by Diana Palmer
She smiled. “I try to.”
Brannon took the card back from her. “I don’t guess you know any of Jennings’s friends or co-workers?”
“Co-workers? Never knew the boy to have but one job, working for that old man who got killed,” Holliman said. “He sure was proud of that job. The last time he was up here, though, he said something strange,” he remembered, frowning. “Said he’d done something he wished he hadn’t. Wanted to protect the old man from some sort of threat,” he continued. “He said he hoped he’d done the right thing.” He glanced at Brannon. “Any idea what that meant?”
“Not yet,” Brannon said, getting to his feet. “But I will have. That’s a promise. We’ll be in touch about your sister. She’s all right.”
Holliman slowly got to his feet. “Thanks for stopping by. Uh, sorry about the shotgun,” he added. “Dale told me to keep my doors locked and watch if strangers came around. Never knew why, but it seemed like good advice, just the same.”
“No problem. No need to walk us out,” Brannon added. “I’ll lock the door as we go. You do have a phone?”
The old man pointed to it. “Not that it would be much use if anybody meant me harm, way out here in the sticks,” he added meaningfully. “But I got my shotgun.”
Brannon gave him an even look. “Got a dog?”
“Can’t take care of one.”
“Keep that shotgun close, and your doors locked,” Brannon told him. “I’ll ask the sheriff to get his deputies to increase their patrols out this way.”
Holliman smiled. “Thanks, son.”
Brannon glanced at the wall and hesitated with the doorknob in his hand. “Jennings is being buried tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. If you want to go, say so. I’ll come and get you.”
The old man swallowed hard. “You’d do that for a stranger?”
Brannon touched an old, worn pistol and holster that Josette hadn’t even noticed, hanging on a nail beside the door. Hanging on the nail with it was a faded, worn silver Texas Ranger badge. “We aren’t strangers,” he said quietly.
Holliman nodded. “Then I’d like to go. Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll be here at one-thirty.”
“Thank you for giving us so much of your time, Mr. Holliman,” Josette said.
“Not much else to do with it, except talk,” he replied, and grinned.
She smiled back and waited for Brannon on the porch, while he pushed the lock and closed the door firmly behind him.
“I didn’t even notice the holster,” she confessed. “You’re observant.”
“You might be forgiven for not thinking so, considering the mistakes I’ve made,” he said tersely.
She let that go. “Do you think someone might hurt him?” she asked as they got back into the black SUV.
“A murderer who’s killed twice won’t hesitate. After all, he can only be executed once,” he replied as he started the vehicle. “We’ve seen evidence of how desperate he is to get whatever Jennings had on him. Anyone who’s connected with Jennings, in any way, is in danger. And I still think Jake Marsh is up to his neck in it.”
She wrapped her arms around her chest. It wasn’t chilly, but she was remembering poor old Mrs. Jennings. “Dale’s mother’s house has been ransacked and she’s been burned out. Surely the murderer won’t bother her again.”
He gave her a quick glance as he pulled out onto the highway. “He will if he thinks she knows something. That’s just Marsh’s style, if it is him.”
“Lord,” she whispered huskily, looking out the window. “What a fearful thing, to be old and helpless and have nothing.”
“To date, we’ve been living in a country that punishes age.”
She smiled sadly. “I guess.”
“Hell of a shame, a man like Holliman, who spent his life protecting other people, has to live like that,” he commented as they drove along. His face was somber. “There are hundreds like him, not just in Texas, but all over the country, men who put their lives on the line every day to save others. And this is how they’re repaid, with retirement and Social Security that isn’t even enough to pay for their medicine, most of the time.”
“That isn’t right.”
“Don’t get me started,” he cautioned. He made another turn, and they were on the road back to San Antonio.
There was a long, tense silence. Josette felt worn and wrinkled. The past two days had been so rushed that she’d hardly slept. It was beginning to catch up with her.
He noticed her lack of animation. “We’ll go see Mrs. Jennings tomorrow, after the funeral,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to talk to the warden at the state prison.”
“Do you think he’ll know who pulled the strings to get Jennings assigned there?” she asked drowsily.
“Not really. But he may have contacts who can find out,” he replied. “This whole thing is fishy. I don’t see how a system with so many checks and balances can let a convicted murderer slip through the cracks.”
“Money talks,” she murmured, closing her eyes.
He glanced at her, noticing the new lines in her young face. Her traumatic life was written there. She’d made one error in judgment, and it had tormented her ever since. He hadn’t helped, with his certainty that she’d tried to frame the local politician’s son for rape. He was sorry that he’d helped get the boy off. It was something he wasn’t ever going to be able to justify, especially considering the fact that he’d seen her at that party, half naked and cowering and sobbing, so sick and afraid that she wasn’t even coherent. He hated his own treatment of her later even more.
“Did you ever find out what the boy gave you at that party when you were fifteen?” he asked, thinking aloud.
“Yes,” she murmured, too drowsy to protest the question. “The forerunner of the date-rape drug.”
He stiffened. “Of all the mistakes I’ve ever made in my life, I regret helping that boy get off the most. I should have known better.”
“It’s all ancient history, Brannon,” she said impassively. “We can’t change anything.”
“I wish to God I could,” he said harshly. “I rushed to judgment about you. I’ve ruined your life.”
“I helped,” she returned without looking at him. “I deliberately left the house at night to go to what I knew would be a wild party. I was rebelling against my stodgy old parents. And guess what? They were right all along. I was too young to handle experienced boys and alcohol and drugs. Because of what I did, their lives were ruined, too. Dad couldn’t keep his job in Jacobsville. We had to move, and he had to take a big cut in salary. They died a lot younger than they probably would have,” she added gruffly. “All because I didn’t like having rules when nobody else did.”
His jaw clenched. He felt as guilty about that as she did. She’d been too young to know better, and he’d been a young police officer who was still learning how to size up suspects. He hadn’t done a very good job with Josette’s assailant.
His hands contracted on the steering wheel. “What I hate most is that if it had been Gretchen, I wouldn’t have been so quick to believe him.”
“Your sister had better sense than I did, at the same age,” she mused. “Gretchen was always mature for her age. I guess that was because your mother was ill so much. You lost your father when you were young, didn’t you?”
“Yes. We lost him,” he said in an odd tone. “Gretchen looked after our mother when she was in the terminal stages of cancer. I felt bad about that. I was with the FBI then, and working undercover. I couldn’t even come home.”
“I never understood why you left the Rangers,” she commented. “You never wanted anything as much as that job, and then just as you were getting promotions, you quit. Just like that.”
“I quit because of you.”
She blinked. Perhaps she was hearing things. “Excuse me?”
“Even though you seemed to be a decent sort of woman, there was always a part of me that thought you’d been lying about the rape—that yo
u were scared and accused the boy to exonerate yourself.” He stopped at a red light, and his eyes under the brim of his hat pinned her face. “Then I made love to you.”
She felt her whole body go hot with the memory. Her face was rigid, but her hands, on the briefcase in her lap, jerked.
“What a revelation that was,” he said curtly. “He couldn’t have raped you if he’d tried, not in the condition you were in.”
“Could we not talk about that, please?” she asked tightly, averting her face.
He glared at the traffic light, which was still red. “That was when I knew just how faulty my judgment really was,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I helped the defense attorney put the final nail in your coffin, when you were the real victim. Everything you suffered, everything your parents suffered, could be laid right at my door. I couldn’t live with knowing that. I had to get away.”
“You did a good job of that,” she said stiffly. “You called me names, took me home and walked away. The next time I saw you was in court, at Dale Jennings’s trial.” Her expression cooled.
“Then the prosecuting attorney took me apart on the witness stand and branded me a liar.”
“Bib gave that information to the D.A.,” he said at once. “He remembered it from early in our friendship, because it had bothered me and I talked about it. But I wouldn’t have used it against you. Especially,” he added harshly, “not after what I knew about you. I didn’t know they even had knowledge of it until I heard it in court. And then it was too late to stop it.” He noticed that the light was green and put his booted foot down on the accelerator gently. He felt gutted as he remembered the pain he’d felt at the trial. “After the prosecution took you apart on the witness stand, you wouldn’t even look at me. I couldn’t blame you for that. I’d done enough damage already. Afterward, it was one more reason to get out of San Antonio.”
“You could have stayed,” she said, her voice strained. “My parents and I moved away.”
“Another move, another job, and your father’s heart couldn’t take it.”
“Life happens, Brannon,” she said wearily. “Maybe if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. My father was fond of saying God always has a reason for things, that He tests us in all sorts of ways—that He even uses other people to do it sometimes. That’s why we shouldn’t hold grudges, he said.” She shrugged and shifted the briefcase. “I don’t blame you for what happened. Not anymore.”
Which was far more than he deserved. But what she wasn’t saying was poignant—that she still cared about him. How could she, after what he’d done?
They were back in the city. He turned onto the street where her hotel was located and pulled up in the courtyard.
“Do you want to go to Jennings’s funeral tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied at once. “I’d like to see if I recognize anybody in the crowd.”
He smiled faintly. “That’s why I want to go.”
“I figured that. I’ll see you…”
“I’ll come by for you about one,” he said. “Then we can go out and pick up Holliman.”
She hesitated. Her fingers traced a pattern on the leather surface of her case.
“It’s the logical way to do things, Josette,” he said quietly. “We have to work together.”
“I know.” She opened the door. “Okay. I’ll be in the lobby at one.”
“Maybe by then, I’ll have a new lead, at least.”
She studied him through the open door as she held it in one hand. “I don’t have to tell you that it needs someone with influence to accomplish a murder like Dale’s.”
“I’m not stupid,” he agreed. His gray eyes narrowed. “Do you carry a piece?”
She glared at him. “No, and I won’t. I’ve got a nice little electronic device in my purse that packs a powerful punch, and I’m no wimp under fire. I’ll get by.”
“A gun is safer.”
“Only if you’re not afraid of it,” she reminded him. “And I am afraid of guns. You watch your own back, Brannon. I’ve had a lot of experience taking care of myself.”
“So you have.”
She closed the door and turned to walk into the hotel. He noticed that she smiled at the doorman, who went to open the door for her with a matching smile. Josette had always been like that, gentle and friendly and compassionate. It made him sick to remember his treatment of her.
He pulled out of the driveway and back onto the street. He really should go by the office, but he wanted to talk to the warden of the nearby state prison. He pulled over into a parking spot and used his mobile phone to get the number and dial it. He made an appointment with the warden, who had the afternoon free, before he pulled back out into the street and turned on the road that led to Floresville.
Josette went into her hotel room and collapsed on one of the two double beds. She was worn to the bone. A bath was just what she needed, to soothe her aching muscles.
She uncoiled her hair and let it loose. Unfurled, it reached down to her hips in back. It was dark blond, soft, faintly wavy. If only she’d been pretty, too, that hair would have made her like a siren, she theorized. But, then, the only man she’d ever wanted to attract was Brannon, and that door had better stay closed.
She touched her throat and closed her eyes. Even after two years, she could feel Brannon’s hard, warm mouth on her throat, working its way down over her collarbone. Her pulse raced. She’d tried so hard to put the painful memories away, but they were tenacious. Josette looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were huge, soft. Her mouth was just faintly swollen. She looked…sensuous.
Josette turned away from the mirror, hating her own responses. Brannon didn’t want her. He never had. He had a terrible opinion of her; he’d said himself that she wasn’t woman enough for him. Why couldn’t she get over him? Despite the men she worked around, there had never been another one who attracted her. No matter how hard she tried to get interested in other nice, single men, there was only one in her heart, despite the misery he’d caused her.
She stripped off her clothing and went into the bathroom to shower. Minutes later, when she came back out, in her bathrobe and rubbing her hair dry, the message light on the phone was blinking.
Josette sat down on the bed and lifted the receiver to call the lobby.
It was the secretary at the D.A.’s office. “Miss Langley?” the pleasant voice asked. “I just wanted to give you this new address for Mrs. Jennings. The social worker found her a nice little apartment out at Pioneer Village near Elmendorf—one of our local retirement complexes.”
“That’s nice,” Josette said warmly. “I was worried about her at the mission. She’s not really able to take care of herself…”
“That’s just what the social worker said” came the reply. “She’s very happy at her new address. Have you got a pen and paper?”
“Yes. Right here.” She fumbled for them in her purse. “Okay.” She wrote down the address as the woman dictated it. “Has she got a phone?”
“Not yet,” the secretary said. “But her neighbor, Mrs. Danton, said she’d be glad to take messages for her. Here’s the number.” She gave that to Josette, too.
“Thanks,” Josette told her. “Brannon and I are going with her brother to the funeral tomorrow. I’ll phone Mrs. Danton tonight and ask her to ask Mrs. Jennings if she’d like us to pick her up, too, since she hasn’t got any way to go. Her brother was upset because he hadn’t heard from her.”
“Mr. Holliman? Oh, yes, Grier in our office is a veritable ongoing documentary of his life. It seems that Mr. Holliman was the Texas Ranger around these parts in the fifties and sixties.”
“I’d love to hear about him,” Josette said, smiling to herself. “Thanks for the information.”
“My pleasure. See you.”
Josette hung up and put the pad in her purse. She was already thinking ahead to tomorrow. She hadn’t really wanted to go to Dale’s funeral. It wasn’t that long
ago that she’d lost her parents, both of them within just two years. But it went with the job. She was just going to have to face it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The warden of the Wayne Correctional Institute near Floresville was a heavyset, taciturn man named Don Harris. He offered Brannon a chair, crossed his hands neatly on his desk and let Brannon tell him what he wanted.
He pushed a button on his intercom. “Jessie, get me the file on Dale Jennings and bring it in here, would you?”
“Sir, you can pull it up on your computer,” she began.
“Oh. Oh, so I can. Never mind.” He hung up, disconcerted as he turned to the computer on the side of his desk and punched in information with two fingers. “Hate these damned things,” he muttered. “One day somebody will pull the plug and shut down civilization.”
Brannon chuckled heartily. “I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I keep hard copy of every case file I’ve got, no matter what the experts tell me about zip files and hard-drive backups.”
The warden smiled, the first warm expression Brannon had seen on the man’s face since he walked in. “Good for you.” He looked at the screen. “Yes, here it is. Jennings was transferred down here two weeks ago from the state prison in Austin…”
“State prison in Austin?” Brannon shot to his feet, went around the desk and looked over the warden’s shoulder, with a murmured apology.
There it was on the screen—Jennings’s file. Except that it had been altered. It didn’t show a murder conviction. According to the file, Jennings was in for a battery charge, serving a one-year sentence in a state prison.
“That’s been altered,” he told the warden flatly. “Jennings was serving time for felony murder. He was in federal prison in Austin, not a state facility. The charge that’s showing is an old one, from his teens. He got probation for it.”
The warden looked sick. “You mean, I let a convicted murderer out on a trustee work detail?”
Brannon touched his shoulder lightly. “Not your fault,” he said reassuringly. “The files were obviously doctored. Jennings’s escape was carefully arranged. Apparently we’re up against a computer hacker as well as a crafty assassin,” he added curtly.
