by Brenda Novak
“That’s highly unlikely.”
“It’s possible.”
She wasn’t optimistic about his theory. Except for the fact that the couple had been killed execution style, the murders didn’t suggest it. As far as she could tell, this wasn’t Mexico’s problem. It was their problem. “There’s no evidence to support it. The victims all crossed the border from Mexico, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. Most of the people we’ve identified came from different regions and had no contact with organized crime. All the indications are that they didn’t previously know one another, either.”
“I’m still hoping it’s a drug lord,” he muttered. “Because if this is a vigilante, it’s going to get ugly around here.”
Sophia grimaced. “Take a look. It’s already ugly.”
“Yeah, well, unless you can stop this guy, it’ll get worse.”
“Thanks for stating the obvious.”
He rolled the male onto his back. The victim had a goatee and the tattoo of a cross on his neck. A bloodstain indicated he’d been shot in the chest, but he hadn’t bled much more than the female.
“Son of a bitch knows how to make quick work of it.”
Vonnegut was talking about the killer, of course. Sophia had noticed that, too, but she wasn’t impressed. “A bullet at point-blank range is pretty effective.”
Crouching beside him, she began to search the victim’s pockets. Sometimes UDAs carried voter registration cards. These cards seemed to hold more significance to Mexicans than the same thing did to Americans. Maybe because they included a photo, in addition to the standard name and address.
Unfortunately, this guy didn’t have any ID. Sophia found five hundred pesos—roughly the equivalent of fifty bucks—tucked into his right sock, as well as a piece of paper with a phone number that had a Tucson area code.
Suddenly light-headed, she swatted at the flies buzzing around the bodies and rocked back to fill her lungs with air that wasn’t pregnant with the smell of stale sweat and unwashed clothing. She hadn’t searched the woman yet, but she needed a moment to recover or she was going to be sick. Judging by the nausea roiling in her stomach, she was as pale as Grant had been the first time he saw one of the bodies.
“Why do you live here?” she asked Dr. Vonnegut while watching Grant finish with the yellow tape.
He was busy getting a body temperature. “What’d you say?”
“Why do you live near the border if you hate Mexicans?”
“I don’t hate Mexicans. I just want them to stay in their own country. Besides, my wife is from around here. And I like to be able to golf year-round.”
“Makes sense.”
“What about you?”
Breathe. Mind over matter. Do not embarrass yourself. These are not dead humans. These are…objects.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she turned her face up to the sun. “I’ve got family here, too,” she said, but she wasn’t talking about her mother and stepfather or her older brother. He didn’t live there anymore, anyway. She was thinking about Starkey. These days, she hated the Hells Angels and everything they stood for, hated that she’d ever had anything to do with them. She and Starkey had gotten together her junior year in high school, when her stepfather had moved in. Since her mother wouldn’t believe her complaints, and her older brother was away at college, Starkey had provided a deterrent to her stepfather’s advances. No one dared mess with her once Starkey came into her life. They knew there’d be hell to pay. She’d enjoyed the protection, as well as rolling on his Harley and wearing all that leather. But the longer she’d stayed with him, the more certain she was that she didn’t want to be an “old lady,” as the Hells Angels referred to their women. Determined to become a full patch member, Starkey was getting more and more committed to the club, which was so involved in drug and gun trafficking that she faced a different kind of risk from the one posed by her stepfather.
So she’d broken free, moved out on her own and migrated to the opposite extreme—law enforcement. After feeling so vulnerable, both at home and with Starkey’s pals as she became more aware of what they were really like, being able to protect herself had meant everything to her. She loved being a cop. But there was one person from the Starkey era she couldn’t let go of, and that was Starkey’s son, Rafe. She didn’t care that he wasn’t technically hers; she’d taken care of him those three years she’d been with Starkey—especially the two years she’d lived with him—and she wouldn’t walk out on the boy. His real mother was a crackhead who’d sell her soul for another bump. In many ways, Sophia was all Rafe had.
And she loved him. It came down to that.
“Someday I’m going to move,” she added, and forced herself to search the dead woman. There was nothing in her pockets except some nuts and a folded piece of paper with several words written in Spanish.
Sophia expected it to be a paper prayer. A lot of illegal immigrants carried them. But it wasn’t. It was a love note.
Although Sophia wasn’t fluent in Spanish, she could read and understand most of what she heard. She’d taken two years of Spanish classes in high school and she’d come into contact with it almost constantly since, via the ranch hands who frequented her stepfather’s feed store and the Mexicans she apprehended. Fortunately, that was enough to be able to decipher the few sentences she saw written there.
“You’re beautiful. Will you marry me? I love you. José.”
This woman had left behind everything she owned except this note? That meant it had to be important to her. She was wearing a thin gold band. It wasn’t very expensive, but it was a wedding ring all the same. Obviously, she’d said yes to that proposal.
Tears welled up in Sophia’s eyes. Trying to hide her reaction, she ducked her head, but Dr. Vonnegut immediately caught on that something was wrong.
“Hey, you okay?”
She averted her face. “Fine. Just doing my job. Why?”
“You’re acting strange.”
Was it so strange to experience grief for these people? To feel that their deaths mattered?
She swallowed in spite of the lump clogging her throat. “I think the guy’s name was José.”
“José what?”
“That’s what I have to find out. And this—” she gazed at a face that, in life, would’ve been as pretty as the note suggested “—this was his wife.”
“Dumb wetbacks,” he mumbled.
Sophia whirled on him before she could stop herself. “Shut up!” she shouted. “Just…shut up!”
Anger quickly replaced his initial shock. “You’re not cut out for this job. I knew it when they hired you,” he said. Then he got up, removed his plastic gloves and stomped away, leaving the bodies to the boys from the morgue, who put bags around the victims’ hands, in case they could recover some sort of trace evidence, and began wrapping their corpses in clean white sheets.
Ignoring the stares of the people who’d been looking on, Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose and struggled to compose herself. She had to be careful. There were enough sexist jerks in Bordertown who thought her job should’ve gone to a man—even though the only viable candidate was a criminal himself.
Her cell phone rang. As she pulled it from her pocket, she hoped it might be Rafe. He’d give her something good to hang on to, help her get through this. But it was too early for him to be up. And as soon as she saw the incoming number, she knew a bad morning was about to get worse: It was Wayne Schilling, the mayor.
3
The voice on the other end of the phone stopped Roderick Guerrero in his tracks. Because he hadn’t recognized the number, he’d been curious enough to answer. But from the moment he’d heard the word hello, he’d known it was his father, although they hadn’t spoken in years—ever since he’d graduated from BUD/S training and received his Naval Special Warfare SEAL classification. He still couldn’t say how Bruce Dunlap had found out he was graduating, or the time and date of the ceremony. Roderick sure as shit hadn’t told him.
But someone had. After all the years Dunlap had chosen to ignore him—even lied about their relationship—he’d flown to California to attend and looked on; acting as proud as any other parent. The only difference was that his wife sat at his side, her lips pressed tight with disapproval. Edna was the kind of woman who walked through town looking down her nose at everybody. Roderick disliked her even more than he disliked his father.
He didn’t know what to say and had no desire to say anything, so he hung up. He felt no obligation to Bruce. It wouldn’t have mattered if Bruce had been calling to offer him a million-dollar inheritance. Roderick didn’t want his father’s money, his advice, his legacy or his love. His love least of all. He didn’t even use his father’s name. Legally, he wasn’t a Dunlap, anyway. He was a bastard and as such had been an embarrassment to his wealthy white father all the time he was growing up. As soon as he was old enough to contest his mother’s wishes, he’d taken her name instead. She hadn’t been happy about that. He was related to the wealthiest man in town and she wanted everyone to know it. It gave her a sense of pride, a connection to something more through him.
Or maybe she enjoyed it for other reasons. Maybe she got some pleasure from knowing her son’s very existence grated on Edna. But Roderick wanted to distance himself from the Dunlaps and all they represented as much as they wanted to distance themselves from him. He was satisfied with his mother’s name. Guerrero meant warrior. That suited him better. He’d been fighting since the day he was born.
Milton Berger stuck his head out of the conference room a few feet down the hall. “What are you doing?”
Roderick had almost forgotten that his boss was waiting to be debriefed on his latest assignment.
“Nothing.” He started to slide his cell phone into the pocket of his khaki shorts when it rang again.
“Can you shut that off and get your ass in here? I don’t have all day!” Milt snapped. As sole owner of Department 6, Milt couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing longer than five minutes. He was too busy juggling. Always in a meeting or on a call, he wasn’t an average workaholic; he was like a workaholic on speed. Roderick was beginning to think the fortysomething-year-old never went home at night.
But he didn’t care what Milt did in his off-hours. Milt wasn’t the kind of guy Roderick liked spending time with. Milt had six operatives, and every single one of them thought he was a bona fide asshole. What did that say about a guy?
As his phone continued to jingle, Roderick’s thumb hovered over the red phone symbol that would send the call to voice mail. It was his father again. Why the hell was the old man making an effort now? At thirty, Roderick was no longer a dirt-poor Mexican boy with no prospects and no family beyond a weary mother who’d come into the country illegally when she was barely twenty and cut lettuce in the fields of the selfish jerk who’d impregnated her. Whatever Bruce wanted, it was too late.
But Milt’s impatience grated on Roderick almost as much as his father’s untimely call, so he answered out of spite. “How did you get my number?”
“What the hell!” Milt complained.
Roderick ignored him.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”
The question that immediately came to Rod’s tongue was why, but he knew his father’s answer wouldn’t make sense to him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it anyway, so he went with “How?”
“Jorge mentions you from time to time.”
Jorge was Bruce’s overseer. He was also the closest thing Rod had to a grandfather and the only person in Bordertown Rod stayed in contact with. Jorge loved hearing about Rod’s undercover exploits, so Rod humored him by checking in every few months and catching up. The old man had never told him that Bruce had expressed an interest. Maybe he hadn’t; maybe Jorge was attempting to engineer some sort of reunion. It’d be like him. He’d always had a soft heart. Jorge was part of the reason Rod’s mother had never left the ranch despite her difficulties. She knew he couldn’t go anywhere else and make the money he made working for Bruce. And she, no doubt, hoped Bruce would eventually “come to his senses” and accept Rod. Mostly, she’d stayed to see her son eventually have more and be more than she could hope to give if she left. “Since when did the two of you become friends?”
“Time has a way of changing things, Rod.”
“And some things will never change. So are you going to tell me what you want?”
“To hear me out. That’s all I ask.”
Hoping his father was about to lose the ranch and needed a loan or something, Roderick decided to indulge him. To a point. “You’ve got three minutes. Make it fast.”
“I’d like you to come to Bordertown.”
This made Roderick laugh. “You’re joking, right? I’d sooner go to hell.”
“Rod, I think you might be able to help with a situation down here. If half of what Jorge tells me is true, I know you can.”
The gravity of “a situation” should’ve piqued his interest. It didn’t. “I have no intention of helping you with anything. Ask one of your lazy-ass white sons.”
Dropping several F-bombs and claiming Rod’s “ass was grass,” Milt stormed out of the conference room, marched to his office and slammed the door. But Rod wasn’t worried about his boss’s reaction. It wasn’t as if he’d be fired. He’d just busted a large child-porn ring in L.A., which was a major coup. Local law enforcement hadn’t been able to accomplish that in more than a year, and he’d done it inside of three months. His stock at Department 6 had never been higher.
“This isn’t for me,” Bruce said. “This is for her, okay?”
Roderick gripped the phone tighter. “Who’s her?”
“Your mother.”
Now his father had his full attention. “My mother is dead. Partly because she wore herself out before she could reach forty. Partly because you ripped her heart out and stomped on it every chance you could get. You’re the reason she’s dead. You and Edna.” He pronounced Bruce’s wife’s name with the disdain he believed it deserved.
“I’m not the one who encouraged your mother to come to America. That was her decision. And I never promised her more than I gave her. I provided work, that’s all. It was as good a job as she could get anywhere.”
“You gave her a baby, that’s what you gave her,” Roderick growled. “A baby she struggled to take care of, along with her little brother.” That brother had returned to Mexico not long before Carolina’s death. Roderick had lost touch with him, but he thought about Arturo often. From time to time, he considered looking him up. He would have done it, except he was afraid Arturo was dead from some drug deal gone awry. He’d caused a lot of trouble before he left. Chances were that if he’d survived, he wasn’t on the right side of the law. He was one of those restless spirits who could never find peace. At least, that was what his mother had always said.
“I gave her some money…now and then,” his father said.
Rod was surprised he didn’t mention how hard he’d tried to persuade her to get an abortion. Or the money he’d offered her in those early years to leave the ranch, leave Bordertown. “So…what? You paid her medical expenses and gave her a few bucks to help feed the kid you fathered? That means you deserve a medal?”
“No, no, you’re right. I—I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry about that.”
“Life’s a bitch, Mr. Dunlap. Babies don’t go away just because you regret making them.” Especially if the mother refused to get an abortion and refused to give up hope that her child would someday be accepted.
“I don’t regret you. I regret how selfishly I acted. I was…scared. I didn’t want what I’d done to cost me my wife and family.”
Roderick rolled his eyes. “Or your inheritance.”
“My father wouldn’t have been sympathetic. Times were different back then. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it’s true.”
Bruce, Sr., had never once acknowledged Rod, even when his mother made it a point to cross his path and say, “That’s
your grandpa.” She was so proud of her son she couldn’t understand why the male Dunlaps, at least, couldn’t see things her way. It was the male Dunlaps who, in her mind, held the power and controlled the money.
“I wish I could go back and do things differently,” his father said. “But it’s too late for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
Roderick glanced at his watch. “Then why are you calling?”
Bruce sighed. “Some racist son of bitch is killing illegal immigrants as they come over the border. Shooting them at point-blank range and leaving their bodies to rot.”
“The only racist son of a bitch I know is you. Besides your father. But he’s not around anymore.”
There was a moment of silence. One that told Rod he’d hit his target. Then his father said, “I deserve that. So would he, if he was alive. But this isn’t about me. Or him. I think this case is more than the local police can handle. They don’t have the funding, the manpower or the experience to deal with it. I’m afraid a lot of people will wind up dead if we don’t get some help.”
Noise, coming from the reception area, indicated the other operatives were returning from lunch, so Rod stepped into the conference room Milt had just vacated and shut the door. He was acting tough, but speaking to his father shook him, made him feel like a little boy again. A hurt little boy. And the hurt resurrected the anger he’d shoved down deep inside. News of the killings brought that anger back, too. He kept imagining women like his mother creeping across the border with the hope of being able to make enough to feed themselves and their families, and being murdered by some vigilante who felt he had the right to take the law into his own hands. It was so easy to feel self-righteous and superior when you had a comfortable home, a safe place to live and a full stomach. “What, exactly, do you expect me to do?”
“According to Jorge, you’ve got the skills to help. If you want to.”
“I’ll have to thank Jorge next time we talk.”
His father ignored the sarcasm. “You won’t believe this, but I’m proud of you.”
