Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  “You’re about to have way more serious trouble than your sex-on-the-side drying up. And if I find out you had one damned thing to do with hurting Rachel Copeland—”

  “She’s—she’s your woman?” Terror filled his voice. “Shit, I’m sorry man, I had no idea.”

  It burned in Zeke’s gut that he couldn’t properly claim Rachel, but he said nothing to correct the man’s mistake. “Which explains why you had best tell me the guilty party’s name while you still can. Otherwise, I have to tell you, I know plenty of out-of-the-way places I could dump your body between here and the Presidio County Sheriff’s office. Because I’m not a man with much to lose.”

  Zeke had no intention of killing anybody, but he allowed his fury to spill out in his words in the hope the threat would be enough.

  Apparently it was, for the man beside him blurted, “It was Lili. Lili Vega. She wanted Rachel out of the picture so she could snatch up Walter Copeland’s business once he loses his license.”

  The driver smiled, for she finally, finally had him in her sights. Alive and in the flesh, looking so much like the photo she had studied. A photo Providence had placed in her hands and Justice let her recognize.

  She felt blessed for this good fortune, and for the increasing vigilance that had prompted her to buy a police scanner with some of the money she’d taken from the ATM. A nice young man—despite his long hair—working at the Carlsbad, New Mexico, Radio Shack where she’d stopped, had helpfully looked up the emergency frequencies she needed on the Internet and set the scanner for her. When he wouldn’t take a tip, she’d given him a hug in thanks, since he reminded her of her son.

  She’d only wanted to assure herself she had not been discovered, to gain an early warning if the Presidio County Sheriff started looking for her. She hadn’t bargained on the radio leading her to the man she had been almost certain she’d lost.

  Earlier this morning, when she had stopped by the pathetic little hovel where he’d hidden, she had found it stripped and emptied of his clothing. Very recently, she guessed, since he’d left animals behind. She’d shrieked with fury, thinking he had somehow been forewarned against her, that he had robbed her of her chance to finish this at last. To repay a debt of blood and torment, a sin that had destroyed lives.

  For twenty years, she had been waiting, twenty years her family had been suffering. And though the first of Willie’s so-called friends had told her everything as he had pleaded for his miserable life, right down to the name of the real killer, she wasn’t letting any of them escape justice. Particularly the one who had been paid to safeguard Willie—the one whose disappearance had drawn things out for so many years.

  And then, the call went out, and she smiled, knowing where to catch him. And hoping she could figure out a way to get him to pull over before the county sheriff beat her to it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

  —Henry Louis Mencken,

  from Prejudices, Third Series

  Far too frightening to crawl back beneath the porch again. The thought of risking being trapped inside there, swallowing back screams to prevent discovery, set panic swirling and the pulse pounding.

  But the observer had long been alert to the presence of such nests and knew of another—more certainly real—which had recently appeared in one of the hangars on the far side of the airport. Not a wasps’ nest, this one, but made by some kind of bees. Someone else who’d seen them had been worried they might be of the Africanized variety and thought they ought to be exterminated before they got out of hand.

  Whatever kind of bees they were, they’d been plenty pissed when, still half-stupefied by the chill of the morning, they and their nest had been unceremoniously scraped off by a long-handled shovel and dumped inside a thick brown paper bag. The observer—pounding heart in throat—quickly grasped the top and twisted it closed.

  “Jesus. Yes.” Un-stung and dizzy with relief, the bees’ captor laughed to hear the furious buzzing of the suddenly roused creatures. Trapped in a confined space, helpless—let the little bastards see how they enjoyed it.

  “But don’t worry. It won’t be long.” Not since Her Royal Highness had called earlier to check the schedule, to see if there would be a glider and someone available to give her a tow. Though her father had taken the day off for personal business, Rachel would come soon, she’d said, would be there by the time the bright sun warmed things up for better flying.

  The heat would liven up the bees, too, in their thin cocoon tucked halfway beneath the glider’s rudder cable. Secured in such a way that the paper would rip open soon after Rachel set off on her final flight.

  After parking the pickup she had borrowed from her father, Rachel made her way toward the glider hangar.

  “Hey, Lili, how’s it going?” Rachel tried to mask her pain with false cheer but must have overshot the mark, considering the concern in the younger pilot’s dark eyes.

  “Sister, you look strung out.” Lili tucked back a strand of hair—now colored neon orange instead of the hot pink she’d had previously. Behind that streak, she had another dyed bright aqua.

  Rachel gestured toward Lili’s head and tried to change the subject. “Kind of a tropical effect. I love it.”

  “Thanks.” Lili’s glow lasted only moments. “But seriously, what’s wrong?”

  With a forced smile, Rachel answered, “Nothing flying can’t fix.”

  She only wished it could be so easy. Short on sleep and struggling not to wonder how far from Marfa Zeke had by this time traveled, she was also feeling lousy about this morning’s run-in with her dad. She’d begged and finally browbeat him into letting her make an eye doctor appointment. After convincing the medical secretary to work her dad in today, Rachel had completed her “betrayal” by calling Patsy, already at The Roost despite her late night, and asking her to drive him to Alpine that afternoon.

  “Glad to,” her stepmother had responded. “I’ve been after him about it for the last six months. Now you can be the bad guy, and he’ll have the whole drive to cry about your bullying on my shoulder.”

  “Works for me.” Rachel had been glad to hear what had sounded like approval in the woman’s voice. Rachel doubted she had thawed their long-running cold war in one fell swoop, but asking for Patsy’s help with her dad had warmed the chill a bit.

  Lili shot her a knowing look. “Man troubles, I’ll bet. I’m an expert at those. Soaring’s as good a cure as any. Bobby and I pulled out the Blanik for you, and the tow plane’s fueled and ready. If you want, I’ll tow you extra-high today. Give you a longer flight.”

  It was a good suggestion since, even though the day was heating up as the bright sun approached its apex, the best thermals wouldn’t develop until later. The more altitude, the longer her glide back to earth. “Kind of troubles I’ve got, I’ll take the highest tow you can dish out.”

  Rachel meant it, though as of this morning, she had one less worry. Her attorney had phoned to say it was official. The Underwood suit had been dropped. Her dad and stepmother would even get back a decent portion of the retainer, since Greenberg hadn’t yet sunk too much time into the case.

  Lili laughed. “You’d better bring your oxygen, then. Not really. But why don’t you take this along to cheer you up.”

  Reaching into the front pocket of her flight shirt, she lifted out an MP3 player no larger than a pack of gum. After messing with the controls and unraveling the headphones, she offered it to Rachel with a grin.

  “I put together a mix of songs for flying that is unbelievable. You’re gonna love it, promise. I guarantee that you’ll land smiling, or your money back.”

  “Well, okay. Sure.” Rachel took it, feeling doubtful not only about Lili’s taste in music—since the bar where she worked was as notorious for its blaringly loud hard rock as its rough-hewn reputation—but also her sudden burst of kindness. More than likely, the younger pilot was feeling magnanimous in victory since she figur
ed that Rachel was no longer any obstacle to her hopelessly one-sided lust affair with Zeke.

  Might as well take advantage of her good mood while I can. Rachel could all-too-easily foresee a day when Lili would blame her for breaking Zeke’s heart and “driving” him away.

  Bobby Bauer drove the golf cart over from an odd-looking small plane he’d been working on in front of a nearby hangar. He looked happier than Rachel had seen him in a long time.

  “Ready to go up?” he asked. “I’m sort of in the middle of something, but I can spare a few for ground crew duty.”

  Rachel squinted in the direction of the patriotically painted red-white-and-blue plane he’d been working on. “Great paint job. Whose is it? Or I should say, what is it?”

  Bobby grinned. “Mine and my brother’s. Isn’t it great? One of those metal home-built kits. We’ve adapted an old Mazda rotary engine to put in it.”

  Rachel smiled, glad to see him so enthusiastic. Clearly, restoring contact with at least one member of his family had lifted a portion of the burden he carried.

  Lili’s forehead crinkled. “You’re putting a car engine in a plane? Wouldn’t it be easier just to—”

  “Like I keep telling you, Lili-girl, life’s not always about easy.”

  It sprang to mind that Lili’s grandmother should have given her the same advice about her dating habits, but Rachel swallowed back the unkind thought and gestured toward some promising puffs of cloud. “Could be some decent thermals popping. Ready?”

  She checked over the single-seat Blanik, a cross-country sailplane her father often flew. Though this glider was only a couple of years old, Rachel paid particular attention to the cockpit’s hinges and closure apparatus. Such failures might be rare, but every time she thought about the accident, she felt light-headed.

  But everything looked great, and the radio was working, so she swung her body down into the tiny cockpit, an act that—for everything that was so desperately wrong in her life—still sent frissons of excitement dancing up her spine. Strapped inside this small space, she knew she could find the respite, perhaps even a measure of the peace, she needed to get through this first, worst day of letting Zeke go.

  The best thing about these little sailplanes, Rusty, her father said so often, is you can’t afford the weight or space to take worries up with you.

  Not long later, she would realize how horribly wrong he’d been on that count.

  By the time the emergency lights flashed in Zeke’s rearview mirror, his passenger had lapsed into a stubborn silence. Though Zeke had prodded him with questions, the man refused to give his name or offer further details about his affair with Lili Vega.

  The sheriff switched on his SUV’s siren to get their attention. As Zeke pulled onto the shoulder, his gut knotted. With Castillo’s suspicions running so high last night, would he listen to anything Zeke had to tell him?

  Castillo headed his way, his short legs pumping to eat up the short distance and his expression inscrutable behind dark sunglasses. Yet from the way he moved and the angle of his head, Zeke had an idea the sheriff was seriously pissed.

  Cranking down the window, Zeke tried to deflect a storm by saying, “I’ve brought you back a fellow here you’ll want to speak with. This man’s admitted his involvement in a plot by Lili Vega to bring down Rachel Copeland’s glider.”

  The man beside him lurched into a denial. “I sure as hell didn’t say I did it. It was Lili. Lili’s idea all the way.”

  “Lili Vega?” Harlan flushed, obviously caught off guard, before shaking his head as if to regroup. “Get out of the truck, why don’t you? Both of you.”

  Once they did, Castillo motioned them to the far side of the pickup, where they would be protected from the few vehicles that rushed past. This far outside of Marfa’s limits, their only other witnesses were a small herd of Hereford cattle, who barely looked up from their grazing.

  Harlan made a motion indicating that both of them should turn around. “Hands against the truck, boys.”

  Zeke’s jaw tightened with frustration, but he allowed the pat down, as did the other man. When Castillo found neither armed, he grunted a request for identification.

  “Mine’s back in my truck,” the thin man told him before nodding sullenly toward Zeke. “This asshole forced me to leave it there and go with him. That’s kidnapping, right? He should be arrested.”

  “It was a citizen’s arrest,” Zeke corrected as he passed his wallet to Castillo. “And besides, he hit me first.”

  As the sheriff flipped it open, Zeke held his breath, recalling the day he’d bought the driver’s license from an El Paso forger who did most of his business with illegal aliens.

  “Not bad,” Castillo conceded. “If I didn’t know for a fact that you don’t have a real one, I’d’ve bought it for sure.”

  Rather than denying the truth, Zeke blew a slow breath through his nostrils and waited for the lawman’s next move. Castillo slid the ID free, then passed the wallet and its few remaining contents back to Zeke.

  “I’ll just hold on to this for now,’ til we can get things sorted out.” Castillo tucked the doctored license into the pocket beneath his badge and name tag. “Had a call from over in Jeff Davis County. Convenience store clerk phoned the sheriff there, upset about a disturbance by the gas pumps. Deputy got there after you’d gone, but the witness pointed out the pickup left behind and reported you were headed this way, across the county line. And what with the description of the truck, I had a pretty good idea…”

  “I stopped for gas and saw him standing at the next pump,” Zeke said. “Couldn’t very well leave him there. This bastard shot my truck. Owed me at the very least for that truck window I had replaced.”

  “I told you I didn’t shoot at you,” the stranger argued. “I don’t even own a weapon. You can check it out, Sheriff.”

  “Be a lot easier—” Castillo’s expression hardened “—if you gave me your name.”

  “They call me Sy,” he said, “for Simonton. Gideon Simonton.”

  There was a long pause during which Castillo merely stared at him before speaking.

  “Didn’t there used to be some Simontons…lived way out by Shafter?” Castillo shook his head at the mention of a nearly deserted ghost town. “You aren’t part of that bunch, are you?”

  Simonton bristled, shot back a defensive-sounding, “I was only nine then. It’s nothing to do with who I am now.”

  “Terrible tragedy,” Castillo murmured. “That’s all I meant by it. Before my time in the department, but still, you hear about such things, with so many people dying.”

  “What people?” Zeke asked.

  “None of your damned business,” Simonton growled.

  “You’ve made your life my business. Wasn’t my idea.”

  “There was a fire,” Castillo told Zeke. “Killed five or six people in a trailer, years back. Family raisin’ a bunch of ragtag kids out there on next to nothing, and—”

  “Leave them out of this.” Sy’s voice dropped to a plea, almost a whisper. “Almost thirty goddamned years and you’d think a man could get past—”

  “It’s no crime, being a survivor,” Castillo put in. “And a boy can’t help what kind of family he’s born into.”

  Castillo’s voice hinted at some misery that explained the sullen shame in Sy’s eyes. A brand of poverty, Zeke guessed, far more desperate than the type that tainted his own past. Neglect, abuse: specters that would haunt a soul forever.

  “Tell me about Lili,” the sheriff said. “How’d you get started up with that girl? You meet her over at the Psychedelic Scorpion?”

  Zeke might have imagined it, but he thought he heard familiarity in Castillo’s voice—and not only with the bar whose fights were frequently reported in the Big Bend Sentinel. Was it possible he knew Lili from responding to those dustups, or did he have some more personal history with her in spite of the difference in their ages? But maybe it was neither. In a town as small as Marfa, people had all sorts
of long-standing connections. People unlike Zeke, who had no one at all.

  Sy shook his head, his gaze locked onto a lonely, scraggly wildflower that had bloomed along the roadside. “Hell, no. Place gets too rough for my taste. Met her at the street dance during the Marfa Lights Festival this past fall. She’s a pretty little thing, that Lili. Likes men plenty. Isn’t the kind to get hung up about the technicalities.”

  “He means she didn’t care that he’s married,” Zeke muttered, the comment reminding him of Castillo’s history with his first wife, Patsy, and the price she’d paid for his indiscretion. “But let’s cut to the chase. You said earlier, she wanted Rachel gone so she could snatch up Walter Copeland’s business. And you said something about him losing his license, too. You mean his pilot’s license?”

  Sy shrugged. “She thought he’d lose it for sure. On account of how his eyesight’s failing. But since Rachel’s come back, he’s been grooming her to take things over.”

  Zeke shook his head. “And Lili thought if she could kill or scare Rachel off, Copeland would let her have the business?”

  It didn’t fit what he’d gleaned from the talk he’d picked up over the years. Walter seemed fond enough of Lili and spoke well of her flying. But Zeke had never sensed any sort of father-daughter bond—nor anything remotely improper—between the two. Certainly nothing to cause Lili to imagine herself as a substitute for Rachel. But then, Zeke had never encouraged Lili’s attentions either, and according to Rachel, the younger woman had warned her away from him.

  So Lili was flirtatious, probably even loose by a lot of people’s standards. And she might delude herself in some respects, but would she resort to murder?

  “She tried making some phone calls,” Sy explained. “But Rachel just dug her damned heels in deeper.”

  Castillo frowned. “You mean to say that Lili’s been the one harassing Rachel?”

  Sy nodded.

  “So what was your part in it?” the sheriff pressed.