m saying right now.”
“Shit.”
“Feel the same way. It’s my day off.”
“Not now it isn’t.”
Shep grimaced. “Stay on this side of the road, please,” she said. “Lieutenant Camacho’s on his way here. He’ll speak to you when he’s been briefed.”
She turned and crossed the road back to the old gas station, where she signalled to one of the uniforms who had just arrived. He was from Clark County Sheriff’s Department, and his cruiser was blocking the track that led around the back of the building, its lights still flashing. The man came over to her, and Shepherd told him to set up a cordon and make sure that no one crossed it without authorisation.
She went around to the rear of the station. Two Crown Vics had delivered three detectives from the Vegas homicide squad: Laura Rooney, Mike DeSouza and Mike Burgener. Salazar was observing the photographer from the forensics team as he took pictures of the dead men. He saw Shepherd and walked over to join her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“TV’s here already,” she groused. “It’s gonna be a circus before too long. You got anything?”
“I do,” he said. “Come with me.”
He set off into the scrub, picking a careful route through the fist-sized rocks that littered the ground. In the distance, Shepherd saw what looked like a scratch in the landscape. They closed in on it and she saw what it was: a trench. It was long, perhaps six and a half feet from one end to the other. It was shallow, too, and would have been deep enough to hide a man if he was prone.
Salazar knelt next to it. He pointed to an indentation at the head of the trench. “See this?” he said. “Looks like where a bipod might have been rested. I think someone dug out a place to hide, brought a rifle with them and picked off the guys in one of the cars. I found six casings—.338s, from something big.”
She chewed her lip. “What do you think happened?”
“You got an exchange going on out here. Drugs. One party sets up the other one, puts a sniper out here. A couple of the dead guys had pretty big entry wounds. I’m guessing the sniper fires first; then his friends finish off the ones he missed. This was a nicely set trap. Professional.”
Shepherd was sweating; she used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the moisture from her forehead.
“You want some good news?” she said. “I got a call. We got a name for the survivor—Maximilliano Sacca. Mexican. Nasty piece of work. Record for pimping, assault and dealing.”
“A gangbanger?”
She nodded. “One of Delgado’s crew. He got to the hospital ten minutes ago. He’s badly shot up, but they think he’s going to be okay.”
“What’s next?”
“We got two leads. Delgado and Sacca.”
Salazar nodded. “You got a preference which one we do first?”
“Sacca’s going to be out of commission until they fix him up. Let’s go check out Delgado’s place.”
67
Oscar Delgado’s house was ostentatious. The sicario was surprised that he would be so crass as to draw attention to himself in this way. According to the file, Delgado explained his wealth by way of the ownership of a legitimate heavy metals business, usefully employing that same business to import the cartel’s product. But it would have been prudent to have chosen a slightly less showy property. The sicario doubted that La Bruja would have approved, had sh
e known.
The house looked empty. The windows were uncovered and there was no sign of occupation inside, despite the two cars that were parked on the drive leading up to the house. The sicario eyed them, then looked up as a man and a woman came out of the house and made their way down to the road. The man was old and doughy and was dressed in a rumpled suit and aviator shades; the woman was wearing dark slacks, a white blouse and shoes with a very shallow heel. She reached into her jacket and retrieved her phone, the action revealing a pistol in a shoulder holster.
The sicario had been in this line of business long enough to recognise a cop when he saw one.
He drove on, glancing over to the house as he continued by it. The detectives leaned on the hood of the first car. The woman had her phone pressed to her ear and was deep in conversation with someone on the other end of the line.
The sicario turned around and pulled over at the side of the road. He was able to watch the house from here without being seen. He reached into the equipment bag and took out a pair of small binoculars, observing the detectives through them as they went back inside the house again.
He waited there for ten minutes until they came outside once more. The man closed the door. The woman went to the first car and started the engine. The sicario watched as the man went to the second car. Both vehicles pulled away.
He thought about waiting and then breaking into the house, but decided against it. His instincts had always been good, and he knew that something was not quite as it should be.
He could always come back to the house later, but, for now, he needed to find out what the police were doing here.
He started the engine and followed them.
68
Milton stayed at the table for three hours, nursing the same cup of cold coffee for fear that he might miss something if he turned his back. He had been joined by a detective from the San Diego Police Department. Louis Salazar had made a call and requested assistance, and a young officer—looking like he was not long out of his twenties—had been sent. The man’s name was Riesenbeck, and he was earnest and serious. Milton had introduced himself to him and had explained what they were looking for, furnishing a description of all three Russos. Riesenbeck had taken up position on the other side of the check-in hall, and the two of them kept in touch by phone.
Milton was still angry, although the red-hot fury that had been generated by Jessica’s betrayal, culminating in the shooting of Beau, had subsided a little. But that did not mean that he was prepared to forgive and forget.
Far from it.
He knew that his anger was fuelled partly by his disgust at having allowed himself to be used. He did not consider himself to be a credulous person, but Jessica had made a fool of him. She hadn’t been the innocent that he had assumed. The only reason he hadn’t eaten his gun when he left the Group was because he had decided that he could use his talents to help those who had no one else to turn to. Jessica had taken advantage of him. More than that, her betrayal had robbed him of the chance to add further balance to his ledger. He knew how irrational that sounded, but it was what it was.
Jessica’s family, too, were not innocent. They might not have been as ruthless as Delgado and his cronies, but the Russos were involved in a joint criminal enterprise, and they had used Richard’s connection to the cartel to enrich themselves. They must have known the danger in the course that they had elected to take, and the certainty of the fate that would have awaited them had they been discovered. Delgado would have killed them all had it not been for the money that he needed to recover.
They had proceeded with their theft despite the risk and, when it had gone wrong, the children had fomented an ingenious scheme to recover their father that was executed with cold-blooded efficiency. They had enjoyed the element of surprise and had exploited an assumption that Milton could now see was chauvinistic; that a pretty girl like Jessica could not possibly be anything other than what she appeared to be.
Fool me once, shame on you.
There would be no fooling him twice.
Milton checked his watch. It was midday. He looked up at the departures board. The flight from San Diego to Portland was due to take off at half past the hour. The screen announced that the flight would be boarding from Gate 24 and that it was on time. It was a domestic flight, so Milton knew that the gate would close fifteen minutes prior to departure. The Russos were cutting it close. They still had to make it through security. He assumed that they would be careful, would be travelling without hold luggage and would limit their exposure in a public place as much as they could. He tried to put himself in their shoes and imagine what he would have done: stay out of sight until the last possible moment before heading to the gate.
He looked at his watch again. Five past twelve. They would have to show up soon. But even as he concluded that, an insidious thought floated to the surface: what if they had changed their plan?
He called Riesenbeck. “Anything?”
“Nothing.”
Shit. Had he underestimated them again?
69
Shepherd and Salazar drove across town to the ER at Southern Hills Hospital and met the doctor responsible for Maximilliano Sacca’s care. They followed him up to a room on the third floor.
“Here we are,” the doctor said as he brought them to a door that was guarded by a uniformed officer.
“So how is he?”
“Three gunshot wounds and some internal damage, but we were able to patch him up. He’ll live. He’s dosed up pretty good, but he’s fit to be questioned if you go easy.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Shepherd led the way inside. Sacca was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows that had been arranged behind his back. A cannula had been fitted to the back of his hand and that, in turn, had been fitted to a drip. His vitals were being monitored, with his heart rate and blood pressure displayed on one of the screens that was fitted to a moveable stand behind the bed. He was a large man, with a shaved head and tattoos on his exposed skin. He had inked lipstick kisses on either side of his face, a design around the crown of his head, and some sort of gang design—Shepherd didn’t recognise it—was visible above the bandages that had been wrapped around his stomach.
Shepherd took a chair and placed it next to the bed. Salazar went around to the other side of the bed and stood over Sacca there.
Shepherd took out her notebook. “Hello, Señor Sacca,” she said. “I’m Detective Shepherd. That’s Detective Salazar. We’re with the Las Vegas Police Department. We need to ask you some questions about what happened out in the desert last night.”
The Mexican glared at her, but said nothing.
“Look,” Salazar said. “I’m going to be straight with you. You’re in a lot of trouble. I mean a shit-ton of it. We’ve got you at the site of a multiple homicide. I’m guessing we’re gonna find your prints on one of the weapons we found there. We know that you run with Oscar Delgado’s crew. And we know that Delgado is one of the dead men. All we need is for you to tell us what happened down there. That’s it.”
Sacca glared at Salazar and then turned back to Shepherd.
“You’re going to have to talk,” Shepherd said. “It’ll be much better for you if it’s now.”
“Inmunidad,” he said, his voice weak and breathy.
“Immunity?” Shepherd said. “Sure. We can talk about that.”
“Inmunidad,” he said again, with more strength.
“If you cooperate, tell us what happened and help us catch whoever it was who killed your amigos, then I’ll make a case that you should receive favourable treatment.”
“Immun—”
“But that’s a one-time deal,” Shepherd said, cutting him off. “You got my word that we’ll make it easy for you, but that’s only if you answer my questions right now. You don’t answer them, or you mess around with us, then what can I say?” She shrugged. “We throw the book at you. Comprende?”
He scowled.
“I’m seriou
s,” she said. “We can leave, but if we do, you won’t get the same offer again. Your call.”
He leaned back a little, wincing from the pain. His expression changed from resentment to acceptance. “What you want to know?”
“What happened out there?”
His voice was strained and his English halting, but Shepherd could make him out. “There was to be an exchange.”
“Drugs?”
He shook his head. “No. There was a gringo. He stole from us.”
“Name?”
“Russo.”
Shepherd noted it down. “First name?”
“Richard.”
“Go on,” Shepherd said.
“This man? He was estúpido. Oscar said he took five million dollars. Five million, from the cartel! He must have thought that Oscar was estúpido, like him, but he wasn’t. Oscar was smart. He knew. We went to his house and we took him.”
“Took him where?”
“The warehouse.”
“Where’s that?”
“Sunrise Manor. East Cartier Avenue. It’s quiet, no one nearby. We took Russo there. He was a pussy. Folded after the first question. We beat him some anyway, but it was easy.”
“What did he say?”
“That he had taken the money. Admitted it, straight up. Said he had it in a storage place up in Silver Spur.”
“Five million dollars in storage?”
“Hundred and fifty in cash, the rest in Bitcoin. Oscar sent two guys to go and collect it, except they got lost on the way and, when they got there, they were too late. It was gone. Russo’s daughter and this other gringo had got there first.”
“The other guy?”
“John Smith. Him and a second gringo were working with the Russos. The old man was on his own when we took him, but, as we were driving away, we saw a car with the daughter inside heading back to the house. Oscar wanted her, too, so we turned around. We get back there, the daughter and the guy she was with are inside the house. We go in, too, all of us, all packing. The guy takes out Pérez, Lòpez and Morazán—”
