Sulfur Springs

  “He was sure ready to jump to a lot of conclusions about Peter.” She tapped the tabletop with her fingers. “I want to ask him about that bombing.”

  “Maybe better to ask someone more willing to talk off the record.”

  “Like who?”

  “Her,” I said and nodded toward the street outside the restaurant window.

  I’d watched as Michelle had parked her truck in the lot of the Desert Breeze Inn, gone into the office, come out, and walked toward the restaurant. She spotted us as soon as she entered.

  “Heard the explosion?” I asked.

  “Hardly. I live on a ranch ten miles from here. But heard about it pretty quick.” She pulled up a chair and joined us. “Mind?”

  “I was just thinking of you,” I said. “Can we buy you breakfast?”

  “I ate a couple of hours ago. But coffee would be fine.”

  The waitress brought our coffee and an extra cup. “How you doing, Michelle?”

  “Real good, Georgia.”

  “You folks ready to order?”

  When the waitress had gone, the pastor said quietly, “Are you both okay?”

  “A little shook up,” I said. “But all things considered, we’re doing okay.”

  Rainy didn’t say anything.

  “This is way worse than I thought,” the minister said.

  “What did you think?” I said.

  “Not here.”

  “We’re kind of limited now in our choices of where else to talk.” I nodded toward the black spot on the asphalt next to her truck.

  “I’ll take care of that,” she said.

  Our breakfast came and we ate, a little on the fast side, because we were both eager to hear what the Marine turned minister had to say. We paid, and as we left, Georgia called, “You folks take care. And I mean that.”

  We crossed the street to Michelle’s truck.

  “We’ve been asked to leave the Desert Breeze,” I said. “Not without good reason.”

  “Where will you stay?”

  “Not sure. My guess is that the other places in town won’t be smiling a big greeting when we show up.”

  “I’ve got a place for you. Throw your bags in the back of my truck.”

  We did and got into the cab beside her. She pulled out of the lot and, a couple of minutes later, parked on the street across from the little church where we’d met her the night before.

  “The church?” Rainy said. “That’s the place you’re thinking of?”

  “Not the church,” Michelle said. “The parsonage.” She nodded toward a small stone house on our side of the street, shadowed by tall cottonwoods. “Like I said, I have a ranch ten miles out of town, so I use the parsonage for guests of the congregation. It’s made of the same stone as the church. Somebody wants to blow you up, it’ll take a small nuclear device. Not fancy, but it might do until you figure your next move.”

  We carried our things inside, where the air was blessedly cool.

  “I kicked on the AC before I met you this morning, just in case,” Michelle said.

  The parsonage was small and sunny. We dropped our bags in the tiny bedroom, then sat in the living room with Michelle.

  “Georgia told us about the car bombing in Sulfur Springs,” Rainy said.

  The minister nodded. “Happened a couple of months ago.”

  “One man killed,” I said. “Who?”

  “Word is that he was a member of White Horse.”

  “White Horse?”

  “There’s a war going on in Coronado County and the other counties along the border,” Michelle said.

  “A drug war?”

  “It’s a great deal more complicated.”

  “Who is White Horse?” Rainy asked.

  “A vigilante group, trying to go head-to-head with the cartels. They’ve taken their name from a passage in Revelation. ‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’ ”

  “So White Horse against the cartels. Not so complicated,” I said.

  “Not until you consider the Border Patrol, and the federal governments on both sides of that wall, and local law enforcement, and vigilantes like White Horse, and the wave of refugees trying to make it to the U.S., and the humanitarian groups trying to help them, and on and on and on. In what crosses that border, nothing is simple.”

  “Do you think Peter is involved in what crosses that border?” Rainy asked.

  “I do. But not the drugs. Peter’s stayed clean, I’m sure of that.”

  “If not the drugs, then what?” I said.

  “Peter has a big heart and a strong conscience,” Michelle said. “Where refugees are involved, the situation is frightening. So many of those coming across from Mexico are women and children. They’re preyed on by the coyotes who take their money to lead them here. They’re sometimes robbed and raped by these men and abandoned in the desert. If they don’t have money for their passage, they become mules for the cartels. Imagine the kind of desperation that drives people to take those risks.”

  “So how does Peter fit in?”

  “I think he’s helping these desperate people. That’s not something we talk about openly here in Coronado County. Feelings run high on both sides of the issue, and honestly, it can be dangerous. I can’t say for certain that’s what Peter is doing, but I’ve strongly suspected it for a while.”

  “And this would bring him into conflict with the cartel run by the Rodriguez family?”

  “The cartels don’t just traffic drugs. They traffic people. Anything that might bring you into contact with one of the cartels is risky business.”

  “You told us to talk to Nikki Edwards,” I said. “Is that because she’s close enough to Peter to be in his confidence? Or do you believe she’s involved in helping the undocumented immigrants?”

  Michelle considered her words before replying. “Like Peter, she’s a person of strong conscience and conviction.”

  “We were supposed to talk to her this morning. Missed our appointment.”

  “Have you tried calling?”

  “Not yet. Been a little busy. Have you talked to anyone in your Sulfur Springs congregation about Peter?”

  “I’ve called.” She shook her head. “I can’t tell if they really don’t know anything or if they’re too afraid to talk. What are you going to do?”

  “We’re not leaving Coronado County until we know what’s going on with Peter,” Rainy said.

  A smile came to Michelle’s lips, one of understanding, and she said, “You’ll need a vehicle. We don’t have any car rentals in Cadiz. So, how would you like my truck? She’s got a lot of miles on her, but she’s reliable as the day is long.”

  “We couldn’t,” Rainy said.

  “Don’t worry. Somebody blows her up, she’s fully insured.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She handed me a ring with two keys on it. One was an old skeleton key. She touched the other. “This key’s for the parsonage.”

  “What’s the other for?”

  “That’ll open the church, in case you decide you want to pray there. And one more thing. You’ll need to give me a lift back to the ranch.”

  “If you’re willing to risk a ride with us,” Rainy said.

  She took Rainy’s hand. “Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  We dropped Michelle at her ranch, which was east and south of Cadiz, set among grassland within sight of the border fence.

  “I drive my property along that fence almost every day, and almost every day I find something left behind by the mules,” she’d told us on the way there. “Mostly backpacks stuffed with marijuana. I always wonder why they’ve dropped them, what the consequences might be. I call the sheriff’s office. They come out, take possession. It’s the same for all of us who own property that abuts the fence.”

  “Do you try to interfere with
the trafficking?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s just asking to get shot. Life along the border,” she’d said with a shrug.

  We headed back toward Cadiz. Once again, Rainy was quiet in a disturbing way, her focus to the south, beyond the fence.

  “What is it, Rainy?” I asked. “What’s coming at us from across the border?”

  “When I know for sure, Cork, I’ll tell you.”

  “Why all the mystery? We almost got ourselves blown to kingdom come this morning. What aren’t you telling me?”

  She turned her brown eyes to my face and studied me as intensely as she’d studied that foreign landscape to the south. It occurred to me that Rainy knew almost everything there was to know about my life before we met. I’d shared it with her willingly. But in her own life, there was a great gap, and that gap was the years she’d spent in Arizona during her first marriage. She’d offered me little pieces of information, but never the whole ball of wax. And now here we were, in that territory of her untold life, and I was aware of how much of her was still a mystery to me.

  “Do you trust me, Cork?”

  “I want to, Rainy.”

  “Do you trust me?” she said again.

  I should have been able to answer immediately. “Yes,” I finally said.

  Was it the truth? I wanted it be.

  “You’ll know everything soon, I promise,” she said.

  “How soon?” I asked. “And what does it depend on?”

  Before she could answer, I spotted a Border Patrol vehicle coming up fast behind me, the light bar flashing. It pulled close, and in my rearview mirror I saw the officer at the wheel waving me over. I braked to a stop at the side of the road and lowered the truck window. The hot air rushed in and with it the smell of that arid place, which was beginning to seem to me like the distant smell of death, dry and leathery.

  The agent got out. His green uniform was smartly pressed, his shoes polished, his metal badge shining in the bright sun. He wore mirrored sunglasses under the bill of his green cap. His right hand rested on the butt of his holstered sidearm.

  “Morning Mr. O’Connor. Ms. Bisonette.”

  I recognized him from the day before, when we’d been stopped on the Old Douglas Road.

  “Good morning, Agent . . . ?”

  “Sprangers. Jamie Sprangers.”

  He took off the sunglasses. His eyes were like small glistening stones, his face tanned and cut by lines from squinting into a relentless sun. He was handsome, his good looks dark, what, I suppose, a romance novelist might have called “swarthy.”

  “Heard about the incident with your vehicle this morning,” he said.

  “Seems like all of Coronado County’s heard about it,” I said.

  “Big county, small population. Word travels fast. Especially with something like this. Kind of unusual.”

  “Not so much, from my understanding.”

  He nodded. Once. Then looked across me at Rainy.

  “How’re you holding up, ma’am?”

  “Just fine, Agent Sprangers.”

  “Your son is Peter Bisonette. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gone missing, I understand.”

  “We haven’t heard from him since the day before yesterday. No one has.”

  “Lots of kids are uncommunicative. A day or two doesn’t seem like much to be concerned about. Any reason you should be worried?”

  I said, “Mind me asking what your interest is, Agent Sprangers?”

  “That destroyed Jeep Cherokee you rented. That has all the hallmarks of a hit. Around here hits usually go along with the drug traffic. Drug traffic across the border is one of my areas of concern.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “Does the name Rodriguez mean anything to you folks?”

  I didn’t let a thing show on my face. I hoped Rainy didn’t either.

  “Should it?” I asked.

  “Mexican family responsible for most of what crosses illegally along the border here with Coronado County. A cartel, more or less. They call themselves Las Calaveras. The Skulls. Carlos Rodriguez heads the family. Enjoys being called Lagarto. Lizard. Something like a hit, that would come from orders handed down by Rodriguez.”

  “I don’t know that name,” I said.

  I glanced at Rainy. She shook her head.

  Over Sprangers’s shoulder, I saw three vultures circling on thermals, in the same way I’d seen the day before when we encountered the agent. He saw me looking and turned.

  “Buzzards,” he said. “Admirable creatures in their way. They survive in a landscape inhospitable to most other animals, thriving on what dies in that landscape. An interesting fact about those buzzards. They defecate and urinate on themselves, use the evaporation of the water as a coolant. They’re all about survival, whatever it takes. I’ve always seen that as a valuable lesson. Not uncommon for us to stumble across the bleached white bones of someone who ignored that lesson. A lot more of those bones in this desert than we’ll ever find. Out here, the lost usually stay lost forever.” He turned back to us, reached into his shirt pocket, and drew out a business card, which he handed to me. “In Coronado County, you need to be very careful about who you talk to, and even more careful about who you trust. If you feel you’re in any danger, call me.”

  “And we should trust you because . . .” I said.

  He gave us a swarthy smile and put a finger to his cap. “Good day, folks.”

  Agent Sprangers returned to his vehicle, did a U-turn, and headed south, toward the border.

  “Was that a warning?” Rainy asked. “Or was he really offering to help?”

  “I’m not sure. Could be he’s just trying to read us.”

  “Like we’re trying to read him?”

  My cell phone rang.

  “Cork O’Connor,” I answered.

  “This is Nikki Edwards. I heard about this morning. We need to talk.”

  * * *

  We met her in a little park on the San Gabriel River south of Cadiz. It sat among cottonwoods and sycamores that grew along the banks and gave welcome shade, and was rendered almost invisible from the road by a thicket of shrubs I later learned were tamarisk bushes. Nikki was waiting for us at a picnic table, the only person there.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said even before the introductions. “They didn’t wait long to target you.”

  “Who?” I said.

  On the radio, her voice had been velvety, and I’d imagined some young, slinky siren. But Nikki Edwards wasn’t much younger than I. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore glasses and a ball cap with NAMI printed across the bill. She ignored my question, and all her attention went immediately to the woman at my side.

  “You’re Rainy. Peter’s told me so much about you. I can imagine how worried you are.”

  “Who targeted us?” I asked again.

  “Here,” Nikki said and indicated the picnic table. “Sit. We’ll talk.”

  The riverbed lay a few yards from where we sat. In Minnesota, I might have heard the rush and tumble of clear water over stones, but here there was only the dry rustle of leaves as a small breeze blew through the trees along the bank.

  “When did you last hear from Peter?” Nikki asked.

  “The day before yesterday,” Rainy said.

  “How did he sound?”

  “Scared.”

  “What did he say?”

  Rainy hesitated. Dangerous territory, telling someone your son confessed to murder.

  “Did he mention Rodriguez?” Nikki said. “Or White Horse?”

  “Only Rodriguez. And the name Lagarto.”

  She nodded as if that made sense.

  “We know about him and Las Calaveras,” I said.

  “A family of reptiles,” Nikki said. “A ball of snakes.”

  “Why would Peter mention White Horse?”

  Nikki folded her hands on the tabletop and closed her eyes, as if in prayer. “Where to start?”

  We he
ard a car approaching on the road, and Nikki’s eyes shot open. She raised her head and listened intently, in the way deer in the great Northwoods do when they sense danger. The car passed and she relaxed.

  “It sometimes feels like a war zone in Coronado County,” she said. “Like in any war zone, those who suffer most are the innocents. The Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office handles the work of identifying human remains found in the desert in the counties along the Mexican border. There are hundreds of sets of remains still unidentified. That’s only a fraction of what probably is out there undiscovered. The most common demographic used to be males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. But that’s changed. We’re seeing more and more women and children, the majority coming from Central America and the states farthest south in Mexico. Border control has tightened, so the flow is not what it used to be, but more people are dying.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re forced to make the crossing in some of the worst country imaginable. And too often, they cross alone and unprepared, or if they come with a coyote, they’re abandoned or even murdered.”

  “What does this have to do with Peter?” Rainy asked.

  “Peter works with a group who call themselves Los Angeles del Desierto.”

  “Desert Angels,” Rainy translated.

  “They do what they can to keep the innocents who are so desperate to come to the United States out of the hands of the predators. They intercept these people in Mexico and arrange safe passage.”

  “And Peter?”

  “Peter was a soldier. He’s been trained in reconnaissance behind enemy lines. He’s fearless, but not stupid. When it comes to moving through the desert, he knows how to disguise his presence so effectively that the cartels and the sign cutters have no idea where he is.”

  “Sign cutters?” Rainy asked.

  “That’s what trackers are called,” I said. “When they’re following someone’s trail, it’s called cutting sign.”

  “So, Border Patrol?” Rainy said.

  Nikki nodded. “Border Patrol.”

  Rainy put it together. “Peter leads these people to safety.”

  “At great risk,” Nikki said. “Carlos Rodriguez has put a price on the head of anyone who helps Los Angeles del Desierto. And on this side of the border, there’s not only the Border Patrol to contend with, there’s White Horse.”