Devils and Dust (23 page)

Cosgrove was standing by his personal vehicle, a white Cadillac Escalade, out in front of the small sheriff’s substation on Main Street. He still had the broad shoulders and massive build of the star middle linebacker he’d been at the University of South Carolina, even though his brush cut shock of hair had gone gray and his face was lined from years in the sun on his family farm. The Cosgroves had done well for themselves for generations in Hearken, which is how Castle figured the Sheriff could afford vehicles like he drove on what the county paid him.

“What’s up, sir?” Castle said as he got out.

“Castle,” the Sheriff said, “tell me about this stop you just made.”

“Yes, sir,” Castle said, nearly snapping to attention by sheer reflex at the commanding tone. He gave the Sheriff the full story, trying to keep it as straightforward as possible, as if he was giving testimony in court.

“A white guy and a Hispanic?” Cosgrove said when he was done. Castle nodded. “Good,” Cosgrove said. “Find them. Pick them up.”

“Sir?”

A scowl appeared on Cosgrove’s face. “Do I stutter, son? I said pick their asses up. Bring them here.” He gestured at the substation. “And let me know. But use your cell phone. Stay off the air.”

“Yes, sir,” Castle said. This was making less and less sense. The tiny substation had been the old Hearken police department until the town had decided their money would be better spent if they let the county Sheriff pick up the slack. Officers joked that the place reminded them of the Sheriff’s office in the old
Andy Griffith
show: A couple of desks, an ancient computer, an even more ancient radio that was a relic of the 1970s, and a pair of old cells in the back. There wasn’t even a magistrate on duty. Which reminded him. “Sir?”

Cosgrove had been turning away toward his car. Now he turned back, the scowl deepening. “What now?” he snapped.

“What’s the charge?”

The Sheriff stared at him incredulously, as if the question were the most absurd thing he’d ever heard. “Charge?”

“Yes, sir,” Castle said. “Why am I bringing them in?”

“Questioning,” the Sheriff said.

“Questioning,” Castle repeated.

“Yes. Questioning. They may be material witnesses in an ongoing Federal investigation. Any more dumb-ass inquiries, son?”

“No, sir,” Castle said.
Other than what bug has got up your ass
.

“Good,” Cosgrove said and turned away again. “Now do your damn job.”

“Yes, sir,” Castle said and got back in the patrol car. He took a moment to get his anger under control as he watched the Sheriff drive off. Then he started the engine.

“J
ACK,”
O
SCAR
said. He was making no move to get out of the car.

“Yeah?” Keller said.

“When we find this place,” Oscar said, “what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to go in and get your boys,” Keller said.

Oscar shook his head. “I do not think that will work.”

Keller’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Why not?”

Oscar looked at him sadly. “You really haven’t thought this through, have you?”

Keller felt a brief stab of frustration. “What are you…”

Oscar nodded. “Think, Jack.” He gestured toward the trunk of the car. “We’ve seen what kinds of weapons these men have. And we know there will be more of them at this farm.” He shook his head. “I have known you for years now. I have worked with you. I know your first thought is to kick down doors and start grabbing people.”

It’s all I have
. The thought came to Keller unbidden. Oscar saw his look and nodded again. “I know that is what you live for. What keeps you feeling alive. But I don’t think it will work this time. And it might get my sons killed.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“We look. We see what we can see. And then we do what we should have done a while ago. Alert the authorities.”

“Who?” Keller said. “Local cops?”

“No,” Oscar said. “I think the locals may be protecting these people. Certainly they do not seem to want to know what is going on out there. But the FBI, even the Immigration…” he shrugged. “We let enough people know that someone is practicing slavery, here in America, in the twenty-first century, someone will do something.” He sighed. “If nothing else, they will come once they know illegals are here.”

Keller tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. He didn’t entirely succeed. “Maybe it’s you who hasn’t thought this through, Oscar. Best-case scenario is, they believe you, and being the Feds, they hem and haw and take forever to put something together. Who knows what happens in the meantime? Worst case is, they don’t believe you, don’t do anything, and they figure out you’re not here legally, and they lock you up, then they deport you. Actually, in any scenario, they lock you up and send you back to Colombia. And your sons. If those crazy racist fucks don’t kill them first.”

Oscar nodded. “I know that. I have decided I’m going back anyway. With my sons.”

“You’ll…what?”

“I can’t keep living like this, Jack. Outside of the law. It’s making me crazy.” He looked at Keller. “I came here to be safe. So my sons could be safe.” He threw up his hands. “Look at this. Am I safe? Is my family safe? Since I came to America, I have been kidnapped and shot by drug dealers, I’ve had crazy men try to kill me, and now this.
Mierda
, I was safer in Colombia, teaching school, than I am in this place. Than I am with—” He stopped.

“Than you are with me,” Keller said.

“Jack, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, you’re right,” Keller said. He thought back to another man’s words:
You bring death, and hell follows with you.

“You are not responsible for what has happened to my boys,” Oscar said quietly. “Without you, I wouldn’t be this close to finding out what happened to them. I thank you for that. But we’re going to do this my way.”

Keller still felt the burn of his frustration. But Oscar was right. He knew that a head-on attack was probably suicide, for him and for Oscar. Still, something in him clamored for, as Oscar said, kicking down doors and grabbing people, even if it would get both of them killed. He took a deep breath.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”

“Good,” Oscar said. “Now let’s go see what we can see.”

S
HE HADN’T
gotten breakfast that morning. The only way she could even tell it was morning was by the sounds outside. That worried her. If they’d stopped feeding her, then whatever reason they had for keeping her alive might have gone away. She wished she knew what was going on. She wished she knew what time it was. And she really had to pee again.

When she heard the locks working again, Angela got up off the bed and stood behind the chair, grabbing it with both hands. If someone came through that door with a gun, she was going to pick it up and try to club him with it. The chair might be flimsy, it might not be much of a weapon, but she wasn’t going without a fight.

It was Esmeralda, and she wasn’t carrying a gun. She was dressed in black jeans and a white blouse with ruffles on the front. She wore dark glasses. Angela couldn’t see the usual guard behind her. She stood inside the opened door, not speaking.

“Hi,” Angela said. “I was wondering if you’d be back.” It was then she noticed the marks on Esmeralda’s wrists, ugly blue bruises that looked fresh.

Esmeralda saw her looking and her jaw tightened. She took off the dark glasses to show a blackened eye. “So, I guess you were right.”

“It doesn’t make me happy,” Angela said. “And no, I’m not going to say I told you so.”

The girl shook her head, her face a mask of fury. She wiped her glistening eyes with the back of her hand. “You still want to get out of here?”

“Yeah,” Angela said. “What about the guard?”

The girl gave her a savage smile. “Come see.”

The guard was stretched out full length in the hallway, snoring, with and an empty tray next to him. Next to the tray was an equally empty bottle of beer lying on its side.

“I put pills in his food…and in his beer. He’ll sleep for a while. I had to wait till Miguel and the others were gone.”

“Where did they go?”

Esmeralda shrugged. “Something to do with their big plan. Against the boss.”

“Miguel is making some sort of move against Mandujano?”

Esmeralda nodded. “He works for the fat man. Zavalo.”

“So Mandujano has nothing to do with bringing me here.”

“I don’t know why you were brought here. I hear about some things. Not others. Do you want to leave or not?”

“Oh, yeah,” Angela said. “But first things first.” She gestured at the guard. “You get his guns. I’ll be back.”

When Angela exited the restroom, Esmeralda was standing in the hallway looking impatient. She was holding the guard’s submachine gun in one hand, a 9MM Beretta in the other. “You know how to use either of those?” Angela asked.

“The pistol. A little.”

“Okay,” Angela said. She held out her hand for the machine gun. It was an H & K MP5.

“You know how to use this?” Esmeralda said.

“A little,” she said. She retracted and released the bolt with the charging handle. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“You know where the American consulate is?”

“I think so.”

“Then there,” Angela said.

“But I’m not American,” Esmeralda protested.

“There may be some people there ready to overlook that,” Angela said. “If you’re willing to talk to them.”

“Talk…you mean inform?” The girl shook her head. “No. I won’t do that.”

“Esmeralda,” Angela said, “you may not have a choice. You won’t be able to come back here. You know that.”

Esmeralda’s eyes grew wide. “I…I…”

“When you opened that door for me,” Angela said, “you crossed a line. Miguel finds out you did that, he’ll hurt you. Badly. Maybe kill you. He’ll almost certainly kill me. And he probably won’t do it quickly.”

The girl was beginning to panic. “She didn’t really think this through,” Angela thought. It came to her that, despite her outer hardness, she was a terribly young girl. “Come on, honey,” she said. “We can talk about this in the car. You do have a car, don’t you?”

Esmeralda nodded. “Outside. In the alley.”

“Okay.” Angela heard the sound of footsteps on stairs, the clamor of upraised male voices.

“
Mierda
,” Esmeralda said. “They’re back early.”

K
ELLER DROVE,
with Oscar in the passenger seat studying the stolen GPS, which he held on his lap. In his other hand was the map they had printed out on a computer in the Hearken Library. Both of them had their pistols, Keller’s stuck down into the gap between his seat and Oscar’s, and Oscar’s between his seat and the door. The long guns were in the backseat, under a rough blanket they’d taken from the trunk. Occasionally, Oscar would look up from the GPS as they approached one of the infrequent crossroads. At each one, he’d quietly call out a direction: “Left. Straight ahead. Right.” The Glock Keller had taken from the warehouse in Mexico was shoved down alongside Oscar’s between his seat and the passenger door.

Outside of town, the terrain turned to pine forest that crowded in on the sides of the narrow road. From time to time, the land on either side of the road fell away and they drove along a raised roadway with blackwater swamp on either side, the water stained to the color of strong tea by decaying vegetation. The trees seemed closer, arching over the road as if they contemplated making their final move and blocking them from in front and behind. Then, as suddenly as they’d entered, they’d burst out into sunlight, the swamp giving way in its turn to open fields thick with crops—soybeans, cotton, tobacco, and corn. They saw farmhouses set back from the road, surrounded by trees, some bright and shiny and new, some looking as if they were frozen in the midst of their collapse.

“We’re getting closer,” Oscar said. “This is the beginning of the church’s lands.”

“I can tell,” Keller said. Where the other fields had been open, here a chain-link fence ran between the road and the open land. The fence was high, at least twice the height of a man, and topped with a double strand of barbed wire. Every few feet, a sign was wired to the chain link, stating POSTED. NO TRESPASSING in white letters on a black background. Other signs, bright yellow in color, warned DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE.