Gold Dust

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Sheriff Cody Parker’s office in the Lamar County Courthouse was much smaller than O.C. Rains’ digs. A wooden desk and four oak filing cabinets set side-by-side took up one wall. A bank of windows usually brought in plenty of light, but the day was so cloudy Deputy Anna Sloan needed the desk lamp to finish her report on the shootout. She screwed the cap back onto her fountain pen when the phone rang. “Sheriff’s office.”

  “I’m looking for Sheriff Cody Parker.”

  “He isn’t in and I’m afraid he’ll be out of the office for most of the day. I’m Deputy Anna Sloan. Can I help you?”

  “I didn’t expect you to answer.”

  Recognizing Stan Ewing’s voice, her fingertips unconsciously touched her black eye and cheek. The swelling had gone down, but it would take weeks for the bruise to fade. She took a moment to answer. “Well, hello, cowboy.”

  “Bet you’re surprised to hear me.”

  “Flabbergasted is the word.”

  He chuckled. “I feel the same way myself, but I’d say thunderstruck. I never expected to hear your voice again.”

  She swallowed and searched the ceiling for the right words. “Look, I didn’t either. I expected that we’d run our course…”

  “Hold on. Let’s save that for the next date. I really was calling the sheriff. Can you take a message?”

  Anna took a deep breath to calm her suddenly jangling nerves. “Shoot.”

  “I know who it is that he’s probably looking for after that shootout with a couple of cattle rustlers. I was gonna leave this anonymously, if there’s any way.”

  “That’s hard to do at this point. How do you know about that incident way down there?”

  “It’s easy when the guy called and said I better be careful because some folks think I set the whole thing up, but I didn’t. You know what happened that day at the sale barn.”

  “You’re talking about Lucas DeWitt, the guy who gave me the contact information to set up my buy.”

  “Your buy? It was you that was there?”

  “It was me, all right, and two other deputies.”

  “I’ll be damned. You really are a deputy. I never figured you for the law.”

  Her mouth was suddenly dry. Now he knew almost everything about her and here she was, feeling like a high school girl with a crush. She pulled a strand of hair behind her ear, as if he could see through the receiver. “Let’s get this taken care of first. You know the name of the guy who got away?”

  “Sure do. His name is Owen Lee Bass, and he sent word back that he’s gonna kill me when he gets the chance, but you know I didn’t do anything, Anna. I just set up a meeting to get you some cattle.”

  “Don’t worry about that. You know anything else?”

  “No, but I bet he has a record and it’ll probably include rustling somewhere.”

  “I can pull it up. What happened?”

  “Like I said, Lucas caught up with me at the sale barn yesterday and told me that Owen called him to find out who’d given him his name. Lucas said it was me who introduced you to him. That’s all I know, except I’m carrying a pistol now.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll pull up his sheet and track him down.” She paused. They were finished with that part of the conversation.

  Stan stepped in to help. “Look, you have my number. Why don’t you gimme a shout when you get the chance? I promise I won’t call the sheriff’s office every day, asking to talk to you.

  Relief washed over her. She was back in control, or so she thought. “Good. Stay out of the honky-tonks and away from the sale barn for a while until we can pick this guy up. I’ll give you a call when the smoke clears. How’s that?”

  “Fine. Hey…thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I hope that ‘smoke clears’ comment wasn’t prophetic.”

  She thought about what she’d just said and smiled at the ten-dollar word used by a cowboy. “Me, too. I’ll call you soon.”

  They hung up and she wondered why she’d said it would be soon. It didn’t matter. She went to work tracking down Owen’s rap sheet. The phone rang again and she snatched it off the cradle.

  “You forget to blow me a kiss goodbye?”

  Mayor Stratton’s voice sounded surprised. “Why, no. Who do you think this is?”

  Shocked, Anna put her hand over the mouthpiece and stifled a scream. “Uh, no, Mayor Stratton. It…was my mom. I was just talking to her. How can I help you?”

  “Well, I wanted to see how you were feeling and if you’re all right, ask you to supper one night soon.”

  Her breath caught. “I don’t know. What night would be good for you and your wife?”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Agent Joe Hill sat behind his desk on the third floor of the nearly ten-year-old building in Langley, Virginia, bearing the sign Bureau of Public Roads. The walls were filled with memorabilia gathered from across the country, but there were no photos of him with a family, only government officials, friends, or alone on a spring creek in Missouri where he liked to fish.

  Two other agents were in cushioned chairs on the opposite side of Hill’s desk. Deep in thought, he opened a tobacco pouch and filled his pipe with cherry blend. In his office, there were no aliases. “Did they get the house cleaned up in time, Matt?”

  The dark-skinned agent named Matteo adjusted the knot in his tie. “No, sir. The police got there first.”

  “I’m assuming protocol was followed in renting it.”

  “Yes. Louise did everything right, except for what happened once they were inside.”

  “You’re right about that. I never expected the others to fail.”

  Matteo fidgeted as if their failure was his fault. “They underestimated their man.”

  “Do we know it was that old man? Maybe it was another agency.”

  “It was him, and another guy that’s even older.”

  Irritated at the news, Hill finished packing the pipe and put the pouch in a desk drawer. He moved a snub-nosed revolver to the side and plucked out a Zippo. He lit it, puffed twice, and leaned back in thought. “So, two old country rubes took out five of our best agents.”

  “They’re good.” The second speaker had hair as reddish orange as a clown. “I’m not sure they don’t have any training.”

  “Or your pros got overconfident.”

  Matt jerked a thumb. “Sammy here says they’re working with another team. It makes sense. Two old men can’t do that kind of damage, so try this idea. Maybe they were decoys like we were using Louise. Let’s say they took Louise to the house and were followed by their secondary team. They opened the door, got out of the way, and let the pros do their job. They were in and out in minutes, leaving everyone dead but Larry Brimley. He’s missing.”

  Men who moved through the world as invisible as ghosts were having trouble understanding how others with apparently less skill could outmaneuver them at every turn. Hill clicked the stem against an incisor. “You think this rogue team, or the two old men if that’s who it was, took him for questioning, Agent Fontaine?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Sammy sat up straight, the same way he did to answer questions in school. “We checked the hospitals, but there’s no sign of him. I called our usual doctors, thinking he might have gotten away, but none of them have seen him.”

  “Safe houses?”

  “No. He vanished.”

  “He didn’t vanish. They’re probably working on him right now.”

  The two agents exchanged glances, but remained silent.

  “Find them.”

  Agent Matteo laced his fingers. “How?”

  Hill flipped the lid open on a small box, revealing several trout flies he’d inherited from his father. Gently touching the vintage flies, he worked on his next move in the game of chess c
alled subterfuge and planned to go fishing as soon as the operation was cleaned up. “Figure it out. We’re the CIA.”

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Cody, Anna, and John Washington were in Judge O.C. Rains’ office. The judge was busy signing a warrant for Owen Lee Bass. “Where’s Prosper, Texas?”

  Elbows resting on his knees, Cody fiddled with his hat brim. Half sitting with one foot on the ground, Big John Washington took up most of a corner, leaning against a file cabinet with his arms crossed.

  Anna perched herself on a stack of books taking up most of the other chair in the office. “It’s a little farm community north of Dallas.”

  “Collin County?”

  “Yep.”

  “Run it down for me, Anna, how you got this name.” Cody hid a grin at how fast Anna’s leg was swinging. He wondered if it was a sign of nervousness over serving the arrest warrant, or over a tall Austin cowboy that she’d been defensive about.

  She described the phone call and her tenuous relationship with Stan while John and Cody tried to maintain their composure. She’d already growled at them over their grins and nudges, and they didn’t want to set her off again in the judge’s office.

  “After that, it took me a while, but I pulled up his history through the new National Crime Information Center. It’s only a year or so old, but NCIC had everything I needed. He was arrested here once for a DUI, so that gave me a start. Then I went from there, AKAs, family, known associates. A lot of people know him and Dale Thompson, who got killed in the shootout the other day.”

  “Sorry to hear George Nobles died.” O.C. signed another paper. They were all silent at the mention of the stock inspector’s name. “He was a good man.”

  “When I started running family names, Owen’s brother popped up.” Anna frowned at the smirks on Cody and John’s faces.” He’d been in jail for grand theft auto, armed robbery, assault, sexual assault, and…are you ready for this?…cattle rustling. Found him living in Prosper and called the local constable down there. His eyebrows were already up over folks around there talking about strange goings on at his place.”

  “How so?”

  “He hadn’t been working his fields much, and his kids had been talking about a sick relative that was staying there. The constable hung out up at the co-op gin for a while, just fishing around and learned that one of the local farmers had seen an unfamiliar car in Ellis’ barn when the door was open. You know how folks talk. There ain’t no secrets in a small town.”

  O.C. finished the paperwork and handed it over to Cody. “You hook up with the Collin County sheriff and y’all go in with them to make the arrest. I don’t want you just knocking on the door by yourselves.”

  Cody slid the folded documents into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket. “We won’t.”

  “That means all three of you. And you two quit grinnin’ at her like you know something.”

  Eyes toward the floor, they nodded like recalcitrant children.

  “Good. Now, y’all go get that sonofabitch.”

  Chapter Seventy

  Doc Heinz said he’d let me go home pretty soon, and boy, was I glad. I’d always thought I’d enjoy being in the hospital, lazing around bed with nothing to do but sleep and read. I’d imagined days of being propped up with pillows, waited on hand and foot by pretty nurses, and digging through a stack of library books.

  Instead, those nuns were in and out every fifteen minutes, poking and prodding at me, jamming needles into my butt, and generally fussing around. Most of ’em were sour old maids with lines around their mouths from keeping their lips pursed all the time, like they lived on green persimmons.

  But there was one young nun who always had a grin and a mischievous look in her eye. It was her job to give me my shots when I needed ’em, and it was kinda embarrassing, because every time she stuck me, it was in the hip.

  She saw my drawers more than Miss Becky did on washday, and the funny thing about it was that I heard her in the hall one morning, saying that she wanted to be the one to give me shots.

  Doc Heinz came in one day when Miss Becky was gone. He sat at the end of the bed and watched me over the tops of his glasses. “How you feeling today?”

  “I’m doing good. I still have that cough, but it’s not as deep.”

  “Your asthma bothering you?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Stick out your arm.”

  I did, and he took a syringe out of his pocket.

  “I’m gonna use you as my guinea pig.” He laid a syringe flat on the inside of my forearm and barely slid the end of the needle under the skin. “I talked to your grandmother, and she agreed to let me try something to get your asthma under control. This is gamma globulin. You’re gonna get one of these every six weeks for a good long while. Now, this is gonna sting a little.”

  “What is that stuff?” It looked like dirty water in the little window on the syringe’s side.

  “It’s a serum made out of human blood that’s supposed to boost your immune system.”

  He pushed the plunger and a bubble formed under the skin, like a blister. He wasn’t kidding, it felt like a bee sting, but I held still.

  “Good boy.” He kept my arm in his soft hand, watching the blister. “So tell me about that dream you had, the one with rats in my operating room.”

  I told him, but without getting into the Poisoned Gift. When I finished, he chewed a lip. “You have a lot of dreams like that?”

  “About rats?”

  He chuckled. “No, about the future.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve known your Grandpa since before the war.”

  He didn’t need to say anything else about that. “Sometimes.”

  “Do they ever come during the day?”

  I felt uneasy about where he was going, but had been taught not to lie to adults. “Sometimes.”

  “Umm, humm.” He rubbed his thumb over the blister that I saw it was getting smaller. “Have you ever talked to anyone about it?”

  “Miss Becky and Grandpa.”

  “No, I mean like a doctor.”

  “What would a doctor know about dreams?”

  “Some doctors know a lot. That’s not my line, but I know a couple of people you could talk to.”

  I saw something in his eyes I didn’t like. I wanted to yank my arm away, but he was still rubbing that blister away. “I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

  “Umm, humm. If you felt like you wanted to make those dreams stop, would you tell me?”

  “Sure, but you can’t stop dreams.”

  “Talking might help.”

  I looked out the window. “That won’t help at all.”

  He waited a couple more beats. “Fine, then.” He slapped my leg and stood. “I’m sending you home tomorrow, but you take it easy. No running, jumping, or playing for a while ’till those lungs clear up. I don’t want to see you back in here again.” He paused by the door and gave me a smile. “Now you enjoy the rest of the day and then get out of here before you ruin one of my nuns.”

  Dr. Heinz left and I lay there, wondering what he meant until the pretty nun came in with a steel tray. “Last shot. I’m gonna miss you. Now, roll over and show me that hip.”

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Ned Parker steered the Fury into a motel parking lot. A snowplow was at work clearing over two feet of snow. Traffic on the streets moved at a snail’s pace while more continued to fall.

  Tom Bell shook his head. “I can’t believe you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You just drove back to that house where we killed all those people and unloaded a dead man into that woman’s Mustang like we were delivering mail.”

  “They were all gone.”

  “I know it, but I never would have thought of that.”

 
“The man deserved that much respect.”

  They’d spent the previous night in a motel while Larry Brimley rested in the Fury’s trunk, perfectly preserved during the long cold night and following day.

  The police were gone when they returned to the row house at dusk, but the woman’s snow-covered car was still where they parked it on the next block up. Tom unlocked it with her keys and they quickly transferred Larry’s body behind the wheel. The heavy snow kept folks inside, and no one saw them set him up behind the wheel.

  Tom Bell chuckled at the memory. “The police are gonna be surprised when all this melts and they find him.”

  “It won’t be long.”

  “So now what?”

  Ned studied the neon-lit underside of the Holiday Inn’s porte cochere. Outside, the bright star atop the familiar sign flickered and brightened every few seconds as the neon starburst spread outward, artificial fireworks in a snowstorm. “I’m gonna get a room in here under my name.”

  “Then what?”

  “Either some of these people are gonna come see me, or I’m gonna use that number we have to call this Mr. Gray and talk to him myself. If that don’t work, we’re driving over there.”

  “Good lord.”

  Chapter Seventy-two

  “I want to go in before daylight.”

  Cody didn’t like the look in Sheriff Hawkins’ eye. The Collin County lawman was a little too eager. “There’s kids in there.”

  Anna sat between Cody and John in Hawkins’ utilitarian office. “I don’t like having murderers and rustlers in my county. Let’s go get it done.”

  “We don’t know how Ellis is going to react. It’s a school day. Let’s just wait until the kids are gone, or for him to feed his cows, or go to the field, if that’s what he does. We can take him away from the house.

  “His wife works at the Sav-U grocery store. She’ll be gone then, too. That should just leave Owen in there by himself and nobody but him’ll get hurt if he acts the fool.”