“I like that,” I said. “No day lost.”
Nora the Dawn Artist was in her late forties, with skin tanned and dried by the desert. Her eyes were a crystal bottomless blue. I showed her a photo of Denny Mondari’s white Mercedes, first thinking she might have seen it pass by on the road to the mine. The whole theory hung on Mondari driving here, so I had hope.
She said, “Well, maybe,” then shook her head and said, “No, I’m sure I haven’t seen that car.”
I prodded.
“Seemed like you might have had something there for a moment.”
She shook her head no, and I showed her six photos of known bombers. Several were poor shots, grainy rail-and bus-station photos, crappy airport video, and partial views later given a percentage of probability by some analyst in DC. They weren’t much to look at. The car was the best hope, though Shah was trying for better resolution images on four of them.
Nora sifted from one photo to the next, then studied my face before looking out across the desert. She was watchful and trying to be helpful but in truth was just waiting for us to leave. I got it and thanked her.
After the dawn-artist visit, we slow-drifted the gypsum road. Desert dirt roads branched off on either side, and most had some housing before ending in rocky desert hills or flattening out in the scrub. Plenty of it was unconventional housing, and where we were headed was even more so, a place nicknamed Cargoland.
Once years ago, Nogales and I were in Cargoland together, but that was an investigation I didn’t like to think about. It was how we first met. I was working human trafficking. A lead took me to Sacramento to track down a motorcycle gang leader named Mikel Richter. Richter was able to shake me, but not a series of spotter planes that tracked two motorcycles and a blue van to Ocotillo Wells. I arrived an hour behind, then checked in with the sheriff’s office and teamed up with a young Pete Nogales to check out a bar in Cargoland.
That was on November 10, almost eight years ago and just after sunset. A cold wind was blowing and a full-on party was underway in a bar built from cut-open used shipping containers. Two girls, one fourteen, one seventeen, were chained naked to bolts welded to a steel wall of the bar. They weren’t for sale that night, instead were being rented, and I pushed through the crowd bidding on them. One bar patron was just pulling up his pants when I pulled my badge and gun.
“You there?” Nogales asked.
“Yeah, just thinking about last time.”
“Do you want to turn in to Cargoland?”
“Not yet, I’m changing my mind. I don’t think we’re ready with the right questions yet. Let’s go out toward the gyp mine and work our way back.”
We drove an hour of unpaved desert roads and past cobbled-together housing, and then on out toward the mine before returning to the sheriff’s office in Borrego Springs. There I logged into the terrorism database and printed more photos and sketches, including one of another bomb maker who was believed dead, but as far as I knew had never been confirmed dead. That was reaching for straws. I felt the early hope fading. Probably another dead end.
Julia and I talked for a while. I called Jo, but she was with a patient.
When Nogales returned, we ate burritos outside at a table in the night air, then nursed beers in four different bars as we showed sketches and photos. We reshaped the story. The dismembering murderer now stalked at night and favored bars. He was alone and would keep to himself and might have a barn or other outbuilding he lived in. He was friendly, outgoing, and good-looking. You wouldn’t have a clue how bad he was.
At midnight Nogales dropped me back at the motel and at five thirty the next morning picked me up again, and we returned to Nora the Dawn Artist’s house. Nogales looked over and grinned as he said, “At least we know she’ll be awake.”
I had an additional motive for wanting to see Nora again, other than to show her the new photos. I was drawn to how she had tried to cope with the devastating deaths of her family. Nogales said she was considered half-crazy for the painting of the dawn each day, but that wasn’t crazy to me. Far from it. It was an affirmation of life. I admired her will to turn pain into beauty.
She showed us today’s painting, which caught the sky burning in crimson streaks and caught the first sliver of sunlight on the gray desert rock. It moved me and strangely brought tears that I hid and wiped away. She offered coffee. I took her up on it and used the moment to show her a better image of the Mercedes but got nothing but a shake of her head. I showed her the three new photos of the bombers I’d printed in the sheriff’s office late yesterday afternoon, and she picked up the grainy black-and-white of the man who was rumored dead and said, “That’s him.”
“Him?”
“Yes, this man I’ve seen here.”
“Recently?”