Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) Read online

  “Good idea. Again, I’m sorry. Thanks again for your help.”

  “I gave you nothing,” she said.

  “Understood.”

  “Be careful.”

  After saying they needed to stay in touch, they both clicked off.

  Ben sat in the cab of his truck staring at his disposable phone. Perhaps he was ready to emerge from his monastic lifestyle.

  17

  Deputy Sheriff Lester Dawson had finally caught a break in his case at the Grange Hall during the church Bingo. He brought Maria Alvarez to the morgue, where she had definitively identified the shooting victim as her brother, Marco. That was the good news. The bad news was that Maria had no idea why her brother had been targeted. Was this a simple hate crime? Did some local decide he didn’t like Hispanic immigrants? He would look into that angle, but for some reason he thought that wasn’t the case.

  The detectives in the sheriff’s department had taken the lead interrogating Maria, grilling her for hours. Lester had sat back and tried to intervene when he thought the young woman was been treated too harshly. She was, after all, the sister of the victim and not some mass murderer. Hours later, the detectives thanked Maria for her cooperation.

  Truthfully, Lester knew that the woman was scared to death. Although she had been born in America, she still didn’t seem fully integrated into society.

  Now, late afternoon, Lester drove Maria back to her home in the northern part of the county, just a few miles from the entrance to Cantina Valley.

  “How are you doing?” Lester asked Maria. He noticed she had a death grip on the door with her right hand, and her left was digging down on her thigh.

  “No so good,” she said.

  “I understand. I lost my brother in Iraq.”

  “I’m sorry.” She hesitated and then added, “Did you serve as well?”

  “No. I did two years of college and became a cop.”

  His lack of military service was a constant failure on his part. Especially in the mind of his father, who had volunteered as a Marine in Vietnam. After his brother died, Lester guessed his father wished it had been him instead. Maybe he should have served.

  “My brother was a soldier in Afghanistan,” she said. “He survived two tours there only to be shot a few miles from home.”

  He had heard this during her interview with the detectives. Lester was still trying to figure out why Marco Alvarez had not come up during their finger print check. They should have been in the military system. “I’m really sorry, Maria. I promise I will do everything in my power to bring him justice.”

  “Thank you.”

  They rode in silence for a while, and Lester tried to recall if there was anything she had not told their detectives. “You said your father died a few years back. How did he die?”

  “A heart attack.”

  “What did he do again?”

  “He worked the fields here in the valley.”

  “I mean before coming to America.” The detectives had not asked this question, but Lester had no idea if it was significant.

  “He was a soldier,” Maria said. “But he met my mother and they had Marco, so they decided to come to America.”

  “The Catholic Church helped them come here?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What year?”

  “In nineteen eighty-four. I was born in eighty-seven.”

  “Your mother is still alive,” Lester said, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes. She doesn’t work anymore. She lives with me.”

  “And you’re a nurse in Springfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a long drive.”

  “Not really. It’s a straight shot to I-Five or down to the Beltline in Eugene. I can make it to the hospital in forty minutes.”

  The sheriff’s detectives had already scoured over her brother’s house a couple of miles from Maria’s place, and had not found anything of interest.

  “Is your mother home?” he asked.

  “Yes. She is very distraught.”

  “She didn’t go to the Bingo. Why not?”

  “She wasn’t feeling well. An upset stomach.”

  He needed to interview her mother, but he didn’t want to bring her to the sheriff’s department. Something told him she would be more open to his questions in the comfort of her home.

  Moments later and Lester pulled into the driveway of Maria’s house in the countryside northwest of Junction City. It was a small white single story house that looked to be built in the early nineteen hundreds. Massive cottonwood trees would provide shade in the summer.

  Lester shut down his sheriff’s department rig and glanced over to Maria. “Would it be all right to come in and talk with your mother?”

  “I don’t know if she will be up for that,” Maria said.

  “I could show up tomorrow morning and take her to the station for an interview.”

  She turned quickly and said, “That would be cruel.”

  He didn’t think she would like that. “It’s standard operating procedure to interview the next of kin, Maria. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t talk with her. We can do that here, or down at the department.”

  “I thought you were the nice one,” she said derisively.

  “I’m not your enemy, Maria. Does your mother have something to hide?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then let’s get this out of the way. She might remember something that could help.”

  Finally, Maria agreed with a slight nod of her head.

  They got out and went into her house. Her mother was sitting in a rocking chair in the corner of the living room, knitting something. The elder Alvarez wasn’t surprised to see Lester, since he had seen her at the edge of the window when they pulled into the driveway.

  Maria introduced her mother to Lester, and the mother barely lifted her eyes in acknowledgement. He could tell from those puffy eyes that she had been crying.

  “Please, Deputy Dawson, take a seat. Would you like some coffee?” Maria asked him.

  “That would be great,” he said.

  She went off to the kitchen, which was in a separate room off the small dining area.

  Then he pulled out his notebook and glanced around the room at various family pictures. There were shots of Maria and Marco as children, graduation pictures, and a standard photo of Marco as an Army soldier. What was conspicuously absent were any photos of the parents, other than a couple with the children.

  Lester sat on the end of the sofa near the older woman. Actually, Maria’s mother had to be only in her early sixties. But she looked a little older than that. Probably from a life of hard work.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Alvarez,” Lester said.

  The older woman stopped knitting, but still refused to look at Lester. “What do you want from me?” Mrs. Alvarez still had a thick accent. “You already spent hours with my Maria.”

  “It’s standard procedure to speak with the next of kin, Mrs. Alvarez. I need to find out who did this to your son.”

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” the mother said. “Maria was close to her brother. Since Marco came back from the war, he had a hard time talking with me and my husband.”

  “I understand,” he said. “My brother died in Iraq.”

  Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Lester glanced about the room and said, “I notice you have no photos of your life in El Salvador.”

  “We had no life in El Salvador, Deputy Dawson.”

  “Maria said your husband was a soldier there during the Civil War,” he said.

  “Those were bad times,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “We have tried to forget that.”

  Maria brought two cups of coffee and handed one to Lester. She set her cup down on the coffee table and went to a small bookshelf, finding a photo album. She took a seat next to Lester on the sofa and flipped through the pages until she found a couple of images of her mother
and father. Her mother was pretty and slim in a white dress, and her father wore his military uniform.

  “These are their wedding photos,” Maria said.

  “Those are just snapshots,” Mrs. Alvarez corrected. “We had to leave the official photographs behind when we left for America.”

  Lester couldn’t imagine their early life coming down to a couple of pages of photos in a binder.

  Maria closed the photo album and brought it back to the shelf. Then she returned to her seat and took a sip of her coffee.

  He had to admit that he knew almost nothing about the Civil War in El Salvador. He was too young to remember it on TV, and perhaps too old to have gotten that information in his history classes.

  “Your husband was obviously with the government Army,” Lester said. “So, he just left when his service was done?”

  The mother’s disposition turned even colder. She said, “He was nearly killed twice by the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas.”

  Maria said, “He was shot in the stomach while in the mountains on a raid and he lost a large section of his intestines. The Army discharged him after he recovered. But he never really fully recovered. He had a soldier’s gaze my whole life.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s just a fact,” Maria said. “America was backing the El Salvador government, so my father was given a chance to come here. It was an easy choice.”

  “We love this country,” Mrs. Alvarez said. “That’s why my son joined the Army. He was a proud American.”

  Their conversation went on like this for another ten minutes, but Lester didn’t learn anything new. He was, however, more determined than ever to find the person who had killed Marco Alvarez. The man had been a patriot and had been shot in the back of the head and left for dead along Cantina Creek. He would find the killer.

  Lester thanked them both for their help and went back to his rig.

  He was nearly shaking from his need for nicotine. Almost immediately after shoving a pinch of tobacco under his lower lip, he settled down somewhat. Lester thought about his first impression of his victim that night along Cantina Creek. He had assumed the man was homeless based on the guy’s clothes and the smell. It turned out that the clothes were not even owned by Marco Alvarez. Someone had either bought or stole them from a homeless man and put them on Marco. Why? To make him care less. To make him not look too hard for the killer. Initially that tactic had worked. The sheriff had given the case to Lester, who had never investigated a murder before. But no matter what happened, he vowed to find the truth.

  18

  Without actually saying anything, Ben’s Air Force friends had nevertheless given him direction. Besides doing his normal chores that were never ending on any ranch, he spent a lot of time over the next couple of days on the short wave. Maybe that was for a couple of reasons. Perhaps he didn’t just have suspicions. He could have been finally reaching out beyond his meager existence to other humans.

  Late Wednesday afternoon, while he sat in his living room listening to classic rock and drinking a cup of tea, he heard a car coming up his driveway. He really needed to set up a wireless camera at his gate powered by solar with a backup battery.

  He went to the door and saw the black BMW. Maggi got out and smiled at him. She was wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots. Not exactly work clothes.

  Ben opened his front door and said, “What’s up?”

  “We need to talk.”

  He let her in and she sat on the bench by the door to take off her boots.

  Then she stood up and said, “Do you have anything stronger than tea?”

  Smiling, he nodded his head toward the wet bar. He found the aged rum and poured each of them a glass. Then they moved into the living room. Ben turned off the music and took a seat on the sofa with Maggi.

  Something was obviously bothering Maggi, he could tell. “What happened?” he asked.

  “A few days ago my brother finally called me,” she said. Then she took a quick sip of rum and continued. “He said everything was all right and not to worry.”

  “But that’s not what big sisters do.”

  She nodded. “Right. I tried. But then I got a visit from my girlfriend in the FBI.”

  “Booty call?” Ben quipped.

  Shaking her head, she said, “Anyway, she warned me that something was going on down here. She couldn’t tell me what, but she made it clear that this sedate little valley was not quite as it seemed.”

  “No shit!”

  Maggi scrunched up her nose and cocked her head to one side. “What do you know?”

  He ignored her question. “This FBI friend didn’t clarify?”

  “She said she couldn’t. But she was concerned about Tavis.”

  “What did he say he was up to?”

  “Tavis said he was working in the mountains, picking mushrooms. This week he was hunting truffles.”

  “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “Our resident Bigfoot expert also happens to be the biggest supplier of truffles in Oregon,” Ben said. “I’m guessing your brother works on one of Marlon Telford’s crews.”

  “It’s not like they’re making meth.”

  “I know. But Marlon is a weird dude. I’ve been up in the mountains with him. But I just thought he was a quirky professor type. My neighbor thinks the man is seriously flawed.”

  Maggi put the glass to her mouth and downed the rum. Then she let out a long breath and waved her hand in front of her mouth. “That warms all the way down.”

  Ben gazed at her anew. She was still concerned, he could tell, but he wasn’t sure if her concern was based on solid evidence, or if she was prone to overreact in unsure situations. He wasn’t about to mention to her that a couple of his old friends in government had done some background investigations for him.

  “What do you want to do?” he finally asked.

  “I’m on comp time the rest of the week,” she said. “The result of long hours of negotiation with a nursing union. If you don’t mind some company, we could look into this further until Monday.”

  Ben smiled and got up, shifting his head for her to follow him. “I’ve got to show you something.”

  She reluctantly set her glass on the table and got up. “Is this where you get naked and see how I react?”

  “Lawyers,” he mumbled.

  He brought her into his master bedroom and pointed at a desk in the corner.

  “You have a laptop,” she said. She looked closer and said, “Internet? When did you get that?”

  “I had a guy hook up satellite internet this morning.”

  “Seriously? Next you’re going to tell me you ordered a flat-screen TV online,” she said.

  “I don’t have time for that. We have to figure out what’s going on with Tavis McGuffin.”

  “Where do we start?”

  “Bigfoot.”

  •

  The last couple of days had been a total crap sandwich for Deputy Lester Dawson. First, his boss had taken him off of the Marco Alvarez murder case. It turned out that once there was a name to the deceased, and he wasn’t just another dead Mexican, Marco deserved the best of detectives. Lester had also found out why Marco’s finger prints had not shown up in the military database. They had never been run. At least not until after Lester had found Maria at the Bingo parlor and she had identified the murder victim. Then the detectives had quickly run the prints and found the match.

  Before getting dumped from the case, Lester had checked out Marco’s Army record. It turns out the man had earned a Bronze Star with Valor during his last deployment, along with a Purple Heart from an incoming mortar attack to his forward deployed unit. This fine soldier didn’t deserve what he got on that cold, rainy night along Cantina Creek.

  Then Lester found out that his ex-wife was getting married again—to a state police officer. Lester guessed she had traded up. The silver lining was that the new husband lived close by, so he would still be able to see his daughters eve
ry other weekend.

  With Lester officially being pulled from the murder investigation, he had no real way to complete his promise to Maria Alvarez and her mother to find the person who had killed Marco.

  But what Lester did have was too much vacation time on the books. He was at the point of use it or lose it, so he decided to use it now. Instead of going somewhere warm and sunny, which any normal Oregonian would do at this time of year, Lester would stay at home and investigate Marco’s murder.

  He had no direction, though. What he did have was a strange feeling that everything wasn’t right in Cantina Valley.

  During the last couple of days he had gone over his notes again, trying desperately to find something he had missed. Finally, he got to his talk with Mrs. Alvarez and the photo of Maria and Marco’s father as a young man in El Salvador. None of that was suspicious in itself. Yet, he couldn’t get the facial expression of Mrs. Alvarez out of his mind. That period in her life was painful. Almost as much as the loss of her son. What could cause that?

  When he looked into the Salvadoran Civil War between 1980 and 1992, he was horrified to find out that 75,000 people died in that country during that short period. How did he not know this? El Salvador was just a short flight from America. The atrocities of that civil war seemed to have been committed on both sides. America had backed the Salvadoran government with arms, intelligence and training, along with a heavy dose of CIA activity. And the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), were backed by Nicaragua, Cuba, East Germany, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union. Those smart enough to flee, like the Alvarez family, survived the atrocities. The UN had charged the Salvadoran government with death squad activities, where their troops would go into remote villages suspected of FMLN affiliation and kill anyone with a pulse, including women and children. Was Marco’s father one of those Army soldiers? There was probably no way of knowing for sure.

  19

  The two of them drove in Ben’s old Ford pickup truck to Marlon Telford’s place down the road. The rain was back with a vengeance. So much so, that they sat for a while in his truck in front of Telford’s place, waiting for the downpour to subside slightly before getting out into the deluge.