Блейк Крауч: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

She nodded and turned to the reluctant keeper of her safe house. “Jerry, is it okay if we take our coffee over to the office so we don’t bother you?”

“That’s okay; I was just going myself. I have some data to work on for my Monday report.” At least the guy could take a hint. He served our coffee, taking his outside with him with an almost apologetic smile. Could be he didn’t want to know the details, even if he didn’t mind doing a favor for his aunt.

Megan went back quickly to put on some shoes and a windbreaker — did she think she was going somewhere? If I took her with me, it would be too risky, unless we went straight to the closest cops. I didn’t even know where that was. She might be better off staying here. Before I made any decisions, I needed to get her story.

We had a few sips of coffee before she took a deep breath and looked as though she was going to tell me something she was reluctant to tell, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “I met you before, in Laguna. You gave me money.”

I smiled. “I didn’t think you’d remember me. I’m Lane Terry.”

“My real name’s Megan Halliday, but I want people to call me just Megan. I’m not proud of my father’s name.” I nodded in sympathy, and she asked, “Do you know anything about the Protectors of the Blood?”

“Not a whole lot.” I had heard that they were a racist armed group that splintered off from some religious survivalist cult, but I wanted to say as little as possible so she’d open up.

“My father’s been the leader ever since my uncle Gary went to prison. His name’s Levi Halliday. When I got away from home, I kind of had a chance to go sane. I never went to school. When I would try and ask questions, my father would beat on me until I stopped. But I couldn’t stop. I guess I’m stubborn. That’s what Marcella says.” She paused. “I’m confused and I’m stubborn.”

“Sometimes stubborn can be good,” I said. I could tell it wasn’t easy for her. I’m sure I didn’t have that much nerve when I was her age. Seventeen seemed like long ago.

“Marcella helped me a lot,” she went on, hugging her knees as she hunkered into a corner of the sofa. “When I first came to her I was traveling with a couple of other street kids, a boy and a girl, about a year ago. I ran away because my dad killed Jesse.”

“Was he your boyfriend?”

“Jesse’s my brother. Was. He got away with it because they were down by the border and our dad shot him and got rid of his body. Everyone in that little town is afraid of him, so he thinks he can do whatever he wants to women and kids.” She looked at me, then back down, and now I could really see the child there, rocking with her arms wrapped around her tight, like a closed bud, as though to keep herself from flying apart. I had a sense I needed to keep her talking.

“So he got away with it?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Nobody said anything. Jesse wasn’t strong enough to be a man, that’s what he thought. He didn’t like guns, and he didn’t learn what my father tried to teach him. My father really thought he was going to be leading an army of Protectors, and our big brother, when he gets out of the Marines, he’ll be next in line. But Jesse, when he got big enough, would have to be his backup lieutenant to take over the Protectors later on. He wanted both his sons to follow in his footsteps. He called Jesse a faggot and hit him a lot. He hit all of us.”

Then she suggested another cup of coffee. “I can do it now. That machine was so complicated to learn.”

“I wouldn’t even try,” I fibbed. I wondered if she needed a little break. When she’d delivered our refills, she stretched, walked over to the window, lifted a slat to look outside, murmuring, “Quiet as a tomb,” then came back to the sofa. She lifted her little cup, then set it down again.

“My dad wanted guns and money, so he decided the best way to get both was to kill this gun dealer that he knew. Him and his wife had lots of merchandise and lots of cash. Where I’m from, nobody’s got no credit or taxes or nothing if they can help it, and they don’t use their real names.

“So he took Jesse with him to help, and Jesse was only fifteen years old, and even if he seen a lot of animals dead, he never seen a dead man before, and when my father shot the gun man and told Jesse that it was his turn, that he had to shoot the wife, Jesse couldn’t, and my father had to and then kind of disowned him. They loaded up the guns and money, and my father knew how not to leave any traces, and how to put bodies where nobody would find them. The dealer people lived way up out in the desert, and nobody even missed either of them for weeks, since they was always away at gun shows.

“But when they did, in come the ATF and the FBI, and everybody’s twice as paranoid as before, and my father’s telling all his friends that the feds probably killed the gun dealers just so they’d have an excuse to clamp down on everyone who hates the government and the illegals. And they acted like they believed him, too.”

“When did he kill your brother?”

“Well, Jesse was his number-one problem, wasn’t he? With the government getting into it, he could tell them, and he would have been a great witness against him. He was there when he killed them people.” Her eyes were watery again, and she shook her head as though to clear it.

My mouth was dry, and I took a sip of coffee to avoid clearing my throat and said, “Tell me what happened after that.”

“Okay, he had to get rid of Jesse because he didn’t trust him, said he was born wrong, should have been a girl, like that was the worst curse you could put on a person.

“So the next time they went border hunting, he killed my brother. He thought nobody could touch him, but it must have been eating at him because he started asking me if Jesse ever told me anything about the trip they took the year before, and I told him I didn’t know a thing about it, that Jesse didn’t confide in me because I was only a girl. I think he believed me, but I knew it was only for a while because he’s crazy and he wouldn’t think twice about killing me if he knew that I knew all about it. Jesse told me every detail, and I wrote it all down since then and give it to Marcella in case he ever got to me, so they could finally get him for something. And then I went off paper and on the run.” She shrugged. “That’s it.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what ‘off paper’ means.”

“When you break off connections with the government and drop out of sight. You use a fake identity, move around, and pay cash for everything. Cover all the traces you were ever alive. That’s what I done. I found some new IDs my father forgot about because they were for women, and he was complaining that his supplier had screwed it up again, and how women only had a small part in it, and he needed men’s identities. But he didn’t give them back, and they sat in a drawer, three of them, and I took all three so if he remembered any of the names he wouldn’t know which one I took. And it turned out it wasn’t important anyway because I didn’t have to work or rent a place or even have a bank account.”

“How did you live?”

She told me she’d stolen some of her father’s cash and come to California, finding other runaways, traveling, finally running out of money in Laguna Beach. Then, she said, just like her guardian angel I gave her five dollars and sent her to Marcella.

I smiled. “Don’t think I’m qualified for that job, but thanks for the thought.”

“Welcome. When I got here, I heard that when they tried to take my father in for gun trafficking, he shot up a gun dealer who was helping the ATF, and then he escaped. That’s all I know.”