The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion]

by Harry Hunsicker

  He fell, and I managed to catch his arms before he hit the ground. I eased him down so that he was lying flat on his back—standard procedure when someone loses consciousness, get the blood going to the brain.

  I checked his vitals, which were good—pulse strong, airway clear. He was not in any immediate danger.

  Someone on the inside of the nail salon opened the door a crack.

  I stood, kicked the door in the middle, and then jumped to one side, back pressed against the wall.

  A yelp from the interior.

  I waited.

  A few seconds passed. Then, movement. Feet shuffling. Heavy breathing.

  “Boone? Are you all right?” A woman’s voice, one I recognized.

  Suzy.

  I stepped away from the wall.

  She stood in the doorway, staring at the old man on the ground. She was wearing the same clothes as last night. Her face was even paler, skin drawn around the eyes and mouth, except for one side where a bruise had formed high on her cheekbone.

  “Hello, Suzy. How are you doing today?”

  She didn’t reply. She glanced at me and then back at Boone.

  “How’d the date with Chigger go?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” She pointed to the old man.

  “Beats me.” I peered over her shoulder toward the interior. “Who else is inside?”

  “Nobody.” She rubbed her nose.

  “Are you OK?”

  “What do you care?” She stuck out her lip, all pouty.

  “You got anybody else giving a damn about you right now?”

  Silence. Boone stirred at our feet, groaning.

  “Let’s get him inside.” I helped the old man stand.

  The interior was dark and looked like it had been abandoned years before in midmanicure.

  Along one wall were three workstations, each with jars of crusted polish and baskets of dusty cotton balls. On the opposite wall was a sofa and a coffee table. Old newspapers had been taped over the front windows. Cobwebs were everywhere.

  Suzy and I maneuvered the old man onto the sofa. He was conscious now but not really awake.

  “How are you feeling, Boone?” I checked his pulse again. Normal.

  He mumbled something indecipherable.

  “What’s wrong with your head?” I asked.

  No answer. I looked at Suzy. She shrugged but didn’t say anything.

  Outside, a car door slammed.

  “Don’t go down south tonight,” the old man said. “The border ain’t no good place to be.”

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked.

  “Dunno. He doesn’t make much sense sometimes.”

  He snorted like he was mad but then closed his eyes.

  “Where are we?” I looked around the room.

  “Right now? This here is Boone’s place.” She pointed to the old man on the couch.

  “He owns a nail salon?”

  “Uh-uh. He owns the building.” She paused. “Hell, he owns about half of downtown.”

  I glanced at the figure on the sofa.

  He appeared to be sleeping, snoring softly. He looked like someone you might find passed out in a bus station toilet stall, proof that you should never judge a book by its torn dust jacket.

  From the street came the sound of a second car door shutting.

  I strode to the window. A corner of one of the newspapers had come undone. I peered through the hole.

  A gray Chevrolet pickup with an extended cab was parked in front of the building across the street. The building was small, maybe two or three offices total. A sign in the front window read piedra springs computer repairs.

  At the rear of the pickup stood two men.

  They were of average height and build, wearing jeans and work shirts. Completely unremarkable except for what was on their heads—straw cowboy hats with Tom Mix creases.

  Just like the two men who’d tried to take Molly and her children last evening.

  I watched the two guys and debated what to do. I was in enough trouble already with the local authorities, and I didn’t particularly want to have another run-in with Sheriff Quang Marsh.

  Suzy stood by the old man on the couch, looking lost and pissed at the same time.

  She put me in mind of another girl, one from a long time ago. Made me wonder whatever had become of her, and if she’d been the beginning of something bad or the end of something good.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Five Years Ago

  Interstate 35, just outside of Hillsboro, Texas

  The truck stop was not the kind of place that advertised clean restrooms and hot coffee. It was the kind of place that drivers talked about in code on Internet forums, a location to score crank or weed or a lot lizard, the latter a prostitute who scurries from rig to rig like a reptile.

  I’d been assigned to a human trafficking task force the feds were running, an operation designed to stop the flow of women from south of the Rio Grande to the brothels of North America, at the time a large ancillary source of cash for the drug cartels.

  We’d busted a driver with a trailer full of Guatemalan teenagers, and the feds were doing the paperwork while I checked out the other eighteen-wheelers on the premises.

  The last vehicle wasn’t a truck. It was a late-model Mercedes, an S-class sedan.

  The driver was Caucasian. Midforties with slicked-back hair and a starched, white, button-down shirt. An expensive gold watch on one wrist, a matching bracelet on the other.

  He rolled down his window.

  “What’s the problem, Officer?”

  “I need to see your license, sir.”

  I stood a little behind the driver’s door. The angle made it easy to see the man’s hands but hard for him to use a weapon against me.

  “Did I do something wrong?” He made no move to get his license. “I’m just sitting here.”

  His tone was pleasant but forceful, the way he might address a waiter who’d forgotten to refill his water glass.

  “Sir, I need to see your ID.”

  He nodded toward the cluster of federal agents. “Looks like you got your hands full over there. Why you messing with me?”

  His tone was less pleasant. People in expensive cars were used to getting their way.

  “No one’s messing with you.” I paused. “But you need to show me your license now.”

  The front passenger seat was empty.

  I sensed movement behind the tinted windows in the rear. I stepped back, put my palm on my weapon.

  “Out of the car. Right now.”

  “Whoa there, buddy.” He held up his hands. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  “Who’s in the backseat?” I drew the gun.

  The cartels were known to employ extra guards, third parties who traveled separately and were not easily identifiable as being part of the smuggling operation.

  A white guy in his forties in a luxury automobile didn’t fit that profile, but a lot of law enforcement officers were dead because they let down their guard at the wrong time.

  He stared at the muzzle of my gun. There was no fear in his eyes, only a mild sense of irritation at his time being wasted.

  “My daughter’s in the back,” he said. “You gonna shoot her, too?”

  “Not unless I have to. Now get out of the vehicle.”

  He stared at me for a long few seconds. Then he opened the door with one hand, the other held so it was in view.

  I kept my gun aimed. “Real slow and we won’t have a problem.”

  He pulled the handle and swung open the door. His movements were precise and cautious.
After a moment, he stepped out, hands up.

  I flung him around the open door and onto the hood of the car, facedown.

  Then I peered in the back of the Mercedes through the windshield, gun at the ready.

  The girl was maybe fifteen but more likely not, certainly too young to drive yet. She appeared unarmed.

  She was wearing a plain white T-shirt that was smudged with dirt like she’d been rolling on the ground. She was thin, her skin pallid, pupils dilated. Her face was dirty, too.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “That’s Emily,” the driver said. “It’s OK, sweetie,” he shouted. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  I lowered my gun. “Are you OK, Emily?”

  Silence. The girl didn’t even look at me. She just stared straight ahead.

  I holstered my weapon and gave the man a quick pat down, pulling a cell phone from his front pocket and a wallet from his back. In the billfold, I found his license. I dropped both wallet and phone on the hood next to the man’s head but held onto the license.

  “Talking, that’s not her thing,” the driver said. “She’s autistic.”

  The man’s name was Dirk Wilson, home address in a ritzy part of Dallas. I read his particulars into my radio, asked Dispatch to run a check for wants and warrants.

  “She looks junked up,” I said.

  The man didn’t say anything.

  “Has she taken any drugs?”

  “What kind of father do you think I am?” He sounded angry.

  I tossed his license on the hood. “The kind of father who brings his daughter to a place like this.”

  Across the parking lot, the Guatemalans had emerged from the trailer and were blinking into the bright light, staring at their new surroundings. It was July, the middle of the afternoon. I could only imagine the smell coming from the trailer.

  “You’re making a big mistake, Officer.” Dirk Wilson shook his head. “You have no idea the trouble you’re getting yourself into.”

  There was the line I’d been waiting for. Cops were always making “big mistakes.”

  “What kind of work are you in, Mr. Wilson?” I picked up the man’s phone.

  “I’m in the real-estate business. I’m a developer. Can I get off the hood of my car now?”

  The device was password protected.

  “Not yet.” I held on to the phone. “Tell me why you’re hanging out at this particular truck stop. You thinking about building a shopping mall here?”

  “I was just getting some gas. No law against that, is there?”

  The pumps were a hundred yards away, close to the highway entrance. The Mercedes was parked by the back fence. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, broken beer bottles, and more than a couple of used condoms.

  My radio squawked, Dispatch calling. Dirk Wilson was clean. No wants or warrants.

  I pulled him off the car. “Lean against the hood. Keep your hands visible.”

  “Thank you, Officer”—he peered at my nametag—“Baines.”

  “The girl, Emily,” I said. “Is she on any prescription medication?”

  He smoothed his shirt and smiled at me like he was thinking of a joke, something not all that funny, just mildly amusing.

  “A Texas Ranger. You think that makes you a big man or something?”

  “So she’s not on any meds as far as you know?”

  No answer. Just a smirk.

  “Does she have any ID?”

  “She’s fourteen. Of course not.”

  I peered in the backseat. “Can you tell me your name, honey?”

  Silence.

  “Do you know where you live?”

  “I cannot believe you are doing this.” Wilson shook his head. “She’s autistic. She can’t talk.”

  The girl crossed her legs, one arm draped across the seat back, a faint smile on her lips. Her eyes were no longer quite as glazed. They were hard and cold.

  In that moment she appeared older than her years, aware of her sexuality in ways that a fourteen-year-old should not be.

  I looked at Dirk Wilson. “Where is she on the spectrum?”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s autistic, right?”

  He hesitated, then nodded.

  “So where does she fall on the spectrum? Does she have Asperger’s? Or Rett syndrome?”

  No answer. A hint of fear crossed his face before being replaced with anger.

  “The last one,” he said. “She has, uh, Rett syndrome.”

  We were both silent for a moment. A police helicopter flew overhead.

  “She doesn’t have ID,” I said. “She looks like she’s doped up, but you can’t or won’t tell me if she’s on any meds.”

  “Where are you going with this, Baines?”

  Some officers would look at the facts, taking into account the obvious social standing of the man, and let him go. Others, like me, would follow the more prudent route and call CPS so they could sort everything out.

  I started to answer the man, to tell him I was sorry but I was going to have to verify that the girl was in fact his daughter and that she wasn’t in any peril, either from her own actions or those of others. I was going to tell him there was too much that didn’t add up about the situation so I would be getting Child Protective Services involved.

  An abundance of caution, that was the phrase I planned to use in my report.

  That was what I planned to tell the man.

  But his phone—still in my hand—rang, and my father-in-law’s name popped up on the screen.

  Three minutes later, I let Dirk Wilson drive away with the girl.

  She watched me from the rear window as the big Mercedes sped across the parking lot, and I wondered what would become of her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  From the window of the abandoned nail salon, I stared at the two guys across the street, standing by their gray pickup in front of the computer shop.

  They weren’t the same people who’d tried to assault me the night before, but their clothing was similar, their hats identical. They were hard-looking—faces weathered, arms ropy with muscle. Men who would give others pause, make people cross the street.

  Unlike the nail salon, the computer repair business appeared to be a going concern. An open sign hung in the window, and a couple of cars were parked in front.

  “Suzy,” I said. “Come here for a second, will ya?”

  She sauntered to where the gap in the newspaper was. Boone, the old veterinarian, was still on the couch, eyes closed.

  I pointed to the hole. “You know who those men are?”

  She peered outside. Shook her head.

  “Two guys with the same kind of hats,” I said. “They were in the bar last night.”

  She looked again. “This is Texas. Lots of people wear hats.”

  “Cowboy hats exactly like that, the crease higher in the back than in the front?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “They were driving an extended-cab, gray Chevy, just like that one. That ring a bell to you?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she took a sharp breath, leaned closer to the hole.

  I pushed her away, looked outside.

  Chigger—face still red from the pepper spray—stood in the doorway of the building across the street, talking to the two men.

  “What’s he doing over there?” I said.

  “Maybe he got a job. He’s good with computers. Least that’s what he told me last night.”

  Whatever his skill set, at the moment Chigger didn’t appear to be very happy. The two cowboys kept pointing to
their pickup. Chigger kept shaking his head.

  Suzy ripped another hole in the paper so she could see what was going on, too.

  “I hope they kick his ass,” she said.

  “What did he do to you?”

  Silence.

  “Tried to warn you,” I said.

  A choked sob.

  I pulled away from the gap in the newspaper. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “His phone.” She wiped her eyes. “He wanted to take pictures.”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “You know . . . while we were doing it.”

  A moment of silence passed.

  I said, “Did he rape you?”

  “That’s an ugly word.” She crossed her arms. “Why would you say something like that?”

  I looked back outside, where Chigger and the two men were continuing their discussion.

  “Besides, I probably led him on,” she said. “I’m always doing that, seems like.”

  “You led him on to give you a black eye?”

  No answer.

  Some people couldn’t be saved, even from themselves. Especially from themselves.

  I described the woman from last night and told Suzy what had happened to her. Asked if she knew anybody named Molly who looked like that. She told me no.

  While I debated what to do next, the men by the computer store flanked out just like the others had the day before, going on either side of Chigger. They clearly wanted him to get in the truck, and he just as clearly did not want to. But he didn’t go back inside, either. Probably realized there wasn’t anywhere he could run to if they were determined to take him.

  I strode to the front entrance.

  “What are you doing?” Suzy said.

  I flipped the dead bolt and stepped outside. The blinds on the door rattled, the sound loud in the stillness of the day.

  The two men and Chigger turned and looked at me.

  I marched across the street, hands loose at my sides like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Except I was carrying a folding knife, not a six-shooter.