Drone: An Eli Quinn Mystery Read online

  Lulu’s Grind was nearly empty. Lulu didn’t serve dinner. And she didn’t serve beer. I could’ve really used a beer. That’s part of the reason I’d asked Beach to meet me here and not over at Café Amir, which had two excellent ales on tap. I had a feeling the beer would have to wait, no matter how loudly it called. Meanwhile, I wanted to be in a public place but one where we could talk without being overheard. I knew it was a risk, but it’d be risky going to my house or my office until I figured out the next step. Better to be in public. Even better with a posse member who packed a gun and wasn’t afraid to use it.

  Lulu came out. “You look like hell,” she said.

  “Thanks, Lulu. Been a rough day.”

  “Been a rough year,” she said.

  Lulu knew more about me than just about anyone, except for Beach and Sam. Lulu and Jess had been best friends, did everything together, shared whatever women share that men generally aren’t aware of. Presumably including a lot about me, especially the bad things. I could always tell Lulu knew way more about me than she let on.

  She wagged a finger side-to-side, frowned, and gave me the head nod I knew well. “I tell you go have sex, not go fighting. It’s time. A year is long enough.”

  I took a deep breath to acknowledge her good advice, wondered if Jess might advise the same. If anyone knew about that, it’d be Lulu. I might as well have plunged a knife into my ribs. I winced, let the breath out slowly.

  “Can’t argue with you, Lulu.”

  “Then listen to me.” She bobbed her head once more as punctuation. “Now, what can I get for you?”

  We both ordered coffee, and Lulu gave me one last stern look before heading inside.

  ***

  I told Beach about the ranch, the van, the muffled shouts in Spanish, Skeleton Man and Mr. ’56, the black BMW that might be the same one he’d seen, how Lasko had jumped me from behind, and how I had disabled and disarmed him. The talking was really painful, so I went slowly.

  “Why didn’t he just shoot you ’stead a sneakin’ up on you?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to make noise, attract attention,” I said.

  “Or maybe he’s not so bright.”

  I nodded.

  “And maybe he likes to fight.”

  I nodded.

  “So you karate chopped his ass.”

  “Kicked him in the nuts.”

  “Works too.”

  “Then I kicked him in the head. He should be up by now, but he’ll have a helluva headache.” I was getting used to the pain of talking. That’s the thing about pain. You can’t always avoid it. Sometimes you just have to get used to it.

  Lulu brought our coffees. We leaned back causally, as if we’d been chatting about fishing or basketball. Once she’d left we resumed.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

  I shook my head. No need to verbalize this. Beach would understand.

  “This isn’t done,” he said.

  I shook my head in agreement.

  “Something about that house, that van, a Maricopa County sheriff sergeant in plain clothes beating you up for being there,” Beach said. “You want to see where this goes. So you neutralized him temporarily. Just enough force.”

  I put my thumb and forefinger together, left a tiny gap.

  “And maybe a little bit more,” Beach said.

  I nodded and smiled. Smiling hurt worse than talking, so I stopped.

  “You figure whatever’s going on, you’ve just nudged it along.”

  I nodded.

  “You know what it is that’s going on?”

  I shrugged.

  “Ideas?”

  I nodded.

  ***

  Sam arrived and exchanged greetings with Beach.

  “You look like hell,” she said.

  “Three’s a charm,” I said.

  Lulu returned. Sam stood and they executed a light embrace coupled with a perfect single-side air kiss. My eyebrows must’ve shot up. I knew they knew each other. Sam and I had been here several times together, and Lulu knew all her regulars. But I didn’t realize they were that friendly. My advanced detecting sensibilities smelled a serious conspiracy. They both looked at me, shook their heads and rolled their eyes like besties. Sam ordered a coffee and Lulu practically skipped away.

  “What happened?” Sam asked.

  “I was wondering the same thing,” I said.

  “I mean to your face.”

  I told her the whole story. Beach, having heard it already, rocked back on his chair and bounced the red ball off the patio tile.

  Sam listened patiently until I was done.

  “You kicked him in the nuts?”

  I nodded.

  “First case you’re breaking noses, second case you’re kicking a sheriff sergeant in the balls,” she said. “You’re going to get a reputation as a tough guy, you’re not careful.”

  I gave her the “Aren’t I?” look. She snorted out a laugh.

  That’s when I pulled the pie out of the bag and handed it to her.

  “You didn’t!”

  I nodded. It was becoming my preferred means of communication.

  “You just earned my services for a couple more hours,” she said. “And I think I might know what was in the van.”

  I nodded. It was a gesture with many meanings.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Quinn,” she said.

  “Hurts,” I said, pointing to my face.

  I don’t know exactly why she smiled at that. But I liked it, as always.

  “What’d you find?”

  “I dug deep on this,” she said. “I tied some things together from several sources that I don’t think anyone else has put together before. Ted McCall comes off as staunchly anti-immigrant, right? You’ve seen him on TV, the awful things he says.”

  “A donkey’s hindquarters,” Beach said.

  “Agreed,” Sam said. “He’s been chasing immigrants for years, decades. Has apprehended a few. Even shot a couple without killing them. Got off on a self-defense claim. A sheriff deputy I know in Cochise County said there was some circumstantial evidence in another case that McCall shot and killed a border-crosser, but he was never arrested for it. Again, it wasn’t publicized. So U.S. Border Control and local law enforcement agencies have an uneasy relationship with him. While they admit he, and his group, and others like them sometimes aid the cause of patrolling the border, they see the situation as a powder keg, and they can’t condone vigilante patrols.”

  “So McCall’s actions may be as violent as his words,” I said.

  “Fair bet, yes,” she said. “His ideology has become a pathology.”

  “So you’re inside his head a little more now.”

  “A little more.”

  “And your diagnosis?”

  “Psychopaths and sociopaths both have a serious disregard for others,” she said.

  “Check,” I said.

  “They lie. They cheat.”

  “Let’s assume he does.”

  “They’re not always violent, but they can be.”

  “Check.”

  “And they don’t feel remorse. Guilt is not in their vocabulary.”

  “Sounds like our guy,” I said.

  “McCall may have traits of both, but my bet is mostly psychopath,” Sam said. “He uses others like pawns, but he manages to maintain relationships. People trust him.”

  “What’s any of that got to do with the van?” Beach asked.

  “I’m getting to that,” Sam said. “You remember a few years back, when that SUV crashed, killed ten undocumented immigrants?”

  “There were more than ten stuffed into it,” Beach said.

  “Seventeen,” Sam said.

  “How the hell do you put seventeen people into an SUV?” Beach said.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. “And I don’t know how seven survived.”

  I rolled my hand to encourage Sam to get to the point.

  “A Fed I know says the SUV was registe
red to a guy known to be close to McCall, an organizational lieutenant of sorts. Guy said his SUV had been stolen. The driver was undocumented, and he was killed, so the inquiry didn’t go anywhere, and the details were never in the press.”

  “He’s smuggling immigrants,” I said.

  “That’s what was in the van,” Beach said.

  “Sure, steal my thunder,” Sam said.

  “He’s running a safe house,” I said.

  “Or an unsafe one,” Sam said.

  “All right under the Feds’ noses,” I said. “Nobody would figure him for it.”

  “If I’m right,” Sam said.

  “You usually are.”

  “Usually.”

  “Let’s go find out.”

  Chapter 20

  The sun was thinking seriously about setting when I called Paul E. Peters and arranged to meet him halfway between Pleasant and his office. Beach, Sam and I had agreed to meet back at Lulu’s Grind later.

  When I left Lulu’s I went a block east, one north, one west, then south back to Lulu’s and looped around the traffic circle before heading to my house. Didn’t see a tail. Slowed way down at the last turn before my home on Resolution Way so anyone following would maybe show themselves. Nothing.

  I opened the garage door with my remote and pulled the Jeep inside. Solo met me in the garage, having come from the house through the doggie door. I’d made sure whenever Solo was home, he had free run of the house and garage, discouraging anyone who might think it a good idea to enter. I gave him a quick pat and told him to get in the Jeep. Opened a cabinet in the garage and grabbed the black case. It was light, wouldn’t be a problem to carry on our hike. Put it in the Jeep, and Solo and I headed out of town.

  I spotted Pauly’s minivan in the parking lot of the shopping center just off the 101, parked next to it and climbed in through the sliding side door, black case in hand.

  “This an official CIA vehicle?”

  “Official shuttle-the-freaking-kids around van,” Pauly said.

  “That explains the Cheetos,” I said, pointing into the crevice of the rear seat.

  “You look like hell,” he said.

  I laughed. It hurt. I stopped.

  Pauly shook his head. “So anyway, you going to tell me what this is about?”

  “Nope.”

  Pauly nodded. I opened the case. He went to work. I let him. It took him just a few minutes.

  “Going to use a little duct tape here,” he said. “The fit isn’t perfect. But it should work.”

  “You’re a regular MacGyver,” I said.

  “Yeah, I once disarmed a missile with a paper clip. Saved most of Asia.”

  “Someday you’re gonna have to tell me what you really do,” I said.

  “Someday I will,” he said.

  “Not today?”

  “Nope.”

  I shut up and let him finish. He handed it to me like a proud father giving his son a toy he’d put together. Then he opened the center console and took out three pairs of night vision goggles, handed them to me.

  “You did not get these from me,” he said.

  “Of course not. I picked them up at Radio Shack.”

  “Government issue, Quinn. You get caught with those, they’ll waterboard you. Don’t screw around.”

  I nodded.

  “Mikey got anything to do with it?

  I didn’t answer.

  “McCall?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You going to break any laws tonight?”

  I shrugged.

  “Then I don’t want to know any more, do I?”

  I shook my head.

  “You need help?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “You going to ask me for any? I can bring the full force of the Feds to bear, if needed.”

  I wasn’t sure if Pauly was serious or not. I looked him in the eyes. No hint of joking.

  “I got backup,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Keep your cell phone handy though, in case I need a MacGyverism on the fly.”

  Pauly nodded, sharp and serious-like, and I guessed that his “full force of the Feds” was not an empty promise.

  “You’ll need to allow for the extra weight,” he said. “It’s just a couple ounces, but it’ll make a difference. And remember, at full resolution with a live feed you’ll have less battery life. Whatever you’re doing, make it quick.”

  Chapter 21

  “Smuggling immigrants from Mexico and Central America into the United States is complicated,” Sam explained. “It’s big business, well organized, run more and more by Mexican drug cartels.”

  I knew most of this, but Sam was a reporter, and she’d been researching all this for me. I was her audience, so I listened intently. Beach and Solo were in the back of the Jeep as we drove across the 101 and then up I-17. With the top down, they couldn’t hear Sam. But we’d all discussed the plan already, so that was OK. This was just background.

  “There are networks of people in Mexico whose sole job is to round up potential migrants, with promises that may or may not be legitimate,” she explained. “The migrants are brought to the border in busloads, sometimes put up in motels. They wait on someone else in the organization, known as a coyote, to take them across. The coyote’s only goal is to make it to a border town on this side, dump the cargo and collect his fees before getting caught.”

  “Then what?” A good listener knows when to insert a useful prompt.

  “The immigrants are moved around, maybe put up in different motels for a while, maybe transported to a safe house. That’s typically owned by someone known as the boss. The boss is the smuggling organization’s top dog.”

  Night was coming on fast, just a hint of purple left to silhouette the mountains to the west. I was anxious to get there.

  “Used to be the smugglers, especially the coyotes, relied on their reputations of success and good treatment of the migrants. Word of mouth got them their next clients. So they had incentive to treat the migrants well. With the drug cartels getting involved, the smuggling is mixing with drugs and the sex trade. The migrants are promised safe passage and a good job in the promised land, but as often as not they get nothing of the sort.”

  “They make them work for years to pay off the exorbitant smuggling fee,” I said.

  “Or worse, they’ll turn the women and children into sex slaves or prostitutes.”

  This I didn’t know so much about. My jaw clenched tight and I gripped the wheel tighter. I tried but failed to relax. We had a good plan in place, even if we didn’t know exactly what we’d find.

  “What’s in it for someone like McCall?”

  “A crossing can cost two grand or more,” Sam said. “He might get a cut of that.”

  “Or he’s selling sex slaves.”

  “You sure you want to wade into the middle of this?”

  I pushed the pedal down and took the Jeep up to eighty.

  ***

  It was pitch black when we exited at Coldwater Canyon Road in Black Canyon City. Just as the road doubled back to the south I turned left and wound through a maze of small streets to reconnect with another segment of Coldwater Canyon that headed east. I was pretty sure it would be a bad move to take Deadman’s Drive out to McCall’s place. Skeleton Man and Mr. ’56 would be on the lookout, and who knows who else. So we’d mapped an approach that would bring us within a mile of the ranch on the north side, via a road of unknown condition. From there we would walk. Google Maps showed there were no houses the last half-mile of the road, so if we played it right, we could approach unnoticed.

  We followed Coldwater Canyon Road nearly to its end, found the rutted unmarked road forking off to the southeast. I cut the lights and drove slowly. The road gave way to rough terrain, the bumps jarring. I drove until I worried we’d get stuck. I turned the Jeep around so it’d be ready for a quick getaway if needed.

  We got out. Solo hopped to the ground and was immediately at my heel. I grabbed the black case that
sat in the back between Beach and Solo.

  “That way,” I whispered and pointed. It was slow walking in the dark, the milky sea of stars not helping much.

  We walked in silence toward a slight rise in the otherwise flat valley. If I had it figured right, McCall’s place would be just a couple hundred yards beyond the rise, and we wouldn’t be visible from this side of it. It was so dark, we wouldn’t be seen anyway, unless someone was looking for us and shone a powerful light our way. Off to the right, far in the distance, I saw a porch light that should be Skeleton Man’s place. Beyond that a few other lights dotted the night.

  We walked bent over for the last twenty yards, then stayed crouched down and peeked over the rise. Nothing.

  Beach asked in a whisper: “Bearings wrong?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Where is it?” Sam asked.

  “Right there.” I pointed.

  “Where?” they both whispered together.

  “Look harder,” I said.

  You actually had to look slightly away from the house to see its dark geometry against the unlit desert. No lights on.

  Beach asked the obvious question: “They gone?”

  “Let’s find out,” I said.

  I opened the black case and pulled out the drone I’d built two years ago. Pauly had replaced the regular video camera with an infrared one, which would pick up heat rather than regular light. I hadn’t flown it in two years, so I’d be rusty. I’d inserted a new battery that was fully charged, but Pauly had warned me it wouldn’t last long with the extra weight and the camera.

  A few minutes was all we needed.

  I set the drone on a flat spot of ground and turned it on, paired my iPhone with the drone’s onboard Wi-Fi. From my phone I could see what the drone saw—nothing but a dark grey screen, since the camera pointed at a forty-five-degree angle toward the ground.

  The iPhone signaled the drone’s four rotors to spin, and with a quiet whir the machine lifted off, automatically hovering three feet above the ground to await further instruction. The app showed me what direction the drone was facing, its altitude above the ground, and its distance from us. Flying it on a pitch black night would not be easy.