Twenty

Serena agreed to move Montclaire to the closest bunkhouse, where she’d be easier to protect. It stood in the open, the approaches cleared of underbrush and the pines limbed up. The gravel off the county road ran for miles with no other ranches along the way. That was the only way in here unless someone crossed the mountain behind the house. Javier said that looked easier than it was. You couldn’t see the deep canyon at the foot of the mountain until you were right on it. Even in daylight that was killer country to cross.

“We’ll set up after dark,” Aragon said, Lewis with her on the porch, deciding how they would do this. “With Thornton knowing where Lily is, she’s not safe. We need to be out here every night. You’ll sleep when you’re dead, remember?”

“Daytime?”

“We have to figure something out.”

“Let’s use the top of that rise down the road. We’ll see headlights coming before they’re close.”

“Thanks for helping, Rick.” He didn’t like going twenty-four hours without seeing his family. He’d arrived after swinging home with groceries and a promise to be back to cook breakfast. Aragon was glad to have him. It would be a long night in the woods.

He said, “I got an update from Rivera. Tucker came through again.”

She saw Lily Montclaire moving behind a window inside the bunkhouse. It was hot out here on the porch with the western sun cranking up the temperature in the tinder-dry woods. The bunkhouse was probably an oven. All the windows were open but one, the bathroom with three shower stalls. Serena had caught Montclaire standing in the window, naked, taking her time drying herself, watching Javier as he groomed the mules. She’d nailed boards over the window so that wouldn’t happen again.

Lewis said, “Backpage is now cooperating without needing subpoenas. Tucker just had to mention the grand jury the Feds always have working in Albuquerque.”

“We could use something like that.” Aragon put her feet on the railing, an iced tea by her feet. Lewis had his tea resting on his thigh, leaving a ring on his jeans.

“There was an ad placed by an Andrea in Espanola. She’d meet up in Santa Fe, but she was over forty years old. Somehow Tucker learned she was that teacher, the one who nodded off in her car during lunch hour at the high school with the needle on the seat next to her.”

“With her head on the steering wheel. I remember that. Kids found her, thought she was dead.”

Montclaire came out of the bunkhouse with wet towels in her arms. She crossed to the clothesline Serena used for the family and draped them over the cord.

“But he also got ads paid by Star Salazar. They were for different girls. None for herself except the oldest, which ran only once. She showed her face in that one, the metal ring in the nose for those who like that. It ran under ‘Freaky Latina.’ The ones for the other girls, there’s no faces, just hips, tight shirts over boobs, and thighs. A couple with sports car tats. One might be Cassandra Baca but Tucker couldn’t be certain.”

Montclaire was watching them, a towel obscuring her face as she raised it over the line, then her eyes again looking their way when the line sagged under the weight of wet cotton.

“Tucker says the numbers from the ads matches the number found on Montclaire’s phone. She was texting Star Salazar.”

Montclaire had finished with the towels and was coming their way.

“That woman,” Aragon said. “She said she only met Star Salazar once in the Pizza Hut.” Aragon dropped her feet and sat forward, her forearm on the top railing. “Lily, get up here.”

Serena grilled elk burgers topped with her red chile, loaded with oregano and cumin. Aragon and Lewis waved off beers. Serena talked about where Javier should be right now, camped inside the boundary of the Pecos Wilderness along a stream without a name. The other guiding services were steering customers to peaks and mesas. He’d found a valley that years ago had been cleaned out of elk and deer and written off by local hunters. The animals were responding to pressure in the famous high country by returning to the old range.

“Denise, you should come with us.” Serena dished posole onto plates. “Help with camp. Get yourself a cow elk. You can keep the meat in our freezer. We’ll get to see you whenever you’re hungry.”

Lewis should come, too, bring his girls. They ever been on a mule?

Aragon’s mind was on what Montclaire had told them before Serena called dinner: she’d never seen the girl she thought was Andrea with a phone.

The time you called about the Backpage ad, she’d asked Montclaire, who answered? You got to know Andrea’s voice. Was it her? How about the other times?

Montclaire had shrugged. I did most of the talking, asking about dates, can you do tonight, how much? It was yes or no on the other end, and a number. We always texted after that.

Tucker had seen something in the video. He passed it to Lewis to ask Montclaire: What did you leave on the seat in the Pizza Hut?

Montclaire had pretended the question puzzled her, came back with Nothing. Why do you think I left something?

Serena told Montclaire to clear the table. They’d eaten outside under the trees. Montclaire carried dishes into the house, not having talked during the meal, by herself on the end of a bench.

“We’re going to lay in the dirt in the dark all night long for that woman,” Aragon said to Lewis when Montclaire was out of earshot.

“I’m laying in the dirt in the dark all night long for Cassandra Baca.”

Serena reached into the cooler by her chair and cracked another beer for herself. “Javier has a pair of night-vision goggles,” she said. “They’re fun.”

“That’s how he’s able to shoot mountain lions in the dark.” Aragon wanted one of those beers to chase the red chile taste in her mouth. Instead, she’d be drinking coffee at midnight. “And here I thought it was his mountain man skills.”

“Isn’t that illegal,” Lewis asked, “using night-vision goggles to hunt?”

“Who’s hunting?” Serena took a long drink and wiped her lips on the back of her hand. “He’s protecting his family and property.”

A little after one a.m., headlights showed the underside of trees across a little valley from where they’d set up. Aragon removed the night-vision goggles. She’d been getting a kick out of seeing deer, then a bear moving under the trees, coming straight at their position, pausing, sniffing the air, then swinging wide around them.

The light reappeared, topping out on the opposite hill, then angling down the dirt road.

They heard the engine as it climbed toward them. Headlights. A car stopped at the tree they’d dragged across the road.

They came out of the woods on opposite sides of a Crown Victoria. Dashboard glow showed two people inside.

“Police! Get out of the car and turn around, hands on the roof.” Lewis taking charge on the driver’s side, a big flashlight lined along the barrel of his Glock.

Aragon did the same, holding her flashlight along the barrel of her gun, and saw the face behind the window on her side. “It’s Pork and Sauerkraut.”

The doors opened. A foot came out. A man stood.

“What the fuck? Is this how you welcome fellow officers come to your aid and assistance?” Albert Fenstermacher unfolded himself from the passenger side, his hand shielding his eyes from the flashlight’s beam. Darrel Park came out the driver’s door.

“Sergeant Perez told us you might need help protecting your witness,” Fenstermacher said. “We needed to talk with you anyway. We’ve been calling for hours.”

“There’s no signal out here.”

“Would you put that down, for Christ’s sake?”

Aragon lowered her flashlight and holstered her weapon.

“We brought sleeping bags.” Fenstermacher nodded over his shoulder at the rear seat. “We can spell you guys. Maybe all of us can get a little shuteye.”

“Much appreciated. Help us move this tree out of the way. We’ll walk ahead. My sister-in-law was going to bed, but she’s probably on the porch with a rifle across her knees. You drive up alone, she’ll be wondering what happened to us. You don’t want to learn what an Annie Oakley she is.”

As they dragged the tree back into the forest, Fenstermacher talked about their investigation of the dead Indian without a foot.

“You’d given us the name E. Benny Silva, that photo of the copper cable in his scrap yard. We asked him about it. He pulled out this book from under the counter. ‘Sorry, no copper cable this week.’ He held it open for us to see. ‘I got rainspouts, pipes from a hotel downtown they’re renovating. No cable.”’

“You show him the photo I sent you?” Aragon asked.

“He said that wasn’t copper, that’s why it’s not in his book. But it looks just like the copper cable round our Indian. PNM matched it with their stock, some alloy so they can trace anything that gets ripped off.”

They got the tree into the bushes, Fenstermacher having a hard time with it. “How did the two of you get that thing into the road?” He was bent over, hands on his knees.

Park took over while they waited for him to catch his breath. “Guess what? Silva lives in that neighborhood that lost power the night before the Indian turned up dead. We went to his street, talked to this old guy with a walker putting out a soaker on what’s left of his lawn. You know, the air’s getting pretty bad in the city? The wind shifted. He had a handkerchief over his face. We asked him about the power outage, what he’d heard. He’d heard Mr. E. Benny Silva saying it would never happen again.”

“El Patron,” Aragon said. “Defending the pueblo.”

“So what we wanted to run by you, your thing with the girl in the dumpster. Sarge let us see the photos. Don’t want to step on toes, but maybe because we have the footless Indian on the brain, it looks staged. Like ours. Why go to all that trouble, severing a foot, wrapping him in wire yanked out of the transformer that cut the neighborhood’s AC, unless a message is being sent? Nobody’s gonna touch that transformer again except the PNM crew supposed to work on it. Your thing, you think maybe a message, too, in Mr. Benny’s dumpster? Yo. What’s that?”

Headlights lit up the underside of branches across the valley, then disappeared.

“Someone’s coming,” Lewis said, already moving. “Let’s get this tree back in place.”

They dragged it out of the bushes and again blocked the road. The headlights lit trees on the opposite hill, then swung into the little valley.

Aragon said, “Guys, act like you were coming in here and this tree stopped you. Try to see who’s driving. We’ll be in the woods. Don’t let them know you’re cops. You’re lost, looking for the Interstate.”

She and Lewis melted into the darkness. They watched a vehicle approach, a pickup truck. No, it was a cargo van sitting as high as a truck, full size, headlights on high beam. Fenstermacher and Park stood at the back of their car, Fenstermacher waving, friendly, fully lit in the van’s headlights. The van stopped twenty feet away.

The driver’s window came down. Fenstermacher stepped closer. The taillights on his car showed his shirt lifted in the back above his pistol, riding in a holster inside his pants. Park stepped left for the angle on the passenger. He had his gun behind his thigh.

“Tree fell down,” Fenstermacher said.

A voice spoke inside the van. Aragon couldn’t make out words.

“We have to turn around anyway.” Fenstermacher looked behind him briefly as though he was trying to get a fix on Aragon and Lewis in the darkness. “This isn’t the way to the Interstate, is it?”

Park had begun walking down the side of the van toward the rear. The van began backing up, slowly, keeping pace with him.

“Hold on.” Fenstermacher said. “Can you help us out? There’s no signal for our GPS in here.”

Park lengthened his stride. The van picked up speed. Now it began to pull away. Park gave up hiding his gun and ran. The van swerved as it accelerated, then straightened and moved faster down the hill and disappeared in the dip. When they saw it again, the van had turned around and was moving up the far slope and out of sight.

Aragon and Lewis met the other two cops in the road, flashlights on, no need to hide any more.

“I might have done that, too,” Fenstermacher said. “On a dark road, middle of nowhere, a car blocking the way, two guys walking toward me. I got a look inside. Driver: Hispanic, thirties, clean-cut. A boy, teenager, in the middle. In the passenger seat, an older Hispanic guy, heavy-set.”

“I could almost read something on the side of the van,” Park said. “Before it moved off I got ‘enterprises.’”

They left the tree in the road for the rest of the night. One team grabbed sleep in the Crown Vic while the other kept watch from the woods. No other vehicles appeared out of the night. Shortly before dawn, Aragon stiffened at the sound of branches snapping. Something large moving through the woods. She unholstered her gun and racked the slide.

“Elk,” Lewis said. It was his turn with the goggles. “A big bull, a beaut, leading his harem. He’s veering off.” An eerie, stressed bugle split the night, followed by a bizarre huffing. “Listen to that. He’s pissed we’re here.”

At dawn they cleared the road. Aragon walked ahead of the car carrying the three men. Serena was in the corral, a rifle slung over a fence post. She reached for it when she saw Aragon stepping into the clearing. Aragon realized how it looked, like she was being marched ahead of the car.

“Good guys,” she called out. “Cops.”

She introduced Fenstermacher and Park and handed back Javier’s goggles. “Man, these things are awesome. Rick saw a bull and cows this morning. I saw a bear.”

Serena said, “There’s carne adovada and scrambled eggs on the stove. I’ll be right in to make some more.”

The four of them split what was ready and brought their plates onto the porch. Serena was backing a pickup to the corral. She climbed out of the cab and into the bed and heaved bales of hay over the corral’s top rail.

Aragon stopped eating and watched. “Look at that,” she said to Lewis. “You see it?”

“Look at what?”

“How you can get a body into a dumpster. Serena couldn’t throw a hay bale into the corral if she was standing on the ground. From the back of a pickup, it’s just another chore.”