Commander Major Chase Parker’s voice boomed from the speaker. “Sonny, what’n hell happened up there in Dimmitt?”
I knew better than to be a smartass right at that moment. “More than any of us expected.” I outlined the events from the time I met Sheriff Davis until Patrol Officer Rivera ended the shoot-out only seconds before passing out.
“You hurt?”
“Not physically.” I held the steering wheel steady with both hands as an eighteen-wheeler passed me doing more than eighty miles an hour. The truck’s backdraft raised grit that peppered the windshield like dry sleet when he pulled back into the lane.
My Dodge shuddered. “The thing of it is that they had nothing to do with Lang’s death. They were just local punks who should have already been serving life sentences down in Huntsville. It was a dead end for me . . . sorry, I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“You saved that little gal. They might have missed her in there, and no telling what could have happened to her.”
“Yeah, and it cost them their lives.”
“They knew the job, and would have been there anyway. Those brothers were human traffickers. Don’t go second guessing yourself.”
My eyes burned, probably from all the crap kicked up by the south wind. The weather guessers were predicting a late cold front that would surely bring rain stretching from Wichita Falls in the north central part of the state, all the way down past San Angelo before sweeping southeastward toward Louisiana and the Gulf. “You calling me back to the office?”
“Thought about it, but no. Putting you back on the desk won’t make any difference now.”
“I stepped on some toes while I was there. How’d Dan Bills take it? I know what he told me, but I’m sure he had more to say when y’all were talking.”
“He’s mad enough to chew nails.” Major Parker’s voice wasn’t accusatory, just matter-of-fact. “Said he should have been investigating a local shooting involving local law-enforcement officers instead of having a Ranger from another company drop by unannounced and then leave once he showed up.”
“I didn’t leave that fast. He worked me over pretty good with questions. I wrote up a report and hung around as long as I thought I should.”
“Well, I was on the phone for a good long while and had to tell him about your new assignment. He finally cooled down and admitted that he liked the idea of this new concept, but he says you still shoulda checked in with him when you got to his region.”
My face flushed. “You’re right. I intended to, but didn’t get over there, or call.” I considered telling Major Parker that I figured he’d already done so, since I was out breaking new ground for him, and in my opinion, he should have been running some sort of interference for us all. Bringing it up would sound like whining, though, and I ain’t like that. “I told him I’m on the way to Comanche. He wanted to call ahead and tell Enrique Elizondo to meet me.”
“He’s a good man. One of the best rangers in Company C.”
“Yep, but I’m supposed to be doing this on my own. I don’t have any intention of pulling him into any of this.”
I didn’t want to tell anyone about Perry Hale and Yolanda, neither. The Major knew of course, but they were my idea and supposed to stay in the shadows, so to speak.
A truck pulling a fifth-wheel camper went around me faster than any rig should be moving. It was one of the big ones damn near forty feet long. Even though my truck’s pretty good size, it felt like a locomotive was rolling a yard away. Right on his tail was an eighteen-wheeler bearing down like a giant blue whale.
There was that tickle again on the edge of my consciousness. What was it that triggered a memory I needed?
I backed off the accelerator. The big rig was next to get past and I flashed my headlights to tell him he was far enough ahead to pull back into my lane. The driver immediately clicked his turn indicator and moved over, using his flashers to tell me thanks. A few seconds later he pulled around the fifth-wheel.
Major Parker’s voice cut through my thoughts. “You still there?”
I snapped back to the real world. “Yessir. Must have lost the signal for a second.”
“Where are you?”
“Between Dimmitt and Comanche.”
“Why there?”
“No solid reason, except that I have a hunch our vigilante’s headed east.”
“So you think you’re just gonna drive to the middle of the state and wait?”
“Like I said, following a hunch.”
“Fine then. Call me as soon as you know something.”
He hung up without saying good-bye like he always does. I punched the phone off only seconds before it rang again. This time it was my wife, Kelly. I plucked it off the bracket and answered. “I was gonna call you when you got home.”
“I bet. Where are you?”
“People keep asking me that.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. I needed to call you, though. The first thing I have to tell you is I’m fine.”
She took a deep breath. “Uh oh.”
I told her about the shoot-out as I passed pastures full of mesquite and cedar, scattered ranches, and turnouts to gates blocking two-lane tracks that vanished in the distance. She didn’t say a word until I finished.
“You need to come home for a while.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it’s gonna hit you at some point, and I think I need to be with you when it happens.”
“I’ll be a while yet, if it does. Besides, I’m in the middle of tracking this guy down and haven’t had much time to think.”
“Look, buddy, I know what it’s like driving those highways. You think more when you’re behind the wheel and it’s just you and the road.”
She knew me better than anyone else. Folks don’t realize Texas highways go on forever. It takes all day to travel the width of the state from El Paso to Texarkana, and part of that’s at 85 miles per hour. The best part is that once you get west of I-35, a line reaching from Dallas–Fort Worth to Austin and San Antonio, the highways open up and you can set the cruise, lean back, and let your mind wander.
I’m bad about that. I can start out at one place and all of a sudden realize I have no idea where I am, or where I’ve been. I can blink and a half hour later wonder if I’ve gone through a town at all.
“Well, right now, more than anything else, I’m thinking about where this guy I’m after might be headed.” Holding the steering wheel with my left hand, saw a spot on my thumbnail. Scratching at it with the forefinger on that same hand, I realized it was a speck of dried blood. It flaked off, and I fought a shudder.
Kelly’s voice snapped me back. “What happened to that little girl?”
There it was again, my bride worrying about kids other than our own. That’s one of the things that made her a fine teacher and the best person I’ve ever known.
“Karen’s fine. She was in my truck the whole time. She finally fessed up that she was sixteen and a runaway. She has family on the way to pick her up right now. She’ll be home before long.”
“She’s gonna need counseling.”
“That’s the truth.” I knew where Kelly was headed with that line of reasoning, and that’s another reason I love her so much, even though she sometimes drives me nuts trying to be mother to the whole world. “And a doctor, I imagine. I know what you’re thinking, and we’re not bringing her to our house. She has a family in Oklahoma. They’ll take care of her.”
The empty two-lane road snaked through the arid ranchland, much of the color washed out from the recent hard winter. The grass was coming back, but slowly. Fence posts flashed past, and I realized I was driving way too fast, taking the curves with enough speed that the dually strained to slip off the road. The highway rose and fell in swales, unusual for that part of the country. I let off the gas and relaxed my one-handed white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel.
“They’ve done an outstanding job so far.” Her voic
e dripped sarcasm.
“Easy, girl. We don’t know her story or her parents’ story, either. Kids run away. You know as well as I do that girls her age are nothing more than hormone factories. You do the best you can and pray they get out the other side of adolescence in one piece.”
“Well, it sounds like she’s not an adolescent anymore. In years, yes, but in life experiences, she’s probably as old as we are.”
“That’s what makes you such a good teacher and mom. But we’re not adopting this damaged girl. She’ll be fine. How’re our kids?”
“They’re fine. Mary has a new boyfriend, and Jerry’s complaining there’s nothing to do when he gets home from school.” She paused. “He’s in trouble at school again for that temper of his.”
A quick temper was one of those things he’d inherited from my side of the family. Over the years, I’d learned to control it for the most part, but not the other little curse I’d given him, being impetuous.
I pictured the twins. Jerry flopped on the couch with the TV remote in his hand, and Mary on the phone, either talking or deeply involved with whatever new social-media platform the kids were using at the time. “Have him mow the yard.”
“Yes, master. I need to tell you something else . . .” Her voice disappeared as the phone dropped the call when the road dipped into a low place and out of cell-tower range.
I pitched the phone onto the dash and gripped the wheel. It frustrated me that I’d lost the signal, and my spirits sank even further. A lump formed in my throat from feeling sorry for myself, and I had to swallow a couple of times. Once again my hands were white knuckling the steering wheel, and I had to consciously relax.
As I crossed a low-water bridge and crested the next rise, a feral cat darted out from a clump of tall grass growing under a downed mesquite laying over a fence and streaked toward the other side of the road. It was almost under the right front tire before I even saw the tabby, and there was nothing I could do to miss it.
I’d long ago taught the kids not to kill themselves trying to miss an animal on the road. My children’s lives were worth much more. The same went for me and Kelly. I felt the slight thump under the dually’s back wheels. A quick glance at the results in my passenger-side mirror told me there was nothing I could do for the poor animal. I glanced around, but there were no houses anywhere within sight. It wasn’t anyone’s pet.
A sudden tightness in my chest rose like a volcano, and my eyes filled with tears. I needed to tell my wife I loved her, and for her to tell the kids for me, but the damned cell service dropped. I started to pull off to the side, but the shoulder there was almost nonexistent.
It was only a cat. Probably one someone had tired of and dumped.
A lump rose once again in my throat, and I swallowed.
Karen was only a young girl caught in a cruel world and forced into human slavery right here in the United States. My twins were close to the same age, and the thought of Mary in the hands of men like those back at the trailer brought my stomach into my throat. And it wasn’t only girls they preyed on. Boys were subjected to the same perversions from those who live just beneath the surface of civilized society.
My eyes burned.
The dead lawmen outside of Dimmitt left behind wives, children, and families.
My chin quivered, and I clamped down.
I’d killed men again, and honestly thought I was tough enough that it wouldn’t bother me anymore. At least that’s what I told the therapist the department insisted that I see after my shoot-out in Mexico a few months earlier.
An empty roadside park shaded by spreading live oak trees beckoned, and I pulled over and killed the engine and cried like a baby while the hard-south winds rocked the truck.
It was only a damned cat.
Chapter 19
Tanner and Willy waited outside the Holiday Inn Express in Jasper as the sun settled below the treetops. As far as their small community of Gunn was concerned, Jasper, at 7,500 people, was a big town. Families in Gunn usually drove to town for groceries at least once a week, or to eat out, for a movie, or to visit the doctor.
Gunn itself was nothing more than a hamburger stand, a feedstore, gas station, a couple of small antique stores struggling to survive in crumbling buildings built during the Depression, and an automotive repair shop that also sold flatbed and cattle trailers.
Tanner’s nerves were tight as fiddle strings even though nothing was happening. They watched from the parking lot of the local farm supply store selling everything from deer stands to clothing. Tanner parked near stacks of corral panels, galvanized water troughs, and pallets of barbed wire and steel fence posts.
More cautious than his dad or Daddy Frank, Tanner had no interest in going into the hotel and knocking on their targets’ door. The youngest of the clan, he was more in tune with technology and well aware that cameras recorded daily life even there.
They were taking a risk just sitting in the parking lot, but he’d scanned the area and noted that the supply store only had a couple of cameras pointed toward the entrance. Had it been a chain store like Tractor Supply, the company would have been more concerned about the nighttime theft of the farm and ranch items stacked in the lot year-round.
Tanner was also on edge from the south wind gusting up to forty miles an hour, bringing even more Gulf moisture to the region ahead of the coming cold front. “I’ve about had it with this wind.”
“At least it keeps the skeeters away.”
“It keeps me in when it blows like this.”
“It won’t last.” Willy smoothed his beard. “Weatherman says it’ll turn out of the north here in a little bit. It’s coming up a cloud, and I bet it’s gonna be a toad strainer.”
“That’s toad strangler.”
“Well, I can’t announce some words right.”
Tanner started to correct him again, but he was secretly afraid that Willy would really take offense. The seemingly mild-mannered and quiet man who appeared somewhat simple could turn to violence on a dime. “Well, when it comes out of the northwest, it’ll blow just as hard and I hate that, too.”
“Bitch bitch bitch. You’ll be complaining there’s not enough breeze come July.”
“At least all this’ll be over by then.”
Willy drew a deep breath. “Yeah, and things’ll be different. We’ll be some rich sumbitches!”
“How can you say that? All we’re gonna do is put more product on the roads and increase our chances of getting caught. We need to go back to the old ways where we made good money and weren’t interested in getting rich.”
Tired of the conversation, Tanner was about to change the subject when the two men they were looking for stepped through the glass doors of the Holiday Inn Express and walked to their dark Chevrolet sedan.
Tanner started the car’s engine, frustrated that the headlights came on automatically. “There they are.”
Willy straightened in his seat as the Chevrolet pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. Tanner waited until he could put a couple of vehicles between them and dropped in behind the car. The agents drove as if they had a specific destination in mind, headed south.
The sky darkened, and lighted signs flickered on in a wash of neon and halogen glare. High clouds took on orange, yellow, and pink highlights. The traffic signal caught them, and on the yellow caution arrow, the agents turned onto rural Highway 190, going like they were headed for Louisiana. Tanner stayed well behind and was glad he did when the agents suddenly pulled into a left-turn lane five miles from town and made a sharp U-turn.
“Shit. They’re going to the Swamp.”
Willy rubbed his stomach at the name of the local restaurant specializing in crawfish boils and seafood. “Sounds good to me. You think it’s to eat?”
“Don’t see any other reason right now. I doubt they’re going in there at this time of the day to question somebody.”
“I could use some fried catfish. It’ll be dark when they come out. It’ll be perfe
ct.”
Tanner made the same 180-degree turn and pulled into the half-full dirt parking lot. The sprawling restaurant tucked into the piney woods lining both sides of the divided four-lane highway was the only business within miles. The Swamp’s blue and red neon sign glowed against the cotton-candy pink and orange sky.
The agents drove past the entrance and around to the side, parking near the woods and away from the others. Tanner pulled in between two pickups, positioning his car to see the entrance in his rearview mirror. They waited for several minutes after the agents entered, to be sure they were seated before he and Willy went inside.
The aromas of crawfish spices and fried foods enveloped them as soon as they walked into the loud restaurant. Green was the predominant color on the walls, the counter, and the murals depicting life on the bayou. Posters featuring any movie filmed in a swamp or deep piney woods helped set the backwater tone.
Tanner pointed at an empty booth on the right when the hostess in a white shirt and jeans gathered two plastic menus together. “Can we have that one?”
She glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. “Sure.”
They slid onto the vinyl seats within clear view of the entrance and settled in to wait.
* * *
Unlike when they arrived, the dark parking lot was completely full by the time Tanner and Willy stepped back outside. A line of hungry customers stretched out the door and dissolved into a crowd waiting under the porte cochere for their names to be called over the PA. Families, couples and groups of young people drank beer and talked on benches under the overhang. More customers gathered in familiar groups between the vehicles parked closest to the entrance, smoking and waiting for their turn in the popular restaurant.
The twenty-foot Swamp sign featuring a happy green alligator on one side and a crawdad on the other cast a glow onto the underside of low clouds that had thickened overhead. A line of headlights from cars and pickups waited on the road’s shoulder to turn into the packed lot. More vehicles prowled the ragged rows, looking for a parking place.
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