The Lost Ones Page 9

  A few folks wandered in the front door of the old gas station and nodded to Quinn, rain dripping from their coats. Some shook his hand or passed on a few problems.

  One man had lost a good dog. An old woman wanted to know about any progress in the break-in at the Baptist church. Someone had stolen six peach pies from the deep freeze. Quinn was patient and listened to it all. After all, coming to the Fillin’ Station for breakfast in downtown Jericho was better than keeping office hours. He learned more there in ten minutes than he’d probably learn all day behind his desk.

  Quinn was about ready to leave when Lillie sat across from him and snatched a half-eaten biscuit—already buttered—from his hand. She wore a baseball cap with a ponytail threaded through the back and a satiny sheriff’s office jacket that read chief deputy.

  “Go ahead and help yourself,” Quinn said.

  “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “How’d it go overnight?”

  “Helped Joe Burney’s dumbass daughter out of a ditch. Kenny issued some traffic tickets and looked for a stolen vehicle.”

  “What got stolen?”

  “Nothin’,” Lillie said. “Some kid didn’t know his buddies took it and hid it out behind the car wash.”

  “Busy night.”

  “What’s going on?” Lillie asked. Mary wandered over and rested her hand on Lillie’s shoulder while sliding coffee in front of her. Lillie patted the old woman’s liver-spotted hand. Mary smiled back as if in a daydream.

  “Thought I’d try and talk to Mara Torres again,” Quinn said.

  “She prefers Mara Black.”

  “Well, I’ll talk to Mara Black again.”

  “There’s somethin’ off about that girl,” Lillie said.

  “No kidding.”

  “No, really off,” Lillie said. “She ain’t right. I’d say she’s operating on a different radio signal than most.”

  “Been through a lot.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Lillie said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her. She talks about people on Days of Our Lives like they’re real people. She about shit her pants when she found out Sami might be pregnant, like Sami was a real person and it was a real baby. She talked for two days about whether it would be a boy or a girl. I let her come in my office every day at noon to watch her stories so she’ll shut her mouth and cooperate.”

  “She made any calls?”

  “She’s got a public defender.”

  “Any friends?”

  “Some women from her church came to see her,” Lillie said. “They brought her some lemon cake and some bologna sandwiches. I got the feeling they didn’t know Mara real well.”

  “I still can’t believe what they were doing was legal,” Quinn said. “They were bringing in babies with all the right papers.”

  “When the children come from developing countries, the only type of qualifications you need is some cash,” Lillie said. “When you adopt that child, it’s legally your baby. That has nothing to do with American laws. You think any of those Mexican officials gave two shits about where those kids ended up?”

  “But how in the hell does a woman adopt dozens of kids and sell them off?”

  “Foreign kids aren’t looked after like wards of the state.”

  “That’s dumber than shit.”

  “That’s the law.”

  “Any news on the child’s autopsy?”

  “No,” Lillie said. “But I spoke to the coroner’s assistant up in Memphis. They got fingerprints, and signs of a severe beating. They’re just making sure everything all makes sense for a jury.”

  Quinn nodded. “You want some more coffee?”

  “Afraid I’ll drink yours?’

  Quinn smiled. Lillie smiled back. She was pretty when she lightened up a little bit, her freckled face brightening up like a kid’s. He and Lillie had been decent friends in high school but better friends since he’d come back to Jericho and Tibbehah County. During the summer, Lillie had been his running partner, trailing down fire roads and country highways to keep his training in check. They’d shoot guns out on the range and sometimes drink beer after. They’d grown close, with things progressing over the summer. But they understood that’d be a bad mistake, knowing how crossing lines might be a recipe to fucking up a hell of a good thing.

  “Listen, you got a second?” Quinn said, lowering his voice. He looked to make sure that Mary was out of earshot, Mary being the kind who’d wipe down a table for five minutes to hear some gossip. “I need to talk about something personal.”

  “You wetting the bed again?”

  “If you can’t handle it,” Quinn said, “forget I mentioned it.”

  “Go on. Go on.”

  “I’m not really good about talking about stuff like this.”

  “That’s kind of like EJ.”

  “Who the hell’s EJ?”

  “Fella on Days. He’s gone back to being evil, and that’s why Taylor has to leave him.”

  “Caddy’s back.”

  “I know.”

  “She says she’s clean.”

  “How many times is she gonna do this to her poor son?”

  Quinn nodded. “My momma says it’s our job to accept her back with no questions asked. She said she won’t judge her or ask her where she’s been. She tells Caddy that the light is always on at our house, and her bedroom will always be the same.”

  “She hasn’t changed Caddy’s bedroom?” Lillie asked. “How old is she?”

  “Too old,” Quinn said. “She’s sleeping with a stuffed bear and staying up to watch Elvis movies with Jean. And she’s getting real pious, asking me questions about my relationship with God.”

  “You doin’ well with that?”

  “It’s nobody’s damn business.”

  “You are a charmer, Quinn Colson.”

  Quinn leaned in and Lillie joined him. Their heads almost touched.

  “She wants me to help her talk out some shit that happened to us when we were kids,” Quinn said, whispering, watching the front door. “It’s some unpleasant stuff, and things are best left unsaid.”

  “But it’s troubling her?” Lillie asked.

  Quinn nodded.

  “Maybe she needs to pour some light in.”

  “Or maybe this is just some more of Caddy’s bullshit.”

  “How bad?” Lillie asked.

  Quinn let out a deep breath and twirled a coffee mug in his hands. He just looked to Lillie, and Lillie, seeing the horrible thing there, just nodded with him, knowing whatever it was just wasn’t ready to come out.

  Quinn’s cell rang, and he picked up. Mary Alice let him know that he had someone waiting for him at the sheriff’s office. He said he was coming on in now.

  “Who’s there?” Lillie asked.

  “An ATF agent interested in Ramón Torres.”

  “Heard about her,” Lillie said, staying seated as Quinn grabbed his coat. She wrapped her arm over the back of the booth in a cocky manner. “Also heard Ramón wasn’t the only thing she was interested in.”

  “She believes Ramón was into guns like Janet was into selling babies.”

  “Watch out for those redheads, Sheriff,” Lillie said. Mary slid a plate of eggs and sausage before Lillie without her even ordering. Lillie grabbed her fork and dug in. “Never knew a one that wasn’t crazy as hell.”

  “THANKS FOR LUNCH THE OTHER DAY,” Dinah Brand said. Her red hair had been combed straight back from her face and tied in a simple, tight knot.

  They were sitting in Quinn’s office again, and it was raining in sheets outside the lone window facing the back of the jail on the river. Again, Dinah was dressed for court, black pleated dress, black blazer, with real nice shoes. Quinn didn’t know shit about women’s shoes, but they looked nice, being suede and all. Her lipstick was very red, and it set off something nice and pleasant with her hair.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look just like Claudia Jennings?”

  “Who’s that?” Dinah asked.
She smiled, mouth parted a bit, eyeing Quinn to see just where he was going with this.

  “The queen of the B movie,” Quinn said. “She was a friend of my dad’s. She was in all these pictures like ’Gator Bait, Truck Stop Women, The Great Texas Dynamite Chase before I was born. She was a pistol.”

  “How’d your dad know her?”

  “He worked in the picture business before I was born, and some after.”

  “What’s he do now?”

  “Don’t know,” Quinn said. “Haven’t heard from him since I was in high school.”

  “Is that tough?”

  “If you knew my dad, you’d know it made things much easier.”

  “Anything new with the Torres family?” Dinah asked.

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “You?”

  “Zip.”

  “We’re expecting back the autopsy any day now,” Quinn said. “Plan on making a solid case once we can find these people.”

  “I think they’re in Mexico.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you won’t ever be able to touch them there.”

  “Can y’all?”

  “Extradition from Mexico is complex.”

  “Didn’t mean anything by saying you looked like that actress,” Quinn said. “I meant it as a compliment. Hope that doesn’t cross any professional boundaries.”

  “You work with many women in the Army?”

  “We didn’t have women Rangers, but yes, I did.”

  “Did you mind that?”

  “Not at all,” Quinn said. “I remember this one soldier, tough gal from Texas, who used to sit in the catbird seat of a Hummer, keeping watch at Camp Phoenix. One day some little Afghan kids started talking to her in some pidgin English. One of them asked her what was that she was holding, and she looked down at them and smiled and said, ‘It’s a big motherfucking gun, kid.’”

  “And your chief deputy is a woman.”

  “So we’re good?”

  “How many people in this community have you interviewed about the Torres family?”

  “You’re welcome to the reports,” Quinn said. “Talked to folks at the Dollar General, where she used to work, and at their church. They weren’t regulars there. And they didn’t have any neighbors to speak of. One of those ‘keep to themselves’ deals.”

  “Nothing more from Mara?”

  “You spoke to her,” Quinn said. “What were your impressions?”

  “She’s psychologically stunted,” Dinah said. “It was like speaking to a twelve-year-old.”

  “Lillie, my chief deputy, says she’s mainly interested in watching soap operas and eating cake.”

  “I hear you have a small Hispanic community here,” Dinah said. “Have you reached out?”

  “Some,” Quinn said. “We’re not exactly well staffed with Spanish speakers, but I have an old friend who runs the El Dorado restaurant here. We went out and talked to some folks. No one knew Torres. Nobody ever knew him to hold a job.”

  “Not to imply you didn’t do a good job,” Dinah said. “But do you mind if we drive back?”

  “You want to tell me more about his connection to these bad men on the Coast?”

  “They are known associates.”

  “That sounds a lot nicer than it is.”

  “We’ve scattered a big network out of Dallas.”

  “Bad people.”

  “We think Ramón Torres is part of a cell connected to a group that beheaded seventeen farmers over the summer.”

  Quinn leaned forward in his chair, his boots touching the floor. He widened his eyes and shook his head. “All drugs?”

  “Drugs, guns, human trafficking,” Dinah said. “Bad people.”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “And carry a big motherfucking gun.”

  15

  THERE WASN’T MUCH IN THE WAY OF WHAT QUINN WOULD CALL A HISPANIC community in Tibbehah County. There was a collection of about twenty old trailers huddled together on a one-acre slice of land right outside the Jericho city limits. Most of the folks who lived there were day laborers taking on construction jobs or cleaning houses or offices. Everyone knew they were mostly illegal, but no one made a thing of it, because the folks had done so much to help rebuild a lot of the town. Two Latino soldiers in his company had joined up to gain citizenship. Quinn had a ton of respect for the immigrant work ethic. And there was no more loyal, tough, and resourceful soldier than one who had a clear sense and love for his new country.

  The rain fell in a steady downpour and had turned the muddy clear-cut land into a soup.

  “I got some rubber boots in back of my truck,” Quinn said. “Might fit.”

  Dinah nodded, and Quinn got out and checked in his truck box for the pair Lillie had left with him when they’d gone out and searched for old Miss Magnolia, who’d wandered away from her house for the hundredth time.

  “They’re a little big,” Dinah said.

  “Deputy Virgil has big feet,” Quinn said.

  Most of the trailers looked as if they’d been picked up and put down in a lot of different places; sagging, tired, and worn on concrete blocks. Some of the folks who lived there had planted small gardens with peppers and tomatoes. Most of the tomato plants had died, the vines hanging lifeless and brown, but the peppers would last until the first freeze in a few weeks, growing bells and jalapeños as Quinn did on his farm.

  When they went door-to-door, knocking, Dinah was good at the entrance, explaining in Spanish that they weren’t with ICE or immigration, only wanting to find out if they’d seen this man. She’d carried a mug of Ramón Torres, a picture taken in Houston for a DUI arrest in ’03. His face looked slick with sweat, eyes bloodshot, and he wore a yellow T-shirt. Most all who came to the door were women, many of the men already out on jobs. Some of the trailers didn’t have electricity, and their residents used propane tanks to cook, many of the places smelling of tortillas and spicy burning fat. The women were smiling and polite but made nervous by the star Quinn had pinned on his shirt. He and Dinah stood there, rain sluicing down the brim of his cap, she huddled in a slicker, waiting outside maybe fifteen trailers. Some of them were abandoned or no one answered.

  “You see any recognition?” Dinah asked. “When we were speaking?”

  “Nope.”

  “Goes with your theory that he wasn’t connected to anyone local.”

  “I’d like to know a little more about this cartel if they’re planning on setting up shop in this county.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Dinah said as they walked back to Quinn’s truck. “We just got the alert when the news came out about Ramón Torres. We’d been looking for him for the last two years.”

  “And you say these people are with Los Zetas?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you believe they’ve got cells down on the coast.”

  “They control most of the Texas border,” Dinah said, pulling off her slicker, folding it, and placing it in the back of the cab. “They got a pipeline of drugs and cash that heads up through Memphis and Chicago and over to Atlanta.”

  “But we could have a cell here,” Quinn said. “Working with Ramón?”

  “I guess it’s possible,” Dinah said as Quinn cranked the truck and headed back to town. The county road stretched long and slick before them, broken pavement with no shoulder, only long drops down into wooded land. “I bought some photo packs maybe you and your deputies could study.”

  “Sure.”

  Quinn stopped off at a roadside produce stand right outside Drivers Flat. The stand was a lean-to of barn wood and tin. It was late in the season, but they still had some peppers, pole beans, and tomatoes. The woman who worked the stand looked like someone you’d see out of a WPA photograph, rawboned and weathered, with a gaunt smile and long thin fingers. She exchanged a couple bucks for some beans. It had stopped raining, and soft mist rose off the rows and rows of pumpkins ripening for the fall.

  “I promised my mother I’d pick some up if I was out this wa
y,” Quinn said.

  “Most of your family here?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Your mother must be glad you’re home.”

  “You’re welcome to ask her,” Quinn said. “She does a nice spread every Wednesday after church.”

  “I better get back.”

  “Invitation stands,” Quinn said, following the road back to Jericho, passing the Dollar General where Janet Torres had worked, Hollywood Video, and on past the Piggly Wiggly. The rain had left puddles in the potholes, and water sat stagnant along the drainage ditches.

  “I’d like that,” Dinah said.

  Lillie was at the front counter at the sheriff’s office when they walked back inside. And she did her best to not seem interested in Dinah Brand in the least. Quinn introduced them anyway, and Lillie looked up from some reports she was writing to give a friendly nod. Quinn grabbed a couple coffees, and they went back to the office. Dinah swung her purse on the back of the chair and sat down, opening up a thick black leather satchel she’d brought in from her trunk.

  “How many deputies do you have?”

  “Nine.”

  “For the whole county?”

  “All we can afford,” he said. “Trying to get a maintenance barn going. I’ve got to go in front of the county supervisors to beg.”

  “And you don’t like to beg.”

  “You’d have to know our supervisors,” Quinn said. “A bit like selling your soul.”

  “OK,” Dinah said, opening up a three-ring binder and showing Quinn photos, three to a page, of Mexican nationals in the United States believed to be working within cartels in the Mid-South. Quinn walked behind his desk, turning the binder back toward him, and flipped through each page while sipping some coffee.