“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” Chris asked. “In person?”

“¿Tal vez nunca? When I was too young to remember?”

“So he really could be anyone at all?”

“Well, except for the gun,” Danny added. “Except for that.”

Amé nodded, reluctantly. “Rodolfo had a silver gun, a gift from Nemesio, from my uncle. I also received such a gun. It arrived in a package at my front door. This was a year ago, right after Ben died. There was no note, nada. I never showed it to anyone or talked about it, but I knew who sent it. The man in my apartment described it.”

“You never told me that, Amé,” Chris said.

“I know. I never told Danny, either, or anyone.” She stopped, didn’t add anything else. If Chris thought she was going to apologize for it, she didn’t.

Danny stood again. He’d been up and down as they’d been talking about what happened last night, rising and falling in rhythm with the story. “I searched him. He had some money and a Mexican passport and license, both probably fake. Neither are in the name Juan Abrego, which is what he called himself to us. He’s got a B-2 visa visitor stamp in the passport, although he says he’s never been to the U.S. He also has two phones, one a regular Telcel, the other something called a Blackphone. I looked it up, it’s some super-high-tech phone, hard to hack or trace, but you can fucking buy it on Amazon. For what it’s worth, neither of his numbers were in Eddy’s phone, which was another thing I checked this morning, and another reason why we went to see him.”

“These phones are how he’s talking to his people in Mexico?”

“Whatever people he has left,” Danny answered. “He claims he needs time to get him and the girl out of Texas, probably out of the U.S. altogether. He says he can get someone to meet him here and bring him new passports, money, whatever. Just a few days, and then he’s gone.”

“But what about Amé’s family . . . ?” Chris added. Chris didn’t know much about Amé’s mother—Margarita—who used to work at the Supreme Clean in Murfee. He remembered picking up Sheriff Ross’s uniform shirts from her. But she and Amé’s father had moved back to Mexico a few years ago, after they’d identified their son’s body in the desert, and although his deputy talked to her mother once or twice a month, he didn’t think she’d seen her in a long time. Margarita was always trying to get Amé to come south to stay with them, but she wouldn’t cross the river, at least as far he knew.

Danny nodded. “Yeah, there is that.”