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 heard 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.”
“Vigilantes,” I said.
“They haunt the routes refugees often take, where water jugs and food and blankets have been set out by a broad range of humanitarian groups. They slash the jugs, steal the food and blankets, intimidate the refugees. And although they’ve never been caught at it, there’s good reason to believe they’re not above killing. They know about Los Angeles del Desierto, and are no more pleased with it than the Rodriguez family is.”
“How often does he lead people across?”
“Several times each month.”
“And you know all this how?” I asked.
Rainy said, “Because there’s a price on your head, too, isn’t there? You’re a Desert Angel.”
Nikki didn’t deny it.
“Did Peter get you involved?”
“Other way around. I drew Peter in.” She gave a weak smile. “Several years ago, a number of us in Cadiz who were concerned about the terrible ordeal of those coming across the border began putting out jugs of water, food, blankets. It wasn’t much of an organization then. We did it quietly, because we didn’t want to draw attention. Two years ago, I convinced Peter to help us. His vision changed everything. With Peter, we became the Desert Angels. There are humanitarians on the other side of the border who’ve been helping those who want to cross. Peter connected with them, established a network. He began taking as many refugees away from the coyotes as he could. These are people so desperate to come here that fences and laws won’t stop them.”
“Peter keeps them from dying,” Rainy said.
“That and more. He keeps them out of the hands of the coyotes, who would take everything from them. He keeps them from being caught by the Border Patrol, who would just send them back. He delivers them into the hands of people here who’ll see to it that they arrive safely wherever it is that they’re going for a new life. He truly is an angel.”
Rainy asked, “What happened to him the day he called me?”
“He’d set up a rendezvous that night. The way it always worked was this: He would identify a crossing location along the border, somewhere away from the usual routes, and he would give it to me. I’d broadcast it during my show, work the longitude in with my chatter about the cuts I play.”
I thought about the odd information I’d heard her give the night before when I listened to her program, the number of minutes and seconds in each selection. A longitude would be easy to embed in all that arcana.
“The people on the other side use that information and are there to meet Peter with the group he’s going to lead,” she said.
“He met the group that night?” Rainy asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him.”
“Do you have any idea what might have happened?”
“You need to talk to Old Turtle.”
“Who’s that?”
“I have no idea. When we communicate, we only use cover names now. It protects us all. To everyone else, I’m known as Nightingale.”
“Why do we need to talk to Old Turtle?”
“Peter told me that if ever there was any trouble, he’s the one to talk to.”
“How do we get in touch with Old Turtle?” I asked.
“Send your telephone number to this email address.” She wrote it down on a slip of paper and passed it to me.
“Telephone number, that’s all?”
“That’s all. Old Turtle will contact you.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before.”
“Do you know where Peter lives?”
“When he left Cadiz, he didn’t tell anyone where he was going. But whenever we’ve met, I’ve always had the sense that he’s come from somewhere south.”
“Sulfur Springs?”
“I doubt that. The town’s a hotbed for White Horse. But maybe in the area.”
“Are you in any danger?” Rainy asked.
“Only if they grab Peter and he talks. Or,” she said, giving us a dark look, “if they grab you.”