Hawke's Target

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Within that framework, I was allowed to form a ghostlike Shadow Response Team, or SRT. There was already an SRT within the Ranger organization that’s easily found on the internet when you look up Texas Rangers, but mine consisted of only two people outside of our organization, Yolanda Rodriguez and Perry Hale.

  “Fine. If it’ll get me out of this town and off the desk for a while, I’ll do it.”

  “I knew you’d agree.” The Major finished his beer and placed the empty bottle on a stone coaster. “Even though our vigilante is taking bad guys off the street, he’s causing more work for us. You guys go track this one down and put him in jail.”

  Mr. Tillman put his bottle on the small table beside the cushioned chair. “I got to go pee.” Lifting himself with both hands on the arms, he grunted to his feet. “But I’ll tell y’all one thing. I believe if I’s y’all, I’d find this feller and give him a medal for doing what ought to’ve already been done.”

  Chapter 5

  The sun was low in the panhandle sky by the time Alonzo pulled into the parking space in front of his fifth-wheel trailer in the Murphy Springs campground not far out of Amarillo. Unlocking the door, he waved at a fellow camper and climbed the metal steps and inside the Crossroads Cruiser.

  “Honey, I’m back. Just stay there. You don’t have to get up right now. I’ll fix us some supper when I get finished.”

  After opening the windows for ventilation, he settled at the dining table, opened his toolbox, and completely cleaned a little .22 pistol. “I’ll start some supper in a little bit. We’re leaving in the morning, hon.”

  He listened for an answer and nodded his head. “That’s right. We have a couple more stops to make before we get home, and then you can rest all you want, and I can, too.”

  The sun was down by the time he finished cleaning the semiautomatic pistol. The sky was awash in yellows and pinks that darkened with the loss of light when he went back outside to build a fire in the metal ring. He hoisted his glass of Glenlivet as a wave to an elderly woman walking her dog down the campground’s asphalt road.

  She waved back. “Hello, Alonzo.” She pulled at the leg of her baggy shorts and paused as her schnauzer watered a wooden site number. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

  “We are, too.”

  “I didn’t get to meet your wife. I’m sorry she’s not feeling well.”

  “Betty’s doing better today. She’ll be fine by the time we get home.”

  “Safe travels.” The woman moved on without looking back, watching the little dog look for another object to squirt.

  Alonzo settled into an aluminum chair under the camper’s awning to stare into coals. He wondered if he should feel anything for shooting Gibson outside the Amarillo strip club or the guys in California, or Arizona . . . or New Mexico.

  Remorse?

  Guilt?

  Fear?

  Not a damn thing. All that had been beaten out of him years ago by Daddy Frank.

  That’s what they get for letting these people out to roam the streets.

  He winced as a lance of pain shot through his stomach, much more intense than the one in the woods. He dug a prescription bottle from his pants pocket, shook a pill into his palm, and washed it down with a swallow of scotch. The spasm passed soon enough, and he took another sip of good single-malt whisky. The light was gone by the time Alonzo finished a third drink.

  The clouds lowered even more. The pleasant yellow glow from the camper’s lights spilled outside, creating a dim island in the darkness. He finished the drink and went inside to meet up with one last pour.

  Afterward, he carefully slipped into bed beside Betty as a strong south wind arrived and rocked the trailer. He lay there with his back to her still body, waiting for the pill to take effect, and thought back over the past few weeks. The country was going to hell, Alonzo was dying, and there was nothing left for him any longer.

  Wrapped in almost total darkness, he studied on his recent delivery from a lifetime of submersion in the Wadler family philosophy and moonshine business established back in the 1950s. Daddy Frank decided there was more money in the drug trade and switched to marijuana in the ’60s, and finally cocaine in the late ’70s.

  No matter what they did, the old man would never be satisfied with the amount of drugs they moved across state lines and came up with the idea to increase the delivery of his products when he noticed how many people were hauling campers these days.

  Snowbirds moved in great herds of white fiberglass twice a year. Once in the autumn when the cold north wind pushed them from the northern states down to the Texas Gulf Coast. After spending most of the winter in the state’s comfortable climate, the warm south winds started the migration back to their homes.

  Years earlier, those moving east to west on I-10 interested him more. The family patriarch began making big money on that interstate during the cocaine boom. Now everything including illegal prescription pills such as hydrocodone and Xanax moved through the southern tier of states in a river of delivery vehicles. In the last twenty years, the drug pipeline serviced by major waterways in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi received injections of even more illegal drugs destined for Florida and the Southwest.

  Daddy Frank’s new idea to utilize RVs was based on a vision he had about a muddy river flowing across the country, one full of great white hailstones floating without impediment. He and the Preacher discussed it the next day when they were driving to Beaumont. The old man passed a truck pulled over by the highway patrol and noticed a camping trailer that barely slowed in the next lane.

  The fresh image of white hailstones floating on a river’s surface came to mind at the same time they passed the bright, shiny camper, and the new delivery system was born.

  Alonzo snorted in the darkness and then stilled, afraid he’d disturb Betty lying beside him. No matter how well their plan came together, it would do nothing to bring his life back to normal. He’d get home soon, with half a million in cash from the drug delivery hidden under the bed along with the Semtex plastic explosives, and Daddy Frank would still be in charge.

  He had a little surprise for Daddy Frank, who had wrecked his already unstable life with his new delivery plan.

  Alonzo didn’t believe in Daddy Frank’s idea any longer. He was done with everyone, and all because of a drunk felon named Nicholas Barbour.

  Chapter 6

  I glanced around at the bare West Texas landscape on my way to Amarillo. Folks who’ve never driven that part of I-27 have a hard time visualizing the Big Empty. Our state is so large, we don’t describe distances between cities and towns in terms of miles, but how many hours it takes to get somewhere.

  The only things in sight were scattered ranch houses and barns, an occasional silo, and bobwire fences. Even the trees were few and far between, unless they were planted around houses for a windbreak and shade, and the only other things above ground level were the overpasses from crossing highways.

  Oh, and a lot of sky.

  Thirty minutes later I’d been thinking so hard about the vigilante that I was surprised when Amarillo suddenly appeared. Getting my head back into city driving, I pulled into the parking lot of the Amarillo sheriff’s office a few minutes later. A strong south wind almost took my hat when I stepped out of the truck. A Texas flag cracked under the Stars and Stripes in the strong wind that most of those living in the panhandle would consider a breeze.

  There was one night about twenty years ago when I was staying at a motel in Amarillo and the steady wind was so strong at eleven that night the flagpole actually leaned to the north, pulled by flags stretched so tight they looked to be starched.

  A dusty ranch pickup pulled in front of the sheriff’s office and stopped not far away. The wind brought me the grassy odor of fresh cow shit from the tires and undercarriage, or maybe it came from the cab, tracked in by the local cowboy with his faded jeans stuck in the tops of his boots. The sun-creased rancher climbed out at the same time, tugging his stain
ed hat down in the wind, nodded in my direction, and stomped inside.

  I was almost to the courthouse steps when a fireplug of a sheriff himself came through those same doors, tugging his hat down. “You must be Sonny Hawke. I’m Andy Cates.”

  “That’s me.” I shook hands with the sheriff, stepping to the side for a deputy to pass. “Looks like y’all’re busy.”

  “Always. Folks can’t seem to learn to behave.”

  “They suffer the same failings down in the Big Bend. Anything new?”

  “While you were on the way up here, your Major Parker sent me a report about two more murders in Albuquerque, New Mexico, most likely committed by this vigilante. One, a felon by the name of Rodolfo Felipe Delgado, was convicted of manslaughter and got a plea agreement to several felonies and was released from jail on his own recognizance when he agreed to enter a drug-treatment program he never attended.

  “Someone reported a foul smell coming from a gray trailer house surrounded by a chain-link fence in the Mountain View neighborhood of South Valley. When the police arrived on the 10-54 possible dead body code, they found the trailer baking in a bare dirt yard. Delgado’s corpse was lying on the couch with most of his brains dried on the wall beside him. There was no weapon nearby, so they ruled out suicide.

  “The second murder victim was Judge Debra Palmer, who had released Delgado under the speedy trial umbrella recently established by the New Mexico Supreme Court. The houses in the Los Ranchos de Albuquerque neighborhood were the nicest places in the area. Her husband found the judge floating in her swimming pool after he came home that night. Shot once in the back of the head.”

  I turned to get the wind more to my back. “This old boy’s been busy.”

  “Sounds like it. We have a BOLO out on him, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. No description of him or his vehicle.”

  “Or her.”

  Sheriff Cates raised an eyebrow. “Good point, but I can’t recall ever hearing of a female vigilante.”

  “These days, I expect anything.”

  The glass doors opened and a sullen young man stumbled outside, propelled by a push from the rancher, who I assumed was the boy’s daddy. He grabbed the youngster’s collar and jerked him to a halt in front of us. “Beau, you apologize to the sheriff and to that man there for what you done.”

  Beau looked to be around eighteen and half-terrified of us. “Ssss . . . sorry. I won’t do it no more.”

  The rancher’s gray eyes were full of fire. “And say it to that Ranger. You’re lucky it wasn’t him that drug you in.”

  I met the kid’s watery eyes. His chin trembled. “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean no harm.”

  “It wasn’t me who brought you in.”

  “No, I ’magine he’d-a shot you.” The rancher took a deep calming breath. “Now, get in the truck. I’m gonna work your ass off stringing wire for the next week.” He reset his wide-brimmed sweat-stained hat, nodded in my direction. “He’s gonna learn his lesson before I’m done with him.” Shaking his head, he followed the young man to the truck.

  Sheriff Cates and I watched them pull onto the street. I grinned. “What’d the kid do?”

  He chuckled. “Nothin’ worse’n I ever did when I was his age. Him and friend got into their daddy’s whiskey last night and put a stuffed rattlesnake in an Origins bag and took it out to the Silver Spur café to have some fun. They set the bag down beside a car in the parking lot and went inside to see what would happen.

  “Some silver-haired woman saw it on her way in and picked up the bag like it was hers. Halfway through supper she just couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to see what she’d scored in the parking lot. She put the bag in her lap and peeked inside. Apparently a stuffed snake-in-a-sack looks just like a live one.”

  We laughed as the pickup pulled out on the street.

  “Witnesses say it looked like she was hit with ten thousand volts of electricity. She jumped up and fell back onto another table in a drop-dead faint, then they say she rolled off on the floor, her foundation garments made public and her head dribbling like a loose basketball for a minute before the bag closed.”

  “That doesn’t seem like an arrest offense.”

  “Wouldn’t have been, but things unraveled even more when paramedics showed up and strapped her on the gurney. They put the bag and her purse by her feet at the same time she came back around. It set her off again.” He pointed in the direction of the disappearing truck. “Genius there said he was her son and jumped in the ambulance to ride with her.”

  “So?”

  “So, halfway to the hospital he got sick from the whiskey. That’s when the ambulance called it in and pulled over. My boys brought him in, and his daddy made him spend the night in jail before he came to take him home.”

  “I’d be willing to bet you won’t see him in here no more.”

  We chuckled, and the sheriff hung his thumbs in his gunbelt. “Ain’t that the truth? We’re gonna keep a lookout for this vigilante you’re after, but I wish I had more for you. What are you gonna do while you’re here?”

  “Go over to the Big Texan, get a steak, and then check into the motel there to wait and see what happens next.”

  He sighed. “I’m afraid that’s all we can do right now.”

  “Something’ll break, and when it does, I’ll be close by and ready.”

  Chapter 7

  The morning was cloudy and cold underneath the big panhandle sky. Alonzo sat in the doorway under the camper’s awning, surveying the empty panorama that was Llano Estecado, an arid and virtually treeless plateau near the Texas/New Mexico border. Seventy miles to the west, Billy the Kid allegedly slept under a slab of concrete, in an iron cage resembling a nineteenth-century jail cell, and surrounded by a low adobe wall.

  Most of the campsites in the stark, barren campground were empty except for a distant silver Airstream camper parked in the shade of a mature cottonwood tree. Despite the fact that Alonzo had taken the last campsite at the end of the park’s lead-gray asphalt road, a cheerful elderly couple walked past his site with their fuzzy little white yapper. It tried to pee on everything they passed, even after it had exhausted its limited supply of urine, and spent most of its time standing on three legs, straining.

  Just back from the drugstore, Alonzo exchanged friendly waves and sipped a hot cup of cowboy coffee. A yearling doe picked her way through the sage and clump-grass-dotted landscape. A disposable cell phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. He punched the answer button. “What.”

  His Uncle Jimmy Don chuckled from over six hundred fifty miles to the east, in Gunn, Texas. “Most folks usually say ‘howdy.’ It sounds better.”

  For once the cancer in Alonzo’s stomach was quiet, and he didn’t want anything to wake the snarling badger up again. He scratched fingers through thinning hair and took a long, deep breath to remain calm. “You at work?”

  “That’s all I do these days. People always need lumber, and I don’t think the saw at this damn mill ever quits singing.” Most every member of the family held jobs to keep up the pretense of social acceptability. Those paychecks didn’t hold a candle to what they were making in the family business. “Where’re you?”

  Alonzo closed his eyes and envisioned the Big Thicket sawmill where he’d worked as a kid. He could almost hear the blade’s whine as experienced mill workers sliced fragrant lumber out of the long, stripped pine trunks, or “strip logs,” that came in all day on the East Texas log trucks. Daddy Frank owned the sawmill that was one more entity in his diversification portfolio.

  Bracketed by the winding, muddy Sabine River to the east, and the equally gritty Trinity River to the west, the Big Thicket was once more than 3.5 million acres of woods so dense in places that little sunlight reached the ground. The earliest pioneers who first settled there in the early 1800s were a hard breed who either preferred the solitude of the woods or grew to love the refuge where they could live their lives as they pleased without interference from outside entitie
s.

  Those people back then evolved their own customs and way of life that was passed down for generations in a land where a man could get lost simply by stepping off the road. Swamps, cottonmouth moccasins, panthers, endless game trails, bayous, wild hogs armed with razor-sharp tusks, swarms of mosquitoes, and unexplored land all served to prevent most casual intrusions.

  The Thicket, as most East Texans called it, was a good hideout for displaced Indian tribes at first, then for those who wanted to become scarce for a while, getting away from the rules and restrictions put upon them by society. Still hemmed in by thick tangles of vines intertwined with myrtle and yaupons, a barrier that kept most people out.

  Jimmy Don didn’t get to know everything, and Alonzo always played his cards close to the vest. He told a lie. “Caprock Canyon State Park, drinking coffee, and watching old people walk their dogs.” No one gets everything they ask, and he didn’t want anyone to know exactly where he was. “I think I might start a new career as the Outdoor Fashion Police. People in their seventies shouldn’t wear shorts with long white socks. It ain’t pretty.”

  “Wish I had your job. I reckon you finished what we sent you out there to do. We ain’t heard from you in over a week, and Daddy Frank’s getting antsy. I guess you delivered the product.”

  Alonzo’s stomach burned at the mention of the forty kilos of cocaine he’d delivered to a distributor in California, making him wonder how many pills he had left in the bottle. He didn’t figure he’d run out before getting back to Gunn, and after that, it wouldn’t matter. “I dropped it off and got the cash, just like I was supposed to.”

  “Any trouble?”

  A pause. “No.”