Apache Country (39 page)

“Issa big deal, Davy,” she said, slapping her
thigh with her hand. “They got it all sewed up, all the right palms
greased, ev’body shtumm. They use the Ranch, Davy. They make ’em at
the Ranch. What ya thinka that?”

He was stunned. Boy’s Ranch was the largest
and most visible rehabilitation facility for young offenders in the
Pecos Valley. Some of the State’s most highly-respected civic
leaders were on its advisory board.

“Ha!” she said triumphantly. “Gotcha,
huh?”

“It would take a lot more than two of them to
keep the lid on something like that,” he said. “Big money. Who else
is in this?”

Alice shook her head. “You don’ wanna know,
kiddo,” she told him. “Stick your nose into that, you’ll wind up in
a hole inna desert.”

He changed tack. “Tell me about the German.
What’s he got to do with all this?”

She looked up sharply, her eyes full of
venom.

“That bassad,” she said venomously. “Might
think Joe’s a bassad, but he’s twenty times the bassad Joe is.”

“You know him?”

“Bassad, sure I know him. He’s the one brings
in the pickups.”

Easton frowned. “Pickups?”

“’s’what they call’m. Pickups. Pick ’em up,
move ’em on when they’re done with them.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, being
deliberately dense, hoping to keep her talking. “Pick who up
where?”

“Liss’n, ya wanna freshen my drink f’me?” she
said. She was too drunk to get up. She held out her glass and
simpered. “C’mon, be a sweetie, jussa li’l one, then you can come
sit by me and we’ll talk like we useta, ’kay?”

She patted the cushion beside her coyly. She
was so blasted he figured another one wasn’t going to make a lot of
difference. As long as she didn’t pass out on him before he found
out what he wanted to know. He took the glass from her hand and got
her another drink. She was staring blankly at the carpet when he
came back with it. She looked vaguely surprised, as though she had
forgotten he was there.

“You were telling me about the German,” he
said.

“Bassad,” she said automatically. “Disguss
me.”

She took a slug of bourbon and shivered as it
went down.

“You know his name?”

“Carl … uh, something,” she said blearily,
and hiccuped. “Works outa Juarez.”

Of course, he thought. Ciudad Juarez, just
across the border from El Paso, might have been invented for a
dirty business like this one. In the decade following the collapse
of the Colombian cartels, the international drug trade had moved to
Mexico and as a result, Juarez was now the murder capital of Latin
America. Gang executions were frequent, abductions and
disappearances commonplace, but with every branch of law
enforcement corrupted by drug gang bribes, there was little or no
impetus to investigate the murders, let alone the plight of the
desparecidas, the “disappeared ones.”

As well as being the fiefdom of the gang
lords, the city was also home to the continent’s largest industrial
estate, where American corporations took advantage of cheap labor,
low taxes and slack employment and environmental laws. Juarez’
three-hundred-and-fifty factories and assembly plants attracted a
constant stream of young men and women looking for work. If some of
them went missing every day – and it was a well-known fact they did
– nobody cared. In the larger context, hardly anyone except perhaps
the families of the missing would even notice. Pickups, he thought.
Even the word they used for their victims showed their
contempt.

“’s like a produshon line,” Alice mumbled.
“Jus’ arrest ’em on some phoney rap, put ’em in a car, thassit,
they’re on their way.”

Slowly it all dribbled out of her, like pus
from an infected wound. The German had half a dozen Juarez police
officers on his payroll. Boys or youths of the right age, mostly
illiterate and without any clear idea of their rights, were
“arrested” by these corrupt cops and told they were being taken to
a detention center which in fact was an abandoned police facility
at a place called Rancho de la Campana, about ten miles southwest
of the city. From there the desparecidas were handed over to
equally corrupt officers of the Border Patrol, La Migra as the
Mexicans called it, who herded them across the border like cattle
on the hoof. From El Paso the German transported them in
semi-trailers up to Boy’s Ranch in Riverside.

“Bring ‘m up here, put ‘m in special quarters
they got down there, away from the other kids,” Alice said. Her
eyes were glazed and her lips slack. “Fresh meat, they call ’m.
Later the other kids show them ... what they gotta do.”

“What if they refuse?”

“Ha!” she rasped scornfully. “Whaddaya think
they runnin’ down there, sonny, a freakin’ kinnergarten?”

“Don’t they try to get away?”

Alice lifted her head and looked at him,
something akin to pity and perhaps even closer to contempt in her
eyes. “’ss happened,” she said.

He stared at her. “And?”

No reply.

“And, and, and?” he said angrily.

“Whatcha freakin’ think?” she snapped.

“Are you saying someone killed them?”

“All I know is, iss taken care of, thass all
I’m sayin’,” she mumbled.

“Will you testify to what you’ve just told me
in court?”

Alice threw back her head and laughed
raucously, spilling some of her drink.

“Sure,” she said, her voice acid with
sarcasm. “Sure, tessify in court, earna thanks ’f a grateful
commun’ty. And then what, ha? No job, no money, no freakin hope.
Who’s gonna take care o’ me, ha? — the grateful freakin’
commun’ty?”

“If you agreed to testify I could get you
into a Witness Protection Program. I’d take care of you,
Alice.”

Her expression became sullen, hostile.

“Fuck that,” she said. “Fuck you. Fuck
everyone. You wanna be a hero, go ’head. Jus’ leave me out of it,
’kay? Jus’ … lea’ me ’lone, juss ...”

Her eyes closed and her head fell forward;
after a moment she started to snore. Easton went into the bedroom
and got a blanket which he draped over her, then put a cushion
behind her neck and pushed her back so she wouldn’t slide forward
off the chair. Then he let himself out of the house and drove away,
feeling soiled and sad.

Easton found a pay phone, stretched a Kleenex
over the mouthpiece and dialed SO. They told him Tom Cochrane was
on the swing shift and wouldn’t be on duty till afternoon. Deciding
not to tempt Providence by continuing to use the Camry, Easton
dumped it on a side street near the El Capitan school, and stole a
bicycle from one of the unlocked sheds there. Sorry, kid, he
thought as he pedaled away, my need is greater than yours. People
who would notice and remember a man on foot never even see a
bicycle rider go by.

Cochrane lived in an old four-bed, one and a
half bath house at the southern end of Missouri Avenue, between
Buena Vista and Chisum in the southwest quarter of town. Coasting
past the house without slowing down, Easton checked for signs of
surveillance: anyone on foot, vacant houses with maybe one
curtained upstairs window, an occupied car parked between
driveways, an unmarked van with tinted glass windows.

To be on the safe side he pedaled north as
far as McGaffey then turned, heading back the way he had come. As
he drew level with the house for the second time, Tom Cochrane came
out through the backyard gate and opened the door of his car. As he
did, Easton ran the bike up on to the sidewalk and coasted to a
stop behind the detective.

“Don’t turn around, Tom,” he said softly.

Cochrane froze, half in the car and half out.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “Easton?”

“K-Mart parking lot,” Easton said, and rode
off down the street before Cochrane could say anything else. Maybe
he was being watched, maybe not. It didn’t hurt to play safe. As he
got off the bike and slotted it into a rack, Cochrane turned into
the parking lot. Spotting Easton, he drove over and opened the
passenger door. Easton got in.

“You really are a piece of work, Chief,”
Cochrane said, shaking a cigarette out of the pack.

“You heard about Kuruk?” Easton said.

“It was all over the news like World War
Three. You and that goddamn Apache. What the hell happened?”

Easton told him everything: the helicopter
and the pursuit around Chimney Rock, the bright silver line of the
arrow flashing across the clearing, the astonished disbelief in
Mose Kuruk’s eyes.

Cochrane shook his head. “That’s nothing like
what was on TV,” he said. “According to the helicopter pilot, you
and Ironheel shot him down, then killed Kuruk and took off with
their guns. His co-pilot backed him up.”

“Anybody ask them what they were doing up
there in the first place?”

Cochrane nodded. “They claimed Kuruk told
them he was working with SO and asked them to spot for him, he had
an idea where you guys might be, but he needed backup.”

“SO confirmed that?”

“You know it,” Cochrane said. “And if you
don’t know it, Olin McKittrick called in the FBI. They took a
ten-man team to the Reservation to find you and Ironheel. Tore the
place apart. All sorts of hell broke loose. There was practically a
riot up there. Oh, and for your information I understand Ironheel’s
sister was, what is it the Feebs call it? “Comprehensively
interrogated,” but they let her go. Where is Ironheel, by the
way?”

“Still up in the mountains,” Easton said. “I
talked to him last night.”

“And he’s okay?”

“Is there some reason he wouldn’t be?”

Cochrane lifted a shoulder. “McKittrick was
on TV last night saying he expects to make an arrest in the next
forty eight hours. Again.”

“Interesting,” Easton murmured. “This time it
might even happen.”

“Say what?”

“Skip it,” Easton said. “Now, what did you do
with those casts and photos you took at Garcia Flat?”

“Safety deposit box, Sunwest Bank,” Cochrane
said. “No one can get at them.”

“A DA with a search warrant can,” Easton
said. “Who knows they’re there besides you and me?”

“You think I’m nuts?” Cochrane said crossly.
“Nobody knows. Bad enough I ever went out there and made them.”

“You said they matched the tires of Apodaca’s
trail bike? That puts him at the scene.”

“His bike, anyway,” Cochrane conceded. “But
we’ve got no way of proving when. Produce the casts in court, all
he has to do is say, sure, I went up there later to have another
look around, now go prove I didn’t.”

“He’s dirty through and through, Tom. He
killed Robert Casey.”

“You told me that,” Cochrane said. “But you
never explained why.”

“Okay,” Easton said. “Apodaca and McKittrick
are involved in some kind of syndicated sex ring kidnapping young
Mexicans for immoral purposes and to use them in pornographic
films.”

“Mexicans from Mexico?”

Easton nodded. “Juarez. They call them
pickups. They bring them up here to Riverside first.”

“First? Listen, slow down, will you?”
Cochrane said. “This is coming at me too fast.”

Easton slowed down, explained it as simply as
he could, from the discovery of the video through the killings at
Garcia Flat, the murder of Weddle, all of it. When he stopped
talking, Cochrane made an aggrieved sound.

“You’ve been on the run, for Chrissake,” he
said exasperatedly. “How the hell did you manage to find all this
out?”

“Better you don’t know, Tom,” Easton said.
“Just trust me, the porno movies are made at Boy’s Ranch.”

The detective shook his head. “You know, when
you said a syndicate, I thought, yeah, it figures,” Cochrane said
wearily. “But how does a syndicated sex ring get to use a Young
Offenders rehab facility as a cover?”

“Don’t know yet, Tom,” Easton said. “But
you’ve got to admit it’s pretty damn clever. Last place in the
world anyone would look. And as secure as a bank vault.”

There were three kinds of sex rings, they
both knew that. The simplest was the solo sex ring which involved
one adult perpetrator and multiple victims, where no other adult
was involved. The second type was known as a transition ring, in
which the victims – and pornography, usually computerized,
featuring their activities in high definition color – were
exchanged between adults, usually with a money settlement.

What they were dealing with here, however,
was the third and most pernicious variety, the syndicated sex ring,
which involved a secret society of adult offenders and any number
of victims, all of whom were aware of – and in many cases fed on –
the participation of the others.

“There was a case in Oregon,” Cochrane said.
“I read about it in the FBI bulletin. This phony clergyman set up a
shelter for runaways, nobody had any idea what he was really doing.
He sold more than a quarter of a million photographs inside a year,
sixty thousand bucks worth. And the Feebs reckoned that was just
the tip of the iceberg.”

“What do you know about hebephiles?” Easton
asked him.

“I know it’s a term they use to classify the
age of the victims. Pedophiles like small children. Hebephiles
prefer male teenagers, and so on. I know I loathe everything to do
with the whole dirty business, the way they ... what they do.” he
said angrily. “My teeth ache just thinking about it.”

A syndicated hebephile ring was run like a
production line in a factory. At any given moment its hapless
victims were being recruited, seduced, dumped. It was a big-money
business. Its by-products included photographs, audio tapes, films,
CDs and DVDs featuring the victims in cruelly graphic sexual
situations. These were sold over the Internet or by advertising in
‘specialist’ magazines, or circulated by electronic or snail mail,
using accommodation address cut-outs and box-number postal drops,
often in foreign countries, simultaneously facilitating
money-laundering and rendering tracing almost impossible.