As Texas Rangers, L. Q. Navarro and I had waged a private war against drug mules in northern Mexico. We never shot down an unarmed man or refused him quarter when he walked toward us with his hands on his head. But the night ambushes we set up were guaranteed to result in firefights and not negotiations. This particular group of drug transporters, or at least their compatriots, tortured a friend of ours to death, a DEA agent who was one of the finest men I ever knew. We trapped them in adobe huts, mesquite thickets, river-bottoms, and arroyos thick with cactus, and dawn would find us inserting playing cards emblazoned with the shield of the Texas Rangers into the mouths of the dead.
But no matter what the war advocates of our times tell us, no violent excursion ends well. L. Q. Navarro paid with his life for our grandiose schemes, and I still feared sleep and the images that dwelt in my unconscious. That night I sat by myself in the living room until 3 A.M. The valley was dark, the fir trees on the mountains shaggy in the starlight. I could hear deer or elk clatter against our rail fence, a rock tumble from the hillside, a pinecone ping on the barn’s metal roof. Was Wyatt out there? I doubted it, not tonight.
But it was only a matter of time, I thought. Men such as Wyatt Dixon were driven by ego and a visceral pride in themselves. In fact, their perception of themselves was actually their only possession. I had just managed to cheapen Wyatt’s image of himself, and I knew one day soon the bill would come due.
At the time I did not know there were other people in the area who were even more foolish and reckless than I, a bunch who had just embarked on the worst mistake in their lives.
Chapter 11
THE NEXT MORNING started off in earnest with Darrel McComb in my office, a martial light in his face. His cheeks were bladed with color, his crew cut stiff as hog bristles, his suit freshly pressed, his shoes spit-shined and gleaming.
“You look like a man in motion, Darrel,” I said.
“What were you doing at Wyatt Dixon’s place yesterday?”
“You’ve got Dixon under surveillance?”
“Duh,” he answered.
“It’s none of your business what I was doing there.”
“Somebody tossed Greta Lundstrum’s house. Somebody who could tear two-by-four joists in half with his hands. Sound like anybody you know?”
“If you think Dixon is a viable suspect, go talk to him. Right now I’m pretty busy.”
“What was he looking for?”
I could tell he didn’t expect an answer, but I surprised him and myself as well. “I think a couple of new shooters are in the area.” I wrote down the names Dixon had given me and shoved them across the desk. “Temple came up empty on these guys. Maybe you’ll do better.”
“You’re running some type of police investigation on your own?”
“I didn’t say that. And I don’t know anything about Dixon breaking into a house, either. If I were you, I’d be careful, Darrel.”
“About what?”
“I’m not sure what kind of work you used to do for the G, but I suspect it was down in the basement, off the computer, and genuinely nasty. If I know that, other people do, too. My guess is they’re not happy you know their secrets or how they operate.”
“I’ve known some prissy lawyers in my career, but you’ve got your own zip code, Holland. You got these names from Dixon, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“What makes you think you have some kind of privileged status in this case? If I catch you holding back information in a homicide investigation, I’ll do everything in my power to have you disbarred. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I can sympathize with your situation, Darrel. You don’t get a lot of help. But you beat up a friend of mine with a blackjack. It was a lousy thing to do. So don’t be pointing your finger in my face.”
I saw his jawbone tighten. He looked sideways, out the window. “So maybe I’d change that, I mean about American Horse.”
He waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, he opened the door to let himself out.
“Darrel?” I said.
“What?”
“Does the name ‘Mabus’ mean anything to you?”
“No.” He looked hard at me. “Why? Who is he?”
“Probably no one important. Forget I mentioned it,” I replied.
“Were you really an assistant U.S. attorney?” he said.
ALL MORNING Darrel McComb remained agitated and angry. He was convinced now that Wyatt Dixon had broken into Greta Lundstrum’s bungalow and that Dixon had taken information of some kind from the house and was sharing it with an attorney. Now, through the attorney, Darrel had obtained the names of two men who were possibly hired gunmen recently arrived in the area. He started to go into the sheriff’s office and tell him of everything he had discovered, then realized he would also have to tell the sheriff he was in the sack with a woman he was using as a confidential informant, one who was perhaps involved with criminal activity.
Darrel had arranged a supper date with Greta that evening. And once again he knew his interests in her were far from purely professional. His memories of their tryst Saturday night caused sexual stirrings in him that made him wonder if part of him wasn’t still locked in adolescence. He was also starting to experience another problem, one that was like a sixteen-penny nail driven into his skull. He felt he had betrayed Amber by sleeping with Greta. It made no sense at all. Amber treated him as though he were a moral cretin, a bumbling loser she could dress down at a public dance. To get rid of his own guilt feelings, he let himself imagine Amber in bed with Johnny American Horse, her knees spread on top of him, Johnny’s hands cupped on her breasts, her mouth open and her eyes sealed with her passion. Then he felt such rage at the vision in his head he smashed his fist into a locker door while other cops stared at him, bewildered at his behavior.
He tried to eat lunch in a café downtown but couldn’t finish his food. He returned to the department, checked out a cruiser, and headed for Stevensville. At first Greta had been devastated by the damage done to her home, but she had quickly regained control of herself, substituting anger and resolve for loss and helplessness. In fact, Darrel was impressed. She had moved into a motel, put someone else in charge at her office, and hired carpenters, roofers, drywallers, and painters to repair her house. She worked side by side with them, firing a nailgun into studs, rolling paint onto drywall, rope-pulling bales of shingles onto the roof. The workmen showed up at 7 A.M., called her “ma’am,” and did not use profanity within earshot of her.
When he pulled into the driveway she was on the roof, in white painter’s pants, a cute white cap on her head. She climbed down the ladder, a hammer swinging from a cloth loop on her side. “How you doin’, handsome?” she said.
“Thought I’d check out how it’s going, maybe update you on a couple of things I found out,” he replied.
But she seemed uninterested. She tucked a strand of hair in her cap and watched a carpenter running an electric saw through a board. Then she turned back at him and smiled. “Want to have some lunch and maybe a little rest break?” she said.
He felt his loins tingle, his hand close on the steering wheel, and again wondered who was controlling whom.
“I already ate. I’m on the clock, anyway,” he said.
“Good, that makes two of us. I have to be back here by three. Follow me to my motel. There’s a restaurant next door where you can park the cruiser. I’m in room six.”
She pinched his chin, got in her SUV, and drove off.
He waited five minutes, filling out the log for the cruiser, then followed her. He parked on the far side of the restaurant, bought a roll of breath mints from the cashier, used the restroom, and exited the building by the same door he had entered. He cut behind the building, found Greta’s room on the back side of the motel, and knocked on the door.