The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (85)

She shut down the computer and turned to the nightstand clock: almost midnight. She turned off the lights and tried to sleep, and failed. Bored in the dark, bereft of ideas, she got the remote, turned on the television, piled pillows under her head, and began clicking around through the cable channels.

Got caught by an old movie called High Fidelity, a rom-com about a guy who ran a Chicago record store. She missed the first part of it, but watched it right to the happy ending, yawned, clicked through the available channels.

She caught a repeat tape of a local news channel. A weary-looking brunette with unsubtle makeup was saying, “. . . may not be coming to El Paso after all. Reports from Mexico say that at least part of the caravan broke off the main highway and are headed toward the border crossing at Pershing. How much of the caravan is continuing to El Paso and how much is going to Pershing is uncertain, but the caravans should arrive in either place late tomorrow, if their progress continues as it has the last few weeks. Pershing, if you will remember, was the site of a controversial crossing nineteen months ago . . .”



* * *





Letty remembered.

A Central American caravan of men, women, and children, apparently headed north to El Paso, had turned east at a small Mexican town instead of continuing north, and had arrived at a crossing at Ochoa, Mexico, linked across the Rio Grande with the town of Pershing.

There was almost nothing at Ochoa except a Mexican border station, a couple dozen houses mostly inhabited by the border guards, a gas station/convenience store, and a huge parking lot for Mexican eighteen-wheelers headed for the U.S.

Pershing was larger, although Letty wasn’t certain how much larger. If she remembered correctly—she climbed out of bed and fired up her computer and found that she did remember correctly—it was also a small town.

Pershing’s main claim to fame occurred when the Central American caravan, including large numbers of children, showed up at the Mexican side of the bridge with almost nothing in the way of food, water, or shelter. The mayor of Pershing, Harold Lopez, with support from all the city commissioners, had become a hero to a segment of the American political community when he invited the refugees to cross the bridge, and shouted down the Border Patrol when patrolmen tried to stop them.

“Food and water for babies,” Lopez had shouted at the El Paso news crew that had shown up to record the confrontation. The Border Patrol cracked when the news crew reported that a baby had died, possibly of dehydration, and the caravan crossed the bridge. Once inside the U.S., members of the caravan had to be processed through the American legal system. That could take months, and might well result in many of the refugees remaining in the country.



* * *





Letty reviewed the whole story in the Google links, then checked the mileage to Pershing. Kaiser had already told her that nothing in Texas was close to anything else, and he was right. Pershing was the only crossing between El Paso and Presidio, Texas, and was about sixty miles southwest of the I-10 town of Van Horn. The last stretch, between Van Horn and Pershing, was on a two-lane highway through the mountains, apparently designed expressly for truck traffic. Altogether, Pershing was about three road hours southeast of El Paso.

And she thought, Hawkes—Jael—is already running.

At two o’clock in the morning, she called Kaiser, who answered with a groan and, “Aw, what happened?”

“Did you get any sleep at all?” Letty asked.

“Yeah, I finished the book at ten, I was sleeping like a baby until eight seconds ago,” he said.

“Get up, pack up, we need to hit the road.”

Kaiser’s voice sharpened up: “What happened?”

“Nothing, yet, as far as I know. I’ll meet you in the lobby in half an hour, we’re checking out. You’re driving. I haven’t slept at all, and I need some. Half-hour.”

She clicked off and went to get dressed and pack her clothes.



* * *





In the lobby, Kaiser asked, “Can you tell me now?”

“After we get checked out and we’re in the car,” Letty said. “This might not make you happy.”

“I’m already not happy,” Kaiser said.

Outside, the air was cool and felt a bit damp, compared to the afternoon’s blow-dryer heat. Stars were bright overhead, and while waiting for Kaiser to catch up, Letty twisted in circles, face turned to the sky. More stars than she’d seen even in deep rural Minnesota; but on the other hand, in deep rural Minnesota, in the winter, you had the rippling yellow, purple, and blue-gray curtains of the northern lights.

“So tell me,” Kaiser said, throwing his duffel and shotgun case in the back of the Explorer.

“Let’s get on I-10,” Letty said. She walked around to the passenger side, dropped the seat back so she might possibly get some sleep. “We’re going east.”

When they were moving, she laid it out for him: an anti-immigrant militia with the leader on the run for no good reason they could yet see, a town celebrated for allowing an entire immigrant caravan to cross the border, and now another caravan on the way to the same place.

“The only thing I could think of is that the caravan is triggering them. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but there’s a good chance they’ll do it in Pershing. That’s what I think.”