The Last Chance Olive Ranch

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “I wonder why,” Sheila said drily. There was a silence while he tried to think of an answer to that. After a moment, she went on. “What have you heard from Branson?”

  McQuaid closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the morning’s two deaths like a thirty-pound metal chain draped across his shoulders. If he had pulled the damn trigger when he had Mantel in his sights all those years ago, Watkins and his wife would be alive right now. Mantel had stood right in front of him, asking for it, all but begging for suicide by cop. But McQuaid—who believed that a cop did a cop’s job, not the job of the judge or the juror—had refused the offer. And now he was regretting his refusal.

  He took a sip of coffee, finding it flat and tasteless. “Nothing more since Branson’s five a.m. call. He probably has his hands full with the investigation. He’s got the press on his back, too. Must be a circus over there, with both the DA and his wife dead. It’ll be breaking news on all the cable channels.”

  “You should have told China about the wife,” Sheila said disapprovingly. “They were friends, apparently. Or at least acquaintances.”

  He sighed, agreeing. He should have told her. “I just . . . well, couldn’t. Believe me, it would’ve made things worse. Thanks, Chief. I really do owe you.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sheila sounded skeptical. “China has now come up with the notion that you might be thinking of putting yourself out there as a piece of bait. To catch Mantel. She let me know that she thinks the idea is horsepucky, quote unquote.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” McQuaid had to chuckle. “China is a smart gal, you know. She’s been around. And it’s not a bad idea,” he added tentatively, testing Sheila’s response. “Unless Houston can nail Mantel in the next couple of hours, somebody might need to draw him out.”

  “I didn’t say that, you did,” Sheila retorted. “If that’s what you have in mind, don’t tell China. I’m just letting you know because you’re likely to get an urgent call from her, telling you that she wants you to stay out of it. All the way out.”

  McQuaid didn’t think so. It was true that China preferred that he put his law enforcement experience to work in a CTSU classroom, where he taught a couple of criminal justice courses every year. She didn’t like the idea that he might be out there on the front lines somewhere, doing what he used to do as a detective at Houston PD. But she never gave him a hard time about it.

  He said, “You haven’t heard anything from Houston?”

  There was a commotion in the background and McQuaid heard the voice of Connie Page, Sheila’s assistant. A murmured conversation, then Sheila said, “Take a message, Con. And get the door, will you? I need five more minutes.” The sound of a door shutting.

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Sheila said. “I just got off the phone with a Harris County assistant DA. Last name, Abbott. First name, Ian. I-A-N Abbott.” She paused. “There was a witness in the Mantel case. A young woman named Martha Kennedy. Remember her?”

  “I do.” McQuaid remembered her clearly—a slight young woman, blond, with a wide-eyed innocence that belied the sordid life she’d been lured into. “She was one of Mantel’s older girls. We located her down in Corpus and Watkins convinced her to testify for the prosecution.” The DA had coerced her, really, with an arsenal of threats—charges of prostitution and conspiracy, even accessory to murder. “She wasn’t too keen on the idea to start with, but she did a good job. Pretty compelling testimony, as I remember. The jury seemed to think so, anyway. She did a little time, but I heard that she straightened herself out, went to college, got an associate degree.” He frowned. “What about her, Sheila? Why are you telling me—”

  He understood then, with a gut-twisting wrench. “He got her.”

  “Right,” Sheila said. “She’s dead.”

  “Ah, hell.” Not a surprise, though, not really. The only surprise was that Mantel had managed three killings already, the two Watkins and now the Kennedy woman. The weight on his shoulders—the weight of regret for not disposing of Mantel when he had the chance—suddenly got heavier. “Where did it happen? When? How?”

  There was a pause, and then Sheila said, “That’s the thing, Mike. It wasn’t Mantel who killed her. Her body was found next to the Ship Channel late yesterday, not far from where that barge collision happened last year. She was dumped out of a vehicle, looks like. She’d been dead since Sunday night or Monday—multiple gunshot wounds.” Another pause. “Mantel didn’t get out of Huntsville until Wednesday. So maybe it’s unrelated. A coincidence.”

  “Or he’s teamed up with somebody,” McQuaid said, not quite thinking, not wanting to think, just going through possibilities out loud. “Maybe the person who picked him up in Huntsville after the escape. Maybe others. Maybe he’s calling in favors.” Which would give Mantel more options, extend his reach, make him more dangerous.

  A long moment. “Sounds right,” Sheila said finally. “But at this point, we’re guessing. Just wanted you to be aware of the situation.”

  McQuaid put down his coffee mug, sat forward, and took a yellow pad out of a top drawer. “Well, I hope this guy you’re talking to in the DA’s office has notified the people who helped to make the case against Mantel. Watkins had a couple of assistants who questioned witnesses at trial. Mantel might be nuts enough to make a run at them, too.” He picked up a pencil. “Witnesses—maybe a half dozen, counting the Kennedy woman. They’ll have a list in the DA’s office. Not sure they’ll have the names of my team, though. Branson, Carl Zumwalt, a young cop named Bradley, Jack Phillips, Jim Lash, a couple of others.” He was writing the names down as he said them.

  “Here’s the number you should call,” Sheila said, and gave it to him. “Ask to talk to Ian Abbott. At this point, nobody’s saying publically that Mantel is behind the Watkins’ murders. The DA accumulated plenty of enemies over the years, so it could be pretty much anybody. The press doesn’t seem to have made the connection, either—not yet. But Abbott is the one who spotted the Mantel-Kennedy link. He’s the one you’ll want to talk to. Maybe you can get him to put out a heads-up to the guys who were on your team.”

  McQuaid drew a circle around Abbott’s phone number. “Who’s coordinating the search for Mantel?”

  “The Texas Rangers are already on it. It’s complicated. Huntsville wants a piece, since they’re the ones who lost him. Houston, too, because of the Watkins’ murders.”

  “And you,” McQuaid said. Blackie’s wife might look like a fashion model, but at heart she was a shark. An ambitious shark.

  Sheila sounded grim. “If he shows up over here, of course I’d want us to catch him—before he kills anybody else.” Both of them reflected on that for a moment, then Sheila said, “I have no idea how much firepower the Rangers will put behind the search. Do you have a guess?”

  She was asking because, a few years back, McQuaid had done some work for the Texas Rangers, the elite investigative division of the Department of Public Safety. He still carried a souvenir of one investigation—a bullet fragment lodged near his upper spine—and memories of long, painful months in rehab. He’d also collected some useful connections—Harry Royce, for instance, who was in charge of the SRTs, the Rangers’ regional Special Response Teams. He wrote Royce’s name, circled it, and drew a line to the circle around Abbott’s name.

  “The Rangers will pull a team together,” he said. “Chances are they’ll concentrate on Harris County, though. We’re two hundred miles west. Mantel’s not very likely to make it over here.” But as he said the words, the skin prickled on his shoulders. Mantel wasn’t dumb. He’d figure where they’d likely be looking for him, and where they wouldn’t. That’s where he’d strike—especially if somebody threw out a piece of bait. He frowned. That was the word China had used. He didn’t like it, but—

  “Want me to see what I can find out from the Rangers?” he asked. “Maybe they’d let us join the team. Give them a hand.”

 
Us. Meaning PSPD. And himself. With the Rangers. Back in the game, with skin.

  “I’d be glad to help, if we’re invited.” Sheila hesitated. “You’re sure you want to deal yourself in, though? It’s not your job, Mike. It’s risky.”

  “Breathing is risky,” McQuaid said.

  Sheila chuckled. “Yeah, but with breathing, we don’t have a choice. There’s nothing that says you have to lay it on the line in this case.”

  He thought about that, and thought about the night he’d had Mantel in his sights and had chosen not to fire. There was choice, and there was choice. And choices had consequences.

  “I know the guy who runs the Rangers’ SRTs,” he said. “I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”

  He hung up the phone and sat for a moment, thinking. He checked his watch: 9:40. He made another trip to the coffeemaker, where he poured a second cup. He took his mug and the yellow tablet to the receptionist’s desk and sat down to clear yesterday’s calls on the answering machine. Once he got that quick chore out of the way, he’d phone Harry Royce.

  There were five messages on the machine. A late-afternoon call from Charlie Lipman with the name and address of a woman a suspicious husband wanted surveilled—not the kind of work McQuaid liked to do, so he’d line up one of the associates, Meredith Curtis, if she was available. The second was a quick, breathy “Oops, sorry, must’ve dialed the wrong number.” The third was an early-evening call from a client down in the Valley, where Blackie had been working a case of industrial espionage. McQuaid filled out a pink slip and stuck it on Blackie’s spindle. The fourth, at nine twenty, was a call from—

  With a surge of irritation, McQuaid recognized the number. “Hellfire and blazes,” he muttered, and threw his pencil down.

  It was Sally, his ex-wife, Brian’s mother, and the raw reminder of a very bad time in his life. Sally, who turned up like a bad penny when she wanted a favor or needed money or had to hide out for a few days from whatever threat was menacing her untidy life. How long had it been since he’d heard from her? Six months, seven? She was supposed to be picking up half of Brian’s University of Texas tuition, the part that the boy’s scholarship didn’t cover. But she hadn’t been able to come up with the money, and McQuaid—and China, too, of course—were carrying the full load themselves. China was philosophical about the situation, but McQuaid saw red whenever he thought of it. It was just like Sally to promise the boy she’d help with his college expenses, and then duck out. A promise meant nothing to her.

  He hit the Play button and Sally’s voice came on again, thin and reedy, plaintive. “Mike, listen, Mike, honey, I’m not calling the house because I know how China feels about me asking for favors and I don’t want to risk her picking up the phone. But I really, really need to talk to you. So could you call me just as quick as you can? Pretty please. I’m in trouble, and I’ve exhausted every other option. You’re my last chance, Mike. My absolutely, positively last chance.” She rattled off her number and hung up.

  Her last chance? It sounded like she was short of money again. McQuaid had heard that song—same verse, same chorus—so many times he couldn’t begin to count the repeats. Sally had a lot of problems, the most challenging of which was a split personality. Some days she was Sally. Other days, she was a vagrant, profligate character named Juanita whose favorite hobby was spending somebody else’s money. When he and Sally were married, of course, it had been his money Juanita liked to spend, and she had gone through quite a lot of it before he understood what was happening.

  He distrusted psychobabble, so when he first learned about the diagnosis—that multiple-personality business, something called dissociative identity disorder—he’d been skeptical. But he had to admit that in Sally’s case, it made a certain kind of sense. She had always said she wanted to be an actress, and when Juanita had first showed up, he’d thought maybe Sally was trying on some sort of role, complete with makeup and hair and costume changes: expensive costumes from Neiman Marcus and rings and bracelets from Deutsch & Deutsch. Actually, acting would be a good career choice for Sally. She was a chameleon who could move from one persona to another with the flick of an eyelash.

  Of course, Sally blamed Juanita for the cataclysmic meltdown of their marriage. China said this was an evasion, like blaming another woman when Sally should have accepted her own share of the responsibility. But even now, years into a happy second marriage, McQuaid had trouble disconnecting emotionally from Sally, for he felt that much of the blame for their failure was his. She had been very young when they got married. She had no idea how hard it would be to be a cop’s wife, what it would be like to spend night after night alone, imagining one dangerous scenario after another, dreading the knock on the door and the announcement that her husband had been shot or knifed or run down by a vehicle. That was when Juanita had put in her first appearance. And no wonder, really, given Sally’s inability to cope with the stresses, which got worse, not better, after Brian was born and she had the full care of a baby.

  But after the divorce and detox and rehab, after McQuaid had gotten custody of Brian and paid off most of the debts his ex-wife had left him, Juanita still continued to show up and make messes. When he could, McQuaid had tried to help Sally get her life back on track, because he still felt partly responsible for Juanita’s arrival in the first place. And because Sally/Juanita was, after all, Brian’s mother. The boy tried to pretend that he wasn’t disappointed when she failed to remember his birthday or didn’t call to congratulate him when his science project won first place in the district. But McQuaid knew that Brian cared, and that he worried about his mom.

  And now there was something going on with her. Again. He sighed. He’d better check and see what her trouble was. Sometimes all it took was a phone call, a few soothing words. Maybe he’d even get lucky and she’d tell him her problem was solved. But when he punched in her number, he was shunted off to voice mail. So he left a message and clicked off.

  Then back to the answering machine for that last call, at 6:10 this morning. He pushed the Play button. There was a silence, then a low, grating voice, like somebody crunching a mouthful of gravel.

  “Hey, McQuaid. If you’ve heard about Kennedy and the DA and his wife, you’ll know who this is. If you haven’t, well, you’ll hear pretty soon. Either way, just want you to know that I’m coming for you. Thought you might want to know, so you won’t go to the trouble of coming for me.” Then that laugh. The crazy, unmistakable laugh, like fingernails on a chalkboard, that sent a cold shudder down McQuaid’s spine. “I’ll be over there, my friend, as soon as I take care of a few others first.”

  McQuaid glanced quickly at the caller display, but it said Unknown Number. Mantel must be using one of those untraceable prepaid phones. He sat back for a few moments, feeling the cold settling in the pit of his stomach and thinking about choices and the number of people who were dead today because he had chosen not to shoot when he could have. When he should have, damn it.

  Then he got up and went to the desk in his office, where he took out his Rolodex, looked up the number for the Rangers’ headquarters in Austin, and punched it into his cell phone, glancing at the clock. It was 10:05. A couple of minutes later, he was back at the receptionist’s desk and Harry Royce was on the line.

  “Yo, McQuaid,” Royce rumbled. “Good to hear from you, buddy. Got something on your mind?”

  “Matter of fact, I have. His name is Mantel. Max Mantel. I had the lead on the investigative team that put him away a few years ago.”

  There was a silence. Then a flat, guarded, “I guess you heard he let himself out of Huntsville.”

  “And took out Paul Watkins and his wife. One of the investigators called me. Five a.m. this morning.” He paused. “I also heard about the Kennedy woman. The witness. You know about that one?”

  “Yep.” Royce was laconic. “No clear connection with Mantel, though. Not that I’ve heard, anyway.”


  “I have,” McQuaid said. “Sit back and listen.” He hit Play again and held his cell phone a few inches from the speaker.

  “Well, that clears up the Kennedy mystery,” Royce said when the message ended. “I’ll pass the word up the line. If you don’t mind leaving it on the machine, I’ll send somebody to make a copy.”

  “I can do that.” McQuaid didn’t offer to make the copy himself. The law enforcement officer who copied the tape and took possession of it would be at one end of the custody chain that could end in court. “I had something else in mind, though,” he added, and laid out what he’d been thinking.

  Royce listened to the whole thing without comment. When McQuaid was finished, he said, “I dunno, fella. It’s a stunt. And it won’t work if you don’t line up some media, quick.” He sounded doubtful. “You think you can do that?”

  “It’s meant to be a stunt,” McQuaid said. “It’s meant to attract attention.” Thinking of his friend Hark Hibler, the editor, publisher, and owner of the Pecan Springs Enterprise, he added, “And yes, I can line up the media.”

  “It would spread us pretty thin,” Royce said, still dubious. “I don’t have an army, you know. I’ve got to cover the bases over in the Houston area, also down in Corpus, where Mantel’s family lives. My guys are all strung out, and there’s no good way to narrow the search. All I can send you is one, maybe two. Maybe not even that.”

  McQuaid was ready for that. “No sweat, Harry. We can handle it here. I just talked to Chief Dawson—Sheila Dawson, Pecan Springs PD. She’s willing to assign some of her uniforms, if you’re willing. Want me to ask her to call you?”

  Royce chuckled with a cynical good humor. “Sounds like the two of you have got this plan already worked out. Yeah, sure, have her call me. We can probably put something together.” His voice hardened. “And you, you watch your back, McQuaid. You hear? If you get good media, this stunt of yours might just work too well. We don’t need to be giving this bastard the satisfaction of killing another ex-cop.”