Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Blake

Blake and Gavin made it to Ajo before they stopped again. They pulled into a filling station for drinks. Gavin didn’t like caffeine and bought Sprite. Blake wanted all the caffeine he could get and got a diet Dr. Pepper. They also picked up several bottles of water and relieved their bladders in the facilities. When they’d gone south another mile Blake pulled over.

“Let’s gun up.”

Gavin nodded coolly but his eyes sparkled. With a fatherly sigh Blake went to the trunk for their guns. He handed the younger man a bullet proof vest.

“Oh, man,” Gavin said, “is that really necessary?”

“You wear a gun, you wear a vest,” Blake said. He was struggling his black t-shirt over his own vest.

“Well, can’t I at least wear it on top of my shirt?”

“We are in plain clothes,” Blake said, buttoning his denim over-shirt. “I didn’t expect this to be a babysitting project.”

“Like no one will notice all this under our clothes,” Gavin muttered, but peeled his shirt off. His nose wrinkled at the vest, smelly from other men’s sweat and hot from riding in the sunbaked trunk. He completed the redressing and donned a shoulder holster. The gun followed and he checked the ammunition and safety. Though the younger detective had failed to bring his vest per procedure, Blake was relieved to see that his moves with the gun were fluid and practiced. The two detectives finished their costume by pulling their jackets over the other three layers. The desert breeze blew warm and Blake could feel sweat building up under the Kevlar.

“Be glad it’s not August,” he said as they returned to the car.

“Why all this gear, anyway?” Gavin asked.

Blake hadn’t told Gavin much about the phone conversation with Nik, and nothing about his hallucination featuring a fortune teller. He didn’t trust everything either of them had said but he’d have to figure it all out later; for now it was time to move.

He turned and smiled at the young man. “I got a bad feeling, that’s all.”

Gavin nodded his head. “Alright.”

Blake kept close eye on the mile markers and slowed to fifty then thirty.

“There’s the 156 mile marker.” Just beyond it a road appeared on the right, barely differentiated from the surrounding desert. He turned onto it and rolled down his window. An explosion, muffled by distance echoed across the sand. Smaller ping-ping noises, he counted three, then another blast.

“That was a shotgun,” Gavin said.

“And some smaller weapon,” added Blake. He couldn’t accelerate on dirt much without losing control but he increased his speed from fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The road behind vanished in boiling dust. Gavin cocked his pistol and hung out the passenger window.

“Keep the safety on,” Blake said. “I don’t want you to shoot yourself if we end up in a ditch.”

Five elongated minutes passed and the drive stretched endlessly. As they slowed to wind around a rock promontory a white Camry came weaving around the corner. A nondescript man driving the car slowed to point a pistol at Blake’s face. The white car bounded over a bump and Blake swerved to avoid a collision as the gun fired. A breeze whipped past his head and the white car sped past, disappearing into the roiling dust the unmarked police vehicle had left in its wake. Blake pulled to a stop in the soft sand at the verge and looked to his partner.

“Are you hit?”

Gavin, white faced, pawed at his left shoulder, finding a rip in the Kevlar. “It felt like I was hit by a hammer. Am I bleeding?”

Blake examined the young man’s neck and shoulder and found no blood but pulled a slug from the vest.

“No blood. Do you think it broke a rib?”

“It hurts but not like broken bone bad.” Gavin shrugged his shoulders experimentally. “I think I’m okay. Go ahead, let’s get after him.”

Blake engaged the clutch then cursed himself as he tried to drive back onto the road. The tires spun in six inches of powder. Back and forward he maneuvered the car but he only sank the wheels deeper. He jumped out and slammed the door.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

Gavin joined him and both men stared in impotence as dust settled around them. They heard another shot, very close and abandoned the vehicle to run toward the sound. It wasn’t far; the ranch entrance was just around the curve.

A row of outbuildings stretched to the left and a barn stood ahead. To the right was a two story wooden house encircled by a shaded veranda. These three buildings surrounded a packed dirt yard holding a large grey van. There appeared to be a crowd of drunks near it. Two women, dressed in full skirts of some brilliant but filthy fabric drooped in the dirt like faded blossoms. They were weeping steadily and without regard of the others. Two men were laughing as they tried to help another man up. They were unsuccessful and landed in a heap with their fallen comrade. The slant heels on the men’s boots, the dark skin and black eyes tagged the group as Mexican Nationals.

“Mija, mija, dondesta?” one of the women cried, looking around the yard from her position in the dirt.

Blake recognized the rangy blonde woman in the center of the yard from Sara’s dream. She stood over patch of dark wet dirt, her presence the only note of sobriety on the scene. She swung a shotgun from the hip and fired again into the wasteland behind the stable. She waited for the sound to echo away before shouting like a teacher in a schoolyard.

“Shut up!”

The drunken Mexicans looked to her for a moment then returned to their previous activities.

“Drop the rifle, ma’am,” Blake shouted. The woman was in the act of reloading and Blake ran toward her, pistol drawn. Gavin followed, slower, keeping the Mexicans and the blonde in his sites, swinging his eyes with the gun.

The Anglo did not drop her long gun but lowered the muzzle, holding it loosely in her hands. It was a short swing from action and the lady seemed comfortable with it.

“Who are you?” she said.

“Police officers,” Blake said. “Drop the gun.”

The woman seemed to consider, then carefully bent and lowered the shotgun to the ground.

“Did you see the car that just left?” she said.

“Yes,” Blake said.

“That man has been holding me at gunpoint all morning.”

“Who are these?” Blake nodded his head at the five dark-skinned folk. They had now settled in the dirt and watched the two converse, with side-long glances at Gavin who still covered everyone with his gun. “Are they drunk?”

“Something’s wrong with them,” Johni said. “I gave them some food.”

“Okay. Start at the beginning. What happened?”

“This morning, about ten, I heard an engine,” the woman said. “A white car showed up, followed by this grey van.” She pointed. “I came to the porch and the man you saw leaving got out. I wasn’t worried. I figured they were lost or something. But then he pulled a gun on me and made me feed everyone and said he was going to take me with them.”

“Wait a minute. Who drove the van?”

“One of these guys. They weren’t like this when they got here. He gave them something.” She bowed her head and put her hand over her eyes.

“Okay, so how did you get that rifle? If you were under the gun all day?”

Blake looked in the woman’s blue eyes. They were like ice, the pupils nearly non-existent. He remembered that Sara had said she was a junkie and her constricted pupils suggested she was under the influence now.

“He was taking me with him, as a hostage, I guess. He wanted me to drive the bus so he could hold the gun on me. I said I needed my purse and ran back to the house. I was afraid he’d shoot me but he waited and I got my husband’s rifle and shot him.” She spat in the dirt. She sounded disgusted. “I thought he was dead.”

A loud wail interrupted them and Blake looked to the people on the ground.

“De donde eres?” he asked them. Where are you from?

“Mejico.”

“Que estado?” What state.

“Sonora.”

The woman wailing on the ground burst into louder cries. “Dondestan mijos?” Where are my children?

Shit, shit, shit. Blake needed time to think. According to Stepan a man was holding a woman at gunpoint. But this woman was the exact picture that he’d seen in his hallucination, the one Sara said was trafficking. Those kids had come from somewhere and someone was in charge, but surely it was that man who’d shot Gavin? But this woman says… He felt like he was living a double exposure. What would he be doing if he’d come on this situation without that dream or vision or whatever?

It was hard to subtract Sara’s influence since she was the first to suggest trafficking. Was this woman really working with the well-respected Eddie Wyatt? How could their faces have been inserted into his mind? And here’s Wyatt’s young partner, waiting for Blake to issue orders. Did Gavin know about this scheme? Blake would never share sensitive information with this hothead and if Wyatt were really involved Blake assumed he’d have as much sense.

His thoughts were interrupted by Gavin.

“Did you get the license of the car, ma’am?”

The woman put her hand to her forehead and swayed a bit. “No. I’m sorry, it’s been a nightmare.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She touched her right eye which was swollen and discoloring with a bruise. “He hit me with his gun. Twice. He kept threatening to kill me.”

Blake pulled his phone. There was no service.

“Does your phone work?” he asked her. “We need to put out a bulletin on that car.”

“He yanked my land line from the wall.”

Gavin looked at Blake. “I can go radio from the car.”

Blake nodded his head but Johni wasn’t finished.

“What about these people?” she said. “Are they going to be thrown in jail? That doesn’t seem right. I think that man kidnapped them.”

Gavin looked at Blake with eyebrows raised.

“If they get sent to jail they might be there forever,” Johni continued, “And the women keep looking for their children. Shouldn’t we let them get back to their children? The border is only twenty miles away.”

Blake stared at the ground. He had no evidence that this woman had done anything wrong. He couldn’t arrest her but if they could get the illegals back to Mexico at least they’d be safe and maybe then he could arrange for a watch on this place, or call the FBI.

“That’s not how we’re s’posed to do this…” He looked over at Gavin. “What do you think?”

“I say bring ’em back home,” Gavin said.

“Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

Gavin looked relieved. Blake turned to the woman. “We’ll call in the crime---“

Johni interrupted him. “If you call that in there will be cops swarming all over this place,” she said. “Can’t you just get these guys home and forget about it? That man will be dead soon enough. He’s gut shot. Just get those poor people back to Mexico and we’ll talk about it when you get back.”

“All right. You’ll be okay here for a couple hours?”

“I’ll be fine,” Johni said. She looked at the sky. “Y’all get going. It’s getting late.”