Before She Dies (22 page)

Chapter 36

From the pass above Regal, I could count the lights, a sparse scattering of a dozen spots of yellow. Farther to the south and east, I could see the bright glare of the sodium-vapor lights at the border crossing. The gate would be locked, the officers gone for the day.

With the windows down, I drove through the narrow dirt lanes, keeping a sedate speed neither too fast nor too slow to attract attention. A single bulb burned somewhere in the bowels of Mateo Esquibel’s little house, the light faded to little more than a candle’s worth by the time it washed up against the lace curtains.

No lights were on at the ancient building next door. More than sixty feet long and only twelve or fourteen feet wide, it might have been a mercantile or feed store at one time. A portion of the roof had collapsed, and the three elm trees in the yard were dead. I stopped the Blazer near the end of the building, pushed off the lights, switched off the engine, and got out.

For February, the night was mild with just the faintest breeze stirring the tall grass along the old building’s foundation. But I wasn’t interested in history. I pushed the truck’s door closed just enough to turn off the dome light and skirted the old store, heading toward the back of Mateo Esquibel’s property.

If the old man had a dog, it was inside. I moved slowly, keeping my flashlight off. I didn’t remember any fences in my path, just an open side yard strewn with rocks and cacti.

I reached the trailer where the old man kept his wood supply, and bent down to look at the hitch that rested on a stout chunk of rail-road tie. If it had been used recently, fresh steel-against-steel contact marks would show on the bottom of the housing that covered the ball. I was about to attempt an impossible position so that I could see the hitch when the dog began barking.

From inside the house came the insistent, rhythmic yapping and I froze in place, flashlight switched off. For the better part of five minutes I stood there while the mutt ran through its entire repertoire of canine noises. No one came to either door or window, and eventually the dog gave up. For another five minutes I stood still, giving the animal time to lose interest.

Moving cautiously, I backed up and made my way around the back side of the trailer, and then to the back wall of the garage. A side window had been boarded up years ago, the nails rusting and sending streaks of black down the wooden walls.

At the front corner I hesitated, listening for the dog. Then I eased around to the doorway. It was secured with an old iron hasp and an enormous brass padlock. Any shine the brass may have had when it was new had given way to a dull patina decades before. By placing a single finger between the two sides, I tried to pry the doors open. They didn’t move a fraction of an inch. Whoever had hung the door had been an expert.

I made my way around the east side of the garage. Another window was covered, this time with a combination of boards and cardboard. One of the eight panes of glass had been hit in the corner with a small projectile—no doubt a neighbor kid’s rock from a slingshot. The pane hadn’t shattered, but by working my pocketknife into the hole I could pry loose a small wedge of glass.

I did so, and then pushed the cardboard that had covered the inside of the window to one side—just an inch or less, but enough for the beam of the flashlight to lance into the garage. I squinted and sucked in my breath. The beam bounced off chrome and fancy paint.

With care, I went to work with the pocketknife again, enlarging the hole by prying out another sliver of glass.

This time, when I looked, I could see the bright colors clearly, the trade name on the fender, and, as I swept the beam back, the fancy gas cap, air dam, and roof rack. The Weatherfords’ Suburban had survived its high-speed trip from Oklahoma no worse for wear.

I took a deep breath and snapped off the flashlight, standing quietly with my back to the garage.

Now that the pieces were drifting into place, it all made perfect sense. Carlos Sánchez had himself an effortless pipeline for prize vehicles, straight to Mexico. He could make copies of the keys at leisure; he could lift an extra temporary sticker and fill in appropriate names. It wouldn’t be hard to find willing drivers—both for the excitement and the money. And either explained how Tammy Woodruff had gotten sucked in.

A dozen questions still circled in my mind like hungry vultures over a carcass. It made no sense that Carlos Sánchez would let this vehicle sit in a garage a rifle shot from the border. No matter how innocent the garage appeared, every minute the stolen truck stayed on the U.S. side of the line, the risk increased. That meant that all we had to do was wait.

I made my way back to the Blazer, climbed in, and released the clutch, allowing the vehicle to roll forward down the slight incline. When the road forked, I turned left, started the engine, and drove out of the village as casually as if I lived there.

The last dirt road turned off the pavement just before the first switchback. I followed it, winding up the hillside toward the enormous white water-storage tank that had been installed with monies from a federal grant five years before. The tank provided ample and dependable storage, and its broad, smooth sides provided local spray-can artists with an open canvas.

I drove around the back side of the tank and parked under two-foot high letters that proclaimed
Esmarelda y Paco, ’93
. The bulk of the tank shaded me from the vapor light. From there, I commanded a view of the entire valley. I could clearly see the patch of black behind Mateo Esquibel’s house where the garage stood.

I turned the volume of the radio up just enough that I could hear the broadcasts, but kept the windows of the truck closed.

The night closed in, broken only by an occasional jet high overhead or a coyote somewhere in the hills behind me. Shortly after eight o’clock, a car engine started somewhere down in the village. A moment later headlights flicked on near a house a hundred yards west of Esquibel’s. I watched as the vehicle oozed out of one driveway, traveled down the road a stone’s throw, and pulled into another. A porch light went on, remained bright for a couple of minutes, and then went out.

The folks of Regal weren’t into rompin’ and stompin’, at least not on a Wednesday night. I looked across to the hillside on the east where the small church stood, but if the Catholics had planned a Wednesday night service, they hadn’t showed.

All evening long, I’d listened to Gayle Sedillos working dispatch, her voice caught by the repeater on Regal Peak. At 9:17, she came on the air, and I could hear a slight edge to her voice, a slight tremor of excitement.

“Three oh seven, PCS.”

“Three oh seven, go ahead.” Tommy Mears sounded bored. He was a good actor.

“Three oh seven, ten-twenty?” She had asked the deputy where he was less than twenty minutes before, and at that time he’d been at the airport, talking with manager Jim Bergin.

Now, he replied, “Three oh seven is two miles west, on the interstate.”

“Ten-four, three oh seven. If you get a chance, would you swing by the hospital and pick up a folder from Detective Reyes-Guzman? She said it’s at the information desk.”

“Ten-four.”

I smiled in the dark and my pulse clicked up about thirty notches. The message meant that Carlos Sánchez had left his house. Estelle Reyes-Guzman had no folder for anyone, but Carlos Sánchez, if he was listening to the police scanner, had no way of knowing that. Gayle had managed the complex and dull alert message without a hitch.

The cellular phone on the seat beside me chirped, and I picked up the receiver. Bob Torrez’s voice was distant.

“Sir, he’s heading west on State Fifty-six.”

“All right. Don’t let him pick up your headlights coming out of town.”

“I’ll stay back. What about Tomás?”

I glanced out across the sleepy village toward the border crossing. “No sign of him. But he said he’d be there.”

“I’d sure hate to see this guy slip through.”

“He’s not going to do that, Robert. Mears should be a minute or so behind you.”

“I can see him right now. He’s at the filling station on Grande.”

“Don’t let him get itchy. I want to see how Sánchez plays his game. Remember, if he stops at the bar, get to Gayle in a hurry. You go on past, and make sure Mears turns up Fourteen.”

“Yes, sir.”

The inside of my mouth was dry as I sat in the dark, trying to picture the flow of traffic southwest on 56. Carlos Sánchez had to be feeling confident. If he didn’t have a scanner, he was stupid. If he did have one, all he knew was that Deputy Mears was tied up at the hospital. There had been no word on the movements of anyone else. The night was ordinary.

I took a deep breath and settled back in the seat.

Eleven minutes later, the telephone chirped and I startled so hard that I almost hit my head on the roof.

“What?”

“I think he stopped at the bar, sir, but if he did, it was just for a minute. No more than that. I didn’t have time to go on by. He’s headed south.”

“All right. Stay back. Remember the scenic pull-out halfway down on this side. That’s where you stop.” Off in the distance to the south, I saw a single flash of light, as if someone had swept a spotlight in a circle, shooting the beam up into the night. “And Tomás is in place,” I said, hoping it wasn’t wishful thinking.

At 9:38, I saw the headlights high up on the switchbacks from Regal pass. They descended sedately, almost poking along.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I muttered. All I could see were the lights, but I could picture the old truck putting along, inconspicuous and legal as all hell. A rancher going home after checking the cattle, or a kid out in his daddy’s truck, going home nice and early just like he was supposed to. There were no state police on this section of highway, and Carlos Sánchez knew—and I hoped he was gloating—exactly where the deputies were.

The truck passed the turnoff to the water tank and kept going. If Sergeant Torrez had crested the pass, he’d dumped his lights, because the mountain behind us was black.

Like a homing pigeon, Mateo Esquibel’s old truck idled into the village, turning first this way and that, finally backing right into the old man’s yard, back bumper crowding the hitch of the wood-laden trailer. Resting the binoculars on the steering wheel, I watched the figure get out of the truck, illuminated by the faint rays cast by the dome light.

Sánchez was a believer in taking time with his cover, apparently. If he’d allowed Tammy Woodruff to drive a stolen truck to the border, he’d used the old man’s truck, hooked to the trailer, when he’d driven back up the highway to check on her, knowing that no one would give him a second glance.

From where I sat behind the water tank to Mateo Esquibel’s old adobe was at most 300 yards. But even with the binoculars, the figure was nothing more than a vague, drifting shadow.

Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked; it was soon joined in chorus by half a dozen others. The dogs didn’t know what the hell was going on, and neither did I. My telephone chirped again, and when I answered Bob Torrez said, “I’m at the pull-out.”

“All right. Sit tight and stay on the line,” I said, laying the receiver on the seat. I didn’t know what to think, since I assumed Carlos Sánchez would be meeting someone at the border… someone who would collect the vehicle and, I thought, hand over a lump of cash—perhaps ten, maybe fifteen thousand for such a vehicle.

But as yet, I saw no clear way for Sánchez to return to Posadas once the deal was made. Maybe that was his plan. Maybe this time he was headed south along with the Suburban. Two murder raps made for powerful motivation.

Down below, a blast of light illuminated the area around the garage. The backup lights of the Suburban were bright, and for a moment, perfectly clearly, I could see the wooden doors, open wide. Sánchez pulled out of the garage, stopped to get out and close the doors, and then drove out of Mateo Esquibel’s yard. I tracked the Suburban as it drove through the village and reached the pavement. “Turn right to Mexico,” I said, and as if he heard me, the vehicle turned toward the border. I started the Blazer and pulled out, lights off. By the time I reached the pavement, I could see the brake lights of the Suburban flash as Sánchez braked for the tight curve just before the customs’ gate. I accelerated hard, wanting to narrow the distance while the slight rise of hill separated us.

As I approached the curve, I shoved the gear lever into neutral and clicked off the engine. I wanted to roll to a stop just as I crested the hill, so that when Carlos Sánchez got out of the truck, he wouldn’t hear the engine or tire noise of my old Blazer.

At the same time, hidden behind a hillock on the Mexican side of the border, Captain Tomás Naranjo of the Federales had promised that he’d wait for my signal before making a move—in case our quarry somehow slipped through the gate.

Our timing was perfect. Our luck could have been better.

Chapter 37

Carlos Sánchez never looked back. If he had, he’d have seen the silhouette of my vehicle a hundred yards away, squatting in the middle of the road. He got out of the Suburban, walked to the border gate, and unlocked it. Simple as that. As Nick Chavez had once said, theft was simplest if the thief had a key. I wondered who Carlos Sánchez had bribed for that useful copy.

He reached for the top bar and started to swing the heavy welded pole gate toward the American side.

I started the engine of the Blazer with one hand and barked into the cellular phone, “Move it, Robert.” At the same time, a light show erupted from south of the border as two vehicles exploded from behind a long creosote-bush-studded sand dune.

Sergeant Torrez had not waited at the turnout. When he’d seen the Suburban pull out of the village, he’d coasted down the hill and now was less than two hundred yards behind me.

I saw the flashing lights across the border; the Blazer’s back tires chirped as I floored the accelerator.

Carlos Sánchez froze in his tracks for only a heartbeat as lights converged from both directions. With a lunge, he pushed the gate away and sprang toward the Suburban. Just as Tomás Naranjo’s jeep slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and sand thirty feet from the gate, Sánchez accelerated hard, all four massive tires chewing sand and gravel. The Suburban spun to the west, its shiny back bumper narrowly missing the gate as it turned.

I yanked the wheel to the right, thinking to block Sánchez, but back up the highway was not where he had in mind. The Suburban shot off the side of the road and bounced across the ditch, paralleling the border fence. For two hundred yards, the fence was high and solid, welded rails and wire. But farther on in both directions, it shrank to nothing more than six strands of barbed wire.

If Sánchez was headed up the line, where he could drive the vehicle right through in a tangle of posts and snapped wire, he’d face two squads of eager Federales, itching for some excitement to cap their day.

Even as I swung off the pavement in pursuit, I saw Bob Torrez’s old pickup truck slide in a circle and catapult off into the sand and bushes.

But the border wasn’t what Carlos Sánchez had in mind, either. His truck thundered along the rough fence access road, dove down through an arroyo, and, as it crested the other side, swung back to the north.

If I had had the speed, I could have cut him off when he turned across my path. But I hadn’t engaged the front hubs of the Blazer, and was caught off guard. Now, stuck in two-wheel drive, I couldn’t keep up, as my back tires churned and spun in the soft sand. Bob Torrez guessed Sánchez’s route back toward the village, and angled to intercept him.

I saw his pickup hit a hummock of grass and go airborne, shedding its spare tire, oil cans, tools, and part of the right taillight assembly. In between bounces, I grabbed the police radio microphone off the dash.

“Three oh seven, make sure that highway’s blocked,” I shouted. “Take it at the first switchback.” Mears wouldn’t have any trouble putting a cork in the highway. All he had to do was park sideways at the turn. The steep mesa face would take care of the rest.

As we approached the south side of the village I could see two sets of red lights coming down the hillside as Mears and Bishop cut off Carlos Sánchez’s escape to the north.

Ahead of me, the lights of the Suburban disappeared as the vehicle plunged down into the main arroyo that split the village in half. I turned away from the edge, knowing that it was a sure trap for two-wheel drive. Bob Torrez spun north, and just as the Suburban roared up and out on the west side of the arroyo he reached the dirt path that was Regal’s southernmost main street.

Sánchez didn’t flinch as Torrez’s old truck plunged into his path. The two vehicles met with a crash, the impact spinning the pickup around so that it faced back the way it had come. With a scream of bent metal against rubber, Sánchez flogged the battered Suburban into one of the side lanes.

By then I had worked my way north along the arroyo to the lane, and when I reached the crumpled pickup I paused just long enough for Torrez to dive in, shotgun in hand.

“He can’t go anywhere,” I said, and even as I spoke we saw the Suburban pull into Mateo Esquibel’s side yard.

“Howard, we’re going to need you down here at the house,” I said into the mike. “Tom, stay up on the highway.”

I approached Esquibel’s tiny adobe slowly. The Suburban sat in the driveway, door ajar, dome light on.

“You think he slipped out the back?” Torrez breathed.

“Be careful,” I said, and he was out of the Blazer like a shot, weapon at high port. I slid the truck into gear, turned off the lights, and got out.

I knew Carlos Sánchez had not slipped out the back. I couldn’t imagine that walking was his style, especially in this country. His return to the house could have been for only one reason. He had to figure that Mateo Esquibel was his ticket to Mexico.

I stepped forward and shut the door of the stolen Suburban, and the yard was plunged into darkness. The dog inside was yapping, and I could see only one light. It was so faint it would have frustrated the most dedicated Peeping Tom.

“Sánchez!” I shouted. “Come on out.”

Other than the old dog, there was no response from the house.

“We don’t want to hurt either you or the old man. Come on out.” Still no response. I cursed and turned as Howard Bishop’s patrol car idled into the yard. He started to get out of the car, but I waved a hand as I walked over. “Stay in the car and keep on the radio,” I said. “Bob’s around back. I don’t think our man is going anywhere.”

I turned back and walked toward the front door. Just in front of the small front stoop I stopped, hands on my hips. “Carlos! I want to come in.” The damn dog started yapping again, and I heard a dull thud, like furniture being moved. “I’m at the front door,” I shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid.” Going through the door wasn’t one of the brighter things I’d ever done, but I was in no mood to stand out in the dark, trying to negotiate with silence.

Carlos Sánchez had to know as well as I did that other deputies waited outside. I was counting on him understanding that shooting one old fat officer wouldn’t do him any good.

The doorknob turned and I pushed open the front door. The light came from a little burlap-shaded lamp that sat on a low table on the west wall, two paces from the woodstove. A doorway led to the back of the house, where I supposed the kitchen and bathroom to be. Mateo Esquibel was sitting in a deep, old chair. The blanket that covered it had long shed its color and was now soft from dust and dog hair.

Mateo looked at me as I stood a pace away from the door on the stoop. His face was expressionless, heavy-lidded eyes just watching. The dog sat in his lap, and yapped once more before falling silent.

Behind the old man’s chair stood Carlos Sánchez, his back to the thick, impregnable adobe wall. He held a short pump shotgun, and rested the weight of the gun on the wing of the chair. The muzzle looked as big as a howitzer.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

Carlos raised his head a fraction, twitching his jaw. “Drop your gun outside,” he said softly.

“No,” I said genially. “You’re holding that thing, and my gun’s buried under my coat. I’m no quick-draw artist. Just relax.”

A loud thump came from behind the house and Sanchez’s eyes flickered.

“Can I walk over to the doorway there? I’ll tell ’em to back off.”

Sánchez nodded, and the shotgun muzzle followed me as I walked past them to the doorway leading to bed and bath.

“Robert!” I shouted. “Forget it. Go round front and keep Howard company. Everything’s fine in here.”

I turned and looked at Sánchez. He was smaller than I had remembered, slender and dark, with none of the bulk or coarseness of his father.

“You see? It’s easy. Now, what do you want?”

“Over there,” he said, and motioned to the still open front door.

“All right,” I said affably. I kept my hands in plain view. “You want me to close it?” I did so without waiting for a response.

The old man raised a hand and rubbed the left side of his face. He was missing three fingers, probably lost half a century before Carlos Sánchez was born.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Sánchez snapped.

“Then what do you want?”

“I think that’s pretty obvious.”

“What do you think is going to happen to you once you’re across the border?”

“I’ll take my chances with that,” Sánchez said.

“Well, we’re not going to let you do that,” I said. “The best thing you can do for all concerned is put that damn shotgun down before anyone else gets hurt.” Sánchez’s eyes darted to one side, toward the side window. He shifted position slightly, putting the old man squarely between himself and the opening. “You had quite a deal going for yourself,” I said, but he ignored me. Carlos Sánchez wasn’t about to lapse into a long session of storytelling or explanation.

“Back outside,” he said, and hefted the shotgun. With the other hand, he grasped Mateo Esquibel by the elbow and urged him to his feet. The old man looked confused and frowned.

When he looked at me, I said slowly and distinctly, “Do exactly what he asks.” If he read lips, he read Spanish, not English. He glanced at Carlos Sánchez, and the younger man said something in Spanish. The old man nodded.

Sánchez escorted the old man across the floor toward the front door. “You go back outside. Tell them to back off. Way off. Leave your truck.”

“The keys are in it,” I said. “But this isn’t going to work, Carlos. You’ve got to know that.”

“It’ll work if you use your head, sheriff. Now do like I said.”

I didn’t move for a long moment. If Sánchez did make it to a border crossing, either by way of crashing through the fence or bribing the right person, I had no guarantee that Tomás Naranjo and his troops would feel especially motivated to fight our war for us. Sánchez had committed no crime in Mexico, beyond the sale of a few stolen vehicles—and that was damn near a national pastime across the border.

Much as I wanted the son of a bitch, I didn’t want the old man hurt. If he had known what Carlos Sánchez had been up to, he was technically as guilty as the man who held the shotgun. But I found his complicity unlikely. He was going to be a sad old man now, knowing that Sánchez hadn’t been visiting him out of respect for the aging.

I backed up, filling the doorway. “Carlos…” I started to say, but he interrupted me with an impatient wave of the shotgun.

“Call them off.”

With a deep breath, I turned to shout at Torrez, who crouched behind the bulk of the truck.

Behind him, I saw more lights turned on as the tiny village gradually awoke to the ruckus in Mateo Esquibel’s front yard. The old man’s dog ran out of the house and made a beeline for Bob Torrez, stopping a dozen feet from the deputy to bark frantically.

I heard the guttural squelch of Howard Bishop’s radio, and then the deputy slithered out of the car and crouched by the front fender. “Sir!” he shouted. “Mears just let Victor Sánchez through. He’s coming in.”

I stopped in my tracks and looked to the east, toward the main road. A vehicle was just pulling into Regal, going much too fast and fishtailing in the dirt.

Turning to Carlos, I said, “Is this the rescue you were hoping for?”

But to my surprise, he jerked Mateo Esquibel closer and rested the muzzle of the shotgun on the old man’s shoulder. “Get him out of here.” The urgency in Sánchez’s voice surprised me. I waited, framed in the doorway, knowing that more confusion might work in our favor, providing a safe opening.

If Carlos Sánchez let down his guard for an instant, I could grab the barrel of the pump shotgun, wresting it away from the old man’s head. Failing that, I knew exactly how Sergeant Robert Torrez operated. Even as he moved into position behind the Suburban, I’d caught the glint of light off the barrel of his .308 deer rifle. One opening was all he would need.

Victor Sánchez’s fat pale-green Continental slithered into the yard, almost taking off the door of Howard Bishop’s county car.

He jerked open the door and stalked toward us, reaching the back of the Suburban before Torrez blocked his way.

“Let him come through,” I shouted, and I saw Carlos Sánchez duck his head. He fidgeted and backed around the old man until their two heads merged as one. He pulled Mateo Esquibel a step back into the living room. When Victor Sánchez reached the stoop, I held up a hand.

“You’d better stop there,” I said.

“I don’t have to talk to you!” Carlos shouted at his father, and for the first time there was a crack in the younger man’s voice.

Victor’s face bulged with fury as he looked at me. “What do you think you’re doing here?” he whispered.

“Your son’s holding Mr. Esquibel, Victor. That Suburban’s stolen. He was trying to slip across the border.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. When he spoke, he had to force the words out through clenched teeth.

“Carlos! Get out here!”

“Be careful,” I said. “He’s got a shotgun.”

Victor’s head snapped around like I’d jerked it with a chain. “He’s wanted in connection with two murders, Victor. Deputy Enciños and Tammy Woodruff. He’s not just going to let you walk in there.”

I turned slightly in the doorway so Victor could see past me.

Carlos saw his father and shouted, “Get him out of here! I mean it.”

“Carlos, don’t do anything stupid,” I said. Victor Sánchez started to push past me, but I blocked the doorway with one arm. Without taking his eyes off his son, Sánchez said, “Get out of my way.” He stood patiently, waiting for me to weigh the options. Finally I dropped my arm. Victor stepped forward into the living room, standing between me and his son.

I saw no weapon in Victor’s hands, and I was banking on Carlos being incapable of swinging the shotgun without having to twist away from the old man. That would give me room for a clear shot, and I edged my hand back toward my holstered revolver.

But Victor Sánchez had a different agenda. I don’t know what he knew, or what he had been able to piece together. But right then, his small, hard eyes were focused on the shotgun and the old man.