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The stock supply catalog lies under the cot where I left it, spine cracked, pages stiff with use. I pull it free and open the cover. Carrier numbers run down the inside in my handwriting, along with venue dates and routing codes from the sealed packets Neil made me carry. The S.H. initials show up on every piece of approval paperwork, stamped in the corner like a signature nobody was supposed to read.
Every few weeks I drive to the public library in Deming and use their computers to search what I can't access from a dead phone on a ranch with no internet. The librarian thinks I'm researching livestock haulers for Eldridge. I've gone through APRA's public staff directory and archived organizational charts trying to match those initials to a name in the compliance division, and each trail dead-ends at the same administrative wall. Whoever S.H. is, and there are several people with those initials, nothing the public can access tells me which one signs the approvals.
A folded printout slips loose from between the pages. HIGH MESA LIVESTOCK. I printed the federal SAFER registrations at the Deming library and compared them against APRA's approved-hauler list. APRA lists High Mesa under a seven-digit carrier number formatted like a USDOT registration. The federal database has no record of that number, and Texas has no company registered under the name. High Mesa exists only inside APRA's system, listed, approved, and active.
Somebody inside APRA didn't just approve a fraudulent hauler. Somebody built one.
High Mesa appears beside three venues in my notes: Lubbock, Prescott, and Las Cruces. Sandy was in Lubbock. Las Cruces is the arena where a bull rider named Grant Corbin died the season before, and I was the one who pulled him out of it. The carrier number is the connection I can't explain.
Tires strike the washboard beyond the mesa. The sound reaches the bunkhouse in faint, evenly spaced bursts. Whoever is coming hasn't slowed.
Beneath the Lubbock date, I wrote the only word the scheduling service gave me: PLACEMENT CLOSED.
Sandy Canutson confirmed the arrangement. She knew Clint's name, she knew what the weekend paid, and she told me she'd done it before. After the Lubbock party, I asked Clint whether she'd made her next booking. He said Glenna handled the women and told me to mind my business. It was a reasonable answer delivered half a second too fast.
I tried to call the number for Glenna’s agency. It wasn’t out of service or forwarded. It was dead. On the Deming library computers, I searched Glenna's agency and found three outfits operating under variations of the same name across two states. None of the three had a Glenna attached to its registration. I called the first listed number from a payphone in Deming.
"I'm trying to book Sandy again," I said.
"Booking number?" the woman asked.
"I don't have one."
Keyboard clicks came through the line. "Which client?"
"Clint Wilson."
The clicking stopped. "Who gave you this number?"
"Glenna."
Three seconds of dead air. "There's no Glenna here."
"Then tell me where Sandy went."
"That placement is closed." She said it the way a dispatcher would cancel a route. Placement, not booking. "Where was she placed?" I asked, and the line went dead.
The business addresses led to strip-mall offices in Midland and Amarillo, and the one I could verify through a public directory shared a suite number with a bail bonds operation. None of it proves trafficking. It proves Neil built the escort-agency story so the introductions looked voluntary to anyone who never saw what happened after the women left the bar.
Nothing about Sandy sounded rehearsed. She rolled her eyes when I asked whether the arrangement had been explained to her, and she told me she'd done this before. Everything about her said professional, willing, and mildly annoyed at being questioned.
Neil watched her out the door like a foreman counting heads. I sat on a barstool and finished my drink, and by the next event she was gone. Her phone is dead, and no business registration for any of the three lists an owner or agent named Glenna.
I don't know what happened to Sandy Canutson. I know I'm not comfortable with the answers I've been given.
Red calls once from the pen, sharp and impatient. The engine is close enough now that I can separate it from the wind.
The engine noise reaches me through the bunkhouse wall. I close the catalog and slide it into the folded clothes in my duffel. If the vehicle belongs to Neil, the evidence leaves the ranch with me.
The phone sits powered down in the glove box of the truck, fully charged and useless unless I decide the risk of turning it on is worth taking. Torres gave me a post-office box and a set of contact codes before I left the circuit. I've used them. She hasn't responded. The second message was supposed to go out tomorrow from the post office in Columbus, mailed to the backup box under a code only she should recognize. If she doesn't respond to that one, I stop waiting and take the catalog to someone who will.
I was supposed to show up at Torres's office months ago and put everything in front of her. The reason I didn't is simple.
Three hours before the appointment, Neil left a voicemail containing nothing but the address of the federal building. Not a threat. Not an instruction. Just the address, delivered without commentary, which was worse than anything he could have said. If he knew where I was headed, the door had something behind it besides Torres, and the man who sent the voicemail has never wasted a message on information that didn't serve a purpose. The address was a warning. Showing up after receiving it would have been confirmation.
The last man who asked about Neil's packets vanished off the circuit, and nobody has seen him since.
Vic handled livestock for Thornton and took the stool beside mine after the Santa Fe performance, a few weeks after Grant Corbin died. He ordered whiskey and didn't touch it for a full minute. When he finally picked up the glass, his hand shook hard enough to rattle the ice.
