Iron River (5 page)

Hood nodded and looked down at Buenavista.

“I got an anonymous call two mornings ago,” said Reyes. “It was the same day you got here. It was a woman, and she told me there was an injured man in the desert outside of town. She told me to drive east on 98 until I saw a pickup off to the side. I did that. Big skid marks at the truck. A rear flat and a jack ready to use. I followed two sets of tracks to a bloody patch in the sand about fifty feet from the highway. Then those two sets doubled back, then I followed a third set into the desert. He’d walked half a mile or so. I found him dug in underneath a bush, just about dead. Half an hour later, the med center ambulance got there and they carried him out on a stretcher.”

“Did she hit him while he was getting the jack ready?”

“That’s a reasonable explanation, but she didn’t say anything about it. I called for a tow and did a DMV check on the truck. Registered owner is Mike Finnegan of Los Angeles. Later in the impound yard, I went through the truck. He had a big tool chest in the bed and ninety thousand cash dollars inside it. Wasn’t even locked. So I went to the hospital. He was in surgery to set two broken legs and a broken arm. His jaw and both cheeks were broken also. And four ribs. Serious internal injuries. The ER doctor told me the X-rays showed two skull fractures. The doctor said there would certainly be damage to the brain—the question was just how much. I examined the guy’s wallet. Valid CDL, same address as DMV had. No credit or debit cards, no phone or insurance cards. No pictures of the wife and kids. He had a chain video store membership card, a key, and a punch card for a car wash up in Los Angeles. He had four hundred and sixty-four dollars. And a folded piece of plain white paper with your name and your new Buenavista P.O. box number on it.”

“Mike Finnegan?”

“So you know him.”

“No. I don’t.”

Reyes looked frankly at Hood in the morning’s new light. “I went by the hospital about half an hour ago. He’s still in the ICU but he’s conscious and talking. He said: Tell Charlie Hood to come by and say hello.”

Hood stood over bed 11 in the ICU. Finnegan’s legs were fully engulfed in thick plaster casts, and one arm bore a cast from shoulder to hand. His entire head was wrapped in gauze with small openings for his eyes, nose, and mouth and was pinned upright for stability by skull clamps affixed to stainless steel rods that rested on a rigid collar.

“What are
you
looking at?” asked the man. His voice was soft and strained and it sounded as if it came from a mouth that could barely open. Hood thought he heard a humorous edge to it but knew he must be mistaken.

“I don’t know you,” said Hood.

“Maybe, under all this, I’m your long. Lost. Brother.”

“My brothers aren’t lost. And they don’t have a voice like yours.”

“Well, don’t be disappointed. Because I don’t know you. Either.”

“Charlie Hood. You had my name and address in your wallet. You told the police chief you wanted me to come and say hello.”

“Oh, Charlie. I don’t know how that piece of paper got there. I’m Mike. Finnegan. I’m sorry I can’t shake your hand.”

Hood looked down on the man. Hood guessed that he was short and slender underneath all the plaster and gauze. All Hood could see of his actual body was a pink spot of mouth, two twinkles far back in the head wrap, and part of his right arm and hand, bruised and bandaged and spiked with an IV drip and a finger cuff for the monitor.

“Who would have thought you could get top-drawer medical care here in this desert?” asked Finnegan. “Of course I’m sure it helps to be a cash customer.”

“What happened?”

“A flat tire, a speeding Mercury, and a heaping helping of bad luck. I wish I could have a cigarette now, but I’ve never smoked one in my life. No telling what zany ideas are getting through the new cracks in my brainpan.”

“The doctors say you’re lucky to be alive.”

“
Really
.”

“Another couple of hours out there would have done you in.”

“I’m nodding in agreement.”

Hood located the twin glimmers deep in the gauze. “What are you doing in Buenavista?”

“Trying to pass through Buenavista.”

“What’s your business?”

“I’m self-employed.”

“What business?”

“Business is all the same, Charlie. Buy low, sell high. Wait for the bailout.”

Hood watched a thin stream of bubbles rise up through the saline bag. A woman in scrubs appeared from behind him and she glanced at the vitals monitor, then back at Hood. She was young and pretty and when she took up the chart, Hood checked her ring finger but before he could look away she caught him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Charlie Hood. I think I’m here on the basis of some misunderstanding.”

Finnegan laughed tightly. “Is this a cosmic misunderstanding? Or a comic misunderstanding?”

“Mike, you talk too much,” she said. “You talk to me about the effects of steroids on cranial pressure. You talk to Chief Reyes about the boy who was killed last night. You talk to the nurses about party boats on the Colorado River and you talk to the janitor about floor cleaners and his brother in prison. Now you’re yapping away to Mr. Hood about selling high and cosmic versus comic.”

“That’s
Deputy
Hood, doctor,” whispered Finnegan.

“Oh?”

Hood said he was “on loan” from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. She offered her hand and he shook it.

“Beth Petty.”

“She’s a female doctor,” whispered Finnegan.

Beth Petty smiled and shook her head. “Careful, Mike, or I’ll sedate you.”

“Use something pleasant. Please.”

Dr. Petty held Hood’s look. “Los Angeles? I studied medicine at USC.”

“I studied psychology at Bakersfield State.”

“There’s a conversation killer,” said Finnegan.

There was in fact a brief silence as Petty made notations on the chart and hung it back on the wall next to the sharps collector. “I hope you like Buenavista, deputy.”

She smiled at him and walked out and Hood heard her footsteps no longer.

“Is she beautiful?” whispered Finnegan.

“Yes,” Hood whispered back.

“She’s not in focus and neither are you. The ocular swelling is horrendous. Oh, deputy, I just remembered how that piece of paper got into my wallet. It was pressed upon me by a reserve deputy you once worked with. Well, who you once shot and killed, actually. Coleman Draper.”

Hood studied the small, plastered man. “For what purpose?”

“He said you were a good man and you might be able to help me.”

“Do what?”

There was a longer silence and Hood saw that the twinkling lights of the man’s eyes were gone. His first thought was that Finnegan had died. Then he heard the deep, slow breathing.

“Find my daughter.”

“I already have a job.”

“As we all do. Consider it pro bono or even charity. Deputy Hood, I’m a crushed and tired man. If it’s okay with you, we’ll. Talk. Later.”

“Where did you get the ninety grand?”

“I earned it, of course.”

Hood waited a moment. Then he heard the yawn enclosed within the bandage and he walked out.

 

 

 

 

J
immy Holdstock was bright and affable and still built like the Wisconsin tight end he once was, but this morning his brain was sleepless and his heart was heavy.

He kissed Jenny and told her he loved her before he even cracked the front door of their El Centro home, to keep the heat out and the cool in as long as possible. The girls were still asleep, and Jimmy touched his wife’s cheek and walked outside to the new day. He was twenty-six.

He had rented the house two months ago for his assignment to ATFE Operation Blowdown. It was a fifties home—pink stucco and squat—smack in the middle of five hundred acres of cotton a few miles from town. Holdstock liked the desert, which surprised him, because until two months ago he had never seen one except from the sky. This desert was full of unexpected beauties. Like now: a trio of doves cutting toward him low in the gray sky, squeaking softly as they sped over the miles of green plants tufted with white. Jimmy glanced up at them, but all he could think about was Gustavo Armenta.

He slung his war bag over his shoulder—vest, holster, his standby gun and ammo, a Bible in case he got a minute to himself, lunch, a plastic liter bottle of frozen water that would melt during the day and always have an ice-cold swallow for him when he needed it. He was wearing a suit and tie and he already had beads of sweat trickling from his armpits despite the extra antiperspirant. Holdstock’s regular sidearm, the one he had discharged during the Buenavista sting, had been taken from him by a senior ATFE agent early the next morning.

Four short years ago Jimmy had graduated from Madison and was headed for the priesthood through a Minnesota seminary. But his desires were powerful and he fell in love with a St. Paul coffee shop waitress, Jenny Reuvers. He dropped out, and six months later he was married and happy. Not long after that, Jenny had shown him the positive drugstore pregnancy test, the same week that Holdstock was accepted into the ATFE training program in Washington, D.C. ATFE was a good fit for Jimmy because he was smart and could think on his feet and always knew what the rules were. He was afraid of nothing. There was Miami and New Orleans and Chicago. When Blowdown came along, Jimmy and Jenny went for it. ATFE needed some fresh faces for the battles on the Iron River. Southern California!

He unlocked the side door of the garage, stepped in and found the switch for the motorized door. When the door had clanged up into place, Jimmy slung the duffel onto the front seat of his Five Hundred, tossed his jacket in the back, and climbed behind the wheel.

He arrived at the Federal Building in San Diego just over an hour later, having noticed almost nothing during the drive, having heard hardly a word of the Christian radio show. He parked and took a swig of ice water.

Mars came to the ATFE lobby and took Holdstock upstairs to the regional director’s office. Mars was pale and unforthright and he said nothing on the elevator ride up. The SAC was Frank Soriana, a large and often jolly man who this morning looked at Holdstock with no jolliness at all.

“Jimmy, the bureau got the Armenta bullet from the sheriffs down in Imperial and did a hurry-up on the toolmarks. You killed him
and
the gun dealer. So, good shooting on the one, and bad luck on the other. Armenta was almost fifty yards away when you fired. Incredible bad luck, Jimmy. I’m sorry it happened.”

Holdstock had known that the toolmarks testing was pointless. His first two shots had hit the gun dealer—he could hear the smack of the bullets hitting the body—and the third had missed to the left. And just a moment later, he had heard the screams.

Jimmy nodded and looked down at his hands. He had been a half step ahead of Janet Bly, and he could see the young gunrunner in the black suit standing there like Death himself in the patio light, his gun out and ready. He could see Tilley with his hands up. He was aware of Ozburn and Hood in the periphery of things. He was aware of the empty tables, empty chairs, the closed umbrellas, the big outdoor grill unmanned at that late hour. And when Black Suit had swung his gun at Ozburn, Holdstock had put him down with two shots and missed by a fraction of an inch with the third.

Sitting in the regional director’s office and staring at his hands, Jimmy Holdstock replayed the scene for what seemed like the thousandth time.

But by now the scene had changed. It started one way and then it became different. Now, when Jimmy saw it again, the black-suited gunman—his name turned out to be Victor Davis—wasn’t swinging the gun on Ozburn, he was lowering it.

Holdstock closed his eyes. Janet Bly had held fire. Sean Ozburn and Charlie Hood had held fire. So Jimmy had been outvoted three to one on deadly force and killed an innocent boy, too. Since it happened, he had been telling himself that the toolmarks on the boy’s bullet would prove him innocent, but really, he knew that no one else had fired and what were the chances of some other shooter having taken out Gustavo Armenta?

He took a deep, wavering breath.
I’ve killed a young man I never saw alive,
he thought.
Leadeth me beside still waters. Please
.

“We’ve talked to Ozburn and Bly and the deputy,” said Soriana. “Sean and Janet thought Davis could have been preparing to fire. Charlie Hood didn’t say that, but he did say that Davis was not lowering the gun as ordered. So, three out of three witnesses are standing with you, Jimmy. And I’m standing with you, and Agent Mars is, and all of ATF. The boy was an accident. He was collateral damage. It breaks my heart to see the innocent die and I know it’s breaking yours, too, Jimmy. But don’t let it break all the way. We need you whole again.”