Sulfur Springs

  “The man who spoke to you,” I said. “What did he look like?”

  “Mexican. Six feet. Clean shaven. Black hair. Forty, maybe a little more. Natty dresser.”

  “A name?”

  “No.”

  “How are you supposed to contact him?”

  “He gave me a number.” Harris reached into his shirt pocket, brought out a folded slip of paper, and handed it to me. I recognized the area code for Tucson.

  “It’s probably a throwaway phone,” I said. “He’ll use it for this transaction then get rid of it. I think we need to let your father know about this development, Peter.”

  He nodded his agreement, and I punched in Mondragón’s number on my cell. When the man answered, I said, “Has Joaquin made the call to his father?”

  “Yes,” Mondragón said. “And things have changed.”

  “Let me guess. They told you that they have Jayne Harris and Robert Wieman.”

  “And someone else that Rainy says you know and care about. A minister.”

  “Michelle Abbott? They’ve grabbed her, too?”

  “But we have Joaquin,” Mondragón said. “If I cared about any of these people, it would be the proverbial Mexican standoff.” There was some talk on the other end. I heard Rainy’s voice, stern. Then Mondragón said, “I want to speak to my son.”

  I gave the phone over.

  Peter listened, then said in a voice that would brook no argument, “We make the exchange.” He listened again, and said, “We’re at Jocko’s ranch house.” He nodded at something his father said and replied, “Está bien.” He handed the phone back to me. “They’re on their way here.”

  Harris looked like a man who’d just come off the battlefield, beaten and bewildered. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Let’s go inside, Frank,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  We sat at the kitchen table while I explained what we knew for sure and then our speculations.

  Harris shook his head firmly. “No way. Not Jocko. I don’t care if it’s true they’ve been using his landing strip, Jocko didn’t know anything about it. And I can tell you right now he’s not the leak in the Desert Angels.”

  Peter leaned across the table. “I’m going to say something, Frank, and I need the truth from you.”

  Harris looked at him and understood without having to be told. “You’re thinking that if it wasn’t Jocko, then it had to be me, right? It’s not, Peter. I didn’t betray you. You’ve got to trust that.”

  I didn’t know Frank Harris well, but I’d been reading people all my life, as a cop and otherwise. I didn’t think he was lying. That’s what my own heart told me. I guess Peter’s heart must have told him the same thing, because he said, “I believe you.”

  I heard thunder in the distance and looked out the window of the ranch house kitchen. The fury of that day’s monsoon storm was sweeping toward us.

  “If Jocko was in the dark,” I said, “they must have used the landing strip when he wasn’t around. How would they do that?”

  We all thought a bit, then Peter offered, “Maybe when Jocko flew me out to meet with a group I was going to guide?”

  “How would they know when that was?”

  “The leak in the Desert Angels,” Harris said.

  “You fed Nikki Edwards the coordinates for the crossings, so she could broadcast them,” I said to Peter. “Would she also have known if Jocko was going to fly you or if you were going to drive yourself?”

  “Not specifically, no,” Peter said. “No one but Jocko and I would have known. And Frank.” He looked at Harris.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. Well, Jayne.” Harris’s face changed in an instant. His eyes moved to the window and to the coming storm, and I could see his brain working. “No,” he whispered. “Christ, no.”

  CHAPTER 38

  * * *

  Frank Harris stood at the kitchen sink, staring through the window at the storm sweeping toward us. Beyond him in the distance, the black clouds exploded in moments of brilliant white, and lightning split the eastern horizon like rips in a photograph.

  “Jayne,” he said, as if she were some long-lost love.

  I sat at the table with Peter, pieces of the puzzle falling into place for me. “You said that when your vines were killed, a lot of the other vineyard owners suffered as well and had to sell. But not you. You said Jayne’s investments kept you afloat. What were those investments?”

  Harris had his back to us and was slumped over, as if afraid he might vomit into the sink. “I don’t know exactly. Jayne’s always taken care of the business. I grow the grapes. That’s the part I love.” He shook his head. “She must have sold off a lot of stock or something. Everyone else had their land on the market back then, and Jayne was buying it. She had this vision that we would become the largest vineyard in Arizona. Me, I just wanted to make good wines.”

  Another thought occurred to me, another piece of the puzzle. “This land she bought. Who brokered those deals?”

  “Marian Brown.”

  Brown and Jayne Harris. Two women used to handling large sums of money. Two women, perhaps, with similar grandiose visions. Maybe they were the base of a financial triangle in Coronado County, and who was at the apex of that dangerous geometry?

  “Did Jayne and Brown have other dealings together?” I asked.

  “They met over wine and talked a lot. I wasn’t a part of that. I don’t like Marian much. I don’t know what Jayne sees in her.”

  “What did Marian and your wife talk about when they got together?”

  “I don’t know. Marian usually came when I was out working in the vineyards. Whenever I came back to the house, she was just leaving.”

  “Have their meetings been more frequent lately?”

  He thought about that, then turned to me. “As a matter of fact, they have.”

  Then I dropped the big one on him. “Did you know that someone murdered Marian Brown last night?”

  From the stunned look on his face, I could see this was the first he’d heard of it.

  “Shot three times in the chest while she was standing in her living room.”

  He stared at me, speechless.

  “The money that kept you afloat, Frank, the money you bought all that additional land with, the money you say came from Jayne’s savvy investments, could it have come from somewhere else?”

  Two and two were adding up in his mind, but he didn’t want to accept the sum. “From Marian Brown? Is that what you’re saying? That my wife was somehow in cahoots with Marian Brown?”

  “I think they were both working with someone else, Frank, someone much wealthier and fully capable of murder. Someone who needed them to help launder his money.”

  “Who?”

  I didn’t answer. I just waited while he worked that one out for himself.

  “Carlos Rodriguez? My wife and Carlos Rodriguez? No.”

  Peter was looking at me with disbelief on his face as well. “Jayne?”

  “I’m just considering the evidence. Someone leaked the information about your rendezvous with the Guatemalans, Peter. You say you trust everyone you recruited. Jayne refused to be a part of the Desert Angels, but Frank admits he confides in her.”

  Peter said, “If what you say is true, Jayne would have had to know the location of my rendezvous that night. Even Frank couldn’t have given her that.” He looked toward Harris for confirmation, but the man was silent. “Frank?”

  “Jayne could have known the coordinates,” Harris finally admitted.

  “How?”

  “You and Nikki usually sit together in church, same pew every Sunday. Jayne and me, we sit behind you.”

  “You what? Overheard us?”

  Frank shrugged. “Enough to guess correctly about Nikki using her radio program to broadcast the coordinates. But that doesn’t mean Jayne sold you out to Rodriguez.”

  “I’m sure Marian Brown sold her soul to the man,” I said. “And she and Jayne were apparently
quite tight, involved in conversations that seem to have been held in a way meant to exclude you, Frank. From what I know, sounds to me like they both enjoyed handling money, large amounts especially.”

  Peter shook his head. “But if Jayne sold me out to Rodriguez, who killed his son in the desert that night? And how did they know I’d be there, and Rodriguez?”

  “I believe Jayne told Marian about the rendezvous, and Marian used White Horse in that ambush. I think she and Jayne were trying to cut themselves loose from Carlos Rodriguez. I think they were planning on Rodriguez being killed out there, maybe even hoping for a clean sweep, both Carlos and Miguel.”

  “And me?” Peter said.

  “You and the Guatemalans? Just collateral damage.”

  “No,” Frank said, shaking his head and looking at me with dark, angry eyes. “Not Jayne. Hell, Rodriguez grabbed her as a hostage.”

  “Maybe it only appears that way,” I said.

  “Goddamn you, O’Connor. Who are you to be making this kind of accusation? You don’t know anything about us. You don’t know this land. You’re a stranger here.”

  “Let me ask you one more thing, Frank. Jocko told me that his father and your grandfather prospected together a long time ago and mined a little. He said it was somewhere in the Sonora Hills. You know where?”

  “Of course. I own the land. But I haven’t gone there in forever.”

  “Does Jayne know where?”

  “I’m sure she does. Why?”

  Peter looked at me, understanding slowly coming into his eyes. “Rodriguez’s stash.”

  “What are you talking about?” Frank said.

  I explained to him about the cache of drugs that had been moved from the mine where Rodriguez had been storing them awaiting transport.

  “You think Jayne moved them?” Frank said.

  “Jayne or Marian or someone working with them. Your grandfather’s old diggings would be a pretty good place to hide all that product. It’s on private land, in a place the public isn’t likely to stumble onto. Close to Jocko’s strip, if plans are to fly it out eventually. And in spitting distance from the border.”

  “No,” he said, denying it with an even more vigorous shake of his head. “I can’t believe that.”

  “There’s an easy way to find out.” I looked through the window at the coming storm. “But we’ll have to move fast.”

  * * *

  We took Peter’s Jeep, which he’d left in Jocko’s hangar the day he went to meet the Guatemalans. Because of Peter’s wounded leg, I drove. Frank directed us south several miles, then we followed a dry wash that wove into the Sonora Hills. The sky was a cauldron filled with black, and a strong wind ran beneath, bringing with it the sweet, heavy scent of rain.

  We rounded a bend and Frank pointed to the right toward a fold in the hillside. I pulled out of the wash just as the first fat raindrops hit the windshield. In front of us was the opening to an old excavation.

  “Granddad called it the Jezebel,” Frank said. “He told me it kept teasing him but never gave him much in the end.”

  We got out of the Jeep as the rain began to come down in earnest, and we ran for the mine. We’d brought flashlights, and inside, we thumbed them on. There it was. Wrapped bricks rising like a false wall from tunnel floor to tunnel ceiling, God knew how many layers thick. I guessed it was cocaine, millions and millions in illegal product.

  All this illicit wealth, I thought, and men like Rodriguez still preyed on the poor who were trying to get to freedom, still stole from them what few pesos they had left.

  In the backsplash from the flashlights, Frank Harris’s face was as expressionless as a dead man’s. “It’s true then,” he said. “It’s all true.” He continued to stare, but silently, because what more was there to say?

  Outside, the storm poured down rain and lit the Sonora Hills with brilliant, blinding flashes of lightning. I stood looking through a steady stream that cascaded down the hillside above and formed a ragged waterfall over the mine entrance. The wash we’d driven was no longer dry. We needed to get to the ranch house to meet Rainy and Mondragón, who would be bringing Joaquin Rodriguez with them, but I could see that we wouldn’t be going back anytime soon, at least by that route.

  “Is there another way back to the ranch house?” I asked Harris.

  He seemed not to hear.

  “Frank,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Walking, I suppose. It would be hours back to Jocko’s that way. Best just to wait.”

  I pulled out my cell phone. In the cover of the cave, I got no reception. “I’m going to make a run for the Jeep, try to call Mondragón.”

  I looked at Peter, then nodded toward Harris, who seemed so lost. Peter gave me a nod in return.

  I sprinted to the Jeep, jumped inside, and checked my phone. Two bars. Not great, but enough. I punched in Mondragón’s cell phone number. On the other end, his phone rang and rang and finally went to voice mail.

  “It’s Cork. We’re not at the ranch house. Give me a call when you get this message.”

  I returned to the mine and told Peter and Harris what was up.

  “I don’t like that he didn’t answer,” I said.

  “Maybe out of cell phone range?” Peter offered.

  “Were you ever completely out of cell phone range when you were exploring the Coronados?”

  He shook his head. “One of the reasons I wanted to set up sanctuaries there.”

  Harris walked to the entrance and stared into the rain.

  “Maybe Rodriguez got them, too.” He spoke in a dead voice.

  “I’m going to wait in the Jeep, in case Mondragón calls back,” I said.

  “Why don’t we all wait there together?” Peter suggested.

  Peter and I made a dash, but Harris came slowly, oblivious to the downpour. When he reached the Jeep, he was like a man who’d taken a shower fully dressed. He sat slumped in the backseat and, just as he had in the mine, simply stared at the rain.

  “I hate just sitting,” Peter said.

  “Have you ever hunted?” I asked.

  “Never.”

  “Just sitting is a lot of what you do. You learn to be patient.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Frank said quietly at our backs.

  “Kill who?” I asked.

  “Rodriguez.”

  But I knew Rodriguez wasn’t to blame for Frank Harris’s misery.

  My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Mr. O’Connor, this is Deputy Crockett. One of our Border Patrol picked up your wife, and Gilbert Mondragón, on the Old Douglas Road. They asked that we notify you.”

  “Where are they?”

  “On their way to meet you at Wieman’s ranch house. Agent Sprangers is with them. They should be there soon.”

  “We’re not at the ranch house.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Until this rain lets up, stuck in a mine in the Sonora Hills. What did my wife and Mondragón tell you?”

  “Just that there’s a hostage situation. Sheriff Carlson’s working on pulling together a team for that. We assume you have Joaquin Rodriguez.”

  That surprised me. Why wasn’t Rodriguez with Rainy and Mondragón?

  “We’ll get to the ranch house as soon as we can. There are some things Sheriff Carlson and Sprangers should know. Have them call me.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What’s up?” Peter asked when I’d ended the call.

  I explained things to him and to Harris, who seemed to be coming around now.

  “We need to get to Jocko’s,” I said.

  Peter looked at the brown torrent that was gushing through the wash and shook his head. “Going to be a while.”

  And it was. We waited an hour for the storm to pass and then more time for the run of water in the wash to ease enough to risk driving the Jeep out that way. Hunter though I was, I found myself growing more and more impatient, and finally I decided we had to leave.
>
  “Buckle in,” I said. “We’re going.”

  But before I had a chance to move, a big black crew-cab pickup truck with wheels like those I’d seen on earthmovers came crawling up the wash. The grille was high above the water, which swept around those great wheels as if around the legs of a dinosaur. The truck swung out of the current toward the Jezebel Mine and the place where Peter and Harris and I sat in the Jeep. I couldn’t see through the windshield.

  “Hand me the Winchester,” I said to Harris.

  He passed it up to me, and I chambered a round. The truck parked facing us, the grille like a huge, skeletal grin. The back door on the passenger side opened and a man got out. Hispanic, tall, muscular, dressed in black, with an automatic rifle in his hands. He walked to the other side of the truck and opened the back passenger door. He reached up with one hand and helped someone down from that raised chassis. I recognized Michelle Abbott. Her hands were bound behind her back with duct tape, and a strip of tape was across her mouth as well. Next came Jocko, bound in the same way. The man said something to them, and they walked forward a few steps then stopped, with the man directly at their backs. The driver’s side door opened next, and another man got out. He kept his back to me and I couldn’t see him clearly. He walked to the other side of the truck, opened the door, and helped Jayne Harris down. Like Jocko and Michelle, she was bound with duct tape. The man walked her to where the others stood and placed her in the front line with Jocko and Michelle, then took his place behind them along with the other man.