Mark Rogers, author of “High Weeds”, lives in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sofia. His award-winning travel journalism for USA Today and other media outlets has brought him to 56 countries. His crime novels have been published in the U.S. and UK. Uppercut, his memoir of moving to Mexico, is published by Cowboy Jamboree Press. NeoText publishes his Tijuana Novels series and Gray Hunter series.
Mystery Tribune has previously published Mr. Roger’s noir story, “PEN.”
*****
The rains had been heavy that winter and the mustard plants had grown high as a man. Raul pushed forward along the path through the weeds; his hands duct-taped behind his back. He didn’t know the man behind him with the rifle slung over his shoulder. The man hadn’t said more than a dozen words: Move… Silence… Outside. The tattoo of a serpent on the man’s neck and his dead eyes said he was cartel, but which cartel Raul didn’t know.
The sun was rising at the horizon—no shadows yet—only illumination. Crows rose from within the thick mustard plants, disturbed by the men’s progress. Smells drifted through the air, of tar and gasoline, telling Raul where they were headed; the landfill at the edge of the Dos Miel highway. The cartels had an arrangement with the police. They dumped dead bodies where they would be easy to find. In exchange, the police refrained from investigating the murders.
The sun was rising at the horizon—no shadows yet—only illumination.
When Raul was a soldier in the Ladrillo de Oro cartel, he had dumped his share of bodies. It was a year ago, when his wife died, that he bargained himself free. He thought the price he’d paid was high enough. But it was true what they said: “No one leaves the cartel.” Someone needed him to die—to square an account he had no knowledge of. He should have taken his children and moved far away, where he would be a nobody.
The path dipped into a ravine and then climbed again. It had rained in the night and the path uphill was slippery clay, sticking to his boots. The sun was now high enough to make sparkles in the yellow mustard flowers.
A stink rose from under his arms and his mouth was dry.
At the top of the ravine and still surrounded by high weeds, Raul saw the landfill in the distance. Tall humps of dirt left by trucks. Broken cinderblock, brick, and splintered wood. Plastic bags of trash. Seagulls and crows floated above and a black dog emerged from the pile with something in its jaws.
The strength left his legs and he stumbled, recovered.
The man shoved his hand in Raul’s back. “Move.”
A rustle in the weeds and two children emerged to stand in the path before them. Ariel, Raul’s 12-year-old daughter, and Juan, his ten-year-old son. Both held pistols.
Raul froze.
The pistols wobbled in his children’s hands.
Raul kept his pistols loaded, with seven rounds in each. On both pistols, he saw the red dot in the tumbler at the base of the hammer.
How did they know how to work the safety?
“Go home,” said Raul. “Run. Go now. This business has nothing to do with you.”
Instead of running. Ariel moved to one side.
Raul glanced over his shoulder at the man. His dead eyes looked confused. The rifle remained slung over his shoulder.
Ariel raised her pistol. Juan followed.
Raul sank to his knees as both children fired. He felt a bullet pull at the sleeve of his shirt. Heard the man’s curse, “Chingada!”
Raul fell forward on the wet clay as both pistols fired again and again. Until they were empty and his executioner lay bleeding. Not dead yet, but close. Then—as Raul rose to his feet—truly dead.
Juan cried and sobbed. Ariel came forward and gently lay her pistol on the ground. She moved behind her father and tore at the duct tape bonds until Raul’s hands were released.
Raul worked the blood back into his wrists, then embraced his son, taking the warm pistol from his hand. Over Juan’s shoulder, he saw Ariel staring at the dead man.
She looked at her father and said, “We saw him take you from the house. We knew where he was going.”
Raul knelt by the dead man and emptied his pockets. There wasn’t much. A Samsung phone with a cracked screen. A cheap wallet with 300 pesos and no ID. Raul reached into his own pocket and took out his wallet with his driver’s license and Coppel card. He stuffed it into the dead man’s pocket. Slung the dead man’s rifle over his shoulder.
He stood up and said to his children. “Hide yourself in the weeds. This will only take a moment.”
Dragging the man down the path of wet clay to the landfill was not hard at all. Perhaps the blood soaking the man’s clothes made it even easier. Raul released his grip when the body was at the edge of a mound of dirt and rock. He scrabbled around in the rubbish until he had paper, cardboard, a broken pallet, and kindling. The man’s wide-open eyes looked less dead than they did when alive, as though he died surprised. Raul arranged the wood and paper over the man’s face and lit it with his lighter. He stood back as the meat cooked. The police wouldn’t care. They’d find Raul’s driver’s license and bring the corpse to the Tijuana morgue. Eventually, to make space, they’d bury him unclaimed in a mass grave without ceremony.
He started back the way he came.
His children came out of the high weeds.
Raul picked up the pistols from where they lay and tucked them in his belt.
“We say goodbye to your mother,” said Raul. “Then we run.”
*****
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