No Help From Austin: Red: Book 5

by Darrell Maloney

  Never mind the fact he doesn’t know half the people he professes his love to.

  These drunks don’t cause too many problems. They’re largely funny, they provide free entertainment, and they tip the ‘tenders twenty dollar bills.

  They’re largely tolerated by all.

  The last kind of drunk is the mean drunk.

  Mean drunks allow their anger and rage to spill free. The more they drink the angrier they get.

  By the fifth drink they want to fight everyone in the bar. Man, woman, patron, bouncer… they don’t care.

  By the seventh drink every woman in the bar is a “whore,” every man a “sissy.”

  The bartenders cut them off at that point, but it’s too late. The damage is done.

  The dragon’s been let out of his cage.

  Any bartender will say that one mean drunk’s usually not hard to deal with. Cutting him off, or threatening to, usually calms him down. Throwing him out gets rid of the problem completely.

  But two angry drunks can be an insurmountable problem. That’s when vague threats often become real fist fights, frequently resulting in flying beer glasses, bar stools, fists and teeth.

  Luis Martinez was one such drunk.

  Had been all his life.

  Part of it was the lifelong feeling of inadequacy, borne at least in part by living under his brother’s thumb for so many years.

  Part of it was probably inherited from his father, who was a legend in El Paso for his ferocity.

  Luis was an angry man, pure and simple. He hid it most of the time.

  But when he drank it came rushing out like a boundless tide.

  This particular morning he was drunk.

  And he couldn’t control his anger.

  Savage was trying to play him. Savage knew it and Jesse knew it.

  Mostly Luis knew it, and he wouldn’t play the fool.

  Not this time.

  He placed the point of his Bowie knife against Savage’s chest.

  Not particularly hard. Not hard enough to tear the fabric of his shirt or to draw blood.

  Rather just hard enough so Savage could feel the pain of the cold steel blade. And imagine what it was capable of doing.

  Or rather, what Luis was capable of doing.

  “I’m gonna ask you one more time, you stupid old man. Give me the combination or die.”

  A smarter man; one less greedy, would have realized the gig was up. He’d have given up the combination, trading it for his life.

  John Savage made up in greed what he lacked in intelligence.

  “I’m telling you, I can’t open the safe until nine a.m. There’s a time lock…”

  He never finished the sentence.

  Luis, blinded by anger and refusing to be lied to any longer, made good his threat.

  He shoved the knife deep into Savage’s chest.

  The razor-sharp blade tore through the big man’s shirt, lay waste to his sternum, and tore apart his heart.

  Savage’s eyes, already widened from the pressure of the garrote against his windpipe, seemed to pop out of his head.

  He looked down, startled to see a crimson flow bursting from his chest and onto Luis, as though he didn’t know what it was.

  His curiosity lasted but a second.

  Such a knife causes catastrophic damage to the human heart. Damage almost impossible to recover from without an operating room and a fully trained trauma team standing by.

  It was over in seconds.

  Savage slumped and then dropped to the floor when his sheer weight was transferred to Jesse’s hands.

  The garrote went flying like a sling shot, whizzing past Luis’s head.

  The anger suddenly left Luis’s face as he realized what he’d done.

  Jesse flared.

  “What in hell did you do that for? We could have made him talk.”

  Instead of answering, Luis turned his attention to the desk, pulling out desk drawers and leafing through them.

  “He won’t have the combination written down, you idiot. The only place he had the combination was in his damn head.”

  Luis used the last bits of anger in him to kick Savage hard in the face.

  He didn’t feel it, but Luis felt much better doing it.

  “Come on. Let’s get his share of the loot and get the hell out of here.”

  -48-

  In most ways the brothers left the bank exactly the same way they’d entered it.

  Stealthily, furtively, carrying two backpacks heavily laden with treasures.

  There were a couple of things very different about them now, though.

  The most apparent was the massive blood stain on the front of Luis’s clothing.

  And there was something else, too. Something not so easily identifiable without close scrutiny.

  The men had crossed a line they’d spent their whole lives trying to avoid. One they’d always been able to talk or fight their way out of before. Though hardened criminals, neither had ever committed a murder before tonight.

  Now they were something else besides common criminals.

  Now they were part of a small element of society who’d done mankind’s worst possible deed.

  Now their tickets to hell were permanently punched. They had nothing else to lose. They were no longer men to mess with.

  And they no longer had a home in Blanco.

  Jesse would have preferred to have locked the bank’s door. But not enough to go back inside the bank and have to roll over Savage’s corpse to search his pockets for the keys.

  They needed to get moving.

  The sky had started to clear a bit, but was still mostly overcast.

  A handful of stars twinkled above them. But the moon was still covered, and would prevent them from being seen by anyone not close enough to stumble into them.

  Their luck was holding.

  They made their way from the bank across the street to the courthouse square, then down a couple of side streets to the warehouse where they’d been dropping their cargo for several weeks.

  The warehouse was mostly full now, having barely enough extra space to hide their wagon and team of two horses.

  Jesse lit an oil lantern immediately and they went straight to work hitching up the team.

  They’d done this often enough to do it quickly and efficiently. No words of instruction or coordination were necessary.

  They didn’t say a single word until they were side by side on the bench heading out of town.

  Luis finally asked, “Now what?”

  “There’s nothing else for us here anymore. It’s all out there. If we stay here we’ll be hanged for murder.”

  “You didn’t kill him. I did.”

  “It don’t matter. In the State of Texas anybody involved gets the same death penalty.”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

  Jesse was silent for a moment.

  He thought it touching his brother would have taken the fall alone.

  They hadn’t always seen eye to eye. Sometimes they’d fought viciously, with no concern whether the other lived or died.

  But now, in the wake of the greatest crime they’d ever committed, Luis felt bad that his brother had been caught up in it.

  “You didn’t. If you hadn’t killed him I might have.”

  “Are we going by the house?”

  “Yeah. We need to get some clothes and the silver bars we’ve got stashed in the wall. Don’t change your bloody clothes, though. They’ll tie us to the murder. We’ll wait until we make camp tonight and you can burn anything that’s bloody.”

  “Where we headed?”

  “Hell, we might as well go where the treasure is. Up 281 to I-20, then east. We’ll collect the treasure as we go and settle down in some other little town under different names. Nobody bothers to carry ID anymore, so nobody can prove we’re not who we say we are.

  “We’ll hide the treasure in the false floorboards of the wagon. Pretty soon we’ll have enough to live lik
e kings. We can own whatever town we settle in.”

  “Like Savage owned Blanco?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “That didn’t work out too good for him, though, did it?”

  “He was stupid. He pissed off too many people. Stole from them and murdered some of them. He took advantage of people.

  “We won’t do that. We’ll have money to invest. Maybe in a legitimate business. We won’t make enemies of people. We’ll make friends instead. Hell, we’ll have so much we can play nice. Share some of it with others. Make contributions to the church, stuff like that.

  “We can be the anti-Savage. We’ll do everything he shoulda done and didn’t.”

  “You really think we’ll get away?”

  “Yes. People see us driving our wagon along the highway all the time. Nobody will think anything of us heading out of town this morning. They’ll figure we’re just going out to collect provisions like we always do.

  “By the time they realize we’re not coming back and start to wonder whether we’re tied to Savage’s murder, we’ll be too far away for them to ever catch. Plus, we’ll change highways in three days and they won’t know which direction we went.

  “We’ll travel by day today, then hide the wagon in the woods for a full night and day. Then we’ll start night traveling. It’ll be safer for us anyway, make it harder for anybody to ambush us and take the rig.”

  Jesse suddenly laughed.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “I just had a thought. You know, it’s very possible they won’t come looking for us at all.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Savage was the most hated man in Blanco. They might be so busy celebrating his death it never dawns on anybody to find and punish his killers. Hell, if they ever figure out we did it they’re just as likely to erect a statue in our honor as try to catch and prosecute us.”

  The thought appealed to Luis, who smiled and said, “Maybe. But I’d just as soon not hang around to find out.”

  “Don’t worry, brother. In five days time we’ll be more than a hundred miles away from here, counting our second

  batch of treasure.”

  -49-

  The brothers needn’t have worried about a posse being quickly formed and sent after them.

  Savage’s paranoia and self-imposed isolationism would take care of that.

  Savage wasn’t one to be seen walking the streets of Blanco of late. Most of the town’s residents hadn’t laid eyes on him in weeks, except for those who happened to be out and about when the Ranger took him to and from the boarding house.

  There was nothing unusual, therefore, when nobody saw the portly banker or spoke to him the first day after his murder.

  Tad Turner had knocked on the bank’s door right around noon day, as was his usual habit.

  But there was no answer, even after he’d knocked several times and called the banker’s name.

  That wasn’t unusual either. There’d been many times when Savage was inside the bank, sleeping off an all-night drunk and either couldn’t be awakened or wasn’t in the mood for lunch.

  Tad assumed that to be the case and returned to the boarding house to report to Mrs. Montgomery she wouldn’t have to make the fat man lunch on that particular day.

  Since she’d gotten enough extra food at the daily gathering to cover for Savage’s lunch, she offered to make Tad a sandwich instead.

  He heartily agreed, for it was known far and wide that Mrs. M made the best tuna fish sandwiches in all of central Texas.

  Tad returned to the bank just after the town timekeepers rang the church bells seven times to tell the residents it was seven p.m.

  Still no answer, either to Tad’s knocks or his calls.

  That was unusual, but just slightly so.

  It didn’t send up any red flags in Tad’s mind, for it wasn’t the first time Savage started drinking in the early afternoon and was passed out on his couch at dinnertime.

  Besides, Tad had seen for himself that Savage had a huge stockpile of shelf-stable snack foods in his pantry.

  Although he certainly could afford to miss a meal or two, he was in no danger of starving to death.

  It wasn’t until the following day, when Savage failed to answer his lunch call two days in a row that Tad finally got curious enough to turn the knob on the door.

  He was understandably surprised to find the door unlocked. For Savage might forget a lot of things.

  But he’d never forget to lock the door that served as his only protection from townspeople determined to do him in.

  Tad progressed slowly into the bank, calling Savage’s name each step of the way.

  He didn’t want to be shot as an intruder.

  It was hard to see. The candles Jesse and Luis had left burning in their haste to leave had burned themselves out.

  The generator had run out of fuel.

  And the blackout curtains Savage had hung over all the windows gave Tad the odd feeling he was walking into a cave.

  He walked to a window and drew the curtain aside.

  And he froze at the sight in front of him.

  The room smelled stale, but hadn’t yet grown putrid. The body was in its first stages of decomposition. Flies covered Savage’s chest and face, darting in and out of his mouth and nostrils, laying eggs as they went.

  The same was true of the wound on his chest.

  Tad was amazed at the number. He’d never seen so many flies gathered in one small space before.

  He didn’t go near the body. He knew at least that much not to.

  He wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. The man was obviously dead.

  He turned and beat feet out the front door and into the street.

  “Everybody come quick,” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  “Somebody’s killed Savage!”

  -50-

  At the time of any crisis so many things are happening at once it’s hard to keep track of everything.

  The same was true of Tad’s discovery, although the event wasn’t really a crisis in the minds of Blanco’s citizens.

  Well, except maybe for Savage.

  One of the first on the scene was Judge Dan Moore, who declared the bank a crime scene and ordered it sealed.

  Then the obvious struck him.

  There was no police department to investigate the crime. The police chief was the whole department. And he had flies taking up residence in his nose.

  “We could send a rider to Austin,” Lester Booker suggested.

  “No,” the judge and mayor jointly decided. “It’s a three day ride on a fast horse. Another three days minimum for the Rangers to arrive.

  “By the time the Rangers get here the body would be rotten and stinking up the whole town.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We have Dr. Munoz recover the body and dispose of it. We send a rider to Austin, but tell them the body’s been disposed of, the crime scene’s been corrupted, and every one of Blanco’s citizens had a motive to kill the son of a bitch.

  “Then we’ll let them decide whether they want to send somebody here to conduct an investigation.”

  “Any other options?”

  “We could hold an emergency session of the city counsel. Offer the police chief job to an interested party. Have them conduct an immediate murder investigation.”

  “That wouldn’t do any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because every person in town hated the man. Whoever we hired as police chief would be as big a suspect as anybody else. It wouldn’t necessarily be an impartial investigation.”

  “I like the first option better.”

  “Me too.”

  “Somebody go get Doc Munoz.”

  No one shed any tears over John Savage’s passing. Once the body was out of the bank and lying in the morgue, though, there was a lot of interest in the bank itself.

  Judge Moore had posted two men on the bank’s door to keep people from brea
king in until after the five o’clock meeting.

  As the church bells chimed five times the old judge called the meeting to order. The food brought back by the town’s gatherers a couple of hours before was dumped from their saddlebags and backpacks into a pile on the floor of the courtyard gazebo.

  One by one, the residents were allowed to come forward and take their share.

  As usual, Judge Moore lent his keen eye to ensure no one got too greedy.

  Once that was done, the judge addressed the crowd.

  “Like him or not, John Savage is dead. Like it or not, he was one of us, born and raised here in Blanco. And whether you loved him or hated him, he was a human being. He’s now in God’s hands. Would anybody like to say a prayer and talk to God on his behalf, to ask for mercy for him?”

  From the back of the crowd came the words that pretty much summed up the whole town’s feelings about the suggestion.

  “Hell no! Let him burn in hell where he belongs!”

  The judge shrugged his shoulders.

  “Fair enough.”

  He moved on to address the proverbial three hundred pound gorilla sitting in the corner of the gazebo.

  “We need to decide what to do about the bank. Many of you want to get into your safe deposit boxes to see if there’s anything left there. Some of you want to see if there’s enough gold and silver in the vault to cover everyone’s deposits.

  “Most of you, I suspect, just want to see the extent John Savage has been hoarding his ill-gotten gains for the last few years.

  “Mr. Mayor, how do you feel about breaking into the vault to see what’s in there?”

  The mayor stepped forward and cleared his throat.

  “Ordinarily I’d be the first to advocate we stay out of the bank. It’s still technically a crime scene. At least until the Texas Rangers decide whether or not to investigate Mr. Savage’s unfortunate death.”

  The same voice shouted again from the back of the crowd, “Unfortunate hell! He got what he deserved! Let’s vote on it!”

  The mayor looked at the judge and said, “What do you think, Dan? Want to let democracy decide it?”

  “Why not? It’s the American way.”

  “Very well. By show of hands, how many think we should leave the crime scene untouched until the Texas Rangers have the option of launching a murder investigation?”