Blood Sweep (28 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

A low range of hills obscured the approach to Tres Santos, and once past them, tourists would feel that they were deep in Old Mexico—no border fence in view, no wash of signs blossoming along the route, no dwellings, no cattle, no nothing. The road forced attention—not quite wide enough for two cars, with blind corners and undulations, and no prior warning about what other pathways might merge from out of the desert.

The country south of the hills was surprisingly green, or at least a narrow strip of it was where the Rio Plegado wound down toward the village, its
galleria
of brush, small cottonwoods, even desert willows and walnuts flourished. Fed by springs, the Plegado puddled in the few spots where it surfaced, a true Jekyll and Hyde personality. The focal point of a huge watershed, it had been the Plegado that had swollen and surged half a lifetime ago, triggering a flood wall so powerful that it had swept away the Mazón family pickup at the river crossing south of the village. That was the story, anyway, told by Benedicte Mazón. But she would trust Juan Guerrero's version of the events that had left her an orphan.

As Estelle followed the road that bordered the Plegado, she saw that save for the occasional puddle under the protective shade, most of the riverbed was stone dry. The river—a tiny creek, actually—had become her friend during the years when she had been blissfully ignorant of the disaster. Then, she had been Estelle Florencia Reyes…and had been content to
be
Estelle Reyes. The name
Mazón
meant nothing to her beyond the man who now made such extraordinary claims.

The Iglesia de los Tres Santos
greeted visitors to the little valley, and oversaw the day-to-day life there, but no longer garnered the affectionate glances it once did. Burning to the ground in 1980, the community had made the incomprehensible decision to build a modern frame replacement. A short steeple jutted out of the metal roofing, and although the church was painted brown, it bore no resemblance, neither in appearance nor character, to the original adobe structure that it replaced.

Still, it had lasted now more than three decades without sagging or cracking, and residents had grown used to it.
Utilitario
was the most common compliment.

Estelle swung the car into the church parking lot and paused in the sparse shade of an ancient, black-limbed walnut. With the car windows down, she switched off the low rumble of the engine and let the sounds of the village seep in. Sun pounded on the packed dirt of the lot, and off the white paint of the Charger. Far in the distance, she heard the whine of a power saw—perhaps don Román himself, or one of his sons, at work on more whimsical creations.

Off to the southwest, somewhere below the gray concrete block elementary school, two goats made conversation. The faint thup-thup of helicopter blades carried in from far to the east, too far away to be really intrusive. With a rush of wings, two drab sparrows lit on the stone walkway to the church and regarded her with heads cocked.

Slipping her cell phone out of her pocket, she selected the sheriff's number and waited while it rang, and rang some more. The repeater on top of San Cristóbal peak should have made reception crystal clear. Finally, on the eighth ring, Torrez answered in his usual mid-conversation habit.

“So what are you doing down there?” He didn't sound pleased.

“I'm parked at the Iglesia in Tres Santos, Bobby. Everything is quiet. Juan Guerrero said that Mazón is waiting for me. At the Guerreros'. The police are nearby, but they're pulled back now. Maybe that's Naranjo's doing. I don't know. He's been cagey with me.”

“Huh.” Whether he was disinterested, disapproving, or just plain Bobby was hard to tell. “What does he want?”

“To talk with me.”

“I meant Naranjo. If he knows where Mazón is, why doesn't he just go get him?”

“I think…actually, Bobby, I don't know what I think. Maybe it's a favor to me.”

“Hell of a favor. You talked to Naranjo?”

“No. I haven't seen him. I don't know. He may not even be here. There's a presence, though. A chopper is in the neighborhood. I haven't seen any troops yet.”

“So you're just walking into that one.”

“I suppose so.”

“You left your hardware at the crossing?”

“Yes.”

“Not the smartest thing.”

“It's their law, Bobby.” The sheriff knew that as well as anyone, and he would obey that policy at times when it suited him.

“Look, I'm headed toward Regál right now. If you need anything…”

“I don't think so. If Mazón is here, I have nothing to fear from him.”

“Yeah, but Naranjo? Don't be gettin' between the two of them. This guy ain't
his
uncle.”

“I'll try my best.”

“What's your plan, then?”

Estelle paused. “I wish I had one, Bobby. I truly do.”

“Listen to Naranjo, then. Talk with him first. It's
his
turf. Don't be tryin' to work this without him.”

“I should be back on the other side of the fence,” Estelle said, but she said it to herself as she hung up the phone.

It would have been easy to think that she didn't understand Tomás Naranjo. If Benedicte Mazón had taken refuge in Juan Guerrero's home, what stayed the colonel's hand? Mexican law enforcement was not known for its patience, especially with a killer who had struck twice on one side of the border and three times on the other. Simple enough. A truckload of solders to surround the simple little adobe, and Mazón would come out, one way or another. Cheaper to bury than to feed.

She started the car and eased it out of the church parking lot. From this rise, she could count half a dozen new trailer homes and the small general store that had been built since her last visit. The tiny Tienda de Tres Santos
would cater to the modest flow of tourists—there were too few residents to support any such undertaking. As she passed, she saw an SUV with Iowa plates at the single gas pump. The hundred liters of fuel might be the store's only sale of the day.

Beyond the store was the first of four river crossings, and the Plegado barely dampened the concrete “upside down bridge,” a simple and safe smooth passage across when the water wasn't high. A depth gauge, a striped pole with meter marks, had been installed at each side, and it promised that the Plegado could rage with at least three meters' depth of water charging down the canyon. From trickle to killer.

Her car tires whispered across the concrete of the inverted crossing and she looked up-channel. The story of her family's tragic demise might be entirely apocryphal, of course. Teresa Reyes had never told her anything beyond the basic story of her life that began a year
after
the flood. The one-year-old who she'd taken in had spent the first year of her life nurtured by the church. Mexico was no stranger to orphans, and the church welcomed having the tiny child so comfortably adopted by the widowed school teacher Teresa Reyes. Juan Guerrero had kept the tragedy to himself—as the years passed, there was less and less reason for him to seek out the little girl and speak of the flood. And of course, every other year or so, there were other angry surges of floodwaters, all of them blending into the accepted character of the river. Other residents of the valley had suffered similar fates when they became careless or fatally daring.

The incident that had claimed her family, if Mazón and Guerrero were to be believed, would be legend. Everyone in town would know the story. They might
not
know what had become of the newborn orphan child. A very thin possibility.

True enough, the Mazón family, if that was their name, simply ceased to be. And now, Benedicte Mazón, claiming to be her uncle, had crawled out from under a rock.

The dirt road crossed the Plegado three more times. The road followed the river channel around an ox-bow, and for a few hundred yards the Plegado coursed due west. On the south side of the river, she once more stopped and shut off the engine. This was no sylvan streamlet with shade-dappled waters that enchanted photographers. The deeply scarred banks were supported here and there with the rip-rap manufactured from the crumpled remains of automobiles and trucks too lame to continue their road service. Estelle wondered if, buried somewhere in the sands downstream, the crumpled Mazón family's pickup truck enjoyed the same fate.

Far to the west, she heard just the faintest engine sound, and looked up toward the ridge, a cactus and rock-strewn vantage point that she had climbed dozens of times as a child, often in company with Mateo or Abbie Diaz. A brown SUV had taken one of the rough burro trails to the top, and now parked with a panoramic view of the village. One man got out and rested something on the hood of the truck. Even from 500 yards away, she could guess what it was—and where it would be looking.

“Ay,” she breathed. A curious towhee hopped noisily through the brush and emerge to examine her car, pausing for a moment just below the driver's window. The bird's head cocked, and large eyes regarded Estelle. “What do you know about all this?” she whispered. With a brief
nuck,
the bird flew off, disinterested.

She started the car and eased it forward, away from the river. An imposing adobe wall, decorated here and there with bursts of Talavera
tile, grew out of the hillside, and where the road skirted close, a sign announced
Casa Diaz.
In another ten yards, an ornate iron gate yawned open. The vegetation hinted that the gate had not been swung closed in years.

The circular gravel driveway brought her to Casa Diaz
,
a squat fortress of thick adobe walls that horseshoed around a courtyard shaded with pampered cottonwoods and two burly walnut trees. A three-tiered fountain splashed water noisily, the spray almost reaching the two wrought-iron benches. Colonel Tomás Naranjo sat on one of them, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his hand. As Estelle's county car nosed through the gate, he rose, stepped to the fountain and reached down to turn a brass valve. The fountain water died to a gentle and quiet trickle.

Estelle pulled in only far enough to avoid blocking the gate. She had worked with this man dozens of times over the years, always gently deflecting his personal interest in her. He had never made any secret of his admiration for her and her family.

“I apologize in advance for making all of this needlessly complicated,” he said, his elegant English cadence marking each syllable. “Still, it is good to see you here again.” He reached out his hands and took Estelle's in both of his, a courtly grip that lingered. His eyes never left hers. “I never tire of visiting this place. It is indeed fortunate that my wife is one of their best customers.”

Estelle stopped, turning slightly so that Naranjo had to drop his right hand from the comfortable spot it had found at the small of her back as he escorted her toward one of the benches. She had first met Naranjo when she was but twenty-two. In all of those years, his courtly manner—even deference toward her—had remained unchanged. He had never pressed close enough, either in words or physically, to make her uncomfortable. But there was no need to encourage him. His admiration-from-afar could stay that way.

“I am told that Mazón is here?”

The colonel nodded slowly. “Not exactly
here,
but,” and he pointed south with his chin. “At don Guerrero's. I wanted to give you some time with him.” A natural enough presumption, she supposed, but not one she eagerly embraced.

“If you have him in custody, we could have met in one of the district offices.”

“In a manner of speaking, he is in custody…in that there is nowhere now for him to go.” He turned and looked off into the distance, taking in the truck on the ridge. “We do not need to rush into tragedy.”

“Means what?” It was one of Bobby Torrez's favorite expressions, a cryptic demand for clarification, and Estelle found it perfectly suited to the way she felt at the moment.

Naranjo almost smiled. “
Señor
Mazón is currently accepting the hospitality of don Juan Guerrero, who is also anxious to speak with you. He tells me that he hasn't seen you for many years.”

“We move on.”

Naranjo laughed, his handsome face capturing the moment of pure pleasure. “Oh, we do. We do.” His head dropped as he removed his dark glasses, two fingers smoothing the mussed hair over his ears. “At this moment, how would
you
like this to…to work? What are your wishes?”

Estelle took a deep breath, wishing the answers were cop-easy. “We have a triple homicide in my jurisdiction, Colonel. You have at least two in yours. If Benedicte Mazón is guilty of any or all of those, then he needs to be in custody.”
He won't go quietly,
she thought.
Not this time.

And as if hearing her thoughts, Naranjo said, “I don't believe the actual apprehension,” and he lingered over each of the four syllables in turn, “is going to be so straight-forward. This is a man with everything to lose. It appears to me that he wishes to take a final moment to justify himself to you. That is important to him, it seems.”

“I don't care what's important to him, Colonel.”

Naranjo shrugged. “No, but it helps to explain his motivation.”

“Of course he knows you're here?”

“I am sure of it.”

“And he's just sitting in that little cottage and waiting to be arrested? Or shot?”

“He is not waiting for me,” Naranjo said patiently. “It is you with whom he wishes to meet.”

“Why have you granted the courtesy? He's there—arrest him. Or is it not so simple?”

“Indeed not. I have no desire to visit this
confrontation
on such a gentle and innocent family.” He drew himself up, taking a deep breath that savored the dry, clean air. “This place,” he said, and then he looked at Estelle with raised eyebrows. “You feel the peace here, no?”