“You got it.”
Norma pulled into Chili’s, and they spent the next hour eating, drinking, and talking, and all the while, Hunter’s thoughts kept returning to the boatman and the abducted child, Kelly. She felt sure he might be the next key…
Hunter drove across the international bridge and into Mexico at nine the next morning. Stopping by a food cart, she ordered three breakfast tacos of chorizo and egg, and a bottled coke dripping with moisture as the vendor pulled it from a red plastic bucket filled with watery ice.
He opened the bottle with a church key that hung from a kite string attached to the cart, and took her money, then handed the tacos and coke to her. She ate as she drove, sipping from the coke bottle occasionally, and finished two tacos in record time. The town was wakening, and there was vehicle and pedestrian activity, but it wasn’t crowded so early in the day. Most of the business was in the evening and at night.
The road turned upriver, meandering along residential streets and, as she left the town’s buildings and houses, she saw more ruins of abandoned homes, and stray dogs running furtively through the overgrown brush and down the alleys.
She checked her phone for the GPS marker and continued paralleling the Rio Grande. Across the river, miles into Texas, Hunter spotted the silhouette of the Sleeping Lady, a low mountain range that served as a guide for early travelers. Ten minutes later, the GPS marker showed she was directly across from the boatman’s spot. She drove fifty yards beyond, parking the vehicle in an open area on the side of the dirt road. She finished the last bites of taco and drank the last of the coke, burping slightly from drinking it so fast, then left her pickup.
Walking the road gave Hunter a good look at the narrow trails going into the cane and brush toward the river. When she found one that looked more travelled, and had the same set of tracks overlaying one another indicating multiple use by the same individual, she went down it, into the tall green cane.
Several other trails intersected with the one she followed, but she stayed on the tracks. When she was close enough to hear the river, she also heard someone coming up the trail. Hunter found a small break in the river cane and slipped through it, stopping about five feet from the main trail. She knelt and watched the trail. It wasn’t long before the old man shuffled up the trail, the man she recognized as the boatman from the other day. He had a stringer of catfish and perch slung on his back and carried it over his shoulder with his index finger through a slender loop of the stringer. He carried a weathered Zebco rod and reel on the same shoulder, holding the handle with his other fingers and his thumb.
He held a phone to his ear with the other, saying into the phone, “Tengo bastante por la comida. Trae algún frijoles y tortillas, y serranos del jardín, por favor.” He listened a moment, then said, “Viente minutos. Bueno.”
So, Hunter thought, the boatman was having someone over for lunch. She’d been close enough, and the phone’s volume loud enough, that she knew he’d talked to a woman. Rather than stopping and confronting him, Hunter decided to follow, see where he lived. That might be handy later. She could come back to check out the boat another time.
He turned left on the main road, and Hunter waited a minute before going to her pickup. She started it up and followed the man, watching him until he turned in the first residential neighborhood, still walking and carrying his fish.
His house was the second one up the road, and nicer than the others around it. It was a two-story home made of cinder block, painted a pale blue, with red tile roof. His yard had grass, which his neighbors did not. Hunter decided to find a place to watch the location for a while. She found a home half a block up the road that had banana plants overgrowing the fence and hanging into the caliche street. She slid into the overhang, crouching among the long, fat leaves, hiding from the boatman’s home unless he was seriously looking for someone.
Fifteen minutes later, a midnight blue Cadillac Escalade parked in front of the boatman’s house. Hunter sat a little straighter, taking out her phone to snap pictures. Her first was of the Escalade’s plate. It was a Coahuila plate. The next ten photos were rapid fire as three women exited the Cadillac. Two were women in their forties, one in a red dress and the other in a maroon one, and the third was a muscular, twenty-something woman dressed in black workout gear. She resembled one of those elite Crossfit women in the magazines, not bodybuilder big like a weightlifter, but the ones who looked hard, strong, and very fit. She walked like her body weighed nothing, light as air.
Hunter took several photos of each of them as the boatman came out to meet them and carry their wares into the house. She snapped three photos of him as well. She noticed the man almost bowed to the woman in red.
Hunter recognized the one in red. It was the woman who threw the child off the bridge, only now her face and arms showed bruises as if she’d been beaten. “So that’s one of the boss ladies. Looks like she pissed somebody off big time.” She said to herself. “But she’s still hanging around.”
When they entered his home, Hunter waited five minutes, then walked by the house and stopped at the corner. She thought about what to do next, and looked over the street and homes. Every yard was almost overgrown with bushes, trees, plants, and shrubs of all kinds, and they crossed the low fences between houses. She didn’t see any dogs, which was strange, but she did see several cats.
Hunter took her time and strolled along the street. When she reached the boatman’s house, she saw the man and women sitting inside the screened front porch at a table, and the woman in red talked and gestured.
Hunter decided to take a chance and move in beside the next house, staying between the bushes and plants on each side of the fence. She stopped near the corner of the boatman’s yard, and could hear voices coming from the porch area. She edged forward and could see thr
ough the branches to make out the people at the boatman’s home.
The woman in red talked in English, which surprised Hunter. She wasn’t loud, and Hunter had to strain to hear.
The woman said, “Paco, I want you to take the next ones yourself. Take someone with you to bring back the boat, and you can drive us all.”
Paco said, “Por supuesto, of course. When will we do this?”
“Be on the river tomorrow. We will come fast. They’ll hunt for us immediately.”
“You want me armed?”
“Yes.”
“As you wish.”
Hunter thought it might be drugs, but she continued to listen.
The boatman said, “What about what we already have?”
“Make the calls, have your helpers stage it somewhere north where we can combine the two loads and take it all with us. Makes for a big payday that way.”
“And if there are any problems?”