MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  Eating my half of the sandwich, the dog and I padded back down the hall to the office and fished out the file labeled Organized Crime, took it to the living room, and spread the contents on the Turkish rug.

  CNN was still droning about terror alerts, so I flipped to Turner Classics, where The Big Sleep sizzled onscreen.

  Bacall had Bogey practically panting after her. I wondered about Logan, where he was and if he was okay. I was pretty sure when he found Obregon that she would try to eat him alive. An unexpected jolt of jealousy punched me in the stomach. She was beautiful and charming, but so are some snakes.

  Sighing, I sorted the clippings and interviews into two piles one for El Patron and one for the Syndicate flipped open a fresh sheet of paper on the legal pad, and made a flow chart, looking for connections.

  I zipped through my little red notebook, glancing over the notes I’d taken during my meeting with Soliz.

  The Syndicate began as a Mexican-American prison gang meant to protect Tejano prisoners from other organized gangs locked up in Folsom. Two decades later, they expanded to street crimes, including drug trafficking, extortion, and pressure rackets.

  Within the past decade, the Syndicate became more organized and began ruling its areas of Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso with an iron fist.

  I placed the archived articles in ascending order according to date. There was a distinct spike in execution-style killings eight years ago, but the number tapered off within a year. Following that trend, there were significantly fewer taggings and gang-related graffiti in all three cities. There were also fewer street shootouts and fewer arrests, although that didn’t mean the crime wasn’t still there only that it was being controlled.

  The Syndicate was moving from street crime to organized crime, which meant they were probably getting some influence in local police departments, city governments, and probably even some judicial muscle.

  I had a dozen articles regarding bribery between bail bondsmen and the judicial branch in El Paso, but the witnesses mysteriously came up missing.

  I thought of Diego and shivered.

  Shaking it off, I lined up the info on El Patron some of which I’d gathered when I’d had my first run-in with Selena Obregon and her ear-chopping, Firestone-burning ilk. El Patron was an Argentinean outfit that came to Central Texas fully organized and running like a well-oiled machine. Their scouts and secondaries came in with smuggling, money laundering, and some insurance fraud, and were successful for a year and a half until the leadership arrived. Selena Obregon was crazy as batshit and blew the entire operation. John Fiennes, the other primary, was just as greedy a bastard. Gorgeous and hypnotic, too, but that’s also what they said about Ted Bundy.

  Onscreen, Bogey’s voice growled along. The black-and-white movie cast amorphous shadows across the living room, making my eyelids feel heavy. I drank some bourbon and Diet Coke and, with much grumbling on his part, scooted Marlowe over on the sofa. It’d been a long day, and the morning was bringing another one hot on its heels.

  I pulled the quilt over me and settled in to watch the end of the movie. My mind drifted back to Obregon, and my heart did a nervous riff against my rib cage. How had she escaped with a marshal in the bloody melee at the courthouse?

  The phone rang, and I yelped.

  The ringing was muffled because Muse was sprawled on the cordless, and she performed a lot of ceremonial bitching as I pulled the receiver out from under her. Muse stalked down the hall toward the bedroom.

  “Hello,” I said, juggling the receiver.

  “Hey, kid, missed talking to you at the wake.”

  “Logan,” I said, feeling a sharp nip of lust.

  “No breakins, no threatening letters? No photographs, no dead birds?” he said. I turned and looked back out my living room window, where the young cop was still in his cruiser, watching my house.

  “Not today. Where are you?”

  “Doing some paperwork at the office. I’m going out of town for a while.”

  “Is this one of those things where you can’t tell me where you’re going or when you’ll be back or if you’re going to be in a war zone?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Have you got a lead on Obregon?” I said, and he was quiet. I got a terrible vision of Logan in the wilds of Argentina, dodging bullets and the even more deadly claws of Obregon the She-beast. “Can you at least tell me if you’re leaving the country?”

  More silence.

  I sighed. “Can you tell me if you’re close?”

  “Every day a little closer. How ‘bout you?’

  I looked down at the clutter of papers covering my living room floor. “Working on it.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Heard you were looking for Diego DeLeon today.”

  I had to stop myself from growling. “Did you talk to Deke?”

  “Just warning you. You poke DeLeon with a stick, he’s liable to poke back.”

  “Yes, I’ve had him take a poke at me before.”

  “God, you are stubborn,” he said, and I could practically see him pounding his head on his desk.

  I wanted to say “No, I’m not,” but a sudden and unexpected bout of maturity reared its ugly head. Instead, I said, “Do you think El Patron is back from the dead? Do you think Obregon is going to reorganize?”

  “She’ll try. But you chop a snake at the head, the body wriggles for a while, and then it’s road kill.”

  “As long as there’s not a second snake slithering around in the bushes?”

  “There’s always that.”

  I sighed. “Is there a second snake?” He was quiet.

  “Cauley, there are going to be times when our jobs put us at crosspurposes.”

  I blinked, feeling like I’d just been suckerpunched. I swallowed the punch along with a big slug of bourbon and Diet Coke.

  “How big are the crossed purposes?” I said. “Only as big as you let them get.”

  I took a breath in and let it out slowly. “When are you leaving?”

  “Early tomorrow.”

  I nodded to myself. “You’ll be careful, right?

  I could practically hear him smile on the line. “You too, kid.”

  “I’m not the one heading into a war zone,” I said.

  He was quiet again, and then he said, “Don’t be so sure.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Faith Puckett has been missing for two days,” Tres said into Miranda’s microphone, his long hair lifting in the hot breeze. “She’s eighteen years old.

  Eighteen and with the voice of an angel. She has her whole life ahead of her.” He stopped, closed his eyes, took a deep breath through his nose, and began again.

  “Faith was supposed to start recording her first CD tomorrow evening.” Behind him, Kimmie Ray stood holding a photo of Faith, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Cantu stood off to the side, out of camera range, leaning against a haggard-looking red oak. He nodded, encouraging them to continue.

  I’d rolled out of bed before daybreak and headed for the search site to meet Mia. Marlowe was exhausted from sleeping on the sofa, and he and the cat were both in bed when I left.

  As I suspected, there were fewer volunteers and less media. The big white bus brought the uniformed church kids back in, armed with cookies and Kool-Aid and a prayer circle.

  “That’s her stepbrother, right? What’s he doing?” Mia said, sidling up to me, Nikon out and ready. She lined up her shot to get Tres in the foreground of the rising sun.

  “Rescue tactics. He’s putting a face and name to the missing person. If she has been kidnapped and her captor sees this broadcast, it makes her more human to her captor repeating her name, reiterating the fact that she has a family who misses her.”

  Mia nodded and snapped another shot.

  Tres held up a photo of Faith. It was an older shot, the way she looked before she went off to boarding school. I frowned and touched Mia’s arm, shaking her off the shot. She raised a brow but lowered
her camera.

  “She’s got so much to live for,” Tres said. “Please. If you have any information, any information at all, please call this number. Any information that leads to Faith’s safe return…” he looked down at his feet. “Well, we’d appreciate it.”

  “You mentioned a reward,” Miranda said as her cameraman pushed in on the two of them.

  Tres nodded and looked straight into the lens. “Any information any at all, if it has anything to do with helping us find Faith and bring her home will be rewarded.”

  Miranda wrapped it up and stalked off to find fresh meat. Tres made his way toward Cantu.

  “That right?” Tres said, and Cantu nodded. “Did good.”

  Tres stared out over the horizon.

  Behind us, Olivia cantered up to Cantu with her clipboard, spoke softly, and the two rushed back to base.

  Mia moved closer to me, quietly snapping her lens cap onto her camera.

  “At this rate, you people are never going to find her,” Tres said. “I’m setting up a second command post at my house on the other end of the ranch.”

  Mia and I cast each other sideways glances.

  “Tres,” I said. “I know you’re worried, but Cantu is very good at what he does. Team Six is the best in the region.”

  Tres shook his head. “It’s been over two days now. Do you know how mentally fragile Faith is? I have resources you people will never have.”

  He scanned the field as volunteer searchers linked arms to search another area.

  Tres turned to me and looked me hard in the eyes. “I want a media blitz. I want you and your photographer to come to my house this afternoon to help me get organized.”

  My photographer? To her credit, Mia didn’t hex him right there on the spot.

  “Tres, I don’t know I think you should talk to Cantu about this…” He reached into his pocket and produced a business card, as though he hadn’t given me one before.

  “She’s out there somewhere, and I’ll find her,” he growled.

  I looked down at the card, feeling a little sick. He was asking me to step outside the lines. I have no problem with that, as long as I think the lines are arbitrary.

  Cantu was never arbitrary.

  Tres was staring back at base camp, where Cantu and an EMT were treating a young female volunteer for heat exhaustion.

  I blew out a breath and slipped the card into my pocket, watching as Cantu pressed a blue cool pack on the girl’s forehead.

  To Tres, I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Tres headed off to speak with Hollis, and I looked at Mia. “What are you going to do?” Mia said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know yet.”

  We gazed out over the search scene, and Mia uncapped her camera for a wide shot. Deke was there and the girls I’d spoken with at Boners. Hollis was pacing about, barking orders into his radio. The girls didn’t seem impressed.

  The icky deejay from the club jittered by the fence, chattering warp speed on a cell phone. Ethan was out with the foot searchers, as he’d been since the first day. Even Kimmie Ray made a brief appearance.

  “All the usual suspects,” Mia said, framing her shot.

  I shook my head. “Not all of them,” I said. “Where’s Josh?”

  *

  “Are you alone?” I said to Cantu over the phone.

  I was back in my office, looking at the preliminary arson reports on the two trailer fires.

  “As alone as I can be with a hundred volunteers running around, passing out from the heat.”

  Cantu sounded tired more tired than usual and I was guessing Junior Hollis had a lot to do with that.

  “You know anything about Tres Ainsworth going cowboy and starting up his own search op?” Cantu said.

  “He’s asked me to come help. I said I’d do what I could, but I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Only to see what’s going on.”

  He was quiet. “Don’t go alone.”

  “Of course I’m not going alone. I’m taking Mia.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel so much better. Where’s Logan?”

  “Gone.”

  There was a long silence, and he said, “We’re not getting anywhere with Boss Hogg in charge. I keep hoping Hollis will haul his fat ass out of here and let us do our job.”

  “Not likely,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, a guy can hope. When and where are you supposed to do this thing with the Boy King?”

  “Tres’s house, two o’clock, which means I might have to rearrange a meeting with Dan Soliz.”

  “Cauley, stay out of the gang thing,” he said, and I knew from experience he was frowning with his whole face.

  “My boss just got here. Gotta go,” I said. “I’ll let you know how it goes at the Ainsworth Palace of Dysfunction.”

  “What the hell are you doing here this early?” Tanner grumped, trudging down the hall with a giant cup of coffee and a stack of expense reports.

  “Why does everyone keep saying that,” I said, falling in behind him, armed with my little red notebook as we went into the Cage.

  “And so it begins,” he said, and sighed. “What’ve you got?”

  “You got my stuff on the gang thing last night, but I’m going to go see Dan Soliz. And funny, Diego DeLeon the head thug at the Syndicate was at Puck’s funeral. We know Puck was a soldier for El Patron. I want to talk to Soliz.”

  Tanner was awake now. He set his coffee and paperwork on his desk and went for a licorice whip.

  “Okay,” he said carefully. “What’s got your engines on afterburn?”

  I hopped up on his desk. “I don’t know, but something. This morning at the search site, Tres Ainsworth told me he’s going to branch off, start his own search operation.”

  Tanner dropped into his swivel chair. “What?”

  “Yeah, that was my reaction, too. He wants me to help him set it up.”

  Tanner gnawed the red candy vine. “Your buddy Cantu know about this?”

  “He does now.”

  Tanner shook his head, his nostrils flared like he’d just smelled a scoop. “What are you going to do?”

  “Go see what’s going on.”

  “I take it the search for the girl isn’t going well.”

  I shook my head. “It’s technically out of Cantu’s jurisdiction. Dawes County’s running it like a joke.”

  “You checking credit cards, phone calls, insurance, the will?”

  “Ethan’s working on it. No activity on bank or credit cards. Her cell was in the trailer fire.”

  “Ethan’s showing a lot of interest in this.” I nodded but didn’t comment.

  “Any word on the girl they found in the fire?”

  “They ID’d her. She’s at Brooke’s burn unit, still in intensive care. She’s a dancer who worked with Faith. Similar build, similar hair. I only put out the general stuff because they haven’t found her family for notification yet.”

  Tanner nodded. “They think the girl’s an accident?”

  “Cantu doesn’t.”

  Still gnawing, he nodded, then got up and paced to the window. “Who else knows about the second search?”

  “Mia and whoever else he’s asked to help. I can’t imagine it’d be that many people it takes a near miracle to raise a search team in any kind of reasonable order, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Tanner nodded and chewed and then nodded again. “Cauley, you’re up to your ass in this thing.”

  My blood pressure spiked, and I could feel a scolding coming on. “We give you a lot of leeway with the cops and with the whole search-and-rescue thing because you’ve got an in, and we figure it’s sort of like we’ve got a reporter embedded in local law enforcement.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, so?”

  “Just don’t forget whose side you’re on. You’re not a mouthpiece for the police department. Your job is to get all the information that’s import
ant to the public and let the public sort it out.”

  My jaw dropped. An uncommon bit of good sense grabbed the words that almost flew out of my mouth. It also prevented me from kicking him in the leg.s

  “Tanner, I’m a volunteer for the search unit, just like everyone else on the team except Olivia and Cantu. That crew is a good cross-section we’ve got a dentist, a photographer, a CPA, and a housewife. Our District Attorney would give his left nut for a jury makeup like Team Six. I don’t think any of us forget that we’re volunteers.”

  “I knew you were going to take it that way, and that’s not how I meant it,” he said. “I was embedded in Afghanistan. I know how you start to depend on each other, get all buddy-buddy, watch each other’s backs. I’m just telling you, forewarned is forearmed.”

  I gaped at him. I didn’t know he’d been in Afghanistan. As far as I knew, his life started when he’d been an anchor at ESPN. You tend to forget that a journalism degree can mean a lot of things. I tried to imagine him in fatigues and a Kevlar vest, but I just couldn’t picture his perfect broadcast-anchor hair getting messy in the dusty Afghani desert.

  Aunt Kat always said Austin was the place to come to be who you always wanted to be or to be who you really are. I wondered now who Tanner really was.

  I started to ask him about it, but he was seated at his desk, his head in his hand, looking at the reports. I was being dismissed.

  I swallowed. “Okay,” I said, hopping down, careful not to drag any papers with me when I went. “I’m going to go get busy.”

  “You know you still gotta write obituaries, right? Your inbox is getting full.”

  “I did half of them this morning, along with a short on the search progress.”

  Tanner nodded.

  “I think Ainsworth is going to want a big article on his new and improved search operation.”

  “You probably wouldn’t lose money on that bet. See what you find out, and we’ll talk about it when you get back.” He blew out a breath. “Where’s your FBI agent in all this?”

  “Gone,” I said, and Tanner nodded.

  “Just…” he shook his head. “Be careful.” I nodded and headed for the door. “Cauley?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fine job on getting the search stuff out on the web.”