Chapter Twelve
Laredo, TX.
Too empty. The apartment had been too empty. He'd taken a shower, changed—grabbed something to eat. He'd checked the answer machine, nothing from Benita Alvarenga—a single message from Vic Delossantos at Laredo Border Patrol.
Delossantos had said to call. He said he had news of Alfonso Saldana, from out of Brownsville.
Whicher called Border Patrol, they’d told him Delossantos was out working a shift—he held while they found out where.
After, he sat out in the yard with the glass doors open. Smoked a cigarette in the kitchen, TV on.
He'd read his notes. Stared at the four walls of the apartment. Then locked up, headed out, riding Clarke Boulevard and 35 to Convent Avenue.
It's gone six in the evening as he pulls into the truck lot at the side of the Rio Grande in downtown Laredo.
Delossantos is by a group of stock trailers and cattle trucks.
He's in rough-duty uniform, fatigue shirt tight against his heavy frame. With him is a sandy haired young woman in jeans and a dark blue polo shirt.
The marshal makes his way across the hot asphalt.
Inside the trailers he sees horses moving, shifting through the open-slat sides. The whites of their eyes show—they dart away again into darkness.
The young woman in the polo shirt carries a clipboard securing reams of paper. Underneath an arm she has a bunch of carbon-backed forms.
Delossantos spots him, a look of surprise in his face.“You got my message?”
“I got it.”
“What're you doing down here, man?” Delossantos steps from the cattle trucks, grinning. “You don't have a girlfriend or nothing?”
The woman with the clipboard glances over.
“Border Patrol called from Brownsville,” Delossantos says.
“About Saldana, right. I wanted to hear.”
“Aguilar, it was. The guy at the port of entry? The day we went out there, Agent Aguilar, you remember?”
Whicher pictures the man; shaved head, the hi-top boots. He thinks of the family in the pickup—the couple with the little girl.
“Brownsville Patrol took another look into the whole thing,” Delossantos says. “The arrest log, the deportation.”
“They took another look?”
“The county medical examiner's office want to know, for their record.”
“They find something?”
“Maybe. It turns out, Saldana claimed to have a son that died. At the time of the arrest.”
Whicher eyes him.
“He claimed his son's death was being looked at by the university but they wouldn't talk to him. That's what he was doing up there.”
The marshal gazes out across the river at the Mexican flag hanging slack above the tree line in Nuevo Laredo. Three times Saldana went there; three times in and out of campus trying to speak with someone, trying to ask about his son. They didn't like the look, the way he was dressed. Maybe his English hadn't been so good.
“You think it changes anything?” Delossantos says.
“I don't know.”
The Border Patrol agent shoves his hands in his pockets. “How you get along, anyhow, this afternoon? With Merrill Johnson? You go on out there?”
“Yeah,” he says. “We went up. To that ranch.”
Delossantos nods. He stares at the cattle truck. “This bunch of horses is one of Johnson's shipments.”
The marshal watches the animals, nervous-looking, agitated, some barely moving. “What are they—for slaughter?”
The woman in the polo shirt steps over. “Afraid so.”
“This is Hannah Scott,” Delossantos says. “From Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.”
She writes on a form, slim hands moving quick, cross-referencing some kind of certificate.
“Hannah's a vet. She gave us the tip about that broodmare. I told Hannah, anything to do with Merrill Johnson, she could let me know.”
“Does Johnson put a lot of horses through here?” Whicher says.
“Enough.” She looks at him, skin of her face freckled, the features petite.
“That horse transporter seemed pretty big just for moving one mare.”
“Anything comes in like that,” Delossantos says, “we search it inside and out.”
“Easy way to give a bunch of folk a ride.”
“In a horse transporter?” the vet says. “It would be.”
Delossantos shakes his head. “Man, anybody hitches a ride, they're going to scatter at the border.”
Whicher stares at the cattle trucks, smell drifting on the over-heated air.
Hannah Scott checks-off more permits.
“Lot of paperwork,” the marshal says.
The vet shrugs. “We need certificates. Live horses, they need inspection not more than thirty days prior to export. The vehicles have to have been cleaned, disinfected...”
“Just to ship 'em out and kill 'em?”
“Any sign of infectious disease or parasites, we can't let them go.”
Whicher glances across the lot to the next two trailers, all filled with horses.
“Same shipment,” she says.
“All organized through Merrill Johnson?”
“Yep. And the same destination.”
“You mind if I ask you something?”
She looks up from the papers on the clipboard.
“You know much about rabies? The situation, how it is in the area?”
“I know it's on the rise.”
“The sheriff in Dimmit County reckons they had twelve cases so far this year. Something like a hundred across the whole of south Texas.”
“Canine rabies is a problem along the border,” she says.
Vic Delossantos studies Whicher. “Why you want to know that?”
“The shooting in Dimmit, the victims were moved, on account of it. Before a justice of the peace could give permission.”
The vet chews her pen. “You fight crime, we fight the war against disease...”
“Does Merrill Johnson come up regular on your radar?”
“I guess. He's a prime contact for any deal involving horses.”
“It's his main business?”
“Along this sector,” Delossantos says, “rail freight would account for the bulk of it.”
“But road loads come in to it?”
“Man has a lot of irons in the fire.”
“Wonder how he keeps from getting burned?”
In the dim-lit bar a block north from the river, Whicher sits alone at the long counter. The place is filled with office girls, suits out of downtown, drunk cowboys in tooled boots. A bunch of Hispanic construction workers sit around a table sharing pitchers of beer, they're covered head to foot in cement dust; their skin whitened, hands like leather around their mugs.
He sweeps the room—more working men, truck drivers, guys out of the meat packing plant. Merrill Johnson and his horse farm was another world. Two hours upcountry, a different universe.
The long-neck on the counter reflects neon and brass. Hannah Scott would still be at the river, her and Delossantos, certifying horses for slaughter.
The news from Brownsville could be something. He stares at his reflection in the bar-room mirror—big guy in a suit and hat. Busted nose. An air of something nobody wanted a piece of.
He swivels on the stool. At the edge of the group of construction workers, one man sits vacant rocking back in a chair, staring into space. Whicher takes a swallow of beer. Thinks of Eric Kessler on the porch at Eagle Pass.
He reaches in his jacket. Feels the hard edge of a business card. Slips it out.
If Saldana had a child that died in the hospital, there'd be a record of the mother.
He stares at the card.
University Campus, Brownsville. Professor Joyce Kinley.
Two numbers are printed on it—one the university, the other a private number. He leans into the bar, catches the eye of a girl working.“Y'all have a phone?”
She points to the far end of the counter. “Out by the restroom, honey.”
He takes the long-neck and the business card. Walks the length of the bar.
In the lobby he places the beer on top of a wall-mount call box. He stares down the corridor to a glass door leading out to the street. A guy walks by him, clothes covered in cement dust, boots leaving a mark on the floor.
Whicher eyes the white-gray powder. He feeds quarters into the slot. Punches the number on the card.
The ring tone is soft, muted, expensive-sounding. He pictures her out somewhere, some campus gathering, dinner. He thinks of hanging up.
“Joyce Kinley...”
“Professor Kinley?”
There's a pause on the line.
“This is Marshal Whicher, we met a couple days back. Regarding an arrest on campus.”
“Yes. Marshal. What can I do for you?”
He runs his hand down the side of the bottle. “Something came up,” he says. “You don't mind my calling?”
“I don't mind.”
“We have some more information since the last time we spoke. Some of the particulars on the arrest.”
“I see.”
“It may or may not be relevant. There was something I thought you ought to know, that you might want to know...”
The professor's silent.
“One of the cases you're handling was actually the child of this guy Saldana. At least that's what he claimed,” Whicher says. “I can't imagine why a man might lie about a thing like that.”
No response.
“I guess he never married the mother. The name wasn't going to be Saldana.”
“I'm truly sorry if we got that wrong...”
“No, no,” Whicher says. “It was just...”
Neither of them speaks for a long moment.
Outside on the street, cars and trucks rumble past, evening light from the southern sky streams in through the dirty glass pane in the door.
“How come they couldn't survive?”
She clears her throat. “Was it a girl or a boy?”
“A boy.”
“The little boy was born without a brain. Without a functioning brain. Both the other infants were girls. Presenting differently.”
“What happened to the mother?”
“The mother.”
“Can you tell me her name?”
“I can't give you that kind of information.”
“I could call the hospital...”
“The mother was a migrant woman, non-US. If you want a name, you'll have to make it official, marshal.”
They'd have to make it official. They'd have to be investigating Saldana's death.
“I'm sorry,” Professor Kinley says. “That's just the way it is. Was there anything else?”
Whicher chews on his lip. “The field of toxicology, ma'am—is it a field you've studied extensively?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, outside of infant mortality?”
“I'm not sure I follow?”
“I wanted to ask about returning service people. From the Gulf.”
“Oh. You mind if I ask why?”
“Some of the troops are thought to have suffered exposure to toxic chemicals, pollutants?”
“Is this something personal to you?”
He snatches up the bottle, takes a sip.
“I can tell you that some problems have been noted. Among a small but statistically significant percentage of the people stationed overseas.”
“There is something?”
“No hard evidence, nothing like that. But there's a pattern of illness. Is this in some way connected with the death of that man?”
Whicher leans against the wall. Unsure what to say. “I have a buddy. He got sick.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.”
Whicher stares down the dim corridor out into the street. “I'm sorry for taking up your time, ma’am.”
“I'm sorry too,” she says. “Sorry for all of it.”