The Carrion Birds (17 page)

“I’m not making any promises,” Gus said.

Dario’s smile only grew bigger. He nodded to the
two men holding Gus in place and they stepped back, taking their hands from his
shoulders. “Let’s start again,” Dario said. He took a seat in the chair across
from the old man, crossing one leg over the other and laying the gun across his
thigh, his finger resting over the trigger guard. “You know me and I know you,
and all I’m really after here—the reason we’ve come and we’re all visiting you
in your house this morning—is the answer to one simple question.”

“I can’t help you,” Gus said.

Dario looked up at the pictures on the mantel
again. He pulled back his sleeve and checked his watch. “You know your son is
very good at what he does. He has a real talent. The only problem is that he’s
very stubborn.”

“Stubborn?”

“He doesn’t see that it’s all over for him in this
town,” Dario said. Behind, the front door opened and Ernesto walked in. He
paused for a moment, looking to where Gus sat in the chair, before Dario waved
him over. He’d found four of the staff houses empty, but the fifth looked to
have someone living in it. Dario turned back to Gus. “Someone is missing?”

Gus didn’t say anything.

Dario raised the .45 off his leg and pointed it at
Gus. “Should we see who comes running?” He gave the trigger a pull and the gun
bucked in his hand, releasing a sound loud as thunder and the cloud of gunpowder
to go with it. In the wall over Gus’s head, a hole the size of Dario’s thumb
could be seen in the plaster.

“Jesus!” Gus said. “I’m telling you I haven’t seen
Ray in ten years, I don’t know where he is now. If he’s in town, I don’t know
it, and he didn’t stop by to say hi.”

Dario could feel his patience running thin. He was
tired and he’d given this man every chance he was going to get, but now it was
all coming to a head. “Who is living out back?” Dario asked again.

“My brother-in-law.”

“Who?” Dario snapped.

“Luis, he’s a regular at your bar. He’s probably
sleeping it off somewhere, I don’t know, I don’t keep track of him.”

Dario turned to look at Medina. “Yo lo conozco,”
Medina said, telling Dario he thought the man worked up the road, two miles away
at the Deacon place, raising cattle. Dario turned back to look at Gus. “I’m
trying to help you out here,” Dario said. “I’m trying to help you but it doesn’t
seem like you want to be helped.” Dario signaled for Ernesto, and when Ernesto
came close, Dario told him to go outside and watch the front.

When Ernesto had gone, Dario said to Gus, “The man
who just left lost his brother last night. I asked him to leave so that we could
talk in confidence. Because of Ray his brother is dead. He’s likely to kill you
when he comes back in here, and I’m likely to let him if you don’t have
something for me pretty soon. Because the way this is going to work is not going
to be pleasant, and it’s not going to be short, and no one in this room will
help you.” Dario looked the old man over, trying to decide how he had taken it.
The old man’s face was thin and drawn. The cheekbones showing just below the
eyes and a look of hate crossing his face for a moment, then going away again as
Dario called for Ernesto to come back in.

Dario nodded toward Carlos and César, and the two
men came forward again and put their hands down on Gus’s shoulders. They were
holding him still when Ernesto came forward and Dario told him to begin.

R
ay
walked north through the desert. He carried with him his collection of guns. The
clothes he’d worn the night before were caked in mud, the shoes he’d taken off
Sanchez dusted in a chalky sediment.

He walked until his feet felt stiff as stone
beneath him. The sun above risen into the sky. High billowy clouds floated for
hours in the same position, while the first tendrils of heat began to play
across the desert underbrush. He found large banks of land cut away from the
desert by the rains, the deadfall and underbrush of the mountains, miles away,
brought down into the lowlands and strung out along the banks. He knew he and
Sanchez would never have made it in the Bronco. The land too treacherous and
pocked to go on by anything but foot or horse.

Miles in he came within sight of a road, but found
no comfort in that gray slip of pavement along the valley floor. He watched the
silver reflection of the sun work over the aluminum car bodies as they moved
before him.

He turned away and followed the mountains to the
east, not wanting to rejoin the world just yet, not ready to face the questions
he knew would soon follow.

He was pretty sure the road he had seen would take
him out of there. It would take him between the mountains to the north and those
to the east. He walked on, feeling his shirt begin to stick to his back with
sweat. He thought many times of losing the rifle, but he wouldn’t give it up.
Holding it like some talisman of the past.

There was little he could do but head north. He
would have to call Memo at some point, to tell him about Sanchez and what had
happened out at the old Sullivan house. There was no good way to tell it and he
went on thinking his situation through and wondering how he was going to get to
Las Cruces with no shelter, water, or food.

Several times he came to wire cattle fences. He
passed through private land and into public BLM land, then back again. He found
depressions filled with rainwater. Much of the brown liquid already evaporated
and the remaining water clouded in manure and buzzing with flies. He was
dehydrated. Mad with thirst, but still he wouldn’t drink from them.

He passed through land where cows stood and stared
at him, working their sullen jaws before looking away again. He saw a coyote
from a mile out and he raised the rifle and sighted it through the scope but
didn’t pull the trigger. The long bouncing step of the coyote, sticking close to
the base of the mountains, then disappearing behind a hill. In the heat he
surprised a bedded-down herd of antelope that went hopping over fences and soon
were gone.

In the distance he saw the rusted scaffolding of
forgotten wells standing up against the background of the Hermanos Range. The
ocher-black skeletons he still recalled the names of. The Dean Garner, the Jack
Freal, and the Oleg Stanovich now crested on the horizon. Landowners who had
long since passed and for whom only a grave or well, rusted with time, existed
to preserve their memory.

His own history now thrown in much the same as
these men. His father’s wells dry and all that it had meant for him and
Marianne. And all that would result because of it. Ray out of work and their
mortgage adding up, many months past due. Everyone around them scrambling for
the jobs that were left. Marianne bouncing Billy on her hip, telling Ray every
day that they would make it, that there would be more work. But he could see
that there wouldn’t and he had known already that he was as done with the oil
business as it was with him.

A wish in his heart that he could go back in time
and do it all again, but do it differently, starting again from the day they
came out of the judge’s quarters and stood on the courthouse steps, newly
married. The honeymoon they would take on the Sea of Cortez, eating fish tacos
and walking the streets of the small towns still ahead of them.

Tired and wasted with the years that had come and
gone, he crossed the road thirty minutes later, his clothes still caked with all
they had seen and done the night before. Not one car in either direction.
Columns of light shining down from above, where the sun had found cover behind a
thin grouping of clouds.

He came to the ranch sooner than he’d expected and
he knelt in the dirt at the edge of the property, catching his breath.

For thirty minutes he lay there looking the place
over, fighting back thirst and hunger. As he watched, the wind came, carrying
with it a low cloud of dust that ran along the ground toward the house, a small
iron wind chime singing a solitary tune.

He rose and went cautiously on. It had been a long
time since he’d been here. It was a risk—the life he’d once lived here
unrecognizable from the life he lived now.

Knowing he needed shelter, his clothes torn and
stained with blood. He needed a place to hide away for just a day or so. There
was little else he could do. He stumbled on, his feet scraping over rock and
brush, his tired hands losing their grip on the rifle. He came to the stairs and
pulled himself up along the railing.

Ray rapped twice on the wood frame of the screen
door, waited, then rapped again. He went to the window and looked in, cupping
his hands to the glass. He was just about to go around to the back when he heard
the door latch give. When the door fell back on its hinges, Ray already had his
hand around the screen door, pulling it open. The woman inside offered only the
slightest of gasps as he put out his foot to catch the door before she could
close it. “Hello, Claire,” Ray said, looking past her now into the living room.
“Is Tom around?”

T
here’s all kinds of casings out there,” Kelly said to Eli. They sat in
his office, one floor up from her own in the courthouse. “There’s tire tracks to
at least three different cars.”

He stared at her for a moment then broke away,
dropping his gaze to the desk.

“What’s strange,” Kelly continued, “is that there’s
virtually nothing inside the house. No casings, I mean. You hear me, Mayor?”

Eli gave her a solemn nod, then looked away again,
moving his eyes to the window of his office. He’d been quiet for several minutes
now. As if Kelly wasn’t even there and wasn’t telling him what was going on just
outside his own town.

Kelly knew Eli didn’t want to have anything to do
with this. If it were up to him he’d probably just leave those bodies out there
in the sun till their own gases bloated them big as beach balls. Elections were
coming up. There were no jobs, no work—people leaving the town every week. And
now there was this. There was a lot at stake. Kelly knew what he was thinking
just by looking at the man. How he avoided her eyes, listening to what she had
to say, but listening like he could just let it all roll past him without doing
a thing about it or making any kind of choice.

“Whoever they were after was a good shot. A real
professional—no mistakes.” Kelly paused. “I think it’s time we called in some
help, Mayor.”

Eli stirred in his seat, his eyes on her now,
sizing her up. “That’s all you have to go on?”

“It was a war zone. We won’t really know till the
ballistics report comes back from Las Cruces.”

“How many gunmen are you talking about here?” His
eyes fixed on her now, steady and waiting for her reply.

“I can’t say for sure. We’re thinking they meant to
surprise someone out there. We’re guessing it was this assassin from the
hospital yesterday.”

“Do we know yet who these men are?”

“None of them are in the system,” Kelly said.
“We’re checking with the Mexican authorities now.”

“And the truck you found?”

“The bench was slit open—down the middle—and the
stuffing pulled out.”

“You didn’t find anything?”

“No.”

“Who’s it registered to?”

“Registered to a Jake Burnham.”

“You know him?”

“He’s one of the old boys we have here in town. No
answer at his place when we went by, nothing really, just this truck.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Still waiting.”

“Can we keep this quiet?”

“I think we’re past that, Mayor.”

He was back to avoiding her now, his eyes turned
away. A long pause and then he got up and walked to the window, where, she knew,
down below in the street there were news vans waiting to talk with him. “I’m
asking you now for a personal favor, Edna. Don’t do this to me.”

Out the window there was a high blue sky. The
clouds from the night gone away and passed on into Texas.

Kelly watched him, and when he didn’t turn back,
kept looking out the window, she said, “Tom is saying there’s too much missing.
He thinks we’ll find some bullet-riddled cars if we start looking.”

Eli turned only slightly at the mention of the old
sheriff’s name. Kelly couldn’t tell how he’d taken it.

“I told you I didn’t want him involved with
this.”

“I had to.”

“Is that why you’ve come in here? Is that why
you’re telling me this?” Eli turned away from the window and came back to the
desk. He sat heavily in the chair, looking at her.

“I came here because it’s my job to tell you.”

“Tom Herrera isn’t the law anymore. You get that?
You understand what I’m saying to you?”

Kelly was considering it. She’d been thinking about
Tom for a while now and she knew if Eli had had his way ten years ago, Tom would
be locked up right now. Only he wasn’t, and Kelly had had a lot to do with that.
Maybe too much, but it was something she’d taken on her shoulders a long time
ago. Most of all, she knew Eli wasn’t going to help her now, and she needed
help.

“You find any drugs?” Eli asked.

“No.”

“Money?”

“No.”

“There’s no reason for anyone else to get involved
in this thing then, is there?”

Kelly waited for him to say more and when he
didn’t, she said, “This could just be the start of a real problem.”

“You don’t think it’s finished, then?”

“I think it’s time we called someone. We can’t keep
this to ourselves. Four bodies in two days is a lot to account for.”

“We can handle it.”

“No,” Kelly said. “We can’t.”

Eli looked as if he wanted to say something, but
then didn’t.

“We need to get a plane or a helicopter, and we
need to get it in here soon,” Kelly said. “There’s three other cars out there
somewhere and a whole lot of desert to cover.”

“Who are you going to call?”

“DEA or Border Patrol, whoever can get something in
the air.”