Down Among the Dead Men Read online

  “Unfortunately, that’s about all we can verify. You were missing, too, Beth, for nearly ten months. And no one knows what happened during that time. But a lot of what you remember about Playa Azul could well be a product of the dysfunction.”

  “No,” Beth said. “It happened. Rafael and Marta, Meat Without Feet, the mugging, every bit of it.”

  “According to your ex-husband, the cruise company insists that they have no record of the Santiagos.”

  “Then they must have been using false identities.”

  “The Playa Azul police have discounted your story as well.”

  “They’re wrong,” Beth insisted. “I…I just wish I could get my head past that police station and remember it all. Then I might be able to find her.”

  Dr. Stanley smiled. A gentle smile. Beth sensed he must be a man of infinite patience.

  “I once worked a case similar to yours. A young man who was convinced that his brain injury was the result of being mauled by a grizzly bear. He remembered it clearly. But the truth was, he was the victim of a bus accident and had never seen a bear in his life, grizzly or otherwise.”

  “I’m not him,” Beth said.

  “No, you’re not. And every patient presents differently. But there are certain symptoms that we recognize and-”

  “I was shot, Doctor. How do you explain that?”

  “I can’t. Any more than I can tell you how you wound up in New Mexico.”

  “I just want to remember. Why the hell can’t I remember?”

  “With any luck,” Stanley said, “we’ll one day know the truth. But I’d be lying to you if I told you you’ll ever be completely back to normal. No matter how much progress you make, there will always be some brain dysfunction. How that will affect your life or your memory is hard to say.”

  He leaned forward, smiling again.

  “But the good news is that you are improving. Much faster than we expected. Your CT scans are looking better, and while these cognitive tests can’t really tell us how you’ll function in the outside world, they do give us some reason to celebrate.”

  “And these hallucinations or confabulations or whatever the hell they are. Will I ever be rid of them?”

  Stanley raised his hands in a gesture that made it clear that he had no answer for her.

  “Our research is spotty in that regard. In most cases, the confabulation is short-term, but again, there are no guarantees.”

  “Christ,” Beth said. “I feel like I’m stuck in that fucking Bill Murray movie. How many times do I have to relive this stuff before I go batshit crazy?”

  “‘Crazy’ is not a word I’d encourage you to use. It’s demeaning and not even remotely accurate.”

  “What the hell else do you call it, then?”

  “You were severely injured, Beth. An injury that often leads to confusion. And while I know these episodes are taking their emotional toll, I’m as optimistic about your prognosis as a man in my profession can be.”

  “That’s not saying a whole lot.”

  Another smile. “Just the fact that we’re having this conversation should give you reason to hope.”

  Beth almost laughed.

  Hope was a nice sentiment, but not much more than that.

  And she couldn’t help wishing that whoever had shot her had actually finished the job.

  53

  Vargas

  The woman behind the counter wasn’t having any of it.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t give out patient information.”

  She was Burke Memorial Hospital’s custodian of records, a rotund African-American woman with startling brown eyes.

  “Look,” Vargas said. “I know you have rules, but maybe you can bend them a little. I don’t care about her medical records. All I need is a name.”

  “And all I need are some comfortable slippers, a bottle of wine, and a night with Barack Obama.”

  “I’ll buy you the damn wine if you give me that name. The slippers, too.”

  The woman frowned. “Is that a bribe? Do I look like somebody who can be bought?”

  “I was joking.”

  “Well, I’m not laughing, mister. I don’t know where you went to school, but I think you must’ve skipped out on Ethics One-oh-one. That young lady was a patient at this hospital and it’s not only against the law but against my personal sense of responsibility to hand over private information to anyone, especially the likes of you.”

  “Can’t you at least tell me whether or not you were able to identify her?”

  “No, I cannot,” the woman said. “Both the police and the family have asked us to keep anything involving her case confidential, pending investigation of the incident that put her in here. For all I know, I’ve already breached that confidence just by opening my big fat mouth.”

  “So you do know who she is. You just said ‘family.’”

  She scowled at him. “See what I mean? I think we’re done here.”

  With this, she turned away and disappeared behind her office door.

  Vargas knew this had been a long shot. You didn’t often run across medical professionals willing to risk their careers to help make life easier for a reporter, but he’d had to try. And at least he knew that the American woman had been identified.

  The logical next step would be to contact the Albuquerque police, but it sounded to Vargas as if they weren’t likely to be cooperative, either.

  His only choice, he decided, was to call in another favor and hope he got a better reception this time.

  Several years ago, he’d done a story on a grisly string of murders stretching from California to Nevada and struck up a friendship with a Las Vegas homicide cop by the name of Jennings-the guy who had told him about the “itch.” After suffering a devastating loss, Jennings had flamed out and retired, then wound up doing half-assed magic gigs at a local casino to feed his gambling habit.

  Jennings had an ex-wife in the LVPD and a lot of connections, and was one of the few people Vargas knew who hadn’t condemned him to his ignore list. In fact, when Vargas’s humiliation went public in a very big way, Jennings had sent him a card with a joker on front and a one-line message scribbled inside:

  YOU’LL SOON BE DRAWING ACES.

  That hadn’t happened quite yet, but Vargas knew that Jennings would help him if he asked. And a call to the Albuquerque police from one of their Southwest brethren was likely to receive more attention than a visit from Vargas. Short of that, Jennings was bound to have a connection with access to just the right database. He’d always been a master at getting things done.

  So Vargas went outside to his car, checked his cell phone’s address book again, and dialed.

  After several rings, the line came to life. “Hey, hey, Number Two, it’s been a while.”

  Jennings called Vargas Number Two because they shared the same first name and because the first time they met, Vargas was “just another reporter come to take a dump on the cops.”

  When that turned out not to be true, a friendship and a nickname were born.

  “I need a favor,” Vargas said.

  “So what else is new? Give me a minute or two to win this hand and I’ll get back to you. I just went all in.”

  “You’re a brave man.”

  “Tell that to my ex. In the meantime, I’m putting you on hold.”

  Vargas heard the line click and waited.

  A minute or two later, it came to life again and Jennings said, “I just won a monster pot, my friend, so you caught me in a good mood. What do you want and who do I have to kill to get it?”

  “No killing necessary,” Vargas said, then gave him just enough details to convince him to help.

  There was a pause on the line. “You sure this is something you want to get involved in?”

  “No choice at this point,” Vargas said. “I’ve gotta know who she is.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re developing a crush on the victim.”

  “Hardly. I just found out she�
��s alive.”

  “Yeah, and I’d lay odds your hardened little heart skipped a beat or two when you did.”

  “Are you gonna help me or give me grief?”

  “Both,” Jennings said. “The bad news is, nobody’s all that anxious to talk to a broken-down ex-cop. But the good news is that I know a couple of Albuquerque major-crimes investigators who still owe me a favor. Maybe I can get one of them to pony up.”

  “I knew I could count on you.”

  “Yeah, that’s me, hombre. Mr. Reliable.”

  54

  The detective’s name was Pasternak, an old-school Jack Webb clone, crew cut and all, a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of guy you wouldn’t want to meet on the wrong side of a nightstick.

  He looked about as at home in a Starbucks as a bulldog at a Japanese tea ceremony.

  “Jennings tells me you’re a good guy,” he said.

  They were sitting at a corner table, nursing cups of coffee, Pasternak black, Vargas cream and sugar. Vargas didn’t particularly like Starbucks coffee, but Pasternak had chosen the meeting place. It was several blocks away from the Albuquerque police station, and Vargas figured the chances of running into one of Pasternak’s colleagues was unlikely.

  Which, he supposed, was the point.

  “But I just want you to know,” Pasternak continued, “that that don’t mean jack to me. I learned a long time ago to make my own judgment about people. So until I know what your interest in this case is, you ain’t gettin’ squat.”

  “Jennings didn’t tell you?”

  “Just enough to pique my curiosity and get you an introduction.” He sipped his coffee. “So what’s on your mind?”

  Vargas cut straight to it. “Mexico.”

  “And what exactly does that mean?”

  “I just got back from Juarez. That’s where your vic was shot the first time.”

  Pasternak stared at him. “The first time?”

  “Come on,” Vargas said. “You’ve done the ballistics, talked to the medical examiner. You know she was shot three times, by two different guns. And since the third one was a head shot, I’m guessing she still hasn’t made much of a statement.”

  Pasternak tried and failed to hide his surprise. “Know about head wounds, do you?”

  “My brother was shot point-blank by a gangbanger when he was seventeen. He was never the same again.”

  “Tough break.”

  “Especially the part when he killed himself fifteen years later.”

  Manny had led a tortured life for those fifteen years. Unpredictable motor functions, slurred speech, a diminished IQ. No more ghost stories. No more smiles. A lonely man who had decided that life just wasn’t worth living. So about two and half years ago, he had repeated what the gangbanger had done, and got it right this time.

  Not that Vargas could blame him. As low as he himself had gotten after the suicide, he couldn’t even imagine the shit his brother had been going through.

  But then this wasn’t the time and place to be dwelling on such things, was it?

  Apparently Pasternak didn’t think so, either.

  “So tell me,” he said. “Do we have a leak in the department or are you getting your information from somewhere else?”

  “If you had a leak, we wouldn’t be talking. And, believe me, there’s a lot more.”

  Pasternak stared down at the dark liquid in his cup, taking a moment to process this.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m on the hook. What do you want from me?”

  “Just the basic facts of the case.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I really need.”

  “You’re a cheap date,” Pasternak said. “Maybe Jennings was right about you.” He took a sip of the coffee. “Her name is Elizabeth Crawford.”

  Vargas was surprised and must have shown it, because Pasternak said, “Not what you were expecting?”

  “The name I heard was Angie.”

  Pasternak’s eyes widened slightly. “Who’s your source?”

  “Not until I get the rest.”

  “The only people who could possibly know that name are people who had direct contact with her.”

  “Exactly,” Vargas said. “So finish what you were saying.”

  Pasternak nodded. “Like I told you, her name is Elizabeth Crawford. First few days she was at Burke Memorial ICU and we got nothing from her. Paramedics reported that she kept saying the name Angie over and over again, but her speech was slurred and nobody was even sure if that was accurate. Whatever the case, she wasn’t much help with the identification. They almost lost her a few times and I gotta say, it’s a miracle she pulled through. Somebody fights that hard to survive, you figure they must have a real good reason to live.”

  “Did you fingerprint her?”

  Another nod. “That’s what did it for us. We put her in the database and got a hit out of Los Angeles. We contacted her place of employment, wound up talking to her ex-husband, and he told us she’d been missing for several months. Went on vacation and never came back. And guess where she went?”

  “Where?”

  “Mexico.”

  “Juarez?”

  Pasternak shook his head. “Baja Norte. She and her sister went on a Mexican Riviera cruise and disappeared off the face of the earth. Cruise line reported it when their room steward realized they hadn’t returned in a while. And the purser said Crawford had mentioned she had ‘misplaced her sister.’”

  “So then Angie’s the sister?”

  “Nope. Her name is Jennifer. Angie’s still a mystery to us.”

  “I assume the FBI was called in?”

  “FBI, Homeland Security, the whole ball of wax. They checked activity on their credit cards, tried tracing their cell phones, and got nada.”

  “Until Taco Bell.”

  “That’s right. And believe me, they threw everything they had into it, since Crawford was practically one of their own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s an assistant district attorney. Or was. Just like her ex. They thought maybe the disappearances might’ve had something to do with one of her cases, but they could never connect anything. She dealt mostly with domestic crimes and special victims.”

  Vargas felt a small bump in his heart rate. This story just kept getting better and better. But he wondered why he hadn’t heard about this.

  Then he realized that it had happened around the time he was up in Vancouver, going through his third stint of rehab. The one that finally stuck. And he hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to the world before that.

  “So what’s her condition now?”

  “Last I heard, not so good. Once she was physically able, she was transferred to a traumatic brain injury facility in LA. The ex tells me the lucid periods are few and far between. She managed to give us a couple of names that we looked into, but we got nothing. Her doctor thinks they might be a product of the brain injury.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Tell me about it. The ex says she keeps calling him, thinking it’s ten months ago and that she’s still down in Playa Azul.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “According to him, she’s completely fucked.”

  Pasternak lifted his cup, took another sip, then set it down and gave Vargas a hard stare.

  “Okay, hotshot, now it’s your turn. Tell me about Juarez.”

  55

  Vargas reached into the satchel under the table, brought out the manila envelope, and handed it to Pasternak.

  Pasternak said nothing as he pulled out the three photographs.

  “She look familiar?” Vargas asked.

  Pasternak was leafing through them now, staring at them with undisguised surprise. “What the hell is this?”

  “I’ll tell you what it isn’t,” Vargas said. “It isn’t a Taco Bell parking lot.”

  “I can see that. I assume this is in Juarez?”

  “About a half hour or so south. Place called Dead Man’s
Dunes.”

  “And the woman with her?”

  “A nun. There were four more found nearby and a fifth outside.”

  It took Pasternak about two seconds to put it together.

  “Holy…fucking…shit. The Casa de la Muerte murders?”

  He’d said it fairly loud and several of the other customers turned and stared at him. But he either was oblivious or didn’t give a damn.

  “I don’t fucking believe it. We got a couple bulletins on this, but nobody ever said anything about an American woman, let alone Crawford. Where’d you get these?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, but there’s a Chihuahua state police homicide investigator you might want to take a look into. Guy by the name of Rojas. He removed these photos and every other trace of Crawford from the official file.”

  “Wait, wait, now,” Pasternak said. “Back up a bit. Start at the top.”

  So Vargas did, telling him about the trip to Juarez and the tour of the Casa de la Muerte crime scene. About the Ainsworths letting it slip that there was an American woman named Angie, and about Rojas’s cover-up, including what Rojas had thought was a fatal shot to the head.

  Vargas didn’t mention the ride in the trunk of his car or the executions at the egg ranch. No point in getting caught up in this thing as a material witness. Not right now, at least.

  Pasternak would likely find out about it all himself-probably with Garcia’s help, once Operation Rojas kicked into gear-but Vargas planned to be long gone when that happened.

  “You have anything in your files on a hit man with a half-burnt face?”

  Pasternak shook his head. “I’m pretty sure I’d know if we did.”

  “What about a religious cult called La Santa Muerte?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.” Pasternak pointed to the photos. “They have something to do with this?”

  “I can’t be sure, but it’s come up in conversation.”

  “You wanna clue me in?”

  “Apparently the cult is run by someone called El Santo,” Vargas said. “They’re into drug smuggling and God knows what else, and the guy with the burnt face seems to be their enforcer. I did a quick Internet search when I was down in Juarez and got zero hits. Which means they’re about as far under the radar as you can get.”