Chapter Eight
In the motor court room in Eagle Pass, Whicher blows on a scalding hot cup of coffee, trying to shake the tiredness from his body. On top of a veneered night stand is a napkin and a half-eaten doughnut.
A cigarette burns in the ashtray, the marshal watches blue smoke curling in the morning sun.
Beyond the window, traffic's rolling on the highway. He hadn't slept, the bed too small, light from the court outside too bright.
He stares at the slim file on the bed—Randell Creagan's jacket.
From the next room a TV blares behind thin walls.
Outside, out the window, the Chevy's nose is tight to the room, twin light-clusters staring in. He thinks of the note inside the glove box. Law officers had informers—could that be it? He should have left the note in the apartment, some impulse made him take it—he picks the Marlboro out of the ashtray, takes a drag.
Focus on Creagan.
He lifts the topmost sheet out of Creagan's file. Sips his coffee, checks the time, it's after nine.
He picks the phone off the night stand, dials a number from memory.
At the Laredo Police Department, an operator patches through a call to the auto theft unit.
Whicher stares in the bathroom at the bleached towel hanging from a hook.
The line picks up. “Detective Simms.”
“This is Deputy Marshal Whicher—I'm calling about Randell Creagan. Found dead yesterday, up in Eagle Pass.”
There's a pause on the end of the line. “I spoke with somebody from the Marshals Service yesterday.”
“Marshal Scruggs, my boss.”
“We already searched in Creagan's apartment,” Simms says. “There was nothing there. Is the Marshals office investigating?”
“This is just preliminary.” Whicher takes a pull on the cigarette. “Can you tell me anything about the stolen vehicles charge?”
“Like what?”
“Like what kind of numbers, was it serious?”
“It was plenty serious,” the detective says. “He was fencing vehicles out of state, so it got federal real quick.”
“Okay.”
“FBI thought he might have been moving vehicles back and forth across the border.”
“Say again?”
“I don't know what evidence they had—we weren't party to it.”
“FBI suspected Creagan of cross-border work?”
“Like I said, we weren't aware of any corroborating evidence.”
“You know which office was handling it?”
“Houston, I think.”
Whicher makes a note. He stands, stretches out the phone cable. “You think of anybody that might have wanted Creagan dead?”
Detective Simms cracks a laugh. “A dirt bag like him?”
“Specifically?”
“Not specifically, you'd have to dig. You could try in Port Arthur, I daresay the cops in his hometown knew him.”
“Right,” Whicher says. “If we get this, I'll probably want to come back to you.”
“You know where to find me.” Simms clicks off the call.
Whicher makes a brief note, stubs out the cigarette. He takes a turn around the room.
If Creagan was running cars across the border, he could've been killed in Mexico, maybe Sheriff Owens was right? He didn't seem to live at any of his addresses, maybe he spent time down there. So how come Dane Vogel had been watching the apartment in Eagle Pass? Vogel was IA, not connected to the Houston office.
In the mirror he eyes his freshly-shaved face, runs a hand through his wet hair.
He reaches to the night stand, picks up the Glock, clips the holster to his belt.
He grabs the phone, dials another number.
Above the TV is a shelf with the ornaments—a lone star, a plastic horseshoe. Glass bottle filled with colored sand. The sand is layered, one color on top of another. Rust red, brown to black, burnt yellow. He thinks of the hopper car in the Laredo yard. Raises his finger—the stain on his skin is still there.
At the end of the line, the phone picks up. “Scruggs.”
“Sir, it's Whicher. I thought to call, see if you’d had word from Marshal Riggins?”
“We got it. He spoke with the county attorneys. Everybody's agreed.”
Whicher reaches for another cigarette.
“Dimmit and Maverick don't have money to burn for homicide cases. Webb County don't mind, so long as it's on the federal tab.”
“We handle both Todd Williams and Randell Creagan?”
“The both of 'em.”
Whicher lights up, takes a hit off the smoke. “How about Saldana? The other deaths—at the ranch?”
“Nobody's asking us to investigate. The four Hispanics at the ranch we have no ID, no place to start.”
Whicher stares at the bottle on the shelf. “But Saldana?”
“Webb coroner contacts the embassy, they find his family, they'll let 'em know. We can't expect anybody to come forward, the county will likely bury him. That's just the way it is. It goes on.”
A beat passes. Whicher lets the silence grow.
“How you make out last night?” Scruggs says. “At Creagan's apartment, you didn't call.”
“It got kind of late...”
“You think we need a thorough search?”
“Didn't seem like it.” The marshal snatches up the note from the bed. “I was just on the phone with Detective Simms. At LPD...”
“Oh?”
“He reckons FBI had intel Creagan was fencing cars into Mexico. Houston office, what he said.”
Scruggs grunts.
“You had a guy there—Gerry Nugent?”
“I'm coming up to Carrizo Springs,” Scruggs says. “Ought to be there in a couple hours. I'll call the sheriff, let him know we'll be needing that office space. Get over there, get things set up. We got plenty to look at on Randell Creagan, nothing yet on this other feller; Todd Williams.”
“You want me to start on that?”
“He's local, somebody in the county ought to know him.”
“I'd like to talk to Harris again, Jug Line Harris. Out at the lake.”
“I will lead the blind,” Scruggs says, “by ways they have not known.”
“Say again, sir?”
“Isiah 42:16. If you want to go talk to Harris, do it. Make sure you're back in Carrizo Springs this afternoon...”
Lake Amistad Reservoir.
Scrub and mesquite are high to all sides at the reservoir, birds wheeling over the low hills.
Whicher passes the few trailers, the route giving out to hard packed sand. Harris was nervous as hell the day they'd spoken, the day after the ranch murders. He'd admitted knowing Creagan, hunting with him at least.
He sees the rail-tie up ahead—the marker at the end of the track. A truck is parked there—a half ton GMC pickup, painted black.
The marshal draws alongside it, parks, cuts the motor. Steps out in the bright, midday heat.
The truck's about an eighty-nine, regular cab, on a Maverick County plate. He tries the door—it's locked. It could belong to Harris. How come it wasn't there before?
Whicher steps over the rail-tie, heads for the narrow path in the brush.
He works his way down the twisted trail. Below, he sees the tin-roofed boathouse. A figure is standing near it, a man, his back to the hill—looking out over the lake.
Big guy, not Harris.
He turns from the water's edge, toward the boathouse.
The marshal lowers himself in the scrub, till he shows no outline.
Carrizo Springs, TX.
Two hours later, Whicher sits parked by the bail bond office in the courthouse square; Marshal Scruggs's blue and white Ford Ranger in his sight-line.
Inside the courthouse, Scruggs would be working, straight-backed, sober-sided. What to tell him?
Two times, Gale had come up now.
Two times and he couldn't explain it.
Across the square he sees the window to Sheriff Barnhart's office. It's open. No sign of the boss man in the white shirt.
Whicher steps from the truck, shields his eyes from the glare. Crosses the street beneath the shade of the palms.
In the lobby of the courthouse, Raul Talamantes is sitting in a steel-frame chair.
He's wearing an olive fatigue shirt—sleeves rolled, pipe veins standing on his arms. “Vic Delossantos said you went to see him, mano.”
Whicher nods.
“Yesterday. Down in Brownsville.”
“He said that?”
“Looking into that death in Webb County?” Talamantes crosses one laced boot over the other.
“I believe that'd be right.”
From the corridor at the rear of the lobby, Marshal Scruggs swings into reception.
A female deputy is with him—Hispanic, good-looking, handsome face, a tough streak in it.
Talamantes sits up straighter, slicks his mustache.
Whicher takes in the deputy, swept-back hair, high cheekbones, eyes the color of molasses.
“Marshal,” Scruggs says. “This here's Deputy Alvarenga. Sheriff assigned us a liaison.”
“John Whicher, ma'am. Pleased to meet you.”
“Benita Alvarenga,” she says.
Talamantes lets his eyes linger on the woman. She's late twenties, around Whicher’s age, not real friendly.
“You find Harris?” Scruggs says.
“No sir, no sign of him out at the lake. I thought to get back here....”
“Sheriff made good on his promise,” Scruggs says. “We got us an office, right enough. Along the corridor yonder.”
Whicher looks at Talamantes, still staring at Benita Alvarenga. The man finally breaks off.
“We head on down there?”
Alvarenga leads the way, a half pace in front.
The corridor is dim—at the end is an exit door to the courthouse square, to the right an opening onto a cramped office.
The office has a desk, shelves, a metal file cabinet, a phone. There's barely enough room for three. In the close space, Whicher feels Benita Alvarenga's physical presence, the curve to her body pronounced, despite the uniform.
“Deputy Alvarenga has some background,” Scruggs says.
“The Caucasian victim at the ranch,” she says.
“Todd Williams?”
“We found the mother, Reba Williams. I have an address.”
Whicher looks at her.
“You need to head out, take a look,” Scruggs says.
“She lives not far from here,” Alvarenga says. “In Catarina.”
“'Less you're fixing to stand around like a dogie all day, you best get her interviewed, get a statement.”
“Did you speak with Gerry Nugent?” Whicher says. “Up in Houston? About Creagan, about what Detective Simms had to say?”
Scruggs's face darkens.
Whicher senses a mistake; that he’s been too open.
Deputy Alvarenga regards him, self-contained.
“You want to give me the address?” Whicher says. “For Williams's mother. Or do we head out there together?”
“Marshal?” She looks to Scruggs.
He waves a hand, sits at the desk. “Go ahead and show him.”
“You want to drive?” Whicher says.
“As you like.”
He grabs the Chevy keys. “Let's take mine.”
Catarina, TX.
Twenty miles south of Carrizo Springs on US 83—the brush scrub opens out onto a clearing. In its center a double-front brick building stands half abandoned, studded with palms. Whicher runs an eye across it—it's grand and squalid in equal measure.
Deputy Alvarenga follows his gaze.
“Quite the place.”
“It used to be,” she says. “Way back. In the nineteen-twenties. The old Catarina Hotel.”
The brick is scorched by years in the sun and wind. Colonnades and cornices, windows rotted out, boarded up. There's two long floors, multiple rooms, palms in a courtyard, grown immense. A few stray vehicles are parked in the clearing—old trucks and cars. “It still open?”
“Hunters use it,” Alvarenga says. “It's pretty rough in there. Haunted, too.”
Whicher cuts a glance at her.
There's no smile at her wide mouth.
“Strange country,” he says. “For a hotel.”
“For a while, it was something.”
Past the hotel, the view from the Chevy is a sea of brush and low mesquite. The land pinned beneath a brutal sun.
“Grandfather's time, cattle was booming,” she says. “They had the railroad. Once the wells played out, there was no water—no way the place could survive.”
“What they have around here now?”
“A lot of poor folk.”
“That go for Todd Williams? His family?”
“If they're from anyplace around here.”
She leans forward in the passenger seat, looking for something down the road. A radio mast stands tall in the brush at the south. He glances at the shape of her back, soft skin at the nape of her neck.
“We're not far from the turn,” she says. “Make the next right.”
Whicher slows, signals. Turns the Chevy down a metaled road blown with dirt. Shack-like properties are dotted in the brush. Built years back, surrounded with rusting junk.
Alvarenga studies a sheet of paper printed in the sheriff's department. She points to a shack painted dull blue—a lean-to at one end, wire fencing surrounding the place.
Whicher pulls over, shuts off the motor. “How far you figure this from the Channing Ranch?”
She checks the map. “Twenty something.”
“Twenty miles? What's between there and here?”
They step out of the truck. Cross to a twisted wooden gate.
“There's nothing,” she says. “Just the monte—the brush.” She takes the lead across a beaten-earth plot. Raps at the door.
Beyond the shack, scrub stretches, unending. An air of decay is on everything, paint peeling from the rough board walls, windows thick with dirt, the drapes bleached out.
The door opens.
A thin woman in her fifties stands before them.
She's wearing a patched denim dress, hair wild. Reek of nicotine from the house.
“Reba Williams?”
The woman squints at the uniformed deputy. “What do y'all want?”
“It's about your son, ma'am,” Whicher says.
She glares at him.
“Can we come inside?”
There's a look in her face he's seen before. Bombed out places, Gulf places, reduced to mud.
“Y'all fixing to bring him back?”
Whicher looks over her shoulder into the shack's main room—a sagging couch, a cluttered table, stacks of cheap magazines.
Reba Williams slumps. She turns back inside.
Deputy Alvarenga steps through the door, Whicher follows, taking off his hat.
In one corner of the room is an ancient-looking TV. A hunting bow, unstrung. Faded photographs—Todd Williams as a kid, a teenager. Ink tattoos, broken teeth, skinny.
“What y'all want?” She lights a cigarette from the butt end of another, holding it with yellowed fingers.
“US Marshals office is investigating the death of your son, ma'am.”
She draws the smoke deep. “It ain't nothing more to say on that.”
“I'm sorry for your loss.” Whicher studies the threadbare rug on the plank floor.
“Todd's all I had.” She puts the heel of a hand to her eye.
“Ma'am,” says Deputy Alvarenga. “Your son was unlawfully killed. We're here to help.”
“Well, you cain't.”
“He was found with a group of non-documented illegal aliens,” Alvarenga says.
“Mexican trash.” She glares at the deputy.
The marshal glances at the pile of fabric on a hard-backed chair.
“That's all I got, now,” Reba Williams says. “Sewing bitty dresses to keep me alive.”
“Did Todd live here with you?” Whicher says.
“Sometimes,” she shrugs. “Sometimes not.”
“Did you know what he was doing lately?” Alvarenga says. “In the weeks before his death? Was he working?”
Her face is bitter. “Only regular job he ever had lasted six months. Six God damn months...”
“What kind of work?” Whicher says.
She flicks the cigarette. “Some ol' warehouse.”
“It didn't last?”
“Chicago it was, up to Chicago. I like to died and gone to heaven, he tol' me that. He finally went someplace, only place he ever did went, only time he ever sent me money. He got homesick.” She throws out an arm. “For this...”
Whicher looks out the window into the dirt yard—thorn and scrub beyond it. “Did Todd know a guy named Randell Creagan?”
She nods.
“He did know him?”
“Randell, yeah.”
“What was their relationship?”
She tilts her head to the side—as if at some insult. “Todd used to clean cars an' such. Randell had a bunch on 'em.”
Whicher glances at Alvarenga.
“Where would that have been?” the deputy says.
“Up to Eagle Pass.”
Whicher takes out a notepad. Writes down the detail. “He work regular for Creagan? Like that?”
Reba Williams scoffs. “God, no.”
“How well did they know each other?”
She takes another pull at her cigarette. “Todd used to stay up there, time to time. Randell had a auto yard. Todd be fixin' up cars.”
“Out at the yard?”
She nods.
Whicher rolls the pen between his finger and thumb. “You know where?”
“Monroe. South Monroe. I went up one time, seen him.”
“What else?” Alvarenga says. “What else did he do around here?”
“Todd. He'd be huntin', or fishin'.”
“He work as a guide?”Alvarenga says.
Reba Williams nods.
“For groups? The kind of people that camp out at the hotel, the old hotel?”
Whicher stares at the hunting bow. “I guess Todd knew this ground about as well as anyone?”
“Only thing he did know...”
Whicher checks the last page in his notepad. “Did Todd know somebody by the name of Merrill M. Johnson?”
She looks blank.
“How about Boyd Harris? Jug Line Harris?”
“Yeah. Jug Line.”
“He knew him?”
“Bunch of 'em used to hunt together. Todd. Randell. Him.”
“Where would that be?”
“Out in the brush.”
“Here?”
“Here,” she says. “Them ol' river camps.”
Whicher writes fast in the notepad. “What camps?”
Deputy Alvarenga catches his eye. “There's hunting camps out at the river, along the border.”
Reba Williams stabs out her cigarette.
“These camps, ma'am?” Whicher holds the pen above the notepad. “Where exactly might I find 'em?”