The Chicken Hanger by Ben Rehder

Author:Ben Rehder [Rehder, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TCU Press
Published: 2012-02-29T11:00:00+00:00

Peter Wynn asked questions at that point. “Did you ever see the person who fired the shot?”

“No. We ran.”

“You didn’t have any sort of confrontation or provoke him in any way? This is very important.”

“No, absolutely not.”

“How far were you from the deer blind?”

“Seventy or eighty meters.”

“Earlier you said ‘the first shot.’ So there were more?”

“Yes, several.”

“How many?”

At least ten or a dozen, Ricky thought. That’s what Tomás had said when he told the story outside the trailers to all the men from the plant.

“Three more,” Tomás said. He glanced at Ricky with a quick look that said, Okay, I stretched it a little.

Wynn said, “Do you think the person was trying to hit you? Or were they simply firing warning shots?”

Ricky knew what the lawyer was hoping Tomás would say. Apparently, so did Tomás. He said, “I don’t know. I can’t say that he wasn’t trying to hit us. I would swear that I could hear the bullets passing right over my head.”

“How did you react when the shot hit your hand? Did you scream out? Did you fall down?”

Tomás thought about it. “No, I just ran. I wasn’t sure what had happened. I knew my hand was injured, that was all.”

“Okay, please go on.”

Tomás said the wound was painful, but Luis was able to stop the bleeding. The three men spent the night in the brush. They heard a truck the next morning, and saw it driving toward the blind. They didn’t get a look at the driver because they were too busy hiding. The truck passed in the other direction not long afterwards. So they continued on their journey along the sendero. Tomás looked for his backpack, but couldn’t find it. They hiked all morning and into the afternoon, crossing several county roads and highways, and they finally reached Rugoso at about two o’clock. They felt a great sense of relief, because now they were more than twenty-five miles from the border. It meant la migra couldn’t stop them for questioning without a good reason. Luis went into a drugstore to buy some first-aid items for Tomás’s hand, and not long after that, the men split up.

Peter Wynn had more questions. “When you first crossed the river onto the ranch, did you see any no trespassing signs?”

“Yes, a couple.”

“Were they written in Spanish?”

“In both English and Spanish, I think.”

“But definitely in Spanish?”

“Yes.”

Wynn nodded, writing on his pad. “You never told the police about the incident?”

“No.”

“If you went back to the ranch with the police, would you be able to show them where it happened?”

“Absolutely. There would probably be bloody rags where we spent the night.”

“That would be excellent evidence. What about these other men, Luis and Vicente? Do you have a way to reach them? A cell phone number?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Do you know where they were from?”

“Mexico City.”

“Do you know their last names?”

Wynn obviously thought it would be important to find the men. They were witnesses who could back up Tomás’s story. But Tomás shook his head at Wynn’s last question.

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