The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (73)

“Any sign that anything here is about to blow up?” Kaiser asked. “No pun intended . . .”

“Yes. There is,” Anders said. “You heard about the Caravana Viacrucis del Migrante de Libertad?”

Letty said, “The Caravan of the Migrants’ Way of the Cross of Freedom?”

“Something like that. It’s a caravan coming up from Central America, and the Mexicans aren’t doing much to slow it down,” Anders said. “Word is, it’s headed here and there are more than thirteen hundred people in it. Buses, cars, people walking. It’s not far south of Juárez. Border Patrol is in an uproar, they’re bringing in reinforcements.”

“I don’t mean to be offensive and I don’t want to seem like an entitled East Coast witch. With what John and I have found, apparently a militia with heavy financial means from oil thefts—could be well over a million dollars—and a willingness to kill people, three murdered so far, that we know of, and another probable, and who apparently have access to high explosives and are training to use it . . . why are we talking to a relatively junior FBI agent? Why isn’t there some crisis-management team working here?” Letty asked.

Kaiser jumped in. “I was in the military for a long time and got wounded when some asshole set off an IED on my squad. What are you going to say if this caravan crunches into the border and gets wiped by a bunch of IEDs? C-4 is wonderful for that . . .”

“I’m not all that junior,” Anders said. “I was designated to talk with you, when we were told you were coming. We have other preparations under way, we’ve got a task force that’s . . . tasked with working out the probabilities and coordinating with local law enforcement . . . I’d point out that neither one of you is a trained investigator, from what we’ve been told . . .”



* * *





Outside, in the heat, walking to the car, Letty said to Kaiser, “Tasked with working out the probabilities, my incredibly well-toned ass. How long do you think it’ll take them to put a report together?”

“Jeez, who knows? Anders didn’t even look like he went outside,” Kaiser said. “What’s he really going to know about a militia? And he was their militia guy.”

“And, unfortunately, we’re not trained investigators,” Letty said, looking back at the building. “Maybe I should call Colles and get him to light a fire under their butts.”

“We could try that,” Kaiser said. “But you know what? Nothing moves slower than a bureaucracy. The only way you get speed from an organization like DHS or the FBI is if one person engineers it. Orders out the SWAT squad on his own authority. And he better be right, because if he pulls the fire alarm and there’s no fire, he’ll be in major career trouble. Safety is in numbers and numbers move slow.”

“When you’re right, you’re right,” Letty said. They started back to the hotel, and a time and temperature sign off I-10 said that it was ninety-six degrees at three o’clock. “Listen, we’re not going to learn anything by driving around El Paso. Let’s get on our computers. Read everything we can find on the local militias. Then there’s something we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about . . .”

“Which is . . .”

“Why Winks was murdered,” Letty said. “I can think of one good reason: they didn’t need him anymore. Or they couldn’t use him anymore, which is the same thing. He was a loose end, and they needed to seal that off.”

“We did talk about this—that they killed the Blackburns because Boxie Blackburn had figured something out. They didn’t want to kill Winks, which would have sealed them off even better, but he was their money man. That made sense to me. Then they went and killed Winks anyway, which means something changed.”

“Yes. Us,” Letty said. “We went after Sawyer, and I asked Sawyer about Low, and about stealing oil, which was a mistake. Sawyer told them about that, and they decided to clean up their operation. Kill Winks, burn the truck and that shack. But would they have done all that if they weren’t about to pull the trigger on something bigger?”

“I don’t know. We do have to be careful about one thing—becoming overly paranoid,” Kaiser said. “Maybe nothing much is happening?”

“Three murders,” Letty said. “That’s something. That’s the death penalty in Texas, and they’re not shy about using it down here.”



* * *





As they were approaching the hotel, Kaiser, who’d made the trip mostly in silence, said, “A local cop might know more than the Feds. Somebody who grew up here. I wonder if the El Paso cops have somebody who specializes in the militias?”

“I’ll find somebody to ask. And I’ll call Colles,” Letty said.

“Don’t forget that you think you saw something down by Alice Serrano’s house. You were going to remember what that was.”

“I’ll call you when I remember,” Letty said. “Meet for dinner at seven, and we can figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow.”





SEVENTEEN




Letty spoke to Billy Greet at DHS about the FBI response to the warnings of imminent trouble, and Greet asked, “Letty, are you sure that trouble is really imminent?”