“No,” Joanna said, “it’s fine. One of my officers is on his way and will be here soon. You go ahead.”

The officer left, and Joanna settled in to wait. Across the street a crew of about a dozen men were at work constructing a concrete block wall. It was hard physical labor, and they worked at a steady but unhurried pace. Two men were using wheelbarrows to drag stacks of block from a nearby flatbed trailer over to where other workers were laying the blocks. Another two maintained a steady supply of cement from a mixer. One of the men manhandling a wheelbarrow looked a lot like the guy who had scrambled out of the camper shell in Alberto Amado’s digitally enhanced security video. Joanna recognized one of the guys at the cement mixer as the passenger from the front of the pickup. The driver, however, wasn’t visible.

At the stroke of three, all work stopped. As block layers began gathering and cleaning tools and equipment and putting them away, Joanna reached for her phone. “Where are you, Frank?” she asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “It looks like they’re closing up shop.”

“I just turned off 1-10 onto Kino,” he said. “It’ll take me another fifteen minutes to reach your location.”

“Hurry,” she urged. “Otherwise they’ll all be gone by the time you get here.”

“I understood from Dispatch that someone from Tucson PD was there with you.”

“He was here, but he had to leave,” Joanna said. “He had another call.”

“Just follow them, then,” Frank advised. “Let me know where they end up, and I’ll go there.”

Unwilling to risk losing track of the pickup in afternoon traffic, Joanna was already putting her Crown Victoria in gear. It seemed unlikely that Ephrain Trujillo commuted more than a hundred miles one way from his home in Douglas to a job in Tucson. That meant he was probably staying somewhere in the Tucson area. Joanna didn’t want to delay speaking to him until the following day, when he might not reappear at the job site.

“I’m going to go talk to him,” Joanna said into the phone. “Get here as soon as you can.”

“Wait a minute, Joanna,” Frank said. “For God’s sake. Are you even wearing a vest?”

“What do you think?” she returned, and then she hung up.

The truth was, she wasn’t wearing a vest-hadn’t worn one in weeks because the one she owned no longer fastened around her bulging belly. But these were the guys who had saved Jean-nine’s life, right? Surely they wouldn’t hurt her.

A middle-aged Hispanic man was approaching the pickup with his car key extended when Joanna pulled in behind the LUV, effectively blocking its exit.

“Mr. Trujillo,” she called. “Could I speak to you for a minute?”

He turned to look at her. Two younger men, presumably his passengers, had been walking in the direction of the LUV as well. They stopped and melted back into the construction site. Joanna made no effort to stop them. The driver was the one she wanted. His face, hair, and worn work clothes were all covered with a thin layer of grimy gray dust that made him resemble a ghost. The man’s hardened gaze left Joanna wishing that she weren’t alone.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Hearing his heavily accented but perfect English, Joanna was relieved. While waiting in the car she had struggled to imagine how, without Frank Montoya there to translate, she’d be able to communicate with this man.

“The woman you took to the hospital this morning works for me,” Joanna said hurriedly. “I wanted to say thank you.”

The man’s expression softened slightly. “She is still alive then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And she will live?”

“The doctors don’t know, but she wouldn’t have even a chance at living if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I’m glad,” he said, inserting his key in the lock. “I’ll be going then.”

“No,” Joanna objected. “Please. We need to find the people who did this. Did you and your friends see what happened?”

Ephrain Trujillo looked at her and didn’t answer, but his silence spoke volumes. He didn’t trust her, and Joanna understood why. There was a gulf of antipathy between Joanna Brady with her uniform and badge and this hardworking laborer and his most likely illegal friends. For immigrants without green cards, Joanna represented the enemy. People like her were the ones who stood in the way of UDAs coming to the United States, doing work American citizens had no desire to do, earning a living wage, and supporting their families back home in Mexico or Nicaragua or El Salvador. But in order to learn the truth about what had happened to Jeannine Phillips, Joanna had to find a way to bridge that gap.

“I don’t work for the Border Patrol or INS,” Joanna explained. “It makes no difference to me whether or not you and your friends have green cards. I simply need to know what you saw and where it happened.”

“Are you placing me under arrest?”

“No,” Joanna returned. “You’re not under arrest and you won’t be. Neither will your friends, but I do need your help. Please, Mr. Trujillo. Jeannine’s arms and legs are broken. Her face has been smashed. She will most likely lose the sight in one eye. The doctors removed one kidney and her spleen. The people who did this must be caught. You helped her once by saving her life. Please help her again.”

Ephrain sighed. “What do you wish to know?”

“Where did you find her?” Joanna asked. “How did you find her?”

Shaking his head, Ephrain walked to a stack of unused blocks and sat down on it. Joanna followed, taking out a notebook as she went. When she reached the stack of bricks, he took off his bandanna and used it to whack some of the dust off the bricks beside him, cleaning a place for her to sit.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded and went on. “My wife’s nephew and two of his friends came across the border near Naco the night before last and made it to our home in Douglas. My wife was worried about them being there. She called and asked me to go down and get them. Her nephew had a job that was promised to him on a farm up near San Simon, and I thought that, with this big job to do here in Tucson, my boss would maybe hire his friends. So I went down to Douglas after work yesterday afternoon to pick them up.”

“You’re saying there were three of them, not just two?”

“That’s right. It was already late when we left Douglas, and the trip here took a long time. We had to come up the back way, through McNeal, because there’s a big Border Patrol checkpoint between Douglas and Elfrida. The place where my nephew was going is a long way north of San Simon on a dirt road. As we were driving there, I came around a curve and saw a truck parked along the road. I saw the light rack on top and was sure it was Border Patrol and that we would be stopped. But then, when we got closer, I saw all the little dog doors on the side. So I knew it wasn’t Border Patrol after all.”

“The truck was just parked along the road? Where?”

“A couple of miles north of San Simon.”

“Did you see anyone in it or around it?”

“The engine was running-most likely because it was so cold-and someone was inside,” Ephrain acknowledged.

“What time was that?” Joanna asked.

“One o’clock or so. Maybe later.”

“And then?”

“We drove on up the road and dropped my nephew off. Then we turned around and came back. It’s a long way and the road is very rough, so it took an hour or so. But when we got close enough to see where the truck had been parked, there were lights there-lots of them.”

“What kind of lights?”

“Car lights. Headlights. I wanted to know what was going on, but I didn’t want them to see us. I shut off my headlights and drove for a while by moonlight. Then, when I was afraid they might hear the engine, I got out of the truck and walked closer.”

“By yourself, or did the others walk with you?”

“I have my green card,” Ephrain answered. “The others don’t. I told them to wait in the truck. I walked close enough until I could hear her. She was screaming, begging for them to stop. They were laughing and shouting. ”Kick her again,“ one of them said. ”Kick her again.“ And they did,” he added. “Once you have heard that sound-the sound of someone being kicked in the belly or the ribs-or once you’ve felt it, you don’t forget.”