PERDIDO COUNTY

  Episode 2: Someone's Daughter

  A MODERN-DAY AMERICAN WEST CRIME FICTION SERIAL NOVEL

  by

  LARRY DARTER

  First published by Fedora Press 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Larry Darter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this work, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This work is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Larry Darter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names, if any, used in this publication and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the work are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within this publication have endorsed the publication.

  First edition

  Foreword

  Perdido County: Someone's Daughter, is the second episode in a modern-day American West crime fiction serial novel. Before reading this episode you may wish to first read the first episode, Perdido County: Dark Road. Subsequent episodes of this serial novel are published bi-weekly. There are ten episodes in all. If you enjoyed Perdido County: Someone's Daughter, you won’t want to miss the remaining action-packed episodes.

  For those unfamiliar with serial fiction, Perdido County is not a traditional lengthy novel chopped into parts. I designed it from the ground up as a novel meant to be read in episodes. Think of it like a streaming television series you read instead of watch. There is an overarching plot that ties the entire novel together, but each episode is a stand-alone story with one or more mini plots of its own. Like a short story, each episode has a beginning, middle, and an ending. It is intended that the episodes be read in the order we have published them to get the most enjoyment from this serial novel.

  Thank you for reading Perdido County: Someone's Daughter. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

  Best regards,

  Larry Darter

  Contents

  Foreword

  2.1

  2.2

  2.3

  2.4

  2.5

  About the Author

  Other Books by Larry Darter

  2.1

  Passing the “Welcome to Kimble” sign, the driver of the red Ford Explorer activated the right turn signal and took the ramp to the rest area off State Highway 90. He parked the vehicle beside a stretch of short, sparse buffalo grass with picnic tables. A woman got out of the front passenger seat. After opening the rear door to release an animated eight-year-old blonde girl, the woman walked to the back of the Explorer and opened the cargo hatch. She busily gathered up a loaf of bread, chips, and paper plates for the family’s lunch while her husband grabbed the cooler.

  The little blonde girl bolted toward the picnic area. She squealed in delight when her eyes caught sight of a dollar bill on the grass. As she bent to pick it up, another handful of dollar bills swirled past her in the West Texas breeze. She squealed again and chased after the money, stopping to pick up the bills as she went, stuffing them into the pockets of her blue jean shorts. When the girl got to the back of the picnic area, she charged through a stand of ocotillo, yucca, and sand sagebrush. She tripped over a rock, stumbled, and went to her knees coming almost nose to nose with a young woman lying on her back with blood on her forehead and face, her vacant green eyes staring up at the vast cloudless sky. As dollar bills fluttered about her like strange leaves, frozen in terror, the little girl released a blood-curdling scream that echoed across the West Texas plains.

  ◆◆◆

  She might have knocked, but Wolfe didn’t hear it. He stumbled out of a doorway with a dazed expression on his face. He held a black semi-automatic pistol down at his side. Blood stained his shirt. Finally the voice penetrated, bringing Wolfe back to the present.

  “Olivia has a dead body out on Highway 90,” Judy said. “She’s on line one.”

  Owen looked up at her blankly. Judy was in her fifties, a tall, slim woman with the direct manner common to West Texans that sometimes made outsiders feel uneasy. She leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed.

  “Olivia, a dead body, line one,” she said.

  Owen looked at the blinking light on his desk phone then up at Judy. He nodded and picked up the phone.

  “Hey, Owen, you will not believe this shit,” Deputy Olivia Alvarez said. “We’ve got a dead girl on the side of the highway and there is money blowing around out here like leaves.”

  Owen pushed the hat further up on his head and studied the little lighted button on the phone. “Anybody we know?” he said.

  “Nope, she doesn’t look familiar,” Alvarez said. “No purse, no wallet, no identification.”

  “Where are you?”

  “East side of the highway at the rest stop.”

  “All right, hang on,” Owen said. “I’ll be out there in fifteen minutes.”

  ◆◆◆

  Wolfe and Olivia Alvarez stood looking down at the body of an attractive young woman lying on the ground. Her face looked almost angelic except for the ugly gash on the left side of her forehead. Blood had run down the side of her head where it had dried and matted her dark brown hair. Her hair had a stylish cut. Her long fingernails had been manicured and painted. The woman was wearing jeans and, a grey shirt with blue horizontal stripes, and a light blue fleece jacket. The hem of the girl’s shirt was up a little revealing her abdomen above the waistband of the jeans.

  “She couldn’t be over seventeen or eighteen,” Wolfe said.

  “Looks like she died of blunt force trauma,” Olivia said. “But there’s no weapon anywhere around. Maybe she hit her head on one of those rocks.”

  “You never found a purse or anything?”

  “Nope, nothing at all to identify her,” Oliva said. “All I found was the cash and this.”

  She held up a plastic evidence bag. Wolfe took it from her and examined the contents. It was a red matchbook with “Molino Rojo” printed on the cover in gold lettering.

  “Found it in her right back pocket,” Olivia said.

  “Must be from a bar or a club,” Wolfe said. He knelt down on one knee beside the body.

  “Body glitter,” he said looking at the girl’s exposed abdomen. “Body glitter, cash, mostly singles. She was a stripper.”

  “Stripper?” Olivia said. “Around here?”

  “Don’t know,” Wolfe said. “They have strip clubs over in El Paso. And they have them across the border. There are several clubs in Ojinaga.”

  “So, the matchbook could be from the club she worked at,” Oliva said. “Maybe a customer did this.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I see no signs of sexual assault, but we won’t know for sure until after the autopsy.”

  Wolfe nodded.

  “Want me to bring my Tahoe over here?” Olivia said. “It would make it easier to load her.”

  Wolfe stood up and shook his head.

  “Call for an ambulance,” he said. “This girl was someone’s daughter. She deserves better than the back of your truck.”

  Olivia looked at Wolfe curiously.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Get back to the office and bring Chase and Barney up to speed,” Wolfe said. “I’ll wait here with the girl until the ambulance shows up.”

  Olivia nodded and walked away.

  Wolfe knelt beside the body again. He gently pulled the hem of the shirt down until it covered the girl’s exposed stomach.

  ◆◆◆

  Back at the sheriff’s office, Chase and Barney were counting the money Olivia had collected from the ground at the highway rest area when Wolfe walked in.

  “Nine hundred sixty-three dollars,” Chase Carpenter said.

  “Yes, that’s the same amount I got,” Barney Riggs said.

  “Know what that means?” Chase said.

  “That you can count past ten?” Olivia said with a smirk.

  Barney laughed.

  “No, it says she must have been a pretty hot dancer to make that much working in a border town strip club,” Chase said.

  “What makes you think it was a club on the Mexico side?” Wolfe said.

  “The matchbook Olivia found,” Chase said. “The Molino Rojo is in Ojinaga. I was there last month.”

  “We’re lucky you’re an expert on the local strip clubs,” Wolfe said.

  “I’m not a regular,” Chase said defensively. “I was there for a buddy’s bachelor party. That’s all.”

  “Isn’t it kind of dangerous going to strip clubs across the border with the cartel activity down there?” Barney said.

  “Depends on where you go,” Chase said. “Molino Rojo is a classy place as far as border town strip clubs go. They hire lots of private security. The oil field guys go down there and spend a lot of money. The owners want no trouble that might cause the money flow to dry up.”



  “The Ojinaga Cartel probably runs the place, anyway,” Wolfe said. “Along with the prostitution racket.”

  Chase said, “Probably so.”

  “Chase, go over to the hospital and get the victim’s prints before they transport her to El Paso for the autopsy,” Wolfe said. “When you get back, send them to the DMV. If she had a license, they should be able to match them up with her thumb prints.”

  “Okay, Owen,” Chase said. He grabbed his hat off his desk and went out.

  “Olivia run home and change your shirt,” Wolfe said. “We’re going down to check out the club in Ojinaga. They don’t like the American policia down there so we won’t advertise who we are.”

  “I have a civilian shirt in my locker,” Oliva said. “I’ll be ready to go in five minutes.”

  “Even better,” Wolfe said. “I have another shirt in my office.”

  “What do you want me to do, sheriff?” Barney said.

  “Stay available for calls, Barney, while the rest of us are trying to identify the victim.”

  “Yes sir, sheriff.”

  ◆◆◆

  Wolfe drove down State Highway 67 toward the border. He had exchanged his khaki uniform shirt for a maroon Western shirt. Olivia wore a black button-up cami with spaghetti straps with her jeans and boots.

  “Won’t it defeat the purpose of us changing shirts riding into Mexico in a sheriff’s vehicle?” Oliva said.

  “Not driving it into Mexico,” Wolfe said. “We’ll leave it at the customs and border patrol station parking lot and walk across the bridge. It’s only a few blocks to Boystown from the Mexico side of the bridge.”

  “Boystown?”

  “Yeah, euphemism for the red-light district where all the strip clubs and whorehouses are.”

  “Wow, sounds like you’re as much an expert as Chase,” Olivia said with a smirk.

  “Well, I was sixteen once and curious,” Wolfe said.

  “I’ll bet,” Olivia said. “How many nights a week do strippers work?”

  “Don’t know what their work schedule is like in Ojinaga,” Wolfe said. “But, I knew a stripper in Dallas once. She worked three nights a week.”

  “That girl had almost a thousand dollars on her,” Olivia said. “Even at three nights a week, that’s what—about twelve thousand a month? That means a stripper makes as much in three months as I make in a year.”

  “The stripper I knew in Dallas worked at a high class place,” Wolfe said. “She made a lot more than a thousand dollars a night. She might have out earned your annual salary in a month.”

  “Damn, I’m in the wrong business,” Olivia said. “I can dance and I have a great ass. Maybe I’ll put in an application while we’re down there.”

  Wolfe laughed. “They probably don’t offer a retirement plan or health insurance.”

  “Hell, making that kind of money I could do without the benefits,” Olivia said.

  Wolfe turned off the highway into the parking lot of the customs and border patrol station. They locked their sidearms up in a steel box bolted to the floor in the cargo hold of Wolfe’s Tahoe. Then they passed through the checkpoints on both sides of the bridge and walked into Ojinaga. After two blocks, the pair turned off the main road and proceeded through a gutted stretch before seeing the rainbow of vice that pulsed in the distance in the form of blinking red, green, and blue lights.

  “Looks like the place,” Olivia said.

  As they neared the entrance of the Molino Rojo, they passed a throng of young ladies offering their services for twenty dollars. Outside the club a middle-aged Latino with a heavy black mustache shouted in heavily accented English like a carnival barker. “Show time! Show time! Come in and watch the most noble girls with no pretensions!”

  Oliva and Wolfe walked past him into the club. In the entrance they stopped and looked at printed colored handbills tacked to the wall.

  “That’s her,” Olivia said, pointing to a printed image of a girl wearing a fancy sombrero hat. Beneath the picture it said “Alex.”

  “Guess we got a first name at least,” Wolfe said.

  “If it is her name,” Olivia said. “I’m pretty sure strippers all go by stage names.”

  Wolfe nodded. “That’s been my experience. Let’s go talk to a bartender.”

  The place was dimly lit with murals of naked attractive women on the walls and sawdust spread on the floors. Bright spot lights panned back and forth over a half dozen individual stages. On the stages scantily dressed young women with tall angular bodies gyrated around brass poles to the loud thump of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” As the men crowded around the stages, mostly Americans, waved dollar bills at them, the girls intensified their movements as the music played and stripped to loud approving whistles and catcalls.

  As they approached the bar, Wolfe leaned in and shouted to Olivia over the loud music. “Pull up the girl’s photo on your phone.”

  Wolfe waved down a bartender, an attractive young Latina. She walked over.

  “Yes, señor?”

  Wolfe took Olivia’s phone and held it up so the bartender could see the screen.

  “You know this girl?”

  The woman looked briefly at the image then back at Wolfe.

  “She’s not working,” she said.

  “You know where she lives?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Anyone else here who might know where Alex lives?”

  “One moment,” the bartender said. She walked out from behind the bar and went away. Olivia and Wolfe turned and leaned against the bar on their elbows.

  “Mostly oil field workers it looks like,” Olivia said.

  Wolfe glanced at her and nodded. A few minutes later the middle-aged guy they had passed at the entrance walked up.

  “I’m Lorenzo, the manager, at your service señor,” the man said.

  Wolfe showed him the image on the phone screen.

  “You know where this girl lives?”

  The man gave Wolfe an appraising look. “Everyone wants to know where the girls live,” he said. “Why do you ask, señor?”

  “She’s in some trouble,” Wolfe said. “We need to find out where she lives so we can help her.”

  The man smiled, revealing a gold front tooth. “We don’t give out the personal information of the dancers,” he said. “I’m sorry, señor.” Then the man turned and walked away.

  “He didn’t sound sorry,” Oliva said. “Now what?”

  “We’ll show the photo around a little,” Wolfe said.

  They walked around the club, showing the photo to the girls who served the drinks to the men packed around the stages as they encountered them. All they got was a lot of head shaking. After a half hour, they gave up and headed for the exit.

  “I didn’t think they would tell us anything,” Olivia said.

  “We had to try,” Wolfe said. “This place is all we know about her so far. At least we got a first name.”

  “Though it’s probably not her actual name,” Olivia said.

  Outside as they were walking away a woman’s voice called out from behind them.

  “Señor, wait.”

  They both turned to look as a young Latina woman wearing shorts and a pink tank top came toward them.

  “I could not speak with you inside,” the woman said. “Why are you looking for Alex? Are you policia?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Wolfe said, “from Perdido County. Do you know Alex?”

  “First tell me why you are looking for her.”

  “We aren’t actually looking for her, ma’am,” Wolfe said. “I’m sorry to say we found her dead this morning beside a highway in Perdido County. We’re trying to find out where she lived.”

  “Madre de Dios,” the woman said crossing herself. “What happened?”

  “Don’t know yet,” Wolfe said. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  “So sad,” the woman said. “She was such a nice chicka, and so young.”

  “Was Alex her actual name?” Wolfe said.

  “It’s the name she went by here,” the woman said. “But, it was short for Alexandria.”

  “Were you a friend?”

  “Not so much, really. We worked together. Sometimes when her ride was not waiting across the bridge, I gave her rides.”

 

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