Head Wounds Read online

  “You’ll do what I ask,” Trevino replied flatly.

  “Let’s just keep it to the information you need to know.” Stocky, red in the face, and a bit gone to seed, Ulibarri was still out of breath from the exertion.

  Trevino leaned close. “Right now I need to know you’re trustworthy, otherwise you won’t be going home. No matter what it is, you will do as I ask next time I call. Understood?”

  Ulibarri swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay.”

  Trevino smiled thinly. “Good. Safe journey, amigo.”

  He waited until the Texas cop was in his truck spewing dust from his tires on the dirt road. Once the truck was out of sight, Trevino turned his pickup onto a faint track that would take him the back way to Colonia de los Kickapoo. His spirits lifted as he carried the body of his son home so that Fernando might properly make his final journey.

  CHAPTER 11

  In the middle of the twentieth century, Trevino’s village and a wide surrounding area suffered a severe, long-lasting drought. Growing up after the rains finally returned, he’d witnessed the slow recovery of the land. The river that ran through the village was no longer dry. Springs that were once a trickle gushed water, until the large neighboring rancheros began drilling wells, lowering the water table. Still, water flowed, enough to bathe and wash.

  In the valley, grasses and wildflowers carpeted the pastureland, and the high mountains that towered above showed signs that an occasional black bear roamed through the Colonia de los Kickapoo. In his lifetime, Trevino had yet to see one within a hundred miles of the village.

  Smaller wild game, hunted to virtual extinction, returned in lesser numbers on the land granted to the tribe by the Mexican government. While out hunting, Trevino rejoiced at the sight of a porcupine hiding in a tree or a squirrel scampering across the trail. The sound of nearby mourning doves cheered him, as did quail startled into flight by his proximity. He’d pause and offer a silent prayer that all the wild creatures would thrive, and bountiful hunting would return as it once had been during the long ago days of the ancestors.

  The village was quiet upon Trevino’s arrival with his son’s corpse. The building of the summerhouses had concluded during his absence. After prayers and a tobacco offering were made, women would gather the saplings needed to complete the thatched roofs.

  Trevino drove directly to the graveyard that held the departed members of the Black Bear Clan, unloaded the coffin next to his father’s grave, and began to dig. A wet winter and early spring had softened the soil, and his shovel sliced easily into the moist earth.

  As he bent to his task in the coolness of the early spring evening, he could hear soft voices floating behind him from the village enclave. People were gathering outside to watch. He paid them no mind. His chief, Caballo Galindo, had granted him permission to bury his son without any help or disturbance. At a later time, Trevino would ask for a ceremony to bring Fernando’s soul back to the tribe for one night so that his journey to the spirit world would be unimpeded.

  Steadily he dug, standing waist-deep in the now-dry soil, carving out chunks of dirt, flinging them into the ever-growing mound where he would later place a wooden marker to honor his son’s memory.

  He sang softly to himself as he increased the pace, a breeze whisking the sweat away from his face. His body began to ache, a sign that Fernando’s spirit hovered nearby, urging him on. He was glad to feel his son’s presence.

  Trevino finished at moonrise, climbed out under a star-filled sky, opened the casket, and stopped singing. Fernando’s naked body had been cut open and crudely stitched back together. The sight saddened him. He got an old blanket from his truck, tucked it gently around Fernando’s torso, and, as custom dictated, put a pinch of tobacco in each of his hands to accompany him on his journey to the spirit land. He then placed a small carved-wood figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe next to his head.

  His aged Mexican housekeeper, Consuelo, had asked Trevino to do it as a favor. She’d loved Fernando like a grandson. He had no reason not to. Kitzihiat, the Great Spirit, was no different than Consuelo’s god, except that he gave Kickapoos certain knowledge others did not have. Slowly, he closed the lid, wondering how to safely jockey the casket into the grave without tipping it over.

  Approaching footsteps caused him to turn. Galindo stood a few yards away, a camp lantern in one hand, a shovel in the other.

  “Perhaps you need my help, Estavio,” he said. Galindo was a tall man still in his prime, and his strength was legendary.

  “It would be most welcome,” Trevino replied.

  Together, they moved the casket to the edge of the grave and slowly lowered it, careful to keep it level. Silently they finished the burial together, sculpting a mound of dirt over the grave site.

  “He was a good son to you,” Galindo said, careful to avoid the mention of Fernando’s Kickapoo name.

  “Yes.”

  Galindo shouldered his shovel and led the way back to the village with his lantern. “Who will you choose to retire his spirit?”

  Trevino joined alongside. “Jose Hernandez has a young son, three years old.”

  “He is of your clan, which is good. I’m sure Jose will be honored by the adoption. But, of his three children, the boy is his only son.” Galindo’s unspoken next question hung in the air.

  Trevino nodded. “I wish the boy to live with me.”

  “It is permitted, although Jose may not be pleased.”

  “I will speak to him,” Trevino replied. It would be a simple choice, give up his son or die for his carelessness. He thought it was more than fair. Jose would also.

  “You must wait until the next new year for the ceremony,” Galindo cautioned.

  “That is perfect,” Trevino replied. “I have much work to do for now. Many jobs.”

  Galindo paused. “You will be leaving?”

  “First to my hacienda, and then I must travel.”

  “You have done much for our people.”

  “I hope to do more.”

  “What will you do with the old furniture you brought?”

  “It is for the village. Firewood, perhaps?”

  Galindo laughed. “Always welcomed. It is a long trip into the mountains to fetch more. You must be careful out in the White Eyes world. I’ll need you back soon to lead the next naming hunt.”

  “I’ll be here,” Trevino said.

  “Tonight, stay in my house.”

  “Thank you.”

  There were nods from tribal members as they passed by, but no one spoke. In the hills above the village a coyote sang. It was not an omen of bad luck, but Trevino willed it into silence anyway.

  Jose Hernandez stood hat in hand when Trevino emerged from Chief Galindo’s house in the early morning hours. He was not surprised to see him. Many years ago, Jose had been a glue-sniffing kid living under the Eagle Pass International Bridge, stealing groceries from convenience stores and begging money from strangers. He’d turned his life around and now made his living employed by the tribe. He repaired and maintained the village fences, transported supplies from town, kept snakes away from dwellings, and ensured visiting outsiders did not violate tribal customs or taboos.

  Sturdy and thick through the chest, he had a wide, crooked nose suffered as a young man during a beating by some American White Eye soldiers in a Piedras Negras bar.

  “You wish to have my son bid yours farewell?” Jose asked tentatively.

  “Yes.”

  “Of course, he will do so with honor.”

  The little boy was known as Jose Junior. Inquisitive and fearless. Trevino used his Kickapoo name. “After the fiesta Little Bear Den Near Cattails will live with me. Be my son.”

  “Jefe,” Jose protested.

  “I do this generously so that your wife and children will not be without a husband and father,” Trevino noted pointedly.

  Jose dropped his gaze. “I said too much to Juan Garza about where you could be found. The money he offered made me stupid.”


  “Yes, it did. If Garza asks again how to find me, let me know immediately.”

  Jose nodded. “And if you are gone?”

  “Kill him, if you think you can get away with it.”

  Jose blinked rapidly at the daunting thought of it.

  Trevino laughed. “Do nothing. Tell me upon my return.”

  Jose smiled with relief as he watched El Jefe drive away in his truck.

  From the day of his birth, Estavio Trevino was different, unlike any other Kickapoo baby. He babbled sounds endlessly, crawled and scampered on his hands and knees through dust and dirt to study everything and anything that caught his eye. He drew pictures in the sand by the river of all the animals he encountered, detailed and accurate for one so young. He perfectly imitated the cries of animals and the songs of birds and could whistle better than the most accomplished adults.

  As he grew, he mastered language easily. Kickapoo and Spanish to begin with, learned at home, quickly followed by English that he absorbed listening to White Eye visitors at the village or following American tourists in town. At four years old he was reading, struggling to understand the books in the library of an anthropologist who lived in Múzquiz, where his parents frequently visited.

  Lured by the man’s gifts and money, they were among the many tribal members who spent hours talking to him about the customs and history of the tribe, answering only some of his probing questions, certainly not all. His unsuccessful attempt to unravel and completely understand the Kickapoo people went on for years. After he finally left, there was talk that he had published a book about the tribe.

  Each time Estavio went with his parents when they were interviewed, he sneaked a book to read and return during the next visit. It didn’t matter if it was in English or Spanish. Nor was the subject matter of the book of any importance. At home, he’d hide the book from his parents and read it in one of the more faraway village fields where he couldn’t be seen.

  In the tribe, learning the ways of the White Eyes was frowned upon, their system of education rejected and scorned. Estavio had no desire to be a contrarian, but he could not help himself. He had an insatiable desire to know everything.

  As he grew up, he put aside books for a time and returned to his love of nature. With his father’s guidance, he learned the ways of the hunter and tracker. From his mother came his knowledge of plants and medicine. Through the elders he mastered the stories, prayers, and rituals needed to call the wild animals to him.

  In his youth, he’d disappear alone into the high mountains without notice and be gone for days, sometimes weeks, returning with game not seen on the land for many years. It was decided by the elders that he had a powerful spirit; whether it be for good or evil was yet to be revealed.

  At the age of seventeen, he left abruptly for six years, making no contact with anyone in the village during that time. Many thought him dead. Soon after his departure, his mother died, broken by cancer, weeping for him in her bed. Six months later, a drunk driver killed his father as he walked along the shoulder of the highway outside of Múzquiz.

  Upon his return, Trevino said nothing of his years away from the village. But all could see the changes in him. He was taller, stronger, more confident in his manner. A dominant presence, wary and unsocial, he prowled the colonia restless as a panther before vanishing for a month into the mountains.

  There on a remote, forested mountaintop he burned the U.S. Army uniform he’d worn at his discharge. Serving under a forged identity, he’d enlisted, become a Special Forces sniper, risen to the rank of sergeant first class, and been decorated for bravery. As a soldier he’d learned the skills needed to be a killer and had experienced the feeling of satisfaction it gave him.

  For hundreds of years, Kickapoos had been warriors, hostile and vindictive to those seeking to destroy their way of life. Capable of great savagery against their enemies, they remained fiercely independent. Tribal elders continued to believe in the return of Kickapoo greatness, provided the people stuck to their old ways. Trevino knew it was pure bullshit. They’d never prevail against the White Eyes’ path of perpetual death, destruction, and devastation. But perhaps they could survive.

  Six years in the world had opened his eyes. The way to restore his tribe was with money. As a soldier, he’d been paid to kill. Why not, on behalf of his people, continue his craft as a civilian? Surely there were those who would pay well for his services.

  He came out of the mountains with the carcass of a freshly killed and dressed bear, an event that caused much rejoicing. The elders, who hadn’t tasted the delicacy of bear meat for many years, decided Trevino’s return heralded good fortune for the tribe. He was made chief of the hunt for as long as he wished. It fit perfectly with what Trevino had in mind for himself.

  He’d also returned as the owner of a small ranchero he’d come upon in a hidden pocket valley with a perpetual spring of clear water that bordered the magnificent and dangerous Bolsón de Mapimí. There he’d found Cipriano Morales, a man of some eight decades, semi-crippled, living alone with two old dogs in his dilapidated jacal surrounded by a small herd of goats. Seated under the open ramada in front of his adobe home on chairs crudely fashioned from mesquite wood, Trevino soon learned Cipriano’s wife and two sons were long dead and his only daughter, a naturalized American citizen, lived in Iowa with her children and Ecuadoran husband who managed an auto parts store. He hadn’t seen her in forty years.

  They talked for two days: Cipriano starved for conversation; Trevino captivated by the old man and the possibilities the ranchero presented. Before Trevino left, Cipriano agreed to sell out for a reasonable sum of money, but only after receiving Estavio’s solemn vow to inform Cipriano’s daughter of her father’s death, and to bury him, when the time came, next to his wife and sons in the family plot on the side of the hill.

  Trevino wrote out a transfer-of-ownership agreement that Cipriano signed in a shaky hand, and asked if he had any legal papers that showed proof of title. With a smile and nod, the old man disappeared inside his home and returned with an old leather document pouch. In it was a faded but legible original government deed dated 1878 and signed by Porfirio Díaz, the then-president of Mexico. It awarded to Manolito Morales, Cipriano’s great-grandfather, twenty-one hundred hectares of land that included the valley, surrounding hills, and a narrow swath of the Bolsón de Mapimí.

  They sealed the agreement with a handshake. A hundred-dollar bill that Trevino always carried in his wallet for emergencies served as a down payment. To celebrate, they drank a bottle of mescal that Cipriano kept for special occasions. Until his passing, Trevino would regularly check on his welfare, bring whiskey, food, and supplies to the ranchero, and keep Cipriano’s jacal in good repair.

  Trevino had found the bulwark he needed to keep the world at bay. It had become a very good day.

  Trevino returned home to find his housekeeper still upset about Fernando’s death. His reassurance that Fernando had been buried properly with the Virgin of Guadalupe figurine placed in his casket somewhat consoled her. But her presence was a distraction. Needing solitude and privacy, he sent her to her quarters for the remainder of the day, settled in his library chair, and powered up his laptop.

  Other than the man was half Apache and had a checkered career, he knew nothing about Clayton Istee. Quickly, his searches yielded valuable, basic facts. He was married, with two children. Both were in college. His wife ran a preschool day-care center in Las Cruces. His mother, a retired director of nursing at the Mescalero Public Health Service Hospital, lived on the reservation.

  Istee’s father, Kevin Kerney, a retired police chief, lived on a ranch outside of Santa Fe. He was married to a retired Army general, and they had one child, Patrick, a teenager. Archived newspaper articles spoke of Kerney’s inheriting considerable wealth. Trevino flagged it for further inquiry.

  Recent online articles summarized a cold-case murder investigation of the killing of a college girlfriend of Kerney’s, with felony murder charges fil
ed against him, subsequently dropped. The initial investigating officer had been Istee, who’d resigned his position from the New Mexico State Police for mishandling the case. That, too, was interesting. Why would a son go after his father in such a situation?

  He was intrigued by Kerney’s wife. Trevino’s experiences in the Army made it relatively easy for him to know the difference between warriors and posers. Brigadier General Sara Brannon’s military service looked to be the real deal.

  When he came for Istee and snatched him up, who would look for him? Kerney? His wife? Some unknown?

  He settled back in his chair. There was much more to absorb before traveling to New Mexico. Once there, he’d spend however much time was needed to comfortably navigate his way around and observe his quarry before striking.

  It was not going to be a quick kill. Istee would suffer long and hard before dying.

  CHAPTER 12

  Harjo started out for Eagle Pass driving a pickup truck with legal plates he’d rented from a San Antonio used-car dealer. His DEA credentials and a sweet extra fifty dollars on top of the daily rate had sealed the deal. Experience had taught him that driving around a strange town in an ordinary rental car was never smart. Anyone with watchful eyes would notice little things such as a license plate holder or decal that advertised the car rental company, a series of indelible numbers on the plate or windshield sticker used for inventory control, or simply that the make and model of the vehicle screamed rental. Such carelessness would get him made in a hurry. He’d had his cover blown once south of the border in Coahuila. He could get very dead if it happened again.

  To blend in with the locals, he pulled into a stop-and-rob along the highway, bought some snack food and sodas, and scattered the empty packaging and bottles on the passenger seat and floorboard. Three ten-spots at an auto junkyard got him some damaged wheels, bald tires, and rusty rims to throw into the bed of the truck. A detour on a muddy gravel county road coated the vehicle with splattered dirt and a sheen of dust.