Head Wounds Page 11

  “Just what I don’t need,” Clayton commented. At least so far, no names had been given out by the Feds.

  “You may have saved our lives,” Isabel replied.

  “I honestly don’t know if that’s the case.”

  “You could have been killed protecting Blossom, the girls, and me.”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “I was terrified you’d been shot.” Her eyes were moist.

  Clayton took her hand. “That didn’t happen, either. I’m okay, honestly. Have you talked with Grace?”

  Isabel nodded. “Just before you arrived. She’s very worried.”

  “I’ll call her before I leave for home. Do you want me to request overnight police protection for Blossom and the girls?”

  Isabel shook her head. “Blossom’s brother is coming up from Alamogordo. He’ll be here soon. I’ll stay with them until then.”

  Clayton finished his coffee and stood. “Okay.”

  Isabel’s expression turned somber. Her jaw was set, her eyes now clear. Years of experience told Clayton that she was ready to launch into a lecture.

  He was in no mood. He cut her off with a kiss on the cheek. “Not now.”

  Isabel sighed. “We’ll talk soon.”

  “Soon,” Clayton agreed.

  In his unit, he notified dispatch he was off duty, parked out of sight behind the grocery store, and called Grace.

  Losing all hope, Estavio Trevino logged on one last time to a secure email account routed through La Paz, Bolivia. Once again, there was no message from Fernando. He was hours overdue for his daily check-in, and only some disaster or misfortune would have kept his adopted son from fulfilling his duty.

  Fernando was forever loyal and trustworthy in all matters pertaining to family and in the discharge of any tasks given to him by his father. From a very early age, Trevino had trained him well in the art of self-defense, the use of weapons, wilderness survival, and the skills and techniques of an assassin.

  But he’d never sent Fernando out on a kill and had no plans to do so. As Fernando had grown into manhood, he’d become a valuable assistant for advance research and scouting, and any necessary follow-up assignments. Using Fernando in this way allowed Trevino to remain almost invisible at the time of the kill, virtually impossible to identify.

  Had Fernando asked to be given a target of his own, Trevino would not have denied him. But it was not in his nature. He could kill, but not humans. Trevino believed it had to do with a nightmare memory buried deeply in Fernando’s three-year-old mind.

  His free-spirited German parents traveling with him on an extended camping journey through Mexico had driven into the remote and isolated Bolsón de Mapimí, far west of the Kickapoo homeland, beyond the lovely, vast ranches ringed by mountains. There, at a campsite surrounded by low naked hills, crumpled mesas, gray and lifeless in a windblown emptiness, they had been set upon, the husband murdered, the wife raped and killed, all their possessions stolen, and the child left unharmed and alive near the smoldering embers of the campfire.

  Trevino found him two days later wandering down a dry arroyo almost within shouting distance of his hidden hacienda. He was filthy, hungry, thirsty, and in tears, clinging to him fiercely. Trevino carried the little boy home, knowing that Kitzihiat, the Great Spirit of the Kickapoos, had brought the child to him as a gift.

  The boy spoke no Spanish or English. In fact, he spoke not a word at all. After he’d been washed, fed, given fresh milk and a warm bed, Trevino charged his Mexican housekeeper to be gentle with the boy, while he went to solve the mystery.

  It took a day to find the murder site and three more days to find the stolen vehicle, a VW camper van, parked in a lot behind a bright yellow house in the town of Múzquiz. He’d waited and watched until two men came out and left in the van. When no one answered his knock at the door, he drove to the town center, walked back, and got in through an unlocked back window.

  Inside, he’d found personal items, clothing, and identification documents belonging to the German couple and their boy. A more thorough search convinced him that the two men—brothers in their late thirties—were the only occupants. He gathered up every item in the house that might possibly belong to the victims, put it in garbage bags, and waited. It was night when the men returned, drunk and staggering, carrying take-out food from a taqueria.

  He killed them silently and quickly, took the garbage bags to the van, and drove away. Off a dirt road in the foothills above the city, he burned the van and everything in it. Walking toward a distant hilltop, he saw it explode into a fireball when the flames reached the gas tank. In a brief minute the first emergency siren screamed into the thin air from the town below.

  That was the night Trevino became a father.

  He closed the laptop, left the library, and walked to the media room, where a large-screen television with access to major satellite and Internet subscription services was mounted to a wall. Trevino surfed the El Paso and Albuquerque television stations for any stories about serious crimes, road accidents, or major mishaps that might have occurred in the region. Except for a motorcycle fatality involving a soldier from Fort Bliss, not much else was making headlines on the late evening news. He switched to the YouTube app and ran through the most recent user uploads. A short video of a police shooting incident on the Mescalero Apache Reservation caught his attention.

  A body lay on the parking lot pavement near a car that looked identical to the vehicle Fernando said he’d rented in San Antonio. The video was shaky and the picture too fuzzy. The person talking was hard to understand. Something about a cop gunning down somebody outside the tribal grocery store.

  Had Fernando shot someone? Been shot?

  Trevino scanned for more YouTube footage. He found two more, three more videos, showing a cop holding up his badge as uniformed officers arrived, announcing himself as a Doña Ana sheriff’s detective.

  Trevino froze the frame and called Lieutenant Roger Ulibarri of the Texas Department of Public Safety at his home in El Paso. For years, he had bought information from Ulibarri, and paid handsomely for it.

  “Find out what happened at Mescalero and call me back within the hour,” he said when Ulibarri answered.

  “Ten-four,” Ulibarri replied.

  Trevino dropped the phone on the couch cushion and prowled restlessly through his hacienda and its grounds. It was a modern, low-slung, sprawling house with detached staff quarters, a stable and horse corral, and a five-car garage hidden by a twelve-foot adobe wall that enclosed the entire ten-acre property. Beyond the wall were thousands of acres Trevino owned with only one way in and out, unless, of course, you knew the alternatives.

  As he roamed, he prepared for bad news. It was the only way he knew how to live.

  CHAPTER 9

  A combination of luck and a called-in marker had DEA Special Agent Bernard Harjo in the air to Albuquerque for an emergency meeting with the FBI special agent in charge and Linda Foster-Nelson, the Roswell field agent who’d caught the fatal shooting investigation of a still-unidentified subject at Mescalero.

  The DEA had a fleet of about a hundred aircraft, and while most of them were used for surveillance and interdiction, a few corporate-class jets ferried the bosses around on their way to career-enhancing meetings. Harjo’s free ride came as a result of scheduled maintenance for the plane at the Fort Worth DEA aviation center. He’d be picked up by the pilot on his return to Los Angeles in a different, freshly serviced aircraft.

  That was the lucky part. The marker he’d used was with Ben Shiver, the honcho of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office. Years ago, during a joint operation on Indian land, Shiver had unlawfully restrained and physically assaulted a pushy, arrogant freelance photojournalist, who filed charges against him. Harjo had witnessed the event and swore it never happened. Thus, Shiver’s ass was saved. Thus, Foster-Nelson was ordered to Albuquerque ASAP.

  Harjo was anxious to land and find out exactly why the man Clayton Istee had shot to death ha
d no confirmed identity, no known history. Behind the faked, professional-grade police credentials and other forged personal identification documents found among the unknown SUB’s possessions, a black hole existed. That seemed ludicrous. He had to come from somewhere, be somebody.

  Fifty miles out, the plane began a gradual descent into Albuquerque. The city was pressed against the foothills of the striking Sandia Mountains, and as with all large southwestern cities, there were endless, ubiquitous strip malls, traffic-laden surface streets, interstate highways that cut through its core, and a downtown slowly sputtering toward revitalization. Surprisingly, there weren’t too many skyscrapers, which gave it a more open scale, and the Rio Grande, with its thick bosque, interrupted a good deal of the man-made ugliness.

  The FBI field office consisted of several unimposing buildings in a compound behind an inconspicuous low-security fence. Tucked in among a hodgepodge of industrial and commercial business parks, it bordered an access road that fronted a northbound 1-25 access lane.

  Shiver and Foster-Nelson met Harjo at the reception area and took him directly to a conference room adjacent to Shiver’s office. Just prior to going undercover several years ago, Harjo had last seen Shiver at a law enforcement conference in Montreal. At six-three with no body fat, Shiver tended to lope rather than walk, and, by nature, talk rather than listen.

  Foster-Nelson seemed unassuming and, in Harjo’s assessment, a bit unprepossessing.

  Evidence collected at the scene of the fatal shooting of the unnamed subject was laid out and neatly labeled on the long table. Seated at the far end, much to Harjo’s surprise, was his nominal boss, Samantha Hodges, special agent in charge, El Paso District.

  “Hello, Bernie,” Hodges said genially.

  Harjo hated to be called Bernie. He stifled a grimace, nodded pleasantly, glanced at everything on the table, and said to no one in particular, “Where’s the corpse? It would have made a great centerpiece.”

  Shiver smiled politely and gestured at the contents on the table. “You’ll have to make do with the autopsy photographs. Everything’s labeled, but I’m sure you’ll have questions.”

  Harjo started with the photos. The man had been in his early thirties, slightly under six feet, brown eyes, muscular, with no tattoos or distinguishing marks.

  “No fingerprint matches?” Harjo inquired.

  Shiver shook his head. “We ran them again, as you asked.”

  “We also ran facial recognition software and didn’t get a match,” Foster-Nelson added, referring to her notepad. “However, Interpol came up with an interesting comparable: Herman Joseph Arensdorf, forty-eight, who is serving a fifteen-year prison term in Germany for voluntary manslaughter. He’s never been out of the country and he has no known relatives living abroad.”

  “Our subject was German?”

  “Predominantly German, with some French thrown in,” Foster-Nelson replied. “But ancestry analysis isn’t always accurate.”

  “Because there’s a chance there might be a family connection, we’ve asked for the German prisoner’s DNA profile,” Shiver noted. “His lawyer is blocking our request in hopes of getting his client’s sentence reduced. In the meantime, we’re running the surname Arensdorf through every federal, state, and local database we can access.”

  “Great,” Harjo grumbled. “What about the tablet and the cell phone?”

  “Both the hard drive and the SIM card were erased as soon as the technicians powered on the devices,” Foster-Nelson answered. “Wiped clean with the same type of technology the CIA uses. The serial numbers show they were manufactured in China for sale in the EU.”

  “Is there anything here that’s American-made?” Harjo asked, waving a hand over the table.

  “Not really,” Shiver replied. “The weapons are all foreign-made and were never reported stolen or exported from their country of origin. The subject’s clothing had all tags and labels removed, but fiber analysis suggests the apparel was not manufactured in North America. Same for the luggage.”

  Harjo eyed the top-of-the-line weapons. Glock, SIG Sauer, Beretta, Taurus, all in perfect order. “No latents from anyone other than the victim?”

  Shiver shook his head. “ATF is contacting the firearms manufacturers to find out how the weapons could have slipped through customs.”

  “Personal items?” Harjo inquired.

  “Sure, stuff you can pick up at any drug or convenience store,” Shiver said. “The money’s authentic. Good old American greenbacks that have been in circulation for a while. Not stolen or traceable to any financial institution as far as we know.”

  “Nothing on the dental work?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Foster-Nelson answered. “A few fillings, no major dental work.”

  Harjo grunted in displeasure.

  “Hope dies hard, doesn’t it, Bernie?” Samantha Hodges said.

  “Did you come here to console me?”

  Hodges got to her feet. “No, to pull the plug on your little Mexico expedition. CIA has stepped in and assumed control. They believe this has the look of something beyond a drug cartel operation.”

  Harjo waved his hand in disbelief. “What? This is too slick, too smooth for dumb Mexicans to pull off? Give me a break. What we know out of the Doña Ana Sheriff’s Office is that our dead perp was backtracking on the couple scalped and murdered in Las Cruces and looking for something they’d had in their possession.”

  “That’s true,” Hodges agreed.

  “Who were assassinated by the best sicario in the business under contract to a major Mexican drug trafficker who also happens to be a corrupt high-ranking cop. This was nothing more than a very high profile contract hit meant to send a message. Not the start of some budding espionage escapade requiring a CIA black ops response.”

  “Nothing has been said about anything like that happening,” Hodges cautioned. “What is happening is that Washington has decided there’s enough controversy at the border with Central American refugees clamoring for asylum and overwhelming the immigration system. You are not going to punch your way into Mexico in search of a possible suspect and cause a public relations catastrophe for the administration. There’s already enough diplomatic tension between the two countries. CIA will assess and determine if any action is appropriate.”

  “That’s it?”

  Samantha Hodges nodded. “Special Agent Fallon goes back to his duty station in Vancouver, you go on thirty days’ annual leave, and we let the Doña Ana County SO know the operation has been scrubbed.”

  Harjo turned on his heel to leave.

  “Do you understand?” Hodges snapped.

  “Yeah, sure,” Harjo said on his way out the door.

  Harjo turned in his rental car at the airport general aviation facility and sat at a table in the nicely appointed empty reception area with a clear view of the runways. With a cup of coffee at his side, he opened his tablet and began entering every last detail he could remember of his meeting at the FBI field office. He wanted his facts and observations to be as comprehensive as possible, right down to his Q&A with Shiver and Foster-Nelson. Additionally, he wanted a record of the comments Hodges had made tanking his operation, passing the buck to the CIA, and ordering him on immediate, involuntary leave. Surely it had all been recorded in real time by Shiver and Hodges.

  As he finished a thorough review of his notes, the facilities general manager approached to say his plane was on final approach. Harjo saw the Cessna Citation aircraft smartly touch down.

  He paused. Only one question remained about his notes: what to do with them. He’d started the process as an exercise in self-preservation. Hodges hadn’t said a word about keeping the substance of the meeting confidential. An oversight on her part?

  He accessed email addresses for Danny Fallon and Clayton Istee, attached the document, put “FYI” in the subject line, and sent it. Both had a right to know the game had been changed, especially Istee, who’d likely faced the greatest threat.

&n
bsp; Obviously the man he’d killed in self-defense was important to somebody.

  Harjo was on the aircraft, strapped in, and ready to depart with no other passengers onboard when the DEA pilot told him he’d been ordered to divert to El Paso and drop him off there.

  He smiled and nodded as if it were no big deal. In a way, it wasn’t. Ever since his early years with the DEA in El Paso, it had been his home base. He owned a house there in a nice part of town close to shopping, with a view of the Franklin Mountains to the north and the southern Juárez city lights that stretched deep into the night.

  He was overdue getting back home. Was it time to start seriously thinking of retirement? Not as long as Luis Lorenz remained unpunished for the murder of Harjo’s nephew.

  His phone vibrated. A text message from Hodges popped up on the screen. The CIA had classified their meeting as secret. Harjo smiled. He’d wondered where they’d been hiding during the meeting. Too late, spooks. He turned off the phone and stretched out in his seat for a quick nap on the hop to El Paso.

  Juan Garza entered the basement of Longwei Shen’s restaurant through the tunnel door to find only Estavio Trevino present.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked, unsettled. He’d never met El Jefe alone before.

  “Today it’s just the two of us.” Trevino gestured at the empty chair.

  “Why?”

  “At my request. Sit.”

  Garza did as he was told. “What’s up?”

  “When you convinced the resident DEA agent you could guarantee how to find me, what exactly did you tell her?”

  “What does it matter now?” Juan replied. “The plan has been canceled. Nobody’s coming. Everybody’s safe. It’s all been a waste of time, worrying about nothing.”

  “It matters.”

  “What’s it got to do with me?”

  “You’re not listening.” Trevino smiled. “Special Agent Sedillo never would have agreed to accept you as a guide to find me simply because you said you could do it.”

  Juan looked hurt. “I never said I could do it, Jefe. I told her Jose Hernandez could. I explained all this before.”