“Agreed,” Tell said. “He couldn’t hope for better alibis than the likes of us.”
“Unless of course someone tries to argue Shawn had an accomplice. But then we’d have to expect his DNA to be all over Thalia’s insides like Shawn’s was.” The sheriff pushed his hat back on his head. “You can only hold him so long, Tell.”
“And I aim to hold Shawn here in my jail just as long as I can,” Tell said. “Then I mean to charge him for rape and move him to county. Give him over to you. Then it’s up to you to hold him for as long as you can. Try and stall out Walt Pierce on charging him for murder.”
“Then you’ve heard?”
“That Walt Pierce has determined Thalia Ruiz’s body was found in his county? Yeah. Not a happy development.”
“Old Walt, he’d eat Shawn alive, he got hold of him in his jail,” Able said.
“You’d know better than me,” Tell said. “So far as Walt goes, I just know the fat son of a bitch rubbed me wrong from the get-go.”
“So you’re a solid judge of character too.” Able stopped walking and put his broad back to the wall of the New Austin police HQ. He stared down the alley. A rat scuttled from a drainpipe and scampered under a dumpster. “Tell, I’m talkin’ out of school confiding this next, but, well, a number of folks have perished in Walt’s custody over the years. Most of those lost souls looked real good for the crimes they were collared for, but they didn’t ever get to trial. Some hanged themselves. Some choked on their own vomit. One or two somehow smuggled in pills and OD’d. Or so the coroner found later.” Able looked at his own feet. “Did I mention that the Vale County coroner is Walt’s brother-in-law?”
Tell leaned a hand against the brick wall above Able’s shoulder. “Not as I recall, Able.”
“Well, you see how cozy that is. That DNA of Shawn’s is going to be a tough thing for Walt to walk away from. And maybe for a jury out this way too. Especially Shawn’s sperm being found in Thalia where it was. That doesn’t exactly say, ‘consensual,’ to conservative minds out this way. I’m more broadminded—different strokes, so to speak, and all that. Old Shawn’s a wild one. I didn’t know Thalia was.” Able hesitated. “I’m gonna need to talk to Shawn’s girlfriend I met that night I met you the first time. Need to know some things about Shawn’s bedroom predilections. I’m not sure I don’t think he drugged my Thalia.”
“Can see why you might think so,” Tell said evenly. “You’ll have to handle that interview, although I think it’s a waste of time. That was a different kind of relationship. Be obliged if you and your folks concentrated on clearing Shawn. I’ll focus, personally, on finding the real killer.”
Able smiled. “Can’t promise you an exclusive on that, brother. I’ve got a far bigger force and we can multi-task just fine. But you share and I’ll share, and we’ll share the collar, it comes time. Yeah?”
Tell shook Able’s hand. “Right. Let’s just be quick about it.”
“About that,” Able said. “You should know, the past three years, there have been three pretty similar crimes—all of them rape-murders. All three were committed in Vale County.”
“Send me the files?”
“What I’ve got, sure,” Able said. “But it’s precious little. They were Walt’s cases.”
“Appreciate anything you can dig up on them, all the same.”
“I should go in and see Shawn now, if you’ll let me.”
Tell nodded. “Mi casa es su casa, Able.”
Able slapped Tell’s arm. “Doesn’t help our cause a lick that Shawn diddled Thalia so down and dirty like he did. Like I said, this is a conservative county, most ways.”
“Yeah, I can see it. And, like you, I’m not sure Shawn didn’t drug Thalia.”
Able nodded. “He’ll be sorry if I find out he did that to her. I’d be sorely tempted to kill him myself, that being the fact. Now, no more tricks, right, Tell? No more stuff like finessing Doc Parks into givin’ you DNA results first?”
“I wasn’t trying to screw you, Able. I just wanted to stay out in front of your neighbor—Walt Pierce.”
Those strange gray eyes assessed him. Able finally said, “Again, I elect to believe you. Now I’m gonna go talk to that miserable young bastard.”
“Be my guest. They should be done with the photos just about now.”
Able scowled. “You’re just now getting around to a mug shot?”
“I hired a photographer to shoot Shawn naked, head to toe.”
Able smiled. “With concentration on the hands, no doubt.”
Tell said, “Yeah.”
Able said, “You and me, we’re really gonna get on fine together, I think.”
THEN
Tell awakened in Marita’s arms; the mostly full pitcher of margaritas was still there on the bedside table. They’d shared a couple of drinks, some deep talk, then Marita had fingered the buttons on his uniform, looked up into his eyes, and holding his gaze, kissed him.
From there, it was a loving frenzy.
Marita stirred and said, “It’s morning?”
“Late morning,” he said. “I’m sorry if—”
She pressed dusky fingers to his lips. “Are you really sorry? I ask because if you aren’t, you shouldn’t fill the silence with words like that.”
Tell took her hand from his cheek; squeezed it. “I’m not sorry at all. And you?”
She kissed his chest. “Far from sorry as I can be.”
SEVENTEEN
Tell palmed into a slot in his apartment complex’s lot, shut down the engine and tossed his sunglasses on the dashboard. He rubbed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He massaged his temples, then sighed and hauled himself out.
He got out and stretched, then walked down the creek bank and stood under the willow. After a time, the crickets quieted by Tell’s passage started up again. The mourning doves nesting above Patricia’s deck cooed softly.
A voice behind him said, “Really, Chief Lyon? Suspicion of rape? Honestly?”
Patricia stood on the bank above him, arms crossed. Frowning, she said, “Shawn wouldn’t do that. Whatever else he might do, he’s no rapist, Tell.”
“He’s no killer, I know that.” Tell trudged back up the embankment to Patricia. She turned and began walking along the creek side. Tell fell into stride alongside her, hands in his pockets.
“If you don’t think Shawn raped that murdered woman, then why are you still holding him, Tell?”
“Because legally, I can hold Shawn for a period of time before I formally charge him.”
Patricia scowled at him. “But if you don’t believe he did it, why would you hold him? Why would you consider charging him for something you don’t believe he did?”
“To help protect him, Patricia. To run out the clock before some or another sheriff can arrest his ass, if I can.”
Accusation in her black eyes: “But you intend to maybe still charge Shawn, knowing he didn’t do this?”
“Yeah. And I’d do it with his consent, Patricia,” Tell said. “I’ve also persuaded Shawn not to seek bail when he is charged and arraigned. If we even get that far.”
“Again … Why, Tell?”
“For Shawn’s own protection, Patricia, just like I said before. Shawn has a pretty good alibi in some respects. When that woman’s body was theoretically dumped, Shawn was variously with me and with Sheriff Hawk.”
“Then I ask again, why would you hold him?”
“Because Sheriff Pierce has determined Thalia Ruiz’s body was dumped in his county. It’s Pierce’s murder case now and he’s spoiling to hang it on Shawn. And forensic evidence, a big damned chunk of it, is squarely on Pierce’s side. Or at least it could be made to look as though it is in court.”
“But with you and Able as witnesses for Shawn …”
“Eventually, yes, in a hypothetical trial, we’d be there for Shawn,” Tell said. “If he ever got to trial. But I’m told a number of murder suspects have died in Walt Pierce’s jail. Suspicious suici
des, almost all of them. If you put Able’s and my potential testimony aside, then in a certain light, Shawn’s a slam-dunk for conviction for murdering this Ruiz woman. He spent the night with her. He wasn’t seen leaving her place alone as he claims. Last time she was seen alive was going into a bedroom with him. The next time anyone saw her, she was raped, beaten and dead in that field in Pierce’s county. And Shawn’s DNA is throughout Thalia’s corpse. Nobody else’s is.”
Patricia scowled at Tell. He pressed on.
“Someone also fed that woman a date rape drug. I don’t know yet whether Shawn did that to her. But for now, I choose to think he did, and, at least publicly, to act accordingly.”
“Why?”
“Because Shawn slept with Thalia in New Austin. So the rape aspect of this case is mine until proven otherwise. I can maybe make Pierce wait in line for a time. I can maybe force Pierce to jump through hoops to take custody of Shawn on suspicion of murder. I can buy Able and me time to find the one who really did this and clear Shawn of the killing.”
“At the expense of Shawn’s reputation? His job?”
“He’s already through in this town, Patricia,” Tell said. “Believe me, he’ll want to be out of here once his fellow press members out him as a person of interest. Sheriff Pierce has already issued a statement naming Shawn as his prime suspect in Thalia’s murder and accusing me of impeding his homicide investigation. It’ll hit the eleven o’clock news tonight and the papers in the morning. Shawn wandered into a real tight frame, sleeping with that woman the reckless and wanton way that he did.” That TV attention wasn’t going to do wonders for Tell’s reputation.
“Oh my God, poor Shawn.”
Poor Shawn? “Yeah,” Tell said, sour voiced. “He’s in it real deep. Stuck his foot in it, but good.”
“What a nightmare for him.”
Tell said, “He put himself in that nightmare, picking that woman up. Doing what he did with her, then sneaking out on her. Leaving her alone to walk into the arms of her killer. Shawn damned near perfectly framed himself for her murder.”
Patricia searched Tell’s face. “You said the police have his DNA on her?”
Tell said, “In her. Everywhere.” He immediately regretted the way he’d said it.
Patricia shot Tell a look. “I’m only going to say this once, Tell, and only to you. That can’t be. Shawn, well, he always used condoms.”
“We two are the last ones who should be having this conversation,” Tell said, queasy now. Patricia and Tell hadn’t yet crossed that last and most profound line of intimacy.
“But it’s a fact. He did use protection.”
Looking at his own feet, Tell said, “At your request, Patricia?”
Her cheeks were flushed. “Yes.”
“Well, Thalia must not have asked. And left to his own devices, a man’s not often going to volunteer that protection. Not going to opt for that dulling of the experience. And they were both extremely drunk.”
“So he came inside her.” Patricia shook her head.
“Orally, vaginally and anally. I don’t know in what order.” Tell also immediately hated himself for that last. It was an exceptionally cheap shot, and at Thalia’s expense too.
Patricia said, “Jesus Christ … Shawn …”
“He never tried to hit you, did he, Patricia?”
Patricia’s voice went cold. “No.”
“Didn’t expect so. You’re right. We don’t talk about this part of it again.”
Patricia stopped walking and turned to face Tell. She said, “Do you have your own real ‘person of interest,’ Chief Lyon?”
“Not yet. Not even close.”
“And El Gavilan?”
“Not Hawk, either.”
Patricia said, “You know, tonight I don’t think …”
Tell held up a hand. “You’re right. And I need to make myself a quick dinner and grab a shower and get back out there. I don’t have much time, and neither does Shawn.”
EIGHTEEN
Amos Sharp held Luisa tightly to him. Her body quaked and her tears sogged the shoulder of his shirt.
He couldn’t find worthy words to comfort her, so Amos rubbed her back and kissed her forehead, shushing her and hoping she would soon catch her breath. At a loss to say anything comforting, Amos instead started volunteering what he knew.
“Granddad says this one who’s been arrested, he probably didn’t do it.”
Luisa drew back and looked him in the eye. Her own eyes were bloodshot from days of crying. She said, “Are you sure it’s not just whites protecting whites, Amos? Maybe your abuelo, El Gavilan, and these other cops, that damned border patrolman you want to work for. Maybe they just can’t stand to see this other white, this reporter, punished for what he did to my cousin. They’ll put it off on some cholo.”
“He’s not like that, my granddad,” Amos said. “It’s not like that at all. This reporter—” He hesitated.
Luisa, eight months pregnant with their child, said, “What? Tell me, Amos.”
“It’s … confidential,” Amos said. “I’ve said too much already. It’s an ongoing case.”
“You’re not police yourself yet, Amos. You don’t have a badge to hide behind.”
“I can’t betray a trust.”
“You’re betraying me and our family, Amos. And, please, all the secrets you keep from that old man? About us? And about our child? You said we’d be married already. You said we’d be living together. We made this baby now because it could save me being sent back to Juarez. Yet still you live in that house with that old man, with El Gavilan.” It sounded like an obscenity the way she said it. “I’m at least eight months pregnant. What if the baby comes early? Our time is so short now.” She had no pediatrician … hell, no insurance. When the time came, she was going to be at the mercy of the emergency room to deliver her baby.
“I’ll tell him soon,” Amos said.
“We don’t have time,” Luisa said.
“Then we’ll marry this weekend. Once we’ve done that, and he knows about our baby, it’ll be over and he’ll accept it. He’ll have to.”
“While they investigate Thalia’s murder, they may learn that I’m illegal, Amos. We may not have even days.”
“Then we’ll do it tomorrow night—get married, I mean.”
She shook her head, staring down at her swollen belly. “I don’t know how we got to this place,” she said. “Talking marriage again and about doing it so quickly, like this. I was just asking about Thalia, and about this reporter and what you know of him.”
Amos stared at his hands, at his own fidgeting fingers. “The reporter met her in a bar and spent the night with Thalia at the apartment of a friend of your cousin’s. What happened to Thalia—her being attacked and murdered—that happened after the reporter left her. Shawn O’Hara was with my grandfather and with Chief Lyon when her body was being put in that field.”
“Convenient for the reporter it’s those two who were with him, no?” She was red-faced, her eyes filled with hate.
“No, it’s not like that, Luisa,” Amos insisted. “The reporter was interviewing them for stories for the paper. He was doing that in front of the wait staff, other diners. A bunch of people saw him there. There is no way he could have done it.”
“Who then?”
“I haven’t heard more than that,” Amos said. “Except that, well, whoever did this to Thalia, he wore rings that cut her when he hit her.” Amos held up his own hands. He wore a bulbous high school class ring, a silver ring with skull and crossbones, and a ring that Luisa had given him. “The man’s hands should be badly bruised,” Amos said. “O’Hara’s aren’t.”
Luisa dipped her head, her hand resting on her swollen belly. She wore no rings, fearing they might get stuck from the swelling in her hands and feet and ankles as she moved into her last weeks. “I miss Thal so much,” she said. “The funeral home man says we can’t have an open casket. They won’t even let my aunt see her a last time. They w
on’t let her see Thalia, her own daughter, for ‘her own good’ they said.”
“That was a favor. It was very bad, Granddad told me.” Amos put his hand on her belly; felt motion under there. He cupped Luisa’s chin in his hand and tilted her face up to his. “I mean it. Let’s do it tomorrow. Let’s get married.”
“Amos, I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to back you into this … marrying me. Not like that.”
“Doesn’t matter, either way. I want to.”
“Really?”
“I do,” Amos said. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow we bury Thalia.”
“Then the day after.”
She gazed up at him wonderingly. “Yes, then.” She stroked his cheek. “Your grandfather—he’ll really keep looking for the man who killed my cousin? He won’t let this pass?”
Now Amos felt a little anger. “He told me your cousin was his friend, Luisa. Granddad, well, despite what was done to your cousin, it was Granddad who first identified her. That’s how well he knew her. Granddad takes this real personal, Luisa. He’s not ever going to let this go until he solves it. He’s angry in a way I’ve never seen him. It’s tamped down on the outside, but I see it. I do.”
“Will he be angry like that when he knows about us? About our baby?”
“He’ll be happy,” Amos said. “He’ll be happy for me. Happy for us. It’s his great-grandchild, you know?”
NINETEEN
Tell had just finished his quick dinner and was dressed to go back out. There was a knock at the door. Tell opened it, half expecting Patricia to be standing there.
Sheriff Hawk gave the New Austin chief an up-and-down look. He fingered Tell’s badge and said, “I guess you weren’t goddamn kidding about a working night.”
“No, Able, I meant it well enough. What’s up?”
“I think my crew and I have hauled that damned reporter’s sorry ass clear of the fire, Tell.”
El Gavilan Page 11
