Off to one side of the path sat three low buildings. A shift in the night air brought with it their stench, identifying the three buildings as latrines. He covered his face and took shallow breaths until he passed the latrines and stood on the lip of the dirt lane leading down into the cluster of hovels. In the shadows of the crooked roofs, shapes of people came to life for him. The low chatter and occasional ripple of laughter broke free from the other sounds of the night, giving the camp a festive quality.

He descended the slight incline and allowed his feet to carry him into their midst, but the festive humor melted away with each new step. Silence accompanied him like a contagion and it was remarkable to him how quickly, in this feeble light, they had sensed the presence of an outsider. He stopped in front of one shack, entirely dark, where an older man sat on an upended piece of firewood, whittling away at what smelled like a raw green willow branch, the fresh shavings littering the dirt like a light snow.

In Spanish, Jose explained that he was with the law and needed to ask some questions.

The old man started and stared up, the creases in his weathered face as deep as rock fissures. In Spanish, he asked, "The chief send you?"

"You mean Gage?" Jose asked.

The old man nodded and said, "He's the law here."

"There's a bigger law than Gage," Jose said. "I'm with that law."

The old man contemplated this for a while, then shook his head and returned to his whittling, and spoke no more.

Jose glanced around and saw that others had been listening, and when he began to move down the row, people disappeared like frogs along a creek bed so that by the time he reached the end there were no more workers to interrogate. He started back up the next row and met with the same form of denial until he noticed the flickering silhouette of a dark-haired woman in the open window of a shack, where several candles burned on a small table within.

Jose approached her and asked if she'd speak to him.

In an urgent whisper and speaking in English, she said, "Walk down the next row, then leave the way you came. I'll meet you by the barns."

Then, she shouted, "Gabacho!"

The wooden window slammed in his face.

Jose did as he'd been told, remembering to hold his breath as he passed the latrines. As he waited in the shadow of the biggest barn, he wondered if her urgent words might not have been a ruse to get rid of him. A few minutes later, however, she hurried out of the trees, looked around, and dragged him by the arm inside the barn. Livestock that Jose recognized as veal calves snorted and shifted, straining their hair rope tethers and scuffing the hay-strewn floor. The smell ranked second only to the latrines, but Jose soon forgot about it. Enough light from the halogen lamp outside fell in through a window that Jose could make out the woman's face and he realized she wasn't as young as her long dark hair had made him think.

"They're saying you're with the FBI," the woman said. "My name is Amelia. Are you looking for Nelly?"

"I'm working on a case for a lawyer who's trying to help a Mexican woman," Jose said. "I used to be a cop, but I'm not anymore. I'm not with the FBI. Who's Nelly?"

"A girl," Amelia said, her face wincing with pain. "A friend. I told her to run. I've been here for many years. I know what happens. When someone causes trouble, they disappear. Some say they leave here on their own. I think differently."

"Wait, wait," Jose said, holding up a hand. "What are you talking about?"

"Nelly heard them fighting," Amelia said. "The senator and his wife. Everyone knew Elijandro went with the wife, and not just once. He was a beautiful man. It could only end badly. Nelly is Mrs. Chase's maid. She heard them the night after the senator killed Elijandro. Nelly told me she heard the senator tell his wife that Elijandro asked for it, and I told her she must run. But Nelly had nothing and nowhere to go. She didn't believe. She listened to the others who make fun of me and call me a witch. If it makes me a witch because I know, then I'm a witch.

"She was a good girl," Amelia said. "Young and sweet, and I don't know what they did to her, but I know it's not good. No one comes back."

"Who disappears?" Jose asked. "This happened before?"

"The senator and his friends are very rich," Amelia said. "They do things the way rich people do, using drugs and prostitutes without fear of the law. I have always taken care of the senator's children, so I've never seen these things, but others have. They talk a little about the bad things they've seen and then they're just gone. Who is there to look for them? So we forget and pretend it didn't happen, pretend they went home or moved to Atlanta or Chicago, some big city far away. That happens, too, anyway. People leave, but there are always others to replace them, always people hungry for work. And here, people have a place to live, a place where the agents can never come because the senator makes the laws. We understand this from Mexico, how things work."

"Like razor blades," Jose said, more to himself than to her. "One nicks you and you throw it away for a new one. Aren't you afraid to tell me all this?"

Amelia sighed. "The little girl is the youngest and she goes away to boarding school at the end of the summer. A blade can go dull, too. I will be told to leave. This I know. What's the difference if I leave now?"

"You mean, right now?" Jose asked.

"I have four thousand dollars," she said, patting the rucksack she wore over her shoulder.

"How long you worked here?" he asked.

"Sixteen years."

"And you saved that?"

"It's more money than anyone here has ever seen."

"You can trust me," he said, cocking his head at a sound outside that didn't fit, a sound signaling a shift in energy, something afoot. "I'll find a place you can be safe."

"I know," she said. "No one like you has ever come before. I used to wonder why, then I stopped, but now you're here, a white Mexican with the law and I see the way you move. You're not afraid of them. You're not afraid of anyone, and I think that must be good."

"Don't say that," Jose said, cracking the door they'd come through and studying the empty barnyard. "Where I come from, the day you stop being afraid is the day you get yourself killed."

From the shantytown below came the shouts of men and the tilted beams of flashlights punching through the trees. A dog barked from the farmhouse on the rise. Spotlights flashed on. Worse still was the whining engine of a car coming up the service road and the clatter of stones against its underbelly.

Jose grabbed Amelia by the wrist, flung open the door, and ran.

CHAPTER 36

JOSe SWIVELED HIS HEAD AS THEY RAN, SIZING UP THE BEST direction to escape. They dashed down the road he'd taken to get to Jessup's Knob. Behind them the rise glowed with the coming headlights. He jumped down into a ditch, pulling Amelia with him just as the headlights shone down on them. The lights swung away, then Jose heard the car jam into reverse and rev its engine, and the headlights again lit up the road before the car started to move their way.

Jose swiped the dust from his mouth with the back of one hand as he dragged Amelia up the other side of the ditch and across a scrubby lot before they plunged into dusty and brittle undergrowth. When they were twenty yards in, the car slid to a stop out on the road and Jose heard its doors being flung open. More men shouted from the direction of the barns, and Jose used the sound to regain his bearings and change directions so that they'd be headed away, toward the road and his truck.

Jose heard the angry zip of the bullet a split second before the sound of the shot roared past and he dove to the ground, pulling Amelia down and covering her with his body. Two more bullets zipped through the branches, snapping twigs, their shots bursting out.