The kid hesitated again. All I needed to do was look at the switch. “The guy calls us sometimes. He’s in the food business. Guy’s name is Billy Sharpe. Dude’s a real chingada madre.”
“I bet. The guy you were talking to in Tarrytown?”
He nodded.
“He’s in charge of that operation?”
“Yeah.”
I figured I would follow up on that another day. Food distribution and all of its regulations didn’t really concern me. I still wasn’t convinced it had anything to do with the murder.
“So, that’s it, man. That’s all I know.” Sam swallowed. “You gonna let me go?”
I glanced at Trish. She was biting her lip.
“Yup,” I said.
“What?” Trish’s jaw dropped.
I untied the line from the skidder and gave the loose end to Trish. “If there’s one thing I’m decent at, it’s tellin’ what a man is capable of. I can tell you pretty close to how high a person can jump. I can tell how far a person can walk in the desert before they drop, and I can tell you whether or not a person’s going to be able to kill a man one day and lie about it the next.”
I gave the kid a good scowl, then a nice toothy grin.
“This kid doesn’t have what it takes to kill a man.”
Trish leaned in close and spoke so the kid couldn’t hear. “He was going to kill Ben Brown. We heard him talking to his boss about it.”
“Well, I suppose that’s something he may have intended to do,” I rumbled in a voice nearly as quiet as hers. “But he hasn’t done it yet, has he?”
“No.”
“Then we’d best be on our way.” I turned to the kid. “Son, you head east about twenty kilometers and you’ll find the Brown Ranch. Just follow that there line of mills.”
“What?”
“You heard me, kid. If ya feel too guilty of something you’ve done or something you were gonna do, then just wait here. I’ll have a cruiser pick you up in a few hours.”
The kid’s eyes wandered to his skidder.
“I’ll be confiscating that. I suspect it’s been used in a crime, so we gotta work it over some—see if there’s evidence on it.”
He slumped. The kid was beat.
“Well, deputy.” I swung a leg over the bike and scanned the controls to make sure I knew what I was doing. “Meet me at the Brown Ranch. I believe we have some business to take care of.”
Without bothering to wait for Trish to move the poor bastard, I kicked into the air. That beautiful machine took off like a rocket, complete with a deafening roar and searing fireball. The scorching Texas afternoon air scoured my face and nearly took off my hat. There was no environmentally controlled bubble around this thing. I wondered how that kid managed to go as fast as he did.
It didn’t matter, though. Something had been bothering me since that morning, and Sam’s little mission confirmed it. Ben had seen something that night. I didn’t think it was true when he’d tried to tell me that morning, but now it had just about gotten him killed. I wondered how it might have played out if I hadn’t been there to stop Sam.
I wondered how it would play out now that I had.
Times were rough out there around Dead Oak, and sometimes I was the only justice people got a chance to see.
Sometimes I wondered if there was any justice at all.
Chapter 10
Twenty minutes later, we were basking in the aroma of a rancher’s late afternoon siesta feast in the Brown’s cramped kitchen.
I glanced around the table. Ma Brown’s kids were there—at least most of them. There were twin girls, whose names I didn’t remember. They looked to be about eight or nine. Ben, in all spikes and leather, was in the unfortunate position of being right in between the two pink-clad girls, caught in the crossfire of their too-loud whispers and shrill giggling. He didn’t seem to care. He appeared to be more interested in glaring at me and sneaking glances at Trish. The kid Francis sat with a slack jaw while lights flashed in his eyes. Far as I could tell, he never once looked at anyone. Next to him was a high chair with a fat baby strapped into it and then there was Denise. Next to Denise, Trish sitting rigid in her seat with a look of mild disgust on her face. There were two other boys, maybe three and four, who sat quietly and stared at the food. They were the only two behaving like their father had been killed just that morning.
A whole pile of sausage-filled kolaches filled the center of the table. Forming a circle around it was a slew of grits, bacon, some fried eggs, and a huge loaf of steaming hot bread. A bowl of chopped fruit sat next to my right elbow on the thick slab of a table. Across from me was a pile of tamales, steaming and filling the air with peppery spices.
We weren’t eating yet. Denise Brown was leading a silent grace, which was lasting far longer than I thought it should. My head still hurt, along with some stiffness from bruising that I could feel setting into various parts of my abused body. Stopping the hectic pace just seemed to let these aches sink in. I couldn’t remember when I had last eaten. The empty pit of my stomach was calling out for those tamales, and I wasn’t sure I could wait until the end of some damn long prayer to some god who didn’t even exist.
Then, I felt something.
Deep behind my chest I felt something welling up. There was a constriction, like a difficulty pulling breath, but I was breathing just fine. My eyes watered and my chin quivered. I gripped the slab table with my right arm and squeezed hard. A tear ran down my cheek.
“Amen!” Ma Brown shouted the word, startling me.
“Amen,” I said, not sure exactly why I felt the need to. I grabbed a kolache. The pastry pulled apart and a wave of steam wafted out of it, mixing with the spicy aroma of the hot tamales. I bit into it and did my best to savor it as the heat and spice slid down into the empty pit of my belly. Trish busied herself pushing some cubes of fruit around her plate like some sort of damn princess.
“Mighty fine meal you have here, ma’am,” I said.
Ma Brown smiled. Her eyes gleamed and she shifted her metallic neck. “Well, we like to eat pretty good out here on this ranch, Mr. Crow. Glad you could come back out. I thought we might have gotten off a little bad this morning.”
I nodded and continued to eat. The tamales made their way around, and I had to try one. I untied the string and carefully peeled back the cornhusk. A blast of the spicy steam rolled up around my face and I breathed it in. It was absolutely wonderful.
Ben finally caught Trish’s eye. They locked gazes for a second. Trish ended up being the one who broke away. She had a scowl on her face. The kid grinned.
Denise seemed not to notice. “What are you here for, sheriff?”
“Besides the finest cooking this side of the Rio Grande?”
Her lips pulled into a smile, but her eyes were all business.
“Well, I do have some business here. Nothing to worry about, really.”
“What kinda business?” He voice was cold.
“Ran into a boy just a ways away from here. Sounded like he might have meant your kid Ben some harm.”
Trish jerked away from something under the table. It wasn’t enough of a movement to cause a ruckus, but she frowned and sat with her feet at an awkward angle. Ben smiled but kept his eyes on his food.
“Nothin’ to worry about?” Ma Brown asked.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t believe he was going to go through with it. In fact, I believe it’s someone Ben might already know.”
Ben perked up and then went back to his food.
“Ben,” I said, “you know a guy named Sam, right?”
“No.”
“Let me reword that.” I cleared my throat. “Ben, you know a guy named Sam.”
He looked at his food like there might be a clever answer hidden there.
“Sammer the Hammer, you call him.”
Ben smiled but didn’t look up. “I know Sammer the Hammer,” he said to his food.
I took a fried egg and slathered it with salsa. “Any idea w
hy he might be headed this way to visit you?”
Ben was silent. He looked to Trish but she avoided his gaze.
I continued. “There’s some who think he’s coming to kill you.”
He looked up at me now, briefly showing a worried look. I was worried too, though. I didn’t know why I was so worried. I figured it was gut instinct to feel protective of the kid, like some paternal impulse was kicking in.
“Kid, I’d like to get you under some protection until this blows over.”
“What?” His jaw dropped and he stood up. “Hell no! I’m safe right here.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and took a bite of egg. I chased it with a glass of cool milk.
“Sammer wasn’t on his way to kill me,” Ben said, sitting back down. “He called me when he left Austin. Warned me that the boss was gunnin’ for me. I told him it ain’t nothin’ to me. Bring it on.”
“The boss? You work for Billy Sharpe?”
Ben gave the slightest nod. “Sort of.”
“Sam warned you? Told you what Sharpe said?”
“Yeah, and he was going to pick me up, so we could get somewhere safe.”
I glanced at Trish. Reading her expression was about as easy as reading a slab of granite.
“There might be more after you.”
Ma Brown cleared her throat loudly. I realized then that she hadn’t been eating. She was winning a contest for the best glare of the day.
“Sheriff Crow,” she said deliberately. “Would you care to explain to me exactly what this is about?”
“Certainly, ma’am.” I finished my egg and sopped up the yolk with a hunk of bread. “Well, for starters we believe your husband may have been murdered.”
“He was murdered,” Trish interrupted. “We’re sure of it.”
“He was murdered, but we’re still tracking down the killer—”
“Well, you should have just asked,” she interrupted. “It was them damn Cinco Armas. They always comin’ out here, givin’ us hard time.”
Ben got a serious interest in his food.
“Well,” I said. “They’re under consideration, but we want to make sure we’re doin’ things right. You know much about the business side of this here ranch?”
“For instance,” added the deputy, “do you know who you work with for the distribution of your dairy?”
It was Ma Brown’s turn to gain a profound interest in her plate. “Dan took care of all that. Wasn’t no need for me to get into it.”
Trish kept pressing. “So you don’t know about him getting dropped from the three major distributers?”
Denise shook her head without looking up from her plate.
“Well, we think there might have been an issue with the milk—a contamination issue. Know anything about that?”
Ma Brown knit her eyebrows together in anger. I felt it too. Trish had no right to treat a murder victim’s wife with such rudeness. It was insensitive—maybe even cruel. To attack the product of Ma Brown’s ranch was the deepest kind of insult.
“Trish,” I said in a low growl. “Back off a little.”
“No, I don’t need to back off a little. This is important. We need this information, J.D.”
“But we don’t need it right now. We don’t need to get it here.”
Ma Brown let out a sob.
“J.D, listen. We need to track down this killer as soon as possible before the leads dry up. This is how I used to do it back in Austin, and I don’t see why it can’t work out here.”
I wiped the corners of my mouth and put the napkin on my plate. “Out here things work a little different. You know that already.”
She leaned in close and whispered, “How could she not know this stuff?”
I spoke back in a calm voice for everyone to hear. “We stick a little closer to tradition out here, deputy. The wife’s role is labor and tech. She manages the physical side of the operation. Man’s role is traditionally money business and keeping the house clean. Raising the kids. That sort of stuff.” It came out a little more hard line than I meant it. “Look, I understand that’s not what you’re used to in the city, but that’s how it goes out here.”
Trish stood up. “All right,” she said. “I think I’m done here. You want me to go pick up that Sam kid?”
“Might as well. If he’s on his way here, go ahead and give him a ride home. If he’s where we left him, send him to lockup.”
“You were serious about that then?”
I gave her a dry look.
“Right,” she said.
I met her gaze for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on in her head. When that didn’t work, I tapped my ear, indicating she should keep our audio link open. She nodded but didn’t look happy.
Trish thanked Ma Brown and smiled at the kids. She didn’t get much love back, but the nod was probably more than she deserved. She showed herself out. A moment later, I heard the deep hum of her cruiser lifting off.
I leaned back in my chair and picked at my teeth with a toothpick. A fat, lazy fly buzzed around the room. I watched it move from ceiling to food then back to ceiling again. The kids ate in silence, but Denise Brown didn’t seem to have an appetite.
“‘Preciate the meal, ma’am,” I said once the kids had nearly finished.
She smiled at me. “Any time, Mr. Crow.”
She meant it too. Thing about tradition is that sometimes it opens just as many doors as it closes. Tradition says that if a man comes to your house at mealtime, you feed him, especially if he’s a man of the cloth or the law. Somehow that tradition still held strong, even though there weren’t many of either type of man left. It was a good thing too. If not for tradition, I’d have still been hungry that day.
Ben spoke up. “If I come with you, will your deputy be in charge of my safety?”
“No.” Trish’s voice was in my ear immediately.
“Maybe,” I replied.
He smiled.
When I had said the thing about taking Ben into custody, I had been completely serious. Standing out in the oppressive Texas heat next to that dangerous-looking blue flamed skidder, I wasn’t so sure that having him along would really make him safer. Who could protect the kid better than his family? His mother certainly had some skill with the tech. She was likely a decent shot with a gun too. I didn’t know whether the kid would be safer with me. Even if he was safer, it probably wasn’t my place to take him away from his ma.
Still, he came. His mother stayed inside the house and tried to bore holes into my skull with her stare. Ben slouched his way out of the house. His hair was still spiked tall and black leather was covering every inch of his body except for his face. His eyes flashed red at me in the early afternoon sun. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t brought anything with him, other than the clothes on his back.
We had just launched into the scorching Texas sky when Trish’s voice came in through our audio link.
“J.D, you’re going to want to come check this out,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s Sammer the Hammer.” There was a long pause. “He’s dead.”
Chapter 11
“Johnson.” I called the station once I’d scanned the body. “We got a body comin’ in.”
“Yes, sir.” Johnson sounded tense, like he wasn’t having so hot a day either. “Someone’s looking for you, sir.”
“Who?”
“Not sure. Some guy just came in ten minutes ago. Says he wants to talk to you before moving forward with something.”
“With what?”
“No idea. Seemed to think he was in charge, though.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Pretty good-lookin’ guy, dressed in black. Wouldn’t tell me his name. Looks like some shiny from the city. Lot of metal, you know? Classy.”
“I hear ya.” I looked back at the body. “If he bothers you again, tell him I’m busy today. I’ll talk to him when I damn well please.”
Johnson hesitated, but then
, “Yes, sir.”
I felt a little guilty for making Johnson’s day harder. I was guessing the man in black wouldn’t give up so easily. This play would at least buy me some time, though. I was busy. By the look of it, I was getting busier.
Sammer the Hammer had been murdered. There was absolutely no doubt about it. He was about twenty minutes west of where we left him. The kid had passed my clever little guilt test. It wasn’t proof of his innocence, but it was about as good as we were ever going to get.
He’d seen it coming. With my face right down close to the red earth, I could see in his footprints where he turned and leaned back. Something had approached him from the sky. The ground was harder near the windmill, but the scrubby grass was disturbed in more than one place. Some of it had been stepped on.
My breathing slowed down. I scanned the ground—not with some fancy computer, but with my eyeballs. I looked at the earth the way my mother had once taught me when I was very young, before she left. Back and forth, I took in all of the details of the landscape. To the untrained eye, there might not be anything to see, but I had spent years studying the effects of people and animals on the world. To someone like me, this land was full of information.
I pushed a tuft of brittle grass to the side with the toe of my boot. Beneath it was the first bullet hole, tiny and sunken into the earth. Trish started to work on it while I continued following the trail.
Closer to the jet-black windmill, things got a little more interesting. Sam had been running. His stride showed that pretty clearly. He kept turning back, twisting the ground as he did. He stumbled at one point, making a print with three fingers of his left hand in the sand. Something had been chasing him down hard, and I suspected that he knew whoever it was wasn’t going to let him live.
There was dust on the mill. Normally, windmills get dusty. Windstorms toss up a lot of fine sand into the air and it settles everywhere. This leaves a certain pattern of dust. When it rains, the raindrops carry the dust and shift it around. This leaves a different pattern.
The dust pattern on this windmill was a third kind. It was reminiscent of a wind pattern that pointed up. The tracks closer to the windmill were muted, almost completely erased.
Justice in an Age of Metal and Men Page 9
