Wink of an Eye

by Lynn Chandler Willis

  “Hell yeah it hurts!”

  Rhonda pushed Gram’s hand away, then poked at the bruise herself. “You’re going to need ice, or something on that. You might have broke ribs.”

  “Can we eat now?” Rodney asked.

  My ice pack was sitting in a bowl on the table with Rodney and Gram eyeing it. Damn, it hurt to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. “Rhonda, I’m fine. Let’s eat before Rodney has a stroke.”

  Rodney took his cue that he had my blessing to eat and filled his plate. Rhonda frowned. “You sure you don’t want me to make up an ice pack?”

  “I’ll be fine. Now sit. Eat.”

  She frowned again then sat down beside Rodney. “Did you actually get in a fight, or did you trip, or what?” she asked as she sawed into the meat on her plate.

  “Oh, that’s not the worst of it,” Rodney said between mouthfuls. “But I don’t think he wants to show you that bruise.”

  Rhonda stared at me a moment then her eyes widened. “Oh. There, too?”

  “That sucks,” Gram said.

  “Let’s just say I had to help him to the truck.” Rodney speared another chunk of meat and plopped it on this plate.

  Rhonda grimaced. “So who were these guys? Are they the same guys you play with all the time?” She looked at Rodney.

  He shrugged. “The normal guys. I don’t know what it was, but something about Gypsy tripped Mark Peterson’s trigger.”

  Rhonda cut her eyes at me.

  “Mark Peterson?” Gram asked. “Isn’t he one of the—”

  “Gram, could you pass the corn, please,” Rhonda snapped.

  Gram looked around the table. “What corn?”

  Rodney stared from one to the other like they had both lost their minds. He shrugged it off then went back to eating.

  I took a small bite of the mystery meat and to my surprise, it wasn’t that bad. Amazing what thirty-six hours in a Crock-Pot can do.

  CHAPTER 12

  After dinner, Gram retired to her room to watch television. I went to the bedroom and got Ryce’s file, then carried it back to the kitchen. I set it on the table in front of Rodney. “Take a look at it and then tell me if you still think Ryce McCallen killed himself.”

  Rhonda was at the sink rinsing the dishes and spun around, her face etched with fear.

  “I told Rodney about Burke McCallen hiring me to look into Ryce’s death,” I said. She swallowed hard, then hurriedly turned back to the dishes.

  Rodney stared at the file, hesitating to open it. “What is it?” His voice had taken a deeper, serious tone.

  “It’s a case Ryce was working before he died. It probably raises more questions than it answers, but they’re questions that deserve an answer.”

  He sighed heavily, then flipped open the file. His brows raised a notch as he stared at Mark Peterson’s financials. “He was keeping a file on Mark Peterson?” He looked up at me, his eyes shadowed with uncertainty.

  “That’s actually my file. I don’t know that Ryce had started putting two and two together yet, but the mere fact that he’s dead tells me he was on the right track. And apparently Mark Peterson knew he was on the right track, even if Ryce didn’t.”

  He read on, stopping every now and then to ask a question. Rhonda had finished the dishes and joined us at the table. “Do you think Mark Peterson knew who you were?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. I’d considered it after the knee to the crotch but quickly discarded the thought. “I’m sure he knows by now that someone’s snooping around but I don’t think he can trace it back to me. Not yet, anyway.”

  Rodney closed the file, then furiously rubbed his hands over his face. He let out a heavy breath and propped his chin on his hands. His face was cherry red again, like it was in the truck. He looked like an overheated bulldog.

  “How much do you know about this?” he asked sharply, turning to Rhonda.

  “Just what I’ve told her,” I said. “We were about to get busted and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

  “Where’d you get this file from?”

  “Burke,” I lied. “Ryce kept it at home.”

  He quickly nodded. “And how did you meet Burke?”

  “Tatum asked me for his phone number,” Rhonda quietly offered.

  “And that’s why you’re here? To work this case?”

  “Look, Rodney—it doesn’t matter how he got hired, what matters is there’s some serious wrongdoing going on and the McCallens are just the tip of it.”

  Rodney leaned back in the chair and locked his hands behind his head. “What matters is I don’t want you involved in it.”

  “There’s eight missing girls—”

  “And Mark Peterson nearly castrated your brother today during a basketball game! A basketball game, Rhonda … can you imagine what he’d do if he really thought he was being threatened?”

  I couldn’t go to bat for her on that one. The farther she stayed away from all this, the better I’d feel. “So you think there’s something to it?” I pointed at the file.

  He scrubbed his face again with his hands, then sighed heavily. “It could be. But you know as well as I do, Gypsy, there’s not enough evidence there linking Peterson to those girls to even get an indictment.”

  “Are you crazy?” Rhonda grabbed the file. “There’s plenty of—”

  “Coincidences,” I said. “Rhonda, he’s right. The most anyone could nail him with right now would be sloppy police work for not filing a missing persons report on the girls. Even if there was enough to bring charges, any half-ass defense attorney would laugh all the way to the bank.”

  Her disappointment turned to anger. “So he’s just going to get away with it?”

  “He didn’t say that,” Rodney said. “What he said was we need more proof.”

  I liked that “we” part.

  “So you’re going to help him?” Rhonda asked.

  He scratched at his head. “I need to do some thinking on it. Would you be a sweetheart and run down to the store and grab a six-pack?”

  She looked a little confused but agreed. Obviously it wasn’t something Rodney requested everyday.

  “Y’all want anything else?” she asked, her car keys in hand.

  “Get Lone Star.” I’m a picky drinker.

  She was barely out the door when Rodney leaned in, folded his arms on the table, and looked at me hard. “Last summer, Rhonda and I got hit for about a month with one thing after the other. Her car blew a head gasket and that cost about two grand to repair, the central air went out and that had to be replaced, the motor on the washer went out and it was going to cost more to have that replaced than to buy a new set. We just had a real string of bad luck.”

  “Rodney, if you and Rhonda ever need anything, all you have to do is call. I’m not Wells Fargo, but I’ve got a little put back.”

  He was quick to shake his head. “You’re missing the point. Every week I’d go to the gym bitching and moaning about some new disaster we couldn’t afford. After about a month of listening to my sob stories, Peterson said he had a job I could do, make a little extra money.”

  He had my full attention. “Did you ask him what kind of job?”

  He shook his head. “He said we’d talk about it later. I messed up my knee and missed a couple games and he never said anything else about it.”

  “You think he was trying to recruit you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Hell, he could have been talking about mowing yards for all I know.”

  He was right, so I tried to keep a level head. “But what if he wasn’t? What if he was trying to recruit you? Rodney, you could be our way in.”

  He threw both hands in the air. “Whoa! As much I want to help, man, I’m not so sure about that. Apparently, Peterson has no qualms about killing a fellow officer or trying to take the balls off a guy for something as little as showing him up on the court.”

  I could understand where he was coming from, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. But
there were eight teenage girls out there somewhere having to do things no one should be forced to do. I wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a ninth. “Rodney, the girls that are missing … realistically, I don’t know if we’d ever be able to find them. But they deserve to at least have someone look for them. A twenty-four-hour surveillance on Peterson is a waste of time if I don’t have a general idea of when he’s going to make a move. If I had you on the inside—”

  “Just hold up a minute.” He rubbed his face again with his hands then blew a long, deep breath. “I’m a patrol officer, Gypsy. I write traffic tickets, do welfare checks, and break up the occasional bar fight. I know everybody comes on the force with grand illusions of being a top-notch investigator. They dream of breaking their first homicide case. They get an adrenaline rush with a high-speed chase.” He looked at me with truthful eyes. “I’m not one of those guys. I’m sorry, Gypsy—I’m just not the Superman kind.”

  Rhonda came in carrying two six-packs and a pound bag of coffee. “Man, it’s still a hundred degrees out there.”

  Rodney leapt up and helped her, relieving her of the heavy bottles. I wondered how many of those top-notch investigators would have jumped up to help their wives carry such a small load?

  He tossed me a beer, took one for himself, then put the cardboard carriers in the refrigerator.

  “So, did y’all discuss what you needed to when you sent me on a bogus errand?” Rhonda said and smiled.

  I laughed as I popped the top. “A beer run is never a bogus errand.”

  “You could have just told me to go watch TV.” She kissed Rodney on the cheek.

  He grinned sheepishly. “Uh-huh. And your ear would have been plastered to the wall.” He took a long drink, then sat back down at the table. He turned to me. “I’ll help you with surveillance, or running reports, or doing your legwork.”

  “I appreciate it.” And I did. But it would make it so much easier if he, just once, wanted to be Superman. “Is there an investigator you’ve worked with in the past who might let me work under their license?”

  He glared at me over the top of the bottle. “Shit. You’re not licensed in Texas.”

  Rhonda sat down between us. The technicalities of an investigation were over her head so she looked back and forth between us as if she were watching the French Open. “So, what does not being licensed in Texas mean?”

  Rodney sighed. “It means whatever evidence your brother manages to get wouldn’t be allowed in court. And could end up getting him in trouble.”

  She looked confused. “But evidence is evidence. I mean, if the proof is there, how can they not allow it?”

  “If the evidence is obtained illegally, then it can’t be used,” Rodney said.

  “Illegally? But y’all aren’t doing anything illegal, are you?”

  Rodney rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “Your brother doesn’t have a license to gather evidence in Texas—”

  “That’s never stopped him before.”

  “Whoa!” I threw my hands up in defense. “I’m legit. Most of the time.”

  Rodney slowly shook his head. “Maybe we should just call the Rangers’ office.”

  “We will,” I said. “As soon as I have something to give them.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I showered and shaved, carefully navigating the razor around my busted lip. I dug around in the cardboard boxes until I found what I needed: a pair of khakis and a black, short-sleeved button-down shirt. Although I had folded everything very neatly before shoving it in the box, the road trip had been hard.

  I carried the pants and shirt into the kitchen, where Rhonda was putting away last night’s dinner dishes. Gram was at the table slurping her oatmeal. “Do you have an iron?” I asked.

  Rhonda stared at me like she wasn’t sure what I had asked.

  “An iron … to get the wrinkles out?”

  “Oh, an iron. Of course I have one.” She grinned, embarrassed. She went to the laundry closet and drug out the brand-new ironing board and never-used iron. “We just usually throw whatever we want to wear back in the dryer for a few minutes.”

  I set up the board, plugged in the iron, and adjusted the setting, then got a cup of water from the tap and carefully poured it into the reservoir.

  “You have to add water?” She picked up the iron and examined it closely.

  I smiled. God love her. “I don’t suppose you have any spray starch?”

  Gram laughed. Rhonda pursed her lips, then shook her head.

  No starch. It wasn’t the end of the word. At least I could walk and my testicles were back where they belonged. Life was good.

  “Black shirt and long pants … you do know it’s supposed to be a scorcher today?” Rhonda asked.

  “Why should today be any different? I’m going to Reeves County Detention Center today to pay Hector Martinez a visit. I need to look the part.” I finished the pants and laid them gently across the back of a chair, then ironed the shirt.

  “The part?”

  I smiled. “You’ll see.”

  Back in the bedroom, I pulled on the khakis and the shirt, complete with belt, then slipped on a pair of loafers. I then scrounged around in the boxes until I found the rest of the outfit. In a separate box, I found my accordion-style file folder holding various IDs. I found the one I needed and slipped it into an empty manila folder, then started out.

  I met Rhonda in the hallway. She stared at me with a dumbfounded expression. “A priest? Oh, good Lord.”

  “He is good, isn’t he?” I smiled and adjusted the white snap-on collar poking out of my shirt.

  “Do I even want to know what you’re doing?”

  “Probably not.”

  She slowly shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Gypsy.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “That’s Father Mike to you, missy. Can I borrow Rodney’s truck for a little while?”

  She had a puzzled look on her face. “Sure. I guess.”

  “I don’t know if they do a vehicle search at Reeves and if they do, they might wonder why a priest has surveillance equipment and a hundred thousand dollars worth of cameras in his van. The Catholic Church doesn’t need any more scandal.”

  Outside, I paid for the sin of impersonating a priest. The black shirt was a magnet for the heat. It was barely 9:00 and the thermometer in the truck was already hitting 94 degrees. The weatherman on the local news said the high today would hit 105. His fake smile gave the impression it was something we were supposed to look forward to.

  I grabbed my favorite Nikon from the van and carefully tucked it away in the truck’s glove compartment. I planned to head back over to Burke’s later and take another look at the backyard where Ryce had died. When I had been there before, I still wasn’t sure I was even going to take the case. Taking pictures hadn’t been a priority.

  I programmed the address for Reeves County Detention Center in my phone’s GPS, then headed for Pecos. It was about a forty-minute drive south along yet another road dividing brown dirt and pale green cacti. I settled in for the ride, then called Sophia Ortez.

  “Good morning. Can you do me a favor?”

  “I’m already doing you one and one’s the limit.”

  “Well, this one’s related to the other. It should only count as one big one.”

  “Yeah, one big one. You’ve got that right. What is it this time?”

  “Need you to check with your sources in the Odessa PD and see if there was any kind of prostitution sting that went down recently. Word ’round here is Ryce McCallen got busted with an underage boy.”

  “Oooh. That couldn’t be good.”

  “Supposedly that’s the reason he hung himself and it’s been kept hush-hush out of respect for the family.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Yeah, but I ain’t buying it.”

  “And you think journalists thrive on conspiracy theories.” She snickered. “I’ll check it out. You are going to share that whopping check
you’re getting at the end of all this, aren’t you?”

  It was my turn to laugh. If she only knew. “Yeah, I’ll share the check if you share the Pulitzer.”

  “Good-bye, Gypsy.”

  “Bye, Sophia.” I clicked the phone off. Even if the rumor came back as the truth, it didn’t explain the eight missing girls. Ryce was on to something and I didn’t think it had anything to do with a fondness for underage boys.

  The Reeves County Detention Center was divided into three facilities; Hector Martinez was in Reeves III, a medium-security compound. Although it was a federal prison, it, like many others across Texas, was managed by a private corporation. It was the single largest employer in Pecos. Over the years, Reeves had made a name for itself for its riots and for its large population of illegals shipped in from across the southwest. The inmates who were allowed visitors each had an approved-visitors list and to make the list, one had to submit to a complete background check. It could take as much as thirty days to be approved to visit. I didn’t have thirty days. Attorneys and clergy were cleared to visit at any time, providing the facility wasn’t in the middle of a lockdown or mass riot. No matter how desperate I was, I couldn’t in good faith pretend to be an attorney. I did have some standards.

  The facility was surrounded by two rows of eight-foot chain-link fencing topped with razor wire. Guards’ towers were stationed about every hundred yards. I dug out my fake clergy ID from the manila folder and showed it to the gate guard. He waved me through without a second glance. I parked in the visitors’ lot, then carried the folder with my fake background information to the visitors’ entrance.

  I fell in line behind a Hispanic family waiting as the female correctional officer confirmed they were on the approved visiting list. She checked each bag as another officer did a wand search. The family had obviously been here before and knew the routine.

  I moved up in line and handed the officer my fake identification papers. “I’m here to see Hector Martinez,” I said, and smiled softly. I gave her Hector’s inmate number so there wouldn’t be any surprises. “Family emergency,” I added quietly.

  She looked over my papers, then waved me through to the next officer. He did a quick wand scan, then spoke into the radio attached to his shoulder. He rattled off Hector’s inmate number, then instructed whoever was on the other end to bring Hector to private visiting room 3.