Kitabı oku: «Body Heat»

Praise for the novels of Brenda Novak

“The Perfect Couple was fast-paced and extremely engaging from the very first page…. Once I started, I couldn’t stop! Definitely, most definitely add The Perfect Couple to your reading list.”

—True Crime Book Reviews

“Novak delivers another expertly crafted work of suspenseful intrigue heightened by white-knuckle danger and realistically complicated romance.”

—Booklist on The Perfect Couple

“I guarantee The Perfect Couple will keep readers on the edge of their seats.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Realistic and gritty, this story grabs the reader by the throat on the first page and never lets go.”

—RT Book Reviews on Watch Me

“Gripping, frightening and intense…a compelling romance as well as a riveting and suspenseful mystery…Novak delivers another winner.”

—Library Journal on The Perfect Liar

“A chilling, sensual tale that features a host of skillfully developed characters and intricate, multilayered plotting. Sacramento-based Novak writes gripping romantic thrillers.”

—Library Journal on The Perfect Murder

“As always, Novak’s plotting is flawless, and her characterizations are rich and multilayered. What sets this story apart from the rest is the intensity of the romance between the two wounded protagonists—it simply sizzles. A keeper.” (4.5 stars, Top Pick)

—RT Book Reviews on The Perfect Murder

“It’s hard to go wrong with a Brenda Novak novel.”

—Book Cove Reviews

Body Heat
Brenda Novak

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Bradley and Audrey Simkins at Booklovers Books…I love coming into the store and seeing gigantic posters of my novels covering the wall. Thanks for hand-selling so many of my novels. Thanks for coming out to any event where I need a bookseller. Thanks for doing the BBQ at my launch party each summer (no one can BBQ like you!). And thanks for constantly reminding me, just because of your own passion, how much I love everything about books.

Dear Reader,

It never fails. With each new set of books (I’ve been doing three per summer for a few years now) I seem to choose a favorite hero. One always intrigues me or resonates with me more than the other two, and this summer that’s the hero of this novel, Roderick Guerrero. Rod’s a character who has triumphed over a great deal of adversity. Instead of letting it break him, he’s used it to make himself wiser and stronger. I like people who’ve survived a few bumps. They’re always more textured, more interesting.

The research for this novel took a little more time than usual, but I was glad of the opportunity. I learned a lot about Arizona and the area along the Mexican border. Although Bordertown is a fictional place, there are many towns similar to it, with lots of atmosphere and challenges. I think challenges make a place more interesting, too.

I’d like to extend a special thank-you to Debbie Berke and Grant Noyes. Their names show up as characters in this novel because they were generous enough to purchase the privilege to help me support worthy causes such as fundraising for my children’s high school and diabetes research. To me, these are real heroes.

I love to hear from readers. Please feel free to write me at P.O. Box 3781, Citrus Heights, CA 95611, or visit my Web site at www.brendanovak.com, where you can enter to win monthly draws, read samples of other books I’ve written, download a pdf list of all my titles or check out my annual online auction for diabetes research, which includes so many cool things. So far, together with my fans, friends and publishing associates, we’ve raised over $1 million for this cause. My youngest son is a Type 1 diabetic, so I live with it up close. A cure is my fondest dream.

Love is the key!

Brenda Novak

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue

1

Racism is man’s gravest threat to man—the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reasons.

—Abraham J. Heschel, rabbi and philosopher (1907–72)

Benita Sanchez was almost as afraid of running into a rattlesnake as she was U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The CBP would send her and her husband back to Mexico. But a snake… The way José said she should creep across the ground—always staying low, very low—made her feel so vulnerable. Snakes came out at night, when the temperature cooled. She could easily stumble into one. Maybe they’d hear a brief shake of the rattle, but they’d never see its beady eyes or sharp fangs before it struck. Since they’d lost their coyote, or smuggler, they had only the moon to help them. And it was barely a sliver—a sliver that looked like a tiny rent in a gigantic dome of black velvet, which was slowly turning purple as the night edged toward dawn.

Although they’d crossed the border with thirty-one other Mexican nationals, they were now alone. Everyone had scattered when the border patrol spotted them more than twenty-four hours ago. Had any of those people made it safely back to Mexico? Or were they in some holding cell? She and José had escaped “La Migra,” but she was no longer sure she considered them lucky. Did José actually know where he was leading her? He said he did. He’d come to America once, but that was five years ago. And their coyote had promised they’d have only a six-hour walk. Even if she deducted for the time they’d spent sleeping, they’d been on their feet for eighteen.

As they came to a cluster of mobile homes, José whispered to circle wide and crouch lower. He’d once told her it was easy to sneak across la frontera. But it hadn’t been easy at all. Although he’d insisted she wear several layers of clothing, the thorny plants that scrabbled for purchase in the rocky soil still managed to sink sharp spines through the fabric or scratch her somewhere she wasn’t covered. Add to that the hunger, thirst, homesickness and fear—fear of snakes, dogs, drug-runners, thieves, unfriendly Americans, La Migra—and it was almost unbearable. The whole world felt hostile.

Tears began to burn behind Benita’s eyes. She wasn’t sure she could go on. She hoped the presence of these trailers meant they were on the outskirts of a town where she could at least get a drink of water, but even if they were close, two miles seemed like fifty when you were walking through the desert.

“José?” She could hear the determined crunch of his footsteps in front of her.

At the sound of her voice, he stopped. “You must be quiet,” he replied in rapid Spanish. “Do you want the people in that trailer to hear you? If they do, they’ll call the border patrol!”

The mobile home they skirted was one of the nicer ones she’d seen, a double-wide with a yard and everything. But its white paint seemed to glow in the dark, making it look like a giant ghost with flat, empty eyes. This was a soulless, godforsaken land. How could it be the paradise José promised?

“Maybe we could drink from the hose,” she suggested.

He hesitated and finally agreed. He had to be thirsty, too. But as they drew close, a dog began to bark, so he grabbed her hand and yanked her away.

“Agua!” she begged.

“We can’t risk it.”

“Then let’s try another place. Maybe the next one won’t have a dog.”

“We’re almost there.”

He’d been saying that for miles. Unable to believe him anymore, she stopped walking. “I’m scared. I want to turn back.”

“¿Estás loca?” he said, instantly angry. “We’ve come too far. We can’t go back.”

“But…” She swallowed hard. “How much longer?”

“We’ll be there soon,” he promised.

But would she be any happier after they arrived? They were going to a safe house and then the home of his cousin, Carlos Garcia. She’d met Carlos on two different occasions and didn’t like him. He enjoyed playing the big shot, pretending to be something he wasn’t. She didn’t want José to become like him….

“Hurry!”

Her husband was getting impatient. Benita knew how much this trip meant to him. He’d talked of it the whole time they were dating, painted appealing pictures of the opportunities to be found in America. But…

Gathering her courage, she started after him again. She wouldn’t be a disappointment, wouldn’t make him regret marrying her. Besides, as he said, they’d come too far to turn back. Surely the number of mobile homes meant they were indeed close to the safe house. Bordertown was as far as they had to go tonight. It was all arranged. They’d rest, then they’d call Carlos and he’d pick them up and take them to Phoenix. There, they’d live with him and two other roommates and, hopefully, find work so they could help pay the mortgage until they’d saved enough to afford their own place.

“Aren’t you worried about snakes?” she grumbled.

“Snakes will be the least of our worries if you don’t keep moving.”

Sighing, she tried to move faster, but with every step she wished she’d been able to talk José out of this. They were young and in love; they could make a living in Mexico somehow, couldn’t they? She didn’t want to go to America. Maybe he could make more money here—big money, like he said—but would they ever be happy living in a foreign land? A land that didn’t want them? And what if they were caught and deported after they’d begun to build a life here?

It was a risk Benita didn’t want to take. “José, I really, really want to go home.” The tears she’d been holding back began to stream down her cheeks.

He didn’t even turn around. “You’ll be glad we did this. Just…trust me.”

She thought of the water bottle they’d finished hours ago. Would they find themselves lost in the desert when the sun came up in less than an hour? Would they stagger around in the one hundred and fifteen degree heat without food or water and eventually die a terrible death?

The mere possibility made her shudder. All she had left was a pocketful of nuts. And they were covered with salt.

“We shouldn’t have crossed,” she said. “We should not have done this.”

A gruff chuckle alerted them to the presence of a third party. “Well, well…what do you know? It sounds as if someone is coming to their senses.”

Benita squealed, then clamped a hand over her mouth. A dark amorphous shape stood in front of them, blocking the faint light of the moon. She couldn’t make out specific features, but she knew he was a stranger. And she was pretty sure he was wearing a cowboy hat and holding a gun. He had something in his hand….

Was he white? She might’ve thought so except he spoke perfect Spanish.

Her husband inched toward her, placing his body in front of hers, and she let him. She hadn’t yet told José, hadn’t wanted to worry him before their trip el norte, but she’d just found out she was pregnant.

“Disculpe, señor,” he said. “We—we mean no harm. We are passing through, that is all.”

The stranger switched to English, which seemed to come as naturally to him as Spanish. “What you’re doing is illegal, mi amigo.”

Although he knew bits of English, much more than Benita did, José wasn’t fluent. He stuck with his native tongue. “But we are just visiting family. We mean no harm. We plan to go back to Mexico after two weeks. We stay only two weeks.”

It was an obvious lie, and the man was far from fooled. “Shut up.” Again he spoke in English but even Benita understood the meaning of those sharp words.

“Señor, please.” José edged closer to her. “It is only me and my—my little brother. We have no drugs, nothing.”

This time, the response came in Spanish. “Your brother.”

He’d heard her speak, which made this another transparent lie, but Benita kept her mouth shut, in case he believed José. Some boys had high voices, didn’t they? “Sí. He—he is frightened. Por favor…please, do not hurt him.”

Benita could hardly breathe. The stories of rape, beatings, robbery and other abuse that occurred during border crossings had circulated throughout Mexico. Parents used them to warn their children to stay home, as her father had warned her. But, other than to insist she chop her hair short and wear a baseball cap and men’s clothing, José had shrugged off her parents’ concerns. He said they worried for no reason and promised her everything would be fine.

“Stop groveling or I’ll shoot you both right where you stand.”

Those words and the disgust in the stranger’s voice made Benita start shaking. Who was this man? What was he doing out here? If he was a border patrol agent, he would’ve told them by now, wouldn’t he? Had they interrupted a drug run? Or was this a local farmer who didn’t want them on his land?

“I—I have money,” José said.

They didn’t have a lot. It was Carlos who was supposed to pay their coyote once they’d made it safely across. But at this point Benita was ready to turn herself in to the authorities. She didn’t care if he sacrificed every peso.

The man laughed. “You think I’m a dirty cop—like the kind you have in Mexico?”

José didn’t answer. “Forgive me. I am not trying to offend you, señor.”

“Your smell offends me, amigo. You being where you don’t belong offends me. And the fact that every word out of your mouth is a lie offends me.”

There was a click, and a brief flash of light. Benita covered her face, bracing for the worst. But he was only lighting a cigarette. She caught a brief glimpse of his chin, which was covered with dark stubble, before he closed his lighter.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, blowing smoke in their faces.

“Sí. Money. You want money?” José bent to get the cash hidden in his sock.

“I don’t want your lousy dinero. You couldn’t have enough pesos to buy me a new pair of boots, amigo. What I want is for you to undress your little brother here. I’ll use my night-vision goggles to take a peek at his chest. If he is, as you say, a boy, I’ll let you pass. You can head on to Tucson or L.A. or wherever else and bleed this country dry just like all your wetback relatives who’ve snuck over the border before you. But—” he took another long drag on his cigarette “—if she’s got tetas…” Another blast of smoke hit Benita in the face, making her cough. “I’m going to punish you for being the lying sack of shit you are.”

José didn’t move. Benita could feel his tension, could tell he was weighing his options. What had the man said? She’d recognized only a few words. Would José decide to run? They couldn’t. They’d be shot.

“Okay, I—I admit it. This is my wife, not my brother.” José’s voice was raspy with desperation. “But…she’s barely twenty, señor. And she’s frightened. Please, I beg you. Let us go. We will head back to Mexico. Right now.”

The man took another drag. “Until next week or the week after. Then you’ll come creeping across the border again.” He switched to Spanish, no doubt to make sure she’d understand. “I read an article that said you wetbacks try at least six times before giving up. Takes some pretty big balls to be so bold, you know what I’m saying? Besides, someone’s got to die. Might as well be you.”

Die? Benita sank to her knees. “No, por favor! I—I didn’t even want to come here. I’d rather go home. I’ll stay home. Don’t hurt us.”

He made a tsking sound. “How could you put your wife in such danger, Pedro?”

He had never asked for José’s name. He was using “Pedro” as a racial slur. She could feel this man’s hatred as palpably as the heat of the sun when it beat down at midday. But she was glad José didn’t complain. He squeezed her shoulder. Probably to comfort her. Maybe to convey an apology. You were right. We should’ve stayed. “I was just…trying to give her a better life,” he said.

A light went on in the closest trailer. When the man turned to look, José grabbed a handful of Benita’s shirt and jerked her forward. He wanted her to run, but she couldn’t get up fast enough and they lost the precious second that might’ve allowed them to escape.

The cowboy swung back, and they both froze with fear. Thanks to the light coming through the trailer window, the barrel of his pistol was outlined in silver, and they could see that it had something on the end.

Benita knew what that something was; she’d seen a silencer before. Her brother hadn’t always lived the kind of life he was living now that he’d settled down and had a couple of kids.

“Someone’s awake,” José said. “They’ll see you. You’ll get caught if you shoot us. Let us go.”

The stranger didn’t seem the least bit worried. Chuckling deep in his throat, he tossed his cigarette on the ground and fired so fast Benita didn’t realize he’d pulled the trigger until José collapsed. Her husband’s hand clenched, dragging her to the ground with him, so the shot intended for her went over her head. But that was all he could do to help. In the next second, he made a funny noise and went still, and she knew the man she loved, the father of her unborn child, was dead.

“You killed him!” she wailed, crouching over his body. “You killed him!”

“Hey, what’s going on out there?” A woman had opened the door of the trailer and called out in English. Although Benita couldn’t understand her words, she thought the interruption would make the man run away. But it didn’t. With a curse, Cowboy brought up his gun and aimed again.

“This oughta teach you spic cockroaches to stay in your own damn country,” he ground out, and pulled the trigger.

Benita felt a flash of pain between her eyes. Then she felt nothing at all.

2

The sun was just beginning to creep over the horizon when Sophia St. Claire brought her cruiser to a skidding halt at the dusty group of drab to not-so-drab trailers a mile outside of town. She’d thrown on her uniform and dashed out of the house as soon as the call came in. But she was too late. The people who lived here had abandoned the comfort of their homes to gawk and were standing in the middle of the crime scene.

“There goes whatever evidence I might’ve been able to collect,” she grumbled. But why get upset about it? If this was the work of the same killer she’d already been chasing, chances were he hadn’t left any evidence to begin with. In the past six weeks, someone had killed ten—now twelve—people in three different incidents, all UDAs or undocumented aliens, and walked or driven off into the night. Whoever it was didn’t attempt to bury the victims or hide their corpses, even when he had the chance. His earlier targets hadn’t been discovered until more than a week after their deaths.

As she turned off the engine, the small crowd, all of whom had glanced up when she arrived, watched her with pinched and worried expressions. They were obviously aware of the gravity of the situation. But they didn’t seem to realize that they should move away from the bodies. Maybe the CSI shows weren’t always one hundred percent accurate on forensic procedures and techniques, especially when it came to timelines, but surely these people had seen enough TV to know they shouldn’t contaminate the crime scene? It wasn’t as if they lived in some bucolic Mayberry R.F.D. The people here, mostly Mexican Americans with some whites and a few American Indians thrown in, were as rugged as the land. What with drug trafficking, human trafficking, gangs who had ties to the Mexican Mafia, racial disputes and a local chapter of the Hells Angels roaring around, blowing through stoplights, breaking speed limits and looking for trouble, this was almost a war zone.

Catching a glimpse of two prone bodies, she winced and jerked her door open.

Debbie Berke, the woman who’d called to report the shooting, met her as she got out. “Sophia, they’re dead,” she said. “They were killed instantly. Wasn’t no reason to get the paramedics out here.”

Sophia wasn’t surprised to be addressed by her first name. Only thirty, she hadn’t been chief of police for very long. And most of these folks had known her since she was a baby. Debbie’s late husband had been the veterinarian who’d operated on Toby, her family’s dog, when Sophia was fifteen, and eventually put him down. “I understand. I’ve called the medical examiner.”

“He’s on his way?”

“That’s what he said.” But Sophia doubted he was in any kind of hurry. Some of the sentiments Dr. Sandy Vonnegut had expressed at the last crime scene led her to believe he didn’t consider the death of illegal aliens to be much more distressing than roadkill.

She hollered for the crowd to step back at least twenty paces.

With their brown skin and inky black hair, the victims were, as expected, Mexican. One was a man, the other a woman. The male victim lay facedown in the dirt. They both had on several layers of clothing—long-sleeved shirts with dirty work pants—and tennis shoes, all secondhand quality at best. Sophia couldn’t see where the man had been shot; any blood was hidden beneath his body. It was the woman who gave away the manner of death. She lay on her back, staring up at the sky with a perfect hole in her forehead. That hole oozed a slim trickle of blood. The woman’s heart had stopped almost immediately….

They were young. Too young to die. Especially like this.

Sophia crouched next to them, checking each for a pulse. It was a pointless gesture. They were both dead; that was obvious. But she went through the motions, anyway, hoping…

Finding Debbie to be absolutely correct, she stood and studied their surroundings, searching for anything that struck her as odd or out of place. An object left behind. An object taken. Tire tracks. Except for the fact that this incident had happened much closer to town, the scene looked exactly like the two she’d visited during the previous month and a half. The killings had occurred on a barren patch of desert too rocky to reveal tire tracks or footprints. And from what she could see so far, the perpetrator had left nothing behind but the bodies.

“What do you think?” Debbie murmured over Sophia’s shoulder. The expectation in her voice suggested she believed Sophia could pull the killer’s name out of thin air.

With a sigh, Sophia took a pad and pen from her shirt pocket and guided Debbie away from the bodies. She wanted to talk to her and anyone else who might’ve seen or heard something. She also needed to enforce the perimeter she’d created and, as long as she stood close to the victims, the others would come closer, too. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

“I heard a—a noise.”

A siren wailed in the distance. One of her two deputies, Grant—who’d been on duty last night—was on his way, bringing the yellow police tape he’d accidentally put in his car instead of hers the last time they’d been through this. “What kind of noise?”

“At first, I thought it was a wounded animal.” She paused. “I know there’ve been other murders like this. Everyone’s talking about them. But you just never imagine—” she shrugged helplessly and tears welled up as she gazed at the corpses “—you just never imagine it can happen right outside your door.”

Sophia laid a comforting hand on her arm. “It might be easier if you don’t look,” she said, and shifted positions to block Debbie’s line of vision. “Take a minute, if you need to. We can continue whenever you’re ready.”

Dashing a hand across her cheeks, Debbie struggled to control her emotions. “I heard a cry. It frightened me, so I got up and walked through my house. Everything seemed fine. I peeked out the window, but it was too dark to see, and I didn’t want to go outside. I told myself there wasn’t anything to worry about and started back to bed. But then I heard voices. They seemed to be arguing. One belonged to a woman.” She lowered her voice. “That made me think Earl and Marlene had had another fight.” She jerked her head to indicate a couple standing in their bathrobes staring, in a dazed fashion, at the lifeless bodies, but it wasn’t necessary for her to point out who the Nelsons were. Sophia knew them by name. She knew almost everyone who lived in the mini trailer park. Although her financial circumstances had been much better, she’d grown up less than a mile away.

“They haven’t been getting along so great since he lost his job,” she explained, after which her volume edged up to normal again. “Once I thought I knew what the problem was, I lost my fear and stuck my fool head out to see if I could get them to settle down. That’s when I heard two thumps, right in a row. A woman cried out in Spanish and I knew it wasn’t Marlene.”

“You couldn’t see anything?”

“Nothing. It was pitch-black out here. And I had the lights on inside, which didn’t help.”

Sophia wanted to groan in frustration. Why couldn’t they catch a break? “Can you remember what the woman said?”

“I don’t speak Spanish. You know that.”

“What did it sound like?”

“To me, it was gobbledygook.”

As long as Debbie had lived in Bordertown she hadn’t been able to pick up any Spanish? That should’ve surprised Sophia, but it didn’t. For the most part, there were clear lines of demarcation between the two nationalities, despite almost constant contact. “So then what?”

“I ducked back inside, called Earl and grabbed my shotgun. I keep one in the closet in case I need to scare off a mountain lion or a javelina or what have you. But by the time Earl rolled out of bed, and I found ammunition, whoever had killed these poor people was gone.”

“You didn’t see anyone in the area?”

“No.”

Damn it! “What about a car or truck?”

She motioned around her. “Just what you see here.”

“Did you hear a vehicle?”

She shook her head. “But I wasn’t listening carefully because I was so frantic to find my ammo.”

“Do you think whoever did this could’ve left on foot?”

“I figured they must have. So I jumped in my old truck and drove around for a bit, but I couldn’t see a soul. And I’m sort of glad,” she admitted, tears filling her eyes again. “I wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with the kind of man who could do this.”

Sophia was thinking they probably bumped into him on a variety of occasions. Bordertown had shrunk drastically from its former silver-mining days. Now it had a population of only three thousand. And, judging by the location of the other murders, which were all in the surrounding desert, she guessed the killer lived nearby.

“Why would anyone do this?” Debbie asked.

That was the one question Sophia found easy to answer. “Hate.”

“But who could hate enough to kill absolute strangers? I mean, yeah, maybe these people were breaking the law. I get tired of the situation with the illegals, too. We all do. But some of them are just plain…desperate. You can hardly fault them for wanting to be able to put food on the table!”

“This killer feels justified.” Sophia could sense it in the way he left the bodies. He didn’t rape or rob or beat them. He didn’t touch his victims at all. He exterminated them like vermin. And the fact that he didn’t bother to even throw some brush over their bodies told her he was proud of his actions.

“It must be someone new to the area,” Debbie guessed.

She couldn’t imagine a friend or acquaintance committing such a heinous act. But Sophia wasn’t so sure. It didn’t have to be a stranger. She’d witnessed enough racism to understand it could be anyone. Or maybe this wasn’t what it appeared to be. She had plenty of political enemies who wanted to discredit her—one man in particular. Creating a high-profile case like this, a case she couldn’t solve fast enough to defuse the ticking time bomb of public sentiment, would be one way to do it. There were plenty of other possible scenarios, too. Although she’d previously considered border patrol a federal issue and hadn’t gotten too deeply involved in it, she knew the ranchers and farmers in the area were angry about the damage caused by the droves of illegal aliens who crossed their land.

“I don’t think he’s new.” Something about the confidence with which this killer acted made Sophia believe he’d been around for a long time, that he was intimately familiar with the region and its politics, and that his hatred of illegal immigrants had recently been honed and sharpened. Which was why her thoughts again turned to the man who’d most like to see her fail. Leonard Taylor. Because of a situation with a Mexican woman, a UDA—or undocumented alien—Sophia had the job he felt should be his….

“You’re saying it’s someone from around here?” Debbie gasped.

“I’m saying it could be. Maybe the killer had a run-in with a UDA that went badly, or he was robbed by one, or his wife left him for a Mexican or cheated on him with one. He might even have lost his job to someone who wasn’t supposed to be in the country.” Or he didn’t become chief of police as he’d always hoped thanks to an illegal immigrant who claimed he’d raped her.

“Anything could be a trigger,” she added. Because of their random nature, hate crimes were some of the most difficult to solve. That meant she had to do the nearly impossible—before this killer could strike again. Lives depended on it. Her job could depend on it, too.

Douglas was larger. Why couldn’t all of this have happened fifteen miles to the east?

“I hope you’re wrong,” Debbie murmured.

“Thanks for your help. You think of anything else, give me a call.”

Determined to take a closer look at the ground on which they lay, Sophia returned to the bodies. Although the perpetrator had collected his shell casings when he’d killed before, she doubted he’d done it here. Now that she’d spoken to Debbie, she figured he wouldn’t have had the time. He’d shot these people knowing there was a trailer forty feet away with an occupant who’d just called out to him.

The fact that Debbie’s shout hadn’t saved their lives showed a distinct lack of fear and no respect for law enforcement. That was another reason she thought Leonard, or one of his supporters, might be involved. This killer definitely wasn’t worried about any threat she might pose. He was bold. And he was growing bolder by the day.

Suddenly, she saw it. The glint of metal in the dirt.

Cautioning everyone not to move, she jogged back to her squad car and got the small forensics kit she kept in her trunk. Then she used a pair of metal tongs to gently lift a spent shell casing from the small rocks that’d previously concealed it.

“Handgun,” Earl volunteered.

Sophia hadn’t realized he’d stepped up behind her. She shaded her eyes. “Looks like it.” It was the right size for a semiautomatic. And there was a distinctive bulge in the web area forward of the extractor groove. She was no ballistics expert, but she knew any deformity might tie it to a specific gun.

After dropping it in a small paper sack, she managed to find two other casings that had fallen into some thorny mesquite. She’d expected a total of two, but this proved there were three shots. All the casings had the same defect; they’d come from the same gun.

She was closing and marking the bag when Officer Grant Noyes, a twenty-three-year-old fresh out of the academy in Phoenix, arrived with the crime-scene tape. He blanched when he saw the bodies and turned a bit green. He had a weak stomach. But he had to learn to deal with the pressures of the job. She needed his help.

“Set up a perimeter,” she said.

Another car came toward her, this one a black sedan. The Cochise County medical examiner. Apparently, Dr. Vonnegut had decided to show up without making her wait too long.

While the M.E. parked and climbed out of his car, Sophia got her measuring tape, her video camera and her digital camera. She needed to take photographs and a video of the bodies before anyone touched them. She needed to take photographs and a video of the whole area. And she needed to include a scale so prosecutors could recreate the scene, if necessary. She didn’t have the forensics team a larger city might have. She had her two deputies, and until the FBI officially responded to her request for help, she had the assistance of a detective from the Cochise County sheriff’s substation in Douglas. Dinah Lindstrom lived in Sierra Vista five miles away, but she’d been raised in Bordertown. Sophia hadn’t yet notified her that there’d been another killing. The intentional oversight wouldn’t improve their relationship, which was strained at best. But Sophia worked for city council, not the sheriff’s office. And considering the fact that Dinah Lindstrom had been one of Leonard Taylor’s biggest advocates, she couldn’t be sure the detective was really on her side, even now.

“What’ve we got?” Vonnegut, clearly unhappy, frowned as he trudged toward her. Fortunately, unlike Lindstrom, he didn’t seem to have any particular affinity for Leonard, or none that she knew of, anyway. It wasn’t as if she and Vonnegut had ever been enemies. But no matter how many times she dealt with him, they never became friends, either. He seemed a little too proud to be accessible. At the very least he was impersonal.

“Two vics, both dead,” she replied.

“Same killer as last time?”

“Same M.O. UDAs shot in the desert and left where they fell.”

“What’s with the guy who’s doing this?” he grumbled when he was close enough that he couldn’t be overheard by the others.

“Seems to me he’s dissatisfied with the immigration problem.”

“But if he gets caught, he’ll go to prison. What’s the point? For every one he shoots, there are thousands who’ll cross the border right after. Patrols pick up six hundred a day. Even conservative estimates suggest they miss twice that many.”

“Hence, his frustration.” Frustration that could easily cause Taylor’s anger at what his victim had cost him to boil over. Considering that anger, she’d often feared he might try to hurt her. But if anyone else wondered about Leonard’s culpability, she hadn’t heard, and she hadn’t mentioned it herself. First, she needed proof. Otherwise, she’d be criticized for having some sort of vendetta against him. His friends had already accused her of making up the rape she’d reported on behalf of the illegal alien who would never have come forward without her—all to “steal his job.”

After telling Grant to keep the bystanders out of the way, she walked Vonnegut over to the bodies.

“Maybe it’s not an American who’s doing this,” he said as he knelt next to the male. “Maybe it’s a Mexican drug lord settling old debts with poor mules or runners who tried to sell the dope they carried and keep the money.”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

“It’s possible.”

She wasn’t optimistic about his theory. Except for the fact that the couple had been killed execution style, the murders didn’t suggest it. As far as she could tell, this wasn’t Mexico’s problem. It was their problem. “There’s no evidence to support it. The victims all crossed the border from Mexico, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. Most of the people we’ve identified came from different regions and had no contact with organized crime. All the indications are that they didn’t previously know one another, either.”

“I’m still hoping it’s a drug lord,” he muttered. “Because if this is a vigilante, it’s going to get ugly around here.”

Sophia grimaced. “Take a look. It’s already ugly.”

“Yeah, well, unless you can stop this guy, it’ll get worse.”

“Thanks for stating the obvious.”

He rolled the male onto his back. The victim had a goatee and the tattoo of a cross on his neck. A bloodstain indicated he’d been shot in the chest, but he hadn’t bled much more than the female.

“Son of a bitch knows how to make quick work of it.”

Vonnegut was talking about the killer, of course. Sophia had noticed that, too, but she wasn’t impressed. “A bullet at point-blank range is pretty effective.”

Crouching beside him, she began to search the victim’s pockets. Sometimes UDAs carried voter registration cards. These cards seemed to hold more significance to Mexicans than the same thing did to Americans. Maybe because they included a photo, in addition to the standard name and address.

Unfortunately, this guy didn’t have any ID. Sophia found five hundred pesos—roughly the equivalent of fifty bucks—tucked into his right sock, as well as a piece of paper with a phone number that had a Tucson area code.

Suddenly light-headed, she swatted at the flies buzzing around the bodies and rocked back to fill her lungs with air that wasn’t pregnant with the smell of stale sweat and unwashed clothing. She hadn’t searched the woman yet, but she needed a moment to recover or she was going to be sick. Judging by the nausea roiling in her stomach, she was as pale as Grant had been the first time he saw one of the bodies.

“Why do you live here?” she asked Dr. Vonnegut while watching Grant finish with the yellow tape.

He was busy getting a body temperature. “What’d you say?”

“Why do you live near the border if you hate Mexicans?”

“I don’t hate Mexicans. I just want them to stay in their own country. Besides, my wife is from around here. And I like to be able to golf year-round.”

“Makes sense.”

“What about you?”

Breathe. Mind over matter. Do not embarrass yourself. These are not dead humans. These are…objects.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she turned her face up to the sun. “I’ve got family here, too,” she said, but she wasn’t talking about her mother and stepfather or her older brother. He didn’t live there anymore, anyway. She was thinking about Starkey. These days, she hated the Hells Angels and everything they stood for, hated that she’d ever had anything to do with them. She and Starkey had gotten together her junior year in high school, when her stepfather had moved in. Since her mother wouldn’t believe her complaints, and her older brother was away at college, Starkey had provided a deterrent to her stepfather’s advances. No one dared mess with her once Starkey came into her life. They knew there’d be hell to pay. She’d enjoyed the protection, as well as rolling on his Harley and wearing all that leather. But the longer she’d stayed with him, the more certain she was that she didn’t want to be an “old lady,” as the Hells Angels referred to their women. Determined to become a full patch member, Starkey was getting more and more committed to the club, which was so involved in drug and gun trafficking that she faced a different kind of risk from the one posed by her stepfather.

So she’d broken free, moved out on her own and migrated to the opposite extreme—law enforcement. After feeling so vulnerable, both at home and with Starkey’s pals as she became more aware of what they were really like, being able to protect herself had meant everything to her. She loved being a cop. But there was one person from the Starkey era she couldn’t let go of, and that was Starkey’s son, Rafe. She didn’t care that he wasn’t technically hers; she’d taken care of him those three years she’d been with Starkey—especially the two years she’d lived with him—and she wouldn’t walk out on the boy. His real mother was a crackhead who’d sell her soul for another bump. In many ways, Sophia was all Rafe had.

And she loved him. It came down to that.

“Someday I’m going to move,” she added, and forced herself to search the dead woman. There was nothing in her pockets except some nuts and a folded piece of paper with several words written in Spanish.

Sophia expected it to be a paper prayer. A lot of illegal immigrants carried them. But it wasn’t. It was a love note.

Although Sophia wasn’t fluent in Spanish, she could read and understand most of what she heard. She’d taken two years of Spanish classes in high school and she’d come into contact with it almost constantly since, via the ranch hands who frequented her stepfather’s feed store and the Mexicans she apprehended. Fortunately, that was enough to be able to decipher the few sentences she saw written there.

“You’re beautiful. Will you marry me? I love you. José.”

This woman had left behind everything she owned except this note? That meant it had to be important to her. She was wearing a thin gold band. It wasn’t very expensive, but it was a wedding ring all the same. Obviously, she’d said yes to that proposal.

Tears welled up in Sophia’s eyes. Trying to hide her reaction, she ducked her head, but Dr. Vonnegut immediately caught on that something was wrong.

“Hey, you okay?”

She averted her face. “Fine. Just doing my job. Why?”

“You’re acting strange.”

Was it so strange to experience grief for these people? To feel that their deaths mattered?

She swallowed in spite of the lump clogging her throat. “I think the guy’s name was José.”

“José what?”

“That’s what I have to find out. And this—” she gazed at a face that, in life, would’ve been as pretty as the note suggested “—this was his wife.”

“Dumb wetbacks,” he mumbled.

Sophia whirled on him before she could stop herself. “Shut up!” she shouted. “Just…shut up!”

Anger quickly replaced his initial shock. “You’re not cut out for this job. I knew it when they hired you,” he said. Then he got up, removed his plastic gloves and stomped away, leaving the bodies to the boys from the morgue, who put bags around the victims’ hands, in case they could recover some sort of trace evidence, and began wrapping their corpses in clean white sheets.

Ignoring the stares of the people who’d been looking on, Sophia pinched the bridge of her nose and struggled to compose herself. She had to be careful. There were enough sexist jerks in Bordertown who thought her job should’ve gone to a man—even though the only viable candidate was a criminal himself.

Her cell phone rang. As she pulled it from her pocket, she hoped it might be Rafe. He’d give her something good to hang on to, help her get through this. But it was too early for him to be up. And as soon as she saw the incoming number, she knew a bad morning was about to get worse: It was Wayne Schilling, the mayor.

3

The voice on the other end of the phone stopped Roderick Guerrero in his tracks. Because he hadn’t recognized the number, he’d been curious enough to answer. But from the moment he’d heard the word hello, he’d known it was his father, although they hadn’t spoken in years—ever since he’d graduated from BUD/S training and received his Naval Special Warfare SEAL classification. He still couldn’t say how Bruce Dunlap had found out he was graduating, or the time and date of the ceremony. Roderick sure as shit hadn’t told him. But someone had. After all the years Dunlap had chosen to ignore him—even lied about their relationship—he’d flown to California to attend and looked on; acting as proud as any other parent. The only difference was that his wife sat at his side, her lips pressed tight with disapproval. Edna was the kind of woman who walked through town looking down her nose at everybody. Roderick disliked her even more than he disliked his father.

He didn’t know what to say and had no desire to say anything, so he hung up. He felt no obligation to Bruce. It wouldn’t have mattered if Bruce had been calling to offer him a million-dollar inheritance. Roderick didn’t want his father’s money, his advice, his legacy or his love. His love least of all. He didn’t even use his father’s name. Legally, he wasn’t a Dunlap, anyway. He was a bastard and as such had been an embarrassment to his wealthy white father all the time he was growing up. As soon as he was old enough to contest his mother’s wishes, he’d taken her name instead. She hadn’t been happy about that. He was related to the wealthiest man in town and she wanted everyone to know it. It gave her a sense of pride, a connection to something more through him.

Or maybe she enjoyed it for other reasons. Maybe she got some pleasure from knowing her son’s very existence grated on Edna. But Roderick wanted to distance himself from the Dunlaps and all they represented as much as they wanted to distance themselves from him. He was satisfied with his mother’s name. Guerrero meant warrior. That suited him better. He’d been fighting since the day he was born.

Milton Berger stuck his head out of the conference room a few feet down the hall. “What are you doing?”

Roderick had almost forgotten that his boss was waiting to be debriefed on his latest assignment.

“Nothing.” He started to slide his cell phone into the pocket of his khaki shorts when it rang again.

“Can you shut that off and get your ass in here? I don’t have all day!” Milt snapped. As sole owner of Department 6, Milt couldn’t seem to focus on any one thing longer than five minutes. He was too busy juggling. Always in a meeting or on a call, he wasn’t an average workaholic; he was like a workaholic on speed. Roderick was beginning to think the fortysomething-year-old never went home at night.

But he didn’t care what Milt did in his off-hours. Milt wasn’t the kind of guy Roderick liked spending time with. Milt had six operatives, and every single one of them thought he was a bona fide asshole. What did that say about a guy?

As his phone continued to jingle, Roderick’s thumb hovered over the red phone symbol that would send the call to voice mail. It was his father again. Why the hell was the old man making an effort now? At thirty, Roderick was no longer a dirt-poor Mexican boy with no prospects and no family beyond a weary mother who’d come into the country illegally when she was barely twenty and cut lettuce in the fields of the selfish jerk who’d impregnated her. Whatever Bruce wanted, it was too late.

But Milt’s impatience grated on Roderick almost as much as his father’s untimely call, so he answered out of spite. “How did you get my number?”

“What the hell!” Milt complained.

Roderick ignored him.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”

The question that immediately came to Rod’s tongue was why, but he knew his father’s answer wouldn’t make sense to him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it anyway, so he went with “How?”

“Jorge mentions you from time to time.”

Jorge was Bruce’s overseer. He was also the closest thing Rod had to a grandfather and the only person in Bordertown Rod stayed in contact with. Jorge loved hearing about Rod’s undercover exploits, so Rod humored him by checking in every few months and catching up. The old man had never told him that Bruce had expressed an interest. Maybe he hadn’t; maybe Jorge was attempting to engineer some sort of reunion. It’d be like him. He’d always had a soft heart. Jorge was part of the reason Rod’s mother had never left the ranch despite her difficulties. She knew he couldn’t go anywhere else and make the money he made working for Bruce. And she, no doubt, hoped Bruce would eventually “come to his senses” and accept Rod. Mostly, she’d stayed to see her son eventually have more and be more than she could hope to give if she left. “Since when did the two of you become friends?”

“Time has a way of changing things, Rod.”

“And some things will never change. So are you going to tell me what you want?”

“To hear me out. That’s all I ask.”

Hoping his father was about to lose the ranch and needed a loan or something, Roderick decided to indulge him. To a point. “You’ve got three minutes. Make it fast.”

“I’d like you to come to Bordertown.”

This made Roderick laugh. “You’re joking, right? I’d sooner go to hell.”

“Rod, I think you might be able to help with a situation down here. If half of what Jorge tells me is true, I know you can.”

The gravity of “a situation” should’ve piqued his interest. It didn’t. “I have no intention of helping you with anything. Ask one of your lazy-ass white sons.”

Dropping several F-bombs and claiming Rod’s “ass was grass,” Milt stormed out of the conference room, marched to his office and slammed the door. But Rod wasn’t worried about his boss’s reaction. It wasn’t as if he’d be fired. He’d just busted a large child-porn ring in L.A., which was a major coup. Local law enforcement hadn’t been able to accomplish that in more than a year, and he’d done it inside of three months. His stock at Department 6 had never been higher.

“This isn’t for me,” Bruce said. “This is for her, okay?”

Roderick gripped the phone tighter. “Who’s her?”

“Your mother.”

Now his father had his full attention. “My mother is dead. Partly because she wore herself out before she could reach forty. Partly because you ripped her heart out and stomped on it every chance you could get. You’re the reason she’s dead. You and Edna.” He pronounced Bruce’s wife’s name with the disdain he believed it deserved.

“I’m not the one who encouraged your mother to come to America. That was her decision. And I never promised her more than I gave her. I provided work, that’s all. It was as good a job as she could get anywhere.”

“You gave her a baby, that’s what you gave her,” Roderick growled. “A baby she struggled to take care of, along with her little brother.” That brother had returned to Mexico not long before Carolina’s death. Roderick had lost touch with him, but he thought about Arturo often. From time to time, he considered looking him up. He would have done it, except he was afraid Arturo was dead from some drug deal gone awry. He’d caused a lot of trouble before he left. Chances were that if he’d survived, he wasn’t on the right side of the law. He was one of those restless spirits who could never find peace. At least, that was what his mother had always said.

“I gave her some money…now and then,” his father said.

Rod was surprised he didn’t mention how hard he’d tried to persuade her to get an abortion. Or the money he’d offered her in those early years to leave the ranch, leave Bordertown. “So…what? You paid her medical expenses and gave her a few bucks to help feed the kid you fathered? That means you deserve a medal?”

“No, no, you’re right. I—I didn’t do enough. I’m sorry about that.”

“Life’s a bitch, Mr. Dunlap. Babies don’t go away just because you regret making them.” Especially if the mother refused to get an abortion and refused to give up hope that her child would someday be accepted.

“I don’t regret you. I regret how selfishly I acted. I was…scared. I didn’t want what I’d done to cost me my wife and family.”

Roderick rolled his eyes. “Or your inheritance.”

“My father wouldn’t have been sympathetic. Times were different back then. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it’s true.”

Bruce, Sr., had never once acknowledged Rod, even when his mother made it a point to cross his path and say, “That’s your grandpa.” She was so proud of her son she couldn’t understand why the male Dunlaps, at least, couldn’t see things her way. It was the male Dunlaps who, in her mind, held the power and controlled the money.

“I wish I could go back and do things differently,” his father said. “But it’s too late for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Roderick glanced at his watch. “Then why are you calling?”

Bruce sighed. “Some racist son of bitch is killing illegal immigrants as they come over the border. Shooting them at point-blank range and leaving their bodies to rot.”

“The only racist son of a bitch I know is you. Besides your father. But he’s not around anymore.”

There was a moment of silence. One that told Rod he’d hit his target. Then his father said, “I deserve that. So would he, if he was alive. But this isn’t about me. Or him. I think this case is more than the local police can handle. They don’t have the funding, the manpower or the experience to deal with it. I’m afraid a lot of people will wind up dead if we don’t get some help.”

Noise, coming from the reception area, indicated the other operatives were returning from lunch, so Rod stepped into the conference room Milt had just vacated and shut the door. He was acting tough, but speaking to his father shook him, made him feel like a little boy again. A hurt little boy. And the hurt resurrected the anger he’d shoved down deep inside. News of the killings brought that anger back, too. He kept imagining women like his mother creeping across the border with the hope of being able to make enough to feed themselves and their families, and being murdered by some vigilante who felt he had the right to take the law into his own hands. It was so easy to feel self-righteous and superior when you had a comfortable home, a safe place to live and a full stomach. “What, exactly, do you expect me to do?”

“According to Jorge, you’ve got the skills to help. If you want to.”

“I’ll have to thank Jorge next time we talk.”

His father ignored the sarcasm. “You won’t believe this, but I’m proud of you.”

“Like you were proud of me when I was cutting lettuce in your fields and you’d come by and completely ignore me?”

Bruce didn’t respond to the jab, but the tenor of his voice changed, grew softer. “You could make a difference to what’s happening here. I know it.”

“Since when did you start caring about Mexicans?”

“I’ve been a member of this community all my life. Do you think I want to see senseless hate crimes tear it apart? I’m not a monster, Rod. I may not be happy about droves of people entering this country illegally, but that doesn’t mean I want to see them murdered.”

“Yeah, where would you be if you had to pay for white labor?”

“I’m good to my workers.”

It was true that he’d been more generous than some farmers. That was another reason his mother had stayed. She interpreted this generosity to mean more than it really did. But Rod didn’t want to give him even that much. Besides, what was happening in Bordertown wasn’t Rod’s problem. He’d finally escaped. No way was he willing to let this draw him back. “I live in California now, Mr. Dunlap. Since my mother died, there’s nothing left for me in Arizona.” Except Jorge. But speaking to him on the phone and sending the occasional package was enough.

“I’ll pay you,” Bruce offered.

“Absolutely not.” He rubbed his temple to relieve the beginnings of a headache. “I don’t want your money.”

“You took it readily enough when your mother died!”

Clenching his jaw, Roderick spoke through gritted teeth. “Are you kidding me? I was sixteen years old and had just lost the only person I had in the world. I couldn’t have paid for a decent burial without that money, and you know it.” That was the only reason he’d taken it. He would never have accepted it if it hadn’t been for her. “Besides, I paid you back. I made a payment every month afterward, even if it meant I went hungry.” He’d had a hard time surviving the next two years. He’d mostly drifted, taken odd jobs as a dishwasher or a field hand or a painter. He’d probably still be rambling around without tether or anchor if not for a certain navy recruiter who’d worked down the street from an office he’d been painting. After badgering him for weeks, Linus Coleman had talked him into getting his G.E.D. and joining the navy. Rod had signed on the dotted line mostly because he’d been promised a free college education. But his commitment to the armed forces had quickly evolved into much more than that. In the navy, he’d found a home, friends who were more like brothers, purpose in what he did, some self-esteem. But it hadn’t been an easy road.

“I never cashed those checks, Rod,” his father said. “That’s your problem. They were money orders. It’s not as if you were doing me any favors by not cashing them.”

“I thought there might come a time when you’d actually include a return address on the envelope so I could send them back. I brought them with me to your BUD/S graduation, but…you didn’t give me the chance to pull you aside long enough to speak privately. I never begrudged you a cent of that money.”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“I guess…I guess I was trying to point out that there’ve been times when I’ve…tried to help.”

“If that’s ‘trying to help,’ you’re even more pathetic than I thought,” he said, and disconnected as Rachel Ferrentino, a fellow operative and good friend, came into the room.

“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

She looked concerned, so he plastered his usual easygoing smile on his face. “Nothing. Why?”

“Milt’s throwing a fit. Says you have no respect for his time.”

“It’s not just his time. I have no respect for him.”

He expected her to laugh, but she refused to let him throw her off track. She’d figured out that something significant had occurred.

“That was important, huh?” She eyed his phone.

Trying once again to bury the memories conjured up by his father’s call—and the pain associated with them—he drew a deep breath. “Not really.”

Her eyebrows knotted with skepticism. “You’re full of crap. You know that?”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” he replied, and sauntered past her, chucking her on the chin as if his heart wasn’t racing like a rabbit’s.

The air-conditioning at the station was working double time to counter the heat of another one hundred and ten degree day, but Sophia was far from comfortable. She knew Detective Lindstrom would be showing up any minute. Lindstrom had called while she was at the crime scene, almost as soon as she’d hung up with the mayor, which meant she’d had two agonizing conversations in a row. Lindstrom had heard about the shooting via her police radio and was furious that Sophia hadn’t notified her. Sophia had used the excuse that she couldn’t be sure this shooting was related to the others, not until she’d had a look, but that had—understandably—done little to placate Lindstrom. By the time she arrived at the scene, there’d been nothing left except the tape that cordoned off the area and a spot of blood from the male victim’s body. Along with the limited artifacts found in the victims’ clothing, Sophia had taken the spent shell casings, and the morgue had taken the bodies. Because they were dealing with homicide victims, there’d be an autopsy, but Sophia didn’t expect it to reveal anything she didn’t already know, at least about the manner of death.

Ironing out the sheet of paper with the phone number she’d found on “José,” she picked up her phone. She needed to identify the victims so she could call the Mexican consulate and have them notify the families of the deceased. With luck, the person at this number would be able to help.

Six rings. Then a voice speaking English with a strong Mexican accent told her to leave a message.

She was about to do so, but hung up when Lindstrom slammed her way into the reception area. Sophia could hear the detective’s shrill voice, demanding Grant get Chief St. Claire immediately.

Grateful that Christina, who did the clerical work and disliked Lindstrom as much as she did, was away on vacation, Sophia got up and opened her door. “Detective Lindstrom? Would you like to step into my office?” She almost smiled at Grant’s obvious relief but the temptation disappeared the minute Lindstrom stalked past the three desks in the front lobby. Brown eyes sparking with indignation, she leaned forward as she charged ahead, reminding Sophia of a dog straining at a leash.

“What happened this morning is completely unacceptable,” she said. “Completely unacceptable.”

“So you’ve said.” Sophia told Grant to go home. It was time for him to get some rest. Then she waved Lindstrom in and motioned to a chair. “Would you like to sit down?”

“No. I still can’t believe you’d go out there without calling me. We’re supposed to be working this case together, Chief St. Claire. How can we do that if you cut me out?”