Down Among the Dead Men

3

The house was farther away than it looked.

They drove along what had once been an access road but was now little more than chunks of broken earth, making passage by truck difficult and uncomfortable. Vargas had to hold on to the support bar to keep from getting knocked around inside the cab.

Ainsworth had offered to pull the bikes down, give Vargas a ride, but Vargas had declined. The one time in his life he’d taken a ride on the back of a dirt bike had scared the ever-loving crap out of him. Not an experience he was interested in reliving, especially with this guy at the wheel.

About halfway there, Ainsworth brought the truck to a stop and gestured with a nod toward a nearby dune, fronted by a patch of scrub.

“I came up over that rise and nearly put my rear tire in her face. Almost took a header in the process.”

“She the only one you found out here?”

Ainsworth nodded.

“Sonsabitches must’ve used a razor-sharp garrote. Practically took her head off. Then they shot her a couple times for good measure. Local police figured she’d managed to run for it and got caught.”

“Oh? They tell you this?”

Ainsworth huffed a dry chuckle.

“Hell no. They wouldn’t give us the time of day. For a while there, I thought they were gonna cuff us both and send us off to no-man’s-land. But that didn’t seem to keep them from jabbering on in front of us. And I may have forgotten to mention to ’em that we both speak Spanish.” He grinned. “Figured the more we looked like turistas, the better off we’d be.”

“Mi padre es un bastardo elegante,” Junior said.

Ainsworth smiled. “You’re right about that, boy. I’m what you might call a wolf in hick’s clothing.”

They both got a good laugh out of that one as Vargas stared at the patch of earth where the body had lain. After several weeks, whatever blood there’d been had been absorbed by the dirt and brush and blown away by the wind and was no longer visible. But Vargas had worked a few crime scenes in his time, and it wasn’t hard to imagine what the dead woman had looked like.

But then it wasn’t imagination he should be relying on, was it? That would only get him in trouble again.

“What was she wearing?” he asked. “Was she in her nun’s habit?”

Another dry chuckle. “You see any convents around here? She looked like a typical border bunny. Jeans and a T-shirt. First glance, that’s what the policia thought they were. A buncha wetbacks, headed for El Paso.”

Vargas bristled. “Are those the terms they used?”

Ainsworth studied him a moment.

“Look, Nick, you seem like a nice enough guy, but you start gettin’ all holier-than-thou on me, you’re not gonna get much of a story.”

Point taken. Vargas had heard his share of unrepentant bigotry over the course of his life, especially growing up around the fields of Southern California, where the term “berry picker” was not an endearment. His father had worked those fields for hours so long, at wages so low it would make you weep. But he’d never complained, despite the animosity he’d encountered on a regular basis. Much of it from the very families who bought those berries at prices his cheap labor allowed them to afford.

But this trip to Chihuahua wasn’t about old wounds. When it came to work, Vargas had always tried to keep his emotions in check. No reason that should change now.

He gestured to the house.

“Show me where you found the rest of the bodies.”

Robert Gregory Browne

Down Among the Dead Men (A Thriller)