shake. Barely a lie.
“Nobody’s left, Iz. No one is after you. You’re safe.”
Isabel gave a great, relieved sigh, and pressed her hands together in thanks.
“Finally! Finally!”
Pike enjoyed the silence that followed. He thought DeeAnn would enjoy it, too. Then Isabel asked again.
“What do you think I should do with this money? Really.”
Pike tried to imagine what the younger DeeAnn would have told her future daughter.
“Do what makes you happy. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
He patted her leg, and stood to leave.
“Rest easy. I’m around if you need me.”
“Call soon?”
“Soon.”
Pike stepped off the porch when she stopped him.
“Joe?”
Pike turned back, and found Isabel smiling.
She said, “I wish you had known her, too.”
Pike wanted to say something more, but turned and walked to his Jeep.
60.
Sixteen days after Malibu, a dry desert breeze blew from the hills in Nuevo León, sweeping north across the sand toward Laredo. The twin-engine Cessna flew south from Texas, and never climbed more than a hundred feet above the ground. The pilot landed on a dirt strip forty-two miles south of the border. He rolled to a stop, but did not shut down the engines.
“I’ll be back at fourteen hundred. Don’t be late.”
Fourteen hundred was two hours past noon.
“Fourteen hundred.”
“I won’t wait.”
“I understand.”
Pike stepped off the wing, shouldered his ruck, and powered up his GPS. The rancho was four-point-two miles away on a heading of three-five-four degrees.
Pike set off at a trot. A quarter-mile farther, he picked up the pace. Running was nothing. Pike could cover forty miles in a day.
James Robert Kinnaman, now seventy-eight, an American, made his first fortune running cocaine from Colombia. The cartel people loved him, and allowed him to branch into heroin, which was transported in container ships from the Middle East to Culiacán, then trucked north to El Paso. These were his glory years, during which Kinnaman amassed a personal fortune somewhere between sixty and eighty million dollars. Also during this time, the FBI and DEA linked Kinnaman and persons employed by him with sixty-two murders. This explained why he lived in Mexico, in an area where cartel cronies made sure the local authorities left him alone.
Pike reached the rancho in twenty-three minutes.
The hacienda was nice. A large, sprawling adobe set in a pool of green. A man with Kinnaman’s wealth could afford irrigation.
Pike sat among the creosote and studied the area with binoculars. A man to the left of the house changed an irrigation spigot. A man closer to the house carried a rake on his shoulder. A third man trimmed bushes, and two younger guys were washing three pickup trucks. Workers. Maintenance people. The help.
The DEA believed Kinnaman, who had flooded eastern Mexico with counterfeit pharmaceuticals, also supplied fakes to New Way Healthful Choices. They believed Kinnaman had been an investor, whose funding allowed Darnel and Fundt to expand. This explained why so much of their weekly cash flow had been unaccounted for, and why Kinnaman almost certainly was behind their murders. To ensure their silence.
The old man had a nasty reputation for murdering former associates. And former wives.
Pike slowly circled the hacienda, looking for a way to approach. Forty-four minutes later, the kids washed the last truck, climbed into a beat-to-death pickup of their own, and left. The field people still worked.
Pike drew his pistol and let himself in through the front door. It wasn’t locked.
This great big hacienda, the place was empty.
Pike set his ruck by the door, and walked from room to room, the pistol dangling along his leg. Kinnaman was in the kitchen when Pike found him. The man jumped so hard, he grabbed the counter to keep from falling.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Joe Pike.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Your door wasn’t locked.”
The old man pooched his lips.
“Want some coffee?”
“I killed Riley Cox.”
Kinnaman squinted.
“What is this?”
“Terrence Semple. Pitchess Lloyd. Charlie Reyes.”
The cowboys.
“You get out of here. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nathan Hicks. The man you sent to find DeeAnn Ryan.”
Kinnaman wet his lips.
“You’d best leave.”
“Got more names. Want to hear them?”
“I want my money is what I want. That bitch stole my money. I want it.”
Pike raised his gun and shot Kinnaman in the chest. A little high, a little to the left, a bit down from the collarbone. Heart shot.
Pike walked over, and looked at the body.
“You can’t have it.”
Pike shot Kinnaman again. Head shot.
He took a small picture of Isabel Roland from his pocket, and propped it on the counter above the body. It was Isabel’s graduation picture, the one where she looked like her mother.
“It’s her money now. She’s keeping it.”
Pike turned from the body, and let himself out. He shouldered the ruck and began the four-mile jog, but after a bit he decided to walk. Pike had more than enough time to reach the Cessna. He enjoyed the desert. The air was clean. The rugged scenery was beautiful. The silence felt right.