"Where are we going?"
"You'll be all right," he said. "You'll be with your people."
Ten minutes later Gage got off the highway and went down another rural road. He turned off into a gated drive and stopped. A man wearing jeans and a cowboy hat and carrying a machine gun walked up out of the culvert and spoke in a low voice to Gage before unlocking the arm of the gate and swinging it open. Nelly jammed a knuckle into her mouth, stifling a cry. They jounced along the rutted track and around a bend, and came to a stop in a cloud of dust before a tractor trailer.
They got out to the sound of crickets and the low whine of the big truck's engine. Diesel fumes mixed with the dust, choking her. Gage reached for her arm. Nelly screamed, winced, and turned away, but he got hold and she felt the thick fingers clamp down.
"You're all right," he said, lifting her nearly off her feet and propelling her to the back of the truck, his words hardly betraying the strain from his effort. "You're just gonna take a little ride."
Her feet skimmed the dirt, kicking up gravel as Gage marched her the length of a rusted orange container. In the back, a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a thick beard swung open the doors, aiming a machine gun of his own inside. A laser beam of light from the scope stabbed the dark hole like a long red needle. A warm stench floated up out of the truck and Nelly heard sniffling and groans and realized the floor of the trailer was littered with human forms.
The man in the flowered shirt stepped back and rested his gun on the ground. He took Nelly's other arm and together with Gage hoisted her up and into the back. She stumbled over one person and stepped on another, who shouted a halfhearted curse. Nelly's stomach heaved again, this time spouting a thin stream of vomit that her hands couldn't completely contain. The smell of her own filth lost itself in the pervasive stench. She spun to see Gage and the other man swinging shut the metal doors. The latch clanged home.
The truck's brakes hissed and shrieked, and the container of human beings lurched forward, slowly gaining speed.
CHAPTER 26
JOSe LEFT HIS TRUCK A GOOD BIT UP THE ROAD FROM THE WORKERS' entrance to the ranch, taking care to drive it well into the scrub along the embankment of the bridge that crossed the Trinity. From the backseat of his truck he removed a backpack that held night-vision goggles, a powerful flashlight, a good hunting knife, a rain poncho, and a couple of packages of dried nuts. He hoisted the pack and climbed out onto the road, hiking back toward the entrance, but plunging in through the scrub to avoid the gates and come out on the drive far enough up the way to avoid the camera.
Using the GPS, he navigated the dirt roads until he found the hillside and stopped for a moment to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow. Up in the field, his night vision revealed three deer peering down at him until he started up through the corn and they bolted into the woods. When he reached the place where Elijandro had died, he removed the goggles and flicked on the powerful flashlight. The search for the shell casing turned up nothing and he snorted in frustration, knowing that it had to be there.
"Unless," he said aloud, finishing the sentence with the thought that Gage or the senator might have taken the shell for a reason. The question was, for what reason?
Jose thought about Gage's description of Elijandro's head injury, brains all over. He took out his cell phone to make a call and saw that he'd missed three calls from Casey and that she'd left a message. Instead of calling her back, he dialed Ken Trent.
"How'd it go?" Trent asked.
"You said it, a weird cat. He was fine, actually. I wanted to ask you about turkey hunting."
"Season ends tomorrow, so you'll have to wait till next year if you're wanting to go with me."
"I'm fine with a Butterball from Kroger," Jose said. "I wanted to know what kind of gun you use, what kind of shells."
Somewhere nearby in the black woods, a rabbit screamed like a dying banshee. Jose jumped.
"What the hell is that?" Trent asked.
"I think a rabbit," Jose said. "Coyote must have got it."
"Where are you?"
"Murder site," Jose said, "accident site, whatever."
"In the woods?"
"The senator's got some spread."
"Gage isn't with you."
"No, just me. I circled back."
The line went quiet. Jose knew how his old boss liked to size up pictures in his mind.
"I use six shot for turkeys," Trent finally said. "HEVI-Shot. Lots of people shoot fours."
"What are those? Pellets the size of a pea?" Jose asked, never one himself for anything more than a handgun.
"More like a BB, a little smaller even."
"How tight is that pattern at about twenty feet?"
"Fit in the palm of your hand."
"Would that punch a hole in a man's skull?"
"Make a nice divot."
"A hole?"
"Maybe. You'd have to talk to Vern Thomson about ballistics."
"It wouldn't punch through the skull and out the other side, though, would it?" Jose asked.
"Doubt that."
"Would a shell casing say what kind of load you had?" Jose asked.
"The number's right on the side," Trent said, "printed on the plastic."
"I appreciate it. One more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Would you ever hunt a turkey using a slug instead of shot?"
"Not unless you were happy with a Butterball," Trent said. "You gotta hit them in the head or the neck. Their feathers are so layered, they're like Kevlar. Slug's for a deer. You gonna tell me what's going on?"
"Long story," Jose said. "I'll buy you a beer. Gotta go. Thanks."
Jose hung up and began a different search.
He positioned himself in front of the tree where the senator had supposedly shot from and aimed the flashlight in the direction of the stump where Elijandro had sat. Beyond it, a big silver beech rose up on one side with what looked like a younger oak-about eight inches in diameter-on the other. Beyond them yawned the pitch black of the open field, where the turkey had supposedly been.
As he stepped over the stump, Jose shone his light down into the scuffed-up leaves and crouched. Softly he pushed aside the leaves, one at a time, filling the night air with a damp loamy smell, until he found some purple rubbery matter that he suspected was gore. He poked at it with his fingertip, verifying it to be more than clotted blood. Gage hadn't exaggerated.
Shining the beam, he stalked over to the beech tree and ran his hands over its smooth gray skin. He found nothing. He bent to the small oak with its rougher bark, went over it once, and then again more carefully. His fingers passed over a rough brown patch in a jagged crease. He took out his knife and poked the tip into the fibrous web, digging in half an inch before the point struck something metal. With his heart pounding he stepped back, shone his light, and took a photo of the tree's trunk with his phone, closing in to take a second one up close. He dug around what he now realized was a hole until the warped copper of the shotgun slug was exposed.
He took another picture, then dug the rest of it out, taking care to dig the knife into the tree and not the slug itself in order to preserve its integrity. When he had it free, he examined it under the beam of light, turning it over, but seeing nothing he could pinpoint. He fished a plastic Baggie from the backpack, dropped the slug in, and returned the bag to his pack.
Jose looked around, breathing hard. His heart pounded out a quick beat inside his chest. He knew that if the slug had passed through Elijandro's head, even though the human eye couldn't know it, a forensics lab could.
CHAPTER 27
JOSe'S BLOOD COOLED AS THE HIGHWAY SNAKED INTO THE HIGH-rises of downtown Dallas. He thought about Casey and checked his phone, saw the calls he'd missed, and dialed her up.
"Are you okay?" Jose asked. "I saw you called."