Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Cody

Cody’s phone rang. It was his mother.

“Hey Mom. What’s up?”

“This is Detective Blake. I’m with your mother and I want to speak to you and Mr. Stepan. Right away.”

“Just a moment.” Cody stared at the phone then at Nik. “I’m in the middle of something but I’ll call you right back. Two minutes. Don’t go away.” He disconnected and spoke to his partner. “It’s that detective I told you about. He’s with Mom.”

“He’s calling you?”

“Us. He wants to talk to both of us.” Cody kept his voice low but he wanted Nik to listen. “Maybe he can help us. He doesn’t know anything about this ranch or Viktor. Can’t he be the one we talk to? We can ask him to keep it under his hat.”

Nik chewed his lip. “Well, we’re screwed here. We need help and I don’t want to talk to the locals.”

“I think he’s okay,” Cody said definitively. “Call him back.”

Nik called back.

“This is Nikolai Stepan.”

“This is Detective Blake. We were told that you were selling drugs.”

“I’m not.”

“We obtained a search warrant for your home,” Blake said, “and we didn’t find drugs. Instead we found a lot of interesting files about selling children.”

“I’m not doing that, either. But,” Nik continued, “right now I’m in Ajo and we’ve found a ranch we think is being used to funnel people in from Mexico.”

“So these little kids here…” Blake said.

“Right. That’s where it started. I was coming back to see about the other kid when I saw the man with the gun. I know him from Russia. He’s bad news.”

Blake said. “A man with a gun.”

“We’re afraid they’ll take the others, if there are others, away. We thought maybe you could come out here and stop them.”

“You better start at the beginning,” Blake said.

Nik told Blake about his day as succinctly as possible. When he finished there was a silence on the other end. Finally, “Watch the place as closely as you can and call if anything changes. It’ll take a few hours but I’m on my way.” Blake hung up.

The men paid up and returned to the wash.

“Where do you think Chui is?” Cody asked. “Shouldn’t we try to find him?”

“We need to watch the ranch,” Nik said.

“Let’s separate. You go to the house and I’ll try and find Chui. If I can’t locate him in a half hour I’ll join you.” Nik wasn’t crazy about the plan but he agreed they should look for the little boy. He showed Cody where he’d seen the child disappear with the burro and Cody began his search.

He took the easiest path, thinking a scared boy would want to move fast. His instincts were correct. Sandal footprints, broken bushes and donkey tracks showed the way. Circling west, then south the trail skirted the bottom of a ridge a half mile west of the ranch. Climbing the gradual slope on the far side of the bluff Cody came upon a shady meadow with the little boy asleep with his head on the flank of the sleeping donkey.

Satisfied that the boy was safe Cody continued around the outcrop to a ledge overlooking the ranch, its undraped windows staring up at him like dark eyes. He rested a moment in the cool of a cave, the running and hiking of the day suddenly catching him up. Cody fell into a doze but a sudden loud sound woke him with a jerk that sent his head bashing into the rock behind.

The donkey had brayed, seemingly in his ear and the quiet ranch below erupted with activity. Two figures slammed out of the house. Viktor reached for the woman but she shrugged him off and looked up to Cody’s hiding place. Had he been seen?

The tiny figures were still, seeming to stare up at him, but after some minutes without a repetition of the sound, Viktor directed the woman back into the house. Cody waited like a statue until they were gone, then hurried back to find Jesús awake, manfully quieting the burro.