Isodora parted her hair and looked hard at Casey, setting her jaw. "I will tell you this. I know he did nothing. He, Elijandro, he would have this-how do you say-hives, this rash. Big red dots."
Isodora rubbed her chest. "Here he had them. When he was with me, he would have this. Always. Before we married, I used to tease him and call them diablo se mancha, devil spots. And when he came back after the first time he went with her, I made him show me and he didn't have it. So, you see?"
Casey nodded and said, "I see why you believed him. I'm just trying to find the reason why Senator Chase would have done this."
Isodora bit her lip and nodded, as if holding back tears.
"Maybe he thought like you," Isodora said in a whisper.
At the sound of the guard rattling the door, Casey stood up.
"All right," she said. "I'll do everything I can. I should at least be able to get you to a place where you can be with Paquita."
The guard stood frowning behind the young girl and nudged Isodora's ribs with the baton, telling her to get moving.
Casey rounded the table and pushed her face so close to the guard's that she could smell the cigarettes on the hefty woman's breath.
"You touch her with that thing again," Casey said in a low growl. "You so much as wave it at her and I'll have you bounced so far out of this place you'll think you were riding a rocket."
The guard snickered and said, "Yeah, I heard all about it. A woman like you can't rest when another woman is in need. Lady, why don't you go get some sleep."
Casey opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out and she could only watch Isodora being led away.
Instead of lodging a complaint with the sergeant, Casey simply asked when Isodora would be delivered to the courthouse for her appearance on Monday.
CHAPTER 11
CHIEF GAGE BACKED HIS CRUISER UP TO THE MOTEL DOOR AND dragged Teuch's body out. He unfolded a thick plastic tarp inside his trunk and dumped the body in, slamming the trunk closed and dusting his hands as he scanned the empty parking lot and the pockets of wan light spilling from cheap fixtures up and down the row of doors. He moved with the confidence of a man who'd been a law unto himself for nearly twenty years.
He was only a deputy fresh out of community college when the senator's old man died and the senator took over the ranch, bumping his older sister and her no-good husband to a beach house in Galveston. It was a deflowered high school cheerleader who gave Gage the first opportunity to distinguish himself with the senator, who was then just a young lawyer at the attorney general's office in the city. When she awoke in a ditch with her skirt hiked up over her boobs she called 911 from a pay phone outside of town, gibbering so that the dispatcher couldn't understand her.
They sent Gage out to pick her up and when he saw the black eye and realized where the whole thing was headed, he told her to shut up and drove her straight back out to the ranch. Gage showed his stuff by offering the girl the chance to make up with Chase or be taken in for possession of a small bag of cocaine he removed from his sock and tucked into the low-cut neckline of her rumpled dress and beneath the double-D cup of her bra. The senator never forgot that, and together they had ruled their own little slice of heaven in this forgotten corner of Dallas County ever since.
Inside the motel room, Gage knelt down beside the bloodstained carpet and mopped it as best he could, putting his back to the flimsy bureau, moving it along the wall toward the bathroom to hide the vast bulk of the mess. He clucked his tongue, satisfied with the camouflage of stains from other bygone accidents and crimes. The towel went into the trunk with Teuch's things, and Gage drove off into the night, tires roaring over the still-warm asphalt.
Out on Route 45, about twenty minutes and two counties to the south, Gage pulled off at a picnic area. He got out of his cruiser and rousted the lone trucker, who was stripped to his underwear and pulled over for the night, telling him he'd have to move on to the truck stop down in Corsicana. The running lights of the big rig hadn't even disappeared over the next rise before Gage had Teuch's body out on the curb. He dragged the young gangbanger by the armpits out into the scrub a ways where no one had any business being and flopped him down in the parched dirt.
Somewhere in the distance a coyote sniggered and then wailed in a high-pitched scream, the sound rolling endlessly across the flat land. A chill jiggered Gage's spine, only to be warmed by the metal curve of the hammer on the big pistol at his waist. They'd do a good job on the Mexican, the coyotes would. Gage took only one cursory glance around before drawing the pistol and taking aim at the center of the Mexican's forehead, standing well away so as not to spatter his pants with gore. Orange flame burst from the gun's barrel and the deafening roar rolled right back out across the same flat land, truncating the coyote's call. A hairy divot from the top of Teuch's head took off like a flushed snipe, disappearing into the shadows and drawing a chuckle up from Gage's belly.
The police chief returned to his car, whipping it around, gravel singing in a cloud of dust, and accelerating on down the highway. He gripped the wheel and let the surge push him back into the seat as the needle pegged 120. Gage was in no particular hurry to get away.
He just liked to drive fast.
CHAPTER 12
WHEN SHE GOT TO HER OFFICE, THE FIRST CALL CASEY MADE was to Norman Case, the district counsel at the Department of Homeland Security. Casey knew of him from his days as an assistant in the attorney general's office. He had the reputation of being a fair and decent lawyer and had won several high-profile drug trials for the federal government.
Casey called the office, gave her name to the secretary, and spilled out Isodora's story as quickly as she could, hoping to elicit some sympathy.
The secretary answered her with disinterest, suggesting she send a letter to the office.
Casey cleared her throat and said, "I don't know if you caught my name, Casey Jordan? I run a women's law clinic downtown, the Marcia Sales Clinic? We've been in the news."
Silence greeted her. Humiliation swelled up inside Casey's stomach.
"My client," Casey said, "if you could see her, they took her little girl and it's all a mistake and I'm trying to help her."
After a moment of silence, the secretary sighed and said, "Hang on."
Casey opened her clenched fist and beat the side of her leg with an open palm.
"Ms. Jordan?" said a man. "Norman Case. How can I help you?"
Casey explained Isodora's situation and said, "I think someone in your office must have mistaken her for someone else. She's undocumented, but she has no record. Her husband was killed in a hunting accident. The thing at Senator Chase's ranch."
"Rough," Case said. "I don't really know Chase, but you had to feel bad for him."
Casey recalled the pathetic image of the wildly popular senator talking at a press conference about the tragedy, tears streaming down his face, his broken voice almost impossible to understand.
"Me, too," she said. "But I feel even worse for the dead man's wife. She's the one I'm talking about. They took her right off the senator's ranch. You'd think after all that-"
"I doubt the senator even knows," Case said. "Some of the ICE people run things without a lot of cross talk. We just process what they bring us. I'll look into it for you. You know how it goes with these illegals. There's what? Twelve million of them? You can't blame the left hand for not knowing what the right is doing these days."
"I'm hoping you can release her," Casey said.
"The hearing is Monday," Case said.
"If she goes into the hearing and they think she's someone else," Casey said, "the judge isn't going to do anything outside the lines. Even if we can't get her set free, at least let's get her identity right and we get her to Hutto so she can be with her little girl. I'm hoping we can get it done before the weekend. She's just a baby."