He smiled despite the situation, and kept to the tall Johnson grass while he skirted the property. Long years of just this sort of action had taught him to keep a wary eye for signs of dogs—old chew toys, piles of crap, bones. Fortunately, Matarife didn’t have this added layer of security.
The home itself bordered on palatial, belying the junked vehicles beside it. Heavy draperies covered four gabled windows on the upper floor. A three-car garage stuck off toward the old trucks, forming a natural barrier between the pool house of matching red brick and the road. Groomed redbud trees alternated with black lampposts on a huge circular drive out front. Clark knew from an earlier drive-by that the iron gate over the cattle guard out front was secured with a chain and padlock. That was good. People put too much faith in locks, and too much faith made them lax.
Leapfrogging from vehicle to vehicle, Clark took less than two minutes to make it to a four-foot chain-link fence surrounding the backyard and pool. The sun was high now, adding dazzle to the surface of the blue water, and, to Clark’s way of thinking, illuminating far too much of the nude woman who sipped a drink on a floating chair while reading a magazine. Dark hair was piled high on her head. A pair of oversized sunglasses hid her eyes. Clark guessed her to be in her mid-thirties, but the bruises and scars on her fleshy body said those years had been hard ones. It was impossible to feel sorry for her, though. She was sipping fruity drinks in a pool while at least two girls lay dead in the dirt less than a hundred meters away. A black SMG lay poolside, just outside her reach, on a folded pink towel. Clark couldn’t be sure from this distance and angle, but the gun looked like a CZ Scorpion machine pistol. The woman was serious about her protection. Beside the pistol was an empty glass that resembled the full one in the woman’s hand and what looked to be a brown walking cane or a riding quirt. That would explain the whip marks on the dead girls.
Clark stayed in the shadows, watching the larger house for another five minutes. There was no good way to approach the house alone. He knew he should wait for Caruso, but there were kids’ lives at stake, and he didn’t have the patience or the time to wait.
Removing the suppressed Glock, he laid it in the grass at his feet and drew the .45. A single shot would wake anyone who happened to be in the house—and, he hoped, bring them outside—but was not likely to cause much concern to the neighbors. It was difficult to pinpoint the location of a lone report.
The unsuppressed round slammed into the CZ Scorpion, spinning it sideways and puffing the towel beneath it. The woman dropped the magazine on her lap and looked back and forth, unable to make sense of what had happened. Predictably, her first glance was toward the gravesite in the sorghum field.
Clark had already picked up the Glock. He set a suppressed round between her feet, causing the inflatable chair to burst beneath the weight of her fleshy body. Floundering, the naked woman untangled herself from the deflated plastic and attempted to swim toward her Scorpion SMG. Clark sent a second suppressed round zinging off the concrete lip of the pool, stopping her momentum. She spun in the water, looking for the shooter.
Clark’s eyes flicked toward the house. Still nothing. But it was early, and digging graves was hard work. And Matarife might be sleeping in. Clark decided to wait a little longer.
The woman treaded water now, looking toward the back field again. She obviously had some demons.
“Who is there?” she asked, a little on the gruff side for a nude person being shot at. She followed up with the same demand in Spanish, more tentative this time. “?Quién es?”
Clark let the Glock speak for him, sending another round slamming into the CZ, this one shattering the plastic magazine. Even if it was still operable, he’d just turned the SMG into a single-shot.
“Tell me who is there!” the woman screamed. The sound of the suppressed Glock was about as loud as an energetic hand clap, but Clark was close enough that she’d zeroed in on the pool house.
It had been a good three minutes and there was still no sign of anyone at the back door. Her boyfriend didn’t care about her, or he was too deep of a sleeper to worry about, or he was gone. Not once had this woman looked toward the house, which led Clark to believe it was the latter.
The woman started toward the gun again.
Clark put a round into the water beside her. “Keep going,” he barked. “Makes my job a lot easier.”
She swished bronze arms in the water, swimming away from the splash of the shot. “Who are you?” She turned, treading water again. “Did Zambrano send you?”
“Suppose he did?” Clark said.
“Ernie left already,” she said. “He has the girl and the money with him.”
“I see,” Clark said. He let her stew awhile, then said, “And suppose Zambrano didn’t send me?”
The woman shook her head. “You are not police,” she said. “Police would let me put some clothes on.”
“Lady,” Clark said, “the last thing I want to do is sit here and look at your fat ass.”
The words seemed to bother her worse than the shooting.
“Who, then?”
Clark decided to drop a bomb and see how she reacted. “I think you may know something about my little girl.”
The woman gave a tremulous shake of her head—but she couldn’t help another glance at the sorghum field. “I don’t know—”
“Cut the shit!” Clark barked. “Who else is in the house?”
“No one.”
Clark put another round into the water, half hoping it would hit her. It didn’t, but it had the desired effect.
She held up both hands, kicking with her legs, barely keeping her head above water. “Who is your girl?”
“Magdalena,” Clark said, gambling again.
The woman sputtered. “You lie.” It would have been a scoff, had she not been working so hard. “She comes from Parrot, who got her from Dorian. I know all about her. She has no friends in the States. Anyway, she is gone.”
“Where?”
“Why should I tell you?” The woman said. “You will only kill me.”
Clark gave an honest chuckle. “I’m a half a breath from killing you anyway. Let’s try this. What’s your name?”
“Lupe,” the woman said, coughing from a mouth full of water.
“And you work for Matarife?”
“If you can call it that,” Lupe spat. “I am his prisoner, like all the other girls.”
“Is that right?” Clark nodded despite the fact that the woman could not see him. “You sure as hell look like a prisoner, sitting around in the pool drinking fruity umbrella drinks.”
“I am . . . how do you say it, the girl in charge,” Lupe said. “His bottom bitch.”
“I can believe that last part,” Clark said. “Okay, Lupe. Tell me again where Matarife . . . Ernie is.”
“He has gone to deliver your girl, Magdalena.”
“Deliver her to who?”
“Zambrano,” she said. “Can you believe it? The man can buy any girl he wants and he picked that little whore.”
“Where is Zambrano?”
Lupe laughed hysterically. “They do not tell me those things.” She pointed to a ring of purple bruises on her neck. “I told you. I am a prisoner myself.”
Clark groaned. “Ernie’s cell number, then.”