“I have no idea.” Which was the truth. I knew no name.
“Where’s your wife?” Sprangers asked.
“I don’t know. We all thought it best to keep me in the dark about that, in case Rodriguez got ahold of me.”
“How do you communicate?”
“I’d rather keep that to myself.”
“I thought we were going to trust each other.”
“I trust you. I don’t trust your whole organization.”
“Any particular reason?”
“For starters, Rodriguez’s men out there this morning. How’d they know where to look?”
“Bugged your pickup. They did it before.”
I shook my head. “I checked that pickup top to bottom. You were there because of the Border Patrol helicopter that spotted me. Rodriguez’s men were there because somebody in your organization leaked that information.”
Sprangers didn’t argue. Instead he said, “How did you know about Bisonette and his Guatemalan refugees and about the ambush in which you claim Carlos Rodriguez was wounded and his son killed?”
“I have better current intel than you. I’m not going to tell you how I got it, because I don’t want to put lives in danger. But I’ll tell you this. I think the other people involved in that ambush were White Horse.”
Vega, who’d been pacing at my back, paused.
“How would White Horse have known about the rendezvous?” he asked.
“Good question. Maybe whoever leaked that information to Rodriguez also leaked it to White Horse.”
“To what end?”
“I think they were hoping to decimate Las Calaveras,” I said.
“White Horse,” Sprangers said. The name clearly left a bad taste in his mouth. He looked at Vega behind me, and some unspoken communication must have passed between them. “A man in Sulfur Springs was killed by a car bomb a few months ago.”
“I heard.”
“He was one of ours, working undercover. Like I told you before, there’s a lot of drug product moving through Coronado County. We’re pretty sure that Las Calaveras is the supplier, and we think that a good deal of it is being handled by the trailer community north of Sulfur Springs.”
“Paradiso?”
“Right. Our man infiltrated Paradiso. Someone made him, blew him up in his truck.”
“I heard he was White Horse.”
“He was trying to work his way into the group when he was killed. We’re pretty sure that a lot of the residents of Paradiso are White Horse. These guys are bikers, disaffected vets, men who want to live off the grid for all kinds of reasons. Bitterness and disappointment are pretty much what they all have in common. They’re disposed to disliking everyone, but their hatred seems to be fixated on the illegals and the government.”
“A lot of them use?”
“A lot of them. But the product is distributed way beyond Paradiso and Coronado County.”
“So why would they want Rodriguez dead?” I said. “If his organization supplies the product they use and someone there is moving it?”
Behind me, Vega said, “Maybe somebody hired White Horse to ice Rodriguez.”
“Who?” Sprangers said.
“Somebody who offered a better deal. Somebody who wanted to eliminate the competition and take over Rodriguez’s territory.”
The room was quiet for a long moment.
Then Vega said, “Mondragón.”
Sprangers looked at me. “Mondragón,” he echoed. “A man whose family has dealt in every form of illegal trafficking across the border. And now he just happens to be here, in Coronado County. Along with his son, who knew the location of the rendezvous.”
I felt as if we’d just moved back to square one.
“His son was wounded in that firefight in the desert,” I said, trying not to sound as frustrated as I felt. “Why would Mondragón put his son in that kind of danger?”
“Maybe it didn’t go down the way you think it did,” Vega said. “Who told you about the firefight? Bisonette?”
He was right, but in his current state of mind, I didn’t want to confirm his thinking. Instead I said, “What kind of man would lead a group of women and children into an ambush knowing there would be gunfire?”
“What kind of man is Bisonette?” Vega asked. “All we really know about him is that he’s a drug addict and the son of a man whose family runs a powerful cartel. As for the women and children, we’ve seen no evidence of that. Maybe it’s all part and parcel of some wild story to placate you and your wife.”
“Look,” I said. “I understand the need to question everything. I was a cop, too. But at some point, you have to trust someone. I trust Peter. I saw the women and children he was leading. I’ve spoken to Mondragón. He has nothing to do with whatever it is that’s going down in Coronado County. He’s here because he loves his son, and his son is in trouble. If you want to know why White Horse might have been involved in ambushing Rodriguez, I think I know someone you should talk to.”
“Yeah?” Vega said. “And who’s that?”
“Marian Brown.”
“Brown?” Sprangers said.
“Mayor of Sulfur Springs. She’s White Horse, or working hand in glove with White Horse, I’d bet my life on it. And you might talk to the town cop in Sulfur Springs. I’m pretty sure he’s White Horse, too.”
“Mike Sanchez?” Vega said, incredulously. “His family came from Mexico.”
“Okay, maybe he’s not actually White Horse. Maybe he’s just a partner in what they do in Paradiso.”
They asked a few more questions, but I’d already given them all I was going to for the moment. Before we left the interview room, I said, “One more thing.”
“What’s that?” Sprangers said.
“Take the drone off me.”
I could tell from the look on his face that I’d hit home.
“I can do us all a lot more good without you constantly looking over my shoulder.”
Sprangers said, “We’ll be in touch.”
*