Steven Havill - Scavengers

“They couldn’t know for sure who I was.”

“No, I’m sure they don’t.” He pushed the Styrofoam cup away. “It appears that our first order of business is to find the Madrid brothers, no? Have a little chat with them.”

“More than a little chat,” Torrez said.

Naranjo flashed a humorless smile. “A manner of speaking. We’ll begin to tighten the net around their apartment in Asunción, and see where that leads us.”

“I want to go along,” Estelle said quickly.

Torrez’s face remained expressionless, but Naranjo tilted his head with interest. “I don’t need to tell you that in Mexico, you’re a welcome visitor…but you carry with you no official capacity.”

Estelle sighed. “No, Captain, you don’t need to tell me that.”

“But perhaps there might be some advantages in our cooperative venture,” Naranjo said, and shrugged. “Perhaps so.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re eager, then?”

Estelle nodded. “Yep.” She picked at the corner of one of the small bandages on her right forearm, a fierce frown darkening her face. She turned to Torrez. “I meant what I said, Bobby. They’re not going to get away with any of this.”

The plan was simple enough. Sheriff Robert Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Guzman would drive one of the county units as far as the border crossing in Regál, leaving it and their weapons behind as they accompanied Capt. Tomás Naranjo into Mexico. Torrez was skeptical about going anywhere unarmed, but both he and Estelle knew it was an understatement when Naranjo reminded them that his Mexican troopers had “weapons enough for everyone.”

Estelle was grateful to Naranjo for extending the invitation-it certainly was not required of him. In fact, if the Madrid brothers could be implicated first in the death of Juan Carlos Osuna in Asunción and then in the attempted murder of Eurelio Saenz on the Mexican side of the border, the arm of Mexican justice would bury them so deep that extradition to face charges in the deaths of the two woodcutters in Posadas County was probably neither a possibility nor a necessity.

As they drove south on Grande Boulevard, Estelle noticed that the normally reticent Robert Torrez was even more quiet than usual. Perhaps he also had been mentally enumerating all the things that could go wrong when two American peace officers strayed south of the border. Whether by invitation or not, the arrangement was an informal one, depending entirely on the strength of Tomás Naranjo’s word.

“I’d like to go through Maria,” Estelle said as they drove through the interstate underpass.

“Regál is almost an hour faster to Asunción,” Torrez said. He glanced over at Estelle, then into the rearview mirror at Naranjo’s Toyota.

“I know. But we can cross at Palomas just as easily, and then catch Route Two back toward Janos.” Torrez had already started to slow for the intersection with State 56, the highway west toward Regál. “I just have a feeling,” Estelle said.

“All right.” Torrez said. He passed the intersection and drove south on State 61. Naranjo followed, a discreet hundred yards behind. “So what’s the feeling?”

“ Mamá y Papá is the feeling,” Estelle said. “We haven’t talked to them. Francis and I stopped in Lucy’s place for a few minutes whenever it was, but other than that, nothing. I’d be interested to hear what they have to say. Things have tumbled so fast, I haven’t had the chance.”

“I think they’d be the first ones to say that their boys are on their own,” Torrez said. “It’s Benny and Isidro who chose to live in Mexico. Their folks didn’t force them that way.”

Estelle sighed. “But they’re up here all the time. That’s what’s bizarre.” After a minute, she held up two fingers a quarter inch apart. “We were this close, Bobby.”

“To what?”

“If those two had followed me across the arroyo, and then just a few yards farther into this country, we’d have had them. Dead to rights.”

“The dead part is probably true,” Torrez said. “And hopefully it would have been them.”

“We were so close.”

“And now…” Torrez said, and stopped in mid-thought.

“And now what?”

He accelerated the unmarked Expedition up to eighty to pass a pickup pulling a livestock trailer. “And now you’re hoping that Isidro and Benny might slip back across the border to find out from Mama and Papa just what’s going on. Try to find out what we know?”

“I would if I were them. Then maybe take off for some place that’s a little cooler.”

“For instance?”

“Guaymas, Guadalajara, Mexico City…somewhere out of the state, that’s all.”

“Or even Denver or Coeur d’Alene,” Torrez said. “Or Central America someplace. Hell, with some money, they can go anywhere.”

“We know they have a little,” Estelle said. “The money from Osuna, the money from the woodcutters. At least that much.”

“Nickel, dime,” Torrez said. “We’re not exactly talking about masters of the big haul here. I’m surprised that they haven’t put the touch on the old man or the old lady yet.” He turned and glanced at Estelle, the figurative lightbulb coming on over his head. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it.”

She nodded. “And their aunt,” she added.

“Paulita?”

“Why not? The taberna probably earns a pretty good bundle. Easy pickings. And after last night, they’re not just going to sit around and wait for something to happen. They don’t know if someone just dragged Eurelio’s body away, or if he’s still alive.”

“Except for the ambulance siren on our side of the border. And they know that Mexican authorities aren’t involved. Nobody chased them. They saw a figure running in the darkness-that’s all.”

“That’s right. If Eurelio is alive, the Madrids have to assume that this time, he’ll talk. But he’s on our side of the border, and that makes for a nice, convenient complication that works in favor of the Madrids. I think that they beat Eurelio to scare him silent. Maybe he sold them that rifle in good faith, as a favor to a relative. Maybe they coerced it out of him. They figured a good beating would convince Eurelio to keep his mouth shut. And then one of them changed his mind and shot Eurelio, almost as an afterthought…one of them is trigger-happy.”

“Not smart, but trigger-happy,” Torrez said. He thumped his index fingers on the steering wheel in a fast drum roll. “A great combination.” As they passed the dirt road that followed the power lines northward, he slowed the car. “Paulita is at the hospital with the boy?”

“Yes. And Jackie’s with her.”

“Okay. That’s one out of the way then. I told Tony Abeyta to stay there until he heard otherwise.” They rounded the sweeping curve that led into Maria, the red tile roof of the taberna visible on the right, and several abandoned, slumping buildings on the left. Torrez slowed the vehicle to an amble.

From the other direction, a large RV sporting white Texas license plates appeared, a small SUV hitched to its back bumper. The rig blinked its directional signal and turned into Wally Madrid’s gas station. The RV was certainly taller than the small adobe building, and probably more square feet on the inside.

Torrez turned left in front of the gas station, drove far enough up the lane that he passed Lucy Madrid’s restaurant and another abandoned building. Just ahead was a cluster of five homes, situated helter-skelter with lot lines that would have made a surveyor groan. Dominating the north end of the village, at the end of J Street, was la Iglesia de Santa Lucia, a low, flat-roofed structure plastered a rich rosy pink.