The Governor's wife Read online

  The Governor's wife

  Mark Gimenez

  Mark Gimenez

  The Governor's Wife

  PROLOGUE

  Dying is a way of life on the border.

  And if her true identity ever became known, she'd be dead before the sun again rose over the Rio Grande. But here in the colonias on the outskirts of Laredo, she was just the Anglo nurse who made house calls. Not that the residences qualified as houses. They were just shanties constructed of scrap material-plywood, sheet metal, cardboard, even discarded garage doors-but they provided shelter from the hot sun if not the dry wind that blew in from the Chihuahuan Desert. It was early September, but it was still summer on the border. It was always summer on the border.

  She ducked her face against the dirt that never ceased to blow and walked down the road to her next house call.

  Barefooted children played in the gray dirt that was the road or in the foul water that was the river. Potbellied pigs lay in what shade they could find. Chickens pecked at the bare ground, and goats wandered aimlessly. Vultures circled overhead, waiting. Always waiting for death. Young women who looked old cooked beans and tortillas over open fires and wielded straw brooms in a losing battle against the dirt. They smiled and waved to the pretty nurse wearing a white lab coat over a bright yellow peasant dress and pink Crocs; a stethoscope hung around her neck. A scarf concealed her famously red hair from the world and a wide-brimmed hat her light complexion from the sun's harsh rays that had burned the land to a crisp brown. Everywhere in Texas, she was considered a glamorous forty-four-year-old woman.

  Everywhere except the colonias.

  Over her shoulder she carried a black satchel filled with medicine and supplies and hard candy. Small children ran to her and gathered around as if she were the Pied Piper, a dozen little voices pleading in Spanish and twice as many hands reaching up to her. She searched inside the satchel and dug out a handful of candy; she placed one piece in each open hand. Their brown faces beamed as if she had doled out diamonds, then they ran back to their madres. The sight of an Anglo in the colonias would normally send the women and children scurrying into the shanties and shadows. But she was welcome now.

  Because while they lived with the fear of death, she was in the business of life.

  She stopped at the next residence where a child's wailing could be heard from inside. A once colorful wool blanket now made gray by the dirt that attacked it like a cancer covered the doorway. A clay flowerpot sat outside with a single yellow sunflower. She spit dirt then called out to the woman of the house.

  "Maria!"

  A hand yanked the blanket aside, and the distressed face of a young woman appeared in the doorway. Maria Teresa Castillo was only twenty-three years old, but she looked twice her age. Life in the colonias aged a woman. Maria was a Mexican national and a single mother of four children and pregnant with her fifth. The youngest had diarrhea. From the river water.

  " Senora, thank God you have come," Maria said in Spanish. "Benita, she is very sick."

  She stepped inside and recoiled at the foul smell of the child's stool, suffocating in the small space. She blew out a breath against the odor then waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Electricity had not yet come to this colonia. She now saw the small child lying on a burlap pad on the dirt floor and crying against the pain of intestinal cramps.

  "Maria, you cannot bathe her in the river," she said in Spanish. "The parasitos and toxins in the water make her sick."

  The Rio Grande was contaminated with industrial waste from the maquiladoras on the other side and human waste from both sides. She cleaned her hands with a gel sanitizer then dropped the satchel and knelt beside her two-year-old patient. She placed her palm on the child's forehead; her skin felt hot and clammy. She retrieved the tympanic thermometer from her coat pocket, placed a disposable cover over the probe, then inserted the probe into the child's ear canal and took her temperature.

  " Ciento dos."

  She put on latex gloves and removed the child's dirty diaper. It was wet and pungent with urine, which was good; she was not suffering from dehydration. She cleaned the child's bottom with a sanitary wipe then applied petroleum jelly to ease her discomfort. She put a new diaper on the child then removed the gloves and searched her satchel for medicine to relieve the child's pain until the bacterial infection had run its course. In Spanish, she explained the proper dosage to Maria. Her instructions were interrupted by the sound of distant gunfire, which elicited no more reaction in the colonias than the sound of the wind. With Nuevo Laredo just across the river, gunfire was the car horns of the colonias. She continued her instructions until she heard a familiar voice outside.

  "?Senora!?Senora! "

  "In here!"

  The blanket parted, and Inez Quintanilla stood in the doorway.

  " Senora, you must run away! You must hide!"

  The doctor's young receptionist was breathing hard, her pretty brown face distorted with panic. That was not like Inez.

  "Why?"

  "They come for you!"

  "Who?"

  "El Diablo! And his hombres."

  Her respiration increased.

  "He's here? In the colonia? "

  " Si, Senora."

  " Why? Why does he come for me?"

  She heard the fear in her own voice.

  "El Diablo, he knows who you are."

  "How?"

  Inez's brown eyes dropped.

  "I am sorry, Senora."

  Her eyes came back up.

  "But you must run! He will take you away!"

  "Where?"

  Inez pointed south to the river and Mexico beyond.

  "You must hide! They are coming!"

  Inez stepped to the blanket that was the back door then turned to her.

  " Senora, I pray to God for you."

  Inez disappeared through the blanket. Pray she might, but there was no god on the border. There was only the devil. El Diablo. And there was no place for an Anglo to hide in the colonias. There was no place for anyone to hide. The river blocked escape to the south, the eighteen-foot-tall border wall to the north. The colonias occupied a no man's land, on the American side of the river but the Mexican side of the wall. The U.S. government had built the wall to keep the Mexicans out, but they had fenced the colonias in. Everyone in the colonias now lived at the mercy of the Mexican drug cartels.

  Including her.

  They would take her across the river into Nuevo Laredo, just as they had taken so many other Americans, who had never been seen again. But she was not just any American. She turned to Maria and gestured to the back door.

  "?Andale, andale! "

  Maria lifted the child and carried her out back.

  She was alone. She didn't need the stethoscope to know that her heart was racing; she could feel it pounding against her chest wall. She stepped across the dirt floor and peeked out the blanket door. She stared east. In the distance she saw women and children scattering from the dirt road and a cloud of dust kicked up by black trucks speeding toward her.

  She did not have much time.

  Everyone in the colonias knew of the Anglo nurse. But only the doctor knew who she really was. She had never revealed her true identity to anyone else, and no one here had recognized her. They had not seen her face on the news because there was no television in the colonias. They had not read about her or seen her photo in the newspapers because only the Mexican papers were sold here-the language of the colonias was Spanish. The colonias, like so much of the borderlands north of the river, were just suburbs of Mexico.

  But Inez had learned the truth. And then she had betrayed her. How? And why? She did not understand, but it did not matter. All that mattered was that they w
ere coming for her. And they would take her into Mexico. She fought not to panic-because what she did in the next few moments would determine whether she lived or died.

  Think, Lindsay, think!

  They would take her, but he would come for her. She was still his wife. Her husband had his faults-he was unfaithful, he was ambitious, he was a politician-but he was no coward. He would come for her. But how would he find her in Nuevo Laredo? Among five hundred thousand people living in five hundred square miles. A sprawling, lawless city controlled by drug cartels. And beyond the city lay the vast Chihuahuan Desert. She would be swallowed whole across the river. He would never find her.

  Unless.

  She grabbed the satchel and rummaged inside until she found her cell phone. She always turned it off when she arrived at the clinic each day because there was no phone service in the colonias, landline or cell. She now turned the phone on. The battery registered full. He had found her here on the border that first time when the Rangers had tracked her cell phone with GPS. He could find her again-if she had her phone.

  But El Diablo's men would search her and take the phone.

  If they found it.

  There was only one place they wouldn't find it.

  She pushed the volume button to mute the compact cell phone then pulled up her dress and reached down inside her panties and between her legs and pushed the phone into her vagina. Then Lindsay Bonner waited for them to come for her.

  And prayed her husband would.

  SIX MONTHS BEFORE

  ONE

  Bode Bonner woke next to a naked woman who was not his wife.

  His wife was out of town, so Mandy had snuck upstairs the night before. She was twenty-seven; he was forty-seven. She made him feel young.

  Alive.

  Vital.

  Relevant.

  Sex with a younger woman allowed him to forget-at least for a few short moments-that he was a middle-aged man with his best years in the rearview mirror.

  It wasn't a pretty sight.

  But Mandy was. Her beautiful backside was to him. He slid his hand down her smooth side and over her round hips and firm bottom and down between her legs. She stirred and groaned.

  "I'm sleeping."

  "Don't mind me, darlin'."

  He reached over to the condom box on the nightstand and shook it, but nothing came out. Damn. He turned back to his aide and inhaled her scent. Her bare bottom beckoned to him, and his body responded. At his age, he hated to waste an erection, especially since he often required a little help from the Viagra prescription. She had said he didn't need to wear a condom, that she was on the pill and unconditionally devoted to him, politically and sexually. Aw, hell, once wouldn't be a problem. He pushed into her from behind.

  "Governor, you're an animal."

  He growled and bit the back of her neck.

  c

  TWO

  The sign on the closed door read: THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE.

  Inside, Bode Bonner sat behind his desk flanked by Texas and U.S. flags on tall standards while Lupe ran the boar bristle brush through his thick blond hair then shielded his eyes and sprayed shellac until his hair could stand tall against a Texas twister. Guadalupe Sendejo was a squat, middle-aged Mexican national who had been in the Bonner family service since she was five. She now served as Bode's personal valet, ensuring that his hair was sprayed, his shirts starched, his suits pressed, and his boots polished. He had brought her over to Austin from the ranch four years before when he had won reelection and the job had taken on a more permanent feel. She held the mirror so he could examine her work, but the mirror caught Jim Bob's amused expression from the other side of the desk. Bode nodded at Lupe.

  " Muy bueno. Gracias. "

  Lupe grabbed the brush and hair spray and shut the door behind her. Bode sipped coffee from a mug with an image of his smiling face and Bode Bonner for Governor stenciled on the side and stared out the second-story windows. The stark white, Greek Revival-style Governor's Mansion and grounds occupied an entire city block at the corner of Eleventh and Colorado in downtown Austin, as it had for one hundred and fifty-five years. Sam Houston himself had sat in this office and gazed out those windows, which now offered a prime view of the pink granite State Capitol sitting catty-cornered across Eleventh Street. The Capitol dome glowed in the morning sunlight just as Jim Bob's bald head glowed under the fluorescent office lights. Add in the pasty skin and pockmarked complexion-the man's got a face like a bowl of oatmeal-and James Robert Burnet looked more like a registered sex offender than the ace political strategist for the governor of the great State of Texas. Bode exhaled loudly enough to get his attention.

  "What's wrong now?" Jim Bob said.

  At first Bode wasn't sure Jim Bob was talking to him. His strategist had an earpiece that looked like a hearing aid on steroids wrapped around his ear, a newspaper in his lap, and an iPhone in his hands. His head was bent over, and his fingers fiddled with the phone like a squirrel with an acorn. Jim Bob texted on his cell phone more than Bode's eighteen-year-old daughter, and he carried on phone conversations while also conversing with Bode, which annoyed the hell out of him. Bode addressed the top of Jim Bob's bare head.

  "You talking to me?"

  "No one else in the room."

  "Then stop texting and talk to me."

  "I'm not texting. I'm tweeting."

  "Tweeting?"

  "On Twitter."

  "Tweeting on Twitter-that's what I'm paying you to do, play on your goddamn phone?"

  Still talking to the top of his head.

  "You're paying me to win elections, and social networking is another way to connect with voters. Grass roots. So I tweet for you."

  "What am I… what are you tweeting?"

  " 'Nine A.M. and at my desk working hard for the people of Texas.'

  "

  "And they believe that?"

  "Your three thousand followers do."

  "I've got three thousand followers? Hey, that ain't bad."

  "Obama's got ten million."

  Bode sighed. "Figures."

  Jim Bob punched a button on his phone as if firing off a nuclear bomb then raised his head and eyed Bode over his reading glasses.

  "Okay… so what's wrong now?"

  Like a mother to her child who had come home from school with hurt feelings.

  "What makes you think something's wrong?"

  "Because you're frowning. Which I find hard to believe, given that you just had sex with a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old girl. If I had been so lucky this morning, you wouldn't be able to slap the smile off my face for a month."

  Bode tried to block the image of Jim Bob and Mandy having sex from his mind.

  "How'd you know we had sex?"

  "Because that gal's just naturally horizontal."

  Bode's thoughts drifted back to that morning in bed. He had tried to satisfy his need for excitement with his young aide, but after a year the initial thrill of sex with Mandy Morgan had waned. Sex was much like big-game hunting in that regard. Bode's gaze turned up to the stuffed animal heads that adorned the four walls of his office: axis and mule deer, elk, Catalina goat, red stag, Aoudad sheep, impala, pronghorn, Corsican ram, sable, and his favorite, the wildebeest.

  "Remember when I bagged the wildebeest?"

  "I do indeed," Jim Bob said.

  Bode and Jim Bob had hunted together since middle school.

  "A thousand feet out, one shot to the head." Bode held an imaginary rifle, sighted in the wildebeest head through an imaginary scope, and squeezed an imaginary trigger. "Boom."

  "That was a good shot," Jim Bob said.

  "That was a great shot."

  The memory of which almost brought a smile to Bode's face. Almost. But after killing so many creatures, the thrill of the hunt had also waned. The hunts had all started to seem the same. Like sex. There were only so many positions and places to have sex, just as there were only so many creatures to kill. Hunting. Sex. Football. Politics. He had alw
ays found fulfillment in those manly pursuits. But now he found himself searching for something more. There had to be something more. He sighed.

  "Why am I in this office?"

  "It's the Governor's Office. And you're the governor."

  "But why am I the governor?"

  "You're a Republican in a red state."

  "No-what is my purpose in being governor?"

  "To get reelected."

  Jim Bob choked back a laugh.

  "Wait, I lost count-is this your third or fourth midlife crisis this term?"

  Jim Bob shook his head then tossed the newspaper on the desk and gestured at the headline: BET ON BODE.

  "You're a hard man to please, Bode Bonner. You just won the Republican primary with one hundred percent of the vote, and you're not happy?"

  "No one ran against me. Where's the thrill of victory in that?"

  The State of Texas had held the Republican and Democratic primaries the day before. But Republicans didn't fight each other in March, and Democrats didn't win in November. The Democrats hadn't won a statewide election in Texas in twenty years. They were that incompetent. That irrelevant. And outside of Austin and a few border counties, statistically insignificant, as the pollsters say. Texas glowed bright red from Amarillo to Brownsville, Texarkana to El Paso; Republicans controlled all three branches of state government. Consequently, the general election was a mere formality, Republican voters rubber-stamping the Republican primary winners. Bode Bonner was as good as reelected for another four-year term. He had been declared the Republican primary winner by eight the night before (the polls had closed at seven), given his victory speech by nine (the party was over by ten), had sex with Mandy by eleven (his wife had left for the airport after his speech), and fallen sound asleep by eleven-thirty. No contest. No agony of defeat for his opponent. No thrill of victory for Bode Bonner.

  "You want thrills, go ride a roller coaster. You won. That's all that matters. Like that guy said about football, 'Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.' "