Above The Law Read online

  "Outside Monterrey. A ways outside in the middle of nowhere."

  "With no phone number," Jose said.

  "At a church," Casey said. "In a town where the only information Sharon came up with on the Internet was a blurb on the name of the newest mayor, Ignacio de Jesus Gonzalez Gonzalez. That's it."

  "Can't be too many churches in a town where the mayor has the same last name twice."

  "I'm going to check the flights into Monterrey."

  "Whoa. You're not going down there?" Jose said. "It's not like just dropping into the barrio, five blocks over and you're sitting at a Starbucks. You're talking rural Mexico. Federales, road bandits, gangs, maybe even soldiers out there with all those rebel problems. You don't just tour the countryside."

  "I'm sure I'll be fine," she said.

  "You know the only thing they found from the last woman I knew who drove around the countryside in Mexico?" Jose asked. "Her shoe."

  "Maybe she liked it so much she decided to stay," Casey said.

  "With her blood in it."

  "Is this your way of offering to go?" she asked.

  "I'm telling you not to."

  "Well, I am," Casey said, swinging open the door and climbing out of his truck, breathless with excitement. "That's the next step. I've got the right lawsuit, now I need the client."

  "Send someone," Jose said. "I don't want to, but I'll do it."

  "I'm going," she said. "I sent her there, and now I'm going to find her and bring her back. You're welcome to join me."

  She shut the door and started for her car.

  Jose rolled his window down and said, "Okay, book me a ticket, will you?"

  Casey tossed her briefcase into the front seat, smiled, and said, "Yes. I'll see you tomorrow. Good luck at the ranch. And Jose?"

  "Yes?"

  "Thank you."

  CHAPTER 35

  JOSe NESTLED THE BIG WHITE TRUCK INTO THE SAME SPOT HE'D used before, in the trees under the shadow of the bridge embankment. This time he walked out onto the bridge to study his spot, assuring himself that no passerby could detect the truck coming from the other direction. Below, the water slipped silently past, a river of murk unwilling to give back a reflection of the brilliant night sky above. Trees rose up from the river's edge, casting a black pall about them thicker than tar. Satisfied, Jose started off, scuffing his boots along on the gravel shoulder until he saw the glow of oncoming headlights and dropped down into the ditch and beyond that into the dusty scrub.

  The car sped past, washing away the sound of the night things all around him, then ebbing away until the chorus of bugs and rodents and frogs rang clearly again, like the piercing sound of an alarm. He took to the roadside and made it to the service entrance of the ranch without pause. To avoid the cameras he ducked back into the brush, glad for his GPS in the confusing tangle of twigs and vines, and coming out well down the drive, where he crunched away at the gravel until ominous shapes of the barns washed by a single halogen light on a pole in the yard sent his blood pumping a bit faster. Between the buildings and beyond, small lights winked at him through the trees. He stood for a time in the shadow of the biggest barn, out of the white light, his nose overwhelmed with the smell of manure and rotted and fermenting feed grain. Inside, animals of some kind shifted in their stalls, issuing an occasional grunt. On a grassy knoll above the barns rested an old farmhouse with light shining from a single downstairs window.

  Jose moved cautiously away from the barns and through the gap in the trees, following a dirt path that opened into the clearing where row upon row of sagging shacks rested like corn stubble, truncated, broken, and listing. From the chinks between the wallboards and the occasional open door or window, a gauzy yellow light permeated the migrant camp.

  Off to one side of the path sat three low buildings. A shift in the night air brought with it their stench, identifying the three buildings as latrines. He covered his face and took shallow breaths until he passed the latrines and stood on the lip of the dirt lane leading down into the cluster of hovels. In the shadows of the crooked roofs, shapes of people came to life for him. The low chatter and occasional ripple of laughter broke free from the other sounds of the night, giving the camp a festive quality.

  He descended the slight incline and allowed his feet to carry him into their midst, but the festive humor melted away with each new step. Silence accompanied him like a contagion and it was remarkable to him how quickly, in this feeble light, they had sensed the presence of an outsider. He stopped in front of one shack, entirely dark, where an older man sat on an upended piece of firewood, whittling away at what smelled like a raw green willow branch, the fresh shavings littering the dirt like a light snow.

  In Spanish, Jose explained that he was with the law and needed to ask some questions.

  The old man started and stared up, the creases in his weathered face as deep as rock fissures. In Spanish, he asked, "The chief send you?"

  "You mean Gage?" Jose asked.

  The old man nodded and said, "He's the law here."

  "There's a bigger law than Gage," Jose said. "I'm with that law."

  The old man contemplated this for a while, then shook his head and returned to his whittling, and spoke no more.

  Jose glanced around and saw that others had been listening, and when he began to move down the row, people disappeared like frogs along a creek bed so that by the time he reached the end there were no more workers to interrogate. He started back up the next row and met with the same form of denial until he noticed the flickering silhouette of a dark-haired woman in the open window of a shack, where several candles burned on a small table within.

  Jose approached her and asked if she'd speak to him.

  In an urgent whisper and speaking in English, she said, "Walk down the next row, then leave the way you came. I'll meet you by the barns."

  Then, she shouted, "Gabacho!"

  The wooden window slammed in his face.

  Jose did as he'd been told, remembering to hold his breath as he passed the latrines. As he waited in the shadow of the biggest barn, he wondered if her urgent words might not have been a ruse to get rid of him. A few minutes later, however, she hurried out of the trees, looked around, and dragged him by the arm inside the barn. Livestock that Jose recognized as veal calves snorted and shifted, straining their hair rope tethers and scuffing the hay-strewn floor. The smell ranked second only to the latrines, but Jose soon forgot about it. Enough light from the halogen lamp outside fell in through a window that Jose could make out the woman's face and he realized she wasn't as young as her long dark hair had made him think.

  "They're saying you're with the FBI," the woman said. "My name is Amelia. Are you looking for Nelly?"

  "I'm working on a case for a lawyer who's trying to help a Mexican woman," Jose said. "I used to be a cop, but I'm not anymore. I'm not with the FBI. Who's Nelly?"

  "A girl," Amelia said, her face wincing with pain. "A friend. I told her to run. I've been here for many years. I know what happens. When someone causes trouble, they disappear. Some say they leave here on their own. I think differently."

  "Wait, wait," Jose said, holding up a hand. "What are you talking about?"

  "Nelly heard them fighting," Amelia said. "The senator and his wife. Everyone knew Elijandro went with the wife, and not just once. He was a beautiful man. It could only end badly. Nelly is Mrs. Chase's maid. She heard them the night after the senator killed Elijandro. Nelly told me she heard the senator tell his wife that Elijandro asked for it, and I told her she must run. But Nelly had nothing and nowhere to go. She didn't believe. She listened to the others who make fun of me and call me a witch. If it makes me a witch because I know, then I'm a witch.

  "She was a good girl," Amelia said. "Young and sweet, and I don't know what they did to her, but I know it's not good. No one comes back."

  "Who disappears?" Jose asked. "This happened before?"

  "The senator and his friends are very rich," Amelia said. "They do th
ings the way rich people do, using drugs and prostitutes without fear of the law. I have always taken care of the senator's children, so I've never seen these things, but others have. They talk a little about the bad things they've seen and then they're just gone. Who is there to look for them? So we forget and pretend it didn't happen, pretend they went home or moved to Atlanta or Chicago, some big city far away. That happens, too, anyway. People leave, but there are always others to replace them, always people hungry for work. And here, people have a place to live, a place where the agents can never come because the senator makes the laws. We understand this from Mexico, how things work."

  "Like razor blades," Jose said, more to himself than to her. "One nicks you and you throw it away for a new one. Aren't you afraid to tell me all this?"

  Amelia sighed. "The little girl is the youngest and she goes away to boarding school at the end of the summer. A blade can go dull, too. I will be told to leave. This I know. What's the difference if I leave now?"

  "You mean, right now?" Jose asked.

  "I have four thousand dollars," she said, patting the rucksack she wore over her shoulder.

  "How long you worked here?" he asked.

  "Sixteen years."

  "And you saved that?"

  "It's more money than anyone here has ever seen."

  "You can trust me," he said, cocking his head at a sound outside that didn't fit, a sound signaling a shift in energy, something afoot. "I'll find a place you can be safe."

  "I know," she said. "No one like you has ever come before. I used to wonder why, then I stopped, but now you're here, a white Mexican with the law and I see the way you move. You're not afraid of them. You're not afraid of anyone, and I think that must be good."

  "Don't say that," Jose said, cracking the door they'd come through and studying the empty barnyard. "Where I come from, the day you stop being afraid is the day you get yourself killed."

  From the shantytown below came the shouts of men and the tilted beams of flashlights punching through the trees. A dog barked from the farmhouse on the rise. Spotlights flashed on. Worse still was the whining engine of a car coming up the service road and the clatter of stones against its underbelly.

  Jose grabbed Amelia by the wrist, flung open the door, and ran.

  CHAPTER 36

  JOSe SWIVELED HIS HEAD AS THEY RAN, SIZING UP THE BEST direction to escape. They dashed down the road he'd taken to get to Jessup's Knob. Behind them the rise glowed with the coming headlights. He jumped down into a ditch, pulling Amelia with him just as the headlights shone down on them. The lights swung away, then Jose heard the car jam into reverse and rev its engine, and the headlights again lit up the road before the car started to move their way.

  Jose swiped the dust from his mouth with the back of one hand as he dragged Amelia up the other side of the ditch and across a scrubby lot before they plunged into dusty and brittle undergrowth. When they were twenty yards in, the car slid to a stop out on the road and Jose heard its doors being flung open. More men shouted from the direction of the barns, and Jose used the sound to regain his bearings and change directions so that they'd be headed away, toward the road and his truck.

  Jose heard the angry zip of the bullet a split second before the sound of the shot roared past and he dove to the ground, pulling Amelia down and covering her with his body. Two more bullets zipped through the branches, snapping twigs, their shots bursting out.

  "They're shooting," Amelia said, her voice and its hysterical timbre muffled by his shoulder.

  "Come on," Jose said, crawling now through the tangle, branches clawing his face.

  No more shots came, but Jose waited for some time before he dared rise to a crouch and quicken their pace. He had no idea how to get to the main road, and the bark of the dog at the house made him nervous they'd be tracked.

  Gradually the way became more clear until they found themselves darting between the thick trunks of old oaks in the wan light of a clouded moon. When they reached the edge of a wide pasture and the ripe smell of cattle, Jose stopped and took Amelia by the shoulders.

  "Are you all right?" he asked in a whisper.

  He could feel her shaking beneath his grip, but she bit her lower lip and nodded. Jose listened and heard nothing.

  "I think we're okay," he said. "Do you know where this is?"

  Amelia looked out over the animals, still as boulders, some staring in their direction. She shook her head.

  Jose raised the wire and slipped through the fence, moving out into the pasture. From there, he could see off to his left a yellow glow on the horizon above the trees. He knew it must be the lights from Dallas, giving him the direction they needed to go to get back to the road. He scanned the open ground and listened with a hand cupped to his ear for sounds of men or dogs, heard nothing but the small rustle of wind and leaves, and retrieved Amelia.

  They kept to the fence line, breached it, and found themselves again in a wood open enough for easy going. When they came out the other side, a slight slope lay in front of them with a scrub line hedging the road beyond. On the other side of the road open wasteland stretched as far as he could see under the false twilight of the city. Nothing rode the small breeze but a distant chorus of coyotes. The broad sky above pressed down on the earth, heavy with dull shapeless clouds backlit by the half-moon.

  Earth and stones skittered along in front of them as they descended to the scrub line. Jose blazed a path through that and they found themselves on the desolate road where the power line above snapped randomly at a transformer box. Jose walked looking over his shoulder, but nothing disturbed them all the way to the bridge. His skin began to crawl as he peered down over the bank at where he knew his truck waited.

  "Stay here," he said in a low voice to Amelia, planting her by the shoulders beneath the shadow of a roadside shrub while he scrabbled down the bank.

  As he closed the gap, the vague white shape of the truck appeared as if by magic in the heart of the darkness. Looking left and right, he held forth his hands like a blind man, feeling for its metal, finding it, and hurrying into the cab. The dome light came to life like an old friend, easing the rhythm of his heart. He fired the engine and let the big machine climb the hill, stopping briefly for Amelia, then spun the wheels in the dirt in his eagerness to gain the road.

  The sigh had no sooner left his chest than headlights seared through the cab. He glanced instinctively, blinded, but aware of the sudden burst of flashing lights from their midst. The siren barked. Jose pulled over and dug the cell phone from his pocket. The trembling of his fingers surprised and annoyed him, but his eyes kept returning to the big side mirror and the shape of the enormous cop as Gage got out and fitted the big hat atop his head. In the mirror beyond Amelia on the other side of the truck, Jose saw a second shape emerge from the other side of Gage's car.

  The phone rang and he got Ken Trent's voice mail. Jose punched in Ken's home phone and put the call through. Gage had reached the back corner of his truck and he rested a hand on the pistol at his hip. The gun came out and Jose reached for the nine-millimeter Glock under his arm, but the idea of a shoot-out with a cop short-circuited his brain and he simply sat with the cell phone hidden beside his leg as Gage tapped the barrel of the pistol against his window. Jose put the window down.

  "You're getting to be like a bad penny," Gage said, the skin along his jawline taut and shifting in the glare of the flashing red lights, "turning up all the time in places you're not likely wanted."

  "Someone took a shot at us," Jose said. "You get a call?"

  "Got a call about someone trespassing," Gage said. "Maybe a kidnapping. That you?"

  Gage flicked his eyes at Amelia.

  "She's with me," Jose said.

  "I'm going to have to ask you to get out of the truck," Gage said. "You, too, miss."

  The shadow of the second man fell across Amelia's window and Jose knew they would take her. He heard a tiny voice and spoke up.

  "Ken?" he said, seeing from the i
lluminated face of his phone that the call had gone through. "Hang on, it's me, Jose."

  He raised the phone so Gage could see it. "I've got Ken Trent on the line here, from Dallas PD. You want to talk to him?"

  "Shut that down," Gage said, growling.

  "Ken, I'm with Chief Gage down in Wilmer," Jose said, raising his voice so Ken would be sure to hear him, even with the phone so far from his face. "He's got a gun on me. Maybe you could talk some sense into him, Ken."

  He hefted the glowing cell phone at Gage and said, "Ken's my old captain, Dallas PD."

  Gage's face twisted. Through his teeth, he said, "Put the phone down. I'm telling you to get the fuck out of the truck."

  Gage thumbed back the hammer on his shiny Colt.45. The metallic click knotted Jose's stomach. He placed the phone on the dash and held up his hands, saying a small prayer that his old friend had heard him and hadn't simply hung up the phone. Gage yanked open the door.

  "I'm cooperating with him, Ken," Jose said to the phone as he got out. "I'm out at Senator Chase's place with a worker named Amelia."

  Gage reached into the truck and pitched the phone down on the pavement, stamping on it and grinding the plastic into the gravel with his boot heel.

  "Bad connection?" Gage asked, grinning.

  "But he knows I'm here," Jose said. "And he knows you're here. So I don't get to disappear in the night like Nelly."

  Something shifted in Gage's eye, like a guttering flame.

  "Amelia, too," Jose said. "She's with me. Ask her. She's not going anywhere, either."

  Amelia sat rigid in the truck, her hands clutching the seat and her eyes locked on the windshield even with the shadow of the other man lurking in her window.

  "She works for the Chases," Gage said. "We'll be taking her home."

  "No," Jose said, holding the chief's pale eyes with his own. "She's with me. You can't get rid of me, and you can't get rid of her, either, not without a whole lot of TV cameras lighting up the town."

  Jose kept his hands in the air and Gage raised his pistol, easing it toward Jose's face in the flashing lights from the cop car until the cold barrel ticked the tip of his nose. Jose never flinched, even when Gage jerked the gun, clicking free the hammer, and returned it to its closed position.