A Triple Thriller Fest (6 page)

After talking with several witnesses who were in the parking lot, including the teenagers, the police determined that the younger man had initiated the fight. Nevertheless, the K-Mart regional director felt that the image of a “don’t-mess-with-me” black-belt assistant manager was not in the best interest of good public relations, and Krueger was dismissed with four weeks’ severance pay.

A week later, one of the parking lot witnesses approached Krueger, who was still out of work and disgruntled, and introduced himself as Jackson Shaw. After some preliminary discussion, Shaw said he was the commander of a local militia unit that could use a man with Krueger’s skills and indicated there was a full-time, paid slot on the command staff. Within two weeks, Krueger was offered the position of first sergeant of the Shasta Brigade, and he had never looked back. He quickly came to know that for the core leadership, there was no turning back, and loyalty was non-negotiable.

Reaching Camp Liberty, the ramshackle cluster of old, wooden huts called home by the top echelon of the Shasta Brigade, he parked the pickup behind one of the shacks, then got out and grabbed a hose connected to a spigot attached to the building. As he began to hose out the back of the truck and inside the toolbox, a man in fatigues exited the shack and approached.

“Any trouble?”

Krueger shook his head and kept spraying the truck.

“Nah. Only the skinny one, Kenny. He barfed all over the place. He’s got no stomach for it, Commander. He was scared stupid.”

“They’ll learn, Sergeant Krueger. We, too, were young and afraid once. Keep after ’em.”

“My pleasure. Think the guard will try to replace the kid?”

Commander Jackson Shaw nodded. “They
have
to if they want to learn anything, and we
have
to keep recruiting. It’s a weed-out game that we can’t afford to lose.”

“We won’t lose, Commander, and they won’t get another spy in here—not for long, anyway. But my problem is making soldiers out of the gutter-dwellers who want to join the brigade. We’ll never function as a unit until we get some trained and disciplined NCOs.”

“You’ll get the job done, Sergeant,” Shaw said. “No other problems this morning?”

Krueger could see that his commander already knew the answer, probably from early morning radio reports.

“A sheriff’s deputy showed up just as we were leaving. I had no choice.”

Shaw nodded. “That will make them more intense in their pursuit. Killing a judge or even a military officer is one thing. Killing a cop is … well, just be alert.”

“They’ll know we mean business, Commander.”

“We’ve crossed the Rubicon already, and we’re playing for keeps now. We win this one, or we die. I want you to run down to Sacramento again in a few days and find a likely bank. We need to keep up the charade.”

“And these young pukes?”

“They’ve crossed, too, whether they know it or not. Take them with you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 4

South of Puerto Penasco, Mexico

Sitting in an old Ford pickup truck with the doors open, two young Mexican men sat smoking, waiting impatiently for the third member of their group to say goodbye to his girlfriend. Oblivious to the political machinations north of the border, or the extent to which opposition to illegal immigration had escalated in California, Carlos Domingo and his teenage girlfriend had decided to make a run for the wealth they knew in their hearts lay just beyond the border.

Carlos found it difficult to maintain his machismo in the presence of the two waiting men, while at the same time trying to console Carmen. She was almost nineteen, but looked more like a schoolchild of fifteen, undernourished, with gaunt, hollow cheeks—the kind models pay big money to have a dentist create. She was fighting in vain to keep the tears from her pretty eyes.

“It’s dangerous, Carlos, and you don’t know the others,” she said, glancing at the pickup.

Carlos, himself barely twenty, tried to make light of her concern, while harboring a great fear at the prospect of crossing the border with those two, both of whom seemed in the same condition as he, but whose honesty was unknown. Carlos had rejected going by the “mule train”—a paid entry system whereby local guides led groups of people across the border through their network of bribed border guards and “safe” illegal entry points. He had chosen instead to cross over into the United States with the nightly influx of “wetbacks,” as those Mexicans who swam—or walked—across the Rio Grande had been called for over a century.

“The man from the MexiCal has a job for me. You know that. For the harvest in Idaho.”

“How far is this Idaho?” she asked plaintively, tears running down her cheeks.

“Far. But I will save all my money, I promise. I will send for you soon. And I will find a priest to marry us.”

“Carlos, I’m afraid,” she whimpered.

“I know, little one, I know.” He took her in his arms and held her close, looking hesitantly over her shoulder at the waiting men, concerned they would see his weakness and simply drive away. “Our son will be born north of the border, Carmen, and he will be our freedom. He will be the key to our green card.”

In the sixth month of her pregnancy, her belly swollen with child, the emaciated girl resembled a starving woman in famine-plagued Africa. She clung to Carlos, desperate and sobbing out of fear and abandonment. Holding her by her thin shoulders, Carlos extracted himself from her fierce embrace.

“I must go, little one. I will send for you soon, I promise,” he said, struggling to withhold his own tears.

He stooped to pick up a ragged gym bag and moved quickly toward the battered truck, walking backward and continuing to hold out his hand to the girl.

“
Vaya con Dios,
Carlos,” she said.

“Before you know it, little one, I will send for you.”

Tossing his bag into the back of the truck, he vaulted over the tailgate into the bed. As he did so, the driver set the tires to spinning in the gravel, steering the truck up an embankment onto the road and the four-hour drive to the border.

As the truck carried him away, Carlos looked back at his pregnant girlfriend and felt his heart would break. He thought of the child that grew within the child. He would send for her—he
must
send for her.

* * *

On Thursday, three days after McFarland’s murder, Dan pulled his Blazer onto the freeway for the short drive from Davis to Woodland. He turned his thoughts from Josiah Rumsey’s role in the Spanish-American War to the staff meeting he would conduct that morning. He had come to enjoy the variety of mental roles he was required to play. It kept his mind sharp, and, if a tabloid headline he had recently scanned while waiting in line at the grocery store checkout was true, using his mind in that way would preclude the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Arriving at the county administrative office building on Court Street in Woodland, Dan greeted his deputy administrator, Jim Thompson, who was already at his desk working on his second cup of coffee. Thompson, who was originally from Wyoming, always wore cowboy boots, a Stetson, and western-cut suits, often with an Indian string art tie. Well-liked, with a good-ol’-boy air about him, he was often the object of office ribbing. He was the personification of the cliché that regardless of formal education, you can take a boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. Working for Yolo County provided for Thompson the best of both worlds.

“So, what did Josiah Rumsey do today?” Thompson asked as Rawlings poked his head in to say hello.

“He thinks if he can get up San Juan Hill before Teddy, maybe
he’ll
become president,” Rawlings replied.

“Yeah, right,” Thompson said sarcastically to Dan’s back as he continued across the foyer toward his office.

This morning banter about his novel had become a part of their repartee ever since Dan had taken Thompson into his confidence about his writing endeavor. Dan had often wished he hadn’t revealed that he was writing a novel, but sometimes Thompson came up with a good suggestion that he was able to incorporate into the developing plot. Their shared secretary, Patricia Collins, found their exchanges amusing.

“Pat, what’s on the schedule today?” Dan asked as she followed him into his office, notepad in hand.

“Staff meeting at nine, executive director from the Yolo Rice Co-op at ten-thirty, and—this you’ll love—Senator Turner is on the stump at Rotary at noon.” She grinned broadly.

“California
uber alles,
eh?” he replied.

“And goodbye, America,” Pat laughed. “Think this was how George Washington became the Father of Our Country—by schmoozing the Rotary boys?”

“Beats chopping down our cherry—or maybe in the case of Yolo County, I should say almond—trees,” Dan quipped. “That’s all?”

“Not quite. Sheriff Sanchez called and asked if he could meet with you this morning. I told him you had a staff meeting, but he said it was urgent. I told him I’d pencil him in before your first appointment, but I’d have to call back to confirm.”

“That’s good, Pat.” Dan nodded. “Tell him to come on over as soon as he can get here, please.” Dan leaned forward and pushed the intercom button on his desk. “Jim, would you step in for a minute?”

Pat continued. “You’ve also got the planning commission this afternoon—the rezoning of the Beasley agricultural section, remember? That’s at three.”

“Jim’s gonna be a busy man.” Dan stood behind his desk and stretched, then removed his coat and hung it on the coat rack in the corner just as Jim arrived.

“Jim, Sheriff Sanchez needs to see me this morning, so would you please handle staff meeting? And this afternoon I’ve got a funeral to attend, so I’ll need you to sit in on the planning commission meeting at three. Pat has the particulars.”

Jim nodded. “That’s fine. Is it that guard officer?”

“Yes,” Dan replied. “McFarland. Most of the Cal Guard will turn out.”

“A real shame,” Jim said, shaking his head.

Dan paused for a moment, thinking once again about his wife’s death and his reluctance to attend another funeral—
any
funeral. “Okay,” Dan said, clapping his hands together to break the moment. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Dan flipped through his daily planner for several minutes after Pat left, pausing to reflect on the entry for Lieutenant McFarland’s funeral in the afternoon. A disturbing vision of the young officer’s distorted face flitted across his memory. The quiet rap on his doorjamb broke his reverie, and he looked up to see Tony Sanchez standing in the doorway.

“C’mon in, Tony. Cup of coffee or a glass of juice?”

“Just had one, thanks. Mind if I … ?” he said, making a gesture to close the door.

“By all means,” Dan nodded, coming out from behind his desk to sit on the sofa on the windowless side of his office.

“I just wanted to keep this information between the two of us.”

“Of course. Got something on McFarland’s murder?”

“Several things have turned up, actually. First, the tire tracks. The treads fit the profile of original equipment on Ford trucks.”

Dan laughed. “Well, Tony, that narrows it down to, what—a half-million vehicles?”

Tony grinned. “Something like that, but don’t forget, police work is long, tedious, and usually mundane, but each data point narrows the possible permutations.”

“I know, Tony. I’m sorry. Please, what else?”

“Well, the lab has analyzed the vomit found on the scene.”

“The what?”

“One of the people at the scene puked his … or
her
… guts out.”

“I’d be terrified if I were facing a lynching, wouldn’t you?”

Sheriff Sanchez nodded. “I’m sure I would’ve, but it’s not McFarland’s.”

“And that means?”

“It means that someone else at the scene wasn’t used to seeing such violence. He lost his ham and egg sandwich when he vomited in the dirt.”

Dan nodded. “That makes sense. So, we have a half-million trucks, and one terrified person.”

“This will go a lot smoother if you’ll just listen for a minute.”

Dan smiled. “Sorry. What else?”

“The autopsy showed that McFarland had been brutally assaulted—tortured, actually—prior to his hanging. Every finger was broken, and he had construction-type staples in his knees and elbows.”

Dan winced. “Good grief, his death might well have been a relief.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Sanchez replied. “Deputy Collins, on the other hand, died instantly. He took a military-style .45 caliber slug through the head at extremely close range, judging from the powder burns on his forehead. Fortunately, we recovered the bullet where it had impacted the bridge after exiting Collin’s head, and it appears that Collins got two shots off before he was killed.”

“Was there any other blood at the scene? Perhaps from someone Collins shot?”

“No.” Sanchez pulled a plastic sandwich wrap from his carrying case and held it up for Dan to see. “Do you recognize this?”

Dan looked closely at what appeared to be a slender piece of metal, about two inches long.

“It’s a … a sliver of something?”

“Look closer, but don’t take it out,” he warned.

Dan took the plastic wrapper and held it up to the light, his eyes focusing on the object. Suddenly his eyes grew larger.

“You recognize it, don’t you?”

Dan looked at Tony, then back again at the object. “There aren’t as many of these as there are Ford pickups, but it’s still circumstantial.”

“True, but it narrows it down, doesn’t it? In fact, two of my deputies regularly play pool with Kenny, and he constantly has this—or a similar—silver toothpick hanging from his lips. He drops it in his shirt pocket when he really concentrates, but it’s as much a part of your brother-in-law’s clothing as that sweat-stained ‘A’s’ baseball cap he always wears backwards.”

“Lab tests?” Dan asked.

Tony shook his head. “Can’t match it to the vomit. Not enough saliva remaining on it. Technicians said the ants and insects probably had a go at it. I’m afraid we didn’t spot it until the following day when we did a thorough ground-eye search.”