Isodora thrashed and struggled and spit at the wife's face.
Through her rage, Isodora was aware that two women with short hair climbed out of the van and spoke to the Iceman about the baby. The two took Paquita from the woman agent and put her into the van, snapping her into a car seat in the back and driving off while Isodora howled from the cage in the back of the ICE agents' car. As the van disappeared over the hilltop, Isodora felt her throat constrict and she choked and gagged and banged her head against the glass until everything went black.
CHAPTER 4
CASEY SAT DOWN BEHIND HER DESK AND REMOVED A FILE from her briefcase. Jose dug into a beaten leather valise, pulling out several files of his own, then holding up one like a card for her to see and placing it on the desk before he sat down.
"Statements," he said.
"Statements?"
"Telling what kind of guy our dead coyote really was. And pictures."
"Of?"
"Rosalita wasn't the first woman this asshole tried to leave in the middle of nowhere," he said.
Casey opened the file, looked at the pictures, and quickly closed it.
"Can we connect him to this?" she asked.
"Had an old friend run some DNA," Jose said. "He was a randy little son of a bitch."
"That's not even funny," she said.
"I didn't mean it to be," he said, nodding toward the file. "There's six. Just the ones they found. I got persuasive with one of his mules. Word is that he'd peel off one lucky girl for every trip he made."
"Which is?"
Jose shrugged. "Twenty, thirty a year. He's been in business five. He picked them up at the bus stop in Nuevo Laredo and took them downriver where he kept a shitty boat, shuttled them over, and took them on a fifty-mile hike through the hills."
Casey flipped open the file again and stared for a moment, the blackened skin clinging to the bones like mold. She gritted her teeth. "Too bad he died so quick."
"A.357 hollow point tends to end things pretty abruptly," he said. "But even if it was quick, you gotta admit getting your balls shot off is no way to go. Can you get the DA to drop the charges against Rosalita with this?"
"If she were a sorority girl from Tech?" Casey said, closing the file for a second time and shoving it away from her. "No problem."
"I didn't see her wearing no pin when I spoke to her."
"Exactly," Casey said, shaking her head. "He'll offer us a manslaughter plea."
Jose whistled low. "Five to seven."
"Instead of the steak dinner we owe her for cleaning up that garbage. If I have to, I'll go to trial."
"Like in the movie?" he asked.
Casey blushed. In her past life she'd represented a law professor who turned out to be a homicidal maniac. The whole thing made national news. She got him off at trial, then helped to nail him when she learned the truth of his guilt. Hollywood got ahold of it, and the story ended up as a Lifetime Movie of the Week with Susan Lucci playing Casey.
"About the only thing real in that thing was me being a damn good trial lawyer," she said, unable to meet his big brown eyes.
"Hey, I like how you take all this stuff personally."
Casey studied his face, looking for the joke.
"I mean it," he said. "You live this stuff."
"I wish you could've seen our old offices," Casey said, looking around, her eyes resting briefly on the plywood slab and the diesel-smudged window above.
"In that glass tower on Commerce?" he said, shaking his head. "I met you there, remember?"
"You never saw the office, though," Casey said.
She'd met Jose getting off the elevator. Instead of getting in, he followed her into the lobby, asking if he could buy her coffee. When she asked him his business there, he told her he was an investigator for one of the attorneys on the tenth floor. She replied that she'd have coffee if he'd track down a witness for her in a case where a young woman was being prosecuted for possession of drugs, just for being in the backseat of a car driven by her older brother. When Jose called with the witness's new number and address by the end of the day, he asked to take her to dinner instead. She agreed, but only if he'd make it a working dinner.
"That place was for divorce lawyers and ambulance chasers," Jose said.
"I'm just thinking about the dignity of these people," Casey said, angling her head toward the door.
"These people-my people, I guess-don't need leather and brass for dignity," Jose said. "Give them a job and a paycheck and they'll hold their heads high."
"I didn't mean it that way," she said. "The place was nice, that's all."
"And hard to get to," Jose said. "Bet they never stacked up outside the door on Commerce Street. I'm sorry about the grease and gasoline smell, but this is the right place for your work. I'd have to charge if you were still in that glass tower."
"And we'd get about half as much done without you," she said. "So, it's all good."
"One thing is not so good," he said, reaching into his briefcase, leaning forward, and laying a second file down on the desk. "That guy you got the restraining order against?"
"For Soledad Mondo?"
"Yeah, her husband, that guy, Domingo Mondo," Jose said. "Just keep your eye out."
"For what?"
"I'm sure it's fine," Jose said, "but I leaned on him a little and there was something about him. I don't know. He didn't make a threat or anything like that, but he had a look. I'm sure it's just me being overcautious."
"Like he's going to come after me?"
"No. Just keep your eyes open. If you see him, or notice something funny, you call me. Don't worry about it. Just be smart. You still got that little.38 I gave you?"
Casey patted the desk drawer beside her knee.
Jose grinned and slapped his knees, rising as he said, "Speaking of smart, I got a little redheaded wife who's taking personal training to a whole new level, but they keep changing where they go so I can't ever get set up on them."
"Redhead?"
"Not red like yours," Jose said, scooping up his files and stuffing them into the valise. "The orange kind."
Casey touched her own hair and felt her cheeks warm.
"Thank you for the photos," she said.
"You'll make it up to me one day," he said, winking and drawing the bolt and letting himself out the back.
Casey went to the door to watch him go. As he climbed up into his F-350, she felt a reply bubbling up from the knot in her stomach. She even opened her mouth to speak and he paused with his hand on the truck door, but the words tangled themselves into a snag and hung up in her throat.
So she waved goodbye.
The throng pressed in on her. A tide of human misery and injustice seeking asylum. Casey wished she were God and could make all their problems disappear. Women bound to men like slaves so they could get green cards. Women working for poverty wages with infants who needed lifesaving operations. Women hiding from abusive husbands, desperate for the protection of a law whose effectiveness worked on a sliding scale dependent on wealth. Women robbed of their virginity, their dignity, and their savings by a race of criminal opportunists without conscience or fear of judicial retribution.
At eleven-fifty she ushered a pregnant teenage girl-hoping for child support from the married executive of a large software company-out the door with promises of help. She thanked Tina and told her to take lunch. As Tina passed through, Casey saw Stacy marching toward her with a file. Before she could get her office door closed, Stacy jammed her foot between the door and the frame and barged in, closing it behind her.
"Wait," Stacy said. "One more."
"Give it to Sharon."
"She says she'll only see you."
"I've got a lunch and I've got the DA," Casey said, looking at her watch.
"Just one more."
"There's always one more," Casey said, rounding her desk and stuffing some files into her briefcase.
"Maria Delgado," Stacy said, slapping a hand on the desk. "You helped her older sister get away from some creep. She has another sister, younger. Her husband's dead. She's got a two-year-old baby, and they've got her in custody and the baby in some foster home."