by John Bowers
“He also said you stole his car.”
“I commandeered his car because I didn’t have room to carry all the girls in mine. I told him it would be returned and it will.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you have no evidence to the contrary. The truth is that Baker came out of nowhere and drew down on me. He fired two rounds as a warning, and threatened to kill me if I made a move. When I got the chance, I took him out.”
“Pretty reckless, don’t you think?”
“I’m standing there with six girls I’ve just rescued from slavery—which is illegal in Federation territory!—and suddenly I’m faced with a renegade marshal who threatens to kill me if I don’t return the girls to slavery. What am I supposed to do? I had no reason to believe Baker wouldn’t kill me, so I defended myself and the girls.”
“That’s a mighty thin story.”
“I have six witnesses. Seven if you ever find Yolanda alive.”
“You still claim she isn’t with you?”
“She isn’t with me. I offered to take her with us, but she said she wanted to stay. If she isn’t there, then talk to Strong. He’s either got her hidden away or maybe he killed her. If you’re interested in the truth, you should at least investigate.”
Colwell was silent for thirty seconds. Nick waited him out.
“You also assaulted Booger Jones. He wants to file charges.”
“Tell him to go ahead. He had a thirteen year-old girl chained to a bed, and his cook was also a slave.”
“Are they with you?”
“They are.” Nick leaned forward again. “Look, you have no quarrel with me. What you should be asking yourself is why did Baker draw down on me? Was he taking payoffs from the slavers to look the other way? Or was he actively involved in human trafficking himself?”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Fine. Maybe he wasn’t, but he didn’t fire two shots for no reason, or threaten to kill me if I didn’t release the girls. He had to have a reason for doing that, and you should be asking yourself what it was. He was your partner, and I don’t think you want the stink on you if he was guilty of something illegal.”
Colwell shifted in the holo.
“When are you coming back down?”
“Couple of days. I have things on this end to nail down. I’ll let you know when I leave so you can arrange to meet me.”
The older man’s mouth was a grim line as he nodded.
“All right, Walker. I have to file a report to London, so you better not be lying.”
“I’ll be filing one too. Just make sure you don’t level any accusations that you can’t prove. We need to be working together on this thing, not fighting each other.” Nick gave him his porta-phone number. “You can reach me any time if you have questions.”
They signed off, an uneasy truce. Nick leaned back in his chair and let his breath out noisily. It was bad enough that Nick had been forced to kill another marshal, but now Colwell was trying to make Nick out to be the renegade. Strong had hidden the only witness left behind, and was accusing Nick of theft; Booger Jones also wanted revenge.
And Colwell was listening to them.
Nick had a chill feeling that this thing wasn’t over, not by a light year.
Nick had planned to file a report to London about the Baker killing, but decided it would be incomplete if he didn’t interview the girls first. He returned to the hotel and found several of them awake. One by one, he took them into his room and debriefed them in front of a camera. Those from the northern states he interviewed merely as a formality, since he had no jurisdiction in the areas where they had been captured. He pointedly asked them about Marshal Baker, but all claimed they had never seen him until the moment he fired the first laser shot into the car’s windscreen.
Consuelo Ratón, the girl Nick had rescued from Booger Jones’s tent, told Nick how she had come to be captured. She lived in Village 24, out near the western border of Willard Kline’s ranch. She and her little brother had been walking alongside a cotton field tracking a tripod rat when two white men in a farm pickup had come up on them from behind. The men were Kline employees, she said, because she had seen them before, but didn’t know their names. They pulled her into the pickup, drove for two or three miles until they were well clear of the village, and raped her. Afterward they blindfolded her and drove for several more miles where they met another man.
Consuelo never saw the third man, nor heard any names, but she knew that money changed hands. The third man drove for several more hours, then stopped and waited for a hovervan coming in from Texiana. When it arrived, he loaded her on board and once again she was aware that money was paid. She remained blindfolded until the hovervan was under way again, at which time she discovered she was in the company of about twenty other girls and three strange men.
Nick asked if she would be able to recognize the first two men if she saw them again. She nodded emphatically.
Julia Gato’s story was almost identical, the only difference being that she was taken from her own yard in Village 24, in full view of at least six witnesses. Her description of the two men who captured her coincided with the one given by Consuelo Ratón; Julia was also driven to a remote location and raped, then turned over to a third man who sold her to the slavers from Texiana.
But Julia wasn’t blindfolded. She saw the third man clearly. Though she didn’t know his name, she knew he was a foreman on the Kline ranch. And he had a tattoo on his neck.
“What kind of tattoo?” Nick asked.
“Una culebra.”
Constanza Valenzuela had been captured in Kline Corners two blocks from her home, on her way to school. But this time it wasn’t a pickup that stopped, it was a hovercar. Inside were two men, one of them a teenager. The man driving the car had a snake tattoo on his neck. It was the boy who jumped out and pulled Constanza into the vehicle. She struggled and screamed, but the man powered the car up over the roofs of Kline Corners and sped away to the west before anyone was alerted. They traveled many miles before stopping, and when they stopped the boy raped her. About an hour later, a hovervan arrived from the north, and Consuelo saw the men in the van hand over a fistful of cash to her captors.
Nick asked if she knew the identities of the two men in the hovercar. She didn’t know the man, she said, but the boy was a regular around town. His name was Joel.
At the conclusion of each interview, Nick asked each girl to look into the vid camera, identify herself, and tell in her own words what she had seen and heard when U.F. Marshal Steve Baker was killed. If Nick ever needed to defend himself in court, the videos would serve as depositions in case the witnesses could no longer be located.
Finally, in late afternoon, Nick returned to his office and wrote a detailed report about the incident, including his findings of illegal slave-holding in Federation territory, his rescue of the eight women in the Outback, and his role in killing Baker. He subspaced the report to London and dropped back in his chair, drained.
He’d been on the planet exactly four days, but it felt like four years. Things were happening so fast he could barely keep track of them. He had a feeling the work was only beginning.
As soon as it was dark, Nick helped Dr. Taylor move the girls to her residence, then headed to the Vega for dinner. The supper crowd, always light on Monday night, had already left when he walked in. Half the lights had been turned off and the place was dim, but cool and cozy. No one was behind the bar, but Nick spotted Nathan Green sitting at a table in the corner. Kristina was sitting opposite him.
Nick walked over to them, frowning at Nathan’s face, which appeared to be smeared with something. As he drew closer, he realized the boy had suffered a beating; he pulled a chair from another table, slid it next to the teenagers, and straddled it.
“What the hell happened to you?” he demanded.
Nathan looked embarrassed, but Kristina glowed.
“Nathan saved my life!” she gushed with the excite
ment of someone who has fresh gossip to distribute. “You should have seen him! He was so brave!”
Nick saw the worship in her eyes, then looked at Nathan and saw a mixture of feelings—pride, perhaps, that Kristina was praising him, but also humiliation.
“Tell me the other guy looks worse,” Nick said.
Nathan shook his head. “They nearly killed me.”
“They? Who?”
“Willis Kline!” Kristina volunteered. “And Gerald Graves. Nathan rescued me from them, but they beat him pretty bad.”
Nick heard footsteps and swiveled around to see Suzanne Norgaard approaching the table. She stood next to Nick and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Nathan, do you want anything else? We’re closing the kitchen in a few minutes.”
“No, Ma’am, thank you. I think I’m full.”
“How about you, Nick?”
“Maybe a hot beef sandwich? Nothing too elaborate.”
“Gravy?”
“Of course.”
Suzanne smiled, collected Nathan’s used dishes, and turned away. Nick made eye contact with the two kids.
“Did I just detect a change in the weather around here?”
Kristina laughed. “Mother was so impressed by Nathan’s bravery that she said I could start seeing him. He gets to eat free for a whole year!”
Nick smiled. “That’s great news. You see, sometimes you make your own luck.” He slid the chair back and stood up. “I’ll leave you two alone. Gotta go get fed.”
He strolled over to the bar, where Suzanne had a cold beer waiting for him. He settled onto a stool and lifted the beer, taking a long swallow.
“While you were off exploring,” she told him, “we had some drama of our own.”
“I noticed. What the hell happened, anyway?”
“Willis Kline happened. Have you met him yet?” Nick shook his head. “He and Gerald Graves were having dinner. They’d polished off nearly a bottle of Lightning apiece, and they were in a big way. Kristina came to clear their table. Willis did something, I’m not sure what, but it startled Kristina and she dumped the dishes in his lap. He just went ape-shit. Grabbed her by the hair and started pounding her head on the table.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Before I could do anything about it, Nathan attacked him and she was able to get away. But Willis and Graves teamed up on Nathan and beat him half to death. If Jason hadn’t been there, they might have killed him.”
“Jason is the younger Kline?”
“Yes. And Roy Blake sat there and watched!”
“What?”
“Worthless, goddess-scorn son of a bitch!”
Nick watched the emotions rage across her stunning features. The angrier she got, the more beautiful she seemed.
“Maybe it’s time I met Willis Kline,” he said.
Suzanne subdued her rage and focused on Nick.
“What will you do with him?”
“Depends. If you or Nathan want to press charges, I can set him in front of a Federation magistrate and get him some jail time. If you don’t, I can at least have a talk with him. Maybe scare him a little.”
Suzanne shook her head. “You can’t scare Willis. He’s too stupid to understand fear. His father is the most powerful man in the region, so Willis thinks he was born into royalty. He has a sense of entitlement, and anyone who gets in his way can get hurt.”
Nick grinned slowly.
“I can’t wait to meet him.”
“I’m serious, Nick. You watch your step with him. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever met to a psychopath. He might kill you.”
“Could he be the one who killed Gates?”
She considered that for a moment.
“I have no reason to think so, but if it turned out to be true, I wouldn’t be all that surprised.”
She lowered her voice, though no one was present to overhear.
“What’s done is done,” she said. “What worries me is what Willis might do next.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you, Willis thinks he’s royalty. Nathan humiliated him in front of the whole room, and the place was packed. I don’t think Willis will let that go.”
“You think he’ll come after Nathan?”
“I’m not saying Willis will kill him, but he won’t let it pass.”
The cook came out with Nick’s dinner and set it before him. Suzanne refilled his beer mug.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here Friday night,” Nick said as he sliced his sandwich and forked a bite into his mouth. “Maybe I could have dealt with Kline right on the spot.”
“Maybe it’s better you weren’t. As busy as we were, someone else might have got hurt.”
Nick sat eating. Thinking. He already had plenty on his plate, but this demanded his attention. He needed to visit the Kline ranch anyway, to inquire about a foreman with a snake tattoo on his neck. He would look up Willis Kline while he was there. He glanced up at Suzanne.
“Do you know a boy named Joel? Teenager?”
Suzanne looked surprised. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard the name somewhere.”
“Joel Graves. Gerald Graves’s son.”
Chapter 15
“I can’t repeat this often enough, so remember it—your authority exceeds that of local law enforcement. Always. Always! Always!”
—Professor Milligan, U.F. Marshal Academy
Monday, July 20, 0442 (CC) – Kline Ranch, Sirius 1
Kline Ranch headquarters was located on the only high ground for miles around, with a spectacular view of the desert in all directions.
As Nick approached, the main house stood in stark relief against the skyline, like a medieval castle or estate. Up close it resembled an antebellum plantation, sans moss-covered cypress trees. Four stories tall, it was bigger than some hotels Nick had seen, certainly bigger than the one in Kline Corners. Vine covered balconies ringed the upper floors, the front façade boasted tall white columns. It almost had a government look about it.
The estate was quite beautiful, everything lush and green. Lawns sprawled for acres in all directions; here and there stood other, lesser buildings, some obviously living quarters, perhaps for employees. Half a mile to the rear, down a paved road, sat farm buildings; equipment sheds, repair facilities, storage towers, and miscellaneous others.
Nick piloted his rental car past the big house and stopped in front of what looked like an office. Adjusting his cowboy hat—he was starting to get used to it—he stepped inside to ask the whereabouts of Willis Kline. A middle-aged black woman eyed him curiously as she spoke into a throat mike. Kline answered at once, his voice bursting out of a speaker on her desk. She asked his location.
“I’m at the main equipment shed,” Kline said. “What’s up?”
“You have a visitor, Mr. Kline.”
“Who is it?”
Nick shook his head and placed a finger over his lips. The woman hesitated.
“He didn’t say, Mr. Kline. I think he’s on his way now.”
The main equipment shed was easy to find. It was the largest building on the paved street that ran through the property, and Nick settled the hovercar outside huge double doors that were open to admit light and air circulation.
As a precaution, Nick thumbed the power switch on his pistol before getting out of the car. He oriented himself briefly, then strolled into the shed and looked around.
The place was as big as a spacecraft hanger and filled with modern equipment. Several large farm vehicles were scattered about, under repair. To his left a robotic welder was spitting light at a harvester; two serf mechanics lay on their backs under another, their faces smeared with grease. The smell of oil and ozone assaulted Nick’s nose. Cool air washed over his face from several large fans in the top of the structure, but it was still hot inside.
Two white men stood near a small office at the end of the building, watching Nick with interest. They wore western clothing and sidearms. Nick suspected
Willis Kline was the taller one. He resembled Willard Kline in the face, had broad shoulders and the beginnings of a gut.
Nick strolled toward them.
“Willis Kline?”
The tall one nodded.
“You must be the new marshal. Heard you were in town.” He attempted a smile, but it was more of a smirk. “What can I do for you?”
Nick gazed at him a moment, measuring the man.
“Nathan Green,” he said.
Kline looked surprised. “What about him?”
“Put him out of your mind.”
“Why would he be in my mind?”
“I think you know why. Your knuckle prints are all over his face.”
Kline shrugged.
“Kid attacked me. What was I supposed to do?”
“I wasn’t there, so all I know is what I’ve heard. What I’m telling you is that if anything happens to that boy, I’ll be coming after you. I hope you won’t make that necessary.”
Kline’s face remained neutral, but a flush spread up his cheeks from his neck. Nick could see the anger in his eyes.
“Okay, fine. But you tell that little fuck to stay out of my way. I don’t appreciate being jacked up in front of the whole goddamn town.”
“I understand that. But you already have your revenge, so leave it at that.”
Kline’s face darkened further, but Nick ignored him. He was looking at the second man.
“Are you Graves?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
Graves was about forty, two inches shorter than Kline, but leaner. Not an ounce of fat was visible on his frame. His work shirt was faded by the suns, his face burnt a deep tan. A bandana was tied around his neck, secured at the throat by a clip. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
“The same applies to you,” Nick said. “I understand you took part in the beating.”
“Like the man said,” Graves replied, “the kid attacked first.”
“And it took two of you to handle him? Grown men like you?” Nick smiled cynically and shook his head. “I’d be embarrassed to admit that if I were you.”
