Hawke's Target

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  The sheriff tightened, and I stepped closer to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Gomez picked up a pen and flicked a blank pad closer to hand. I waved it off and plucked a little notepad out of my pocket.

  “Okay, I’m listening. What’s he doing with it, and where is he?”

  “I don’t know where he is for sure.” Wind noise told us the caller was outside.

  “Okay, you’re sure he’s here in Comanche.”

  “Yessir.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He just told me on the phone.”

  “Does he live here?”

  “Nossir.”

  We traded raised eyebrows.

  “Where does he live?”

  “Why, here.”

  Gomez’s brow wrinkled in irritation. “Where’s here?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to go to prison, ’cause you’re gonna find out a lot more when you get there, and I wanna stay out of it. Can’t you like, just go pick him up and leave the rest of my family out of it?”

  We exchanged glances at the strange request. “You won’t go to jail for telling me about this. We’ll keep it confidential.”

  “Uh, yeah, right. I know how the government is.”

  Deputy Daryl was still standing there. Gomez scribbled a note telling him to call the phone company and have them trace the contact. He disappeared into the outer office and a second later I heard him talking with someone. Gomez returned to the caller. “Okay, son, what’s your uncle’s name.”

  He cleared his throat, a “tell” when someone is lying and needs a moment to think. “John Wadler.”

  Gomez wrote it down.

  “What’s he going to do with this plastic explosive?”

  There was silence on the other end. “Y’all let informants go, don’t you?”

  His answer was instantaneous. “Sure do.”

  “No matter what they done?”

  Our eyes met again. “The law allows us some flexibility to work with people who give us information regarding dangerous individuals or crimes that are about to be committed.”

  I almost grinned at his vague answer straight from the book.

  “They’ll kill me if they find out. Can me and Don . . . my wife like, go into that witness protection program?”

  “That’s above my pay grade, son. You’re talking about the Federal Witness Program, but I’m sure the FBI’ll have to be called in on this, or the ATF. They’ll work with you. If this is the truth, and your story pans out, I’m sure they’ll take all that into consideration. But you’re getting’ way ahead of yourself here. Where you calling from?”

  “Don’t matter.” The silence that followed those two words lasted so long I was thinking the call had dropped. “Uh, Uncle Lon . . . Bill, he’s gonna use it to kill a lot of folks.”

  “Here in Comanche?”

  “No, somewhere’s else.”

  It was obvious the young man on the other end of the line was scared to death, and lying at the same time. He couldn’t remember which first name he’d given us, but there was something about the story that rang true.

  “Okay, you said some people. How many?”

  He cleared his voice. “There’s a bunch of ’em, my whole family, and they ain’t the best in the world, but I don’t want to be involved no more.”

  “Look, I know this is scary, but I’m going to need a lot more information than just this. How about you start from the beginning and give me all the details so we can get to work on it. How much explosive are we really talking about?”

  “Four hundred pounds, like I said.”

  Gomez leaned forward and laced his fingers on the desk. “Son, only the military has that much plastic, I’d think.”

  “Them and now my uncle.”

  “Look, you need to quit beatin’ around the bush and tell me what you know.”

  “I’m not ready to say. I need to get some people out of there first. Just see if you can find him.”

  Gomez’s face reddened, and I could tell he was doing all he could not to blow up at the kid. I was thinking he was a kid, and these days for me that stretches from age fifteen to thirty, and in some cases even more.

  “But you gave me his name, John, then Bill Wadler. Give me his real first name and an address in your town and I can make a few calls.”

  “No. Don’t call nobody.” His voice was full of panic. “Look, let me get a couple of people out of town, and I’ll call you back with everything you need. Maybe you’ll already have him by then, right there in your town. How’s that? You stop him and then we can work out a deal, but I have to be gone outta here before I give you the rest of the family or they’ll come after me.”

  Gomez wrote “family” on his pad.

  Sounds came through the receiver making me think the caller was ginning around, maybe pacing back and forth while he talked, or fooling around with something. He could have been driving, though state law had changed and people weren’t supposed to drive and talk on a handheld device.

  “Look, kid. That’s not going to happen until you tell me who and where he is.” Still wearing his straw hat, Gomez tilted it back on his head. “There’s a helluva lot more than you’re letting on. Son, no matter what you’re guilty of, this kind of info can go a long way in helping us with the law when the time comes.”

  “My family’s like, insane. I helped ’em do something. . . it wasn’t my idea, but I had a part, but I don’t want to do no more. Look, if you’ll just go pick him up I can get out of here and call you back with everything you want to know.”

  The sheriff’s voice snapped like gunfire. “You’re not listening to me! I can’t pick the man up if I don’t have a name, description, and location!”

  The boy on the other end must have turned, because the wind blowing across the phone made it almost impossible to hear. I imagined his hand shaking as it held it to his ear. I leaned in. “Look, son. This is Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke. I just happened to be here on something else. You know our jurisdiction covers the entire state, don’t you? Tell me what you know, what you’ve done, and I’ll handle it.”

  He didn’t sound much older than my own twins, and I thought about what they’d be like, carrying the guilt that seemed to rest on this young man’s shoulders. Gomez was about to say something else when the kid answered.

  “They made me kill”—the wind snatched words that we needed—“agent . . .”

  Gomez recognized it, too. “Son, you need to get out of the wind. I’m having trouble hearing you.

  I glanced out of Gomez’s window. The stiff wind carried a Styrofoam cup across the parking lot, and I wondered how far away the kid was. When the wind picks up in Texas, it can blow from Beaumont to Laredo. With a cold front arriving, it was a sure bet that the wind would pick up in advance of the leading edge of cool air, and that meant he could have been calling from anywhere along that line.

  Was he right there in Comanche?

  The rushing sound quit and a door slammed. A radio suddenly blared to life before the caller turned it down, and he was distracted for a moment. It took a second to realize he’d started a vehicle. “All right. Is that better?”

  We listened as static filled the line and the young man’s voice became garbled. He was traveling, because we heard the familiar electronic Space Invaders sound as the call came close to dropping.

  “You still there?”

  “Right here, I still don’t understand what you said earlier.” Gomez clicked his pen several times, thinking. “I need more specifics about the people you say were killed. I need the other names.”

  The Space Invaders noise rose up and there it was again, issues with technology. In the old days the call on a landline would have likely been clear as a bell, and there wouldn’t have been issues with cells.

  The answer was lost before he came back on. “He’s pulling a . . .” More static. “I’ll call back when I can. I got to think on this a little more.”

  “Son, we don’t have
much time to work here if what you say is true.”

  “. . . ain’t . . . a lot of things, but I’m not a liar . . . fine then . . . gun . . .”

  “Guns? I’d expect as much.” Gomez was writing as fast as a secretary taking shorthand. “What kind of guns and I for sure need to know where you are and . . .”

  “No . . . guns . . . gun . . . gonna drive his truck . . . barnnnnnn”—space invaders again—“set it off . . . already dead, I think . . .”

  We were both straining forward as if that would help the reception. He was gone, and Gomez stared at the phone, as if it was his receiver’s fault the conversation had ended. “Well, hell.”

  I realized I’d been holding my breath. A clap of thunder made us both jump after talking about explosives. Gomez gave a little chuckle and sat back.

  “You think that’s real?”

  I was wondering that, too. “Well, it sounded real, but it might be some kid playing hooky from school, looking to liven things up a little.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past the kid being in the school.” Gomez clicked his pen some more, and I saw it was probably a nervous habit. “I had a dumbass call in a bomb threat from the lunchroom, telling me the place was going to blow up. He hung up when I asked what they were serving in the lunch line.”

  We were silent for a minute. Gomez tapped his pad with the end of the pen. “So, do you want in on this one?”

  “It’s interesting, but I already have an assignment. I’d never get anywhere if I followed every rabbit that popped up.”

  “I know what you mean. I’m gonna do a little digging here and see what I can find out.”

  “I’m gonna go across the street and have breakfast.” I tilted my head toward the window. Thunder rumbled again at the same time lightning flashed. “And then decide what to do about my vigilante. Who knows, I might just do what you said and wait there in the house with that feller Mundy.”

  “But there’s no promise that your guy’s gonna show up.”

  “None at all. I’m doing all this on a hunch based on a theory from a friend of mine who’s good with computers and thinking outside the box. It was her idea he was coming this way and maybe making a stop here in town.”

  Gomez stared at the scribbles on his pad. “Well, order the steak and eggs, but stay away from the hash browns. They’re not the shredded kind.”

  “Good to know.” Rain spotted the window. I set his Weakley Watson cup on the desk. “Thanks for the coffee. I better get going. I’ll holler at you in a little while.”

  “Sounds good.” He returned to his notes, and I headed out into a splatter of rain as thunderstorms shifted the wind into a new direction.

  Chapter 23

  It kept acting like it wanted to rain on the streets of Comanche. Sprinkles wet the concrete, just enough to send a little runoff around the front tires of the cars and trucks parked in front of the Rockin’ R Café. I was in the booth by the front window, sipping coffee after finishing a plate full of eggs over easy and medium-rare steak.

  Lightning cracked, and the windows vibrated. Some of the western motif artwork on the walls rattled. I was half-expecting a bolt to hit the old Fleming oak. Instead, one struck the satellite dish on top of the courthouse in a shower of sparks, plunging the entire place into darkness. The lights in the café flickered, then steadied.

  I slipped the cell phone from my pocket and thumbed it alive. The signal was strong, so I typed in a few key words to do a little searching on my own. I’m not completely inept with those things.

  There’d been something bothering me that I couldn’t put my finger on, and when I heard the kid talking to Gomez on the phone, it came back. He said something that triggered it awake again.

  Another thunderclap rattled the window, and nervous laughter from other customers scattered around the ranch-style café filled the room.

  The dark-haired waitress, who’d probably been the town homecoming queen twenty years earlier, came around with a coffeepot. “You want some more?”

  I pushed the mug toward her with one finger. “Yeah, better had.”

  She refilled the mug and hung around for a minute, interested in the grips on the .45 in my holster. “I have a Glock.”

  I gave her a smile. I’ve been working on my “aggravated but trying to be nice” expression. “It’s a good gun.”

  She pointed. “Do you know your pistol’s cocked?”

  “That’s the way you carry a forty-five.”

  “That’s a forty-five?”

  “It is.” I knew what was coming next. I raised my right arm a little. “They call them Sweetheart grips. My granddaddy put them on there during the war.”

  During World War II, GIs found a use for a new product called Plexiglas. It was used for windows in planes and on vehicles, but when they discovered how easy it was to work, they created a new form of trench art by removing the standard wooden grips on their sidearms and replacing them with the transparent material.

  As in the case of the Colt M1911 on my hip, servicemen placed a picture of a pinup girl or their sweetheart underneath the right-hand side, giving them the name of Sweetheart grips. The other side often remained clear in order to see how many rounds were in the magazine, but revolvers had them on both sides.

  “That’s my grandmother holding my dad.”

  “Well, I was gonna ask you.”

  “I knew you were. They’re unusual all right.”

  Rain slashed against the window. Her eyes drifted over me for several seconds. She cocked a hip. “You need anything else?”

  “Not right now.”

  She drifted off to the next table occupied by two young men and a woman who yelped each time lightning cracked. My refilled mug was scalding hot. “Goddlemighty!”

  I tilted the mug, spilled coffee into the saucer and picked it up with the fingertips of both hands and sipped. “That’s better.”

  The waitress came back by. “Granddad used to cool his that way in their kitchen when I was a kid. I haven’t seen anyone saucer coffee in here for some time.”

  I gave her a wink. “They don’t know me here, and I doubt I’ll be back anytime soon so’s they remember me.”

  She winked back and I tried not to watch her walk back to the counter.

  I paused. “Agents.” I plucked the little pad out of my pocket and flipped a couple of pages. That kid mentioned agents, and before that, he said they made him do something.

  I drummed my fingers on the table. Another thought I couldn’t get a handle on. I took the pen from my shirt pocket and wrote.

  Agents. My Old Man. Trucks. Kill. Gun.

  I kept having thoughts that I couldn’t get ahold of or how they connected. I studied my notes. He said they, whoever they are, made him do something he didn’t want to do, and specifically said the word, kill.

  I Googled the words Texas, killed, murdered, agents.

  “Well, look what popped up.”

  It was a story filed by the Jasper Newsboy about two DEA agents who’d been murdered in a robbery outside of a local restaurant the night before.

  Thinking about the story, I watched light traffic pass outside. A diesel truck pulling an Airstream camper passed. The hair rose on the back of my neck.

  Wind blew another light sprinkle of water onto the elevated sidewalk, wetting the hundred-year-old iron hitching rings anchored in the concrete. They were probably still used from time to time when the locals rode their horses through town just for the fun of it. It’s not uncommon to see that in rural Texas, but I’ve also seen youngsters ride their horses up to the McDonald’s in Amarillo.

  “Good lord.”

  That’d been rattling around in my head ever since I was in the panhandle. I didn’t know what it was, but there was some connection that had to do with eighteen-wheelers and campers. Then when I was with Sheriff Davis, it popped up again. I’d been noticing them out of the corners of my eyes, like the Old Man told me to do when we were huntin’. He always said to pay attention to everyt
hing around me.

  I thought for a second.

  Eighteen-wheelers and campers.

  It kept coming up, over and over again. In that gunfight yesterday, the same thing. Big rigs and RVs. And now the kid said his uncle was in Comanche with the explosives, but not wherever he actually lives. What better way to haul four hundred pounds of anything without anyone suspecting, than in a camper?

  I tapped the pad with my pen, thinking. Putting together those pieces broke the dike that prevented me from recalling the ideas that had been teetering on the edge of my consciousness.

  I called Yolanda, because she answered her phone better than Perry Hale. She answered on the fifth ring. “Hey boss.”

  “The boy with you?”

  I could hear the smile in her voice. “He’s right here.”

  “I figured. Look I’m putting some things together. I think our bad guy’s heading for somewhere in East or Southeast Texas.” I told her about the phone call that came into Sheriff Gomez’s office and my suppositions. “The kid sounded scared to death and he used fake names, but I think the surname might be real, and it’s unusual. I’ve never heard Wadler before.”

  “Me neither. I can find out more than you’d imagine.”

  “I bet you can. Run that through whatever you subscribe to and see if anything pops up.”

  “Will do. I’ll call you back.”

  I hung up and glanced out the window. It was even darker than before, except when lightning fractured the clouds. I caught the waitress’s eye and she came over, smiling from ear to ear when she reached the table.

  “You need some more coffee already, or something else?”

  “What’s the nicest campground close to town?”

  She cocked a hip and looked confused. “Why, that’d be the Evening Star Campground.”

  “Which way?”

  She pointed. “Just a ways.”

  “That’s all I needed to know.” I gave her a couple of tens and slid out of the seat. “Keep the change.”

  “Sure will! Come back if you want anything else.”

  With that worrisome offer tucked away, I headed out for the Evening Star.

  Chapter 24