“There aren’t any witnesses now,” I say. “Just your word against mine. I’ll tell them you tried to lunge at me.” I add, “I’m surgical with this thing,” and lower the gun so the barrel is pointed at Rip’s crotch.
Rip hesitates about as long as it took me to draw my gun. He spills the location, the names of the coyotes he’s been working for—everything he can think to tell.
When the first patrolman comes through the door a minute later, I tell him to radio for a couple squad cars to go out to the storage building and find the prisoners. Then he calls for an ambulance.
“I doubt they’re going to be able to reattach that finger,” I say to Rip. “I guess you won’t be ripping any books in half anytime soon.”
Chapter 4
THE SUN IS high in the sky, bleaching the landscape in a bright, oppressive glare. I lean against the fender of my pickup, squinting my eyes under the brim of my hat, and watch the aftermath of my encounter with Rip. Chelsea’s front lawn is crowded with police vehicles and ambulances. Rip is sitting in the back of one ambulance, with an EMT wrapping his hand in a bandage while two officers stand watch. A female officer is talking with Chelsea in the back of the other ambulance while a paramedic applies an ice pack to her swollen eye. There are officers taping the perimeter of the property with yellow police tape, another officer fending off questions from a local newspaper reporter. Chatter from police radios fills the air.
There isn’t much for me to do at this point but stand back and stay out of the way. I have already given a statement to the incident commander and called in a report to my company commander.
The local police chief showed up about ten minutes ago, and the incident commander took him inside the house to explain the situation. I figure that he’ll be out to talk to me any minute, and a few seconds later, I’m proved right. They appear at the doorway, and the incident commander points the chief my way.
“So you’re the one who got into trouble up in Waco?” he says. “I’ve heard about you.”
“That was a lawful shooting,” I say, unsure of whether I should be on the defensive or not. “Just like this one.”
The chief eyes me with an expression that’s hard to read. His name is Duncan Sandoval, and he’s of Mexican descent, probably in his midfifties, with silver beginning to show up in his mustache and close-cropped hair.
He has a no-nonsense, take-no-shit reputation.
And I’ve got a hell of a reputation.
Sandoval’s poker face breaks into a wide, toothy grin. “You did good work here,” he says. “You got the bad guy and saved a bunch of people. And you didn’t kill anybody, which makes the paperwork a hell of a lot easier.”
Sandoval extends his hand, and I shake it, feeling relieved. There will be an investigation, of course—there is any time an officer of the law pulls a trigger—but it’s a good sign that the chief’s initial assessment is positive.
Sandoval explains that his officers found the storage building where Rip kept the immigrants locked up. “Some of them are in pretty bad shape,” he says. “Dehydrated and starving. But all of them are going to make it.”
I try to stifle my smile, but I can’t help but feel elated. Being a Texas Ranger is a hard job—and a dangerous one—but there are days when it’s rewarding. Days like these, when you save lives and don’t have to take any.
“They’ll have to be deported, of course,” the chief says, shrugging, “but at least they are not dead.”
Sandoval and I talk for a few more minutes, sweating under the late-summer sun. We talk about coordinating the investigation as we move forward, and then Sandoval says he better go give a statement to the press.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll leave your name out of it for now.”
I climb into my truck and feel the exhaustion wash over me. I want to go to my apartment, take off my boots, and crack open a beer. I start the engine and remember the phone call from Anne. In the panic of the day, I’d completely forgotten about it.
There are four missed calls from her on my phone.
What the hell is going on?
I press Play on the message.
“Rory,” she says. Her breathing is fast and her voice is shaky. Immediately, I know that something is up. “I need help. I’m scared. Can you come home?”
Chapter 5
I GIVE MY phone a voice command to call Anne as I speed from the crime scene.
“Rory,” Anne says, her voice calmer. “I’m sorry to bother you. It’s probably nothing. I’m just a little freaked out.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ve been getting threats,” she says, her voice trembling.
“Threats? What kind of threats?”
She hesitates, as if reluctant to say the words out loud. “Death threats.”
I try to process what she’s telling me. Anne is the nicest person I know. She teaches art and biology at the high school. She tutors struggling students on the side. She volunteers at the Humane Society’s animal shelter on Saturdays. Why would anyone threaten to kill her?
But then I remember there’s one person she knows who has a shady past.
“Where is Cal?” I ask, thinking about the asshole she’s been dating off and on since we split.
“Oh,” she says, her voice switching from scared to embarrassed. “We had a fight a couple weeks ago and I guess we broke up. I’ve been trying to reach him, but he must have a new phone because he hasn’t returned my calls.”
“Could it be him?” I ask. “Trying to freak you out?”
“No, Rory,” Anne says, as if I just suggested that the Pope was the one threatening her. “It’s not Cal.”
I never liked Cal. Back when I was working for the highway patrol in our hometown of Redbud, I busted Cal twice: once for selling marijuana and another time for a bar fight. Cal has spent a total of a year in jail because of my arrests.
Anne always claimed that Cal cleaned up his act. He started driving long-haul trucks, worked enough to buy his own rig, and quit drinking alcohol and smoking pot. She always wanted me to cut Cal some slack, but I could hardly be in the same room with him. The guy is scum. If I let my mind wander to the image of Cal making love to Anne, I start to feel sick with rage.
“Did the threats start before Cal left?”
“No,” Anne says. “They started after.”
“And you’re sure it’s not—”
“Damn it, Rory. I called you for help. It’s not Cal. Cal’s halfway across the country. It’s someone else. And I’m scared, Rory.”
I let it go, but it sounds just like the Cal I know to prank his ex-girlfriend to make her miss him. He is probably listening to her voice mails right now, laughing, making her sweat a little bit longer before he comes rushing home.
The only reason she called me is because she couldn’t get ahold of Cal. I’m her backup plan, the guy she turns to when her lover isn’t available. It makes me ill to know I come in a distant second in her life now. But I would do anything for her, including drive four hundred miles just to give her peace of mind.
“I’m down in McAllen,” I tell her, “but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Are you sure you can?”
As a matter of fact, my division chief just placed me on a three-day paid leave pending an investigation of the shooting. This is common practice after a firearm is discharged in the line of duty. But I’m not about to tell her that.
“I can come,” I say. “I’m already on my way.”
“Thank you,” Anne says, her voice so saturated with relief that it sounds like she might start crying.
I want to keep her talking. That will calm her down. Otherwise, she’ll be pacing back and forth for the next five hours while I make my way from the southern tip of the state to its heart.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?” I say. “Everything. From the beginning.”
Chapter 6
THE RANCHLANDS OF Texas roll past my windows as I liste
n to Anne. I am speeding, but I don’t have my lights and sirens on, and I don’t push the F-150 like I did earlier this morning. I don’t think Anne is in any real, pressing danger. It sounds more like kids playing pranks.
She explains that after Cal took off, she started getting phone calls. The voice was distorted by a disguiser app available for phones.
“Was the voice male?” I ask.
“I think so,” Anne says. “But those apps garble everything so much that it’s hard to tell.”
She says that as the prank calls continued, the caller started making disgusting comments.
“Like what?”
“I’m not going to repeat them, Rory.”
“Anne,” I say. “How am I supposed to help you if you don’t tell me?”
“They’re just lewd, gross comments,” she says. “That’s all you need to know.”
She didn’t think much of it at first. She got into the habit of not answering her phone unless she recognized the number. She listened to the messages at first, but then she stopped doing even that.
A few days ago, she came home and her mailbox was stuffed full of cow manure. Last night, someone threw a rock through her window. A message had been attached to it with a rubber band.
“What did it say?”
She hesitates and then reluctantly says, “‘Whores get what’s coming to them.’”
“Jesus,” I say. “Did you call the police?”
“I did, but they figured it was just kids.”
“What did the handwriting look like?”
“It was typed,” she says. “Any computer could have done it.”
I decide to let the rest of my questions wait until I get there. No point making her nervous when I’m not there.
Not only that, but the questions I ask are going to be tougher questions. Uncomfortable questions. I’ll need to ask her if she cheated on Cal, or if there’s another reason someone might want to call her a whore. I’ll have to press her on the “lewd, gross comments.” She might not think the exact words are important, but they could be.
I know she probably didn’t call me so I would actually investigate what is going on. She just wants someone close who can make her feel safe. But I don’t intend to simply sit back and be a bodyguard. That’s not what I do. I will get to the bottom of this.
“Anything else?” I ask.
“Well, the worst of it happened this morning,” she says. “That’s what prompted me to call you.”
I wait for it.
“When I was coming back from the animal shelter, my phone buzzed. I thought it was a friend. She and I were going to go shopping. So I picked up without even looking at the screen.”
I say nothing, letting the story unfold.
“It was the voice,” she says. “He said he was going to kill me.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“He said, ‘I’m going to kill you, you fucking whore. I’m going to put a hole in that pretty little face of yours. I’m going to paint over your good looks with your own blood and brains.’”
A chill slithers up my spine. I catch myself accelerating my truck.
Anne says that she hung up and tried to shake it off. But the tone of the voice—the anger in it—really disturbed her. She canceled her shopping plans for the day and called me.
“Did you call the police again?”
“No,” she says. “They didn’t seem to care last time.”
I tell her that I’ll be there soon, and then, to take her mind off the threats, I ask her about what’s happening in town. She fills me in on the latest gossip, and the small talk seems to calm her down. When I hang up, I can see from the phone that we talked for an hour.
Outside the window, grassy meadows and cattle fields scroll by, and the sun makes its way toward the horizon. I stop once for gas and a sandwich at Whataburger, but otherwise, I drive nonstop. I call Anne every hour to check in, and each time she answers promptly. She seems to be in better spirits the closer I get.
As evening approaches, I watch as the sun hovers over the horizon, lighting up the clouds to the west in a spectacular fiery glow.
There’s nothing like a Texas sunset.
I pick up the phone and call Anne to tell her that she should step outside to take a look.
But this time she doesn’t answer.
Chapter 7
THE TRUCK’S HEADLIGHTS cut through the growing darkness. I keep checking the clock, trying Anne again and again, but there’s no answer. She could be in the shower. She could be watching TV. She could be listening to music while she cooks dinner.
All of those options seem more probable than the one I’m afraid of: she could be dead.
Finally, after ten unanswered calls in fifteen minutes, I contact 911 and ask to be put through to the dispatcher in my hometown. I give the dispatcher Anne’s address—I know the address; it used to be my house—and I explain the situation as succinctly as I can.
“Just send a car out there to check on her,” I say. “Please.”
After I get off the line, I put more pressure on the gas pedal and the speedometer creeps higher. I’m still an hour away if I stick to this speed.
“Screw it,” I say.
I turn on the lights and siren, and I put the pedal down.
I start flying around cars like they’re standing still. When I get to the rural highway where Anne’s house is located, I can see red and blue strobes flashing in the distance. I let out a long breath and ease up on the gas.
But then I get closer and the scene looks all wrong. There are way too many flashing lights from multiple police cars and an ambulance. There are uniformed officers taping off the perimeter of the property, and parked out front is a van with POLICE CRIME SCENE UNIT stenciled on the side.
I skid to a halt on the gravel driveway and rush out of the car. Two patrolmen move to stop me, but I point to the badge on my shirt.
The house is crowded with uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, and forensic technicians. I shove past them all, and when I come to the threshold of the living room, my breathing stops. My body turns to ice.
I can’t believe all the blood.
Bright crimson splatters on the walls.
Dark Merlot puddles soaking into the carpet.
Dried rivulets running out of the wounds in Anne’s body.
She is lying on the carpet with bullet holes in her chest, her arms, her legs, and—as the phone caller had promised—her face.
I have seen a lot of murder victims in my life, but I’ve never seen this happen to someone I loved. Seeing Anne’s face—her eyes glassy and vacant, her skin streaked with congealing blood—is too much for me to bear. The ground beneath my feet is moving, like an earthquake no one else seems to feel. The food in my stomach climbs toward my throat.
I stagger out of the house and fall onto my hands and knees in the grass. I retch and my lunch comes up in an acidic, meaty heap.
I sit back on my haunches and try to breathe. I close my eyes. My skin is clammy with sweat.
A patrolman walks up next to me and says, very respectfully, “You okay, Ranger?”
I don’t answer. I just breathe in the fresh-cut grass and try to make sense of the world now that Anne is gone.
A voice barks an order from just inside the doorway.
“That’s her ex-husband,” the voice says to the patrolman. “Keep him out of here. He’s a suspect.”
Chapter 8
SOMEONE GIVES ME a bottle of water, so I swish the liquid around in my mouth and spit it out. I do this until the water is almost gone, but I can’t seem to get rid of the taste of vomit.
I lean against the tailgate of my truck. Unlike earlier today, when I could wait for the chief of police to come talk to me, I can’t be patient at all. I need answers now.
A patrolman seems to have been assigned the task of keeping his eyes on me. I ask him questions, but the kid doesn’t know a thing.
Several of the officers on the scene k
now me, and a few come up to express their condolences. Many look shaken. Redbud is a small town, and most of them knew Anne. Some of them went to high school with the two of us.
Finally, DeAndre Purvis, a local detective, steps out the front door and heads my way. Purvis didn’t grow up here like most of the men on the scene, but I know him from the years I worked in this jurisdiction.
“Hey, Rory,” Purvis says. His tone is compassionate and much different than the authoritative one he used earlier, when he said I was a suspect. “This is a hell of a thing. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m seriously a suspect?” I ask, making no effort to hide the contempt in my voice.
Purvis gives me a look that says, Of course you are. “You know how this works, Rory. Everyone she knew is a suspect until we rule them out.”
The red and blue lights flash across Purvis’s dark skin. He’s about three inches shorter than me, putting him at about five ten or eleven, and a few years older than me, probably in his forties or at least close to it. Though an outsider might not be able to detect a difference between his New Orleans accent and my Texas drawl, to my fellow Texans, it makes him stick out like a sore thumb.
I always heard mixed reviews about him as a detective.
“You’re right,” I tell him. I swish more water in my mouth and spit. “So what can you tell me?”
“Let me ask you a few questions,” Purvis says. “Then I’ll tell you what I can.”
I agree, knowing I’ll get myself off the suspect list as fast as possible. It’ll be good to get some answers once that pesky bit of business is over.
“Where’ve you been for the past couple hours?”
I explain that I was driving up from McAllen after Anne called me. I can tell that Purvis is trying to do the math based on my timeline. Could I have made it here in time to commit the murder? Not unless I was driving 150 miles an hour the whole way.
“Anyone in McAllen who can verify you were there?”
Texas Ranger Page 2
