by Joe McKinney
Anderson could feel another migraine coming on, and the morning sun wasn’t helping any. It already felt like it was ninety-five degrees out here. He was sticky with sweat and upset and now he had to deal with this.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to will away the looming headache.
“Well?” Levy said.
Anderson opened his eyes. He put a hand over the phone and said, “Garwin called her about an hour ago.”
“Garwin? Jesus, why? Why would he do that?”
He shrugged angrily. “Why the fuck you asking me? I don’t know.”
“Keith?” Margie now. Some of the volume had gone out of her voice, but none of the heat.
“I’m here,” he said.
“I can’t believe you’d do this.”
“Margie, please. I’m sorry, all right? I had to get out here, and I didn’t want to say anything until I had the facts.”
“Well, what are the facts?”
“I don’t know, Margie. I really don’t.”
“That’s great, Keith. Are you coming over here? She wants to talk to you.”
“I will, Margie. Later. Chuck and I have a nine o’clock appointment up at the Comal County Sheriff’s Office. I’ll come by after that. I promise.”
“After your appointment? Jesus, Keith. Jenny is our friend. She needs us here.”
“Margie, come on.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “All right, fine. I’ll see you later.”
She hung up without another word. Keith stood there, looking at the phone.
To Levy, he said, “Fucking wonderful. I can’t catch a fucking break.”
***
They were in the car again, this time heading out to the Hill Country north of San Antonio. The suburban sprawl of San Antonio’s north side fell away and became wide tracts of cedar and oak forests that went off as far as the eye could see in every direction. From the highway, Anderson saw vast clouds of dust and cedar pollen hanging in the valleys between the countless hills, and he was struck by the quiet of it, the peaceful ease that seemed to settle over him as he took in the view.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Levy said.
“Yeah. It takes your breath away.”
“Yeah, it does at that. You ought to think about moving out to Pipe Creek. It’s even prettier than this. Land is cheaper, too.”
“We’ve thought about it,” Anderson said. “But I’ve got three years left on my mortgage. I don’t want to have to go through all that crap again. You know? Another loan, more bills. When I retire I just want to take it easy, read some books.”
Levy nodded. “It’d be nice to put all this behind me. No more calls in the middle of the night. No more stress. No more getting hammered in the press. You know what I can’t wait to do when I retire?”
“What?”
“I am gonna buy some cows.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No, I’m serious. I’ve been thinking. I got all that land out there. If I start raising some cattle on it, I could get an agricultural exemption on my taxes. I could save four or five thousand a year.”
“Yeah, but cows? That’s a lot of work, isn’t it? If you’re gonna do that agricultural exemption, don’t you have to butcher them?”
Levy shrugged. “What else am I gonna do with my time?”
Anderson thought about that. He couldn’t see himself butchering cattle, no way. But at the same time, he had no idea what he was going to do with his own time after his career was over. But the more he thought about it, the more he came to realize that, for the first time since it began, he was actually looking forward to the end of his career. The thought of retirement, of putting all this behind him, of shuffling off all this mind-numbing responsibility and letting somebody else worry about it for a change, suddenly seemed like the most welcome thing in the world.
“Is this us up here?” Levy asked.
“Yeah, looks like it.”
Anderson slowed the car and turned into the main gate for Smithson Valley High School. From the main road, they could see the entire campus, and it was enormous. The school itself was made up of seven large yellow brick buildings with metal roofs. The baseball fields and what looked like horse stables were off to the right. The football stadium, where they were going, was off to the left. Though school was out, there were trucks and cars parked in the grass near the field house. Levy pointed that way and said, “Walsh said he’d meet us down there.”
“Right,” Anderson said. “Let’s hope this guy can tell us something good. After that disaster this morning, it’d be nice to come back with some good news.”
And that’s exactly what they found.
***
The stretch of lawn between the field house and the northern entrance to the Smithson Valley High School stadium was packed with people, parents mostly, but quite a few teenagers as well. Somebody had backed a flatbed trailer up to one edge of the parking lot and men were busy off-loading hay bales. Beyond the rows of hay were food booths and smoking barbeque pits. A cloud of smoke drifted over Anderson and Levy carrying the heavenly scent of slow-roasting meat.
“Looks like a festival,” Anderson said.
“That’s what Walsh told me,” Levy answered. “He said they were doing some kind of fundraiser to pay for their new scoreboard.”
“Did he say how we’re supposed to find him?”
“He said he’d be the only black guy out here. Shouldn’t be that hard.”
They found Detective-Sergeant Julian Walsh at one of the barbeque booths. He was shorter than Anderson, about Levy’s height, but built like the front of a truck, with broad shoulders and a chest and arms that were obviously the product of several hours a week in the gym. His face was flat and almost completely round, and when he smiled, Anderson got a mental picture of a body-building cherub. He wore jeans and a green t-shirt with the Comal County Sheriff’s Office logo above the left breast pocket, and over that a white apron with the words “Chef of Police” printed on it.
“Sorry I couldn’t meet you fellas at Headquarters,” he said. “But I’d already committed to doing this for our Association.”
“It’s no problem,” Levy said. “I’m just glad you could meet us on such short notice.”
“Always happy to help a brother out.”
“So this is your Association’s booth?” Anderson asked. “What are you guys cooking?”
“Pork butt, my man,” Walsh said proudly. “Sixteen hours in the smoke and it’ll dissolve on your tongue. Hey, you guys ought to come by later. I make about the best pulled pork sandwich you are ever gonna have. My grandma’s recipe.”
“Sounds great,” Anderson said. “But we’re kind of swamped.” Then Anderson nodded toward Levy. “And besides, he’s Jewish.”
“Oh, man,” said Walsh. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
Levy waved it away.
Recovering, Walsh said, “I heard about the Morgan Rollins thing on the news. Sounds like you guys got your hands full.” Walsh slipped off his apron and said, “Well, come on over to my truck. I got the info you guys wanted.”
“I appreciate that,” Anderson said.
“No sweat. So, Paul Henninger is a San Antonio Police Officer now, huh? How’s he doin’?”
“He’s having a busy career so far,” Anderson said.
“Yeah, I bet. Say, he’s not in trouble, is he? I know you said you were looking into his father, but he’s a good kid.”
“I don’t think he’s got any problems,” Anderson said. “We’re just interested in the stick lattices you guys found at his father’s death. They may not be related to what we’re doing, but we need to check it out. Did you know Paul pretty well?”
“Well, just in passing. My little brother played football with him in high school. Of course, everybody ’round here knows who Paul is. When you’re in Smithson Valley, Detective, you’re in football country. And Paul was about the best ballplayer Smithson Valley ever turned out.
Some folks ’round here thought he might even go pro one day.”
“Really?” Anderson said. “He was that good? He’s definitely big enough.”
“Oh yeah. My kid brother said there wasn’t nobody could hit harder than Paul Henninger. Lot of people were rooting for him, too. You know, on account of his parents.”
“I don’t really know anything about his parents,” Anderson said. “I was kind of hoping you could tell us about them.”
Walsh took his keys out of his pocket and said, “This is me over here.” He stopped at a yellow Chevy pickup and opened up the driver’s side door. He took out two bankers boxes from his backseat and took them around back.
“Open that tailgate, would you?” he said to Anderson.
Anderson folded down the tailgate, and Walsh put the boxes down on top of it.
“That’s everything,” he said. “Go ahead and take a look.”
Anderson and Levy opened up the boxes and started flipping through them, looking for the crime scene photos.
Walsh said, “About the nicest thing I could say about Paul’s parents is that they were just plain weird. The mother hanged herself when he was twelve. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Anderson said.
“Yeah, I was there that day. It was one of the first calls I ever made as a policeman, if you can believe that.” He shuddered. “Still gets to me, too. She’d been hanging in their barn most of the day. By the time Paul’s daddy found her that afternoon, a bunch of wild hogs had got after her. God that was a nasty sight. She was nearly picked clean from the hips down.”
“Were you the detective on his father’s death?”
“No, I was still a patrolman when that happened. The lead detective on that one was a guy named Wayne Cotton.”
“Is he still around?” Anderson asked.
“No, he died two years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Walsh said. “The guy was headed for an early grave anyway. You know those people who are so fat they have to be buried in piano cases? That was Cotton. Guy never ate a vegetable in his life.” Walsh paused, and Anderson got the feeling he had only just noticed how truly fat Levy was. He looked like a man who has just figured out his foot in his mouth. Twice in a row. He added, “He smoked, too. I don’t think he was planning on a long retirement, you know? Those are his reports in there. I think he took most of those photos himself.”
Anderson kept looking through the stack of crime scene photos until he found a series that showed the stick lattices. His eyes widened as he flipped through them, one by one. He nudged Levy in the shoulder and said, “Hey, look at this.”
Levy looked at the photos and shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Exactly the same as Morgan Rollins and the train yard.”
“Yeah,” Anderson said. He turned to Walsh and said, “What can you tell me about these?”
Walsh looked at the photos and shrugged. “Nothing much. I remember seeing those things in the barn, but I didn’t really pay ’em too much attention. I just thought it was one of the crazy things Paul’s daddy did. The man kind of had a reputation, if you know what I mean.”
“You said that,” Anderson said. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean? What was so weird about him?”
“Well, I guess it was mainly because he and his wife kept to themselves so much. Folks around here are pretty friendly. We’re getting big population-wise, but we still got that small town kind of personality, you know?”
“Like this fundraiser,” Levy said.
“Exactly. Just about everybody knows everybody around here. Paul’s parents, though, they didn’t ever do anything like this fundraiser. Here they had this star athlete of a kid, this kid that was on the front page of the newspaper almost every day during football season, and they never showed up to his games, never took part in the booster club. They just stayed on that farm of theirs and kept to themselves. His momma was supposed to be a manic-depressive or schizophrenic or something like that. I remember, the night before she killed herself, one of their neighbors nearly ran her over on the road in front of their house. Apparently she was running in the middle of the road screaming nonsense about her husband being the devil. A couple of our guys took her home, but Paul’s daddy wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Just told the deputies to drop her in the back room and close the door.”
“Nice guy,” Anderson said.
“Yeah, he was a piece of work. Of course, I don’t really know too much about him. Just that his daddy was a preacher over the Baptist church on Farm Road Three-sixteen. I know they used to fight a lot. Then Paul’s daddy went off to the Army, and when he came back here he stayed around for a few months before heading down to Mexico and lived there for a while. When he came back here he worked at the Morgan Rollins factory until it closed down, and after that he took over the family farm and hardly ever left it.”
Anderson looked at Levy and shook his head. He said, “Paul’s daddy worked at Morgan Rollins?”
“That’s right. Worked there for three or four years, if I remember right. You guys didn’t know that? I thought I mentioned that to you on the phone.”
“No,” Anderson said. “No, we didn’t know that. Seems like we’re learning all kinds of new things.”
***
“So do you think Paul Henninger is part of some kind of cult?” Levy asked.
They were in the car again. It was almost noon, and the highway into town was filling up with lunch hour traffic.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Anderson said. “You saw those pictures. There’s an obvious link between whatever Henninger’s father was doing with those stick lattices and what happened at Morgan Rollins.”
“Plus he used to work there.”
“Yeah, there’s that, too.”
Levy said, “Of course, Martin Henninger is dead.”
“Yep.”
“So where does that leave us? The son picks up where the father left off. He’s part of some sort of cult that’s killing heroin junkies and stealing their bodies from the morgue.”
“Yeah, maybe. I suppose. Of course, Paul Henninger has a pretty good alibi for the night of the Morgan Rollins killings. He was on duty, after all, with a partner.”
Levy turned his wedding ring around his finger. It was a nervous gesture with him, one Anderson had seen him do a lot during long investigations.
He said, “So, where does that leave us? Do you think Henninger is involved with this or not?”
Anderson said, “Chuck, you should have seen him that night at the rail yard. He was really shaken up. Like he’d just had the scare of his life. You don’t fake that kind of look.”
“Okay, so he was shaken up. How does that fit in with all the other stuff we know about his family’s link to this? I mean, he’d just had a gun pointed at him. He’d just been in his first car chase. Maybe he was just rattled from that.”
Before Anderson could answer, his phone rang. He scooped it off his belt and checked the caller ID.
“It’s Margie,” he said, “let me take this.” He flipped the phone open and said, “Hey, babe.”
“Hi.”
She sounded calmer. At least he couldn’t hear any anger in her voice. Now she just sounded tired.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m still here at Jenny’s,” she said. “She’s been getting visitors all day from the Association and the funeral home. God, Keith, there’s so much to handle.”
“Did Deputy Chief Allen come by?”
“Yeah, he was here.”
“How did that go?”
“Well, not so good. He apologized for what happened, but what can you really say in a situation like that, you know? She’s devastated, Keith.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“She’s come to a decision, though.”
“Oh? About what?”
“She wants to go ahead with the funeral. She talked with Raul Herrera’s wife earlier t
oday. They both want to go ahead with it.”
Anderson was stunned. Margie was silent, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t have any words for it.
“Keith?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know if you can do that. Can you bury an empty coffin?”
“Allen was here when she made up her mind. So was the guy from the funeral home. Allen said he would make it happen.”
“He did. Huh. Well, I guess he will then.”
Margie was quiet after that, and Anderson got the feeling that the call was over. He said, “Hey Margie.”
“What is it, Keith?”
“Are we okay?”
“I don’t know, Keith. I just don’t know. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay,” he said. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” she said. “See you tonight.”
“Okay,” he said. But she had already hung up.
Chapter 13
San Antonio’s endless summer rolled on. The sun grew hotter each day, hanging in the sky like a swollen white eye, scorching all but the thinnest clouds from the upper atmosphere. The earth turned brittle from the heat, going from green to yellow to brown. Dust was everywhere, thick and depthless where the air was too dead to allow a breeze.
And the nights weren’t much better. As Paul and Mike roved the streets, baking inside their body armor, soaking their uniforms with sweat before they even completed their first call, they watched the world around them wilting beneath the heat. The homeless and the junkies lounged on discarded couches in the ubiquitous vacant lots and watched them cruise by with rheumy, empty expressions, not even bothering with their usual routine of pretending to move along. Diseased dogs roamed the streets and alleyways of their district, rooting out their dinners from garbage that accumulated behind buildings and in the gutters. But even the scavengers were sluggish and lazy and disinterested to the point that they couldn’t be bothered to get out of the way of passing patrol cars. The heat that gripped San Antonio during the July days and nights of that summer was slow and constant and unrelenting, a prolonged smothering that sapped the will and dulled the mind.
