Gambling on a Dream

by Sara Walter Ellwood

Chief shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I guess you ain’t gonna tell me why the sudden need for the Vegas vacation.”

  Looking down at the table, Talon signed and shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Guess it’s best I don’t know. Then I won’t have to keep track of a bunch of lies.” He shuffled the cards in his hands.

  Talon let a small smile touch his lips. Chief might be bursting with curiosity, but he wouldn’t press him to learn his secrets, which was the reason he'd come to his grandfather and hadn’t told anyone else in his family where he was going. He didn’t want to answer questions he wasn’t even sure the answers to.

  The door opened behind him and he turned. The smile fell right off his lips. Damn, this was the last thing he needed to deal with right now.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” Chet Hendricks ambled into the room like he was John Wayne. “Teaching the boy your bad habits, Chief?”

  Talon stood and faced the son-of-a-bitch who’d made his life hell since he was a kid. Surely, Dawn wouldn’t have sent Chet after him. “What do you want, Hendricks?”

  Chet shrugged and moved around the outside of the dingy room. “Nothing but finding a murderer and drug dealer.” He faced Talon with a tight-lipped grin that never reached his hard eyes. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Blackwell?”

  Talon had more than his share of assholes as arrogant and mean as Hendricks in his life. He glanced at his grandfather. “See you later, Chief.”

  Hendricks stepped in front of him as he headed for the door. “Not so fast. I want to know what you and Justin Vaughn were so chummy about. Heard you and he were talking yesterday. We all know he’s a two-bit dealer.”

  What the hell was he talking about? Vaughn was the kid he'd bought apples for his horse from. Talon had gone to school with his mother and had always had a soft spot for him because the kid had dealt with the same shit he had to put up with while growing up.

  The chair Chief sat on scrapped the floor as if he stood, but Talon didn’t look away from the deputy.

  “Unless you are here on official business, Deputy Hendricks, I suggest you leave now, because police harassment is still illegal from what I understand. And I do believe the Constitution guarantees due process and innocence until proven guilty. Besides, you wouldn’t want it said you don’t follow the law to the letter, now would you? That might look bad in your campaign for sheriff.”

  It never failed to amaze Talon when his dear ole granddad put away the vernacular of the illiterate Indian cowboy, which most folks in town believed him to be, and reverted to the speech of the college-educated man he was. Of course, when Chief pulled out the big words, it was his way of saying fuck off.

  Hendricks backed up and smirked in a self-satisfied way. “Nice to know you got your whole family protecting you, huh?”

  Talon fisted his hands, but common sense kicked him in the ass before he let a punch fly. He glanced back at the envelope still on the table. He had more important things to consider than knocking the head off Chet Hendricks, no matter how damned satisfying that might have been.

  “If you’re arresting me, do it. If not, get the hell out of my way.” When Hendricks stepped to the side, he stalked past the deputy and out the door.

  * * * *

  Dawn pounded on the door of the apartment above a weathered tractor shed at Vaughn’s Farm and Garden Market. “Justin, this is Sheriff Dawn Madison, open up!”

  When no response came, she looked over her shoulder at Wyatt. He moved his leather vest away from his shoulder holster and gripped the Colt 45. She took his cue and drew the Glock from her hip holster. With it pointed to the bright morning sky in her right hand, she tried the knob with her left.

  The door opened slowly, and Wyatt moved into the dark, rank-smelling interior after he determined the place was clear. He went right into the tiny bedroom; she headed left toward the living space. The action so natural her heart stopped for a split second.

  When the stench caused her stomach to churn, Dawn switched to breathing through her mouth. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she scanned the messy room. Beer cans cluttered the tops of an old-fashioned iron sink and an ancient gas stove. Rust splotches pitted the dull white enamel of both.

  The door of the 1970s Frigidaire stood open. The light inside flickering over shelves littered with takeout containers and a partial six-pack of Budweiser. A blackened tablespoon, two insulin syringes, and a burned down candle sat on the 1960s era aluminum table. One of the two miss-matched chairs was overturned, and yellowish stuffing poked out of the tears in the sagging greasy couch.

  “Aw hell.”

  Wyatt’s frustrated voice drew her attention to the doorway into the bedroom. He shoved his Colt into the holster. She rounded the unmade mattress to see what he'd found to make him feel safe enough to put away his gun.

  He looked over his shoulder. “Well, we found Vaughn, but I don’t think he’ll be doing any talking.”

  The eighteen-year-old lay flat on his back on the putrid carpet, surrounded by dirty clothes. He wore only a pair of filthy boxers. Inches from the bluish fingertips of his right hand lay a wide black piece of rubber and a syringe. Infected track marks darkened the inside of his elbows. But what probably killed him were the three blood-crusted stab wounds in his chest.

  His sightless eyes stared at the ceiling, and his normally pale face and the bare skin of his chest had taken on the gray pallor of someone who’d been dead for a while.

  She shoved her gun back into her side holster and knelt beside Wyatt. With a long exhale, she said, “You know, the stink when I opened the door should’ve been our first clue. Goddamn.”

  Wyatt shook his head and stood. “Looks like the same MO as Larson’s murder.”

  “Yeah. Probably killed for the same reason as Chris too. Shouldn’t surprise me. Vaughn’s been a petty dealer and user for years. I thought he was turning his life around after we arrested him in the spring.” She followed Wyatt to his feet, but the action was harder than it should have been. The weight of finding the killer settled squarely on her shoulders. Their only possible lead was literally a dead end. The only suspect was her brother, and she refused to think he had anything to do with this. She unclipped her iPhone from her service belt. “I’ll call it in.”

  * * * *

  Wyatt was ready to call it a night, and at nine PM, after speaking with Justin’s uncle and aunt, he was finally heading home. He was anxious to find out how Rachel made out at her VA appointment earlier that day.

  Yesterday, he’d called her therapist and mentioned that he was afraid she might be having thoughts of hurting herself. He hated doing it, feeling like he was somehow tattling on his baby sister, but damn it all to hell, if she committed suicide, he’d never forgive himself.

  “Wyatt, wait up.”

  Turning at the voice, he stopped.

  Chet Hendricks came out from behind his desk in the communal area of the station and headed toward Wyatt. “I hoped you’d be up for a beer over at the Hardware Bar. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’m headed home.” Wyatt dug his truck keys from his jeans pocket. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  Chet shifted his feet and hiked up his service belt. “Actually, no it can’t. It’s about Talon Blackwell.”

  Wyatt glanced toward the glowing glass panel of the office door on the other side of the room. The gold painting and block letters still proclaimed his friend, Zack Cartwright, sheriff, but that office was Dawn’s domain.

  “What about Talon?” Wyatt faced Chet.

  The deputy’s dark eyes brightened, and his lips twitched as if he was fighting off a smile. “Not here. I’ll tell you at the saloon.” He patted Wyatt’s shoulder with a bony hand. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”

  As they moved down the aisle to the back door, with Chet waving and tossing out “good nights” to the other deputies still at work, Wyatt got the feeling he was
being herded. He stopped. No one herded him. “I’m not interested in a drink, Chet. If this is about the murders, out with it. Otherwise, I’m going home.”

  Chet flattened his lips into a tight line and rubbed the back of his neck. But the displeasure lasted only a second. His half smile was back. “Okay. Here’s what I think. Talon Blackwell is guilty as sin and Dawn knows it. We all know she testified that her brother wasn’t an addict when he was caught and thrown in jail in Amarillo. Well, the evidence suggested otherwise. I looked up the reports. Talon not only was charged with using and possession of cocaine, but three witnesses testified they saw him dealing as well.”

  Wyatt needed to look at those reports, but something about considering Talon didn’t sit right with him. “We have no evidence implicating him in either one of these murders.”

  Circumstantial evidence was all they had. He’d been a cop too long to fall for the circumstantial. Occasionally, it provided the breadcrumbs through the forest to the real McCoy, but not often enough. Mostly, those breadcrumbs lead to dead ends or nothing at all.

  He thought about the responses made by Justin’s uncle during his questioning. Kenny Vaughn mentioned Talon stopping by his farmer’s market on several occasions to buy apples for his stallion, and he would often talk at length with Justin, the last time being Tuesday morning. But Kenny had no idea what those conversations entailed.

  Wyatt also knew Talon had always had a soft spot for the underdog. Despite the changes in his old friend, he still believed that part of Talon was there. Justin definitely qualified as someone stuck on the fringes of society, much as Talon himself always had been. Justin’s mother had been a classmate of his and Talon’s and got pregnant when she was seventeen. No one ever knew who his father was and the rumor had been that it was their high school band instructor. She ended up raising the kid on her own until breast cancer had taken her life four years ago, which had been when Justin’s addiction problems started.

  Wyatt wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Talon saw Justin as something of a kindred spirit and wanted to help the kid out.

  Chet rubbed his neck again. “Look. I know you and Talon were friends, but he’s into some bad shit these days. I think he’s getting rid of his competition.”

  “What do you want, Chet?”

  Shifting his feet, Chet cleared his throat. “I would like you to campaign for me. We all know Dawn isn’t the right person for sheriff. She’ll run this office as crooked as her father did.”

  He narrowed his eyes at the deputy, then slipped his gaze to the others shifting in their chairs, pretending they hadn’t heard. The last thing he wanted was someone like Chet Hendricks in the sheriff’s office. The glow from Dawn’s office door window caught his attention again. Despite all of his bad feelings for her, and hatred of what she had done to him, she was the right choice for sheriff.

  As he set his hat on his head, he met Chet’s expectant brown eyes again. “Tom is and was a good man. Yeah, he got a few kids out of trouble now and again, but when it mattered, he shot straight and true. Dawn will make a good sheriff for this town.”

  Chet’s too-thin, boney face melted a bit. His was a day past a five o’clock shadow, and some of the scruff was coming in gray to match the patches of nearly white in his dark hair. The man was aging fast and not in a good way. Hard to believe Wyatt and Chet were the same age.

  “Are you going to question Blackwell?” Chet put his hands on his skinny hips.

  Wyatt reached for the knob of the back door to the parking lot. “Yes, but tomorrow is another day.”

  Chapter 4

  “Is he crazy?” Dawn stood on her parents’ porch and stared at Chief. “Damn it! Is he trying to make himself look as guilty as possible?”

  “You know your brother hasn’t done anything wrong.” Her grandfather’s easy tone only served to grate on her nerves as much as the slow motions of his gnarled and age-spotted hands with the paring knife as he skinned an apple. He set the peeled Macintosh into a bowl beside him and picked up another from the basket at his feet. “Why do you think Talon had anything to do with these murders?”

  Her mother’s mums splashed reds and golds against the white clapboard of the house, and the whicker rockers scattered over the expanse invited her to take a seat as she had so many times before. She leaned against the thick railing and crossed her arms. The deep porch where she and her brothers played as kids shaded them from the late-morning sun.

  A board creaked as Wyatt shifted his weight. From the hard line of his jaw, he was gritting his teeth. “Chief, we don’t think he’s guilty, but the evidence isn’t looking good in his favor. And leaving town now, only serves to make matters worse.”

  Chief squinted his eyes as he looked at Wyatt. “I’ll tell you this much. Yes, I know where Talon is, but I ain’t free to tell you. I can tell you it’s a personal matter and got nothing at all to do with these dead kids or the drugs they’ve been dealin’.” He glanced at Dawn and winked. “I think he took a plane out of Dallas.” He set to peeling the apple again. “Now, get out of here. Your momma can be a real slave driver. She wants these apples peeled before noon.”

  Her mother wouldn’t have expected Chief to do any such thing. He no doubt offered to peel the apples for her. With a smile tugging at her lips, Dawn pushed off the railing and kissed her grandfather on the cheek. “I love you, Chief.”

  He pulled back and frowned, but she saw the grin that blossomed before it first. “What’s this? I didn’t say nothin’. But I guess I love you too.” He shook the apple and knife. “Now, I mean it, get goin’ with ya and stop botherin’ old men like me.”

  Shaking her head with a smile, she patted Wyatt on the arm. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  When they arrived at her sheriff’s Tahoe, Wyatt climbed into the passenger’s side and watched as she buckled herself in. “I’ll check out the Dallas flights.”

  She nodded and turned the key. “Good. Chief gave me more than I’d expected he would.” As she turned the SUV around in front of her parents’ garage, she glanced at Wyatt. “We both know Talon isn’t the killer, and chasing him is taking the focus off the real murderer.”

  “That’s what I think too.” Wyatt latched his seatbelt and looked out the side window. “I’ll check out the lead with the airport. You continue to see what else you can find out about who might be involved with the drug culture of Colton.”

  Turning onto Blackwell Road to head back to town, she looked out over the pastures and trees that lined the narrow country road. She huffed and shook her head. “Who would have ever thought a tiny town like Colton, Texas, would have a drug culture?”

  * * * *

  Dinner at the McPhersons’ house on Sunday afternoon was quickly becoming the crowning jewel in a shitty week.

  Yesterday, the coroner’s report came in for the time of death for Vaughn--sometime between nine and eleven o’clock Tuesday night. No witnesses put Talon, or anyone else for that matter, at the scene. As for the lead Chief gave them, Wyatt discovered Talon boarded a redeye for Las Vegas late Wednesday night. A murderer would have covered his tracks better than that.

  “So, Wy, when are you moving out to the ranch?” his twin sister asked him over the autumn daisies, sitting in the middle of his mother’s antique oak table.

  He shook off his thoughts from yesterday and reached for his glass of sweet tea. So far, dinner had been anything but pleasant. Rachel sat to his left and picked at her roast beef and garlic mashed potatoes. Lance sat next to his wife across from Rachel and kept his gaze on the plate of food he wasn’t doing a good job of pretending to eat. Only his parents seemed excited to have their family gathered. Of course, no one mentioned the conspicuously empty chair tucked in the corner by the door. Kyle’s name and what he’d done to Charli Quinn weren’t brought up.

  He sipped his tea. “I’m hoping to start moving tomorrow. I’m off, since it’s Columbus Day and the Estradas moved out over the weekend.”

&
nbsp; “We’d be glad to help.” Lance glanced at Audrey who nodded.

  His mother sipped her sweet tea. “Of course we’ll help you move too.”

  “I’ll have to check in at the firehouse, but I’ll be around.” His father cut into his roast. “Now, you need to find a wife and start filling up that big old house with my grandkids.”

  Marlin Ferguson McPherson had always been something of the black sheep of his family. He’d joined the Navy when he was seventeen to get away from the ranch that had been in his father’s family for three generations. But Wyatt suspected his father had also left Colton to get away from a family legacy he never quite lived up to. After all, he wasn’t a Ferguson by name, but everyone in the county considered him one since his mother was part of the famous clan that helped build Colton, along with the Cartwrights and Blackwells.

  In the Navy, his father had become a firefighter and spent the Vietnam War on a ship in the Pacific. When he’d gotten out, he’d come back to Colton and married his high school sweetheart. But he’d refused to be just a rancher. He’d volunteered at the local fire department and lobbied for them to organize into a paid entity. He’d been the first and only fire chief to have ever been a Forest County employee.

  However, for as much as his dad yanked against his roots in the hard, dusty soil of Central Texas, he’d lived as God wanted every good Texan to--married to a good woman, an even better cook, and had at least one child to pass along the family bible to.

  So far, all four of his father’s children have been a disappointment in that last area. Wyatt didn’t miss the look that passed between Audrey and Lance. They’d been trying to have a child for twelve years, ever since Audrey lost her first pregnancy after a riding accident. The only other time Audrey was pregnant since, she’d miscarried early.

  Rachel shifted in her seat, and he frowned. His father was one of the most genuine and nicest men he’d ever known, but sometimes he was as uncouth as a bull in rutting season. Hadn’t he considered how his words would have hurt his daughters? Rachel had never been pregnant, and now she would never have a child of her own.