Miss Ruby blinked away her tears. “He was a rascal when he was little.”
“Like what kind?”
Miss Harriet wouldn’t look at her sister. “Well, he’d tell a lie when the truth was easier.”
“Lies about what?”
“It didn’t matter.” It was Miss Ruby again. “He wasn’t always truthful. Me’n Ed didn’t hold it against him. The boy probably took that from his mama or daddy, but he never knew who they were or what they were like.” Pride brightened her eyes like the sunrise. “God love him, he turned out better than we expected, being a Border Patrol agent and all that.”
Looking through the open window, I saw a sheriff’s department SUV pull up to the curb. “Well thank you, ladies. Y’all did a fine job handling this situation.”
Miss Ruby gave me a smile. “Daddy told us to always be ready, but son, there’s a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“We don’t know why these men came here. We don’t have any money, and anyone who lives in this neighborhood knows that. They didn’t come to rob. They came in here to kill us. You think it was one of them gang initiations? We’ve heard about them on the news.”
“No, ma’am. These guys were too old from what I hear, and experienced. It was something else.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I can’t say right now. Let me work on it for a while, and I’ll give y’all a call when I figure it out.”
Miss Ruby rested both gnarled hands in her lap. A gray-and-white cat jumped onto the arm of her chair, and she went to petting it. “You must know something.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
Miss Ruby frowned. “Well, I need to ask you something.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The first police officers that got here took our pistols. Now we don’t have any way to protect ourselves. Can you get them back for us or get us some more guns? You know, this neighborhood’s not safe anymore.”
I grinned. “Well, I don’t have any pistols to leave with y’all, but I’ll ask the officers to keep someone outside the house for a while.”
“Well, we’ll still be unarmed when they quit sitting out there. I’ve seen them television programs where they have to call the officers in because they don’t have enough money to pay ’em no more.”
“Can y’all put us in witness protection?” Miss Harriet looked hopeful. “I’d like to move somewhere else and start over.”
“Well, the witness protection program is federal. It’s for people who have special knowledge of a case. Those boys out there’ll take care of you. I promise you that.”
Miss Harriet cocked her head, and I could tell she wasn’t finished.
“Is there something else you wanted to ask me, ma’am?”
“There sure is. Are you married?”
“Harriet!” Miss Ruby threw up her hands. “You ought not be asking the man that. And looky there. You can see as clear as day that he’s wearing a wedding ring.”
“I saw it, but it don’t hurt to ask. I just needed to know how married he really is.”
I couldn’t help but grin, and backed out the door, holding my hat between us like a Spartan shield. “I’m as married as you can get. To a good gal, but thanks Miss Harriet for asking. I’m flattered.”
“See?” She made a face at Miss Ruby. “He’s flattered. I still got it.”
“Why you don’t have any such of a thing. You’ve never had a man in your life and . . .”
I fled the scene and went back outside where it was safe.
Chapter 10
In faded jeans and a bright white shirt with puffy sleeves, the light-skinned Devil Woman of Coahuila, known back in Texas when she was a high school student as Tish Villarreal, led a contingency of armed men across a flat valley floor more than a hundred miles from Del Rio. Fenced on one side by sheer rock cliffs that formed a semicircle around the valley, the area where they walked was dotted with mounds of varying sizes, heights, and age.
Several of her soldados, or soldiers, remained beside a line of black Lincoln SUVs to keep an eye on the two-track dirt road weaving across the landscape.
Black wings circled the sky and a weak voice called. “Agua!”
Slender, almost boyish in figure, the five-foot two-inch woman with shoulder-length raven black hair wove through mounds of dirt. As if shopping, she occasionally paused beside some of the older, weathered mounds, reading names and dates written on small plastic tags hanging from crude wire handles that disappeared into the ground.
Two men from Coahuila’s narco government walked beside her, their heads covered from the burning hot sun with straw cowboy hats. The duo didn’t carry themselves with the same wary bearing as the others, but sauntered across the hardpan as if there was nothing to fear within a thousand miles.
Villarreal pointed downward with a slender, manicured finger and spoke in Spanish. “That was Roberto Vega.”
Esteban, the getaway driver and only survivor of the failed Nelson hit in Del Rio, followed a few steps behind her, bracketed by two men with dead eyes and hard sets to their jaws. He followed the point. “Sí, señorita.”
She cut her dark eyes toward him and smiled. Deep dimples formed at the corners of her mouth. They gave her a mischievous look, one that once drove the boys crazy at Gomez High in El Paso. “He was one of my friends from the start. He helped make our organization what it is today.”
The look would have been coy in a bar or a party. It was out of place in the hot valley baking in the sun. Instead of feeling any attraction to the pretty woman with blue-black hair, Esteban shivered. “I knew him.”
“You know why his name is on that etiqueta?”
The weak voice beside the SUVs called again. “Agua.”
Villarreal ignored the interruption as Esteban’s eyes flicked to the man lying prone on the rocky ground, quickly sliding off and back to the little piece of orange plastic that looked like an ear tag for cattle. “Señorita, lo siento. I cannot read.”
“Entiendo.” She resumed their walk, the heels of her caiman-skin boots making tiny thumps that were almost lost in the shuffle of the other men’s footsteps who followed without speaking.
It was safer that way.
“You’re sorry I can’t read?” Esteban frowned. The conversation wasn’t following any path that it should have. “Many of us can’t.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Villarreal’s tone sharpened for only an instant. She softened the statement with a wan smile.
None of the armed men met the cartel leader’s eyes. Instead, they studied the distance, the nearby cliffs, even their own feet, in an attempt not to look too hard at the graves.
She passed a fresh mound that looked to have been created only days earlier. “Do you know what Incencio would have done if I had sent him to Del Rio instead of you and those other three idiotas to wipe the rest of Frank Nelson’s relatives from the face of the earth?”
He started to shrug again, but stopped in mid movement. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
The tiny crease at the corner of Trish’s mouth deepened when she smiled on only one side. “It’s probably best.”
She stopped on a bare, flat piece of hardpan and nudged a rock with the toe of her boot. “He would have done what I asked.” Holding out her hand, she stared into the shimmering distance. “Roberto.”
One of her gangsters with 1518 tattooed across his forehead plucked a Beretta M9 from the waistband at the small of his back and held it out, butt first.
Tish Villarreal took the large pistol with her tiny hand and let it hang loose at her side. “Esteban. You understand how I run this organization.”
Her men separated from Villarreal, circling around so as not to crowd her. Because she’d stopped, the gangsters carrying an assortment of automatic weapons scattered and faced outward to ensure complete coverage of the area. Safe in their own territory, they nevertheless kept their guard up
and fingers close to the triggers, for to do otherwise would draw the wrath of the Devil Woman.
Mouth suddenly dry as the ground under their feet, Esteban stared at his shoes. “Sí, señorita.”
“You know the men who serve under me.”
“Sí.”
“Do you know how I came to this position?”
“No.” Esteban cut his eyes upward.
“I didn’t sleep my way here, like you probably think.” She presented him with a brilliant smile. “It didn’t happen that way. Many thought I was a boy when I was younger. I wore T-shirts and kept my hair short.” She flipped her head, throwing one side of her long black hair back over a shoulder. “I did what I needed to, so I could move up in the ranks.
“Because I looked like a boy, I was the perfect sicario, small and almost unnoticed. I learned from another boy who was my age, who killed up close for the Sinacolas. He taught me much. I liked him, but he disappeared one night and I never saw him again.”
One hand on her hip, she studied the distant ridgeline, possibly seeing into the past. “No matter. He’d taught what he knew. After that, I killed when ordered to, and when the time came, I killed those who issued the orders and took their place.” Her brilliant smile was like bright sunshine on that sunny day. “I assassinated my way to the top.
“I created this cinsorcio. Our world is simple. Move product and people. Obey without question, and never, ever cross me. Those who listen and do as I say profit with plenty of money and a good life. Those who fail to do their jobs weaken the cartel. You understand that, don’t you?”
Esteban finally met her gaze with fearful eyes. “Sí.”
Tish nodded solemnly, as if he’d given an answer full of thought.
“Agua, por favor, señorita!”
Villarreal turned her head toward the man lying on the ground nearly seventy-five yards away. “I’m tired of listening to that pendejo. Bring him over here.” Two of her soldiers trotted in the man’s direction. She addressed another soldato with an AK-47 slung muzzle down over his shoulder. He carried a shovel in his left hand. “Salazar.”
He stepped forward. “Sí, señorita.”
She pointed at the flat piece of ground. “There.”
The man handed his weapon to another, took three steps away from where she stood, and punched the blade into the hard, dry ground, digging steadily. The two soldiers returned, half-carrying, half dragging a shirtless man across the rocky ground.
They held his sunburned, tattoo-covered body upright. Covered with sand from where he’d been laying, his ghost-white face was full of pain and terror. “Por favor.”
“Do not speak.” Villarreal flicked a dismissive hand. “Tell Esteban your name and why you are here.”
He coughed, wet and deep. “I’m sorry, señorita.”
“Tell him!”
He dropped his gaze. “I am Juan Sarmiento. I took some of the cocaina I was supposed to deliver.”
She watched him, as if memorizing the scene at her feet. “Why?”
The Mexican’s face twisted in pain. “To sell, and for my own use.”
“You know my people don’t use the product.”
“Sí.”
“You know the punishment for stealing from me. Tell everyone the penalty.”
“Por favor.” A steady trickle of blood leaked from his mouth. “Please. I will do anything you ask if you spare me.”
“Get on your knees.”
Moving with great pain, the prisoner dropped and bowed his head. “Lo siento.”
Esteban almost gasped at the horrific sight of the man’s bare back. He’d seen the final results many times in the Devil Woman’s courtyard, but never men at this stage.
A loop of wire protruded from the puffy, lacerated skin between the man’s bloody shoulder blades and curled up into the exact same braided handle as those rising up from the surrounding mounds. The other end disappeared into a similar fresh wound in the middle of his back. The wire looped around the man’s spinal column at both ends, anchoring the “handle.”
Esteban unconsciously crossed himself. “Madre de dios.”
Villarreal pointed with her left hand at a wire handle protruding from a nearly flat mound only six feet away. “Roberto. It is time to pull that one.”
Face devoid of emotion and eyes downcast, the appointed soldato nodded and approached the low mound. Straddling the wire handle, Roberto bent his knees, grasped it with both hands, and pulled slow and steady, as if tugging a particularly tough weed from the ground.
The dry soil rose and soft cracking sounds came from beneath the surface. Roberto continued the pressure, gently pulling the handle upward. From underground, muffled pops like the tearing of small roots reached those standing under the hot sun. The dry surface cracked and still he pulled slow and steady. He’d done this before.
He adjusted his grip, rocking the handle slightly to put more pressure on one end, then the other. More pops came clearer as the ground reluctantly gave up what it had held.
Esteban gasped and started to step back. One of Villarreal’s soldiers put a hand against his back to hold the shocked man in place.
Her face impassive, Villarreal watched Roberto do his work with the attention of a farmer pulling potato vines. The foul smell of human decomposition filled the still air as the shallow grave finally gave up the remainder of the spine and skull that had been buried only inches below the surface. The popping sounds were the corpse’s ribs ripping loose from the rotting cartilage. Held together by a few remaining ligaments, the skull and spinal column was dark with sticky clay and full of not-yet decomposed flesh.
Decaying flesh and hair curled off the skull. Dried ligaments prevented the cracked skull from falling off the spine. The entry hole from a bullet in the left temple was tiny compared to the size of the exit wound.
Grimacing at the stench, the usually unmoved narco government men turned away from the sight. Most of her soldados mimicked Esteban’s sign of the cross at the sight of what Roberto held. Like a fisherman examining his catch, and breathing through his mouth to avoid the odor, he turned the grisly trophy sideways for Villarreal to see.
She blinked her long lashes. “That was Juan Duarte.”
Throughout the process and only a few feet away, the soldado named Salazar had continued digging the shallow grave, keeping his full attention to the job at hand.
“Duarte worked for the Nueva Laredo cartel.” The Devil Woman told the story as if they were sitting in a living room instead of standing in the middle of a field from hell. “He killed one of my people after joining them. The rest of his family sleeps beneath the ground in Parral where he came from, but Juan Duarte will never rest. He will hang in the mesquites at the patio de huesos with the others, so that everyone will know his fate.”
Horrified, the man with the handle wired into his back groaned and held up one hand. “Por favor, Díos.”
Villarreal tilted her head like a puppy examining a strange noise. Expressionless, her arm rose and her finger tightened on the trigger. She paused, as if listening to someone they couldn’t see, then handed the pistol to Esteban.
“Shoot him and redeem yourself.”
Without hesitation, he took the pistol. It bucked in his hand. The report was sharp and echoed off the cliff. The pleading man’s head snapped sideways when the bullet plowed through his skull and buried itself in the ground only feet away in an explosion of dry soil. The body folded forward to rest on its chest.
Esteban swallowed the lump in his throat and watched impassively as the body remained on its knees, the braided wire handle rising straight and true from his back. He handed the semi-automatic back to her, prepared for what might happen next.
Tish Villarreal passed the 9mm back to Roberto and met Esteban’s gaze. “You didn’t intentionally fail me. You made a bad decision in taking the younger sicarios. You got sloppy, but because you obeyed me just now and your past loyalty, I will let you live.”
Overcome with re
lief, his knees almost buckled.
Villarreal took his upper arm as gently as a child. “You will never fail me again. If you do, you will join these flowers in my garden. Comprende, my handsome man?”
Weak with relief, Esteban’s voice cracked. “Sí, señorita.”
Flicking her fingers at the silent tenientes, or narco lieutenants, she fixed them with an icy regard. “Go back and tell your capos what you’ve seen and how I deal with treacherous halcones.”
She let go and turned on one heel. Without looking back, the Devil Woman struck out back toward the Lincolns. “Bien. Roberto, let us go hang this one from the mesquites and have alumerzo. I’m starving.”
Chapter 11
Detective Cordova from the Del Rio police department and Val Verde County Sheriff Ortiz were talking to a DPS officer beside a big Mexican palm in the Nelson sisters’ front yard when I stepped outside and set my hat. They quit talking as I approached and weighed what they saw.
I weighed them back and decided they were safer than Miss Harriet.
Thick black hair buzzed short on the sides and probably in his forties, Detective Cordova was slender, but leaning toward a spare tire around the middle. He looked like a good, solid cop to me. I’ve known those kind of officers all my life, men who did their job well and worried at night when they couldn’t figure a case out.
Sheriff Ortiz was an elected official. I could tell he was my kind of guy. Forced into politics by the nature of the job, he was at the core a good solid man and it showed. White shirt, jeans, and a new straw hat, he was the kind of lawman you’d expect in the Valley. The poor guy looked weathered, as if the sun had taken a particular dislike to him and redoubled its efforts every time he stepped outside.
Leaning against his cruiser, the highway patrol officer named Rene Rodriguez was a lean, muscular individual I’d met not long after moving from the DPS to the Rangers. He gave me a nod, attention focused on the cinco peso pinned to my shirt. “I plan to wear one of those someday.”
“It’s tough to get in. You’ll need eight years under your belt as a state trooper.”
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