Culprits

by Richard Brewer

  She shivered with delight—or so it seemed, hard to know with the biting cold—her smile every bit as radiant as the sun overhead.

  “I’m glad to have the company,” he told her. And to his surprise, he actually meant it.

  In design, the sled seemed hardly different than what it might have been a century before, only the treated wood and stainless steel hardware distinguishing it from traditional predecessors. The dogs accepted their leads like professionals, and once the gear got stacked and strapped into place, it formed a natural backrest, and he took his position, Adelaide seating herself virtually in his lap, with Miki standing behind. No declamatory “Mush!” to launch them off, just a guttural wordless cry—the dogs plunged ahead, the sled jolted forward, Anik kick-started the Skidoo. They were off.

  Soon the town vanished in the distance behind them, nothing but endless white all around. The plain gave way to a cliff-bound riverbed, the water frozen over, hard as asphalt, except for a gaping crack dead ahead. Anik and Miki pulled to a stop.

  It was decided that Adelaide would remain on the sled, holding on for dear life as Miki, with another bellowing command, sent the dogs racing ahead, straight for the gap. They dove over in loose formation, dragging the sled over the crevasse at top speed, water rushing below. Adelaide screamed with panicky joy as she and the sled went airborne, landing on the gap’s far side.

  The dogs just kept running, and she would have disappeared from sight, unable to voice a command they would obey, if not for a pick-like anchor she jammed into the snow, which managed at least to slow the dogs down. Anik and Miki took off on the Skiddoo, taking a long route around beyond the gap in the ice and intercepting Adelaide far in the distance. Then Anik returned for the final rider, Mr. Russell from Ottawa, and he held on tight as the Skiddoo sped quickly over the windswept snow toward the sled.

  Mid-afternoon, they stopped to ice fish. Using a six-inch hand drill, Miki bored through the ice, then handed out rods and bits of seal meat for bait. Adelaide wandered off toward a distant bluff to relieve herself in private, and as he watched her totter away in the stiff sealskin suit, the hush of the wind the only sound as wisps of snow rippled over the ice, he felt something like fondness, even admiration. She just seemed so relaxed, so unafraid, so small and yet game for anything.

  They caught one fish, no more, and Anik cut it up to feed to the dogs. They journeyed on until darkness thickened around them, deep in a long, winding canyon.

  Miki and Anik pitched the tents, then laid out the waterproof mats and blankets, unrolled the sleeping bags side by side, a tight fit inside the small tent. The dogs, loosened from their harnesses but chained, would sleep out in the cold. Adelaide petted each one, saying good night, and they lifted their heads to accept her affection.

  The butane stove served as heater inside the tent, despite the warning label that it was not to be used indoors. Dinner was served—canned chili again, but hot—and as a treat before bed: cocoa. Only once they were snugly cocooned inside their sleeping bags did Miki turn off the burner.

  The air remained close even as the temperature dropped, fouled by the lingering smell of butane fogged by bad breath and flatulence. Anik’s snoring sawed through the stark black silence.

  He felt Adelaide’s body, no larger than a twelve-year-old girl’s, stir from time to time beside him. Strangely, he felt himself relaxing, the first time in days. Not that thoughts of death and vengeance never crossed his mind. They were constant companions, like echoes of one’s own breath in a cave. If this young woman—or Miki or Anik, for that matter—had plans to take him down, then fine, he thought, let me die—and with that he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  They rose long before sunrise, ate a breakfast of oatmeal and dried fruit chased with scalding coffee, then packed up their gear and continued heading deeper into the mouth of the river valley, the walls of the bluffs to either side rising up like sentinels packed shoulder-to-shoulder, while off to the east, the first thin rays of dawn cast a bluish sheen along the horizon.

  Anik sped off ahead on the Skidoo, searching out possible campsites for that evening, leaving the others alone with the dogs. The silence seemed to descend like a presence, nothing but the sound of the dogs’ churning paws and the sled runners skimming over hard-packed snow. He felt Adelaide easing back against him, her body relaxing into his. He resisted the impulse to wrap his arms around her waist.

  Come noon, they stopped, pulling up in the shadow of a snow-capped hill that rose from its base like a stovepipe. As Miki tended to the dogs, Adelaide shook off the hooded sealskin coat, wearing only a turtleneck underneath, and wandered off into the sunlight, shading her eyes and scanning the sky.

  A lone Arctic tern sailed far overhead. They’d seen precious little wildlife, only the occasional seal sunning itself beside a hole in the ice, ready to dive back into the water at the merest hint of a nearby bear.

  She bent over to adjust her boots, tug them back up to her knees. He turned away, playing the gentleman, not wanting to seem too obvious, checking her out, and gazed down the winding path of the frozen river among the low white hills.

  A sudden twitch of instinct, prompted from far below the surface of his mind, made him suddenly turn, and that’s when he saw it, the buck knife sheathed in leather and pulled from deep inside her boot.

  A quick tumble of thoughts—no, not thoughts, impressions—suddenly fit together neat and tight, prompting a response, a near instantaneous decision.

  First, thank God for sleep, otherwise he would have seen nothing.

  Second, his suspicions hadn’t been cowardly, but sound.

  Third, a prompt: do what O’Conner would do.

  He reached into his pocket, withdrew the .38, stepped quickly toward her, and emptied the cylinder, all six bullets, into her face, her throat, her chest.

  The gunshots echoed down the canyon like a giant’s handclaps. He stood there, holding his arm out, pulling the trigger over and over as the terrible echoes faded, giving way to the harmless click-click-click. She lay in the snow where, just a moment before, she’d stood crouching over. Blood drained from the face and neck wounds onto the snow. Her sweater darkened around the bullet holes. She stared, wide-eyed, her mouth moving open and closed in silence as her limbs twitched helplessly from shock.

  Finally, he turned toward Miki, the pistol still held rigidly out at arm’s length. The Inuit guide, standing maybe sixty yards away, stared back in silence, as though waiting to hear the impossible. Then he quickly jumped onto the sled, cried out to the dogs, and the team sped off, heading across the drifting snow toward the mouth of the frozen river, growing smaller, smaller, then disappearing beyond a jagged hill.

  He walked over and stood there, watching her die, waiting until she lay there still before reaching inside her boot for the knife. The evidence.

  Nothing was there.

  He turned to look down the canyon, the shadows of the hills stretching long across the snow in the late-day sun. Soon it would be dark, no way to discern his direction, and viciously cold. Wolves would come out, smelling Adelaide’s blood, then him. He was two days from town by dog sled. No telling how long it would take to walk.

  Chapter 6 - Snake Farm

  Manuel Ramos

  “It’s been almost a week and you still don’t have any leads? What the hell you doin’, Garza? It was a fuckin’ riot in the middle of the Crystal Q. At least a half-dozen assholes shot up the ranch and each other. I can’t believe that no one’s talkin’, no one knows shit.”

  Antonio “Tony” Garza recognized the red hue creeping up his boss’s neck, then along his jaw, nose, finally the forehead. Big Jim Spencer’s face looked like a pudgy glob of pink bubblegum. It meant the chief of police was ready to hit something, or someone, and Garza tensed up.

  “Believe it, boss. Even Harrington is playing dumb. You know what his statement said. Claimed he didn’t know what the hell happened at the house. Says he was busy with detail
s for the party. By the time he got to where the action was, no one was left except the dead and wounded ranch hands. Then, when the feds figured out where they split up the money, the only one around was the dead guy, who no one knows, and he ain’t talking.”

  He moved a few inches further from Spencer and tried to be inconspicuous.

  Garza wanted to tell Big Jim that the Crystal Q wasn’t in their jurisdiction and that every North Texas agency from the FBI to the county dogcatcher claimed the case as theirs. The Kilroy Police Department wasn’t in the mix, official or otherwise. But Big Jim was convinced that some of the thieves scattered into “Kilroy’s bailiwick.” Big Jim obsessed after a headline, something to grab the attention of the suits in Austin.

  “When I hired you, I thought you was an upgrade to the usual inbred mutants that wanna play cops and robbers.” Big Jim talked as slow as the tumbleweeds that bounced against the curb of Main Street. “Not by much. You ain’t exactly J. Edgar. If I hadn’t needed someone immediately, I might’ve passed you over, just ’cause your history is sketchy. But I hoped with your degree from UT and your experience over in Lubbock that you’d add somethin’ to our department. So far, I ain’t seen it. Not sure you’re all that cut out for police work.”

  Garza flinched. He took the job in Kilroy because he didn’t have much choice. He needed a fresh start more urgently than Spencer needed a replacement. The trouble in Lubbock—that damn Clara Johnson, no way she was only sixteen—had driven him out of Buddy Holly’s hometown, but so far it hadn’t caught up to him in Kilroy. Clara had cost him a lot of money. Well spent, but expensive.

  “We’ll get something, boss.” The words sounded hollow. “If I could lean on Harrington’s wife, Gracella, that’d be a good place to start. But I can’t even get on the ranch, much less have a one-on-one with Mrs. Harrington.”

  “Do whatever you have to do. The shoot-out has stirred up too much negative attention for Texas. The damn Citizens Improvement League is making life miserable for cops. It’s bullshit politics but if you can’t get results, I’ll find somebody who can.” He slapped his palm on his desk and Garza took the cue that it was time for him to leave.

  Tony drove the dinged-up department Crown Vic straight to his house. Slow but steady. The car had suffered seven years of police abuse and Garza didn’t like to test it. He was the least senior cop on the force, which meant he drew the most senior wheels. Fifteen minutes to his rented house on the edge of town and he saw all of Kilroy on the way. The four-room shack was the only place he could afford.

  Vivian Dollarhyde stretched on the faded living room carpet. Her lime green workout clothes—skimpy shorts, skimpier top—popped, as she liked to say, against her skin’s sweaty glow. She’d been at it since five a.m., two hours before Tony woke up. She’d run her daily five miles in the grayness of the morning moon, safe from prying eyes who might wonder about the dark-haired, obviously not-white stranger. Then for ninety minutes she tormented the used elliptical and a few weights Tony kept for those rare times he thought he should exercise. She finished with yoga twists and Pilate stretches. Tony tried not to think about it but he imagined himself jumping on her prone body and burying himself in the sanctuary of her overheated flesh.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. “Looks like you could use a drink.” It wasn’t quite lunchtime.

  He opened the refrigerator, extracted two Lone Stars, twisted their caps, and offered her one. She chugged half of the bottle before she looked at him.

  “I have to get out of this town. I’m going nuts.” She sat at the rickety table and patted her body dry with a gray towel she’d found in a closet.

  “You just got here, Vivian. What’s the rush? Besides, it’s way too hot, and I’m not talking about the weather. Every brand and style of cop is all over this part of Texas. From Fort Worth to the Oklahoma state line. South to Waco and west to Abilene. It’s like a war zone. Anyone even just a little bit off is getting rousted by state police, Rangers, you name it. You and your pals riled up more law enforcement than we’ve seen around here since they shot JFK.”

  “How the hell would you know that? You’re older than me but you ain’t that old.”

  “Whatever. I’m just sayin’.”

  Vivian wadded the towel into a ball. “That goddamn pilot.”

  “Oh, Christ. Here we go again.”

  “You don’t like it, get out.”

  He thought about reminding her that they were in his house. He kept quiet.

  “I got the right to complain. Ellison tried to kill us and he almost made off with all the money. O’Conner should’ve never let him in on the job. But the old man’s getting soft. I should’ve told him to fuck off when he said he needed me. Practically begged. Said I’d get a bigger share since I had special skills. What bullshit. All the good that share is doing me now. Can’t even buy myself a decent steak. Hell, not even a hamburger.”

  She stood up, dropped the towel on the floor and headed for the shower in the narrow bathroom. She lifted the tank top over her head and turned to Garza. “None of it would’ve happened without me. Seven million. Now look where I am.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Stuck in this pissant town, as far as I could go after the shit hit the fan, a bag of money that I can’t use, sharing a bed with your horny ass. Story of my life.” She disappeared into the bathroom, grumbling to herself.

  Tony thought about joining her in the shower but decided the mood wasn’t quite right. Vivian liked to play. But she was too wrapped up in her trouble. Too focused on how she was going to get out of the state with her money without confronting the cops or the guy who’d double-crossed the crew at the safe house. Or maybe she wanted to deal her own justice to the pilot.

  She’s crazy enough to blow it all on revenge, he thought.

  He again looked around the shack for any sign of the money but it was a fruitless search. She’d promised him a cut of her take, although she hadn’t said where she had it stashed or even how much she had. Tony calculated it was more than a hundred grand, easy. Maybe half a mil, maybe a million? There had to be mountains of money at the Crystal Q.

  She’d told him that after it went cockeyed in Fort Worth, O’Conner dropped her off on the edgy outskirts of town. Cops everywhere, no time for long goodbyes. She left the shotgun from the job with O’Conner—too conspicuous to carry around—and she hadn’t brought anything else from her own collection of guns since O’Conner provided all the equipment she thought she’d need. She didn’t like the way she felt without a weapon but accepted it as part of her situation.

  She’d run long and hard to the only person she knew in Texas who would take her in. On the point of exhaustion, she found Garza in Kilroy. Her toned body, strong lungs, parkour training, and iron will carried her across the wind-scarred merciless Texas prairie without much water or food. She described how she hid from police helicopters and curious coyotes and she cursed that she couldn’t quit thinking about how it had all gone bad.

  Over the years he’d tried to stay in contact. He always had a cell number or email address for her except when she was on the run or sweating out the latest fallout from one of her jobs. She never failed to circle back to him.

  Her career, as she called her sins and crimes, didn’t bother him. Vivian was the forbidden fruit, the type of girl his mama warned him about.

  Good thing he’d let her know he was leaving Lubbock. Here she was, in all her half-naked glory, relying on him to keep her safe and hidden from the heat with more money than he would ever make in Kilroy and all he had to do was bide his time until she made her move.

  Then he would get his share.

  Or maybe, take it all.

  . . .

  Tony finished his shift at five p.m. but told Big Jim that he would keep on it during the night, “going over the file.”

  “You have fun with that file,” Big Jim said.

  “I’m gonna drive over to the Crystal Q in the morning. Try to talk with Gracella, if I can
get her away from Clovis Harrington, if I can get past the front gate. I know a guy on the task force who’s camped out on the ranch. I’ll start with him and see where I end up.”

  The scheme sounded weak, pointless, but Tony thought he had to propose something.

  “Good luck with that. Clovis hangs onto that woman like she was the last remainin’ piece of Mexican tail in all of Texas.” Big Jim laughed at his own crudeness. “You know it’s a good three, four hours to the ranch?”

  “Yeah. So I’ll be gone all day.”

  “You’d better come back with somethin’.”

  Big Jim’s response surprised Tony. He expected to be rejected. Big Jim’s grasping at straws, he thought.

  On the way home, Tony hoped Vivian would go with him to the ranch. Then he shook his head. “Now that is a stupid idea,” he mumbled. He again drove slowly through the Kilroy streets until he was back at his house.

  “Hey, baby,” he hollered from the front door.

  “Hey yourself, Tony.”

  She was in a better mood than when he’d left her earlier. She called him Tony only when she felt at ease, or in bed.

  “What’ve you been up to?” He opened the refrigerator and did not see any beer.

  “Well, I finished the Lone Stars, for one thing.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “Then I got hungry and grilled that ribeye you said I could have.”

  “I thought we’d share it.”

  “It wasn’t that big.”

  “I’ll get something at the bar.”

  She didn’t tell him that in the afternoon she’d relaxed on the back porch with homemade lemonade and thoughts about what she would do with the money. She listened to country music on the radio and practiced a few line-dance moves. She’d decided she had to think of this downtime as a vacation. A vacay with eyes out for cops.