Body Heat

“Disculpe, señor,” he said. “We—we mean no harm. We are passing through, that is all.”

The stranger switched to English, which seemed to come as naturally to him as Spanish. “What you’re doing is illegal, mi amigo.”

Although he knew bits of English, much more than Benita did, José wasn’t fluent. He stuck with his native tongue. “But we are just visiting family. We mean no harm. We plan to go back to Mexico after two weeks. We stay only two weeks.”

It was an obvious lie, and the man was far from fooled. “Shut up.” Again he spoke in English but even Benita understood the meaning of those sharp words.

“Señor, please.” José edged closer to her. “It is only me and my—my little brother. We have no drugs, nothing.”

This time, the response came in Spanish. “Your brother.”

He’d heard her speak, which made this another transparent lie, but Benita kept her mouth shut, in case he believed José. Some boys had high voices, didn’t they? “Sí. He—he is frightened. Por favor…please, do not hurt him.”

Benita could hardly breathe. The stories of rape, beatings, robbery and other abuse that occurred during border crossings had circulated throughout Mexico. Parents used them to warn their children to stay home, as her father had warned her. But, other than to insist she chop her hair short and wear a baseball cap and men’s clothing, José had shrugged off her parents’ concerns. He said they worried for no reason and promised her everything would be fine.

“Stop groveling or I’ll shoot you both right where you stand.”

Those words and the disgust in the stranger’s voice made Benita start shaking. Who was this man? What was he doing out here? If he was a border patrol agent, he would’ve told them by now, wouldn’t he? Had they interrupted a drug run? Or was this a local farmer who didn’t want them on his land?

“I—I have money,” José said.

They didn’t have a lot. It was Carlos who was supposed to pay their coyote once they’d made it safely across. But at this point Benita was ready to turn herself in to the authorities. She didn’t care if he sacrificed every peso.

The man laughed. “You think I’m a dirty cop—like the kind you have in Mexico?”

José didn’t answer. “Forgive me. I am not trying to offend you, señor.”

“Your smell offends me, amigo. You being where you don’t belong offends me. And the fact that every word out of your mouth is a lie offends me.”

There was a click, and a brief flash of light. Benita covered her face, bracing for the worst. But he was only lighting a cigarette. She caught a brief glimpse of his chin, which was covered with dark stubble, before he closed his lighter.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, blowing smoke in their faces.

“Sí. Money. You want money?” José bent to get the cash hidden in his sock.

“I don’t want your lousy dinero. You couldn’t have enough pesos to buy me a new pair of boots, amigo. What I want is for you to undress your little brother here. I’ll use my night-vision goggles to take a peek at his chest. If he is, as you say, a boy, I’ll let you pass. You can head on to Tucson or L.A. or wherever else and bleed this country dry just like all your wetback relatives who’ve snuck over the border before you. But—” he took another long drag on his cigarette “—if she’s got tetas…” Another blast of smoke hit Benita in the face, making her cough. “I’m going to punish you for being the lying sack of shit you are.”

José didn’t move. Benita could feel his tension, could tell he was weighing his options. What had the man said? She’d recognized only a few words. Would José decide to run? They couldn’t. They’d be shot.

“Okay, I—I admit it. This is my wife, not my brother.” José’s voice was raspy with desperation. “But…she’s barely twenty, señor. And she’s frightened. Please, I beg you. Let us go. We will head back to Mexico. Right now.”

The man took another drag. “Until next week or the week after. Then you’ll come creeping across the border again.” He switched to Spanish, no doubt to make sure she’d understand. “I read an article that said you wetbacks try at least six times before giving up. Takes some pretty big balls to be so bold, you know what I’m saying? Besides, someone’s got to die. Might as well be you.”

Die? Benita sank to her knees. “No, por favor! I—I didn’t even want to come here. I’d rather go home. I’ll stay home. Don’t hurt us.”

He made a tsking sound. “How could you put your wife in such danger, Pedro?”

He had never asked for José’s name. He was using “Pedro” as a racial slur. She could feel this man’s hatred as palpably as the heat of the sun when it beat down at midday. But she was glad José didn’t complain. He squeezed her shoulder. Probably to comfort her. Maybe to convey an apology. You were right. We should’ve stayed. “I was just…trying to give her a better life,” he said.

A light went on in the closest trailer. When the man turned to look, José grabbed a handful of Benita’s shirt and jerked her forward. He wanted her to run, but she couldn’t get up fast enough and they lost the precious second that might’ve allowed them to escape.

The cowboy swung back, and they both froze with fear. Thanks to the light coming through the trailer window, the barrel of his pistol was outlined in silver, and they could see that it had something on the end.

Benita knew what that something was; she’d seen a silencer before. Her brother hadn’t always lived the kind of life he was living now that he’d settled down and had a couple of kids.

“Someone’s awake,” José said. “They’ll see you. You’ll get caught if you shoot us. Let us go.”

The stranger didn’t seem the least bit worried. Chuckling deep in his throat, he tossed his cigarette on the ground and fired so fast Benita didn’t realize he’d pulled the trigger until José collapsed. Her husband’s hand clenched, dragging her to the ground with him, so the shot intended for her went over her head. But that was all he could do to help. In the next second, he made a funny noise and went still, and she knew the man she loved, the father of her unborn child, was dead.

“You killed him!” she wailed, crouching over his body. “You killed him!”

“Hey, what’s going on out there?” A woman had opened the door of the trailer and called out in English. Although Benita couldn’t understand her words, she thought the interruption would make the man run away. But it didn’t. With a curse, Cowboy brought up his gun and aimed again.

“This oughta teach you spic cockroaches to stay in your own damn country,” he ground out, and pulled the trigger.

Benita felt a flash of pain between her eyes. Then she felt nothing at all.

2

The sun was just beginning to creep over the horizon when Sophia St. Claire brought her cruiser to a skidding halt at the dusty group of drab to not-so-drab trailers a mile outside of town. She’d thrown on her uniform and dashed out of the house as soon as the call came in. But she was too late. The people who lived here had abandoned the comfort of their homes to gawk and were standing in the middle of the crime scene.

“There goes whatever evidence I might’ve been able to collect,” she grumbled. But why get upset about it? If this was the work of the same killer she’d already been chasing, chances were he hadn’t left any evidence to begin with. In the past six weeks, someone had killed ten—now twelve—people in three different incidents, all UDAs or undocumented aliens, and walked or driven off into the night. Whoever it was didn’t attempt to bury the victims or hide their corpses, even when he had the chance. His earlier targets hadn’t been discovered until more than a week after their deaths.

As she turned off the engine, the small crowd, all of whom had glanced up when she arrived, watched her with pinched and worried expressions. They were obviously aware of the gravity of the situation. But they didn’t seem to realize that they should move away from the bodies. Maybe the CSI shows weren’t always one hundred percent accurate on forensic procedures and techniques, especially when it came to timelines, but surely these people had seen enough TV to know they shouldn’t contaminate the crime scene? It wasn’t as if they lived in some bucolic Mayberry R.F.D. The people here, mostly Mexican Americans with some whites and a few American Indians thrown in, were as rugged as the land. What with drug trafficking, human trafficking, gangs who had ties to the Mexican Mafia, racial disputes and a local chapter of the Hells Angels roaring around, blowing through stoplights, breaking speed limits and looking for trouble, this was almost a war zone.

Catching a glimpse of two prone bodies, she winced and jerked her door open.

Debbie Berke, the woman who’d called to report the shooting, met her as she got out. “Sophia, they’re dead,” she said. “They were killed instantly. Wasn’t no reason to get the paramedics out here.”

Sophia wasn’t surprised to be addressed by her first name. Only thirty, she hadn’t been chief of police for very long. And most of these folks had known her since she was a baby. Debbie’s late husband had been the veterinarian who’d operated on Toby, her family’s dog, when Sophia was fifteen, and eventually put him down. “I understand. I’ve called the medical examiner.”

“He’s on his way?”

“That’s what he said.” But Sophia doubted he was in any kind of hurry. Some of the sentiments Dr. Sandy Vonnegut had expressed at the last crime scene led her to believe he didn’t consider the death of illegal aliens to be much more distressing than roadkill.

She hollered for the crowd to step back at least twenty paces.

With their brown skin and inky black hair, the victims were, as expected, Mexican. One was a man, the other a woman. The male victim lay facedown in the dirt. They both had on several layers of clothing—long-sleeved shirts with dirty work pants—and tennis shoes, all secondhand quality at best. Sophia couldn’t see where the man had been shot; any blood was hidden beneath his body. It was the woman who gave away the manner of death. She lay on her back, staring up at the sky with a perfect hole in her forehead. That hole oozed a slim trickle of blood. The woman’s heart had stopped almost immediately….

They were young. Too young to die. Especially like this.

Sophia crouched next to them, checking each for a pulse. It was a pointless gesture. They were both dead; that was obvious. But she went through the motions, anyway, hoping…

Finding Debbie to be absolutely correct, she stood and studied their surroundings, searching for anything that struck her as odd or out of place. An object left behind. An object taken. Tire tracks. Except for the fact that this incident had happened much closer to town, the scene looked exactly like the two she’d visited during the previous month and a half. The killings had occurred on a barren patch of desert too rocky to reveal tire tracks or footprints. And from what she could see so far, the perpetrator had left nothing behind but the bodies.

“What do you think?” Debbie murmured over Sophia’s shoulder. The expectation in her voice suggested she believed Sophia could pull the killer’s name out of thin air.

With a sigh, Sophia took a pad and pen from her shirt pocket and guided Debbie away from the bodies. She wanted to talk to her and anyone else who might’ve seen or heard something. She also needed to enforce the perimeter she’d created and, as long as she stood close to the victims, the others would come closer, too. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked.