"Did you ever have a granny? An abuelita? That's what I'm like. Anything you did is okay with me, but I need to know. Now, did you do something wrong?"

Isodora's face crumpled and a sob escaped her.

"I did nothing," she said, gasping out the words between great gulps of air. "They took Paquita. Elijandro is dead. I don't care where I go. Just make them give her back to me, Miss Casey. Please."

Casey swallowed and squeezed her hand again.

"You're sure there's nothing?" she asked softly. "Drugs? Bad people your husband was with? Because I can't figure out why this is happening."

"They said I'm illegal," Isodora said, still sobbing. "Undocumented."

"Okay," Casey said gently, "but there's something more. Maybe it's a mistake. It's a big government."

Gently, Casey presented a slew of possibilities-drugs, weapons, smuggling people, and bad politics-but at every suggestion Isodora swore both she and her husband had done nothing wrong. Several times she excitedly broke into Spanish and Casey had to ask her to say it again.

Finally Casey asked, "What about the senator's wife, Isodora?"

Even through the curtain of hair, Casey could see the young woman's face redden.

She shook her head and said, "No, no. He did nothing with her. He was a good husband. A good man."

"But he went with her sometimes?" Casey asked. "At night? Your sister told me."

"She had a problem and Ellie, he was such a good man. She needed him to speak Spanish. What was he to say? She was the wife. We had our own house."

Isodora parted her hair and looked hard at Casey, setting her jaw. "I will tell you this. I know he did nothing. He, Elijandro, he would have this-how do you say-hives, this rash. Big red dots."

Isodora rubbed her chest. "Here he had them. When he was with me, he would have this. Always. Before we married, I used to tease him and call them diablo se mancha, devil spots. And when he came back after the first time he went with her, I made him show me and he didn't have it. So, you see?"

Casey nodded and said, "I see why you believed him. I'm just trying to find the reason why Senator Chase would have done this."

Isodora bit her lip and nodded, as if holding back tears.

"Maybe he thought like you," Isodora said in a whisper.

At the sound of the guard rattling the door, Casey stood up.

"All right," she said. "I'll do everything I can. I should at least be able to get you to a place where you can be with Paquita."

The guard stood frowning behind the young girl and nudged Isodora's ribs with the baton, telling her to get moving.

Casey rounded the table and pushed her face so close to the guard's that she could smell the cigarettes on the hefty woman's breath.

"You touch her with that thing again," Casey said in a low growl. "You so much as wave it at her and I'll have you bounced so far out of this place you'll think you were riding a rocket."

The guard snickered and said, "Yeah, I heard all about it. A woman like you can't rest when another woman is in need. Lady, why don't you go get some sleep."

Casey opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out and she could only watch Isodora being led away.

Instead of lodging a complaint with the sergeant, Casey simply asked when Isodora would be delivered to the courthouse for her appearance on Monday.

CHAPTER 11

CHIEF GAGE BACKED HIS CRUISER UP TO THE MOTEL DOOR AND dragged Teuch's body out. He unfolded a thick plastic tarp inside his trunk and dumped the body in, slamming the trunk closed and dusting his hands as he scanned the empty parking lot and the pockets of wan light spilling from cheap fixtures up and down the row of doors. He moved with the confidence of a man who'd been a law unto himself for nearly twenty years.

He was only a deputy fresh out of community college when the senator's old man died and the senator took over the ranch, bumping his older sister and her no-good husband to a beach house in Galveston. It was a deflowered high school cheerleader who gave Gage the first opportunity to distinguish himself with the senator, who was then just a young lawyer at the attorney general's office in the city. When she awoke in a ditch with her skirt hiked up over her boobs she called 911 from a pay phone outside of town, gibbering so that the dispatcher couldn't understand her.

They sent Gage out to pick her up and when he saw the black eye and realized where the whole thing was headed, he told her to shut up and drove her straight back out to the ranch. Gage showed his stuff by offering the girl the chance to make up with Chase or be taken in for possession of a small bag of cocaine he removed from his sock and tucked into the low-cut neckline of her rumpled dress and beneath the double-D cup of her bra. The senator never forgot that, and together they had ruled their own little slice of heaven in this forgotten corner of Dallas County ever since.

Inside the motel room, Gage knelt down beside the bloodstained carpet and mopped it as best he could, putting his back to the flimsy bureau, moving it along the wall toward the bathroom to hide the vast bulk of the mess. He clucked his tongue, satisfied with the camouflage of stains from other bygone accidents and crimes. The towel went into the trunk with Teuch's things, and Gage drove off into the night, tires roaring over the still-warm asphalt.

Out on Route 45, about twenty minutes and two counties to the south, Gage pulled off at a picnic area. He got out of his cruiser and rousted the lone trucker, who was stripped to his underwear and pulled over for the night, telling him he'd have to move on to the truck stop down in Corsicana. The running lights of the big rig hadn't even disappeared over the next rise before Gage had Teuch's body out on the curb. He dragged the young gangbanger by the armpits out into the scrub a ways where no one had any business being and flopped him down in the parched dirt.

Somewhere in the distance a coyote sniggered and then wailed in a high-pitched scream, the sound rolling endlessly across the flat land. A chill jiggered Gage's spine, only to be warmed by the metal curve of the hammer on the big pistol at his waist. They'd do a good job on the Mexican, the coyotes would. Gage took only one cursory glance around before drawing the pistol and taking aim at the center of the Mexican's forehead, standing well away so as not to spatter his pants with gore. Orange flame burst from the gun's barrel and the deafening roar rolled right back out across the same flat land, truncating the coyote's call. A hairy divot from the top of Teuch's head took off like a flushed snipe, disappearing into the shadows and drawing a chuckle up from Gage's belly.

The police chief returned to his car, whipping it around, gravel singing in a cloud of dust, and accelerating on down the highway. He gripped the wheel and let the surge push him back into the seat as the needle pegged 120. Gage was in no particular hurry to get away.

He just liked to drive fast.