In the house, Jayne said, “Can I get you something cold to drink?”
“Nothing, thanks. The sheriff’s people were here?”
“Just one deputy,” Frank said.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That a few minutes after you flew out, I came back home. Everything was fine when I left Jocko’s. I worked on the winepress for a little while. I want to make sure we’re ready to go for harvest. Then Jayne and I had dinner and settled down to watch a video. That’s when the deputy came knocking on the door. He didn’t give us a lot of details. What exactly happened, Cork? All we know is that Rainy has disappeared.”
“She was gone when Jocko and I came back. All we found was blood and her cell phone.”
Jayne closed her eyes, as if trying to block out the image, and put a hand to her mouth.
“Did you tell them why Jocko took me up?” I asked.
“Told them you wanted to get a better sense of the lay of the land.”
“Good. Pretty much what we told them, too.”
Jayne’s eyes shot open, and she gave me and her husband a suspicious look. “But that wasn’t the real reason you were up there?”
“Part of it,” I said.
She hesitated, as if not sure she should ask what was next on her mind. “And the other part?”
Frank didn’t jump in—his reluctance, I remembered, to bring his wife into the business of the Desert Angels—so I did. “It had to do with Peter.”
She appeared to consider asking more, then must have decided against it.
“Whoever it was that took Rainy knew we were at Jocko’s,” I said. “Did either of you mention it to anyone?”
“I was glued to my computer,” Jayne said. “I didn’t even get any phone calls, which is unusual but always welcome. Lets me work uninterrupted.”
Frank shook his head. “Except for Jayne, I haven’t talked to anyone.” He looked beyond me. “By the way, where is Jocko?”
“His ranch house. I told him staying there might not be safe, but he insisted.”
“Stubborn old coot,” Frank said.
“These people probably know that I’ve talked with you two. And they certainly know that you employed Peter. How secure is this house?”
“It’s not just coyotes roam the hills at night,” Frank said. “We’re pretty well bunkered here.”
“Do you own a firearm?”
“This is Arizona,” he said as answer.
“All right. If you hear anything or think of anything, let me know.”
“Absolutely,” Jayne said. Then offered, “Would you like to stay here tonight?”
“That’s kind, but no thanks.”
“You’ll let us know if you find out anything?”
“Sure,” I told her.
I left them together in the cool of their big house and drove down the lane to the main road. I killed the engine and stared back at the glow from the Sonora Hills Cellars. Against the hard, black night, which was the natural state of affairs in a moonless desert, it seemed a terrible and somehow menacing brilliance. About Rainy’s disappearance, Frank and Jayne Harris claimed to be ignorant. But someone had let the bad guys know where Rainy was. I thought then about what everyone in Coronado County had been telling me from the beginning: Be careful who you talk to and even more careful who you trust.
Things were quiet when I rolled into Cadiz. I cruised down the main street. Only the bars were open, and judging from the vehicles parked in front, the business they were doing that night was just so-so. I drove past the church and the parsonage, keeping my eyes open for anything that might stand out on my radar. Both structures were dark and seemed no more threatening than empty pews. I drove down side streets, looking for someone who might have parked in walking distance. Or rifle range. Although I was satisfied that no one was waiting to ice me from the dark, I parked one street east and approached the parsonage from the rear. I unlocked the back door and went in. I didn’t switch on lights but used the flashlight app on my cell phone to find my way around and drew all the shades. Only then did I turn on a lamp.
I hadn’t eaten since Rosa’s Cantina, but I wasn’t hungry. Thirst was something else. I set the Winchester on the kitchen table and pulled ice from the refrigerator and a glass from the cupboard. I stood at the sink, taking a long, cold drink, and thinking.
If Rainy had been the target of the bomb that morning, I wasn’t just collateral damage. The people who’d planted it were the kind of people who killed not only their targets but everyone connected with their targets. Killed. There I was, thinking that word again and trying my damnedest not to connect it to Rainy. Trying to hold to hope. Trying to walk through the valley without fear.
I remembered a poem Rainy had taught me. She called it a lovers’ prayer and said it was from the Pueblo people.
Across the dark night, we are not afraid.
Our love is the star that guides us.
Through the empty desert, we do not thirst.
Our love is the water that refreshes.
On the long journey, we do not weary.
Our love is the truth that offers strength.
As the mountains rise before us, we are not discouraged.
Our love is the hope that waits on the other side.
When we are together, let us hold hands.
Our love is the promise that is never broken.
I lay down for the night with that prayer in my heart and the Winchester at my side.
* * *
I woke suddenly. The bedroom was in absolute darkness. I felt around on the mattress and touched the metal of the Winchester barrel, cooled by the breeze from the window air conditioner. I wrapped my hand around the rifle and slowly sat up.
I listened. Nothing. Still, I jacked a round into the chamber and slid from the bed. I had a good sense of the room, and I crept to the wall next to the door and pressed myself there.
The parsonage was silent.
There is something that happens to you when you have steeled yourself for violence. It’s like an embrace. You want it. You want to do the violent thing so that it’s done and you can let it go. That’s what I wanted, standing by the door, waiting for whatever was coming.
Five minutes I stood there, barely breathing, and nothing came. But something had brought me out of my sleep. I finally eased myself through the doorway into the small living room. There were streetlights outside, not many but enough to cast a faint glow against the drawn shades. My eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, and that glow was enough for me to see dimly but clearly. I carefully went through the parsonage, checking every corner, every closet. I finally accepted that I was alone.
If what had awakened me wasn’t inside the parsonage, it had to have come from outside. The bark of a dog? A distant backfire? I tried to call up the dreamy memory of sound, but it was gone. I went to the back door, opened it slowly, just a crack. The hot night air came through the narrow gap. I opened the door a little more and risked poking my head into the heat. The backyard was dimly lit from the distant streetlamps and loosely outlined with paloverde trees and low desert shrubs. Nothing moved. If someone was there, they were more patient than I was. I slipped from the house and crouched low, the Winchester cradled and ready. I hadn’t undressed before I lay down, except for my boots, so I stood sock-footed in the dirt of the yard. I began to make my way around the house, sliding along the wall, until I came to the front yard.
Inside the church across the street, I saw a light, of a sort. Not incandescent; it moved. A flashlight? No, not powerful enough. A candle, I decided. I studied the street, empty except for an old Buick parked in front of the little house next door. I darted to the parked car and studied the church for another minute. The candle had stopped moving but still burned. I crossed the street like a deer dodging headlights and pressed myself to the stone of the church wall, which was still warm from the day. I crept to the front door and listened. Voices, too soft to hear clearly. Pastor Michelle
Abbott? I tried the knob, turned it ever so slowly, eased the door open.
The voices were clearer now. A male, angry. And a woman’s voice. Wonderfully familiar.
I made my move and was inside the church, the Winchester stock cradled against my shoulder, the barrel pointed toward the altar rail, where Rainy stood holding the candle.
She turned, her eyes huge with surprise and fear.
The man behind her stepped forward. In the flickering candlelight, I saw that he held a big pistol in his raised hand.
“Wait!” Rainy shouted. “Don’t shoot.”
“Quién es?” the man demanded.
“Mi esposo,” she said.
The hand holding the pistol didn’t drop. I kept the sight of my Winchester on the stranger’s chest.
“Who’s that with you, Rainy?” I called.
“Cork,” she began but faltered. She held her empty hand out to me as if begging.
“Who is he?”
I saw her body, which had been held so tense at my appearance, go limp. Her hand fell to her side. She glanced at the man beside her, then turned her dark eyes to me.
It was the man who answered for her.
“I’m her husband,” he said.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
I eyed the man who’d spoken for Rainy, feeling a great urge to pull the trigger of the Winchester, and not just because of the threatening gun in his hand.
He was tall, powerfully built, with a face so damn good-looking it could have been taken from a Hollywood movie poster. His hair in the candlelight was black and shiny, polished onyx. He wore a black T-shirt stretched across the kind of chest that would have made a weight lifter proud. His pants and running shoes were black as well, as was that pistol he still held trained on me.
“Husband?” I said.
“Ex-husband,” Rainy clarified.
“In the eyes of the church, mi amor, we are married for eternity.”
“What about Consuela?” Rainy said. “In the eyes of the church, wouldn’t that make you a bigamist?”
He shrugged. “Solomon had hundreds of wives.”
“Are you all right, Rainy?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You can put that rifle down.”
In the candlelight, I studied the face of this man who was a stranger to me, but far from a stranger to Rainy. At the same time, he was studying me. At last he nodded, and I returned the gesture, and we both lowered our weapons.
“This is Gilbert Mondragón, Cork,” Rainy said. “Berto, meet Cork O’Connor.”
“I’ve heard about you,” Mondragón said.
“You’re one up on me there.”
“Let me talk to him, Berto. Explain things.”
He thought it over, leaned to Rainy, and kissed her hair. “I’ll wait outside, querida.”
When he’d left, Rainy said, “Let’s sit.”
She set the candle, which was secured in an antique brass holder, on the altar rail, and we took the first pew. For a moment, Rainy just sat there, her head lowered, her face a flickering of shadows in the inconstant light.
“This is the drug-addicted, low-life ex-husband you never talk about? A man so loathsome to you that you’ve never even mentioned his name in my presence? Ancient history, you’ve always insisted.”
“There are things you didn’t need to know before, Cork. That’s changed.”
“Clearly. So what’s the real story?”
“I met Berto when I first enrolled at U of A,” she began.
“Berto? You said his name is Gilbert. What kind of name is Gilbert for a Mexican?”
“He’ll tell you he’s Spanish, not Mexican. And he’s only half Spanish. His mother was an American citizen, which makes him a citizen, too. She loved Gilbert Roland. Some old movie star. Do you remember him?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Vaguely.”
“So that’s what’s on his birth certificate. But he prefers the Spanish name Gilberto. Or Berto. I was eighteen when we met. He was twenty. We fell in love. I became pregnant with my first child, Chantelle. I thought when you were pregnant, getting married was what you did. So we married.”
“Catholic wedding, apparently.”
“A quiet one. He didn’t want his parents to know.”
“Why?”
“They had another bride picked out for him. His family is powerful, Cork. They wanted him to marry the daughter of another powerful family.”
“A political union?”
“Something like that. For a while, we lived a quiet life. Peter came along. Berto finished his undergraduate degree. Then we entered hell.”
“Your husband and a drug habit. That’s what you’ve always said.”
“That’s how I’ve always explained it to people. It’s easier than the truth.”
“What’s the truth?”
“The marriage his family had in mind was to have been a union of business interests, Cork. Not the kind of business you’d find listed on the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Drugs?”
“And everything that goes with drugs. But that wasn’t Berto. Do you know what he majored in at U of A? Social work. He wanted to help people, not prey on them.”
“So what happened?”
“While he was in graduate school, he began to get a lot of pressure from his family to return to his home in Mexico.”
“Which was where?”
“Outside Hermosillo.”
I gave her a blank look.
“It’s in the state of Sonora. A hundred and fifty miles south of the border. Things were getting difficult. The family was under attack from groups who wanted control of those particular business interests.”
“Berto resisted the pressure?”
She nodded. “But he kept being called back. First for short visits, then longer. He’d return looking grim. He never shared the details of what was happening. Which was fine with me. I had enough to worry about. I was practically raising the children alone. Then one night a man showed up at our door. A stranger to me, but Berto knew him. The family rancho had been attacked. Some of Berto’s family had been killed. His father had been shot. It didn’t look like he was going to make it. Berto had to go. The situation down there was dangerous, so I stayed with Chantelle and Peter. The stranger, a man whose name I only knew as El Perro, remained behind. For protection.”
Rainy sat back and breathed deeply. It was stiflingly hot in the sanctuary, and I watched sweat trickle down her temple and fall drop by drop onto the white blouse she wore, turning the fabric there a wet gray.
“Berto was gone all the next day. I heard no word from him. That night, El Perro told me he’d received instructions. He was to take us into the desert, where Berto would meet us. I asked him what was going on. Revolution, he told me.
“I gathered the children and we left with El Perro. I wasn’t sure what we might run into, so I took the Ruger Berto had given me.”
“What? An anniversary present?”
“When he began making his trips back to Hermosillo, he insisted on taking me out to a gun range. He taught me how to use firearms. First a handgun, the Ruger. Then rifles. He made me practice until I was very good.”
“Thoughtful of him,” I said.
“I wasn’t happy about it. But . . . it was a good thing in the end. El Perro drove us south and west, far into the desert. Then he stopped and told me we should get out and wait for Berto. The children were asleep in the backseat. I asked if it was all right not to wake them. He said to let them sleep. Nothing about this felt right. I couldn’t understand why Berto hadn’t contacted me directly. Why had the message come through El Perro? As I got out, I slid the Ruger from my purse. El Perro walked ahead of me. I remember there was a full moon that night. The whole desert was silver and cut with black shadows. I saw El Perro’s right hand move up toward his chest, where he wore a shoulder holster. He had a big silver ring on his pinkie, and I still remember how it flashed in the moonlight as his hand rose. He turned a
round suddenly. His gun was in his hand. But I’d had the Ruger aimed on him from the moment we left the car. I fired that gun until it was empty.”
She stared at the candle awhile. I waited.
“The children slept through it. I took his wallet so that he couldn’t be identified. There were a thousand U.S. dollars in it. I drove the car back to Tucson, directly to the bus station. I bought us all tickets to Hayward, Wisconsin.”
“And Berto?”
“It was, as El Perro said, a revolution. Berto and his father, who, in fact, survived, along with two of Berto’s brothers, somehow managed to hold out and hold on. It took him a while to find me. I’d already started divorce proceedings. He didn’t fight it. My safety, the safety of our children, he put those things first, I’ll give him that.”
“You haven’t seen him since?”
“We’ve communicated over the years. I’ve sent him photos of the kids. He stayed out of our lives, remarried, began another family. But I needed his help when Peter went through treatment.”
“Ah,” I said, finally understanding how Rainy could afford to send her son to a rehab center that charged $35,000 a month. “And what did that buy him with you, Rainy?”
She lifted her eyes to mine, and the deep despair I saw in them made me ashamed of my words.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was uncalled for.”
“The Berto I married, he was such a good man, Cork. This Berto I hardly recognize.”
The church door opened. Mondragón stepped in.
“So, preciosa, does he know all now?”
“Not all,” I said. “I’d like to know what happened at Jocko’s.”
Rainy’s first husband sat on the altar rail, next to the candleholder. Only a couple of years must have separated us in age, but he looked a decade younger than I felt. Except for his eyes. There was something old and tired about them.
“After Rainy’s call last night, I came as quickly as I could,” he said. “I caught up with you in Sulfur Springs.”
“I didn’t see you,” I said.
He smiled, perfect white teeth. “I’m good, huh? I followed you far enough back to keep off your radar. When you pulled into that old-timer’s ranch, I found a good place to watch with my binoculars. After you took off in the biplane, and the other man left in his pickup truck, Rainy was alone. I was going to show myself and discuss Peter’s situation. But I caught sight of someone sneaking through the tall grass south of the ranch house. He surprised Rainy. I could see he had a gun on her. When they started off in the direction he’d come from, I called Rainy. She talked him into letting her answer. I told her to drop the cell phone and bend to pick it up. When she went down, I took him out.”