A Reckoning in the Back Country

by Terry Shames

She hesitates. “Let me make sure Tammy is gone by then. I can’t leave her here alone.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I’m up earlier than usual Saturday morning, having tossed and turned most of the night. Nothing like being confused about a woman to make it hard to sleep.

  I swear Dusty has grown a couple of inches in the night. He wriggles up to me on the bed, tumbling over himself. When he gets to my face, he nuzzles me and does the squeak that passes for barking. From her perch on the adjacent pillow, Zelda judges him not fit for bothering with. I pull on jeans and a uniform shirt and take him outside for his morning constitutional. The rain has gone, leaving the air fresh and crisp.

  I feed Dusty and put him in his box, but it’s clear that in a few days, he’ll be able to jump out of it. I wonder if I shouldn’t get him a real bed. Or a sturdier box. Ellen keeps Frazier in a crate at night, but I never liked the idea, even though he seems fine with it. I wonder how Frazier is going to take to the puppy? And I wonder why I haven’t heard anymore from Ellen?

  After I feed the cows, I take Dusty down to headquarters. Bill Odum is supposed to be back at work today and Maria will be back Monday, so it won’t seem so deserted.

  On my way home last night, I passed by Walter Dunn’s motorcycle shop out on the highway, and I remembered that I had planned to call him to ask whether he knows anyone who might be involved in dogfighting. When I call the shop, the answering machine says they won’t be open until noon, which gives me time to go over and check in on Margaret Wilkins’s family and ask her about some of the things I found on Wilkins’s computer.

  People are still on Thanksgiving time, and there’s not much activity anywhere. Smoke is coming out of the chimney at the Wilkins house. Margaret answers the door. Her face is pale and bleak. She gives me a cup of coffee, and we sit in the living room, where she has a fire in the fireplace. There’s no sign of her kids. She says Emily went back to Houston last night, and Dan has gone off to buy light bulbs and will be back soon.

  “I looked at your husband’s computer, and I wanted to ask you a couple of things. Were you aware that the woman who brought the lawsuit against your husband was writing him hate mail?”

  She looks startled. “No, he never said a word about that.” Red spots flare in her cheeks. “What kind of hate mail? Threats?”

  “Not direct threats, but certainly she bore a grudge. Did she have a family other than her husband?”

  “I know she had a son, because he came to some of the trial proceedings.”

  “How old?”

  “She’s in her sixties, so he’s maybe forty.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “I assumed he was from San Antonio, since he came to the trial, but I could be wrong.”

  “Why did your husband decide to fight the case? Wouldn’t it have been easier to settle?”

  Her eyes flash. “He was stubborn. He thought he would win.” She looks like she could say more, but she shakes her head and is done. It makes me wish I had met the man. It’s hard to get a clear picture of him from what people say about him. One minute Margaret is a loving wife, and the next she’s bitter toward him. His kids seem to have mixed feelings as well. Even as loyal as Dooley was, his description of Wilkins was sprinkled with negatives.

  “The other thing is, your husband seemed to be into sports betting. Were you aware of that?”

  “What kind of sports?”

  “He did online betting.”

  “So that’s what he was doing on the computer all the time! Did he make any money at it?”

  “That I don’t know. Did he ever play poker with friends when he was in San Antonio?”

  “Occasionally. A few of the doctors would get together every now and then and play. Not recently though. Not since . . .” Since the lawsuit, which turned their lives upside down.

  When I get back to headquarters, Bill Odum is there. He’s pale and his eyes are weepy and his nose is red.

  “Have you got a cold?”

  “That or the flu. I never get sick, but I feel like hell.”

  “Well, don’t stay around here and give it to everybody.”

  “I figured you could use a break.” He looks at the box I’m carrying. “What have you got?”

  I put the box down and put Dusty on the floor.

  “A puppy? What are you doing with that?” His listless response tell me he doesn’t feel good. Normally he’d be all over Dusty.

  I tell him how I came by Dusty. “Now why don’t you scoot out of here.”

  “I hate to flake on you.”

  “I’ll live. I’m working on the investigation of that man who was killed out at the lake, so I’d be here anyway.”

  I’m relieved when he leaves. I don’t want him giving me or Dusty his nasty cold. I phone High Ride Motorcycle Repair and ask to speak to Walter Dunn.

  “A voice from the past,” I say, when he comes on the line.

  “I’ll be damned,” Dunn says. “It’s been a while. You looking to buy a Harley and take off on a road trip?”

  “Maybe next time. I need to ask you to help me with some information.”

  I don’t like leaving Dusty in the box so much, so I call the vet’s office and see if I can leave him there for a while. Chelsea says to bring him on over. “We’re busy, but I can put him in a cage.”

  I don’t like the idea of a cage, but I guess it’s not that much different from leaving him in a box in the jail cell, and I suspect she’ll give him as much attention as she can. When I get him there she makes a fuss over him. “He’s grown!”

  “It’s only been a few days.”

  “At this age they grow so fast! Besides, he was undernourished and he has some catching up to do. Oh, he’s going to be a beautiful dog. You never got in touch with those people?”

  “I went over there, and they’ve moved.”

  “Well, you’ll find somebody to take him after the holidays are over. We can put up a notice on the bulletin board if you want to.”

  “Maybe later.”

  I pick up Walter Dunn from the motorcycle shop at noon and we go over to the barbecue place nearby. First we catch up on news. He and his wife have had a baby since I last saw him. “A boy. His name is Jackson, but we call him Jack.” His good friend Jack was killed a while back, which is how I met him. He digs his cell phone out and shows me a picture of a hefty baby.

  “He’s going to be as big as you,” I say.

  “Sure looks like it.” Walter beams. “Now what’s this mysterious business you’ve called me out for?”

  “Walter, have you ever had anybody in the shop who talked about dogfighting?”

  A long sigh escapes him. “Yep.”

  “Really?” Even though LoPresto said motorcycles and dogfighting might have some crossover, I hadn’t really expected Walter Dunn to confirm it.

  He leans forward and clasps his hands. “We run a business. You can’t turn people away just because you don’t like their lifestyle. But that doesn’t mean you have to like everybody.”

  “Does it happen often?”

  “No, but there are a couple of regulars who like to talk it up. What’s this about?”

  “It may be nothing. I’m trying make sense out of something that happened.”

  Our barbecue sandwiches arrive, piled high and slathered with barbecue sauce, along with potato salad and pickles. We’re quiet for a couple of minutes while we tackle the food. After a couple of bites, I wipe my face and say, “When was the last time somebody mentioned dogfights?”

  “Three weeks ago? A month? Let me tell you, having a new baby in the house takes away some of your ability to process time. My memory sometimes doesn’t seem to be what it should. But I do know it wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Did they say there are fights around here?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Let me tell you what’s going on. We had a man killed over at the lake a few days before Thanksgiving. He was attacked by dogs. His hands had been
tied, so he couldn’t defend himself.”

  He grimaces and takes a swig of his beer. “That’s a nasty way to go. And you connected that with dogfighting?”

  “I found some things that made me suspect he attended dogfights. And if he did, he was likely betting on them . . .”

  “I know there are people who get into that big-time.”

  “The reason I was asking if there have been any dogfights around here is because some dogs have gone missing in the area recently, apparently stolen. Somebody told me people who train fighting dogs sometimes use stolen animals as bait dogs.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll tell you something that may surprise you, though. The guys who come in and talk up the fights don’t really look like the kind of people you would point to as trouble. Most of them dress like you or me and seem real friendly and easy to get along with. You wouldn’t know they had a sadistic streak, which is what I think drives some of those people.”

  “Do you think you could arrange for me to have a talk with one of them off the record, see if I can find out more about it?”

  He sighs. “You sure you want to do that? From what little I know these people live by a different code than the rest of us. And they don’t think highly of the law.”

  “I don’t have a choice.” I don’t tell him that every part of my being is repulsed and infuriated by the subject. “Dogfighting and having somebody sic their dogs on a man who can’t defend himself is bad enough, and the idea of using pets for bait adds insult to injury. I can’t let go of it.”

  Dunn finishes up and starts chewing on a toothpick. “Well, they may be tough guys, but, knowing you, I think they’d be better off holding those fights in another county.”

  “I wish it was that easy. Do you think you could set up a meeting for me?”

  He’s slow to respond. “Why me?”

  “I don’t know who else to ask. If you can’t help me, I suppose I can hang around a gun show and see if I can’t get a lead.”

  “Talk to one of your Texas Ranger friends. They might have a connection, or know something that will help you out. Anyway, I’ll see what I can do from my end. It’s a nasty business and I don’t want to get too close to it.”

  Wilkins’s SUV was towed into the Texaco service station down the block from headquarters, and I take my crime scene kit over there to inspect it more thoroughly. As I approach the vehicle, I notice something I didn’t see the other night. It has what looks like a brand-new, substantial trailer hitch on the back bumper. It’s larger than a standard hitch that people use for horse or cattle trailers. It looks like Wilkins was intending to take his boat somewhere.

  The thing about an SUV is that it’s wide open and there aren’t many places to hide things. I pull on some gloves and go back through every place I looked the other night, with the same results. There is not so much as a piece of lint under the seats, and the items in the console compartment—lip balm, change for parking meters, pens, breath mints, and a small packet of tissues—are arranged neatly.

  I don’t know where the spare tire is kept. I flip the back seats forward and see the edge of the mat. I peel it back to reveal a square inset with a pull tab. I pull it up, and suddenly it gets interesting. Instead of a spare tire, the compartment contains a navy-blue canvas bag the size of a large grocery sack. I open it and peer inside. It’s broad daylight, but I still have trouble believing what I see. I smooth the mat back over the place where the tire should be and gently shake out the contents of the bag onto the mat.

  In neat stacks tied by rubber bands are ten bundles of cash. The first one I thumb through is twenties. There are four of those, two stacks of hundreds, and the rest are tens. I remember reading somewhere that one inch of hundred-dollar bills is a little under twenty-five thousand dollars. These stacks are about three inches each. I do a little mental math, and my rough estimate is that there is a little under two hundred thousand here. I’m startled by voices and glance behind me to see two men walking away from the service station. They pay no attention to me, but I become acutely aware of the casual way in which this money is lying in the back of the SUV. I scoop it up and put it back into the bag.

  Then I peruse the rest of the items I had dumped out of the bag. There’s a flashlight, a handful of energy bars, a baseball hat with no logo, a large bottle of vitamins, and a passport. I shake the bottle, and it sounds like pills, so I open it and pour some out into my palm. The bottle contains a variety of pills—some over-the-counter acetaminophen and three or four other types of pills with no identification. The one item remaining, the passport, might hold the key to all of the rest of it. In the photo Wilkins looks like a thug, but it’s unmistakably him. So why is the name on the passport “Leonard Wilson”?

  “You find anything interesting?”

  I jump as Alvin’s voice speaks almost directly into my ear. He’s the owner of the Texaco.

  “Not sure,” I say, palming the passport. “Car’s pretty clean.”

  He peers inside. He’s a scrawny guy with a wisp of a goatee and thinning hair. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a clean car unless it’s right off the lot,” he says.

  We pass the time of day a little longer, and then he ambles back to the garage. I check for any other surprises, but it looks like one canvas bag is enough.

  I’m extra careful crossing the highway back to headquarters since I’m toting a bag with two hundred thousand dollars with me. I carry it inside and take out everything but the money and put it into a plastic bag, and lock that in the top drawer of the file cabinet, something I rarely have the need to do.

  Now I have to figure out what to do with a canvas bag full of money. It’s Saturday afternoon and the bank is closed, but I can’t keep it here. Finally I call Ed Patrick, the manager of Citizens Bank and tell him I’ve got a special deposit and he agrees to come down to open up and take charge of the money. I lock the canvas bag in the trunk of the squad car and drive down the street to the bank to wait for him. While I wait, it occurs to me that I might be dealing with a wad of counterfeit money, but once he gets there and examines the money, Ed assures me it’s real.

  “Where did you get this much money?”

  “It’s a police matter. I’ll need to put it in a safe deposit box for Jarrett Creek PD.”

  He tells me that will take some paperwork, and it will have to wait until Monday. “Meanwhile, we’ll put it on a special hold under your name as chief.”

  “I want to be sure if anything happens to me, it will be accessible to the Department of Public Safety.”

  He has me sign a paper to that effect and gives me a copy for the office files.

  CHAPTER 16

  Relieved when the money is safely in the bank, I retrieve my dog from the vet’s office. He seems happy to see me, wriggling all over and making little huffing noises. On impulse, I buy him a chew bone that Chelsea says will be okay for him.

  Back at headquarters I set him on the floor to attack the chew bone while I take stock of what I’ve found out in the SUV. It looks like Lewis Wilkins was intending to skip out. Money plus passport in a different name equals running. I wonder if the new trailer hitch could be part of the plan. Maybe he was planning to take his boat down south, put it in the water on the coast, and head for Mexico. Did he even know how to attach a boat to a trailer hitch? I recall seeing boats pulled behind vehicles, and he’d need a trailer, too. I can’t help thinking that if that was Wilkins’s plan, Dooley must have known. Without help, how would Wilkins have gotten the boat onto the trailer and away from the marina?

  If he was leaving, was he running from something or to something? If his family knew of his plans, they’ve been awfully cagey. Did anyone know?

  More to the point, I wonder where the money came from. He was a gambler, so likely it’s his winnings. But did he win it at cards? Or was it from dogfighting?

  While I’m mulling it over, the phone rings. I pick it up without thinking who it could be.

  �
�Hi.” Ellen sounds breathless.

  For a few seconds I’m stuck for words, feeling a guilt that is like a kick in the gut. Followed immediately by my silent argument to myself that I have nothing to feel guilty for. She’s the one who went away this weekend—and stayed at her ex-husband’s house. For all I know, they were in the same bedroom.

  “Samuel? Are you there?”

  “Yes, yes. I was just doing something.”

  “Should I call you back?”

  “No. I’m fine. How are you?” As soon as the words are out, they sound awkward. I can’t seem to help being wrong-footed with Ellen.

  But she seems not to notice. “Good. I’m good. How was Thanksgiving at Jenny’s?”

  Besides my getting bamboozled by a woman, like a teenager? “Um, Will is a really good cook.”

  She laughs. “Good thing. I can imagine what Jenny would have done to a turkey. Was it just the three of you?”

  If only. “No. There was a couple there from Bobtail that Jenny and Will work with.” And the girl’s mother. “And the girl’s mother.”

  “That’s nice. Did you have fun?”

  “I guess. When are you coming home?”

  “Um, that’s why I was calling. I decided to stay on a few more days.”

  Two thoughts hit me simultaneously. One is a jealous stab, wondering if she’s going to stay on at her ex-husband’s place. The other is that now I can see more of Wendy.

  “I’m going to stay at my daughter’s place,” she says. “We thought it would be fun to do a little shopping together.”

  “Sounds good.” Why am I having so much trouble coming up with something to say?

  “Are you okay? You sound distracted.”

  At last, something I can hang onto. “This case I’ve got. It’s growing tentacles.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Or maybe not. It means even if I had come back tomorrow you’d be too busy for us to get together anyway.”

  I should protest and tell her that I’d surely find time, but instead what pops out of my mouth is, “You’re probably right. There’s a lot to it.”