A Book of Bones Page 3

  Squeeze, relax.

  Squeeze, relax.

  The interior of the hut was furnished with a desk, a lamp, a chair upholstered in imitation leather that was leaking stuffing, and a worn gray couch with a pillow at one end. The wall behind the desk was adorned with pornographic images of women, many of them represented only by their most intimate body parts. The collage reached to the ceiling, and for all Parker knew might well have extended to cover the entire office.

  Squeeze, relax.

  Squeeze, relax.

  “You think you could ask her to stop doing that?” said Parker.

  “What do you suggest she should do instead?” Lagnier asked.

  “If I were her, I’d clean my hand. There must be battery acid around here somewhere.”

  “You’re being impolite.”

  “Tell her,” said Parker, “to stop.”

  Lagnier placed his hand over the girl’s and gently removed it from his crotch. It dropped heavily into her lap, as though it were not her limb but that of another. She stared at it almost in disbelief, perhaps appalled by the uses to which it had so recently been put.

  “You going to introduce yourself,” said Lagnier, “now that you’ve insulted my woman and me?”

  “My name is Parker.”

  “You FBI too?”

  “No.”

  “Police?”

  Parker thought back to the woman on the plane. He hadn’t expected to be involved in a similar conversation quite so soon.

  “No.”

  “So I don’t have to speak with you if I don’t wish to?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then I choose not to.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “You say so?”

  “I do.”

  “And why would that be, allowing as how I’m now extending to you the continued courtesy of discourse?”

  “Because the mutilated body of a woman has just been discovered on your property, and we only have your word that you didn’t put her there.”

  Lagnier rolled the cheroot along his lips. He was smiling.

  “I called the police. Why would I do that if I’d killed her?”

  “I don’t know, but you could spend a long time in a holding cell while investigators tried to come up with an answer to that question.”

  “Yet as I recall, you’re not a cop, and you’re not a fed, so you can go fuck yourself. And I already answered a shitload of questions.”

  Parker shrugged and began to walk away. He was out of practice, and out of sorts. Lagnier might have been an asshole—in fact, there was no doubt about it—but Parker had aggravated him more than he’d intended. The situation could easily be remedied, but it would require Ross’s assistance.

  “I told you it was a waste of time,” he said to Ross, within earshot of Lagnier.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so rude to the man to begin with.”

  “I don’t need your lessons in etiquette. I did you a favor by coming down here.”

  “Jesus, take it easy.”

  “This guy isn’t my problem. It’s like some folks just enjoy giving money to lawyers.”

  Ross gave a shrug, and a sigh that went on for so long, Parker was afraid the agent might grow light-headed.

  “Mr. Lagnier,” said Ross, “I really don’t want to have to take you all the way to Phoenix to answer further questions about matters that could easily be dealt with here, but Mr. Parker has been engaged as a consultant by the bureau. He possesses certain talents, and is familiar with aspects of this case.”

  Parker kicked up some dirt and watched Lagnier’s brain working. Yes, he had shade from the ATF, but his handler would certainly have advised him to cooperate in every way possible with the investigation into the woman’s remains, and that handler wouldn’t relish being called on to intervene in the event of any recalcitrance on Lagnier’s part. The ATF had already done enough in letting the feds know that they were about to come into contact with a source, although the handler would also have checked that Lagnier wasn’t holding any contraband of his own on the premises—or if he was, that he found a way to get rid of it fast.

  “Fuck it,” said Lagnier. “I got nothing to hide. I’ll answer his questions, just like I answered yours. I just don’t much care for his manner.”

  “Not many people do,” said Ross, which Parker felt was rubbing it in some, but he let it go.

  “Dos sillas,” Lagnier told the woman. She disappeared into the hut, and returned moments later with a pair of lawn chairs, which she unfolded for Parker and Ross.

  “You know,” said Lagnier, once they were all settled, “you two ought to do Shakespeare.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Ernest Lagnier was fifty-nine years old, and had inherited the junkyard from his father, also Ernest. Lagnier owned a home about a mile east of the yard, but rarely spent more than half his time in it, if that. His office had a bathroom, a TV, and a couch that doubled as a bed, as the investigators had learned to their cost during the earlier coital interlude. A ramshackle structure out back contained a primitive shower, and when Lagnier needed hot water, he filled a tin basin and dropped in a heating element. He had no siblings, and had never married. This scavenger life was all he had ever known.

  “It’s a big yard,” said Parker.

  “Biggest in southern Arizona.”

  “You have employees?”

  “Over there.” Lagnier used his cheroot to indicate the assembled Latinos. “Casual labor, mostly.”

  “Are they all legal?”

  “They said so when I asked.”

  “You didn’t check?”

  “Let’s say the cultural and linguistic barriers have yet to be overcome where some of them are concerned. They earn clean money from dirty work, the kind no white man will do. If we build the wall, we’ll have to start scrubbing our own toilets. They’re right with Jesus, which is good enough for me. You ‘consulting’ for Immigration, too?”

  “Just curious. How familiar are you with the contents of your yard?”

  “I walk it every day, even when the sun is splitting the stones. Someone comes in here looking for parts, they don’t want to wait around for hours while I go digging without a map. I know where most everything is at—if not exactly, then within a foot or two. Some yards, they got computerized inventory. Me, I got a file cabinet I never use, and this.” He tapped his right temple with the butt of the cheroot.

  “What about new junk?”

  “See, I know you don’t mean to sound ignorant, but you do. For me, this is not junk. Junk is the stuff even I can’t use. Junk has no purpose. Junk is useless. Everything you see here has worth. It’s just waiting to be turned into cash money.

  “But in answer to your original question, nothing comes in here that I haven’t agreed to take. I decide what’s worth accepting, and I determine what to offer for it, but the secret of a place like this is to get as much as you can for nothing at all. I don’t produce my wallet to hand over money unless I can be damn sure I’m going to get a good return on my investment. Most of what you see here, nobody else wanted. They were happy for me just to take it away so they didn’t have to look at it no more, and they paid me for the privilege. Then I brought it here, figured out what to keep and what to discard, and found a spot for the valuables.”

  “When did you acquire the chest freezer?” Parker asked.

  “Like I told the police and the federal agents, I didn’t.”

  “So it was dumped?”

  “It wasn’t dumped, either. Folks around here know that I don’t approve of stuff just being thrown on my doorstep, no more than they would on theirs. It happens sometimes, but I don’t like it. If the yard is open, and I’m not around, they can leave it with one of the men, long as they pay him, and it goes over there, in that space beside the tires. That’s where new material is stored until I decide where it should go.”

  “Then how did the freezer get in your yard?”

  “I don’t k
now. No civilian is allowed to go farther than this office, not without me or someone else from the yard keeping him company. Folks steal, or they go clambering and nosing about where they shouldn’t, and get hurt. I have to be careful, or I’ll be ass-deep in lawyers.”

  “And how come you didn’t spot the freezer on one of your rounds?”

  “Because it was in the wrong place. It wasn’t with the other white goods. It was hidden with the real trash.”

  “Real trash?” said Parker.

  The freezer looked too big to be concealed comfortably amid garbage, but who knew how much waste was contained in Lagnier’s junkyard?

  “When I say ‘trash,’ I mean the stuff that even I can’t sell, or vehicles that have been stripped of all usable parts.”

  “Junk.”

  “See, you’re learning. Yeah, junk. Merrill and Sons, out of Tucson, come up here once a month with a mobile baling press and shredder, and take away the leavings. They got a hammer mill, and sell that shit by the ton.”

  “And when did they last make a collection?”

  “A week ago, but they couldn’t take everything on account of how they’d made two stops before they got to me, and only had room for maybe three-quarters of what was on offer.”

  “And the freezer wasn’t there when they came?”

  “No, it would have stood out.”

  So the freezer had been placed in the yard sometime in the last week.

  “Could one of your employees have planted it?”

  “You see that man over there, the one with the beard?” Lagnier pointed to an older Latino sitting slightly apart from the rest. “That’s Miguel Ángel. He’s been with me for twenty years. If I’m away, he’s here, and if he’s away, I’m here. I tell you now: Miguel Ángel did not conceal no chest freezer behind busted truck exhausts, and he would permit no one else to do so, either.”

  Lagnier leaned forward, now giving his attention only to Ross.

  “By the way, you think you’re nearly done treating my men like criminals? You’ve left them sitting in that shelter for a long time.”

  “They’ve been questioned,” said Ross, “but we have no way of checking the identities of some of them, or even being sure of where they live. And the Bureau isn’t their problem. It’s Border Patrol.”

  “What about the rest?” said Lagnier. “Miguel Ángel, Francisco, Gerardo, they’re all legal. What you’re doing to them is wrong. You wouldn’t treat them like that if they was white.”

  Ross called over one of his agents.

  “Go talk to Border Patrol. Tell them anyone legal can go home.”

  The agent looked puzzled. “You mean back to Mexico?”

  “Are you trying to get fired?” Ross asked.

  The agent reconsidered the order, and quickly figured out the correct answer.

  “No, sir. Sorry.”

  “Have them hold the rest for now.”

  The agent hurried off, and Lagnier thanked Ross.

  “Other than Miguel Ángel, how long have the others been working for you?” Parker asked.

  “Francisco and Gerardo have been with me for five years. They’re brothers. The rest are temporary, so anything from a few weeks to a couple of months.”

  “Do they have access to the yard out of hours?”

  “No. Only Miguel Ángel and I have keys. And then there’s the dogs.”

  Parker took in the two mongrels dozing at Lagnier’s feet. One of them opened an eye, as though sensing his regard, before closing it again when Parker did nothing interesting.

  “They seem pretty docile.”

  “That’s because I’m here.”

  “And if you weren’t?”

  “Assuming Miguel Ángel wasn’t here, either, they’d have torn you up, or you’d have had to shoot them. There are two more just like them over by the far gate. We got them chained up for now, but we’ll set them to roaming once you’re done.”

  “Yet it looks like someone got past them.”

  Lagnier looked troubled.

  “I don’t see no other explanation for it,” he conceded.

  “Could they have been drugged?” Ross asked.

  “They’re trained to take food from no one but me or Miguel Ángel.”

  “What about the girl?” said Parker, indicating the woman seated by Lagnier’s chair. Like the dogs, she now appeared to be asleep.

  “What about her?”

  “Would the dogs attack her?”

  “I don’t know. She’s never been here without me.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Leticia.”

  Ross interrupted before Parker could continue this line of questioning.

  “Leticia doesn’t speak,” he said.

  “She got her tongue torn out,” said Lagnier.

  “Who by?” Parker asked.

  Lagnier shrugged. “Mexicans.”

  “What kind of Mexicans?”

  Lagnier picked at a scab on his hand. “The other kind.”

  Once again, Parker wished that he were elsewhere, and not in the company of a man who saw only two kinds of Mexicans—two kinds of everyone, probably.

  “When?” he said.

  “Well, she’s been with me for three years, and she was bleeding when I found her, so I’d say about three years back.”

  Parker stared at Lagnier without speaking. Seconds passed. Finally, Parker said, “I have to confess that your thought processes are confusing to me.”

  “That’s because you’re trying to make the world more complicated than it already is,” said Lagnier. “You ought not to contemplate it so much.”

  Parker stood and thanked Lagnier for his time. Three of the Latino workers drifted over: the one called Miguel Ángel, and two younger men whom Parker took to be Francisco and Gerardo.

  “Vete a casa,” Lagnier told them.

  Francisco and Gerardo nodded and walked away, but Miguel Ángel remained where he was, his eyes returning to the freezer before shifting away again, but only for a time, as though in some future hell he would forever be forced to look upon the body within.

  “It was Miguel Ángel who found her,” Lagnier said. “He was the one that pulled out the freezer.”

  Parker introduced himself, apologized to Miguel Ángel for not having much Spanish, and asked if he spoke English. Parker recognized his own politeness as some attempt to make recompense for the earlier treatment of the workers, but also as penance for his rudeness to Lagnier, and what he had subsequently learned about Leticia. Sometimes, his own rush to judgment was a source of shame to him.

  “Yes, I speak English,” said Miguel Ángel.

  “Is there anything you can tell us about the discovery of the woman’s body, anything that struck you as particularly unusual?”

  Miguel Ángel thought.

  “The freezer was too light.”

  “Even with the body inside?”

  “Yes. It should have weighed more.”

  “Why didn’t it?”

  “It had no parts. Just the woman.”

  Parker retrieved his flashlight.

  “Would you mind coming with me?” he asked Miguel Ángel, who did seem to mind but followed him anyway, if reluctantly.

  Parker knelt by the vent at the bottom of the freezer and shone the light inside. Miguel Ángel was correct: the appliance had not been fitted with any of its internal workings, not even a condenser. It was essentially a redundant white box, and also relatively new. It had acquired some dents, and a patina of dust, but that was all. He checked the brand name—COOL-A—but didn’t recognize it.

  “They’re made in Juárez for the domestic market,” said Lagnier, who had joined them. “We don’t see too many this side of the border.”

  Parker got to his feet.

  “She was brought from Mexico,” he said to Ross.

  “Which means she didn’t die here,” said Ross.

  “Because why transport a dead woman to Mexico only to carry her back to the United States again
a few weeks later?”

  Parker stared down for the final time at the body, as he and Ross spoke the same words simultaneously.

  “It’s not Mors.”

  CHAPTER VII

  The Border Patrol wanted to get the suspected illegals over to sector headquarters in Tucson as quickly as possible in order to process them before, in all likelihood, sending them back across the border, assuming they weren’t wanted for any crimes in the United States. But Ross didn’t particularly care to spend two hours driving to Tucson just to hear what he already knew or suspected: that these men had nothing to do with the body in the freezer.

  Nevertheless, it made sense to be certain. After some discussion, it was agreed that questioning should take place at the sheriff’s office in Gila Bend, where the first two Mexican workers to be interviewed claimed, through an interpreter, that they indeed knew nothing about the woman’s body, and had only crossed the border in the last week. A call to Lagnier confirmed that they had first shown up at his yard about four days earlier, which didn’t necessarily mean they were telling the truth, but Lagnier said he’d got “no bad vibes” from them, and he was a man who knew his vibes.

  “He may be right about those two,” said a Border Patrol agent named Zaleski, once all interested parties—with the obvious exception of the Mexicans themselves—had convened in the main office. She had arrived later than her colleagues, and worked intelligence for the sector. “They say they’re uncle and nephew, and they’re clean: no tattoos. That third one, though—he’s a keeper.”