MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  Lots of people visit Austin. No one ever leaves.

  I turned from the window toward Logan. “So where are we heading?”

  “To tie up some loose ends. What kind of shoes are you wearing?” he said, sliding a glance down my legs.

  Each of my nerve endings pinged simultaneously. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me?”

  “What kind of shoes?” he said, taking an abrupt right. “We’re going off-road.”

  I gripped the dash as the car squealed onto Mount Bonnell Road. I glanced down at my Keds, glad for once that I’d forgone fabulous for functional.

  “We’re goin’ up to Mount Bonnell?” Puck jammed his head over the console again, wiggling his shaggy, dark brows at me.

  My upper lip curled into a grimace.

  Mount Bonnell has one of the most spectacular views in Central Texas miles and miles of rolling Hill Country to the west and the glittering Austin skyline to the east. It’s also one of the hottest spots for the back-seat mambo in the four-county region.

  “I never been up to Mount Bonnell. It’s kind of a lover’s leap, right?” Puck was all but bouncing at the edge of his seat. “The three of us are going up there? Really?”

  I stared at him.

  Logan’s jaw muscle tensed, and for a minute I thought he was going to elbow the weasel right in his pointy nose.

  “Three of us are going up,” Logan said. “Two of us are coming back.”

  Puck’s overlarge Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard and sat back in his seat.

  “We’re doing it here? I thought most of these things went down east of Austin,” I said.

  “Most of them do. But we’re on a tight schedule. Today’s the only day he won’t be accounted for. We stage the obit today and postdate it for next week. He needs to be seen in public a couple of times this week, then we put the word on the street he’s been snuffed, flash the right people the obit, and he’s out of it until his court date.”

  “And then you’re finished babysitting?” “Until some other disaster blows in.”

  “Hey! You callin’ me a disaster?” Puck said. Logan ignored him.

  It was harder for me. I stared out the window. I was going to help fake a death. It seemed surreal. But then, half the time I spent with Logan was surreal.

  I shivered. There were people bad people who were going to think Puck was dead. But if Puck could help put Selena Obregon and El Patron her malicious band of murderers behind bars, it was worth it. Even after two months, the mere thought of Obregon still made my stomach twist into a big, oily knot.

  Logan turned into the narrow lot at the foot of the enormous limestone cliff, parked, and got out of the car.

  I took a deep breath and climbed out after him.

  Marlowe bounded out of the passenger door after me, probably using Puck’s lap as a springboard, judging from the way the weasel yelped.

  Logan pointed at Marlowe. “Back.”

  The dog leapt back into the car and waited. I shook my head. One of these days, I was going to have to figure out how Logan did that.

  I stood beside Logan at the back of the battered car, which probably had been a pinata in a former life. The scents of cedar and blue sage wafted on the warm breeze and the sky was brilliant with stars not a scene conducive to murder. In the movies, murders take place in cold, dark alleys not on warm, beautiful, tree-covered banks overlooking a moonlit river. But this was Austin, where anything could happen and usually did.

  Logan rummaged through the trunk, which was jammed with a large duffle bag, two radio consoles, a plastic tool kit marked Crime Scene, a box of twist-tie handcuffs, three large flashlights and an assorted array of weaponry. He pulled a leather shoulder holster from beneath a blanket and slid it over his right arm.

  “Jeez,” I said. “You use all this stuff?”

  “Not all at once,” he said, and I grinned. The edginess I’d been feeling started to ease.

  Puck stumbled out of the car and gawked at the one hundred steps that led straight up to the rocky point. Puck was probably in his mid-twenties, but his voice had a telltale smoker’s rasp and his butt was shaped like it’d been acquainted with the tops of too many barstools.

  At the foot of the stairs, he balked probably afraid Logan wouldn’t let him stop for a smoke break.

  “That’s a helluvalot of stairs.” He turned back to Logan and pointed at the park sign. “Says here this place locks up at ten, right? Maybe we should just do this here you know, we don’t want to mess this up ‘cause some neighbor calls on criminal mischief or something. I could get made.’

  “Yeah,” Logan said. “I hear you’re a real stickler for rules.” Logan shoved a clip into a huge .45.

  Puck’s eyes lit up. “Hey, is that the gun you’re gonna shoot me with?

  Logan stared at him. “Can I see it?”

  “No.”

  I shook my head. Texas men and their firearms the final frontier. Logan checked the clip and then handed me a Polaroid camera, hefted the duffle over his shoulder, placed his left hand at the small of my back, and guided me toward the stairs. Despite the warmth of his large hand, a cold chill skittered up my spine. “You ready?” Logan said, and I blinked.

  Ready? I wasn’t sure. Me on an honest-to-God FBI mission. My heart pounded and I felt a little dizzy. But Logan was trusting me with this assignment, and I liked the way it felt.

  As we headed up the stairs, I could feel Logan’s presence behind me, solid and steady. I’d forgotten how tall he was. His hand was strong, and I could feel the heat of it through my tee shirt, spreading to some underused parts of my body…

  I shook my head. Good grief, Cauley get a grip!

  “You okay?” Logan said, and I nodded.

  To be fair, I hadn’t seen him in more than a month, and I hadn’t felt a hand on my back, not to mention any other part of my body, since Logan set off my fireworks and then left on the Fourth of July. I figured I was entitled to a little latent lust, even under the less-than-desirable circumstances.

  The three of us trekked up the steps, with much wheezing and moaning from Puck, past the park rules sign at the top. No one in after ten, no glass bottles, pick up your own trash, no throwing rocks off the cliff…

  Sounded reasonable. Mount Bonnell is the highest point in Austin. It’s a small park but a spectacular one, with a narrow observation deck and a rustic pavilion at the top. Rock throwing used to be a real problem at the park, which is one of the reasons they’d set a curfew. Some of the high-dollar homes perched beneath the peak had holes the size of small craters in their expensive Spanish tile roofs because some nitwit downed a couple of beers and pitched golf-ball-sized rocks from the peak.

  I gazed around in the tree-shrouded darkness. Puck had been right about one thing the park definitely closed at ten. The place was deserted.

  We were too high to hear the lake lapping the shoreline, but I could smell the fresh water, even at that distance. The only sounds were the rasp of rustling branches and a chirring chorus of cicadas.

  “Stick close,” Logan said, and I nodded.

  Logan led us past the pavilion, where we picked our way along a crude deer path fifty feet straight down to an outcropping. Beyond that, the cliff dropped another seven hundred feet down to the lake.

  “Stay away from the ledge,” Logan said, setting the duffle on a waist-high boulder.

  I looked down. Way down.

  My stomach lurched. “No problem,” I said, edging back toward Logan

  Puck didn’t seem impressed by the altitude. “This is it? This don’t look so bad. Hey! You see those houses down there? Jeez! Talk about la mansiones.”

  I followed Puck’s pointing finger. He was right. The homes tucked into the cliffside were multi-million-dollar estates some I recognized from the ubiquitous two-page spreads Meggie in the Sentinel’s Lifestyle section can’t seem to stop covering.

  Puck stood peering over the edge like he was deep in thought and unfamiliar with the process. He turned a
bruptly and shouted, “Hey, y’all. Watch this!”

  He picked up a rock the size of a softball and heaved back to throw it over the cliff. Judging from the look on Logan’s face, it could have been Puck’s last act.

  But the scree beneath Puck’s boots gave way, and as though he’d seen it coming, Logan grabbed him by the back of his neck and jerked hard. Puck’s life flashed before my eyes.

  “Give me that,” Logan growled, wrenching the rock from Puck’s grip. “You keep that up and we’re not going to have to fake your death.” Logan’s voice was low and rough, and I had to give him an A-plus for not pitching Puck over the edge right then and there. Logan is a patient man, but I have found there are limits to his civility.

  “Gimme a break,” Puck said. “What are there, about fifty houses down there? Statistically, the odds of doing any real damage ‘

  Logan leveled a John Wayne gaze on Puck, and Puck stood down. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently, and after a big swallow he said, “Jeez. Take a pill. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  “You never do. Just stay there and don’t move,” Logan said.

  Puck settled in by the rock as Logan unzipped his duffle, extracting a trash bag, a shirt, and a squeeze bottle of catsup.

  Logan twisted a silencer onto the barrel of the gun. “Take off your shirt.”

  Puck grinned at me.

  “I think he meant you,” I said. “Oh, yeah, right,” he said.

  He hesitated, then yanked his shirt over his head. Puck had a red farmer’s tan that ended abruptly at his neck and a tattoo on each arm one of a Confederate flag and the other of an elaborate pot leaf behind a snake slithering up a dagger. He noticed me staring at the tattoos but obviously mistook my attention. “You like “em? I can get you a good deal on “em.”

  “A real renaissance man,” I said. Logan grinned.

  “How come you want my shirt?” Puck wanted to know.

  Logan whipped Puck’s shirt over a low-slung oak branch, stepped back, leveled his weapon, and shot the shirt.

  The gun made three weird thwip, thwip, thwip sounds, the shirt jerked three times over the branch and the bullets pinged off a rock below.

  Puck jumped. “Holy shit! What the hell are you doing?” “Goin’ for reality.” Logan tossed Puck the shirt.

  Catching the shirt, Puck poked his fingers through three holes. “This was a good shirt! Why didn’t you shoot a hole in that other piece of shit shirt you just pulled out of the bag?”

  “I told you to wear something old,” Logan said.

  “Well, yeah, but you didn’t say you were going to shoot holes in it,” Puck grumbled. He pulled the ruined shirt back over his head, careful not to muss his hair.

  Ignoring him, Logan turned and leapt about eight feet down to the next rocky ledge. He shifted back and forth, checking for sturdiness.

  He looked up at Puck. “Your turn.”

  Puck looked down, warily, watching Logan check the rock. I waited.

  Shrugging, Puck said “See ya” and jumped off the ledge to join Logan.

  “Not if I see you first,” I muttered.

  “Hey, where do you want me?” I called down to Logan, dizzy at the height.

  “Right where you are,” he said. “Just point the camera down the incline when I get him in position.”

  He turned to Puck. “Roll up your sleeves so we can see your tats, then get on your stomach, face to the side so we can get it on film.”

  Puck hesitated, but he did as he was told.

  Even at that distance, I could see a shift in Puck’s demeanor. As he knelt down on the rock, his back slumped a little and he wavered. I didn’t know him very well, but I thought he was getting spooked.

  “Hey,” I called down. “This seems like a lot of trouble. Why can’t you just give the money back?”

  Puck sneered. “Aside from the fact that I don’t have the cash, they don’t let you do that, blondie.” I didn’t say anything, but he looked up at me, agitated. “I was helping my sister out of a sort of contract, okay? She don’t need any of this shit rainin’ on her.”

  “All right, get down,” Logan said, his hand at Puck’s shoulder. “We gotta get this done before daylight.”

  Logan shook the bottle of catsup and squeezed it in short, sharp bursts so that it spattered the rock, then poured three big globs on the holes in Puck’s shirt.

  “Ugh, that feels disgustin’!” Puck yelped.

  But I was still thinking about the sister. “Contract?”

  I stood staring down at the bizarre scene unfolding. I knew the blood was fake and no one was hurt, but it felt creepy with Puck laying there in a crumpled heap halfway down the cliff, gaping red bullet holes in his shirt barely visible in the dawn’s early light.

  Unease prickled the back of my neck. Puck wasn’t a likeable guy, but somebody out there wanted him dead. And he had a sister in trouble.

  “Yeah,” Puck called up, his voice muffled by his awkward position. “She’s a singer and she’s real good. All she needs is a video. We’re this close.”

  He indicated with his fingers how close they were.

  Ah, his sister was a musician. Anywhere else, that might have been news, but Austin bills itself as the Music Capital of the World. Half the waiters and most of the cab drivers in Austin are musicians waiting for their big break. The other half are writers, but I don’t like to go there.

  “Move your arm out by your head and hold still,” Logan said to

  Puck. “You ready with the camera, Cauley?”

  “Yeah,” I said, aiming the Polaroid straight down. I snapped three shots, careful not to get the toes of my shoes in the frame, and placed the developing photos on the boulder as the camera spit them out.

  I peered down at the white-framed window of black film. The image began to surface from the void, and there was Puck, broken and bloodsoaked on a boulder. I grimaced, fighting back a sudden wave of nausea. I knew Logan knew what he was doing, so I fought the urge to call down to him, I’ve got a really bad feeling about this…

  “We done here?” Puck said. “I gotta go shake the stick.”

  Logan tossed Puck the clean shirt and led the way back up the steep rock face as Puck wandered into a thicket of live oaks.

  I grimaced. “He couldn’t have waited?”

  “He missed that chapter in Emily Post,” Logan said. He brushed off a nearby bench so we could sit down.

  I shook my head. “You’ve got the patience of a saint.”

  Logan shrugged. “He’s a pain in the ass but he’s a good informant. He testifies and we get Selena Obregon tied to El Patron, we got them all for organized crime, tax evasion, and all kinds of other good stuff.”

  I sat down beside him, suddenly very aware that we were alone. I smoothed out my hair, wishing I’d had time to do something that resembled an actual style before leaving the house. There ought to be a rule a guy should give a girl at least an hour’s notice before asking her to help fake a hit.

  He was quiet, like he was edging around something he wasn’t sure how to approach. He blew out a breath and said, “You heard from John Fiennes lately?”

  I felt like I’d been suckerpunched. Of all the things that could have surprised me on a night like this, I wouldn’t have guessed that’s what Logan had on his mind.

  John Fiennes was the missing piece in the El Patron trial the one that got away. He was a darkly handsome, young Pierce Brosnan type: beautiful, mysterious, and with the soul of an assassin. He got away with a truckload of antique gold, a lot of my research on the Argentinean crime syndicate, and a chunk of my heart. While it is true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, I was trying to be a bigger person. Some days it works better than others.

  I suspected Logan knew there was more to the Fiennes thing thanI’d told him, but he hadn’t pressed it. Until now.

  Drawing in some air, I said, “No. Not since that last call. If I had heard from him, I’d have called you and Cantu and the United States Army.”
>
  Well. Maybe not the Army.

  “No phone calls?” he said, and a streak of irritation ground up my spine like nails on a chalkboard.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been getting some heavy breathers, but I assumed that’s because I’m testifying at the trial or that it was one of the dorks that Mia and Brynn tried to set me up with so no, I haven’t heard from John.”

  I wondered if his interest in Fiennes was personal or professional. With Logan, I’ve found that it is sometimes both.

  “Phone calls with heavy breathing?” he said, and I groaned.

  “If you will recall,” I said, “you yourself gave me a phone full of heavy breathing just this morning.”

  Logan chuckled. “That was different,” he said, and the tension between us eased.

  “So Puck is being pretty altruistic, considering he thinks his life is in danger,” I said, and Logan looked out across the horizon.

  “Yeah, funny, isn’t it?” I was quiet.

  “Funny thing about a blabbermouth they just can’t keep a secret. Especially when there’s a secret they’re dying to tell.”

  That got my attention. Being a natural-born snoop, my ears were pricked. “You think there’s more he’s not telling, and you’re hoping he’ll crack at the trial or be so indebted to you for saving his life that he’ll tell you when the time comes?”

  Logan didn’t say anything, but I could feel something inside him relax. Probably there weren’t a lot of people he could talk to, and it made me feel like Queen of the Known Universe that I was one of those people.

  The predawn air was heavy with quiet. We sat there, looking at the lake below, and I felt the small space between us begin to buzz with electricity.

  I snuck a surreptitious glance at him. His dark hair was short, shorter than the last time I’d seen him. His chin was strong and his eyes were the color of warm chocolate. His nose was a little crooked, like he’d seen both sides of a bad punch and came out none the wiser. And we were on top of Mount Bonnell, the most romantic spot in Central Texas if you weren’t helping fake the murder of a guy who could be the poster child for celibacy.