More hesitation. Able was aware now of his damp palms on the plastic pay phone’s receiver. Still nothing. Then:
Click.
“Great, kid. I owe you large. I’m hanging up now, Shawn. E-mail me, pronto.”
* * *
Shawn stared at the screen, weighing Able’s words.
Why help them? Why do it?
He hated them both now.
And those Mexicans? After the beating they’d given him, they deserved every dark thing coming their way.
If he shot himself, what could he care for the consequences of leaving Hawk and Lyon twisting in the wind?
But Shawn wasn’t sure yet he had the resolve to take himself out. If he hesitated, and word got out about this letter he hadn’t passed along?
His fingers were poised above the keys, hesitating. Fuck …
* * *
Tell settled back in his cruiser, feeling sweat in his armpits and flutters in his belly. God only knew how he came off on camera this time.
And now he had to await the return salvo from Vale County’s sheriff and his stooges.
Tell turned on the police band, craving white noise to distract him from his own thoughts.
But he couldn’t escape himself.
Slander. There might be grounds for a slander suit in what he had just done. But Strider likely couldn’t risk engaging Tell on those grounds. Tell was fairly certain of that. Alleging Tell had slandered him would mean Strider having to go to court and parade out all of Tell’s allegations before a jury. And extending the allegations into a formal setting—and across time—could result in Tell or others proving the truth of the New Austin police chief’s allegations against him. Slander and libel suits were probably not in the offing, then.
Assassination. Killing Tell was a real possibility. But Tell thought taking his suspicions to the media might insulate him from that threat. At least in the near term that might be so. Strider would be dodging TV reporters and ambush interview attempts in the early going. Strider would be under too much scrutiny to engage Tell himself. But that short-term safety argued for Tell stepping up efforts to bolster his case and charge Strider sooner rather than later.
The enhanced film was an improvement over the original that Tell had uncovered. And projected on the university lecture hall’s big screen, the pickup truck popped—it was undeniably a Dodge Ram. But the two men getting in and out of the hulking truck remained unidentifiable.
Given Tell’s presumed limits of Walt Pierce’s imagination, Tell fully expected Pierce to claim that Tell had conspired to have the film digitally altered to make the truck appear to be a Dodge and not the much smaller Isuzu the Vale County sheriff claimed it to be.
Character assassination. That was the strongest likelihood to Tell’s mind. Pierce would try to take Tell off the field in a professional context. It was the strategy—the tactic—that Tell surmised Pierce had deployed against Able to devastating effect. How else to explain Hawk’s abrupt resignation?
But Tell didn’t have Able’s baggage. Tell didn’t play it gray like Able did. So anything that Pierce contrived to use to compromise Tell would have to be manufactured or stage-managed.
That prospect, like the others, argued for speed on Tell’s part. He needed to move damned fast to buttress his lame case against Luke Strider.
His cell phone rang. Patricia said, “You need to get to a computer, now, Tell. Check your personal e-mail. I’ve forwarded a message to you. Shawn sent it to me to get to you.”
Tell was pole-armed by that. “Damned Shawn sent you another damned e-mail?”
“Shawn was just the conduit,” Patricia said. “The letter is really from Able Hawk.”
“I’ll hit the library,” Tell said. “It’s closest.”
* * *
Tell found a free terminal and accessed his Web mail account. He scrolled down to reach Able’s twice forwarded e-mail. It read:
T.—
You must hate me for a son of a bitch now.
But I had no choice.
Despite what’s being said by W.P. in the media to the contrary, I was not going to have any part in railroading even them Mexican sons of bitches on false murder charges.
The choice I made was the only one I could make to protect mine. Long story short: Some others discovered my other little enterprise in much the same way you did. I know you’ll know what I mean. This other who learned what you learned meant to use it against me like you didn’t.
The sorry upshot is I can’t have your back as I pledged.
And I’m foresworn against contacting you … of talking to you. Even this e-mail is a risk. That’s why I’m writing you from the New Austin Public Library. By the time you get this, I will have already deleted this new e-mail account. Yeah, I’m that damned paranoid about W.P. getting wind of this.
I’ve been trying to find a safer way for us to communicate. Racking my brain, I picked up the New Austin Library’s copy of your cousin’s fourth novel. I didn’t check it out mind you—just read it over and put it back. Read all that spooky stuff about clandestine communication and dead-drops and the like. All I can say is, “Boy howdy.” Surely made for rewarding reading.
—Able
Tell half smiled and deleted Able’s message. He then emptied the trash and made his way to the library’s mystery section. He scanned the spines of the books, walking sideways until he reached “L.” He saw a canted hardcover of his cousin’s fourth novel. Tell pulled it from the shelf and flipped through the pages.
Nothing.
There was a slight bump at the back of the book, however—something protruding between the board and the plastic-covered dust jacket affixed to the book with tape. Tell opened the book at the middle, bending it back wide so the dust jacket bowed up and out. Taped to the back of the rear cover was an envelope. Tell tore it loose from the book’s binding. There was a CD inside the sleeve. He returned the book to the shelf and bee-lined back to the computer terminal he had used to check his Web mail.
Tell inserted the disc and opened a file slugged “T.J.doc.” He was confronted with what appeared to be an empty or blank document. Yet the vertical scrollbar indicated something was there. Tell highlighted the document and went up to the color bar and clicked on black.
A mishmash of oddball symbols and icons filled the screen. Tell frowned, staring at the crazed, hieroglyph-like soup of characters. Biting his lip, he checked to see what font had been used and saw that it was Wingdings. Tell highlighted the document again and went back up to the menu bar and changed the font to Times New Roman.
He smiled as the letter appeared:
Tell,
Thank Christ you’re smart enough to have gotten this far. Take all these crazy precautions as evidence of how paranoid I am with Amos’s ass on the line. I don’t care about me at all anymore. But I’m not gonna see Amos’s life burned down by anything I initiated.
I confronted Walt Pierce about Luke Strider the night before I announced my resignation. If you’re as smart as I think you are, that’d be last night, your time.
I confronted Walt and we came to blows. I’d like to have killed him if he hadn’t japped me with some mace.
You see, Tell, I think Walt beat Thalia and the others to death. I don’t know about the rape stuff. About that, I don’t say anything, regarding Walt. Maybe the rapes were Luke acting alone. But I’m sure Walt beat those women to death, including my Thalia. Walt wears eight rings—big, pimp-like rings—and his hands are still bruised. I have no evidence Walt did this, understand. But I’m convinced. I know you know what I mean. And his reaction when I accused him is good as an admission.
So that’s the purpose of this note: Going after Luke Strider ain’t enough, old son. It’s Walt you have to take out too.
I wish like hell that I could help. I wish you and me could talk this out. Find a way to make it all right. But in exchange for protecting Amos and me from felony charges I promised not to have contact with you or any of my folks. I
have to honor that pledge ’cause Walt’s watching. I’m under surveillance and my phone is tapped. Figure cell phones and my own computer aren’t safe to use, either.
It’s hard, Tell. I guess that’s my punishment for that other thing you caught me in. The job’s my life and I saw myself another ten years, at least, in the post of sheriff.
Cocksuckers have taken away my life.
For my sake, I hope you take Walt and Luke down, hard and fast.
And if you have any ideas about insulating me from gang reprisals, I’d appreciate having them. I figure Walt’s false claims that I’m four-square with him on his “gang” solution to Thalia’s and the others’ killings—particularly now that I’m stripped of official status and security—is Walt’s way of seeing I get my ass shot by one of them Mexican gangsters in the near term.
But I’ll do my best to protect my fat ass, Tell.
You protect yourself and yours.
Wish I could help, son. Your enemies are my own.
But they beat me.
—Able
Tell sighed and ejected the disc.
He nodded at the librarian on his way out. When he reached the front door, he broke the disc in half and dropped it in the trash receptacle.
Walt Pierce, murderer? Maybe serial rapist?
Holy Jesus.
THEN
The doctors had finally made them leave the room; made them leave Claudia there on that bed with a sheet over her face.
The Lyons stood outside in the hallway, holding tight to one another.
Later, Tell would remember that even Chris’s eyes were damp; his cousin’s chin trembling. Holding fast to his older, taller cousin, Tell managed to get out, “I want him dead, Chris. I want to kill this Angel with my bare hands.”
“Oh, trust me, I feel the same way,” Chris said.
“I mean it,” Tell said. “And I mean to do it. Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
Chris squeezed Tell’s neck, looking him in the eye. “Never. Hell, I’ll help you.”
Tell believed him. If any man understood revenge—and had no compunctions about acting on the impulse—it was Chris. “But you have to soldier through these next couple of days,” Chris said. “You have to see to Marita and Claudia …” His voice trailed off, leaving You have to see to their funerals unsaid.
“Of course. But after—”
“After, I’ll make some calls,” Chris said. “You can’t possibly do this alone, Tell. Not and succeed. But, if you still feel this way in a few days, I swear I’ll help you do what you want. Some others and I will have your back. I swear there will be a reckoning.”
Tell looked up; Chris met his gaze. “It’ll be goddamn ugly, Chris. I’m warning you up front—this will be bloody. I want it to be bloody.”
Chris said softly, “I can’t imagine it any other way.”
FIFTY THREE
“You seem sullen, Shawn,” his doctor said. “It concerns me.”
Shawn typed, I’m fine.
“I don’t see that,” his doctor said. “It’s early yet, but I’m going to give you a look at your face. Most of it, anyway. I’m going to show you things are coming along. The swelling’s gone. Soon the stitches will come out. We’re going to look at freeing up your jaw today too. Let you talk. We’ve reevaluated your X-rays and determined there wasn’t a break of your jaw or your palate. That’s very good news—I feared you might suffer a permanent speech impediment. But that’s off the table now.”
Shawn typed, You’ll do all this now?
“Yes,” the doctor replied. “But understand—I’ll be angling the mirror. I don’t want you looking at your jawline until we get those implants in place. Good news there, parenthetically. You’re covered on those. By insurance, I mean.”
Shawn shot the doctor a thumbs-up.
“Understand, also, there’s some scarring. We’ll address that cosmetically, and quite soon. Your right eyelid will require a procedure too. To eliminate its droop, I mean. But overall, I think you’ll be quite surprised to find you’re in better shape than you think you are. Then, after, we’ll get you in that wheelchair for a spin. You must be beyond stir crazy.”
* * *
Tell sat at his desk, staring at the pictures of Thalia, Esmeralda, Marisol and Sonya he’d hung on his side of the divider wall with pushpins.
He felt snookered. His impulse was to run back before the cameras and report that he’d expanded his investigation to include Walt Pierce as a person of interest. But to do that would be to tacitly acknowledge that he’d had contact with Able Hawk.
That meant one course left him, so far as Tell could see: arresting Luke Strider and somehow getting him to flip on Walt Pierce. But Tell still needed a toe in on that front and something that would stick.
Billy Davis was seated at his desk across the room, sucking on a jamocha milkshake and munching on Arby’s curly fries.
Tell said, “Billy, I want you to see if you can get me a meeting with your friend Tom Winch.”
Billy bit the end off a knot of seasoned fries and swallowed. “He might agree to that if we can find a safe place to meet. Today is Tom’s day off. You want to try and do a meeting today?”
“Today for certain,” Tell said. “Soon as possible. I want to end this.”
“Where could you do that? Where could you do that meeting where Tom would feel safe, I mean?”
“Let’s have him meet me out at our shooting range,” Tell said. “You’ll follow Tom out there to be sure that he isn’t followed by anyone else. You’ll lock the gate behind us and stand guard. See we really have no company.”
* * *
Able couldn’t stand it any longer. The flaw with his bid to communicate with Tell—well, the whole thing had been fraught with flaws—but the big drawback from the standpoint of granting Able some flavor of peace of mind was the one-sidedness of his means of reaching out to Tell. He just didn’t know if Tell had gotten his warnings about Walt Pierce’s presumed complicity in the murders. He didn’t know if Tell had found the hidden disc.
He put on his shoes and called to Sofia, who was in the kitchen starting plans for dinner. “I’ll be back in ten minutes or so,” he said to her. “Just running a quick errand.”
Evelia was right there again. “Can I go too, Pap-Paw Hawk?”
“Sorry, honey. No, I have to go alone. But I’ll be back real quick. Maybe bring you a surprise.”
Able drove to the New Austin Library and walked straight back to the mystery section. He took a deep breath and pulled down Chris Lyon’s book. He slipped his big hand between the dust jacket and cover. He smiled. Tell, the clever cocksucker.
It was just too bad Tell had come along at the end—when Able was to be forced off the job. If they’d had three or four years of overlapping service together, the things they might have accomplished … ?
But if Tell succeeded in taking Pierce down, and if Pierce didn’t try to lighten his load by ratting out Able on a plea bargain, there was no saying Able couldn’t run for sheriff again—reclaim his post. Able figured those odds for fifty-fifty. The best prospect was Walt getting himself killed resisting arrest … or opting for suicide by cop.
Able replaced the book on the shelf and shook his head. He shouldn’t kid himself. The only way he’d ever be free to be a cop again—the only way for Amos to live out from under a shadow—would be for someone to put Walt Pierce in the ground. And Able was sorely tempted to see to that bloody chore. Not just for himself and for Amos, but for Evelia’s mother and the other murdered Mexican women.
Able bit his thick mustache. He needed to talk to Tell. Tell might talk him out of his sudden strong compulsion to kill Walt Pierce. Tell might have something to share that would give Able some glimmer of hope that Walt Pierce might really yet be taken down on something that Tell might have uncovered since he and Able had last spoken. He’d watched Tell’s televised interviews and press conferences, hoping Tell truly had the goods he hinted at … that he wasn’t lying to
the press now as Able had once pressed Tell to do.
Able sat down at a computer and registered for another free Yahoo e-mail account. He e-mailed Shawn again. He asked the reporter to pass along another note to Tell—this one asking Tell for a meeting at eight P.M. in the New Austin Kid’s Association ball fields—site of the recent Latino Festival and the fields fronting the scrub wasteland where Thalia had been found.
If Tell had nothing on Walt Pierce, then the risk of the meeting with Tell would soon enough be moot. If Tell couldn’t touch Pierce, then Able was determined to put the Vale County sheriff down himself.
Able told himself that he would kill Walt, all consequences to himself be damned.
* * *
Diego Ortiz flinched as the fat cop with the buzz cut got down in his face again. The cop’s big hand was moving toward Diego’s face—the rings on his fingers catching light. Diego could imagine those rings cutting into his flesh; breaking his bones and teeth.
Sheriff Walt Pierce grabbed hold of the red bandana tied around Diego’s head and wrenched it off. He shook the red rag in the teen’s face. “Fucking gang colors. You’re one fuckin’ sad-ass mess, you know that, Diego? You and the rest of your so-called gang are just a bunch of weak-willed pussies. El Gavilan and that New Austin cop, Tell Lyon, they’ve blown through your numbers like you was just a bunch of pussy-assed cunts. And your butt-boy buddy, Jésus? Did you hear the docs chopped his leg off? That’s right, your fuckin’ leader is now a cripple. Figure that sorry gimp’ll be passed around to the old timers to cornhole once we get him to prison. Your other members too—the ones that don’t get shipped back to Mexico to be cornholed by their own in some Juarez rat hole.”
“I didn’t do that shit,” Diego said, surly. “They didn’t murder them chicas. And even if they did, I wasn’t there or close to it anyway. I ain’t done nothin’. And I’ve got real papers, I’m American-born, just like you.”
El Gavilan Page 30
