“You’d never forgive yourself if you sold out. You love that place. By the way, you’re supposed to be recuperating out there now, instead of driving around looking for a runaway teenager.”
“Duly noted.” I turned north on a gravel road that was a shortcut to the trailer on the Bauer property. I didn’t want to argue about what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I didn’t want to talk about the ranch and whether I would sell it or keep it. Talking about it would bring up more immediate issues, like what to do with Helen. I was beginning to think that unless I threw her suitcase out on the highway, she would stay indefinitely.
“What’s the plan of attack with Russell Stevens?” she asked.
“I thought I’d ask him about the party on the river. From what Lori described, he wasn’t there as a security guard.”
I drove past the point where Kelly and I had jumped the fence, and found the cattle guard leading to the trailer.
The gravel road wound through a thick cedar break. Kelly pointed to a surveillance camera mounted on a limb beside the road.
“Looks like they’re monitoring our approach,” she said.
I slowed down and checked my .45 magazine, then slipped the pistol back in my shoulder holster.
“Just remember that you’re injured. If it comes to the rough stuff, let me do it.” She smiled sweetly. Kelly wasn’t what I would call petite. She had a strong jaw and an athletic figure. Anyone could tell she worked out on a regular basis. The charming smile was what fooled people. As a Marine Corps police officer, it was her best asset. Her smile could disarm even the most belligerent jarhead. She used it like a stun gun. While the perp’s brain was registering beautiful lady, her boot was traveling at the speed of sound toward a vulnerable part of his body.
When we broke out of the trees, I saw one of the skinheads standing near the door and noticed one of the Super Duty pickups was missing. The black Jeep Cherokee with oversized tires was still there. I parked beside the Jeep, and Kelly and I got out.
“Howdy,” I called to the skinhead. He was walking toward me with a sneer on his face.
“Remember me?” Kelly asked.
“This is private property,” he said. “You’re trespassing.” He stopped about ten feet away and put his hands on his hips. He was probably six two or three and stocky. He looked older in the daylight, roughly my age, but he was a hard partier. Up close, I noticed a scar on this chin that was an angry purple color, visible through his week-old beard stubble.
“We’ve got permission. Mr. Bauer said it was okay. We came to talk to Russell.”
He looked a little confused.
Kelly smiled and took a step sideways, giving her a better angle in case things got western. I liked the way she thought.
“I didn’t hear nothin’ about it,” he said.
I took a step closer to him.
“That’s ’cause it was need-to-know information. You didn’t need to know.”
“What?” He didn’t get it.
“Never mind. Where’s Russell?”
He was probably a dangerous man when he decided to hurt someone, but making decisions wasn’t his strong point.
“Russell Stevens. Is he inside? Should I go in and take a look?” I took a step toward the trailer.
“Ain’t nobody named Russell here,” he said.
The trailer door opened, and Russell stepped out wearing tight jeans and square-toe cowboy boots with a sleeveless T-shirt that showed off his bulky prison-yard muscles.
“What’s this about?” he asked. He was taller than his skinhead sidekick by at least an inch but weighed about the same. Every muscle in his body was coiled and ready to spring.
“Mike said you’re working security for Bauer Farms. You a local?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” He walked toward my pickup like he was stepping into the cage for an MMA match, his movements fluid and powerful.
“Just curious,” I said.
He sized me up and seemed to dismiss me as an unworthy opponent, then focused his attention on Kelly. His whole demeanor shifted like the surface of a lake on a windy day. “You came back. You wanna party?” he asked her like he was accustomed to getting his way.
Kelly flashed her badge. “Were here on business.”
“I’m a private investigator.” I held up my credentials.
Russell made no effort to look at it or read it. He stood with his arms crossed.
“Mr. Geisler’s a local,” I said. “He asked me to find his granddaughter, Maya Chavez. I thought maybe you saw her. She’s a senior at the high school. Just turned eighteen. Dark hair about shoulder length. Five six or seven.”
Russell responded without breaking eye contact with Kelly. “Don’t know her.”
“She was last seen at a party on the Pedernales River in August. Owen Bauer was there. Maya was there with another girl, Lori Kostoch. She’s a blonde. Same age. A little shorter. Lori said you were there.”
This caught Russell’s attention. His demeanor shifted back to cage fighter. He looked at the skinhead then back at me. The skinhead backed away and went into the trailer.
“Part of my job is to keep the kids away from that place,” Russell said.
“So, you were out there when the party was going on?”
“The land is private property. It’s well posted. Mike don’t want nobody out there. For insurance purposes. It’s a liability. You should know that.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “You went out there and told them to leave, is that it? You were just doing your job?”
He blew a sharp blast of air through his nose that sounded something like a snort from a buffalo. Russell was losing his patience. That was good. I wanted him a little off balance.
“You want answers, talk to Mike.” He closed the gap between us and stuck his chest out like a silverback gorilla in the wild.
“We’re just trying to find out what happened to the girl,” I said.
He didn’t speak. The expression on his face was blank. The prison stare. He inched closer expecting me to back away, but I held my ground. He was a big guy. If he started swinging, I wanted to be inside his wheelhouse where he couldn’t get a full windup. He stood with his legs spread like fenceposts in the gravel driveway. On a good day, I knew I could land two punches to his one. My first would be to his throat. If that didn’t connect, I’d go for the balls. Anything soft and vulnerable. The problem was, this wasn’t one of my good days. I was still recovering from the bullet wound to my chest and upper arm, and I had lost my edge.
“Time for you to go,” he said.
Kelly was closing on his right shoulder. She had her hand behind her back, no doubt resting on the P226. If Russell did take a swing at me, she would press the barrel into his temple.
“Sure, Russell, sure. No problem.” I pulled out the yearbook picture I had of Maya and held it up. “Just to be certain. This is her. This is Maya. You’ve never seen her before?” I watched his dead eyes take in the picture without showing a hint of recognition. This was what Kelly had seen last night—his eyes were cold, dead, and unflinching. Evil.
I put the picture away. “Thanks for your time, Russell. Good luck with the security job.” I turned and opened my pickup door.
Kelly jumped in the other side. “That went well,” she said as I backed up and turned around.
“Yeah, we know he saw Maya at the party. The question is, why did he lie about it?”
“Why is everybody lying about her?”
“And where is Maya now?”
“I only hope she got as far away from the Dragon as possible.”
Chapter Sixteen
Helen’s car was parked by the barn when Kelly and I rounded the edge of the spring-fed pond in front of the ranch house. There was something unsettling about knowing she was inside using things that belonged to a family she had abandoned many years ago. That, and her talking to Mike Bauer about the sale of the proper
ty without telling me put me in a foul mood.
“Maybe we should skip the ranch visit till she’s gone,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“She’s gettin’ on my nerves.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have anyplace to go.”
“She smells a payday.”
“That’s cynical.”
“It’s true.”
Helen came out on the porch and waved at us. “I made some sandwiches,” she called in a singsong voice.
“That’s sweet,” Kelly said.
I knew it was a setup, but I didn’t say anything. We both got out and walked to the house.
“Come on inside,” Helen said.
She acted as though she owned the place and was inviting us in for lunch. We followed her inside. She’d made roast beef sandwiches and cut them into diagonal portions, along with sliced pickles, coleslaw, and German potato salad.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” Kelly said.
“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble,” Helen said.
Kelly and I sat down.
“Why didn’t you tell me Mike Bauer stopped by?” I asked.
She handed me one of my own Shiner Bocks in a longneck bottle and sat down in Grandma’s place again.
“We haven’t gotten a chance to talk. I know you’ve been busy with Kelly here and the Oktoberfest going on.”
“You told him I was going to sell out?” I took a drink of beer and ignored the sandwich. I’d lost my appetite.
“I didn’t say that. You know how Mike is. He’s always trying to make a deal. He means well.” She stood up quickly and grabbed a pitcher of sun tea from the counter. “Would you like some tea?” she asked Kelly. “If you’ll excuse me, I want to get started on the bedroom. I bought the paint this morning, and I have everything covered.”
“You’re going to paint the bedroom?”
“Those rooms haven’t been touched up in years,” she said. “Oh, it’s no bother. If we do decide to sell, the house will be ready. If we stay, it will be fixed up.”
She hustled out of the kitchen before I could respond. She had said we, putting herself into the decision-making process.
“Look at it this way. You don’t have to worry about doing housework while she’s here,” Kelly said helpfully.
It was small consolation. I reached across the table and kissed her. She tasted like roast beef. I pulled her closer.
Helen walked in on us. “Sorry,” she said, smirking. “Came to get my paint rag. Don’t mind me.” She grabbed a rag from under the sink and hurried out.
I did mind her and the whole idea of her being there, but I couldn’t come up with a plan to get rid of her.
We cleaned up the lunch dishes, and I took Kelly outside for a tour of the barn and the rest of the property. She’d been there before, but I had been in the early stages of recovery, and I wasn’t able to get around very well.
The old barn door was mounted on a metal roller, which gave a rusty squeal when I shoved it open—a sound it never made when Grandpa was alive. I felt a sudden pang of guilt for neglecting my duties.
“This is where you killed the detective?” she asked when we were inside the limestone block barn. The temperature was ten degrees cooler inside the thick walls.
“Yeah, the son of a bitch had put Grandpa’s shirt on and was hiding in plain sight. He had his back to me, and I thought he was Grandpa tied to the support beam. That’s how he got the drop on me. Turns out, Grandpa was already dead. Shot through the heart that morning. Detective Peterson had been waiting for me to show up.”
We walked up the steps to the hayloft. I pointed out the smudge marks on the wall where the fire had scorched the inside timbers the year after the Civil War and showed her the “new” steps Great-grandpa had built because he got too fat to climb the original narrower planks.
“He shot Skeeter from this window.” We peered out the hayloft at the front yard. I could see the spring-fed pond and the hundred yards of gravel road that led to the front gate. I pointed to the line of cedar trees to the north of the house about fifty yards away. “I crawled to the edge of the trees. Skeeter parked out front, and when he got out, he left the shotgun I’d given him on the front seat. Peterson was waiting for him here in the window. I saw the rifle barrel and fired, but I was too late. Skeeter never saw it coming.”
I pointed to the bullet holes in the window frame.
“You were both lucky,” she said.
We walked back down the wooden steps to the ground floor. Grandpa’s John Deere tractor was still there with the hay baler attached. He had left a hundred head of cattle, fifty or so goats, and a couple of horses that were both past their prime. I would have to decide what to do with them. Being a rancher was a full-time job that didn’t pay full-time wages.
“Where did you find your grandpa?”
“In the last horse stall.”
The smell of dried blood turned my stomach, but I knew it was only my memory playing cruel tricks. It had been six weeks since Grandpa’s murder. I walked to the barn door for a breath of fresh air. White puffy mare’s tails painted the blue sky. Kelly followed me.
“Grandpa used to say mare’s tails in the sky meant rain was on its way,” I said.
Kelly took my hand. I didn’t need to say I missed him. She understood.
“There you are,” Helen called from the front porch. “Would you help me move the furniture while you’re here?” She was talking to Kelly. “I didn’t want Nicky to do it. He’s not supposed to lift anything heavy.”
“Sure,” Kelly said, unfolding herself from my arms.
I reluctantly let her go. “I’ll wait for you out here,” I said. “I need to call Skeeter anyway.”
“Say hi from me,” she said and followed Helen into the house.
I sat on the bench in front of the barn and called my partner in San Antonio.
“How’s rehab coming?” Skeeter said when he answered the phone.
“I was just going to ask you the same thing,” I said.
“I’m enjoying the peace and quiet,” he said. He was staying at my house in King William while I was gone.
“Great,” I said. “I have two houses, and I have to rent a motel room to be alone with my girlfriend.”
Skeeter let out a deep baritone chuckle. He was six-foot-seven and weighed three hundred pounds. When he spoke, his voice originated from deep inside his massive body. I imagined him in my living room with his feet propped up on my desk, staring out at my yard and pecan tree.
“Did you at least mow the grass?” I asked.
More chuckling. “I’m not supposed to do any strenuous work,” he said. “I let the neighborhood kid do it. I told him you’d pay him when you came back to town.”
“Thanks. Run up the bill.” I explained Helen’s unspoken intention to stay at the ranch as long as she could find things to do. Which seemed like the next fifteen years.
“She’s your mother. Give her a second chance. Maybe she just wants to help.”
“Thank you, Oprah. Have you got anything on Maya?”
“The phone was a dead end. Your buddy Officer Zeller had already put her in the system. I posted her up on Facebook. No leads yet. I checked her account. No activity since August. Same for her Instagram and Snapchat.”
“Dropped off the grid?”
“Apparently.”
“Check out Lori Kostoch and Owen Bauer. See what’s happening in their world. They’re both seniors at the high school. They were with Maya the night she went missing. Also, I want you to do a background check on a thug named Russell Stevens, aka the Dragon. He’s supposedly working security for Bauer Farms here in Gillespie County. See if he has a record anywhere.”
“The Dragon, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s got a really cute tattoo of one on his chest. Likes to show it off.”
“My pleasure,” he rumbled.
�
�Also, check the Greyhound bus records for the week following the tenth of August. I know the bus stops in town. There’s no terminal, but she could have bought tickets online.
“Got it. And Nick…” He hesitated.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What’s your gut feeling on this?”
“I don’t like it. Too many people are lying. We’re gonna have to move fast if we expect to catch up with her.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Nobody her age drops off of social media like that unless something’s wrong.”
Skeeter cleared his throat.
“What else?” I asked.
“It’s good to be working again,” he said, and disconnected.
Chapter Seventeen
The Geisler ranch was ten miles north of Fredericksburg, tucked into the rolling limestone hills that were covered with live oaks, mesquite, and cactus. The grass was dead this time of year and colored the open spaces with an even tan.
I thought about Anna Metzger’s story when we crossed the bridge at Palo Alto Creek. It was the same route the Kiowas would have ridden the night she was captured. Had Maya been kidnapped? Lori suspected foul play, but she hadn’t seen anything happen. Either Owen or Russell Stevens had to know something. Maya couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
“What are our options, Mr. Detective?” Kelly asked.
“Skeeter’s working on the Dragon’s background. He said Maya’s social media accounts have gone dead.”
“You wanna stake out the trailer?”
“If she was there, she’s gone now.”
“What about the girls and the weapons and drugs?”
“I’m not a policeman. That’s Zeller’s job and the sheriff.”
I stopped in front of Helmut’s front gate. He had replaced most of his family’s original stone fence with hog wire years ago, and the wooden gate was now metal and decorated with a life-sized iron silhouette of a cowboy kneeling in front of a large cross. I didn’t remember the gate from my high school days and wondered if the Christian theme had something to do with his wife surviving her fourth brush with death.
Kelly opened the gate, and we drove across a hayfield that was cut and plowed under, awaiting next year’s crop. A herd of white-and-brown goats followed my pickup to the single-story, clapboard house with a wraparound porch.
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