by Kit Frazier
Chapter One
I ducked under the crime scene tape the way I always do, like I know exactly what I’m doing, but this time I was a little more careful on account of the black-clad SWAT guys drawing down around the perimeter. Sometimes I think the only things standing between me and certain doom are instinct, pure dumb luck and a kick ass hairdresser.
“Little early aren’t you, Cauley?” Jim Cantu was lounging against his cruiser looking like a Hispanic Marlboro Man as he surveyed the rugged limestone hills and gnarled oaks at the back of the Barnes’ ranch. “What we got here is your basic suicide threat,” he continued, squinting into the hot, Central Texas sun. “Don’t obituaries get written after somebody’s turned up a corpse?”
“This isn’t for the Sentinel,” I said, swatting dirt from the seat of my jeans. “Scooter called me this morning and said he wanted to talk.”
“Doesn’t matter. No media behind the line,” he said, nodding toward the SWAT guys.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”
“Calling me media is pure charity on your part,” I said. “And I almost never get shot.”
Cantu grinned down at me as I settled in beside him. Every now and then, Cantu cuts me a break, because once upon a time, he’d been a rookie beat cop when my dad was a detective and he sometimes steps in where my dad left off.
Cantu and I stood, staring at the tumble of weathered planks of the shed where Scott Barnes had holed up, presumably sucking on the business end of a shotgun.
This wasn’t the earth-shattering incident it might seem elsewhere in the world. Here, you don’t ask if you have any crazy people in the family. You ask which side they’re on. In Texas, we believe our own myths, and the wet heat of summer presses heavily on already fanciful minds.
Crossing his arms, Cantu looked at the bruise that was blooming on my forehead. “All right, blondie, I give. What happened to your head?”
“Banged it on a big piece of wood,” I said. Despite a raging hangover, I’d climbed a crosstie fence to get past the police line. I was hot and sweaty, and I had enough dirt under my nails to re-pot a geranium. Plus, now I had a bump on my head and a hole in my jeans, which showed a big patch of pre-laundry day, Wal-Mart underwear. These things almost never happen when you’re wearing nice undies.
“Hurricane Cauley.” Cantu shook his head. “You want off obits? Go chase a real story. I hear El Patron’s on the move.”
I had to stop myself from growling. Cantu knew I’d sell my Aunt Kat’s china for a story that would get me off the obituary page, and while I’d been assigned to do some of the research on El Patron the latest South American syndicate to set up shop in Central Texas the News Boys on the City Desk got the byline on the story. For the most part, I spend my days rewriting death notices, and if I’m lucky, I occasionally get to do legwork for the real reporters.
But getting something on El Patron could fix that for me. Organized crime was nothing new in Texas, but El Patron crossed the city limits into Looney-ville when they shoved a heavy duty Firestone around some poor bastard’s shoulders and burned him alive. Talk about a front-page, above-the-fold scoop.
“Yeah, well, El Patron will have to wait,” I said, and winced as one of the SWAT guys with an orange-stocked sniper rifle disappeared into a thicket of sage. “Did you have to call the Jump Out Boys?” I said, staring at the rest of the SWAT team, which was scattered among bushes and perched in the gnarled forks of live oaks.
“Had to,” Cantu said. “I got dinner duty tonight.”
“You called SWAT because it’s your turn to cook?” I said, thinking of Cantu’s three kids who could make a sane person call SWAT on a good day. “You know Scooter never hurt anybody.”
“And he won’t hurt anybody. Captain’s called a negotiator.”
“We don’t need a negotiator. Let me talk to him.”
“You talked to him last time.”
“Hey,” I said. “That thing with the goats was not my fault.”
Cantu snorted. “You busted in the back of that pet store and scared los cabritos so bad they passed out cold.”
“They were those weird fainting goats,” I said, staring at the shed. I shook my head. “Exotic animals. I don’t know why Scooter can’t sell dogs and cats like a normal person.”
“He’s not a normal person. He’s a serial suicide. This is the second time he’s threatened to bite a bullet this month. It’s standard procedure to call SWAT and I shoulda never let you talk me out of it the first time.”
I started to say that serial suicide was an oxymoron and that Scooter had issues, what with his wife leaving him and all, when I sucked in a breath and stopped dead in my tracks. “Who is that?”
Near the fence line, a lone man loomed, speaking into a cell phone as he surveyed the scene. I’d practically grown up in the West Side substation, and I knew all the precinct cops and most of the usual suspects.
This guy was no usual suspect.
Tall and bronzed with a wide-legged stance, he was a dead ringer for Captain America. I had to remind myself to close my mouth. Probably my hormones. I haven’t had a steady relationship since I installed my shower massage.
“Tom Logan.” Cantu scowled. “FBI.”
“You don’t like him?”
“Nothing personal. We just don’t need a bunch of Feds fucking up a local case.”
“They’re here on a suicide threat? Why would the Feds care if Scooter Barnes is having a bad day?” I said, but the rumble of an engine rolled over my voice.
“Miranda,” I swore.
Miranda Phillips stepped out of a white van, shook out her platinum hair, smoothed her slim skirt and tapped her Ferragamo-heeled foot while her television crew set up outside the flapping yellow crime scene tape. She might have been annoyed. It was hard to tell because her face never moved. It was frozen in a permanent look of surprise on account of all those Botox injections.
Miranda has her own wildly successful syndicated column at The Austin Journal, the Sentinel’s flashier, better-funded rival newspaper and she’s broadening her already triumphant resume by breaking into television.
Miranda never did time on the obituary page.
Miranda is Barbie, if Barbie gave up her Malibu Beach house to pursue a career in journalism. She’s tall and blond and has all the accessories, including a closet full of fuck-me pumps. I, on the other hand, look like Skipper, Barbie’s little sister. Permanently disheveled and always trying to keep up.
As long as I’ve known Miranda, I’ve never seen her sweat. She uses pretentious words like “exquisite” and “extraordinary” at inappropriate times.
I know this because a couple of Christmases ago I walked in on her riding my former husband like a wild, wet pony. Exquisite, she’d panted. Extraordinary.
“How’d she find us so fast?”
“Probably she has that OnStar-navigation-thing,” Cantu said. He looked down at the hole in my jeans. “You should get that.”
“I don’t need any help,” I said. The old shed was hard to find if you didn’t know where to look. It was perched on a wooded knoll behind Scooter’s dad’s house on a bend in the Pedernales River near Paradise Falls. My friends and I used to spend sultry summer afternoons skinny-dipping in the cold spring waters, a memory not even two years in Northern California could extinguish.
“You were sneaking into a crime scene,” Cantu pointed out. “You’re not supposed to be here at all.”
“Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better these were my favorite jeans.” Miranda had finished tossing her hair and did a double take when she caught sight of me and Cantu.
“Well, hello, Carrie,” Miranda purred as she prowled toward us, but she looked right past me at Cantu like one of
those smart bombs in search of a target.
“Cauley,” I said, like she didn’t already know.
“Right,” she said without looking at me. “Like the dog.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“What do we have here?” she said, and I was about to think of something really clever to say, but it didn’t matter because she was staring at Captain America, who was still stalking the fence line talking on his cell phone.
I glanced over the horizon expectantly. The News Boys would be on the scene soon. Luckily, I had anticipated this. You can only screw me four or five times before I start to notice a pattern. From somewhere down the tree-lined road, a red Toyota four-by-four rolled up and slid to a stop next to Miranda’s van.
A rangy, pimply-faced kid climbed out of the truck and yelled, “Somebody order a pizza?” His voice only cracked a little, and it was hardly noticeable, what with all sniper rifles ratcheting his direction.
“Thirty minutes or less.” I grinned at Cantu. “Just like the ad says.”
The kid was reaching across the passenger seat to pull out a big white pizza box when a deep voice yelled, “Freeze!”
I watched as six SWAT guys had the pizza kid spread-eagled on the ground and Miranda was mobilizing her troop of television techs.
“You could go to hell for this,” Cantu called after me.
“They’re trained professionals,” I called back. “They almost never shoot anybody.”
I could hear the falls rushing in the near-distance as I scrambled toward the backside of the shed. The natural spring plunges down a forty-foot cliff to rush nearly fifteen miles through the Hill Country, pooling in Paradise Cove not what most people picture when they think of Texas.
Texas is hot, but it’s not all barren and rocky like the movies, where John Wayne rides into the sunset over a desert dotted with saguaro cactus. The only pitchfork-shaped cacti here are imported from Arizona and John Wayne was born in Iowa. Not that we let little things like facts get in our way.
I pounded on the back door. “Don’t shoot, Scooter! It’s me, Cauley.”
A rustling sound came from inside, followed by a half-hearted sigh. Scooter’s voice drifted through the back door. “You’re too late. Go away.”
“Can’t do that, Scooter. They’ve got the place surrounded. You’re going to have to come out.”
I tried the door and heard a chain rattle from the inside. Scooter didn’t say anything. It was getting hotter by the minute and the smell of cut grass was about to pitch me headlong into an allergy attack. Mindful of the SWAT team perched around the perimeter, I crept around the corner of the shed until I found a hole just big enough for a smallish body.
“Well, crap,” I growled. With much bitching and moaning, I shimmied through the narrow hole, tearing my shirt on a splintered board. Apparently I wasn’t as small as I thought.
“Ow!” I swore, and spit out a mouthful of red dirt while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shed was about fifteen by fifteen, and its most prominent feature was a warped box-bench against the far wall. A bare bulb hung from a frayed wire, and a few rusty tools and half a dozen sagging cardboard boxes were scattered along the side and back walls. I pulled my mini recorder out of my back pocket, more out of habit than anything else and hit the record button.
“Go away,” Scooter said. He was sitting on the box-bench in the corner near a pyramid of old paint cans, where he’d surrounded himself with a semi-circle of assorted weaponry.
I heard a loud squawk and blinked in the dim light. The big, blue parrot that always hung out near the cash register at Scooter’s pet store was perched atop the paint cans.
“Hey, Scooter,” I said amiably, still eyeing the bird as I smacked red dirt off the back of my jeans. “Rough day?”
I started to sit down next to Scooter when the bird shrieked and threw open his enormous blue wings.
I yelped and almost tripped backward over an old, rusty shovel.
“Why’d you bring the parrot?”
“Sam’s a Macaw,” Scooter said dully. The man was no MENSA candidate but he was practically a savant with animals. The bird ducked his great, feathered head at Scooter, who reached out and scratched the bird’s fluffy neck.
“Sam’s good company,” Scooter said absently. “Did you know miners used to take birds with ‘em down in the mine shafts? They’re sensitive to fumes.’
“The birds alerted when there was a gas leak?”
“No. They dropped dead. It was a sign things were about to go south.”
Wow. I hoped that wasn’t an omen.
Sam made a garbled noise that almost sounded human. “I know, buddy,” Scooter said, staring at him sadly.
I winced. When Scooter called me earlier that morning, I’d been recording the Maltese Falcon on Turner Classic Movies. I’d seen what could happen when people got obsessed with birds. But then, I have found that most of life’s problems can be solved with wisdom gleaned from Bogart movies.
“You know,” I said in my best Bogart, watching as Scooter picked at the rusty lid of avocado green interior-exterior. “If you want to off yourself with paint fumes, you’re going to have to do better than a can of twenty-year-old latex.”
“A lot you know,” he muttered. “She left me.”
“I know,” I said and sighed. If we were going to talk about Scooter’s wife, it was going to take awhile. Searching in the dust-moted shafts of light, I found a big, musty box. I shoved it closer to Scooter, coughing at the cloud of dust I’d stirred up, hoping I hadn’t stirred up anything worse than dust, like a nest of nasty brown recluse spiders or a hoard of red, stinging scorpions. Settling in on the box, I really looked at Scooter. I almost didn’t recognize him.
Scott Barnes slumped on the bench, a shadow of the big, blond legend he’d been at Austin High School. Once upon a time, he’d been a kick-ass running back, which was how he got his nickname. Scooter wasn’t the brightest match in the box, but he could blaze through a defensive line like Sherman through Georgia, so much so that he got a full ride to the University of Texas.
He left school early for a coveted contract with the Dallas Cowboys and made front pages all over Texas when he married Selena Obregon, first runner up in the Miss Texas pageant. Once upon a time, his life had seemed charmed.
“Have you talked to Selena?” I said, hating the question. I wasn’t comfortable playing marriage counselor because I wasn’t qualified, and if I was going to be brutally honest, I wasn’t wild about Selena. Oh, sure, she was small and fragile, with hair the color of spun gold and big, morning glory-blue eyes and the faintest trace of an Argentinean accent that made men lose twenty IQ points. But Selena and I had gone to school together and she beat me two years running in all-state drama with her heart-rending portrayal of Blanche DuBois. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers…
“Zorrita,” Scooter said, and I couldn’t help but smile. Little Fox. In the south, nicknames tell as much about the person who gives them as the person who wears them.
“I can’t find her.”
No big surprise there. Just after the honeymoon, their little southern-fried fairy tale went sour when Scooter blew out one of his million-dollar knees line-dancing in a dump of a honky tonk in Oklahoma, ending what would have been a stellar career. No gazillion-dollar contract. No shopping sprees at Tiffany’s. Just a quasi-normal life changing cat boxes in a little pet store west of Austin.
Sighing, I hit the off button on my mini recorder. This was about an old friend. There would be no scoop today.
“Scooter,” I said carefully. “When you called this morning you said you wanted to talk to me about something?”
Scooter stared blankly at the front door. “Why’d they have to go and call SWAT? I never hurt anybody.”
“You threatened to hurt yourself,” I pointed out, accepting the change of subject. Whatever the reason he’d called me, he clearly wasn’t ready to talk about it.
“You don’t want to do this,” I sai
d and Sam squawked, ruffling his feathers. “What about your pet store?”
Scooter shook his head. “I got a guy helps out, looks after the animals, cleans the kennels. Does some computer-type stuff at the shop.”
“A renaissance man.”
“He needed a job when he got out of prison.”
Scooter always did have a soft spot for strays. I wiped my damp forehead. It had to be a hundred and ten degrees inside and the smell of mold and motor oil was making my throat close. And I couldn’t think of a single thing that would ease his mind. Surely there had to be life beyond Selena. I was running low on ideas.
“You know what I like?” I finally said. “The sound of the lake lapping the shoreline on a hot summer night.”
I looked at Scooter and he seemed to be listening, so I went on. “I like the taste of Fredericksburg peaches late in the season, all sweet and so juicy it runs down your chin when you take a big bite…I like the smell of mountain laurel, right when it first blooms…”
“Smells like grapes,” he said. I nodded.
“You remember when we were kids and we played dodge ball?” he said.
I barely remembered. Scooter was three grades ahead of me, and I hated dodge ball, but I nodded.
“You run and run, and they hit you with that ball,” he said. “No matter what you do, you can’t get away, and even if you win, you lose because they’re still gunning for you with that goddamned ball.”
I stared at him. Scooter had enough testosterone to fuel a Third World army. He kicked butt at every sport known to mankind. But I had a feeling we weren’t talking about the playground anymore.
“Yes,” I said. “But you could always yell, Do Over! And you got to start some other game with a clean slate.”
“Not always.” He looked so unhappy I wasn’t sure what to say.
I took a deep breath. “You know what I used to do when I was a kid? I used to make grass skirts out of newspaper, get a couple of cans of pineapples and drag a box out on the roof. Then my sister and I would climb out the window and sit in the box and wish we were in Hawaii.”
Scooter stared at me. “You were a weird kid.”
