“The reports don’t say.”
“Did Hinton go there regularly?”
“I don’t know.”
Will’s frustration grew. It was hard seeing Shel, who was normally one of the most together human beings on the face of the planet, torn up over what he was supposed to do. Will wanted desperately to do something to help.
“Was Gant there that night?”
“Yes. Cantrell’s statement confirms that.”
“Did Hinton and Gant know each other?”
“There’s no indication,” Estrella responded.
“What happened?”
“Statements of other witnesses in the bar that night confirm that Hinton left in the company of Victor Gant.”
“What about Tyrel McHenry?”
“McHenry isn’t mentioned in these reports.”
“Does anyone know where Gant went that night?”
“Not that Ramsey ever discovered.”
Will pushed up from the chair and looked out through the window. The ranch looked peaceful-except for the sheriff’s deputies walking around outside. Will imagined this had been a great place for someone like Shel McHenry to grow up. There was plenty of hunting and fishing, and the ranch work was physically demanding. For a moment he wondered what Shel would have been like as a boy.
Then Will thought about how estranged from his children Don had said Tyrel McHenry was. The man’s past, whatever had truly happened, couldn’t have been easy.
“There is something we can follow up on,” Estrella said.
Will turned to her.
“A few of Victor Gant’s cronies are mentioned in Ramsey’s reports,” Estrella told him. “Since they’re all ex-military personnel, I was able to pull them up.” She laid a computer printout from a portable printer on top of the table. “Six men besides Gant are named. Two of them were KIA in Vietnam. One went MIA there. Another was killed in a 1997 shootout with the Atlanta Police Department while riding with the Purple Royals. The fifth, Michael Wiley, is still riding with Victor Gant. We tagged him as Fat Mike.”
“What about the sixth man?”
Estrella pointed to a name on the page. “PFC Richard McGovern was hit by a Bouncing Betty land mine in 1971 and got mustered out on a medical discharge. He’s living in Philadelphia on a military pension.”
Will looked at the young soldier’s face on the monitor. Back when the picture had been taken, McGovern had been a young man with angular features and hard eyes. He didn’t look civilized even in his dress uniform.
“McGovern was there at the bar the night Hinton went missing?” Will asked.
“Yes.”
“Where did he spend his military career?”
Estrella checked. “He was assigned to Gant’s unit for seven of his eight years served.”
“Did you background him?”
“I did.” Estrella pulled up another file. “Stateside, McGovern was arrested for selling drugs six times from the age of eighteen to twenty. He entered the military voluntarily to avoid jail time.”
“But then he re-upped.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think McGovern became an overnight patriot,” Will said.
“I doubt that.”
“Do you have a current address for McGovern?”
“The military sends him a check every month.”
“Get me the address.”
48
›› International Border
›› El Paso, Texas
›› 1942 Hours (Central Time Zone)
Perspiration trickled down Tyrel McHenry’s back as he sat in the back of the cab in the line leading to the border patrol checkpoints. Evening was settling over the area. The eastern skies had turned dark.
Tyrel’s eyes burned from fatigue. He hated wearing a ball cap instead of the Stetson he’d worn for so long. But he’d had to wear a hat. His forehead had a demarcation as clear as the Texas-Mexico border from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez. He’d never been outside the house without his hat, and his forehead would have been unevenly tanned. People would have noticed and remembered him, and he couldn’t afford that.
He’d also dyed his hair black, something his vanity would never have allowed him to do had he not been forced into hiding. With his weathered tan, he figured he could pass as a Mexican in time. That was the plan anyway. After today he didn’t intend to ever step foot on American soil again.
He didn’t deserve to. He hadn’t deserved that honor in over forty years.
“Senor,” the cab driver called.
“Yeah,” Tyrel answered.
“Do you have your papers ready, senor?”
“I do.”
The cabbie was a round-faced man in his forties. The taxi smelled like cheap soap; a figurine of Jesus stood on the dashboard.
“That’s a good thing, senor. These border officials, they are very proud of their paperwork.”
Tyrel had gotten rid of his papers. When he’d first returned to the States after leaving Vietnam, he’d planned to relocate to Mexico if worse came to worst, and back then identification wasn’t required to pass back and forth between Mexico and Texas.
Relocate, Tyrel snorted to himself. Why, listen to you, you old fool. This ain’t no relocation. You’re jackrabbiting to keep your tail together. Like a coward. If you had any pride, you’d have let the Army do what they needed to do forty years ago.
But he hadn’t been able to do that. Back then he’d just been too afraid. Then he’d come home to find Amanda waiting for him and felt like he deserved something good for himself. Then Shelton had been born and Don after that. Once he’d been on that road, he couldn’t turn himself in. By the time he’d gotten strong enough to accept what he would have had to do, he would have been abandoning his family. The military and the government didn’t help out families of a murdering soldier. Tyrel wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but he was pretty sure about that.
After 9/11 and the tight security that went up overnight on people traveling out of and into the United States, Tyrel had known he’d need papers to get over into Juarez if the time ever came. Working with migrant laborers and other men he’d known had given Tyrel the name of a man who could falsify papers. It had cost Tyrel a lot to get a good set.
He didn’t know how good the papers were because he’d never used them before. But he was about to find out.
“So, senor,” the taxi driver said, “your trip to Juarez, is it for business or pleasure?”
“Business,” Tyrel said, hoping the man didn’t keep talking to him. He just wanted to get across the border and be gone.
After riding out, he’d freed his horse. Given time, the mare would wander back to the barn. He knew that Don, and Shel for that matter, would care for the livestock. Three miles of hiking had brought Tyrel to Bobby Foyt’s place. Foyt and his family were out of town on a last-chance vacation before school started back.
Tyrel had hot-wired the old Chevrolet pickup in the garage, left money for it in Bobby’s barbecue grill because Bobby didn’t let many days go by without grilling, and driven down to El Paso secure in the knowledge that no one would know the truck was missing for several days at least.
He’d stopped and eaten once outside of El Paso. The television had carried a baseball game and the local news. That was when he found out about the manhunt the sheriff had unleashed to look for him. Tyrel had gone into the bathroom with the hair color and come out with black hair. Then he’d gotten back on the road.
In El Paso, he bought a few things to carry across the border in a suitcase, courtesy of the bargain bins at the Salvation Army. He’d have been able to buy anything he needed in Juarez, or wherever he finally decided to light, but going across the border empty-handed would have drawn attention.
“What kind of business?” the cabbie asked.
“Construction.” Tyrel knew enough about that line of work that he could pass for a foreman. He’d learned a lot about woodworking and building when he’d built the ranch house and barn. Then there had been various other projects with neighbors over the years.
“Constuction is a fine business,” the cabbie said. “I have done construction work. My father was a cabinetmaker. A very fine cabinetmaker.”