Coyotes in Winter: Part 4 of 6
The tension builds as Rossi and Lopez fight two suspects and win a breakthrough in the case.
This is part four of a six-part serialized mystery story. If you forgot where we left off, see Coyotes in Winter Part 3. For the first part, see Coyotes in Winter Part 1.
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The blonde woman turned to me, one hand up in a guard, the other reaching into her jacket.
The blonde didn’t leave me any choice. She had to be reaching for a weapon. I elbowed aside her guard arm and grabbed her other arm with both of my hands, as close to her wrist as possible. We started a tug-of-war over the weapon. As we pulled back and forth, she worked it free of her jacket, and I saw the square, black muzzle of a small pistol, like Lopez’s off-duty gun. I shifted my grip down to her gun hand and clamped down. My hands were bigger than hers. I pushed her back, putting her off balance, and as she recovered, moving back toward me, I spun around, pulling her hand up and away and twisting it at the same time into a painful wrist lock.
From Lopez’s direction came the crash of chairs being flipped over and the crackle of a stun gun.
The blonde shrieked as I cranked her hand around as hard and violently as I could. She fell against a table and landed on the floor. I came away with her gun. I took a step back and cleared the chamber, in case it had jammed, and aimed it at her. Only then did I risk a glance at Lopez.
The big guy was sprawled, face down, on the white tile floor. Lopez had landed on top. She pressed the muzzle of her stun gun against the guy’s left kidney and flicked her hair out of her face with a twist of her head.
“Sheriff’s office,” Lopez announced.
The blonde shook her head in disbelief and raised her hands halfway between surrender and a shrug.
We settled the big guy and the blonde at a table.
“Nice takedown,” Lopez said.
“Thanks. I see you brought your emotional support stun gun.”
“Clicky-clicky. Makes me happy.”
I pointed out that she was limping.
“Jacked up my knee again,” she said. “I guess some things do get old.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I said.
Lopez slapped my shoulder.
We put on gloves and got to work: pat downs, empty pockets, strip off belts, shoes, jewelry, check for weapons. The guy had a four-inch-long folding knife, single-edged, like a hunting knife. The woman’s gun was a small Glock .380 with a six-round magazine, a nasty close-quarters weapon. It was similar to what Lopez carried for her off-duty, except Lopez’s gun was 9mm to match her duty pistol. I was glad I stopped the blonde from using it.
We made two piles of their stuff on the table in front of our suspects. Lopez took photos with her phone. Then we packed everything into clear plastic bags and secured it in the trunk of my old Audi. It would be out of sight there, unlike the back of Lopez’s SUV.
Fuentes gazed longingly at several wads of cash, rolled up in tight cylinders.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said to her as I carried an armful of bags out to my car. “It’s evidence.”
“Police in Guatemala take money. Police here take money, too.”
Looking back now I realize that was a hint but I was too tired to recognize it.
I wrapped the woman’s sprained wrist with a bandage from my kit. The guy appeared to have a mild concussion. Lopez submitted a request on her phone for prior arrests and prosecutions. She wasn’t enthusiastic about getting a response anytime soon.
“Any strings you can pull?” I said.
“Not really, no. I’ll probably get a response next week.”
I looked for the waitress. No luck. She and the cook had disappeared. I took a slice of cold bacon from the salad prep and nibbled on it.
Lopez limped out of the bathroom, wiping her hands on a paper towel, headed to the booth where we’d tied up our suspects. Based on my experience, her knee was worse that she was letting on.
“OK, big guy,” Lopez said frostily. “Are you Frank?”
“It’s not what it looks like,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what it looks like,” she said. “It looks like you’re Frank.” She pointed to the woman. “You must be the smart one. Not a compliment. Process of elimination.”
“Shay,” the woman said. “Everyone calls me Shay.”
Lopez cracked her knuckles and said to me, “No other names, no numbers on them?”
“Nope. Checked twice.”
“Check their truck,” she said. “Maybe our luck will hold out.”
I came back a few minutes later with a pay-as-you-go clamshell phone. We didn’t bother about fingerprints. It’s hard to pull prints from phones. There might be one on the battery, of course. The techs could try that later.
Lopez opened it and clicked through some menus. “Last number who called this is… the diner phone. And a few recent calls to… a local number. Looks like Shay here failed to clear the message log. Sloppy.”
She showed the number to Fuentes. “Recognize it?”
“No.”
Lopez opened the phone case and snapped it shut repeatedly. So goes our luck.
She stayed with our suspects while I talked with Fuentes.
“You saw their stuff,” I said to her. “There were no fake papers. No forged IDs. They came to take you back to the coyotes.”
“They also work for the coyotes?”
“It’s not like that,” I said. I rubbed my forehead while trying to think of how to explain this. “It’s like they own their own business. Their goal is whatever gives them the most money for the least effort. They can either make some money selling you fake papers, or, they can make more money selling you to the coyotes.”
Confusion flickered in her eyes.
I called out to Lopez: “Help me out with trafficking.”
Lopez joined us and said, “The traffickers, at this level, aren’t organized. Think of them as different gangs. Sometimes they work together. Sometimes they fight. They don’t make big plans. They only want as much money as they can get, today. They may not be able to spend it next week, or next month.”
Fuentes expression darkened.
“No worries,” I said. “You’re doing great up to now. You had a plan. You got money. The only problem is that you didn’t know enough people and you’re in a strange country. But we can help. We’ll help you get your sister. But you have to think. Think hard. You have to help us.”
We moved to another booth, near enough to watch the suspects, yet far enough to have a quiet conversation. Lopez and I on one side, Fuentes on the other.
“Do you have any idea,” I said to Fuentes, “how the coyotes avoid the cops?”
“No.”
“Do you know who keeps your papers?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“What about your sister? Do you know where they keep her?”
“We do not work the same jobs.”
“What happens when they need you?”
“A driver comes.”
“Who?”
“A man. He takes me to the patient. He takes me back.”
Lopez said, “Is the driver always the same person?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the driver today?” Lopez said.
“At work.”
Lopez pursed her lips: This is interesting.
I agreed.
Lopez drummed her fingers on the table, thinking aloud. “It would be nice to have someone higher up the food chain. But the driver would do. A district attorney might be able to get him to turn someone up higher.” To Fuentes: “What’s the driver’s name?”
“Shawn.”
“Just Shawn?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it has to be a common name.” Lopez pulled her hair back. “I know dozens of Shawns. I once worked with a whole SWAT team named Shawn. All different spellings.”
“Fuentes,” I said, “if a driver takes you everywhere, how come you’re here, now, without a driver?”
“I walked.”
“From where?”
“The motor lodge.”
“You walked all the way from the motel?” I said, incredulous. “That’s eight miles.”
“So what? People walk everywhere in Guatemala.”
“Eight miles?”
“I don’t understand. Don’t Americans walk?”
“Americans,” Lopez said, careful of her knee while she left the booth, “complain about walking thirty feet to their car. C’mon, Rossi. Let’s see if we can get this driver.”
We returned to our suspects in the other booth.
“I’m thinking of a number,” Lopez said to them. “A local number. Belongs to Shawn.”
No reaction from Frank. However, concern flickered across Shay’s face.
Lopez spun the phone on the tabletop. “Shawn… Shawn… Shawn.”
“Which sheriff’s department you with?” Shay said, her voice husky, like Lopez’s.
“Iroquois County.”
“I see. You’re not a cop here. I didn’t think you was from around here. I would’ve remembered.”
“Why’s that?”
Shay scoffed. ”Because not many women try to rock the natural look… at your age.”
Lopez ignored the insult. She took the phone from the table and turned it over and over in her hands, thinking.
After a long moment, Lopez handed me the phone and said: “Re-dial that last number. If a guy answers, let me do the talking.”
I dialed the number and set the phone on the table in speaker mode.
A man answered after several rings. “This better be good,” he said. Loud office noises in the background: conversations, phones, people yelling over conversations and phones.
Lopez picked up the phone. “Shawn?” she said, softly. Her voice was pretty close to Shay’s, and now it sounded even more so.
“What’s up, babe?” the man on the other end said. “I’m busy.”
“I got two ballers. Want some action. Want twins.”
“We don’t have any twins.”
“Doesn’t Fuentes have a sister?”
Shawn spoke with someone on his end. Muffled words. Laughter.
His voice returned, whispering. “They ain’t twins, but they look pretty close. How much we talking?”
“Five easy.”
“Where they at?”
“They passing through.”
“Where’s the pick up?”
“Diner.”
A pause. More noise on Shawn’s side.
“Half an hour,” Shawn said, then hung up.
Lopez leaned over toward Shay and snapped the phone shut in her face.
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