Bridge of Shadows Page 2

  “Get in!” Larry ordered.

  “What’s in there?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “The hell I don’t!”

  Larry shook his head. “Some dead guys, okay? Luis and some other guys. Jesus, get in, will you—”

  He broke off and looked sharply past Pete at the Town Car.

  “You hear something?” he asked. Pete shook his head. Larry took a step closer to the other car, listened, took another.

  This time Pete did hear it—a muffled thump, like something hitting metal.

  “Shit!” Larry jumped back. “Oh, man, that’s it. Come on, Pete, we’ve got to go. Now.”

  “Wait—it sounds like—it’s coming from the trunk.” Pete bent over the trunk and listened, listened hard. “Yeah, somebody’s in the trunk. Open the car and pop the latch.”

  “No way. You put your goddamn prints all over a murder scene, not me.”

  Pete shot him an exasperated look and opened the door with a fold of his shirt over his hand, popped the trunk release the same way. The inside of the car was clean and very hot. It smelled, faintly, of vomit. There were no keys.

  “Nothing,” Larry reported from the back. Pete walked around to stand beside him, both of them staring like idiots at the empty carpet, the spare tire. The smell of vomit was stronger.

  They both jumped at the sound of another thump. This one rattled the spare.

  “Underneath,” Pete said, and dragged the carpet out of the way. The metal plate below was bolted at the corners. “Hell. Got any tools?”

  “No, I don’t have any tools. What do I look like, a mechanic? Oh, man, I can’t believe this is happening. Where’s my shit? Somebody ripped Luis off and they took my shit. What the hell am I going to do? I got obligations, you know.”

  Pete found a crowbar wedged in one corner of the trunk, jammed the forked end under the plate, and heaved up. Metal bowed and popped.

  “You’re fucking crazy.” Larry backed up a step or two, watching as Pete snapped the first bolt off and started on the second. “You don’t know who the hell’s in there. Could be a cop for all you know.”

  “Yeah, that would make sense. Drug dealers always stick cops in smuggling compartments.”

  Larry made the obvious connection—smuggling compartment, missing drugs. He grabbed his own crowbar out of the Mercedes and worked on the other side of the plate, and within five minutes all four bolts were sheared off.

  The plate was still hot to the touch, like coins left in the sun. Pete hissed in pain and held it up with the palm of his hand, squinting under it as Larry helpfully turned on the flashlight.

  “Jesus God,” Larry said, and backed off.

  A woman lay at a torturous angle in the tiny compartment. Her swollen, blistered face was smeared with dried vomit, her lips cracked and bloody, and in her arms she held a little boy with skin the color of delicate ivory, his open eyes gone opaque and dry.

  Her lips parted, the cracks splitting open to stitch threads of blood down her chin.

  “Ayude mi hijo,” she croaked. “Ayude Jaime.”

  Larry backed off, all the way back to the Mercedes, breath rasping hard in his throat. Pete stood frozen, looking down at her, and after a long few seconds he reached down and took the boy out. The small body felt so heavy, limp as a sack of sand. There was no muscle in him at all.

  The reality of it hit Pete in a hot wave, like pepper in his throat and eyes. His lungs felt hot and compressed, and he had to put the kid down, quick, before he dropped him.

  No matter how limp he was, he didn’t look like a sleeping kid ought to look. Pete worked at the buttons on his own shirt, fingers clumsy, got it off and draped it over the little boy’s pale, sad, somehow knowing face.

  “Help me,” he said. He wasn’t sure who he was saying it to for a second; a breeze, startlingly cool, blew up goose bumps on his bare back. Oh, yeah, Larry—Larry was standing there, staring at him like a stranger. “Come on, Larry, help me get her out.”

  “Out?” Larry repeated. “And put her where exactly?”

  He was too tired for this shit. Pete got up, moving maybe too fast, and Larry made a nervous move for his car. Pete held out his empty hands, palms up.

  “In the backseat. Come on, Larry, don’t bullshit me. We’ve got to do this. She’ll die out here. The kid’s already—” For some reason he didn’t want to say it. Larry shook his head and avoided looking down at the blue and white shirt fluttering in the evening breeze.

  In order to avoid that, he ended up staring in the direction of the highway. Pete saw the red and blue lights flashing in the distance at the same time Larry did.

  “Oh, shit!” Larry yelped. “See? See what I told you? No fucking way, Peter. If I go down, it’s for the third time. Why’re we even talking about this? You saw her, no way she’s going to last until morning. I’m not getting my ass busted for a goddamn dead wetback!”

  “Shut up and help me, Larry!” Pete screamed, and it was the wrong thing to do because now Larry had the gun out, a flash of black in his hand, and he had one hand on the driver’s-side door of the Mercedes. “Larry, you can’t do this, man. You can’t leave her here. You’re better than that.”

  “The cops are coming. They’ll pick her up. Get in the goddamn car, Peter, or I swear I’ll leave you here. We got history, man, but I’ll leave your ass.”

  For a second it was very tempting. Get in the car, relieved of responsibility because of Larry and his gun. I had no choice.

  “I can’t,” he said. Simple truth.

  “I’m not saying it again.” Larry got in the car. He started the engine, closed the door, rolled down the window. “Don’t get yourself busted over her, buddy. She’s dead by morning no matter what you do. Okay? Okay. I’m leaving. Bye-bye.”

  He put the car in reverse with a smooth click of gears, the backup lights shooting white flares over the sand. He turned on the radio very loud, the heavy beat of AC/DC thudding like hooves. Stalling. Waiting for Pete to change his mind.

  Pete walked to the passenger-side door, opened it, reached in the back, and took out the quart of bottled water Larry kept for roadside emergencies, like mixing with his scotch. Larry grabbed his arm.

  “Pete,” he said, and let go of him when their eyes locked. “This is a bad fucking scene, man. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Sure, I do,” Pete said, and shut the door.

  The boom of the stereo continued to stomp long after the Mercedes was out of sight. On the highway, the police car zoomed by without stopping, pursuing somebody else, maybe even Larry. Pete might have stood stupefied for hours, staring into the gradual dark, except he heard the woman whisper, “Señor?”

  Oh, Christ He fumbled for the water, reached into the trunk, and held it to her mouth as he supported her shoulders. Her skin was sticky with exploded blisters and body fluids. She stank like—he swallowed hard. She wouldn’t last out here; she was already shaking like an epileptic. He had to get her to El Paso, to a hospital, to the cops, something. The Lincoln had two flat tires, but it was better than nothing. Keys—

  No keys in the ignition. He scrabbled in the lush upholstery, the suffocatingly hot carpet. No keys anywhere. He’d skipped hot wiring in shop class, had no idea how to begin, and from the back he could hear the woman making faint gasping noises. There wasn’t time to experiment; he had to find the keys.

  Larry had talked about dead bodies in the shack. Pete took a deep breath and headed for the shadow-streaked wood, the sunset a bloody eye watching him.

  The woman grasped weakly at him as he passed the trunk.

  “Señor?” she croaked. He gently took her hand. “Mi hijo?”

  He knew that much Spanish, at least. No way to break it to her gently. “He didn’t make it, Señora. I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes blinked slowly. He felt her muscles tremble violently. No tears. She probably didn’t have enough moisture left for tears.

  “I’m going to get the keys,” he said, a
nd tried to let go of her hand. She held on with surprising strength.

  She said something, with great effort. He didn’t understand it. “Take it easy. Easy. I’m not going to leave you.”

  She said, her voice just a thread, “Esmeralda.” He leaned forward and gently stroked her hair back from her ravaged face.

  “My name’s Pete,” he said. “Peter Ross. You hang on, Esme. I’ll be back.”

  He searched five bodies in the dark, brushing away mounds of glistening ants to get at bloody jackets and pants. At the bottom of the pile, a pair of car keys with a silver cross for a key chain. He stood there in the dark, with the stinking, crawling bodies, and for the first time he was afraid.

  Up to him. All up to him now. Live or die, Pete. Time to do something right.

  He jolted the Lincoln along fast enough to spin rubber off the flat tires, while Esmeralda lay on the backseat with her dead son in her arms. A highway patrolman stopped him thirty minutes down the road. The CareFlight helicopter arrived fifteen minutes after that, and Pete became curiously redundant, just another onlooker as paramedics intubated and IV’ed and medicated. When he tried to go to her, the cop taking her statement restrained him and shook his head.

  “I’m responsible for her,” Pete said. The cop looked attentive. “I’m paying for her treatment.”

  “Yeah?” The patrolman sucked on the side of his cheek, regarding him with cool blue eyes. “Why?”

  The question stunned him. He said, “What?”

  “You know her?”

  “I’ve never seen her before.”

  The cop gave him a pitying look. “Not from around here, are you? Buddy, if you let one of them start riding your gravy train, they’ll suck you dry—”

  He pushed free and climbed into the helicopter with her, held her hand as they soared into the empty sky, and it seemed to him that somehow he was leaving everything behind him, even his name. His head felt empty and very, very quiet.

  She opened her eyes as the chopper landed. She didn’t try to speak, and he couldn’t have heard her over the roar of the engine even if she’d tried, but the message in her eyes was clear. I’m afraid. Don’t leave me.

  He didn’t. He stayed through two weeks of hospital rehabilitation, and through Jaime’s funeral, accompanying Esmeralda through the long Catholic mass under the eyes of two burly police officers. He stayed for the police questioning. He left out any mention of Larry or the incomplete drug deal.

  After that he was free to go. His wife wouldn’t return his phone calls.

  Two days after Jaime’s funeral, Esmeralda was deported back to Mexico. There was nothing in the world he could do to stop it, not even marry her. He was still married to Ana.

  A month later, Peter Alan Ross enrolled as an agent of the United States Border Patrol.

  Chapter 2

  Four Years Later—October 26, 1996

  Dr. Ana Maria Ross Gutierrez

  I hate this.

  Dr. Ana Gutierrez leaned her forehead on clasped hands, closed her eyes, and tried to reach for calm. Detachment. It was a part of her job, but she had never grown used to it, not during residency, not during private practice.

  The death of a child was never easy for her.

  The girl’s name had been Lupe Navarro, and she had been a bright seven-year-old bom into a family of eight other children, an overworked father, an exhausted mother. No one had paid much attention to Lupe’s fever until it had lasted for two days. Until she’d begun convulsing.

  They’d brought the girl here to La Clínica Libre, the Free Clinic, instead of sending her to the hospital—because they had no money, they were illegals, and they were afraid of American doctors and police. Ana had done the best she could. One look had told her the girl was breathing her last; she’d grabbed the child, thrown her into her nurse Rafael’s arms, told him to drive, damn it, to the closest emergency room. It was faster than calling for an ambulance in this part of town, at this hour of the night.

  He had done his best, Rafael.

  She had done her best. And it hadn’t mattered a damn.

  Lupe Navarro had died a terrible, agonizing death.

  In the privacy of her office, unseen by anyone except the silently recording surveillance camera, Ana Gutierrez cried. Not a lot of tears, just enough to take the edge from the dull knife of grief in her stomach. When she’d been a resident in Parkland Hospital in Dallas, her mentor Dr. Johnston had always said, Don’t be afraid to cry, it lets out the steam. He’d also told her, with grim sincerity, Just don’t do it where anybody can see you. A weak doctor is a useless doctor.

  Ana never allowed herself weakness, except in private.

  The tears ended, leaving no sign of their departure except a soggy tissue and some faint smudges of mascara under her eyes that would be taken for simple exhaustion. She blew her nose, finished writing the cold, clinical details of Lupe Navarro’s death in the clinic chart, and disposed of the tissue in the waste bin beneath her desk. No more weakness for the rest of the night. No more anything, she hoped; it was late, and she was utterly drained.

  Wishful thinking. It was Saturday night—early Sunday morning, but in the barrio it was Saturday night until morning mass—and she would be seeing the usual parade of knife wounds, gunshot wounds, beatings, and rapes. Not all of them came here, of course—only those illegals who could still talk when they were found. And many of them she sent on to the hospitals, where they would take their chances with police and la migra, who knew all about Saturday nights. Immigration officers hung around like crows picking at road kills.

  She killed the anger when it tried to rise in her. Anger was like tears. She couldn’t afford it.

  Out the window—reinforced with thick wrought iron, for her protection—she had a view of a street only weakly lit by a single streetlight, the buildings gray and brooding, the street decorated with swirling trash, beyond it the sluggish gray Rio Grande river. It looked harsh in full El Paso daylight; it looked ghostly and dead at night. Peaceful. What a lie, she thought. If she listened hard enough, she’d hear the arguments, the screams, the shots. El Paso passions ran like blood, just under the city’s skin.

  Her battered chair squeaked as she rolled it up to the desk—a Salvation Army reject, gunmetal gray and military green. Her in-box held a thick wad of mail. She made two piles: an envelope from Health and Human Services went in the handle-it-later pile; mail from MEChA, the Chicano student organization that sometimes volunteered in the clinic, joined it. She paused over a letter from her lawyer, tapped it against a short fingernail. Probably another bill. She hesitated, then pitched it in the growing do-it-tomorrow pile.

  The next letter had no return address. She frowned at the block printing. It couldn’t be from an Anglo, not addressed to Dr. Ana Maria Estrella Ross Gutierrez. The formality of it was wholeheartedly Hispanic. The postmark was from Juárez, Mexico. She reached out for the letter opener and ripped open the envelope—a better grade of paper than she’d have expected.

  Single sheet of paper. She unfolded it and felt her cheeks flush with shame at being tricked. Peter. After the embarrassment came the anger she’d thought she’d shut away; she could imagine her ex-husband painstakingly lettering the envelope, knowing what she’d think. Another way of showing his superiority—See? I can make you read my letters even if you don’t want to.

  And she did read it Ana, it said. At least he’d stopped calling her Dear. Please give me a chance. It’s important that we talk—important to both of us. If you won’t accept my call, please call me on the pager and I’ll find a phone.

  I really need to talk to you. No fooling.

  She crumpled it up and threw it at the trash can. It bounced out again, just like Peter, who wouldn’t stay in the trash where their marriage had ended up. She didn’t know how many times she’d told him to leave her alone, but he didn’t seem to get the point. Persistent. He’d always been persistent. It was the way he’d gotten her to date him in the first place, that and his in
fectiously beautiful smile, the slow, dry humor—

  Stop thinking about his good qualities. Pete had plenty of negatives. One, he was an Anglo, which she’d overlooked for far too long—and even if she did, he never forgot. Two, he’d become the enemy. She could never be friends with a man who was a la migra, the face of the oppressor. He knew that.

  Being kind and considerate didn’t make up for that kind of betrayal.

  After a moment of thought she picked up the letter, smoothed it out, and stuffed it back into the envelope. She sealed the tear at the top with tape, slashed in red across her name and address and wrote, Return to Sender.

  She tossed it in the out basket and wondered why she didn’t feel any better, all things considered.

  He’d be hurt when he got the letter back.

  “I’m glad,” she said aloud. It wasn’t how she felt. “I am.”

  A cough startled her; it echoed like a gunshot through the quiet office. She turned in her chair fast enough to feel a tense muscle twitch in protest; the chair provided the appropriate squeal of protest. Just a boy standing in the open doorway, nothing to be afraid of. He couldn’t be more than fourteen—except there were no such things as children in the barrio, not at his age; he’d seen death, drugs, despair, suffered beatings, delivered some himself. He had the look. She forced a smile to her lips.

  “Dr. Ana?” The boy had deep brown eyes, long, soft lashes. They were startling in a face tense enough for a man twice his age. A thin scar ran down one cheek, ending in a dark blue homemade tattoo of a tear. “Vamanos.”

  The hell I will. She dropped automatically into Spanish. “I don’t leave the clinic.” Ana was too canny and too experienced to let herself be lured away from the relative safety of La Clínica, though she was asked, begged, and ordered many times a day. The police, much as she hated them, checked on her at irregular intervals here. “I can call an ambulance if you need one.”

  The boy jerked his head toward the door. It wasn’t manly for a gang member to take orders from a woman.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him. His soft brown eyes took on a hard plastic shine. Dangerous territory. They didn’t like it when she pried.