A Cinnabar Sky Read online

  A Cinnabar Sky

  A Cinnabar Sky

  By

  Billy Kring

  Copyright © 2019 by Billy Kring

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by:

  Elizabeth Mackey Graphic Design

  www.elizabethmackey.com

  Books by Billy Kring:

  The Hunter Kincaid Series

  Quick

  Outlaw Road

  The Empty Land

  Tonton

  Hunter’s Moon

  Degüello

  A Cinnabar Sky

  The Ronny Baca Series

  Baca

  L.A. Woman

  Bad Moon Rising

  Short stories

  The Devil’s Footprints–A Hunter Kincaid Short Story

  Jornada

  Non-Series Novels

  Hell’s Bells

  Where Evil Cannot Enter (as B.G. Kring)

  COWRITTEN

  With George Wier:

  1889: Journey to the Moon

  1899: Journey to Mars

  With Manning Wolfe:

  Iron 13

  You can find these books on Amazon, plus short stories and more at my website:

  www.billykring.com

  Chapter 1

  --She wore her scars as her best attire.

  A stunning dress made of hellfire.--

  -Daniel Saint-

  Buddy McFarlen spotted Hunter Kincaid driving a Border Patrol vehicle along Terlingua’s Ghost Town Road near the Starlight Theater, and waved at her like a school kid trying to catch the teacher’s attention. She slowed and stopped beside him, “What’s up?”

  “There’s a car loaded with drugs, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far, on highway one-seventy about a mile from here, the lot where the Sheriff’s Office parks the abandoned cars.”

  Hunter cleaned off the passenger seat by moving an unopened Snickers bar, a half-eaten pack of corn nuts, and an almost empty, blanket-covered aluminum two-quart canteen with enough water left to slosh when she moved it. Buddy slid in and Hunter drove in the direction he pointed, “Is it coke, or marijuana?”

  “I don’t know,” he hesitated before continuing, “and it may not be drugs.” Hunter raised her eyebrows.

  “Either it is or it isn’t.”

  “It’s something. I’m sure of that.”

  “Buddy, you’re giving me a headache.”

  “I know, I know, but bear with me.” He pointed, and Hunter drove in that direction.

  Five minutes later, Buddy indicated two rows of abandoned cars and pickups on a caliche lot. “See the one on the left, the dark green Ford, that’s it. I haven’t checked these in months and just went by again this morning.”

  “And you found the drugs today?”

  Buddy didn’t answer. She drove to the lot and parked, then followed Buddy on foot to the rear of the forest green vehicle. He tapped on the trunk with the edge of his pocket knife. “Hear that?” He tapped on it again, making a muffled, odd sound.

  Hunter said, “Where did you get this one?”

  “It was caught in the big flood six months ago, came down the Rio Grande. I pulled it out of the water with the wrecker and parked it here.”

  “Nobody claimed it?”

  “No. The plates were gone, torn off in the flood, I guess.”

  “Did you check the VIN?”

  “Nope. We figured someone might claim it sooner or later, but nobody has.” He looked at her, “So I got to thinking last night it might be full of dope.”

  Hunter stepped closer, put her nose carefully next to the trunk seam and smelled something odd. Not necessarily bad, but odd and she couldn’t place it.

  Buddy said, “You got a whiff of that?”

  “I smell something, but I’m not sure it’s marijuana. What makes you think it might be drugs?”

  “By where the car came from, it had to cross down through the Rio Grande by the old smuggler’s route to get caught in the rise.”

  “You didn’t check it right away?”

  “It was reported the third day after the flood. Water was still circling around it, and half the roads were flooded. I sniffed the trunk back then, but there was nothing. Now the smell is more like a really bad swamp, right?”

  “I’m not sure what it is. Can you pop the trunk?”

  “I called a deputy to see about doing just that thing. They have the authority to order it and I won’t get my butt in trouble. Carlo Diaz is coming.”

  Ten minutes later, Diaz arrived in a tan Brewster County Sheriff’s Suburban. Carlo, all bright white teeth in that handsome brown face said, “What have you got, Buddy?”

  Buddy gave him a quick history of the car and said, “Can we open it?”

  Carlo looked at Hunter, “What do you think?”

  “We won’t know what’s in it until we do.”

  “Buddy, you have some tools?”

  “Sure,” he said, “Hunter, can you take me to the shop?”

  “Climb in.”

  They returned in less than ten minutes and Buddy carried several pry bars and other items to the Ford. Hunter remained a step behind the two men as they checked the trunk seam. Buddy searched it for a weak point, and decided on one corner that lifted slightly higher than the rest of the lid. When he had the bar in place and pried on it, the lid popped with a greasy, sucking sound, and the smell hit them.

  Both men jerked their faces fast away as if flames shot out of the trunk, and the deputy vomited on the gravel at his feet. Hunter stepped closer and caught a whiff of the god-awful reek coming from the Ford. Like an abandoned slaughterhouse gone fetid and rotten in the summer heat. Buddy wiped his mouth and his watering eyes, “I’ll have to burn my clothes with this smell on them. Brandi won’t let me inside the house.”

  “I didn’t notice that you got any on you.”

  “Being that close will be enough. We opened that lid and a cloud of it rolled over us.” He spat on the ground, “I can still taste it.”

  He stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees, retching. When he gained control, Buddy righted and said, “This is horrible. Take a look.”

  Hunter held her breath. The trunk area was filled with a thick, rancid, greyish soup laced with string-like lines of what resembled fine red threads running through it. A finger-wide, crusty rime of dried material showed all around the trunk’s rim where the lid broke loose when Buddy pried it open. The mix in the bottom looked to be made of thick mucus, or something similar. Hunter turned away and exhaled the held breath and drew in fresh air. “What happened?”

  Buddy said, “Like I said, it’s probably an illegal that got smuggled across and hid in the trunk. This Ford was found downriver at a crossing, half covered up in a debris pile of brush and stuff. A deputy said it washed in there during the flood. He spotted it because the trunk reflected the sun, but had a lot of mud on it that didn’t shine, and he got curious.”

  “The car’s been here in the lot cooking in the sun for six months?”

  “About what we figure,” Buddy said. “Once, over in Sanderson they had something similar and had to use liquid nitrogen to freeze it all, then break it out in chunks to get the evidence because it was like soup.”

  Carlo turned away with his phone.

  Buddy said, “Would be way better than scooping it out. Hoo-wee, this smell would gag a buzzard.” He glanced at the deputy with a hint of a smile, “Woul
dn’t it, Carlo?” Diaz shot him the finger and drank some water from a plastic bottle.

  Hunter said, “I don’t know if you have a body in there, but you sure have a mess.”

  Deputy Diaz, who looked less pale around the gills said, “I just talked to the Sheriff.”

  An oily humidity rose from the liquid and they felt it on their faces and hands. That creeped Hunter out, and she stepped further back.

  Buddy said, “What is that stuff?”

  Carlo ran a stick through it and said, “I feel some things under the surface, they’re moving around when I push them.” He moved the thumb-sized stick some more and lifted it by the end, the way a fisherman lifts a fish out of the water. The deputy had to put some muscle in lifting the object out of the murk, bending the stick like a fisherman’s pole with a big one on the line, and they watched as a human skull rose dripping from the liquid, the stick protruding from the eye socket. The spine remained half-attached, and part of it lifted with the skull until the spine separated from the skull and fell into the soup with a soft plop and sank below the surface.

  Buddy looked at Carlo and Hunter, “This is not good.”

  Carlo said, “No sir, it is not.”

  Hunter said, “This is your baby now, Carlo. Not in my jurisdiction.”

  “Can you two hang around here for a while? I’m the only one working South county today.” Hunter nodded, and so did Buddy.

  Hunter winked at Carlo and said, “So you’re the investigating homicide detective too?”

  “Yeah, and the traffic control officer and the street sweeper and the animal control officer, in case some donkeys mess up in town.”

  “God bless small towns.”

  Carlo shook his finger at her, put his phone in his pocket and called on his vehicle’s radio to continue talking to the Sheriff while the man drove. He also handed Hunter his stick.

  A minute later, Carlo said, “Yes sir,” on the radio and hung up. “Sheriff said for us to go ahead and scoop out what we can, then freeze the rest and seine it as it melts. Then we bag everything.”

  Buddy said, “I’m curious. How did this guy turn into a can of Dinty Moore while in the trunk?”

  Hunter said, “Like being in a slow cooker. Meat cooks off the bones, and everything in there is re-cooked every day the sun is up like this here. It won’t be much longer and the bones would also turn to mush. Isn’t it a hundred degrees already?”

  Carlo said, “If it isn’t, it’s close to it, and like cooking the contents all day, every day for six months. Made it to a hundred yesterday by ten am, so the temp is right on track for today. My guess is the trunk’s interior was around a hundred thirty degrees daily for at least five, six hours.”

  “Don’t feel like it’s your fault, Buddy,” Carlo said, “Whoever drove is at fault.”

  They discussed things for a few minutes, and Buddy made a call, then said, “Brandi’s off work and will bring some food and drinks by for us. I had her pick up a couple of eight by ten tarps we had at the back of the firehouse. I thought they could hold whatever we scoop out of here.”

  Hunter said, “If she can bring a dip net, that might be helpful, too.” She made a scooping motion to how the net would work. Buddy nodded and called Brandi back and got a thumbs-up on the net. Hunter also radioed the other Border Patrol Agent working the area, her friend Raymond Flores, and he said he couldn’t come to the location, that he was on a trail of backpackers near the Hot Springs.

  Carlo got latex gloves for their hands out of the back of his sedan. He also brought out a small six-by-eight plastic tarp. all three started using sticks to fish up half-dissolved bones, rotting clothes, shoes, and a thin silver bracelet on the first effort.

  They put the items on the tarp. Hunter and Carlo looked at each other, “A female?” Hunter said.

  “Looks like it.”

  Several other locals pulled up, curious, and Carlo asked them to leave, which they did. Brandi drove up in a reconditioned black Jeep CJ-5 with Igloo coolers in the back. She hopped out and said, “I just picked up some breakfast tacos. Some are chorizo and egg, some guisado, and four tatema. I brought some salsa, too, and some tortilla chips. I put some iced-down Dr. Peppers in the cooler along with some water.”

  Buddy hefted the coolers out of the seat and put them on the trunk of Carlo’s vehicle, where they ate while standing in the shade of a small desert willow flowering with white and pink blossoms. No one talked much, but Hunter did nod her head at the Ford and say, “One is a woman because of the bracelet.”

  Carlo chewed a moment before saying, “I turned over a pelvis at the last, didn’t hook it but I saw the shape and it was a male.”

  Brandi said, “So there were two in the trunk?”

  “At least. We aren’t through yet.”

  The liquid nitrogen truck arrived and Carlo directed the driver where to park and told him what they needed. His eyes widened, but he pulled beside the green Ford and slipped on heavy, grey insulated gloves that reached to the elbows, then he uncoiled the thick hose to reach the car trunk. He checked the dials on the truck, started the pump and began spraying the cold nitrogen into the trunk. There was enough liquid in the trunk that it took thirty minutes to freeze all the contents solid.

  The driver hung up the hose and removed his gloves, then said, “Anything else?”

  Buddy asked, “How cold is that stuff?”

  “About three-hundred degrees below zero.”

  Carlo said, “That should do it.”

  “Do I send the bill to the Sheriff’s Office?”

  “That would be best.”

  “I’ll do it when I get back to the office. You all stay frosty.”

  Hunter looked at the others as he drove away, “Was he being funny?”

  “Uh-huh, a natural born comedian.” Carlo said. “Just not good at it.”

  Brandi said, “How about I go to the store and get some five-gallon buckets so you can get the chunks out and see what you’ve got.”

  “That would help. Thanks, Brandi,” Carlo said.

  Brandi said, “I’ll be back.”

  She hopped in the Jeep and zipped down the road, disappearing around the curve in a pale rooster cloud of dust. She returned in ten minutes with buckets and pails. Buddy unloaded the items and Hunter and Carlo carefully broke up the frozen mess and scooped out the chunks, careful not to remove anything else. As each bucket melted, they emptied the fluid through the dip net in case something slipped by them, and then plucked out the bones, pieces of clothing, and other paraphernalia.

  They filled up the first tarp with the bones from at least two people, then started on the second. By the time they reached the bottom third of the car trunk, the sun was down and the frozen mixture seemed as solid as an iceberg. They left what was in the trunk and checked the bones they’d fished out of the mess.

  The soupy mixture was still so thick that it coated the bones and material in a slick, gummy layer, obliterating small details on the bones. Buddy, who worked for the volunteer fire department made another call. Ten minutes later, two men drove up in the department’s water buffalo and parked by the tarps. Santino Robles and Bobby Sotomayor got out and surveyed the bones on the tarps. “What are you guys working on here?” Bobby turned to Hunter and said, “I’d expect a deputy to be around here, but not the famous woman from the narco-corrida.”

  Santino said, “Oh yes, El Lobo Y la Tejana. It’s a classic.”

  Hunter said, “You two rounders aren’t in jail today?”

  “Rounders?”

  “I heard it on an old western movie last night. Seemed to fit when I saw you two.”

  Bobby said, “The one with Henry Fonda and Glen Ford? That’s a good one, but its old.”

  Santino grinned and held up his big hands “We’re the good guys, Hunter. Remember who took turns pity dancing with you at the last baíle when you came solo.”

  Bobby nodded and said, “That’s what we do, save damsels in distress like you.” Hunter grinned
and bumped him with her shoulder.

  Santino said, “So, what do we have here?”

  The deputy said, “Bones in the trunk by that green Ford. We’d like to clean them off, but there’s no water around here.”

  Buddy reached into the utility box by the water tank and said, “At your service,” as he unrolled a sturdy water hose and attached it to the tank. He turned on the engine, flipped a small lever at the rear of the tank and said, “For extra water pressure.”

  Bobby took the hose and sprayed the bones with a fine stream at first, then two more times with a stronger flow of water, and held the hose closer to the individual bones. The water ran off the tarp and made muddy snail tracks across the caliche lot until the fluid soaked into the thirsty earth within twenty feet. Small white and yellow butterflies lined up on the damp earth and sucked at the moisture.

  “A bullet hole,” Hunter said.

  Carlo said, “Where?”

  “Under the edge of that one,” she pointed at the largest skull. “I can barely see it.”

  Carlo used a stick and turned the skull to reveal the hole in the forehead. “Well, shit.” He moved the other skulls and found no holes in the other adults, and none in the child’s skull.

  He said, “This gets worse as we go. Now it’s a kid.”

  “One murdered, shot from the front and exiting the back.”

  “I’m guessing a nine mil or thirty-eight, maybe a .357, nothing larger or smaller, judging from the holes. Then whoever it was that closed the trunk on them knew the others would drown. Those are some bad dudes.”

  Hunter walked to the trunk and used the water hose to spray the frozen section, but didn’t melt it to any significant degree. It would take time, and the summer’s heat. She said to Carlo, “No bullet recovery unless we find where he was shot. The shooter killed him while they were in the trunk, but there’s nothing else here that we can find, until the rest of it melts.”

  “Cold blooded,” Bobby said.

  “No duh,” Buddy said.

  Brandi said, “I’m going home, maybe cry a little for whoever these people are. Buddy, I hope you’ll pick up something to eat this evening because I don’t feel like cooking.”