El Gavilan
Authors: Craig McDonald
EL GAVILAN
Craig McDonald
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
THIS NOVEL IS FOR ALISON JANSSEN.
“NEVER ATTACH MORE FEELING TO A THING THAN GOD DOES.”
—ORIGIN UNKNOWN
Contents
THEN
Her grandmother was the first to die of thirst crossing the Sonoran Desert.
Holding her hand as the old woman passed, little Thalia looked across the heat-shimmering sand and wondered again why they had left home.
Thalia’s family went back seven generations in Veracruz.
Veracruz was lushly tropical and sodden with rain. There the Gómez family lived close by the Gulf Coast beaches—palm trees and fruit to pick and eat; the Atlantic Ocean, full of fish. At least, her mother said, they could never starve there.
Though they were getting along, they had no prospects for more.
After much arguing, the Gómez family set out for the distant border.
The farther north they trekked, the uglier and emptier Mexico became for Thalia.
Her grandfather had been a Zapatista when he was only twelve. Consequently, Alfredo Gómez fancied himself more the
vaquero
than he had right to claim. Still, Alfredo had a plan. They invested a portion of their meager funds in two old horses and a mule. Alfredo loaded the mounts with jugs of water.
The unsuccessful crossers set out with too little water. That’s what everyone always said. Alfredo meant to see his family well supplied for their border crossing. Thalia’s grandfather set off a day’s ride ahead of his family with the notion of depositing the water jugs at strategic points to see his family safely across the desert.
The money might have been better spent on professional
guías.
Thalia’s father, Francisco, did meet with a couple of guides, what would now be called Coyotes feigning interest in their services, but really only fishing for free tips.
Papa learned from the
guías
that they fed their clients, or “chickens,” cocaine to make them walk longer distances … and to make them walk faster.
After buying the horses, Alfredo and son Francisco bought some white powder.
All
of them, Thalia, her mother and father and four siblings, her aunt and uncle and two cousins and her grandparents, took the cocaine and set off on foot a day behind her grandfather, aiming for the distant Arizona border.
For the first two days, Thalia brought up the rear, walking backward, waving a tree branch across their dusty path to erase signs of their passage, anything that might tip the Border Patrol. The cocaine made the little girl approach her task with furious intensity.
Long after, Thalia would wonder if the cocaine hadn’t been their undoing, clouding her father’s and grandfather’s minds from seeing the more sensible plan of her grandfather walking alongside them, keeping the mounts loaded down with water close at hand.
And she would later wonder if the drug-induced exhilaration had spurred her grandfather on to riding greater and greater distances out there alone and euphoric in the desert, the critical water jugs being dropped farther and farther apart by the old, wired Zapatista.
And if Alfredo was less the
vaquero
than he fancied himself, her father Francisco was even less the guide.
A two-day crossing stretched into four.
They found less than a third of the water jugs left behind by Grandfather.
Sister turned against brother for want of water. Husband and brother-in-law were crazed by the blow and the thirst and out of their heads from the heat.
The two men came to a knife fight over a jug of water.
Their horrified, dizzy and drugged children looked on as they slashed at one another.
Thalia, only seven, sat with her grandmother as the old woman died from dehydration and heat exhaustion, her lips and tongue black. Her eyes were shrunken back into her head.
Abuela
’s voice was a dry whisper. Sonya Gómez told her granddaughter, “You’ll see it for me, Thalia.
El Norte
, it will be paradise. Your life there will be like a dream, darling.”
They abandoned her
abuela
on the desert floor, already a mummy. They left Grandmother Sonya in the desert with Thalia’s gutted uncle, then, days deeper into their death march, they left behind a cousin, a younger brother and Thalia’s baby sister. The ground was too dry and hard to bury any of them.
When they reached the other side, it took two days to find Grandfather.
Alfredo at once set off with his horses and mule, headed back across the border to find and recover his wife’s and grandchildren’s bodies.
They never saw Grandfather again.
Chasing work and opportunity, the survivors of the Gómez clan kept drifting north across the decades. They became legalized citizens, picking fruit for stingy pay and cleaning hotel toilets and the houses of rich gringos.
Eventually they reached Ohio.
ONE
Tell Lyon let himself in with the keys given him by the mayor of New Austin and flipped on the lights. Tell’s first notion was that the place was oppressively tiny. A tight vestibule fronted a bulletproof-glass, teller-style window behind which the receptionist/dispatcher sat.
Between one
A.M.
and seven in the morning, all local 911 calls defaulted by relay to the Horton County Sheriff’s Office.
Tell’s first personal priority was to reexamine existing work schedules to see if with some overlapping shift rotations—combined with two additional full-time officers he planned to petition the administration and town council for—he could bring his force up to operational autonomy.
He checked his watch against the clock on the wall. It was early, five thirty
A.M.
—he wanted to be there when his crew arrived.
His last stint as a Border Patrol night-side sector chief had concluded one week earlier along the California borderlands. Tell was still most comfortable staying up nights—his lonely bed something to be avoided.
The new New Austin chief of police keyed himself through the second security door to the squad room. He had no office of his own, just a corner desk hidden behind two, seventy-two-inch upholstered fiberboard dividers.
Tell tossed his keys on his desk. His predecessor had left a Snap-On Tools calendar thumbtacked to the front fiberboard divider. An oiled, pneumatic blonde in a hardhat and string bikini straddled an enormous chrome lug wrench. Tell took the calendar down and tossed it in the trash can.
* * *
He was going through the work logs and week’s duty reports when the first of his crew came through the door. She was petite. Her fine, mouse-brown hair was scraped back in a limp ponytail. Tell thought,
Ditzy, but
driven
. And she was the first in. She smiled uncertainly and said, “I’m Julie … Julie Dexter.”
Tell put out a hand. “Tell Lyon. Glad to meet you, Julie.”
She smiled. “Cool, but unusual. ‘Tell,’ I mean.”
“Western novel character,” Tell said. “Daddy was a huge Louis L’Amour fan. Tell Sackett was his favorite character.”
Julie nodded like she understood. She said, “I was named after that cruise director on
The Love Boat
. The one who got caught up with cocaine. The actress, I mean, not the character.”
“I remember.” Tell said, “So, predictions: Four full-time officers here, not counting you and me. Bet you a Starbucks. Who’ll be first in?”
Julie smiled uncertainly. “I’m always first in. Until today, anyway.”
Tell said, “I’d have guessed that. But our uniforms—who’ll be first to arrive?”
“Billy Davis,” she said with a shrug and a head tilt. “And he’ll bring doughnuts. Krispy Kremes …” Julie faltered.
Tell smiled. “Go on. We’re off the record. And you’re really helping me find my feet and get my bearings. I won’t forget that.”
She nodded, pressed a hand to her flat belly. “Billy has weight issues. Chief Sloan,
former
Police Chief Sloan, he had given Billy an ultimatum about his diet.”
Tell thought about that. He asked, “How tall is Billy would you say?”
“Five-ten. Maybe five-ten-and-a-half on a good day.”
“How much would you guess our Billy weighs?”
Julie hesitated again. Tell looked at her, smiling, eyebrows raised. “Two-twenty,” she said.
Tell had expected worse. He said, “Julie, when was the last time one of ours had to pursue a perp on foot?”
She thought about that, screwing up her face. “Frankly?”
“Always frankly,” Tell said. “That’s our pact, you and me—the truth always.”
“The answer is never.”
Tell smiled. “Fine. I’m more interested in brains than wasp waists for my officers. And I’m not one to issue ultimatums. Any prodding I might or might not give Billy about dieting goes to concerns for his health. I’m not going to threaten his job with it.” He paused. “Billy, he has good taste in doughnuts, does he?”
“Few too many things with chopped nuts, but mostly, yeah.” Julie smiled uncertainly. He sensed she wanted to say more.
Tell said, “You can tell Billy all that I told you.”
She was still lingering, on the edge of something. She was toying with her nails. They were blue with yellow smiley faces.
“Something else on your mind, Julie?”
“My work schedule, sir.”
“Tell. My name is Tell.”
Julie said, “
Chief Lyon
.” She smiled. “The old chief insisted I be in at seven
A.M.
”
“Got a conflict?”
“By minutes,” she said. “My daughter has to be at school by seven forty-five, but can’t go inside before seven thirty. My mother’s just had cataract surgery and her driving … ?”