by Sylvia Nobel
The note of glum skepticism in his voice kicked my pulse up a notch. “What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. There’s just something fishy about the whole thing.” He sounded grumpy.
“Like what?”
“Like, what in the name of glory was he doing out there on the Indian reservation so many hours after his shift change?”
“So, he was officially off-duty. Who found him?”
“One of the tribal police. He was parked on a really rough, isolated stretch of dirt road that runs past Morita and comes out near Newfield not far from the San Miguel Gate. It had been dragged just a few hours earlier and….”
I interjected, “What do you mean dragged?”
“Border Patrol vernacular. The agents drag tires behind the vehicles to blot out footprints and such. That way when they’re looking for signs of jumpers, they can tell approximately when the last group crossed and how many. Although, according to the stories Bob told us, these people are wising up.”
“How so?”
“He filled me in on some of their tricks. Smugglers especially, employ some pretty crafty maneuvers like gluing scraps of carpet to the bottoms of their boots. The tribal police call ‘em carpet walkers,” he added as an aside, “but now these people are getting really inventive and using the same type of boots as the Border Patrol to throw agents off the track. One resourceful guy even carved cow prints on the soles of his boots.”
“Wily coyotes,” I murmured, “but getting back to the situation with your wife’s cousin, were any footprints found near his truck?”
“Oh yeah, a bunch. It could be that a group of crossers mistook him for their ride, rushed the truck and who knows what happened from there. But the locals think he was most likely ambushed by drug traffickers.”
“That’s scary.”
“No kidding, but here’s the rub. The forensics team found only his fingerprints on the weapon and they couldn’t find anything to prove that he didn’t take his own life.”
“Well, it is a pretty sophisticated science now, you know that.” I wondered if he was reading too much into the situation considering his personal involvement. “They’re not often wrong.” Silence met my ears. “Tell me, Walter, did your wife’s cousin leave a note of explanation?”
“Sort of.”
“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“It was unfinished. The FBI found a notepad on the seat beside him. It said, I can’t do this anymore, but get this, he never signed his name.”
“Any idea what he meant by that statement?”
“Considering all the circumstances? Yeah, I might.”
5
And the circumstances proved to be interesting indeed. Walter confided that Bob Shirley, along with three other agents and a Customs Inspector, were about to be indicted for alleged involvement in a major cocaine trafficking ring based in Tijuana, Mexico. Theoretically, that was the reason he’d chosen to take his own life.
“I thought I knew the guy pretty well and I’m having a hard time grasping that he’d be involved in anything so…so unsavory,” Walter grumbled.
“He wouldn’t be the first agent to fall from grace. Just a few months ago, I read about four or five others who were arrested for simply looking the other way when the loads were brought across. And these were people with long and distinguished careers. Supposedly they’d pocketed in a few months what they’d normally make in a year’s time. That has to be pretty tempting for some people.”
“I never voiced it to Lavelle, but don’t think the thought didn’t cross my mind.”
“Walter, tell me something. Do you know if he was having financial problems? What does a Border Patrol agent make a year anyway?”
“I gathered things were tight, but I think they were doing okay. He’d just gotten a promotion a few months prior to his death and I think Lavelle said he was up to forty-seven, maybe forty-eight grand a year. Nowadays, that’s probably not a whole hell of a lot considering he was supporting three kids, a wife and his mother-in-law. But still….”
“Did he strike you as the kind of a person who’d be involved in something like that?” I asked.
His short silence was telling. “Boy, you think you know someone and then find out you really didn’t.” He went on to divulge that following the agent’s death had come the revelation that he had apparently been linked to one of the many White power groups operating in the area the past few years. It was alleged that he’d even been spotted at a rally. This additional fact had added to Lavelle’s burgeoning humiliation and spurred their hasty departure. But my interest level really shot through the roof when Walter added as an aside that Bob Shirley had also been the apprehending agent in the case of the Mexican migrant found in Morita, the one claiming to have witnessed the UFO abduction.
“Hmmmm. Now, that grabs my interest. What’s your take on that?”
His deep sigh hissed in my ear. “Probably just a coincidence, but I never got to pursue that angle because Lavelle wanted to get the ‘hell out of Dodge’ when this all came down.”
“Did you talk to his widow about it?”
He snorted, “Loydeen? That netted me a big fat zero.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Every time I tried to talk with her about Bob’s death, including just a few weeks ago when we drove over there to tell everybody goodbye, she flat refused. The strange part is she wouldn’t discuss it with Lavelle either and she seemed….”
A crackling buzz obliterated his answer and I only caught bits and pieces of his conversation for the next few seconds before the line went dead this time. Rats. I tried several times to dial him back, but the ‘no service’ message continued to blink back at me. Oh, well, I’d call him later. I had enough information for starters.
Food was uppermost on my mind when we arrived on the outskirts of Tucson. I pulled up beside Lupe again and pointed to my mouth. She got the message and took the next exit. Within minutes we were seated at a booth inside a noisy coffee shop crowded with truckers, uniformed Hispanic workers and boisterous groups of tourists all decked out in shorts and brightly-printed shirts. A harried-looking waitress wearing a stained blue apron slapped menus on our table, asked if we wanted coffee, and then sprinted away.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Lupe, perusing the menu with interest. Everything looked yummy, especially the Grubstake Special that included juice, a short stack, eggs, grits and homemade biscuits.
“A little. I guess.”
I looked up at the expression of utter misery reflected in her jet black eyes, and my heart went out to her. In addition to suffering the loss of her mother, how would I feel if my brother and uncle had disappeared under such bizarre circumstances? I probably wouldn’t have any appetite either. When I broached the subject, she shot me a warning look and inclined her head towards two middle-aged men at the adjacent table. I edged them an unobtrusive glance. Who did she think they were? Undercover Border Patrol agents? It was possible. Okay. I’d fill her in on Walter’s conversation later.
Hoping to take her mind off her troubles, I filled the void with chatter about work and then lightened the conversation with a few details about my upcoming vacation with Tally. Apparently I failed miserably, as she had shredded her paper napkin into a pile of confetti. We ordered our food and went over the roadmap again. Besides a few sparsely situated towns which included the ghost towns of Oro Blanco and Ruby, vast empty stretches of land, including the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation west of Sasabe, was all that awaited us. Only then did it hit me what a monumental task I had undertaken. What had I been thinking? What were the chances of me finding anything concrete in such a huge area in three short days?
“Just in case we get separated,” I said, sliding her a sheet of paper, “how about giving me specific directions to the mission.”
She sketched out a simple grid and handed it to me just as the waitress slid a pla
te of huevos rancheros in front of her. My breakfast was piled high on a platter big enough to hold an entire turkey. Wow! If my younger brother Shane had been there with me, he’d have hooted with laughter and accused me as he always did of having an appetite like sumo wrestler. As always, thoughts of my family sent a pang of homesickness shooting through me. But at least I had Christmas to look forward to. During the last conversation with my parents, we’d agreed that I would host the family for the holidays.
Lupe’s depression appeared to deepen with each passing moment and she seemed jumpy and distracted, picking listlessly at her eggs while I managed to polish off every bite. When I asked, she whispered, “It makes me nervous to be so close to the…uh, you know, so close to Mexico. Until this thing happened, I did not want to risk coming down here at all.”
“I see.” It was after eleven by the time we left the restaurant, gassed up and dumped a quart of oil in her car. Mellow music from a favorite tape provided a relaxing environment for me as I followed Lupe south on I-19 towards the border town of Nogales—all virgin territory to me. The Santa Rita Mountains, a massive cathedral of rock cloistering a host of shadowy canyons, was a commanding presence to the east while the peaks to the west were partially obscured by drab gray mesas of slag deposited by the local copper mining company.
“Same to you,” I muttered under my breath as yet another irate motorist, who apparently didn’t think 65 miles per hour was fast enough, honked and roared past while issuing me the famous one-fingered salute. Enough. Weary of Lupe’s dawdling pace, I pulled in front of her and checked my rearview mirror periodically to keep her in sight.
To my delight, a fleecy film of white clouds appeared on the horizon, bringing to a close seven straight weeks of pristine blue skies. But the rising wind was presenting a problem. Tawny dust devils, having siphoned up sand, leaves and other debris from the bone-dry desert floor, performed a dizzying ballet in traffic, splattering their gritty contents in all directions. If it kept up, we might be in for a full-blown dust storm, which would make driving even more hazardous, I thought as three eighteen-wheelers, apparently in a race to see who could reach the border first, rumbled past. I was relieved to see the sign announcing that only twenty miles remained until our exit. Good. Armed with the additional information provided by Walter, I was anxious to get started on my sleuthing. For Lupe’s sake, I prayed that the little boy at the mission would be able to shed some light on the puzzling disappearance of her relatives. Knowing just the little I did about this intriguing case galvanized my senses. Was Tally right? Was I an adrenaline junkie? If so, how was I going to change that? Did I even want to?
Thinking of him spawned a twinge of disappointment. Obviously Ruth had never told him I’d phoned, but why hadn’t he taken the initiative to call me? No doubt he was still annoyed about my decision to help Lupe. Couldn’t he see past his own pigheadedness? Couldn’t he grasp that I’d had no option but to pursue this situation as best I could? My thoughts roamed back to Ginger’s evasive behavior last night. It galled me to no end to know she was sitting on inside information concerning Tally and some other woman. What was behind her roundabout references that I took him for granted? The tiniest ember of doubt flickered inside me. Now that I really thought about it, there had been times these past few weeks when he’d been distant and rather withdrawn. I had attributed it to ongoing problems at the ranch, but I’d been so immersed in putting out fires at the office that I hadn’t really pressed him for details. I vowed right then that I would give him one hundred percent of my attention next week and amply demonstrate the depths of my feelings for him. I grinned to myself. The new skimpy two-piece bathing suit should set the stage nicely.
At Arivaca Junction, I pulled over and signaled for Lupe to take the lead again. Other than the Cow Palace Saloon and the Long Horn Grill that sported a gigantic steer’s head complete with long white horns, there wasn’t much to the place, just a few scattered businesses and some ramshackle houses. The streets seemed mostly deserted.
We waved goodbye to a smiling young Mexican girl sitting in the bed of a pickup truck selling bunches of dried red chili peppers, and drove onto a well-maintained road flanked by palo verde trees, prickly-pear cactus and thick clusters of mesquite and ironwood. Secured inside miles of range fence, herds of cattle grazed peacefully on the soft contours of golden grasslands sweeping westward towards the eye-catching Baboquivari Mountains. I thought the jagged peak piercing the now mostly cloudy skyline looked a little like an enormous brown shark’s tooth.
The road gradually deteriorated into a series of sharp turns and sudden dips that had my stomach doing cartwheels. As the car rattled over yet another cattle guard, I decided that this particular route would be inadvisable for anyone prone to carsickness. There was very little traffic other than an occasional pickup or SUV. After a few miles of breathing the blue curtain of oil-laden smoke from Lupe’s car, I dropped back behind her. Why risk an asthma attack?
I have to admit that what happened next was totally my fault. Yes, I was gawking out the window at the breathtaking scenery. Yes, I was thinking about a hundred different things and I was most certainly driving too fast. As I rounded a sharp curve and descended into a wash, it took a second for the dark image ahead to penetrate my foggy brain. “Sheeeeit!” I floored the brakes and skidded to a stop mere inches from a gigantic black bull. Shaking and gasping for breath, three things occurred to me in quick succession. I had not hit him, I was not hurt, and the bull hadn’t budged one single inch. Instead of fleeing in terror, he just stood there, chewing, flicking his tail, and staring straight at me with a wicked gleam in his dark eyes. This imposing beast bore no resemblance to the gentle doe-eyed cows that my brothers and I had petted on visits to dairy farms when we were kids. I shuddered to think of what would have happened had I plowed into him. I would have been dead meat.
My sudden stop had killed the engine, so I turned the key, hoping the noise would scare him. It didn’t. Should I risk getting out to try and shoo him away? I surveyed the sharpness of his horns and decided that would be a dumb move. No way was I a match for what looked to be three thousand pounds of beef on the hoof. When I laid on the horn, he lowered his head and pawed the ground as if in challenge. Now what? There was not quite enough room to drive around him without hitting the road sign, so I shouted out the window, “Okay, big guy, move it. Now!”
His response to my demand was to shake his head and snort a gross-looking gob of bull snot onto my windshield. “Jesus!” Apparently pleased by his performance, the bothersome bovine turned his rump towards me and decided to treat me to more of his bodily functions by depositing an enormous pile of dung in the road. Some of it dropped onto my hood and front bumper. He turned back to me, nostrils flaring, and I swear he wore a look of smug triumph on his broad face. I moaned in disgust, rammed the car in reverse and backed to the top of the rise, hoping that I would seem less of a threat.
I looked in all directions. The range fence on either side of the road appeared to be intact, so where had he come from? In the distance I could see a ranch house and a few outbuildings, but no other signs of life. No people, no cars—nothing but a few red-tailed hawks gliding in the steady wind. Surely by now, Lupe had noticed that I was no longer behind her, so why hadn’t she doubled back?
Wait, I had my cell phone! I grabbed it, then paused. Who was I going to call? Tally? And tell him what—that I was being held hostage in the middle of nowhere by a cantankerous bull? He would laugh himself sick. But, the more I thought about it, the less humorous the situation became. What if another driver happened upon him at night? Perhaps the sheriff’s office could notify the rancher or animal control? I dialed information but got dead air. The ‘no service’ notice blinked at me again. “Stupid, useless phone,” I muttered, stuffing it back into my purse.
There was nothing to do but wait, so I rolled the window down all the way and stared out at the mountain-rimmed valley. I
really had nothing to complain about. Who could ask for a more beautiful setting? It was blissfully quiet, and as the cooling wind fluffed my hair and whispered through the tall desert grasses, I filled my lungs with the fragrant scent. I sat there for at least ten minutes until the bull grew bored with me and leisurely wandered into the brush. All right! I shoved the car into gear and stepped on it, hoping to catch up with Lupe. I’d only gone a mile or so when I saw two vehicles ahead pulled over to the side of the road. One of them was hers. When I got closer, shock zapped my heart. Lupe was leaning against the side of her car, arms folded tightly, talking to a tall, burly man clad in a khaki shirt and slacks. Uh-oh. The large letters on the side of the white and green vehicle parked behind hers proclaimed U.S. Border Patrol. All four of her car doors were open, as well as the trunk. Her bag was on the ground beside her, the contents strewn about.
I mouthed a silent, ‘Oh, my God!’ as I drew alongside them and Lupe shifted her gaze to me. Her usual burnished copper skin tone had faded to ashen gray and I prayed that I was the only one who noticed that behind her expression of subservient impassivity lay a hint of panic. Filled with an awesome dread I waved and parked my car in front of hers. Stay cool, I cautioned myself as I got out and strolled towards them. And be prepared to lie your head off. “Is there some kind of a problem?” I asked, keeping my voice light, my face impassive. He couldn’t hear my heart thundering, could he?
“Afternoon. Do you know this woman?” the man asked, inclining his blonde crewcut towards Lupe, while absently flicking what looked to be her driver’s license between his fingers.
“Sure do. She’s a friend of mine.”
“And how do you know each other?”
“We work together at the Castle Valley Sun newspaper.”
“Is that so?” His close-set green eyes reflected profound doubt. “And what’s her position?”
It irked me that he continued to talk about Lupe as if she weren’t standing right next to him or was a person of so little consequence that he could not address her directly. I swallowed my annoyance. “She works in our advertising department.”
