Page 29 of Never Stay Gone
“Sí.”
“I think one of the girls found in that grave might be someone you know. I’m lookin’ for information about where she might have been and who she might have talked to before she disappeared. You think you might have answers for me ’bout that? Sure would help me try and find out who put her in the ground.”
Ramón pursed his lips and shifted. He looked beyond Dakota, to the dark corner of the bar, and waited. His eyes pinched, and then he nodded. “Who is the girl?”
Dakota pulled out his phone and opened the email he’d received from Bennet: a picture of Amber Serrano one of the times she was picked up by border patrol. She glared at the camera with a fuck-you attitude, a curl of her lip and an upward tilt of her chin. Dakota turned the phone to Ramón and slid it across the desktop.
“Ohh,” Ramón sighed. “Santa Muerte, te convoco. Dame justicia.” He crossed himself and kissed his fingers.
“So you know her.”
“I was wonderin’ where she was.” Ramón sagged back against the water-warped plywood that held his cashbox and a few bottles of liquor. He wouldn’t meet Dakota’s gaze.
“How long since you last saw her?”
Ramón thought for a moment, then said, “Four months. She was coming back north. Stopped here, like usual.”
Four months. That fit with their timeline so far. “North? From where?”
“You know from where.” Ramón nodded toward the south wall. If Dakota walked through the old wood, in a hundred feet, he’d be at the razor-wire-topped fence along the border.
“She bringing merchandise up to sell?”
Ramón said nothing.
“If shewas, where would she go to off-load? She have places she frequented? Spots I can check?”
Ramón looked at him like he was an idiot.
“You know, most times, I care about drug runnin’. I don’t like it, and I don’t like what drugs do to people who get hooked. I don’t like what the cartels do to kids like Amber, neither. She should have been playin’ fútbol and paintin’ her nails, not evadin’ the border patrol and the Texas Rangers. She should have dreamed of her quinceañera, not of one day becoming a sicario.” He pulled his cell phone back and swapped photos, replacing the picture of Amber alive with one of the ones he’d taken at the grave. He hooked his finger at Ramón, beckoning him closer.
Ramón leaned in, and Dakota shoved the phone at him. Amber’s putrefying features, her half-decayed jaw exposing the yellowed and sticky bones of her face, stared back at Ramón. Her skin was dark and leathery, dug through with maggots in places and ballooned with putrefaction in others.
Ramón flew back, cursing in a blur of gutter Spanish. He grabbed his chest and the plywood behind him. Bottles of booze toppled and crashed to the floor. “Jódete!”
“I’m tryin’ to find the fuck that did this to her, Ramón. Someone did that. Someone killed her and threw her away. I’m tryin’ to track the sick fuck, but I can’t do that if you don’t tell me where Amber was goin’.”
Ramón was breathing hard, still clutching the center of his chest. His eyes were cow wide, and his Adam’s apple fluttered above the paunchy jowls spilling over the neck of his shirt. “What do you care about a girl like her?” he finally asked. “No gringo cares about girls like her.”
“You don’t know me, so I’ll let that insult pass on by. This time.” Dakota powered off his phone screen and set it facedown in front of him. “I care about everyone. Now, Amber may not have had an easy life, but that don’t mean she doesn’t deserve justice for what’s been done to her. Someone loves her.” He tilted his head, eyed Ramón. “Maybe you loved her, a bit. Maybe you know her brother. I bet he loves her. He’s probably worried about her.”
Ramón’s eyes darted away and then back.
Dakota laid his hand on his phone. “She matters. And I’m gonna find out who did this to her. Help me, Ramón.”
Ramón unpeeled himself from the back wall and collapsed onto a barstool tucked behind his side of the counter. He mopped his face with his hand, muttering curses mixed with prayers to Santa Muerte. “It don’t take a genius to figure out, gringo,” he finally said. “Where would you take merchandise to sell?”
“Where there’s buyers.”
“And where would that be?”
North. Where there were more people than in the border ghost towns. Rustler was the biggest town in the Big Bend region, and only a few thousand people lived in the entire widespread town’s limits. Was Rustler big enough for Amber to off-load her drugs? And do it without ever coming into contact with Shane, Sheriff Reed, or the other deputies?
Or was she heading farther north? Amber could have gone all the way to Pecos, Odessa, Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo. Gone east or west, to Oklahoma City or Albuquerque. Or farther still, to Dodge City, Omaha, Chicago. Drugs from Mexico ended up in all corners of the United States. Why would Amber have stopped in Rustler?
“Just tell me one more thing,” Dakota said as he pocketed his cell phone. “Amber ever hitch out of the truck stop outside Rustler?”
“All the time.”
