Back of Beyond

Larry said, “It’s no secret the cartels are at war. We know that. But what this San Diego cop tells me suddenly clears things up. Seems Chavez had a daughter named Gabriella who was a junior at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Gabriella was apparently the apple of his eye. She was from his first marriage, before he married Rachel Mina. The cartel fighting Chavez sent some guys north to kidnap Gabriella from the house Chavez had bought for her, and held her for ransom. They wanted Chavez to give them Tijuana and pay them millions in exchange for her. They knew he’d do anything-anything-to get her back. Apparently there was bad blood between Rachel and this girl, but that didn’t matter to Chavez. So Chavez literally cashed out. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars here, Cody. They agreed on a drop location in our country on neutral ground. The speculation was they took Gabriella to Jackson Hole, but nobody can confirm it. But that’s where Chavez’s plane was headed when it apparently had engine trouble and never made it. So the bad guys assumed they’d been stiffed. They didn’t believe Chavez’s claims that the plane went down with their money inside, and it was beside the point because whatever happened they wouldn’t get the loot. So those bastards took Gabriella with them to Laredo, Texas.”

Cody felt his scalp crawl. He said, “Now I remember what happened to her.”

“That’s right,” Larry said. “They murdered her and beheaded the body. After that, from what my San Diego guy said, it took just days for the bad guys to move in on Chavez’s territory and take over. There was a bloodbath involving his holdouts, and Rachel wanted to fight, but Chavez was a broken man and let it all happen. When he started showing up at the meetings in San Diego the cops thought he was planning his comeback or something, but they didn’t know at the time he’d lost his will to live or fight. But that’s why they were watching the meetings. And shortly after that meeting,” Larry said, “Chavez was found with a bullet in his brain down in Mexico.”

Cody’s head was spinning with all the information when suddenly it clicked. “Chavez told the story in the AA meeting,” Cody said. “He told it to Geraghty, Shulze, Anthony, and Hank. He was confessing his sins, preparing to kill himself or be killed. But because everything that’s said in those meetings is confidential and a lot of the time it’s pure bullshit, nobody told.”

Larry said, “But Rachel never knew that, and she wanted her money back and didn’t want anyone else getting bright ideas. The San Diego detective said the Chavez cartel owned enough Mexican cops who were privy to what the San Diego cops were doing that they probably had copies of the photos. So Rachel knew who was in the meeting and who she had to shut up. By the way, Rachel was suspected of being involved in her husband’s death, but the Mexican police never arrested her before she vanished. Now we know what she’s been doing.”

“Jesus,” Cody said, glancing up at Gannon, slowly turning in the rope harness. “So she traveled across the country to find everyone who’d been at that meeting. She wanted them all out of the picture before she came here. She must have contacted Gannon thinking: he’s an outfitter from Montana, he’d know his way around the park, where the plane with the money crashed.”

Larry said, “Gannon probably came pretty cheap.”

Cody said, “But how could an airplane crash in a national park and nobody know about it?”

“It’s simpler than you think,” Larry said. “You know about all the reports we get about aircraft taking off and landing on private strips. Those drug guys disable the tracking beacons and they don’t exactly file flight plans. The plane might not even have been registered. If it was flying north to south to Jackson Hole instead of the other way, it wouldn’t have attracted any undue attention. And the big thing is no one reported it missing. Our task force was assembled because a couple old folks thought they saw a plane that didn’t look healthy flying toward Yellowstone. If it crashed somewhere close to where you are there sure as hell wasn’t anyone around to see it come down.”

Cody nodded. “So the only people who knew what was in the plane or where it likely crashed were Chavez’s inside guys. Not even the bad guys knew where the plane was coming from. Rachel got her info from her husband’s inner circle, but she had no way of getting here on her own. Except for Jed McCarthy’s pack trip.”

Bull Mitchell mounted his horse and signaled to Cody. He was ready to go. Cody waved a just a second wave.

“This Rachel,” Cody said. “She must be a hell of a looker or a hell of a charmer.”

“Both,” Larry said. “A stone-cold manipulator with an ice cube for a heart.”