I also had a text from Jenny with Rainy’s blood type. I called Sheriff Carlson and let him know.
I ate on the road. The food wasn’t nearly as good as what I served my customers at Sam’s Place back in Aurora. The fries were limp and greasy, and the burger tasted like grilled leather. It made me homesick, the thought of Sam’s Place, of Aurora. I wanted to be somewhere that I understood and that understood me as well. But because I had no idea what the hell was going on in Coronado County, I had no idea when I’d get home.
After a lot of discussion, Sheriff Carlson had allowed me to keep the Winchester, which was near at hand. I’d shot two men that day. They weren’t going to die, but it was a form of violence that I’d tried to step away from a long time ago. In Aurora the night Peter called, Rainy had asked me about the men I’d killed across the course of my life. I didn’t tell her, because the truth was that I’d been involved in a slaughter once. In one terrible moment, I’d been part of the killing of a lot of men. I wasn’t wearing a badge then, and it was an action completely outside the law. I’d like to say that they were men who deserved to die, but in truth I knew none of them. I’d told myself it was necessary, but it had sickened me. It had sickened my soul. I’d put away my firearms. Forever, I thought. Now the Winchester sat at my side, and there was blood on my hands again.
There is a word in the Ojibwe language: ogichidaa. It means “one who stands between evil and his people.” Long ago, Henry Meloux had told me I was born ogichidaa. It was my purpose and my fate. I couldn’t escape it. As I drove toward Jocko’s ranch house, with one eye constantly on the rearview mirror, I knew in my heart I was prepared to kill again, if it came to that, not just to defend myself but to protect the people who were my family, the people I loved.
I was also thinking about that damn tracking device Sprangers had blamed on Las Calaveras. It explained the ambush well enough, but left the question of Sprangers’s uncanny awareness of my location and situation a mystery. Unless, of course, he’d been lying and had had a hand in planting the device and had pulled it only because he suspected that, as a result of the ambush, I would check the pickup myself. Which left the possibility that, now I believed I was safe, another device had been planted somewhere else.
As soon as that thought hit me, I pulled onto the next side road and scoured the pickup thoroughly. I found nothing, which meant either that I was safe or that they’d been more sophisticated in planting it this time around. Either way, I didn’t have much choice except to continue to Jocko’s place.
He wasn’t alone when I arrived. Frank Harris was with him. They came from the little ranch house and Frank shook my hand. “Glad you’re still with us, Cork.”
Jocko slapped me on the back. “Nice shooting, pardner. You and my Lena, a match made in heaven.”
“Lena?” Frank said.
“The Winchester I gave him. Still got it, Cork?”
“In the truck.”
Frank said, “Jocko told me you might have a lead on Peter.”
“It’s just a possibility, Frank. Probably a remote possibility. But it’s worth checking out. You still okay with flying me, Jocko?”
“I’ve got her all gassed up and ready to go.”
“Where exactly?” Frank said.
“I’m going to hold on to that piece of information,” I told him. “I think Peter was right. The less those involved know, the safer they are. I’d feel bad if I thought I put you and Jayne in any more danger than I probably already have.”
“What about Jocko here?”
“Don’t worry about me, Frank. I was a pilot in World War Two. Been itching for a good fight for sixty years.”
“Just a sense of where you’re headed, then,” Frank said. “If things go south, I’d like an idea where to start looking for you two.”
I weighed the advisability of telling him against what I felt was his sincere concern for our safety.
“I think Peter may have made for the Santa Margaritas,” I finally said. “It’s a long shot but the only lead I have at the moment.”
“How’d you come by it?”
“Turned over enough rocks until I found something. It’s what I do.”
I grabbed the Winchester and cartridges from the pickup, and we walked to Jocko’s waiting biplane.
“Be careful, you old coot,” Frank said and gave Jocko a gentle slap on the back. “Jayne would kill me if I let anything happen to you.” He shook my hand. “Good luck, Cork. Call me when you’re back. Let me know that you’re both safe and how it went.”
He returned to the ranch house, and I watched until he headed off in his F-150. Then I pulled out the slip of paper on which Sylvester had written the coordinates for the Lulabelle Mine. Jocko took a look at them, climbed into the cockpit, and came out with a map, which he spread on the wing of the plane. He checked the coordinates, studied the map, and finally laid a finger down.
“Got it,” he said. “But what the hell is it?”
“An old mine where Peter might be holed up.”
Jocko nodded as if that made sense. “These mountains along the border, they’re all riddled with old tunnels and shafts. The drug smugglers, they know about ’em.”
“This is one they might not be so familiar with.”
“Well, then, let’s give ’er a shot.”
Jocko climbed into the plane again, stowed his map, and when he came back out, carried a pair of field glasses, which he handed to me.
“I fly. You look,” he said.
He took his place at the controls, and I settled into the seat behind. We put on our headsets, he got us rolling, and once again we headed west.
As nearly as I could tell, we followed the same route we’d taken before. We edged past the Coronados and flew just south of Sulfur Springs. Because I knew what to look for now, I used the field glasses and spotted the abandoned El Dorado Mine. I wondered just how many more old diggings might riddle those mountains and what, in this struggle along the border, they might hide.
We stayed north of Nogales, and I could see the suburban streets spreading out into the desert like tendrils from some greedy plant. We skirted more mountains and flew over rolling desert hills empty of any sign of habitation, and kept flying west. The sun was dropping in the sky, and I knew time and darkness would eventually become a concern. We passed yet another long ridge of mountains, Jocko banked north, and we dropped and flew a few hundred feet above the western foothills. I understood these were the Santa Margaritas and now Jocko was working on locating the Lulabelle Mine.
At last he gave me a thumbs-up, and we began to circle.
Although I trusted Jocko’s navigation, I could see nothing below that was as easily identifiable from the air as the workings of the El Dorado. The hillsides were covered with scrub, desert growth, and great rock outcroppings like red carbuncles. Even with the field glasses, I couldn’t make out anything remotely hopeful. Jocko circled half a dozen times, widening the arc of our search a little each time.
“Anything?” he asked over the headphones.