Chapter 20
We left the FOB and headed east, using the GPS and a pin given to us by the CBP supervisor. On the console between us was a set of printouts, the best pictures Chet could scavenge of the vehicle: a dirt-brown Crown Vic circa the early 2000s.
The road curved and soon we were driving right along the border fence, passing some crossing point that had a CBP outpost in the form of a trailer next to it.
I said, “Looks to be about twenty miles.”
She nodded, then started fiddling with the radio, saying, “We should have paid extra for the Sirius stations.”
I laughed and said, “Pretty fast thinking with that FLETC line.”
She grinned at me and said, “Well, I knew if push came to shove you were going to try to come up with some BS on the fly, forcing me to try to keep up. I figured it would be better if at least one of us bothered to develop the cover a little bit.”
I said, “Touché,” because that’s exactly what I was doing.
She said, “What are we going to do if we find the car? Go to the reservation police and ask them about it?”
I said, “I don’t know. Let’s see what we find first. Maybe I’ll throw this badge around a little.”
“That’s not a real badge here.”
“They don’t know that.”
“No, I mean even if itwasa real badge, it holds no weighthere.”
“Well, let’s see what happens.”
We passed by a couple of trailers, then crossed a dirt road with dilapidated row houses of cinderblock snaking down it. We kept going and came upon the first modern structure I’d seen—a rec center with a ballfield, swimming pool, and a Santa Fe–style building that appeared to be the newest construction within two hundred miles.
We drove by it, the wind causing dust devils to swirl in the baseball field, then passed a gas station and a convenience store. We went by a Catholic church offset from the road, and then were on open highway again, the desert extending out left and right.
I looked at the GPS and said, “Whoa. That was it. That’s the town.”
She slowed down and said, “That wasn’t a town. It was a couple of buildings.”
“Well, according to this, that was the town.”
She pulled over, turned around, and we went back, this time much more slowly. We reached the church, and it looked deserted. In fact, the entire place looked deserted.
We kept going, and I noticed signs of life. Someone was pumping fuel at the gas station, eyeballing us. Jennifer continued driving and we passed the convenience store, a sign above it saying, “Menagers Dam Groceries.” Next to it was another sign proclaiming, “Rainy’s Bar and Grill,” with an arrow pointing to the grocery store entrance. Out front were two pickup trucks. I noticed neither had a license plate, so maybe the CBP wasn’t bullshitting me about the Crown Vic.
We went past the grocery, and in between the pickups, hidden from our earlier angle, was our vehicle. Or at least what appeared to be our vehicle.
I’d already studied the picture from Chet, looking for anything identifiable, and had noticed that the rear bumper was dinged on the passenger side. Something had hit it, or someone had backed into something at one time or another, leaving a crack and a triangle of plastic missing.
I said, “Pull into the convenience store.”
She did, and I got out, walking to the trucks. I went by the first one,glanced down at the car in between, and saw the clipped bumper. The car matched.
I went back to Jennifer and said, “That’s it.”
“So what now?”
“Let’s go inside and just ask. Maybe this won’t be that hard. All we want to do is talk to the man who owns it. Maybe not being reservation police will work in our favor if we tell him we don’t give a crap about anything illegal he’s doing.”
“What if he’s with the guys who killed Marley?”
“I don’t think that’s the case. It’s too much of a stretch to say an Indian from the TO went to Utah, killed Marley, freed the Ghost and came back here. I’m having problems believing it was a biker gang, but aNative Americanbiker gang? No way. He might know them, though. Maybe he got rid of the van for them and doesn’t know what it’s all about.”
