ZACA (Zack Tolliver FBI)

by R Lawson Gamble

  Jesus walked back to his position, his sandals in his hands, enjoying the feel of the rich damp soil beneath his bare feet. No expense was spared to treat this soil––fertilizer, nutrients, insecticides, irrigation, all of the things to make vegetables practically leap out of the ground, all the things the farmers in Mexico could never afford for their dry, dusty fields.

  When he saw Candida approach he waved her to an open station at the planter next to him, but she turned away down the line to a place next to some of the women. From her brief glance he saw she was crying.

  He thought about her during the afternoon. His worry gnawed at him. He decided to approach Candida at the next break. He walked toward her but she turned her back on him. Candida's friend from breakfast came to stand between them. She shook her head at him with her finger on her lips. Jesus hung his head and turned away.

  When the horn sounded to end the day Jesus cleaned his station, removed his gloves, and walked over to the transport truck. His mind was made up to confront Rodriguez when he came in from the field.

  The foreman came last to urge the straggling workers before him.

  Jesus stood in his path.

  "What do you want, new boy?"

  "What is wrong with Candida?"

  Rodriguez put his palm against Jesus's chest and pushed him back. "How do I know?" he said. He tried to walk by but Jesus stood his ground.

  "You left with her at lunch time but came back alone. When she came back she was crying." Jesus looked Rodriguez in the eye.

  The big man glared back. "You need to learn to mind your business," he snarled. "Now get out of my way, mojone."

  Jesus felt a strong hand grip his arm from behind and pull him out of the way. It was Jorge. Rodriguez passed on with a glare.

  "You must not call attention to yourself in this way," Jorge said. "If he turns you in to ICE, you will be sent home. The payments to your family will stop."

  Jesus took a deep breath. He thought what that would mean to Isabel and the girls. He nodded, choked down his anger. Jorge patted his arm and moved away.

  By now the truck was gone. He sat on the bench to wait for the next one. To his surprise, Candida's friend came and sat next to him.

  "I know that you are concerned for Candida," she said. "But you must not risk your job or your welfare. There is nothing you can do."

  "About what?"

  She looked at him, shrugged. "About things."

  Jesus was puzzled.

  The woman's look was sympathetic. She extended her hand. "I am Marcella," she said. "My husband works at another farm nearby."

  "I am Jesus Hermenegildo Moreno," he said.

  "I know. You left a wife and two children in Mexico."

  Jesus's eyes widened.

  "This is a small place. Word moves quickly." Marcella smiled sadly. "But we must be careful. Always, the fact that we are illegal hangs over us. It is what people like Rafael Rodriguez use to get their way."

  Jesus looked at her. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean if he wants something, you must give it to him or risk deportation." All at once Jesus went from puzzlement to sudden understanding and horror.

  "You mean he...she..."

  "You have never heard of the green motel then," she said. "It is a name we give the fields because people like Rafael Rodriguez take advantage of us. They know there is nowhere to turn. One word to the authorities, and all our dreams are done." She looked away.

  Jesus struggled with the impact of her words.

  "So today, he...she..."

  "Yes, he raped her. She can feel only shame. There is nothing to be done."

  "But Señor Reyes, wouldn't he––"

  "Oh, yes," she said. "He is a kind man. If he knew, he would fire Rafael, or worse. But that would not help Candida, or any of the rest of us he has abused. Once Señor Reyes learns of his criminal act, you may be sure the authorities will learn of our illegal status. We will be deported, no matter. Our families will suffer." She sighed. "We must preserve our opportunity here above all things. Scum like Rafael know this."

  The transport truck arrived. They joined the line to board it.

  "You must say nothing of this to anyone," Marcella cautioned before she turned away.

  Jesus was stiff with anger. He masked it only with great difficulty. On the short ride back to the barracks he kept to himself, ignoring the light-hearted banter around him. At the barracks, he went directly to his room, his mind roiling with the injustice of the situation. Jorge had not returned, which was not so unusual, for he often had impromptu meetings with some of the workers. Jesus wished he were here so that he could talk to him about this. Finally, he went to shower and change for dinner. He felt a bit better when he was clean.

  At dinner he understood why Candida surrounded herself with her girl friends and did not invite him to sit with her. But his anger still festered. He spoke little during the meal and left the dining hall at the first possible moment. He took a walk outside.

  It was dusk and brilliantly clear, as it often is when daylight, about to relinquish its dominance, tries to illuminate everything in one last sparkling effort. It felt discordant that the evil personified by Rafael's actions existed in such a setting. He thought of his own Isabella. If such a thing should happen to her, he wondered, how would he react? Just thinking about it, his anger returned.

  Jesus took a turn around the building, along the windowless western side where the setting sun reflected off the whitewashed building. His ruminating was interrupted by a sound behind him. He felt his neck grabbed in a powerful grip.

  "I should wrench your head off your neck, you little turd," Rodriguez said.

  Jesus became blind with a fury that rose without warning from his depths. He grabbed Rafael's wrists with his own powerful hands, tough and strong from a lifetime of hauling nets full of fish. He pulled at them with all the adrenaline-powered strength of his rage. He felt Rafael's grip give. When the man tried to shift to a better position, Jesus held his wrists with an iron grip and spun around, causing the man's arms to cross and twist painfully. In one motion, he lifted Rafael's crossed arms high and kicked him hard between his legs. Rodriguez fell to his knees. Still crazed with anger, Jesus pulled the helpless man's upstretched arms down behind him hard. He put his foot in the middle of the man's back, forced his arms down until the tendons in his shoulders cracked.

  Rafael screamed in pain.

  Jesus released his grip.

  The man's arms fell uselessly to his side. Pain contorted his face. "You are a dead man," he screamed.

  Jesus realized he had gone too far. He stared at Rodriguez, confused. The enormity of what he had done overwhelmed him. Not knowing what else to do, he walked away. A steady stream of curses followed him. He went directly to his room and went to bed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jesus swam to the surface from an anxiety filled dream. The rough grip by ugly, angry Rafael Rodriguez slowly morphed from dream to the reality of an insistent tug at his shoulder.

  "Wake up, Jesus, wake up," Jorge whispered. "It is time for you to go."

  Jesus opened his eyes to darkness. "Go where? What time is it?"

  "It is time for your new job. You forced us to move our timetable up. We must go now. Come, get dressed. Quiet, now."

  Jesus climbed groggily from his bunk and groped for his clothing. The night was chilly; he pulled his clothes on quickly, grateful for the warmth of the hooded sweatshirt. After he slipped into his sandals he started toward his closet.

  "Where are you going?" Jorge hissed. "We must go."

  "But my things..."

  "Forget them. You will not need them. Everything you need will be supplied. You can't stay here any longer."

  Still befuddled, Jesus followed Jorge out the door and down the corridor, dark but for a safety light at each end. His sandals made a scuffing sound along the floor. Jorge turned and glared at him, his finger to his lips. Outside, the moon cast a phosphorescent glow on the gravel and t
he stars were a million laser points. It was easy to see the way and their movement was swift and quiet. A pickup truck waited for them part way down the drive, its motor a soft idle, lights off. Jorge pushed Jesus up into the warm cab and closed the door. He waved the truck away. Jorge was gone. The truck crunched snail-like down the drive to the main road.

  The driver put on his headlights and powered along the macadam. Jesus's brain was in turmoil. He tried to bring order to his thoughts. The driver seemed disinclined toward conversation, the truck hummed along the dark road like a silent shadow. They avoided the well-lit parts of town, a distant glow. They went on a highway. Huge trailer trucks roared by like solitary carnival booths, lit with brightly colored lights. A minute later the driver left the highway and purred along a single lane road, nothing but blackness around them, their headlights stabbing into the unknown.

  Jesus did not realize they were deep into the mountains until the driver stopped to engage the four-wheel drive. The road grew rough and the headlights glowed on rock ledge and high brush. On sharp turns the lights pierced into space and he realized a gorge ran beside the road. Jesus held back the questions that came to his mind; it was not the time to disturb the driver. He felt sudden panic when the driver turned off the headlights, plunging the truck into darkness. The vehicle slowed. Jesus' eyes gradually adjusted to the moonlit road.

  The driver spoke for the first time on the trip. "The Forest Rangers patrol up here," he said, his eyes on the road. "They come here and park at the side of the road in the dark and look for headlights. But we don't need them; the moon is bright tonight. I know this road well."

  The driver lapsed back into silent concentration. The bottom of the truck occasionally grated and scraped along rocks and there were spring-testing lurches into ruts. They crept along. Jesus lost his sense of space and time in the dark. He had a feel of where they traveled only when the truck passed close enough to the cliff side for him to momentarily see protruding rocks and twisted roots. Once a sinewy shape crossed the road at the outer reaches of his vision.

  " Un león de montaña" the driver muttered. "A mountain lion."

  The truck finally creaked to a stop. Jesus had no sense of how long the grinding uphill journey had been. The driver stepped out; Jesus did the same. The glow of the moon was surprisingly bright, the air smelled sweet from pines. Jesus stumbled in the darkness, his perception of depth and distance altered.

  The driver came to him with a large pack and thrust it into his arms. "Put it on."

  Jesus slid it over his shoulders and adjusted the buckles; this, at least, was familiar territory.

  The driver handed him a flashlight, its beam pencil narrow. "Aim it at your feet," he whispered. "Never into the air, even if you fall." He disappeared in the darkness.

  Jesus followed.

  The next hour was an ordeal of steep scrambles, stumbles, toes against roots and rocks, knee pain, sweat and shoulder ache from the weight of the pack. Once Jesus dislodged a rock. It rolled down the slope and thumped into a tree. His guide spun around in anger.

  The terrain leveled, the path smoothed, they picked up the pace. The only chance to catch a breath came when his guide stopped, listened. At those moments the night was still as a tomb, for Jesus a foreign world with no beginning, no end, yet strangely peaceful. They moved on.

  At one of those pauses the driver stopped, whistled, whistled again. A soft whistle answered. They went toward the sound. A shadow formed among the trees, approached them.

  The driver hugged the stranger. "This is Javier," he said. "You will replace him. He will instruct you for the next two days. After that, you are on your own."

  His guide, whose name Jesus never learned, whose face he never saw clearly, turned and vanished.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was late, after ten when Zack returned to the hotel. He paused at his room just long enough to drop off the pack, then went to Susan's room and knocked lightly.

  The door opened at his second knock. Susan was wrapped up in a fuzzy hotel robe, her blonde hair pulled back. Blue eyes glimmered behind glasses.

  "Hi, there. Have you had an interesting day?" She opened the door wide and stepped back.

  "You might say so," Zack said, and entered. Notebooks, clothing, papers were scattered around the room. Chaotic surroundings for such a tidy mind, he thought.

  "Would you like a drink?"

  "No, no thanks. It’s late for me. I wasn't sure you'd be up." Zack moved a sweater and slumped down in an armchair.

  "Well, as you can see..." Susan grinned and spread her palms. She sat on the bed and tucked her legs beneath her. "Well, c'mon. Tell me about it."

  "Susan, I'm worried."

  She frowned. "About what?"

  "About..." Zack paused. "Look, let me tell you about it, then you can see what you think. I'd like you to tell me I'm concerned about nothing."

  Susan looked puzzled. "Okay. Go on."

  Zack told her all about the night's events from the moment he left her in the dining room to answer his phone to his arrival at the crime scene.

  "You certainly do have a way of getting involved."

  "Yeah, sure seems that way," Zack said. "But here's where it gets interesting." He described the dead worker, the evidence that suggested an execution style murder, how they backtracked the killer. "Susan, all that was left of this guy at the end of his prints was a huge pool of blood. We found the missing rifle a few feet away. That's all––no clothing, body parts, not even a watch. Nothing."

  Susan stared. "What do you think it's about?" A thought came; her face fell. "You don't think it's..."

  "I don't know. To be fair, it grew dark so quick we didn't have time to study the ground well. I could have missed something."

  Zack watched Susan's face. Her eyes leveled on him, but he knew her brain was racing.

  "This man, a cartel rival presumably, shoots Manuel," she said. "He walks away and disappears without a trace except for most of his blood."

  "That's about the size of it."

  Susan shuddered. "So you think..."

  "I don't know what to think."

  "When I hypothesized this killer creature with Jim Snyder a lifetime ago back in San Francisco, watched it come to life on paper from the evidence, I didn't really believe it. It was an exercise, inference from data, just a design on a blackboard. It's another matter to know these things exist..." She looked hard at Zack. "Do you really think this could be one of them? There must be another explanation."

  "I don't know. All we saw was the blood. Maybe tomorrow, in the light of day, they'll find something to explain it. But tonight, in the dusk, well, warning bells went off."

  "Will you catch your plane tomorrow?"

  "Of course. I got spooked out there but there's not enough to keep me here. That ranger's a good tracker and Barnard knows a thing or two. There isn't enough reason to call my boss and tell him I want to take another day––or to call my wife, for that matter." Even to his own ears his words sounded like an attempt to rationalize. He stood up to leave. "Look, I shouldn't have told you all this. I won't keep you up any longer. Get some sleep." He walked to the door.

  Susan followed. "I'll say goodbye, then. I probably won't see you before your departure. Jack Burns wants to show me around the anthropology department tomorrow morning."

  Zack smiled to himself as he left. It was obvious the Burns fellow had been smitten by Susan. He couldn't think of a better circumstance for her right now.

  * * * * *

  Zack woke the following morning to the simultaneous nag of alarm clock and the ring of his cell phone. He slammed his hand down on one and picked up the other. It was Luke Forrester, his boss, from Arizona.

  "Hi, Zack. How's your trip going?"

  "Just fine," Zack said, his voice a question.

  "Don't worry Zack, this isn't an emergency. I just had a call from a Rick Malden, a National Forest Ranger out there. Says you helped him at a crime scene last night."

 
; "Uh...yeah..."

  "Wanted to know if he could keep you for a while."

  "Well, it hardly seemed important enough to-–"

  "There've been some new developments since last night, according to Ranger Malden," Luke said. "He seemed to think he could use your, uh, particular skills."

  Zack was befuddled, still groggy with sleep. "Well, I..."

  "It's important enough to him to call me to clear the way."

  "Well, I..."

  "Fine. I won't expect you for a couple more days. Want me to call Libby?"

  "Uh...no, no. I'll call her," Zack mumbled. He fell back on the cool sheets and let his brain catch up. He hated to be behind the eight ball before he was even out of bed. What could have happened that was important enough to call his boss? What did Rick Malden think Zack could do for him?

  Well, he'd find out soon enough.

  Zack called the airline and cancelled his flight, then he called Libby. To his surprise, Libby was fine with it; she had her hands full with little Bernie and her own projects.

  Zack felt both excitement and anxiety as he hung up. He was excited for the chase. He had a mystery to solve; he loved that part. But what if his subliminal fears proved correct? Best put that part out of his mind for now.

  He went to grab a shower. He thought he'd better have a cup of coffee before he called Barnard. He didn't have Malden's number, and he wanted to hear it first from Barnard, anyway.

  Half an hour later Zack sat at a wrought iron table on a delightful patio just outside the dining room with a cup of coffee in front of him. He called Barnard.

  "Sheriff's office, George Barnard speaking."

  "Why am I here, George?"

  "Well, that didn't take long."

  "No, it didn't. My boss woke me up this morning."