Buck Fever (Blanco County Mysteries)

by Ben Rehder

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many people contributed their time and effort to this book, and deserve thanks.

  Several friends and family members read drafts and offered valuable criticism, including Helen Fanick, James Haught, Martin Grantham, Kate Donaho, and Jacob Winters. Thanks also to Christine Aebi for her sharp copyediting skills. A huge debt of gratitude to Mary Summerall, my friend and mentor, for teaching me how to write. I owe you many lunches. Thanks to Trey Carpenter, David Sinclair, and Jim Lindeman—all with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department—for their input on everything from wildlife biology to game law, as well as some darn good anecdotes. Health-care and nursing insight was provided by Jill Rodriguez; Spanish-language assistance came courtesy of Joe Brummer; police language and procedural guidance was given by Tommy Blackwell. Thanks, too, to my lifelong buddy Phil Hughes for helping me tweak the plot. A note of appreciation to Jan Reid, a man who inspires writers across Texas, for his assistance. Special thanks to Tim Dorsey for generously aiding a newcomer.

  I'd also like to thank the kind people of Blanco County, including Bob and Mary Anne Daughdril, for making a weekender feel at home. Very special thanks to my agent, Nancy Love, and my editor, Ben Sevier, for their wisdom and guidance, and for giving a new guy a chance. And lastly, I'd like to thank my wife, Becky Rehder, for her unending support and encouragement.

  All errors, omissions, and distortions of reality are my own.

  BUCK FEVER

  Copyright © 2002 by Ben Rehder.

  Excerpt from Bone Dry copyright © 2003 by Ben Rehder.

  Cover art copyright © 2011 by Becky Rehder

  Originally published in hardcover by St. Martin’s Press, September 2002

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by: Kimberly A. Hitchens, hitch@booknook.biz

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Free Preview: Excerpt from “Bone Dry” by Ben Rehder

  The Complete Series of Blanco County Mysteries

  BY THE TIME Red O’Brien finished his thirteenth beer, he could hardly see through his rifle scope. Worse yet, his partner, Billy Don Craddock, was doing a lousy job with the spotlight.

  “Dammit, Billy Don, we ain’t hunting raccoons,” Red barked. “Get that light out of the trees and shine it out in the pastures where it will do me some good.”

  Billy Don mumbled something unintelligible, kicked some empty beer cans around on the floorboard of Red's old Ford truck, and then belched loudly from way down deep in his three-hundred-pound frame. That was his standard rebuttal anytime Red got a little short with him. The spotlight, meanwhile, continued to illuminate the canopy of a forty-foot Spanish oak.

  Red cussed him again and pulled the rifle back in the window. Every time they went on one of these poaching excursions, Red had no idea how he managed to get a clean shot. After all, poaching white-tailed deer was serious business. It called for stealth and grace, wits and guile. It had been apparent to Red for years that Billy Don came up short in all of these departments.

  “Turn that friggin’ light off and hand me a beer,” Red said.

  “Don't know what we're doing out here on a night like this anyhow,” Billy Don replied as he dug into the ice chest for two fresh Keystones. “Moon ain't up yet. All the big ones will be bedded down till it rises. Any moron knows that.”

  Red started to say that Billy Don was an excellent reference for gauging what a moron may or may not know. But he thought better of it, being that Billy Don weighed roughly twice what Red did. Not to mention that Billy Don had quite a quick temper after his first twelve-pack.

  “Billy Don, let me ask you something. Someone walked into your bedroom shining a light as bright as the sun in your face, what's the first thing you'd do?”

  “Guess I'd wag my pecker at ’em,” Billy Don said, smiling. He considered himself quite glib.

  “Okay,” Red said patiently, “then what's the second thing you'd do?”

  “I'd get up and see what the hell's going on.”

  “Damn right!” Red said triumphantly. “Don't matter if the bucks are bedded down or not. Just roust ’em with that light and we'll get a shot. But remember, we won't find any deer up in the treetops.”

  Billy Don gave a short snort in reply.

  Red popped the top on his new beer, revved the Ford, and started on a slow crawl down the quiet county road. Billy Don grabbed the spotlight and leaned out the window, putting some serious strain on the buttons of his overalls, as he shined the light back over the hood of the Ford to Red's left. They had gone about half a mile when Billy Don stirred.

  “Over there!”

  Red stomped the brakes, causing his Keystone to spill and run down into his crotch. He didn't even notice. Billy Don was spotlighting an oat field a hundred yards away, where two dozen deer grazed. Among them, one of the largest white-tailed bucks either of them had ever seen. “Fuck me nekkid,” Red whispered.

  “Jesus, Red! Look at that monster.”

  Red clumsily stuck the .270 Winchester out the window, banging the door frame and the rearview mirror in the process. The deer didn't even look their way. Red raised the rifle and tried to sight in on the trophy buck, but the deer had other things in mind.

  While all the other deer were grazing in place, the buck was loping around the oat field in fits and starts, running in circles. He bounced, he jumped, he spun. Red and Billy Don had never seen such peculiar behavior.

  “Somethin's wrong with that deer,” Billy Don said, using his keen knowledge of animal behavioral patterns.

  “Bastard won't hold still! Keep the light on him!” Red said.

  “I've got him. Just shoot. Shoot!”

  Red was about to risk a wild shot when the buck finally seemed to calm down. Rather than skipping around, it was now walking fast, with its nose low to the ground. The buck approached a large doe partially obscured behind a small cedar tree and, with little ceremony, began to mount her.

  Billy Don giggled, the kind of laugh you'd expect from a schoolgirl, not a flannel-clad six-foot-six cedar-chopper. “Why, I do believe it's true love.”

  Red sensed his chance, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bellowed as orange flame leapt out of the muzzle a
nd licked the night, and then all was quiet.

  The buck, and the doe of his affections, crumpled to the ground while the other deer scattered into the brush. Seconds passed. And then, to the chagrin of the drunken poachers, the huge buck climbed to his hooves, snorted twice, and took off. The doe remained on the ground.

  “Dammit, Red! You missed.”

  “No way! It was a lung shot. I bet it went all the way through. Grab your wirecutters.”

  Knowing that a wounded deer can run several hundred yards or more, both men staggered out of the truck, cut their way through the eight-foot deerproof fence, and proceeded over to the oat field.

  Each man had a flashlight and was looking feverishly for traces of blood, when they heard a noise.

  “What the hell was that?” Billy Don asked.

  “Shhh.”

  Then another sound. A moaning, from the wounded doe lying on the ground.

  Billy Don was spooked. “That's weird, Red. Let's get outta here.”

  Red shined his light on the wounded animal twenty yards away. “Hold on a second. What the hell's wrong with its hide? It looks all loose and…” He was about to approach the deer when they both heard something they'd never forget.

  The doe clearly said, “Help me.”

  Without saying a word, both men scrambled back toward the fence. For the first time in his life, Billy Don Craddock actually outran somebody.

  Seconds later, the man in the crudely tailored deer costume could hear the tires squealing as the truck sped away.

  Just as Red and Billy Don were sprinting like boot-clad track stars, a powerful man was in the middle of a phone call. Unfortunately for the man, Roy Swank, it was hard to judge his importance by looking at him. In fact, he looked a lot like your average pond frog. Round, squat body. Large, glassy eyes. Bulbous lips in front of a thick tongue. And, of course, the neck—or rather, the lack of one. It was as if his head sat directly on his sloping shoulders. His voice was his best feature, deep and charismatic.

  Roy Swank had relocated to a large ranch southwest of Johnson City, Texas, five years ago, after a successful (although intentionally anonymous) career lobbying legislators in Austin. The locals who knew or cared what a lobbyist was never really figured out what Swank lobbied for. Few people ever had, because Swank was the type of lobbyist who always conducted business in the shadows of a back room, rarely putting anything down on paper. But he and the entities he represented had the kind of resources and resourcefulness that could sway votes or help introduce new legislation. So when the rumors spread about Swank's retirement, the entire state political system took notice—although there were as many people relieved as disappointed.

  After lengthy consideration (his past had to be weighed carefully—life in a county full of political enemies might be rather difficult), Swank purchased a ten-thousand-acre ranch one hour west of Austin. Swank was actually planning on semi-retirement; the ranch was a successful cattle operation and he intended to maintain its sizable herd of Red Brangus. He had even kept the former owner on as foreman for a time.

  But without the busy schedule of his previous career, Swank became restless. That is, until he rediscovered one of the great passions he enjoyed as a young adult: deer hunting. The hunting bug bit, and it bit hard. He spent the first summer on his new ranch building deer blinds, clearing brush in prime hunting areas, distributing automatic corn and protein feeders, and planting food plots such as oats and rye. It paid off the following season, as Swank harvested a beautiful twelve-point buck with a twenty-two-inch spread that tallied 133 Boone & Crockett points, the scoring standard for judging trophy bucks. Not nearly as large as the world-renowned bucks in South Texas, but a very respectable deer for the Hill Country. Several of his closest associates joined him on the ranch and had comparable success.

  Swank, never one to do anything in moderation, decided that his ranch could become one of the most successful hunting operations in Texas. By importing some key breeding stock from South Texas and Mexico, and then following proper game-management techniques, Swank set out to develop a herd of whitetails as large and robust—and with the same jaw-dropping trophy antlers—as their southern brethren.

  He had phenomenal success. After all, money was no object, and the laws and restrictions that regulated game importation and relocation melted away under Swank's political clout. After four seasons, not only was his ranch (the Circle S) known throughout the state for trophy deer, he had actually started a lucrative business exporting deer to other ranches around the nation.

  Swank was tucked away obliviously in his four-thousand-square-foot ranch house, on the phone to one of his most valued customers, at the same moment Red O'Brien blasted unsuccessfully at a large buck in Swank's remote southern pasture.

  “They went out on the trailer today,” Swank said in his rich timbre. He was sitting at a large mahogany desk in an immense den. A fire burned in the huge limestone fireplace, despite the warm weather. He cradled the phone with his shoulder as he reached across the desk, grabbed a bottle of expensive scotch and poured himself another glass. “Four of them. But the one you'll be especially interested in is the ten-pointer,” Swank said as he went on to describe the “magnificent beast.”

  Swank grunted a few times, nodding. “Good. Yes, good.” Then he hung up. Swank had a habit of never saying good-bye.

  By the time he finished his conversation, a man who sounded just like Red O'Brien had already made an anonymous call to 911.

  JOHN MARLIN, BLANCO County's game warden for nineteen years, thought he had seen and heard it all.

  There was the hapless roadside poacher who shot an artificial deer eight times before Marlin stepped from his hiding spot and arrested him. The man claimed he thought it was a mountain lion.

  There was the boatload of fraternity boys who unsuccessfully tried dynamiting fish in a small lake. They sank their boat and one young Delta Sig lost three fingers. Even after all that, one of the drunk frat boys took a swing at Marlin when he confiscated the illegal fish.

  And, of course, there was the granddaddy of all his strange encounters. The hunter who shot a doe one night out of season. That wasn't strange in itself—but when Marlin found the doe on the ground, it was wearing a garter belt and stiletto heels. The poacher had seen Marlin's flashlight and took off, but he left behind a video camera mounted on a tripod, set to catch all of the action.

  Even so, when Marlin took this evening's call from Jean, the dispatcher, he had a little trouble believing what he heard. “A deer suit? You've got to be kidding.”

  “That's what the caller said,” Jean replied. “The ambulance is already on the way. And Sheriff Mackey.”

  “Six miles down Miller Creek Loop?” Marlin was making a mental note.

  “Right. Look for the hole in the fence.”

  Marlin hung up and started to roll out of bed. Louise, still under the sheets, grabbed his arm. “You're not going to leave me hanging, are you?” She pushed out her lower lip in a mock pout.

  “’Fraid so. Duty calls.”

  Louise was a tall, blonde waitress at the Kountry Kitchen in Blanco. For six months, she and Marlin had enjoyed a series of passionate trysts. No strings attached—an arrangement that suited them both.

  Marlin pulled on his khaki pants and his short-sleeved warden's shirt. It was late October, but the evening temperatures still averaged in the low seventies. As he looked for his boots, he told Louise what the dispatcher had reported.

  She was equally intrigued. “That's over by the Circle S, right?”

  “Yep. Miller Creek Loop is the southern border of the ranch, all the way out to the Pedernales River. From what Jean said, the guy's lying in one of Roy Swank's pastures.”

  Louise could pick up a trace of sadness in John Marlin's voice. Setting foot on that ranch, even at night, would bring back some bittersweet memories.

  “You think Roy will be out there?” Louise asked.

  “No idea. Don't really care.” Marlin said as he
strapped on his holster. Even without his revolver, Marlin was an imposing figure. Just over six foot two, with a broad chest and thick arms. Getting a little thick through the middle in the last few years, but he could still feel the hard muscles underneath. He had short black hair, a square jaw, and eyes that could make a veteran poacher drop a stringer of fish and run.

  Marlin bent down to kiss Louise, who let the sheet fall to her waist. She grabbed one of his hands and playfully placed it on her breast. “Hey, that's not fair,” Marlin said softly.

  “It's your choice. Roam around in the woods playing lawman, or stay here and write me up for some kind of violation.” She put special emphasis on the word “violation.”

  Marlin smiled. “You know you can stay here if you want.” He always offered. She always passed. Just the way they both wanted it.

  Louise told him to be careful. Then John Marlin went outside, climbed in his state-issued Dodge Ram pickup, and headed out for the Circle S Ranch.

  Ten minutes after John Marlin left, Louise let herself out, locking the door behind her. She got into her ten-year-old Toyota hatchback, checked herself in the mirror, and drove away.

  Five minutes after that, a small, wiry man with a handlebar mustache slithered out from the crawl space underneath Marlin's small frame house. Marlin had a pair of floodlights at every corner of his house, so a passerby could have easily spotted the intruder. But the quiet country lane Marlin lived on was sparsely populated, so nobody saw the man.

  He started at the front of the house, checking the doors and windows. Finding them all locked, he circled around the house and climbed the four steps to the back door. Standing on the small porch, he turned the knob and gently shoved the door with his shoulder, trying to force it open. No luck. He tried a little harder. The door wouldn't give. Pretty soon, the man began throwing himself against the door.

  He stopped and took a breath, hands on his knees. After a minute, he faced the door again. He raised his right Wolverine workboot to waist level and began to kick the door with the bottom of his foot. The wooden porch shook with each blow.