Now, he hovered over the scene. Since no one had bolted from of the burgundy pickup truck, he scouted the field below him for a clearing in which to land. The whirling blades blew a round circle directly under him on the wet surface. The sagebrush plants that grew around porous lava rock, bent sideways, as they tried to avoid the violence of the aircraft’s turbulence. Not more than fifty feet from the stolen truck where the FBI agent carried on an investigation, he saw a dark spot on the ground nestled between two dead sagebrush plants. He knew just what it was and landed the chopper in the field, twenty feet from the body.
He switched off the rotors and jumped to the ground. The rain had turned the earth into sludge and it squished around his boots as he trudged across the field toward the asphalt road. As he stepped on to the pavement, he noticed that the agent-in-charge was bent forward with her head and shoulders in the rear-seat compartment of the truck.
He stopped just behind the agent and said, “You need to see this.”
Angela Hawk stood and turned toward his voice. He found himself addressing a woman in her mid-thirties with high cheek bones and a beautiful ruddy complexion. Strands of long black hair, the color of her damp jacket, had become rustled under her baseball hat, and lay tossed and twisted on her shoulders.
“See what,” she said with a small black flashlight in her hand.
He pointed toward the field on the opposite side of the road. “Over here. I spotted it from the air.”
“Agent Hawk,” she said, as she followed him. “FBI.”
“Captain Parker, ma’am,” he said and flashed a broad grin. “US Border Patrol. I guess we have the same boss. This way, please.”
They arrived at the body and Angela squatted beside the man. “This was an assassination,” she said as she rolled the dead man’s head back and forth to examine the bullet’s entry wound. “They’re taunting us.”
When Patrolman Parker had interrupted her, Angela had been examining what looked like fresh blood on the floor of the truck. Against the dark carpet it didn’t appear to be in enough quantity to be a gunshot wound, but rather more like a cut bled out for a while. They would test it against all known donors in this case, yet she was pretty sure they would match the DNA to the toothbrush Detective Caesar Garcia of the LAPD had taken from Natalie’s apartment for comparison. This meant she had still been among the living within the last hour but the only reason Angela could see that Natalie had been kept alive was because the perps wanted her for their sex toy. With discoverable bodies in their wake, they were getting careless—or is this a dare? If they chose to get rid of Natalie, they would have no qualms about dumping her where she could be found.
She stared at the crumpled remains of a man in the sagebrush and felt a deep sadness begin to build. Too many victims over time had formed a reservoir of unspent tears and now even though they threatened, she reinforced the spillway. He probably had a family and friends who won’t understand. She felt his back pockets, found a wallet and opened it to his driver’s license.
“Jose` Osorio,” she said as she glanced at the picture. “He turned twenty-six on his birthday last month.”
She flipped through the wallet, and found pictures of a baby and a little girl on the lap of a cute young Mexican woman. With a shake of her head, she took one last look at the body, pushed the sorrow down and let anger rise in its place.
Rudy didn’t know where Tony had gone, so he decided to build a fire. He knew he couldn’t make it big enough to heat the whole barn, as that might cause unwanted attention from a passerby outside, but as it was still daylight, he thought he could get away with one just big enough to give two people reasonable warmth.
He gathered the loose combustible material from the barn floor—remnants of the gate and fallen pieces of the decayed roof—and arranged them in a clearing in the corral. Since Tony was a chain-smoker, he went back to the car to see if there were any matches to be found. There were none. He searched around the inside as best he could in the dark, found the trunk lever and pulled it. The lid popped open.
He stepped around to the opening and looked inside. In the gloom, his hand bumped something cold and steel. He located the lid, opened a toolbox, and by feel found a flashlight. He flipped the switch. A course metal file and a screwdriver lay in the top tray. The jute rope he and Tony had used to open the barn door was still tied to the bumper, so he made quick work; removed it and dragged it to the side of the car with the gas tank fill pipe. With just enough room to feed the end of the rope down the throat, he pushed it through the opening until he heard the splash of liquid. Then, he forced another three feet down the spout. Satisfied, he pulled the rope out and took his tools to the pile of wood he had assembled.
Natalie by this time had been able to sit up and clean her nose enough with Rudy’s sweatshirt that she could breathe easier. She found some potato chips, bread and a jar of peanut butter in the bag Rudy had left her. She rinsed her hands with water from a bottle Rudy had left and used her finger to spread the peanut butter on a slice of bread. She licked the peanut butter off her finger. The best thing I’ve had ever tasted, she thought. As soon as it hit her tongue, she realized just how food deprived she had been and gorged the sandwich into her mouth. She chased it down with the bottled water, but it wasn’t enough. She grabbed a handful of chips as Rudy returned to the coral and watched him clear a space in front of her.
He took the gasoline soaked end of the rope, coiled it in the center of the opening, and tossed the remainder off to one side. Natalie caught his eye as he looked toward the pile of loose hay where she sat. He looked away, tossed several handfuls of the hay into the space in front of her, and added some of the roof fragments he had collected. With the file next to the rope, he stroked the screwdriver over the rough surface with a brisk rubbing motion. Only seconds passed before a spark flew out and the rope burst into flames. He laid the hay and kindling against the rope. The fire began to consume it. As the flames grew, he stacked the broken planks and framing so they too would catch.
Within a couple of minutes, Natalie could feel the heat begin to warm her legs and hands.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
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Rights Reserved
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