Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the empty diner at the side of the county road, Scruggs faces opposite Whicher in a booth.
“I still say we should have somebody try to stop him.”
“We don't know what vehicle he's driving,” Scruggs says. “And we ain't ready to make an arrest.”
“Why come looking for him here?”
“To pressure the son of a bitch,” Scruggs says. “Besides, there was a chance he'd be running wets.”
“Out of the fair?”
Scruggs nods. “Something in him sure as hell cracked.”
Neither man speaks for a minute. Outside on the county road, every other vehicle is a pickup pulling horses.
Scruggs taps a pen against a bunch of papers. “Let's talk about Randell Creagan,” he says. “And this boy, Todd Williams.”
Whicher leans back in the booth.
“Despite what Border Patrol and maybe FBI are saying—we got nothing to show Creagan's anything more than a car-thief and fence out of east Texas. And maybe a snitch.”
“Johnson was hooked up with him.”
Scruggs looks out the diner window. “We got no evidence. If Jim Gale was right about Creagan getting tied on a freight train, maybe that nails Johnson in harder.”
“You ever hear of that style of killing?”
The older marshal thinks it over. “No,” he finally says.
Whicher rubs at his chin.
“How about Todd Williams?” Scruggs says.
“Lindy Page was the best lead. You want, I could call Carrizo Springs?”
Scruggs swivels in the booth. “See if they have a phone.”
Whicher slides out, crosses the diner, walks to the end of the counter. By a bunch of menu cards there's a boxy-looking pay phone. He picks up the receiver, feeds quarters into the slot.
Reception at Carrizo Springs courthouse answers.
He waits while they bounce the call around.
He lights up a Marlboro, thinking on Dane Vogel. If Vogel could pull a stunt like that in the hotel on a US Marshal, he'd be more than capable of scaring the likes of Lindy Page.
Last thing Vogel had told him was; talk to nobody. Had the same gone for Lindy?
A female voice comes on the line; he recognizes Benita Alvarenga.
“It's Whicher.” He glances at his boss. “I'm with Scruggs, out in Jim Hogg County.”
“There was a call while you were out. Miguel Carrasco. At INS.”
Whicher takes a hit off the smoke.
“He said two names you gave him—two Mexican females—they're both confirmed. Wait,” she says, “can you hold?”
He stands straight, takes another drag, pushing the phone close to his ear.
Behind the counter a woman appears, drying her hands on an apron.
“Carmela Ramirez,” Alvarenga says. “And Sara Pacheco. Police in Piedras Negras confirm they're both prostitutes, known to work in la zona.”
The woman behind the counter looks at Whicher. He shakes his head.
“Where did you get that?” Alvarenga says. “Carrasco's message said you think it might be the two female victims from the Channing Ranch.”
“Listen,” he says, “I'm with Scruggs, he wants to know what happened with Lindy Page?”
He hears her breath of frustration.
“You let her go?”
“She changed her story. She said she didn't talk with any cop.”
“Say again?”
“Yesterday, after you left, I went and talked with her in her cell. She said she didn't mean to lie. She was meeting someone, a new boyfriend—she didn't want anyone to know.”
“You believe that?”
“Honestly? No, I don't.”
Whicher stares out at the road. “Why'd you let her walk?”
“I talked with the sheriff. He told me to turn her out.”
“Yesterday he said keep her till she sees a lawyer. On hindering an inquest.”
“That was yesterday.”
The marshal smokes the cigarette. Glances over at Scruggs.
“Lindy said she didn't want folk knowing—on account of how recent Todd was killed. I think she's lying, but what choice did I have? The sheriff wanted her out.”
“She better not skip town. Or end up dead.”
Neither of them speak for a moment.
“I have to go,” Whicher says.
“Don't blame me.”
Alvarenga hangs up the phone.
Whicher mashes out the stub of cigarette. He crosses to the booth. “Lindy Page changed her story.”
“She done what?”
“She was meeting some new boyfriend, not a cop. Said she didn't want anyone to know. Sheriff Barnhart kicked her loose.”
Scruggs sits back, lays his hands together on the pile of papers. “By long forbearing is a prince persuaded...” He sits a minute, black hat set forward on his head.
“Sir?”
“Proverbs 25:15. On patience. Not my strongest suit.”
“You want me to go pick her up again?”
The older marshal shakes his head. He gathers up the papers, sticking them into a worn tote. “Come on,” he says. He leaves money for the tab.
They slide out from the booth, head out into the parking lot.
A stream of vehicles is passing now, jacked-up trucks, horse boxes, families in battered sedans.
Scruggs takes out the keys to his blue and white Ford Ranger. “Was that it?” he says. “There anything else?”
Whicher takes out his own keys. “Couple names have come up.”
Scruggs stands by his truck.
“Possible identities,” Whicher says. “For the female victims at the Channing Ranch.”
“The hell from?”
“INS. Looks like it might be a couple of Mexican working girls. Out of Piedras Negras.”
Scruggs eyes him. “They missing?”
“Miguel Carrasco talked to police in Piedras Negras.” Whicher leans against his Chevy. “Could be a chance to confirm IDs, get something solid.”
Scruggs doesn't answer.
“If Doctor Schulz re-examined the bodies...”
“She won't.”
“If we could get access to records from Piedras Negras...”
“We're not investigating their deaths.”
Whicher looks out over a field of young sorghum. “If credible ID emerges, the law says we have to check. Where the deceased are unidentified.”
“I know the law.”
The younger marshal stands silent by his truck.
“We're not investigating those victims.”
“There's still Saldana? Webb coroner could test for toxicology?”
“When's the last time you went home?”
“Couple nights,” Whicher says.
“I want you to go on home, now. This business here,” Scruggs says, “running through a crowd of folk at a horse fair. Gun in your hand. It's an over-reaction.”
A Peterbilt rumbles by, sun catching the twin chrome stacks.
“You need to step back,” Scruggs says. “You need to take my advice on this.” He pulls open the door of his truck. Climbs in, starts the motor. “I'll see you in Carrizo Springs tomorrow. Just as soon as I'm done in court.”
Whicher nods.
“Don't be worrying on Merrill Johnson. We'll find his ass. The guy's in business, he's public property.” Scruggs yanks the door closed. Rolls the window. “Go on home.” He backs out, steers to the exit of the gravel lot.
Whicher watches him onto the county road. Till he's entirely out of sight.
Hidalgo County, TX.
Dusk. A road headed east through Hidalgo County, into Willacy. Twenty miles to the coast, the Gulf of Mexico. Harlingen and Brownsville to the south.
A knife band of light cuts the horizon in Whicher's rear-view. One last call. After Scruggs left, that was all it was going to be.
Two quarters into the payphone at the diner. A call to Laredo—the rail freight yard.
According to the manager at the rail yard, the man on Whicher's list—by the name of Jose Talamantes—worked a bunch of different places. Tonight, the Harlingen yard.
From the highway, Whicher sees the road signs for Raymondville and 77 South.
He flips the blinker.
Pushes down harder on the gas.
An hour later. The Harlingen switching yard is a mess of ugly warehousing, mesh fences, a two-lane running parallel with the tracks.
It's pitch dark, apart from working lights. A diesel switcher pushes flatbeds up an assembly rail.
Jose Talamantes had been at Laredo the night somebody took a swing at him.
The marshal steps out, locks the truck, checks the Glock at his hip. He starts to walk out into the dark, across the barely lit waste ground.
The site is fenced but cut with access roads, barriers raised, red lights winking—anybody could get in.
A screech of steel splits the air as he reaches a line of hoppers—pale dust caked to their chutes.
Three lines over, empty box cars sit motionless. Doors wide, a black void inside.
The hoppers are thick with dust—some kind of chemical. Maybe lime. The diesel switching engine slows, its light shining on the track from up high on the cab.
The driver leans from a window, shouting something at the crew on the ground.
At the edge of the yard, glowing cigarettes mark out groups of men part-hidden by the lines of freight. They're hunkered among derelict sheds. Whicher thinks of Alfonso Saldana—picked up in Brownsville a year back. Brownsville was only twenty miles south. Saldana could have jumped off a place like this, ridden a bus back—looking for the big university. A reason for the death of his son.
He steps along the track by a row of hoppers. They're the same as Laredo, painted up the same, Spanish words stenciled on their sides.
The crew in a yard like this must know what was going on—illegals riding loads.
He takes out his marshals badge, watches a man checking on a coupling. Thinks of the Hispanic that swung at him; cropped hair, canvas jacket, steel-toed boots.
The locomotive moves at walking pace—a worker following behind on the track. He carries a flashlight, a two-way radio. He's Caucasian, slender—with a goatee beard.
“US Marshals Service,” Whicher calls out. He holds the badge up high.
The man sees him, raises his light.
“Looking for somebody name of Talamantes. Jose Talamantes.”
The man points at the locomotive.
“He's here?”
“Up on the switcher.”
Whicher follows the slow-moving engine.
He waves at the driver—a black guy dressed in coveralls.
The driver slows, drops the revs to idle.
The marshal grabs a hand rail, mounts the locomotive's steps.
“What you want?” The driver calls down.
“US Marshals Service—looking for Jose Talamantes.”
The driver screws up his face.
“Talamantes,” Whicher shouts. “I need to see him.”
From the front-end platform of the locomotive another man steps into view. Hispanic, short haired.
“Your name Talamantes?”
The man nods, face caught suddenly in the train's forward light.
It's not him.
It's not the man that attacked him.
Whicher stands with Jose Talamantes by an empty stretch of access road. Talamantes is older than the Laredo guy. Same short hair. But the face is different, the features sharp.
“I'm working a homicide investigation.”
The man smokes a thin cigar. Saying nothing.
Whicher adjusts his hat. “You work nights as a supervisor, according to the manager at Laredo. Six nights back, I was attacked there—in the yard.”
There's a flicker in the man's face.
“You were working—according to the roster.”
“Rail yard's not a good place at night, man.” Talamantes looks around the darkened waste ground.
“The guy that came at me was packing a wrench. Real big thing. Like he was working.”
“Trespassing, I'd say.”
“You got no idea? No idea at all?”
Talamantes puffs on the thin cigar. “Maintenance crews come and go, man. It could have been anyone.”
Whicher takes out the pack of Marlboros. “What's going on here?” He lights up, points the cigarette at the switching crew.
“They're making up loads. Assembling for outbound.”
“Headed where?”
“North. Chicago, mainly.”
“Chicago?”
Talamantes nods.
Whicher takes a hit off the cigarette. “You know a man name of Merrill Johnson? Freight man, customs broker.”
“Maybe.”
“He come here?”
“Brokers come around yards.” The man smokes his cigar.
Whicher studies him. Talamantes, a guy on a list—no reason to seek him out, except for that name. “Tell me something? Are you related to somebody name of Raul Talamantes? Works for Border Patrol.”
The switching engine piles on revs, drawing up to a line of hoppers. Agent Raul Talamantes had had the bodies removed, it’d changed everything, right from the start; no ID was recovered, potential evidence got destroyed. How much of everything was down to him?
Jose Talamantes looks at him. “It against the law? Being related?”
The locomotive edges up, engages, starts to push.
Talamantes blows out smoke. “Raul's a cousin. Why you even want to know that?”
The marshal only stares at the long line of freight inching forward. Screeching, rolling, clacking on the steel rails.