Sulfur Springs

  * * *

  Royal Diggs was conscious but still a little dazed when Deputy Crockett cuffed him. Before he hauled the big man away, Crockett looked at me with what I interpreted as friendly admiration. “Good job,” he said. “Must be the Indian in you.” He reached up and gave a respectful little tip of that tan cowboy hat with the colorfully beaded band. Then he and Vega escorted Diggs outside to a waiting cruiser. Sprangers stayed behind, lingering with me in the sanctuary.

  “What were you doing here?” he asked.

  “Could be I was praying for some answers. And I think I have one.”

  I offered him my speculation that Marian Brown had probably found Rodriguez’s drug stash and had used White Horse to get him out of the picture.

  “We’ll sweat Diggs,” Sprangers said. “I doubt we’ll get anything. But we’ll also bring in Marian Brown and Sanchez. Maybe one of them will break. I’d like you there for that.”

  I thought about my meeting with Rainy and Mondragón. “I’ll pass.”

  He seemed surprised but let it slide. “We’ll need an official statement from you about this evening.”

  “It’s been a long day. Would first thing in the morning be okay?”

  “That’ll do.”

  We split up outside the church, and I headed back to the parsonage. There was still half an hour before I would see Rainy again, and I slipped out the back door and walked through Cadiz to the road up the mesa to the Goodman Center. As before, Mondragón’s SUV was parked in a far corner of the lot, away from the lights. When I approached, Rainy jumped out and ran to me. She threw her arms around me and laid her cheek against mine, and I smelled her hair, and, God, was it wonderful.

  “Whenever I’m not with you, I worry like crazy,” she whispered.

  “You’re with me now.”

  I kissed her, and the wolf of fear that had tried so viciously to chew out my gut fled in a heartbeat.

  Mondragón came from the SUV, along with another figure, who was limping.

  “How are you doing, Peter?” I asked.

  “I’ll survive.” He shook my hand. “Thanks for everything, Cork.”

  “Where are Juan and the others?”

  “Safe,” Peter said.

  “In one of your mine sanctuaries?”

  “Figured that out, did you?”

  “With a little help from Sylvester.”

  “We can’t move them for a couple days, but they’ll be safe until then.”

  “I don’t know about that, Peter. Someone in your organization sold you out to Rodriguez. He may know all about your sanctuaries.”

  “I’m the only one who knows them all.”

  “What about Sylvester?”

  “He wouldn’t sell me out.”

  Mondragón said to me, “Have you discovered anything more?”

  I told them what I knew and what I suspected.

  “Laundering money through the real estate woman?” Mondragón said. “Small potatoes, comparatively speaking.”

  “You mean compared to the vast millions your own family has invested in the States?” I said.

  “Exactly,” he replied, unfazed by my tone. “So, probably there’s more going on. I have certain sources here that I can tap for information. I’ll get them on it.”

  “The authorities are going to pick her up,” I told him. “They may be able to sweat that out of her.”

  “I could have my people do the same,” he said.

  “No, Berto,” Rainy said in a voice hard and cold, so different from the tone I usually heard her speak in. “I can only imagine how your people would get the information.”

  “All right, querida.”

  “We can’t use the church for notes anymore,” I told them.

  “Your phone? Do you believe it’s safe?” Mondragón asked.

  “At this point, about as safe as anything else, I’d guess.”

  “Leave it on, and we’ll communicate that way. But sparingly. Keep an eye to your back in case you’re tracked.”

  I looked at Peter. “You need to think hard about which of the Desert Angels betrayed you.”

  He shook his head. “I trust them all or I would never have brought them in.”

  “I’ve told you again and again,” Mondragón said, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. “Trust no one except family.”

  “A poor mantra, Berto,” Rainy said.

  “But clearly true.” He held out his hands toward his son. “Peter wouldn’t be in this fix if he’d listened to me.”

  Peter said something to Mondragón in Spanish that I didn’t understand. Rainy laughed, and when she saw that I was confused, translated for me. “He told his father that he got all his trust genes from me, and thank God for that.”

  Mondragón was not amused. “You need to be very careful, Peter, or you could get us all killed.”

  Which, I had to admit, could well be true.

  From far away rose the whine of a siren. Although it didn’t seem to be coming in our direction, Mondragón said, “We need to leave. When I know something, I’ll contact you, O’Connor. I expect the same from you.”

  “Of course.” I turned to Rainy and took her in my arms once more. “Vaya con Dios, love.”

  She whispered in my ear, “Wherever you are, there I am also.”

  CHAPTER 34

  * * *

  In a pinch, it doesn’t take much to be happy. Rainy and Peter and little Juan and the others were all safe. That pretty much did it for me. I walked down the mesa under the rise of a moon nearing half full, feeling relieved and remarkably hopeful and, yes, happy. In the words of Frost, there were still miles to go before I slept, but for a change I was feeling equal to the task.

  Before I reached the parsonage, my cell phone rang. Frank Harris.

  “Sorry to disturb you so late, Cork, but Jocko’s having some difficulty. Things aren’t looking so good. He’d like to talk to you.”

  When I arrived at the hospital, Harris was waiting for me outside Jocko’s room. He shook my hand. “Thanks for coming. Jocko’s been struggling for the past few hours. But I have a sense it’s not so much about the beating he took as it is his worry over Peter.”

  “I think I can give him some good news on that front.”

  “Thank God.” He signaled me to follow him inside.

  Jocko was a big man, but his ordeal seemed to have taken a lot out of him, and lying on that hospital bed, he looked shrunken, hollowed.

  “Jocko,” Frank said quietly. “Cork O’Connor’s here.”

  The old man’s eyes opened slowly and took a moment to focus. He acknowledged me with a faint smile.

  “How’re you doing?” I asked.

  “Not so good.” He spoke barely above a whisper. “Think I may have flown my last plane.”

  “You’ll fly again, Jocko,” Harris said.

  “Not up to you or me anymore, Frankie.” He leveled his eyes on me. “I need to know if Peter’s okay.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “You found him?”

  “I found him.”

  “And he’s all right?”

  “He’s limping a little, but he’s fine.”

  “The folks he was supposed to guide out of that desert?”

  “Safe,” I said and then explained about the ambush and what had happened after. “I’m pretty sure the mayor of Sulfur Springs is involved in all this, and the cop there, too. Mike Sanchez. The authorities are going to pick them up. I think there’s a good chance they’ll crack.”

  “I’d love to be the one to question them,” Jocko said. “Wouldn’t ask gentle, if you know what I mean.”

  “You just take care of getting yourself better.”

  “Feels like a big weight’s been lifted off me.” He slid an arm from beneath the sheets and reached out to shake my hand. His grip was surprisingly firm. “Thanks.”

  “Right back at you, Jocko. You and that biplane of yours have helped save a lot of desperate people. Get well, pardner. There are
still lives to be saved.”

  He smiled, drew back his hand, and let his eyes drift closed. Frank signaled me to follow him into the hallway.

  “Is it true about Marian?” he asked.

  “I know for sure she was there when I got this.” I pointed toward the ugly cut across my cheek, the legacy of Royal Diggs’s silver skull ring. “Everything else is speculation but based on good evidence.”

  “Marian Brown,” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. “We’ve dealt with her in all the land transactions for our vineyards. I always knew she was a shrewd businesswoman, but this?”

  “Why do you grow grapes?” I asked.

  He seemed surprised by the question. “I enjoy it.”

  “Is it about the money?”

  “It’s nicer to make a profit than not,” he said.

  “But it’s not really about the money.”

  “No.”

  “With someone like Marian Brown, it’s all about the money. I’ve seen it before. The promise of wealth, great wealth especially, can twist a person into something barely human.”

  “Just like Rodriguez,” he said, as if it were the name of evil itself.

  “Just like Rodriguez,” I echoed with the same distaste. “Where’s Jayne?”

  “This is all too much for her. She was afraid that if she came, she might have to watch Jocko die. But, honestly, that weight Jocko says you took off him, I think it’ll make a huge difference. Look, I understand that you can’t give away everything, but I hope you’ll keep us apprised of what’s going on.”

  “As much as I can,” I said.

  “And when you see Peter, tell him how glad we are that he’s okay.”

  “I’ll do that.” I glanced back through the doorway at Jocko, asleep on his bed. “Thanks for taking this watch.”

  “Couldn’t leave him all alone, could I?”

  We shook hands and I left him to his vigil.

  * * *

  I didn’t sleep long that night, but I slept well, and I woke feeling hopeful. Until Sprangers called.

  “Marian Brown’s dead,” he said without preamble.

  I was having coffee at the kitchen table of the parsonage. The sun was shining in the window where the bullet had come through that wounded Royal Diggs. The shadow of the ragged edges of the hole in the pane lay on the tabletop, looking like the sharp, gray teeth of a wolf.

  I put my cup down. “How?”

  “Vega and a Coronado County deputy went out to her place this morning to bring her in. They knocked. Got no answer. Looked in the windows and saw her lying on the living room floor. Shot three times in the chest. Sheriff Carlson has a team out there right now working the scene.”

  “What about Sanchez?”

  “Can’t find him.”

  “Did you get anything out of Diggs?”

  “Nothing useful. Have you had any contact with your wife or Peter Bisonette or Gilbert Mondragón since we parted ways last night?”

  I knew why he was asking. He was thinking like a cop, thinking that if I’d told Rainy or the others about my suspicions regarding Marian Brown and Sanchez, I’d given them motive for murder. I was thinking that, too, but only with regard to Mondragón. Although Rainy had killed a man once, the circumstances were understandable and it was long ago. She was a different person now. Cold-blooded murder was something neither she nor Peter would ever condone.

  I could have lied, but I’d already started down a different road with Sprangers. I told him, “Yes.” Then I said, “What about your mole? Could Rodriguez have known?”

  “Like I said, Diggs hasn’t broken. On my end, what you and I discussed last night has stayed with me. I haven’t said anything to anyone.”

  Which made Rainy’s first husband look pretty good to me for the killing.

  Clearly, Sprangers was thinking the same thing. “I’d like to talk to Gilbert Mondragón.”

  “Not sure that’ll happen.”

  “You could help.”

  “Let me think about that.”

  “Don’t think too long. We’re looking for Sanchez, but I’m guessing that if he’s not already dead, he doesn’t have much time left.”

  When the call ended, I contacted Mondragón immediately.

  “We need to talk,” I told him. “Now.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “All of us. You, me, Rainy, and Peter.”

  “In broad daylight? What about the drone that Border Patrol agent put on you?”

  “He took it off.”

  “You’d better be sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right. Where?”

  “Where are you?”

  “An hour from Cadiz.”

  Which meant they weren’t in the safe house in Nogales anymore. So where were they now?

  “There’s a small roadside park along the San Gabriel River south of town,” I said. “Rainy knows the place. I’ll be waiting.”

  * * *

  When I was fourteen, in the dark period after my father died, I spent a lot of time with Henry Meloux, healing. He urged me to hold to the memories of my father. Memories sing to us, he told me. They’re birds whose songs never fade. What I held to as I drove out of town toward the park was the memory of Tamarack County with its tall pines and evergreen-scented air and lakes where sunlight shattered on the water’s surface into a million diamonds. I held to the idea that when all this was over, we would go back to what was familiar—Gooseberry Lane, Sam’s Place, Iron Lake, and Crow Point, where Henry Meloux would be waiting, his ancient face cracked by more lines than dried mud and his dark, almond eyes shining warm in welcome for Rainy and Peter and me. That would be happiness. That would be home.

  I parked in the small, empty lot and walked to the picnic table where, days earlier, Rainy and I had met with Nikki Edwards and then things had got really complicated. The park was hidden from the narrow highway by a wall of tamarisk bushes. The lone picnic table sat in the shade of willows and cottonwoods that grew on the riverbank. Fed by the monsoon rains, the water of the San Gabriel tumbled over river rocks with a soft, constant murmur. I thought about Nikki and about the traitor in Los Angeles del Desierto. She knew about the coordinates for Peter’s rendezvous with the women and children of Guatemala and could have been the one to leak them. But there were so many others as well. Jocko? Frank Harris? Maybe even Sylvester?

  The black SUV parked next to my pickup. Rainy, Peter, and Mondragón got out and came to the table. Mondragón was watchful, his attention on the road that ran behind the tamarisks.

  “Better be important,” he said.

  I spoke to Rainy, not Mondragón. “I just need a question answered. Did you all stay together last night after we talked?”

  Rainy seemed puzzled but said, “Yes.”

  “Berto didn’t leave you at all?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Yeah,” Mondragón said. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Someone murdered Marian Brown last night.”

  “And of course you thought of me,” Mondragón said.

  “I was thinking about motive. You certainly had one. I needed to know about opportunity.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me over the phone?” But as soon as he spoke he understood. “Still don’t trust me.”

  “I trust Rainy,” I said.

  Rainy said, “It wasn’t Berto, Cork.”

  “Rodriguez?” Peter offered.

  “Maybe. Or maybe whoever it is that’s been feeding information about the Desert Angels to Brown and Rodriguez.”

  “Any closer to knowing who that is?” Mondragón asked.

  I shook my head and looked to Peter.

  He shrugged. “I keep racking my brain and coming up with nothing. Honestly, I trust everyone I recruited. I’d still trust any one of them with my life.”

  “And ours,” Mondragón said sternly. He looked back at me. “I’ve been working with my people to find out about Rodriguez’s investments on this side of the
border. These are people who don’t worry a lot about breaking laws. Or fingers. Seems Rodriguez has got quite a diverse portfolio. Interests in Canadian and U.S. mining in particular, a major shareholder in several exploratory enterprises.”

  “There’s a drilling company called Southwestern Geotech that’s been filing on old claims in the mountains around here. Maybe he owns a share of that, too.”

  “I’ll have it checked out,” Mondragón said.

  “Something you should know, Peter,” I said. “Jocko’s taken a turn for the worse.”

  “How bad?”

  “When I left his hospital room last night, he was looking pretty weak. It helped a little, I think, when he heard that you were safe.”

  “I want to see him,” Peter said.

  Mondragón and I both spoke at the same time: “No.”

  “If he dies and I haven’t thanked him for all that he’s done, it would be a great injustice,” Peter said.

  Rainy spoke quietly. “Do you do what you do for the thanks you’ll get, Peter? Jocko’s heart is full, believe me. But his body is fragile. If you risked seeing him now, his concern for your safety might do him more harm.”

  It was a hard truth to swallow, but Peter said, “I understand.”

  “Good.” Mondragón turned his attention to me. “It’s dangerous, meeting like this in the daylight. Don’t ask again.”

  “Believe me, Berto, I’ll be a happy man when I never have to ask anything of you again.”

  Mondragón and Peter headed to the SUV. Rainy and I lagged back. I held her hand.

  “What do you and Berto do all day while I’m out beating the desert for clues?”

  “Mostly, he’s on his cell phone, delivering orders to his people, making contingency arrangements. He’s very organized that way. Ruthlessly so. He talks with Peter, they argue. He talks with me. We argue.”

  “Do you argue about me?”

  “Nothing to argue about. You’re my husband. Wholly, completely, truly.”

  I kissed her, long and deep, and once more, we parted. After they’d gone, I got in my truck and continued south to Sulfur Springs, where I hoped I might find a few more pieces to fit into the puzzle.

  CHAPTER 35