by Sharon Sala
“Talk to me.”
“In addition to the robbery and murder, he also stole the clerk’s car. They found it abandoned on the side of a highway in Austin.”
Wilson felt as if he’d just been sucker punched.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Is that it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” LaQueen muttered.
“He knows where I am, doesn’t he? That tornado footage told him right where we are.”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
He sighed. “There’s nothing you can do. I’ll give the Austin police a call and tell them what’s going on, and hope they find him before he gets this far.”
“I’m sorry,” LaQueen said.
“It’s not your fault. Thanks for the heads up.”
“Wilson…wait.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
“Absolutely,” he said, and hung up.
A cow lowed somewhere out in the pasture, calling her calf. A jet plane flying overhead was leaving a contrail to mark its passing.
Wilson noted it absently, but his head was spinning. This changed a lot of things. He needed to talk to Cat and fill her in. And, while he was at it, he needed some luck, a gun and a pair of handcuffs.
The squeak of the hinges on the screen door behind him alerted him that he was no longer alone. He turned.
“Hey. I wondered where you’d gone,” Cat said, and slid onto the seat beside him.
Wilson took her hands as he looked straight into her eyes. There was no hesitation in his decision to tell her. She was his equal in every way, and now that they were married, what affected him affected her. She had to be told.
“I just got a call from LaQueen.”
Cat frowned. The tone of his voice was telling. “What’s wrong?”
“Remember when we were in Dallas, how we saw that film clip of the robbery at Lowry’s Gas and Guzzle?”
“Yes. Why?”
“It was Jimmy Franks.”
A chill of foreboding swept through her. And she could tell by the look on his face that that wasn’t all.
“And?”
“And they found the car he stole abandoned on the side of the highway in Austin.”
Cat stood abruptly. The anger in her eyes was instantaneous.
“He’s coming after you, isn’t he? He said he would. We have to—”
He grabbed her hands, then tugged her down onto his lap.
“Stop it. We don’t have to do anything but pay attention.”
“Someone needs to go after him. I could—”
“What did we talk about yesterday?”
She knew what he was talking about, but it still didn’t set well with her. She couldn’t just stand by and let a killer waltz back into their lives without doing something.
Wilson could see the thoughts going through her mind. “You are not hunting a killer with a baby in your belly, do you hear me?”
Her eyes narrowed angrily. “I know that. I wouldn’t put the baby in danger, but you aren’t going, either. So what do you suggest?”
He sighed. “We have to tell Mom and Dad. This puts them in danger, too. Damn it. I hate this. I never meant for my job to put my family in danger.”
“You’re not at fault. The world is full of losers. He’s one of them.”
“I’ll wait until the others leave before I bring this up with Mom and Dad.”
Cat nodded. But even after they’d joined the rest of the crowd, her thoughts were flying, trying to figure out how to take down Jimmy Franks. She knew she was going to have to have some faith in the Austin police department, but if that sorry little bastard came looking for them, she would have no qualms about putting him under six feet of Texas dirt.
Luis Montoya was not having a good day. Although he was no longer worried about his wife’s whereabouts, he was now concerned because she still wasn’t returning any of his calls. He’d put off going to the Nuevo Laredo police department until well after ten in the morning, but he could delay no longer.
He’d had no trouble finding it, and after introducing himself, he was now following an officer who was taking him to one of the policemen who’d participated in the arrest of Mark Presley. He needed to find out what they knew, if anything, about his murder victim.
As they passed the booking area, he saw a prostitute trying to talk her way out of an arrest, while a junkie in need of a fix was crying and apologizing for killing his best friend. He kept saying that all he’d wanted was the dope his friend had scored. If he’d shared, his friend would still be alive.
Luis frowned, then looked away. Drugs were at the core of more than half the crimes committed in his country. He hated them and everything they represented.
Finally the officer stopped, then knocked on a door before opening it.
A short, stocky man with a bald head and a neatly trimmed goatee looked up.
“Yes?”
“Detective Mesa, this is Detective Luis Montoya from Chihuahua Homicide. He needs to talk to you about a case you worked.”
Mesa stood up and waved toward a chair on the other side of his desk. “I am Alejandro Mesa. Please sit.”
Luis sat while taking in the neat stacks of paper on the detective’s desk, as well as a family picture hanging on the wall. He wondered if this man’s wife was as unhappy as his, then noted the four children in the picture and decided she wasn’t.
“How can I help you?” Mesa asked.
Luis pulled a photo out of the folder he was carrying and laid it on the desk.
“Have you ever seen this man?”
Mesa frowned. “No, and believe me, if I had, I would have remembered him. What is his name?”
“Solomon Tutuola. Does it sound familiar?”
Mesa shook his head. “Again, I am sorry, but no. You know, this information could have been ascertained by phone or fax. Why do you come so far?”
“The man was murdered in our city. Judging from his rap sheet, he was a very bad man. But still, murder is against the law, and someone pumped a lot of lead into him before setting him and his house on fire.”
Mesa whistled softly below his breath. “That is an ugly way to die.”
“Dead is dead, no matter how one comes to be there,” Montoya said.
Mesa shrugged. “This is true. But why do you think we would have knowledge of this man?”
“A few months ago an American came through Nuevo Laredo, then was tracked to an abandoned house outside this very city. His name was Mark Presley.”
Mesa’s eyes widened, then he began to nod. “Yes, yes. I remember it well. It was actually a tricky situation. As you know, bounty hunting is not legal in our country, and yet this Presley was trailed south through Texas and then over the border by two American bounty hunters. Murder charges had not yet been filed against him, nor had he been brought to court, so there was no bounty to claim. Yet he was on the run. One of the bounty hunters was a woman. She is the one who came for him. As I remember, she believed him guilty of murdering her best friend, who was pregnant with his child. As it turns out, she was right. And since there was no price on his head and he hadn’t jumped bail, technically, they weren’t hunting bounty, you see.”
“This woman…what was your impression of her?” Montoya asked.
Mesa arched an eyebrow, then smiled. “She was the kind of woman you dream about taking to bed…until you look into her eyes. She was a very beautiful woman, but I think if you were her enemy…she would be a very dangerous one. And there was a terrible scar across her throat.” Then he asked a question of his own. “If you are looking for this man’s killer, why are you asking about Mark Presley? He’s in a Texas prison.”
“We found his business card with the belongings of my murder victim,” Montoya said. “I’ve been trying to piece together the last few weeks of Tutuola’s life, and I was thinking that maybe, at one time, the two men had been together.”
Mesa was leaning back in his chair, fiddling with the
end of his pen, clicking it in and out, in and out, as he thought. Then he suddenly sat up.
“There is a thing about Presley’s capture that I just remembered.”
“What is that?” Montoya asked.
“The bounty hunters claimed that Mark Presley wasn’t alone when they found him. That there was another man with whom they exchanged gunfire, but they said he died when the house caught on fire and then exploded, although when we checked a day later, we found no body.”
Once again, Montoya remembered the Realtor Chouie Garza’s description of the man he’d sold the estate to and the raw wounds that looked like newly healing burns. “To your knowledge,” he asked the other detective, “did either of the bounty hunters come back into Mexico afterwards?”
Mesa shrugged. “I did not see them, but that means nothing.”
“Do you remember the bounty hunters’ names?”
“The man was named Wilson McKay, and he called the woman Cat. Cat Dupree.”
Montoya slid the photo back into his file and stood up.
“Is there someone who could take me out to where the fire and capture took place?”
Mesa nodded. “I will get one of our officers to take you, although I don’t know what you expect to find. Very little is left of the building, and after all these months, if there was anything of value left to find, it will be gone.”
“I know. Still, I would like to see for myself.”
“Of course. Come with me. And if there’s anything else we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“I appreciate it,” Montoya said, and he did. The sooner he got this over with and got home to Conchita, the happier he would be.
Eleven
The police car that sped past the alley was running hot. The lights were flashing, the siren a mind-shattering scream echoing through the darkened streets. Jimmy Franks flattened himself up against the wall behind a Dumpster, holding his breath until they had passed.
Less than an hour ago, he’d left the shift clerk at Bob’s Liquor Store dead behind the counter. The money that had been in the till was now in his pocket, making him six hundred dollars to the good. To celebrate the take, he’d also helped himself to a fifth of their best bourbon.
Once he was certain the cops were long gone, he took a slug of the liquor, then continued on his way, slipping through the back alleys of Austin until he was more than a mile from the scene of his latest crime. As he walked, he experienced a revelation.
It was getting easier to kill.
By the time he met up with Wilson McKay again, the man wouldn’t know what hit him. But for now, he needed to lay low. He didn’t think that the liquor store had a security camera, but even if it did, he was feeling smug. He’d done this twice now without so much as a hitch. The gun he’d killed the clerk with in Dallas was heavy against his thigh, even though it was a slug lighter than it had been before he’d gone into the liquor store here in Austin.
And so he walked, feeling high on crime. A short while later, he came upon a seedy motel. The vacancy sign was on, but only the V and the Y were working. All the other letters were dark. Jimmy glanced up and down the street before coming out of the alley. It was perfect for what he needed. The clientele at a no-tell motel wouldn’t be concerned with the identities of their neighbors.
He slipped into the office with his head down, walking with a shuffle and a limp, and paid cash for a couple of nights. He needed a place to hide out until he figured what his next steps would be.
The clerk didn’t even look up. He just took Jimmy’s cash and slid a key toward him.
“Room 120,” the clerk mumbled. “Bottom floor, all the way in the back.”
Jimmy grabbed the key and limped out, clutching the bottle close to his chest. As soon as he cleared the office, he resumed his normal jerky stride and didn’t relax until he was in the room with the door locked behind him.
Once inside, he barely gave the room a glance. It was a dive, but to a man who’d been spending most of his days and nights on the street, it was a luxury. And, since he was flush with money, he was ready to indulge his hunger.
He sat down on the side of the bed and flipped through the yellow pages until he found listings of restaurants that delivered. Several of them had been circled, most likely by past customers who knew the area. He opted for Chinese, called in his order, and then kicked back on the bed to wait for its arrival.
There was a water stain in the corner of the ceiling, and a poorly patched hole in the Sheetrock wall where someone had put a foot—or a fist. The bedspread was brown, as was the indoor-outdoor carpeting, obviously chosen to hide the stains left by the guests. He had a couple of hits of meth, money in his pockets and a roof over his head. Living the life of Riley, as Houston used to call it.
As he thought of his brother, he frowned. He had a right to be pissed at Houston. If he hadn’t gone off and abandoned him back in Dallas, then Jimmy wouldn’t have had to rob that quick stop or kill that woman. Not that he was losing any sleep over it, but it did increase his visibility, which did not suit his purposes.
His belly grumbled. He glanced at the clock. It would be at least another twenty minutes before his food arrived. He might as well watch a little TV—catch the local news and see what was up. He flipped channels until he found a station he recognized, then crossed his feet at the ankles, bunched a pillow behind his head and upped the volume.
It wasn’t until the second commercial break was over that the news anchor switched from national to local news. When he did, Jimmy was shocked to see a booking shot of himself on a split screen along with the clip of him robbing Lowry’s Gas and Guzzle in Dallas.
“Crap,” he muttered, and sat up, leaning forward to catch what was being said.
“The police here in Austin have also identified an abandoned car on the freeway as the same one that was stolen from the murder victim in the Dallas robbery. Authorities have issued a BOLO—a be-on-the-lookout order—for James Dale Franks in this city, as well.”
Jimmy came up off the bed, cursing. Now what? If Wilson McKay was watching the news, he’d just been forewarned. And even if he wasn’t, there were plenty of people who would be letting him know.
This screwed up everything.
His mind was racing as he began to pace. Should he leave? Had the clerk gotten a good look at his face? Or was it riskier to be out on the streets than to just stay put?
“Damn, damn, damn,” Jimmy muttered.
He was still trying to figure out what to do when someone knocked on the door. He jumped and grabbed his gun, then remembered he’d ordered dinner. He dug money from his pocket as he went to the door, opening it only a few inches.
The delivery man was waiting with a sack and a ticket.
“Delivery for Room 120.”
“How much?” Jimmy asked.
“Fifteen seventy-five.”
Jimmy handed him a twenty, took the sack and shut the door in his face. The scent of food made his belly growl, but he waited until he could no longer hear the delivery man’s footsteps before he opened the door and peeked out again. Satisfied that he was as anonymous as he needed to be, he began unpacking all the little boxes, sampling each dish as he opened it. For a man raised on corn bread and beans, chopsticks were useless. He began eating voraciously, using both his fingers and the white plastic fork he found in the bag.
He was down to the fortune cookies when the news ended and the movie of the week began to play. It was a suspense movie about two men switching identities, and halfway through, he got an idea. And the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that he knew what he needed to do to get the cops off his back. All he needed was to find someone with his hair color and general age and build, and he would be good to go.
But first he needed to be able to move about freely, which meant he needed to change his appearance. There was a small pharmacy across the street from the motel. It should have everything he needed. He patted his pocket to make
sure his money was in place, then opened the door. Once he was certain no one was watching his room, he slipped out.
Dust rose in small clouds, coating Luis Montoya’s pant legs as he walked through the remnants of the burned-out hacienda. He wasn’t an expert at investigating fires, but it was obvious this one had started with an explosion. The indentation in which he was standing was a good five or six feet in diameter and at least six inches deeper than the surrounding area.
The blast site.
What had ensued must have been true hell on earth. The fire had burned Tutuola badly. And yet it had not killed him.
That had happened in Chihuahua.
He knew how many bullets had been pumped into Tutuola’s body before someone set him on fire again, this time turning him to charcoal. It was a brutal death, but he still didn’t have a suspect, and it was obvious there were no answers to be had here. What he did know was that two other people had been here when this place burned. Two bounty hunters from Texas.
At least one of them had come back into Mexico again. He needed to find out if the man with Cat Dupree had come, too.
The officer who’d shown him the way out here was long gone. Luis was alone with his thoughts as he moved toward his car. Then his cell phone rang, and when he glanced at the caller ID, his hands began to shake.
Finally.
“Conchita…sweetheart, I have been waiting for your call. Are you all right?”
She was talking and crying. He couldn’t tell what she was saying, but he knew she was upset.
“Slow down. Slow down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
He heard a sob, then a deep, shuddering breath.
“Good,” he said gently. “Now talk to me, querida. Are you home yet?”
“Sì, sì. I am home. I talked to your mother. She said she told you where I’d gone.”
He sighed. At least he didn’t have to worry about letting that piece of information slip. “I was worried when you didn’t answer or call me back. I was afraid something had happened to you.”
There was a long moment of silence, then a question that broke his heart.
