“Let me see,” Talancón says, flicking her fingers on the keyboard, scrolling up and down, reading and rereading the information, finally clicking on the picture to enlarge the image. “There’s gray hair dye inside.” She suddenly frowns. “Why does it say to contact Omaha PD?”
“She’s been missing for years. It’s routine with missing people.” She nods. “I’ll get my people on it. Except...”
“Yes?”
“If I deliver this, how do I know I’m safe?”
“Safe?” she says. “You mean, that you’ll stay alive?”
“Yes.”
“There are suitcases inside the house.” Not answering my question. “We’ll stuff them with clothes; when we get to Tucson, we’ll go to an all-night drugstore, buy bathroom things, whatever else is handy. We’ll buy carry-on bags, at the airport we’ll get newspapers, everything normal. Then all three of us will buy coach tickets and check the luggage. “
“First things first,” I say.
“Now what?”
“I want to call the Sedona sheriff’s department. I want officers to protect my family. You won’t do this for me, I do nothing for you.”
“Call them,” she orders Rey, then stands six inches from my face. “Okay. I give you the guarantee. Don’t push on me anymore, señora. Now get busy.”
Her Rolex chronometer reads just under four hours. I call Lovitta, direct her to the website JaneJohnDoe.com, and give her the name I’ve chosen.
“You’ve got three hours plus,” I say. “Then all the documents have to be at the Tucson airport. You know me, Lovitta. Serious I seldom get. So now I say to you...”
Another of our message codes. My heart pounding while she works it through until she suddenly gasps.
“Ah,” she says. “Don’t worry. Tag, you’re it.”
Less than three hours later, Rey slings four suitcases into the backseat of the Ford pickup and starts the engine. I’m sandwiched between him and the remodeled Talancón. Hair shorter and grayer, Talancón wears a yellow sundress, a light cotton shawl across her bare neck and shoulders, an iPod hanging around her neck.
We drive north, few cars on the road, but the Mexican produce trucks already headed up from Nogales. Predawn light on the desert, the sun rising past mountains to the east. Behind my right shoulder, loose gray clouds, the promise of an early monsoon coming up from Mexico. We drive in silence to Valencia Road, turn east, and ten minutes later leave the pickup in the short-term parking lot.
Inside the terminal, Talancón quickly scans the departure boards and heads us to the American Airlines ticket counter. No problems picking up a waiting envelope containing her documents and three round-trip tickets to Chicago, no problems collecting our boarding passes. A quick trip inside the airport store for carry-on bags, mixed nuts, two newspapers, the latest People and Newsweek magazines, and some beef jerky. At security, we all take off our shoes, drop everything in the X-ray buckets.
“Boarding pass, please,” the TSA man says to Talancón.
“Sure,” she replies with a smile.
Through the checkpoint, moving toward the departure gate, twenty-seven minutes to boarding time. We buy water, then Talancón points at three seats in the waiting area amidst other passengers, mostly seniors, all sitting as far away as they can from a mother and baby.
“Oh, come on,” I complain. “I’ve got a fierce headache. This tension, this, all of this, it’s just, I feel sick. Let’s sit over there, away from that squalling baby.”
“Sure,” Talancón says. “Why not?”
I move slowly, hands massaging my temples as I drop into a seat facing away from the security checkpoint. Talancón hesitates, then sits beside me and motions Rey to sit across from us. I crack the seal on my water bottle, drink from the nipple, then unscrew it and drink half the bottle.
“The list,” I say.
“I’ll give it to you in Chicago.”
“Now,” I say as lightly as I can against my tension. “I just need to see it.”
She snaps open her handbag, passes four pages to me, handwritten on legal paper. I make a rough count. Well over a hundred major meth dealers, all across the state, twenty-seven on the Navajo rez alone.
Rey’s eyes suddenly open wide at something behind me and I drop my water bottle, liquid spilling across my lap and onto Talancón’s shoes. Snorting angrily, she bends over to brush off the water and I leap out of the seat and run sideways. Talancón’s quick to react, half rising to chase me before a green-uniformed Border Patrol guard raps a handgun against her head. Talancón staggers before two other BP guards batter her to the floor and handcuff her.
“You’ve made a bad mistake,” Talancón says to me in a hiss.
“I’m your biggest mistake,” I shoot back.
She doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“You don’t know computers,” I say. “You knew what to ask for, but you didn’t know why I chose that legend.” She shakes her head rapidly, trying to clear the fog, her eyes alert, half-narrowed, menacing. “Judith Dunnigan Fletcher. You didn’t ask me why she disappeared.”
Talancón is very, very puzzled, suddenly very, very afraid.
“She murdered her entire family. Embezzled several hundred thousand dollars from her corporation. And just disappeared.”
“Where is she now?” Talancón croaks.
“Right here,” I say, inches from her face. I rip out her wallet, open it to her brand-new, platinum-grade driver’s license with her photo and new name. “And here’s your new U.S. passport. Judith Dunnigan Fletcher. Plano, Texas.”
“I’m not her,” she protests. A strong surge of passengers floods by, exiting an American gate. She bolts to her feet, shrugging off deputies, tries to run and blend with the passengers.
Two suited men block her way, grasp at her arms, fighting to contain her manic energy while holding her subdued.
“Meet Jackson Caller, U.S. Marshal,” I say. “Here to take you to Texas where you’ll quickly be tried for murder.”
“I’m a Mexican national,” she announces boldly. Still a tigress. “I can prove that in any court. The documents are fake.”
“Meet Jack Bob Deeter, U.S. State Department,” I say. “He’ll verify that your U.S. passport is absolutely, entirely authentic. These aren’t counterfeit IDs. I arranged for real paper.”
“You arrogant whore,” she hisses. “You’ve killed me.”
“You threatened my daughter,” I say. “My daughter. She’s my life — you threatened my life. No longer. No more. We’re done.”
“When I’m free,” she shouts back over her shoulder, “when I prove who I really am, I’ll come for you!”
I figure I’ve got at least a year before she beats our legal system. By then, I’ll be lost myself, adrift on the Navajo rez with a new name and a new life.
Lame Elk
by Leonard Schonberg
Ashland, Montana
Lame Elk awoke suddenly. He knew he had been dreaming. Now he tried to catch the dream before it disappeared down the dark hole dreams escape to when you’re not fast enough to catch them. For a few moments he almost had it. Then it was gone.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and the bilious taste told him he was going to be sick. He rolled off the cot onto the cement floor. Propped on his hands and knees in the darkness, he retched, the dry heaves tightening his abdomen like a fist. Gasping for breath, he fell onto his side, then pushed himself into a sitting position. Assaulted by the stink of his vomit-encrusted clothes, he forced himself to breathe through his mouth even though it made the dryness worse.