Texas Sicario (Arlo Baines Book 2) Page 16

  Shadows splayed across the bedroom, the last of the night disappearing as dawn filtered through the windows. The dim light accentuated the drabness of the room, the faded wallpaper, scarred wooden floor, the battered dresser.

  Boom.

  Another shotgun blast.

  I remembered where I was, the time of year.

  An old farmhouse at a ranch outside of Stephenville, a small town about two hours west of Dallas. Early September, the start of hunting season for doves, all but a religious festival for certain Texans.

  After a moment, my heart rate lessened. I slipped off the bed, wandered to the window.

  Sunflower fields surrounded the yard, separated by barbed-wire fences. The plants represented a major food source for doves. Two men in camo T-shirts sat on hunting stools on the field side, backs to the house, shotguns resting on their laps.

  The farmhouse used to be the caretaker’s place, and the structure was twenty years past needing to be torn down. Aloysius Throckmorton had arranged for the lodgings as well as the old pickup in the garage, our current mode of transportation.

  Miguel appeared in the doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand held out as an offering.

  I padded across the room and accepted the mug.

  “Did the hunters wake you?” I asked.

  He didn’t reply, eyes wide and empty.

  “Los cazadores te despertaron?” I tried again in Spanish.

  After a few seconds, he shook his head and disappeared down the hall.

  He didn’t talk much anymore, or sleep for that matter, not since the night he killed Fito Alvarez.

  Not like he’d ever been a chatterbox, but now he was nearly mute, a few words a day at most. If circumstances were different, I’d take him to a doctor, a specialist of some kind. But doctors and hospitals meant records, a paper trail, and we’d been through too much to get caught in a trap like that.

  Also, Miguel had killed an enforcer for a drug cartel, which didn’t bode well for either of us.

  The only medical care we had was the drunken ob-gyn who owed Throckmorton several favors and had taken care of my concussion in the aftermath of the Aztec Massacre. Unfortunately, he wasn’t qualified to treat childhood emotional trauma.

  That’s what the media called the killings, by the way, the Aztec Massacre, despite protests by several Native American groups.

  Four people had died, all by Miguel’s hand.

  Alphonso “Fito” Alvarez, a dirty cop from Del Rio, who might or might not have been on the DEA’s payroll as an informant, depending on which alternative news website you followed.

  Maria Diaz, a hairdresser supposedly in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  And two street hoods with extensive criminal records, the tattooed thugs.

  As of the previous night, the last time I’d checked on my burner phone, the Dallas police had no leads. The primary investigator, Detective Ross, referred reporters back to his original statement, which declared the crime to be a small-time drug deal gone bad, despite the fact that no narcotics had been found on the premises.

  I took a sip of coffee and decided to pack my few belongings. Maybe it was the noise from the hunters, maybe we’d just been in one spot too long, but today felt like a good time to find a new hidey-hole.

  After packing, I showered and got dressed. When I left the room, duffel over my shoulder, Miguel was in the hallway with his bag.

  “Great minds think alike,” I said.

  He frowned, clearly not understanding the expression.

  Together we cleaned up what little mess we’d made, putting everything in a plastic garbage bag that would go in the back of the truck for later disposal.

  I used a rag and a bottle of glass cleaner to wipe down every surface in the house, obliterating any fingerprints we might have left.

  The place was still awash with an ocean of our DNA, but our efforts would slow down any investigators, if they learned that we’d been at this location.

  Outside, the sun had risen over a cloudless horizon, promising a hot day.

  We waited until the hunters left their perch to retrieve a couple of downed birds. Then we jogged to the pickup, threw our stuff in the rear, and hopped in the cab.

  We were gone by the time they returned to their stools, out of the yard and onto the gravel road leading to the highway. Dust trailed the old pickup as I kept the speed at a steady twenty miles per hour.

  Miguel looked out the window as the sunflower fields passed by.

  Hunters were everywhere, their vehicles lining the side of the road. Hopefully they were all busy searching the skies for birds, not paying attention to us.

  The burner phone rang, and I answered. Only one person had the number.

  “Where are you?” Throckmorton’s voice on the other end.

  “Driving.”

  “That joint from the other day,” he said. “How soon can you be there?”

  We’d met at a Mexican food restaurant several weeks before, when he’d given me the key and directions to the farmhouse.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Toss your phone.” He ended the call.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE -

  Lupe’s Family Restaurant occupied a stucco building on a farm-to-market road a few miles outside of town.

  The exterior was painted with a mural of Pancho Villa riding a longhorn bull and holding a beer stein, which made no sense to me, but I wasn’t in the food service business.

  The lot was about half-full, mostly pickups and work vehicles, the sun bright and hot, reflecting off the gravel. I parked underneath a hackberry tree at the edge of the lot, the nose of the truck pointing toward the highway. Throckmorton’s Suburban was by the front door.

  Miguel and I got out and headed inside.

  The interior was decorated with piñatas and sombreros, the air smelling like grease and corn tortillas. The place was doing a good business, farmers eating breakfast, ranchers discussing the price of cattle, everybody talking about how they needed rain.

  Throckmorton sat alone at a four-top in the rear of the dining area, his back to the wall.

  “You lose the phone?” he asked.

  I nodded and took a seat next to him, my back to the corner. I’d tossed the cell into a creek about a mile or so away.

  Miguel sat across from me.

  Throckmorton looked at the youngster. “Tienes hambre?”

  No answer.

  Miguel and the old Texas Ranger had become fast friends in the days after the shootout at the bazaar, at least as much as possible with the youngster not communicating all that well.

  Throckmorton had put aside his inherent prejudice against brown-skinned people for the moment and taken the child under his leathery wing, buying him candy and video games, fretting over him. Miguel stayed close to the old lawman as we made our way out of Dallas, standing next to him as the Texas Ranger gassed up his Suburban, following him through the aisles of various convenience stores.

  Maybe the boy needed a grizzled grandfather figure in his life. Maybe Aloysius Throckmorton, childless and lonely, felt a need to nurture.

  “He still not talking?” Throckmorton asked.

  I shook my head. “Why the urgency to get together?”

  Several elderly men in overalls and gimme caps shuffled across the room. When they were past our table, Throckmorton said, “The police got a usable fingerprint off the gun that killed Fito.”

  A knot formed in my stomach. I’d wiped down the gun, but with the head injury and general chaos, I obviously hadn’t done a very thorough job.

  “A child’s fingerprint,” he said. “Not in any databases.”

  The waitress strolled over, asked if we wanted anything to eat. I ignored the rising nausea and ordered, because it seemed like the thing to do, huevos rancheros for both Miguel and me. Throckmorton asked for huevos con chorizo, heavy on the chorizo.

  After she left, I said, “So they know about him now.”

  “They know about a kid, n
ot him specifically.”

  The building had been empty when the killings occurred, so no one had heard the gunfire. Quinn Vega had helped me carry Javier to the office—I had the vaguest recollection of this—and place him on the sofa in the reception area, Miguel following us in a daze.

  “They’re still trying to put the hard drive for the video system back together,” he said. “Good call, smashing it up.”

  I nodded, the memory of destroying the DVR fuzzy, like so many things from that night.

  “What about Pecky Ruibal?” I asked. “Any leads on that?”

  “That’s a grade-five shitstorm. The assistant manager at the club, one of the other guys who got killed, his uncle’s a state senator. Every investigator not working the Aztec Bazaar is logging overtime on the Ruibal case.”

  The waitress returned with a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa. Miguel ate a couple. Then he crossed his arms like he was cold and stared across the room.

  “You know a place called Mendoza’s Auto Salvage?” Throckmorton asked. “Over on West Davis by the highway?”

  I shook my head, tried to keep a poker face.

  In the aftermath of the shooting, I had been left with very few options. I’d been suffering from a head injury and not functioning at full speed. Even under those circumstances, my main goal remained crystal clear—protect Miguel.

  So I’d decided to take a chance and call Throckmorton, being up-front with him about the situation at the Aztec Bazaar. Fito was dead, as were others. I didn’t say who had pulled what trigger, and he didn’t ask.

  Confiding in a Texas Ranger nearing retirement—one who wanted nothing more than to stop the Vaqueros by whatever means necessary—seemed like a better idea than coming clean to the Dallas police. But I hadn’t told him anything about Quinn Vega and me shooting the ponytailed man and the thug at the salvage yard.

  “How about a guy named Gusano?” he asked. “Hooked up with the Mexican Mafia.”

  “The Worm?” I wondered if Throckmorton was about to slap the cuffs on me for murder.

  “Not my first choice of nicknames.” He paused. “You know him?”

  I shook my head again, grateful I’d disposed of my weapon.

  “Somebody took him out at the salvage yard. Ballistics matched the gun used in the other killings.”

  “Was Gusano’s name on the list?” I asked. “His real name?”

  Throckmorton shook his head.

  Then he told me what I already knew. The fire at the warehouse that destroyed a car similar to the one witnessed at Pecky Ruibal’s crime scene. The other two dead guys in the office, lower-echelon soldiers with the Mexican Mafia, killed with a different weapon, a Glock 9mm.

  “Eleven murders in one day,” he said. “Everybody at the Dallas PD is a teensy bit uptight, as you can imagine.”

  Eleven killings was a relatively quiet Saturday in Chicago. But in Texas, a Sunbelt state with historically low crime rates, that level of carnage made for lurid headlines and lots of official hand-wringing, police brass fearing for their jobs, government officials grandstanding for the news cameras.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Seven of the murders had been committed by the same gun, the weapon used to kill Alejandro Sandoval, the crime that had started my involvement. Seven killings that I still didn’t know anything about, despite my best efforts.

  The circumstances surrounding the other four, the people who had died at the Aztec Bazaar, I was all too familiar with.

  “You think there were two shooters?” I asked, hoping I sounded like I didn’t know the answer.

  He nodded.

  “Maybe one of the Mexican Mafia soldiers is our killer,” I said. “He and Gusano mixed it up and both caught a bullet. That would make the most sense.”

  “Maybe. Except the police didn’t find any weapons at the scene.”

  I drummed my fingers on the tabletop, trying to look pensive and not worried.

  “Somebody cleaned up,” he said. “Took the guns, destroyed the DVR.”

  Neither of us spoke for a few moments.

  “You used to carry a Glock, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged. “You always were a rebel.”

  The Texas Rangers were as tradition-bound and stuck in their ways as an eighty-year-old spinster living alone with a bunch of cats. Rangers wore the same garb—Stetsons and western-style shirts. Carried the same guns—Colt Government Models in ornately tooled holsters. Deviations were noticed, frowned upon.

  The waitress brought our food.

  Throckmorton dug in. Miguel picked at his. I just stared at the plate.

  “You OK?” Throckmorton asked. “Something wrong with your eggs?”

  I ate a bite, feigning enthusiasm. “Why’d you tell me to ditch the phone?”

  “Ross’s making noise about you being a person of interest. He knows you and me are friends. If he decides to check out my phone records . . .” He arched his eyebrows.

  As a former homicide investigator, I actually felt a little sorry for Detective Ross. He had a morgue full of murder victims and precious little to go on.

  Despite the fact that I had broken Fito’s nose in a crowded bar, no one had admitted to the police that they’d seen either of us. Good for me in terms of the Dallas PD, bad in the sense that Fito’s people knew I was there and that I had to have some knowledge of what happened to him.

  All Ross had to go on, however, was the four dead bodies in Maria’s store, an unidentified child’s fingerprint, and no video.

  I had talked to the detective by phone the next day, my head bandaged and aching like I’d drunk a bottle of tequila the night before.

  I told him I was at my motel during the time Fito had been killed. With no cooperating witnesses or video, he couldn’t very well contradict me. Also, it was common knowledge that I didn’t handle security at night. That was the job of the patrol service, who mercifully was not on-site at the time.

  Throckmorton stared across the room like he didn’t want to look me in the eye.

  I waited, knowing there was more to come.

  “Ross’s heard about Miguel,” he said. “The partial fingerprint. You can imagine how his mind’s working.”

  The youngster ate another couple of bites and stopped, looking back and forth between the two adults at the table.

  I pushed away my plate, my mind worrying over logistics: how much money I had easy access to, where we could go next, the difficulty of getting Miguel a forged identity.

  The waitress came over and asked if we needed anything else. Throckmorton shook his head. She cleared the table and left.

  “How much longer you got on the job?” I asked.

  “About to start using up vacation time now.”

  My only ally was days away from retirement.

  Then it would be Miguel and me alone, facing Ross and his homicide investigation and an angry drug cartel.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR -

  Outside the restaurant, Throckmorton and I stood by the side of his Suburban. Miguel was in my pickup.

  “How many killings is that with the same gun?” I asked.

  He mumbled to himself for a moment, tapping on his fingers with his thumb. “Six or seven, at least. Not counting the collateral damage at the club.”

  “Our guy’s likely not a professional,” I said. “Otherwise, he would have ditched the weapon after the first couple of hits.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he was sending a message by using the same piece.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Sandoval at the tire store. A single round in the head would have been enough. But three times? One in the knee, for Pete’s sake—that’s like he wanted it to hurt.”

  Neither of us spoke. Cicadas screeched in the trees, and a truck hauling a gooseneck trailer lumbered down the road.

  “You talked to Quinn Vega lately?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  We’d spoken several t
imes by phone in the week after the killings, but I hadn’t communicated with her since Miguel and I had gone underground.

  Witnessing Fito’s death had seemed to calm her nerves.

  In the immediate aftermath, she was no longer shaky and fearful. She’d found an ice pack for my head after I’d carried Javier to the office, helped me hold the phone while I called Throckmorton, propped me up as everything went woozy again.

  “You thought about what to do now?” he asked. “I got a guy in Abilene who can put you up for a while.”

  “And then what?” I said.

  Sooner or later, Throckmorton would run out of guys who were willing to hide me from the police and a drug cartel.

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose like he was tired and reached inside his SUV, removing the picture by the speedometer.

  “Me and my wife, you know we never had children.”

  I gave a half nod, half shrug.

  He held up the photo. “This is my niece. My sister’s kid.”

  “Looks like a nice girl.”

  “Smart, too. She was studying architecture at UT.”

  I decided not to comment on his use of the past tense.

  “Unfortunately, she had a bad picker when it came to men.”

  “What happened?”

  “Boyfriend was hooked up with one of the cartels, thought he was Scarface. Got her working as a mule, running shit across the bridge in Brownsville.”

  I understood now why he had helped me escape from the Aztec Bazaar, why he wasn’t going to arrest me no matter how much jeopardy that choice put him in.

  “She’s in the penitentiary. Just turned twenty-six years old.” He shook his head. “What do you think it’s like for a pretty girl like her on the inside?”

  I wondered if he was ever part of any DEA task force. Had all this started as a way for him to avenge what had happened to his niece?

  That made as much sense as anything. We were all trying to fix something, to patch the cracks in our souls.

  He returned the picture to its spot in his Suburban, and neither of us spoke for a few moments.

  “Far as I can tell,” I said, “there’s only one way out.”

  He cocked his head.

  “Give the Vaqueros the shooter. Negotiate a peace.”