Flaming debris might be tossed thousands of feet into the air and could fall thousands of feet from its source, depending on wind conditions. All that falling, fiery wreckage could trigger a second round of house and brush fires around the plant.
Thalia had regained her footing and stared at the rising ball of flame; saw bits of something cascading down from its plume. Not looking back to see if her co-workers were seeing what she was seeing, or if they heard what she said, Thalia had screamed, “I have to go!”
Then she’d run out to her old truck.
* * *
Thalia got as close as the southern corporation line, where a barricade had been set up. She was still four hundred yards from the plant and her husband, yet she could feel the intense heat of the raging fire.
She grabbed the arms of anyone who looked like a plant worker or emergency technician—anyone who might help her through the barricades and take her to her husband. But nobody would do that, and city cops and county sheriff’s deputies kept turning her away or asking her to leave.
She was sitting on the bumper of a Horton County sheriff’s SUV, head in hands and racked with sobs when she felt a hand on her shoulder. A man said, “Ma’am, do you have family at the plant?”
Thalia looked up and saw a big, older man in a gray uniform. The sun glinted on his badge and dark sunglasses. He said carefully, “They tell me anyone in the loading area at the time of the first explosion couldn’t have made it out. That they would have been vaporized—instantly, if that’s a comfort. I have a list, honey, a list of the men who were known to be in that loading area. Who are you looking for?”
Thalia told him her husband’s name.
The older, husky cop didn’t tell her anything back. He looked at the list and then opened his arms.
He held her tightly to him as she sobbed and beat on his back with her fists, soaking his uniform’s shirt through between the collar and epaulet with her tears.
That was how Thalia met Able Hawk.
TEN
The chief hadn’t been two minutes out of the booth when Able Hawk slid into Tell Lyon’s vacated seat across from Shawn.
“Had other business across the way,” Able said. “Supposed to be meeting Sheriff Walt Pierce, but the bastard stood me up and his own people can’t seem to find the cocksucker. Buy you another coffee, Shawn?”
The journalist shrugged. “Why not?” He stuck his notepad in his pocket. “But if you’re thinking I might preview my profile of Lyon for you …”
Able’s gray eyes narrowed. Not “Tell.” Not “Chief Lyon” or “Tell Lyon,” but simply, tersely, “Lyon.” That was telling, so to speak.
“I’ll wait to read that profile,” Able said, “just like all the other rubes. That said, I was sitting just across the dining room and I do have eyes, Shawn, nearsighted though they may be. I sensed a charged exchange, even from a distance.”
Shawn shook his head. “Sure you’re not farsighted, Sheriff Hawk?”
The old cop smiled back. He said, “I’ll confess that I thought for a second there I might have to step between you two tough guys. Am I wrong?”
“Came pretty close, I guess.” Shawn surprised himself by admitting it. Then the encounter tumbled from him. He ended with, “And I think the bastard’s cost me my girlfriend.”
Able smiled and sipped his coffee. “Venturing out where I have no business, I will volunteer my perception the young lady was all eyes for Lyon last night, and he for her.” Able sipped more coffee, made a face, then tore open a packet of sugar and stirred it in. “But looking at it from a different angle, I’ll only observe that Chief Lyon’s late wife was Hispanic. Marita was her name, and she was twenty-seven when she was killed. Only two years older than Patricia. So you can see where she must push Lyon’s buttons. Your Patricia, I mean.”
Shawn opened his mouth to speak, but Able charged on, anticipating Shawn’s next remark. “Your girlfriend,” Able said, “well, she frankly interested me too. As a friction point between you and Lyon, if you see what I mean. So I looked Patricia up on the BMV computer. That’s how I know her age, Shawn. I like to know the key players, best I can.”
“So you did see it too—their infatuation with one another,” Shawn shook his head.
“Maybe saw even more than you,” Able said.
The journalist looked up sharply, cheeks reddening.
“That didn’t come out quite right,” Able said. “What I fuckin’ meant was, my perception is, Patricia, she’s the marrying kind, and you sure ain’t. Stories get around these parts outside the stories you circulate for a livin’, Shawn. About conquests and the like. Pretty clearly, you’re not lookin’ to settle down anytime soon, but it strikes me that Patricia is. That bein’ an accurate assessment on my part, and I believe it is with all my dark heart, you’re perhaps well shed of the gal.”
The sheriff ran a rough hand through his close-cropped gray hair. “Jesus, Horton County’s lousy with pretty Spanish tail now. Ask my advice, I’d say drive on, lad.”
“Lyon’s nearly thirteen years older than Patty,” Shawn said. “Nearly old enough to be her father.”
Able snorted. “Maybe in certain backward and backwoods parts that’d be true,” the sheriff said with a lopsided grin. “Least ways in some lingering backwaters where the generations grow increasingly shorter and their eyes get wider apart. Places where the definition of a virgin is any young gal that can outrun her uncle or brother. But not in these environs. Here it’s what you call a ‘May-December romance.’ Tell had a few years on his late wife too. ’Sides, my dispatcher, DeeDee—who reads Cosmopolitan and Vogue magazines like the old folks around the county read the Bible—DeeDee, she says that ‘forty is the new thirty,’ whatever to Christ that fucking means.”
Shawn shook his head again. “Yeah. Whatever.”
Able said, “So, should I brace for another rough and leftward-leaning editorial about my recent policies, Mild-Mannered? Been nearly two months since you took me back of the woodshed for some ACLU-hand-wringing-inducing gaffe or policing policy on my part.”
Shawn said, “No. Readers are pretty clearly on your side now, Sheriff. Certainly the Recorder subscribers are. And so is my publisher. And it’s hard to deny the effect that this illegal immigration is having on the school system and social services.”
“Indeed,” Able said, searching Shawn’s face.
“You know that Patricia is one of your greatest fans, except for this latest thing you did,” Shawn said, staring down into his coffee.
Able scowled. “What latest thing that I did?”
Shawn told the sheriff the story of the hostess from Patricia’s parents’ restaurant—the one arrested by Able Hawk and his men for prostitution. Shawn told Able of Luz’s situation and Luz’s ailing mother and her little girl back in Mexico.
“Deeply moving,” Able said, his voice raw. “Sincerely, Shawn, I feel for her, this Luz. That’s no bullshit, son. I’d help her out financially myself, if I could, knowing her story now. I think I might even remember her. There was about ten we arrested. I remember one that seemed a bit different from the rest of the pack. Either way, I’m truly sorry and heartbroken for her. And for her kid. But you see, Shawn, every life is a story. Every hurt is someone’s personal tragedy. Your day job is taking the general and making it particular. Your mission is to humanize the news. So you look for sad examples like Luz. You write stories about people like Luz to bring the news down to human-scale. That’s what you do and you do it well enough. My job requires me not to be bogged down by individual circumstances. I apply the law equally and dispassionately. I can’t afford the luxury of trying to see in shades of gray, Shawn. It’s one law for the lion and the lamb. That’s my job. There’s an old saying I favor: ‘Never attach more feeling to a thing than God does.’”
Shawn scowled. “You really think like that?”
Able nodded. “I try to.”
ELEVEN
Tell picked up his cruiser’s radio and clic
ked. “Go ahead?”
“Chief Lyon? It’s Julie.”
“Hey, Julie. What’s up?”
“It’s an emergency. I’m going to call you on your cell phone, Chief Lyon. Thing like this, well, Chief Sloan insisted I keep it off the police band. Keeps the press off-footing,” she said.
“Do that. Oh, and Julie, next time, I want you to know you can call me on my cell phone from the get-go.” Reporters and their goddamn scanners—truly a pain in the ass, to be sure.
“Okay, Chief Lyon.”
Tell racked his radio mic and picked up his cell phone, waiting. Two long minutes later, the phone rang.
“Chief Lyon, it’s Julie.”
Tell rolled his eyes. “Hey, Julie. It’s Tell. What’s up?”
“Do you know the Kid’s Association ball diamonds, Chief Lyon?”
On his drive around town the night he’d gotten in, Tell had passed a sign for the ballpark But he couldn’t place it. He said, “I’ll need directions, Julie. Why am I going there?”
“In a field that runs behind the ball diamonds, two little Mexican boys found a body. Looks like she’s been murdered. She’s naked and badly beaten.”
“Give me those directions, Julie.”
The distances were short, so Tell took the directions in real time.
Julie said, “Best to park in the Association’s parking lot and walk across the ball fields, Chief Lyon. There’s no other good way back there.”
Tell drifted into the Kid’s Association’s parking lot, spewing gravel. Julie was hedging again. Tell said, “Just tell me what you’re thinking, Julie.”
“This field, Chief Lyon, it’s in what’s called the ‘Three Corners.’ The jurisdictions and boundaries are a little bit blurry out there, Chief. This might not even be our crime scene.”
“Let’s assume that it is and stick hard to that notion, Julie. Coroner on the way?”
“He’s already there, Chief. So are Billy and Rick.”
“Thanks, Julie.”
“Good luck, Chief Lyon.”
“Thanks again, Julie.”
* * *
Able Hawk held up a meaty hand to shush the reporter. He dipped his other hand in the left breast pocket of his uniform and plucked out his cell phone. He said, smiling, “Hey, DeeDee.”
“Sheriff, we got a body in the Three Corners spotted by a couple of illegal juveniles. Latino female, age thirty to thirty-five. Nude and badly beaten. Signs of repeated rape according to Coroner Parks.”
“Got it. Thanks, Double-Dee.”
Horton County’s sheriff slid out of the booth. He said to Shawn, “Okay, hands-across-the-water stuff, Mild-Mannered. We’ve got us a body over to the Three Corners, Shawn. I’m gonna let you ride with me, if you’re game.”
Shawn slid out of the booth, excited but pissed off he hadn’t brought a camera. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
Vale County Sheriff Walt Pierce stopped scratching his crotch and scooped up his cell phone from the console between the seats of his command cruiser. He said, “Roxie, what’s the story?”
“Two spic snot-noses found a naked and dead beaner bitch out to the Three Corners, Sheriff. Two or three yards either way, I hear, and it could be ours.”
The Vale County sheriff closed his cell phone and checked the mirror—smoothing his bristly hair back with his right hand, rings catching sunlight. He frowned at something on one ring and held it up close to his face. He rubbed it clean, then switched on his sirens and gunned her—ninety miles an hour through a New Austin school zone.
Jaywalking Mexican kids scattered from his path.
* * *
Tell skidded into a vacant space between two of his officers’ cruisers. He stepped out into the still-settling dust. One of Tell’s officers, Rick Keaton, was leaning over a chain-link fence, ashen, trying to compose himself.
Rick saw his chief approaching and straightened up. Still looking shaken, Rick saluted. Tell resisted the impulse to return the absurd gesture. He said, “You were here first?”
“Yeah. Sorry, Chief. I’ll get right back there in just a few minutes.”
“When you can will be fine, Rick,” Tell said.
The ball games underway were distracting the civilians from the crime scene developing behind them. Well, that wouldn’t be true much longer, Tell thought. He said, “Rick, go over and start talking to folks around those ball diamonds. See if anyone saw anybody, any strange cars or that sort of thing. You know the drill.”
Tell walked on until the parents’ cheers were a dim hum. He waded into waist-high weeds.
* * *
Able Hawk skidded into the slot next to Tell Lyon’s command car. He said to the reporter by his side, “Chief Lyon, he’s fast. I’ll give him that much. ”
* * *
Tell saw his other officer, big Billy Davis, standing grim-faced by County Coroner Casey Parks, who was squatting over the body.
Tell squeezed Billy’s beefy arm. “You okay, brother?”
“Fine, Chief. Thanks for askin’ though. Rick, he okay?”
“He’ll be fine. Guess you two don’t get many like this?”
“No, Chief. This is more a Vale County-style crime.”
The coroner nodded. “You must be Tell Lyon.” Doc Parks held up a latex-gloved hand and said, “I’d shake, but …”
“Hell of a way to meet,” Tell said.
“Where else to do it, with our jobs?”
“Guess that’s so,” Tell muttered, squatting down on his hams next to the coroner.
As a Border Patrol agent, before he’d been kicked upstairs, Tell had paid his dues, cruising the lonely roads in the no-man’s land between Mexico and California, hours out of sight of anyone else. He’d go out there, armed with sack lunches and dinners, jugs of water and a roll of toilet paper, listening to CDs sent to him by his cousin. Lots of country, folk … vintage rock and the cream of seventies songwriters’ works. And his personal favorite, Mickey Newbury.
Tell went out there looking for illegal crossers. Alive or dead, the Border Patrol lingo was such the agents called the Mexicans “bodies.” But Tell had seen his share of actual corpses. He’d seen pregnant women who had delivered on the desert floor—mother and child soon after dead from exposure and dehydration. He’d found at least a dozen dead elderly couples who had frozen in the cold night or cooked in the afternoon sun. He’d found young men who’d set off from Mexico lugging two jugs of water that weighed them down; slowed them to their deaths. But they had set off with fewer gallons than the trip demanded. Hot and thirsty, they’d go off their heads, shedding shoes and clothing under the sun, hastening their own deaths by exposure. Tell had found them on their backs or bellies, dead and dusted in the alkali, faces frozen in death-rictus grimaces, curled up in fetal positions. Their skin was like leather.
The dead woman lying before him now wasn’t wizened. Her body was ripe and raw and bruised; not yet mottling from the settling blood. Bruises and deep lacerations covered her torso and breasts. The woman’s face was all but obliterated. Deep cuts crisscrossed her cheeks and forehead. Her lips were shredded and her nose nearly flattened from repeated blows.
Her mouth gaped and her front teeth were broken or missing. The woman’s dark eyes were still open, already filming over. Her head rested in a bed of ivy. One bruised arm was crooked over her head.
“Rape, clearly,” Doc Parks said. “And clearly she’s been beaten. One thing for certain, the bad bastard who did this was wearing rings or brass knuckles. He was into cutting her.”
“We’ll never get an identification on that ruined face,” Tell said. “I wouldn’t even put a possible witness through trying. Jesus, but she’s been torn to pieces by the son of a bitch.”
The coroner offered Tell a pair of latex gloves. “You have the stomach to assist me, Chief? It’d be a great help. I’m woefully underfunded.”
Tell reluctantly took the gloves. “Okay.” Billy Davis turned his back. But he stayed alongside t
hem—Tell respected the big cop for that.
A new voice behind them said, “Jesus and Mary, that luckless woman.”
Tell nodded at Able Hawk. Shawn O’Hara, looking vaguely sick, was hard on the sheriff’s heels.
He pulled on his latex gloves, then Tell said, “No offense on this Shawn, but, Able, you sure this is a good idea, letting press this close, this early?”
“I’d do it,” Able said. “And I know you’re new to these parts. So you couldn’t know that this place, it’s—”
Bless Julie, Tell thought. He said, “I do know, Able. This is Three Corners. Suspect if you and I and Walt Pierce don’t see eye to eye on this in the next few hours, we’ll be calling in surveyors and cartographers to determine whose headache this woman’s murder really is. Better, absent that kind of turf war, that you and I share this one, don’t you think, Sheriff?”
“Right.” Able stooped down, stoic, searching the dead woman’s devastated face. “He said softly, “Oh, Jesus no … no.” He brushed some bloodied hair back from the woman’s forehead and said, “I think this is a friend goddamn it.”
Tell thought Shawn O’Hara might soon pass out. He was leagues out of his depth, but too prideful to turn away.
Coroner Parks said, “Here we go now, Chief Lyon. You get a grip on her shoulders, and I’ll get her thighs. Let’s roll her on over.”
* * *
Shawn took in the body with sidelong glances. Alive, and a bit skinnier, the woman might have been hot enough to do. She was busty. Long dark hair and dark eyes. Good thighs. She was Shawn’s type, okay. But then there was the gaping, destroyed mouth. The stubs and shards of broken teeth. Those cuts across her fine breasts—the cuts long and deep, but no longer bleeding. The woman’s face was hamburger. Shawn couldn’t believe what fists could do to a human face.
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