by Mel Odom
“I can’t believe he just ran like that,” Don whispered.
“Daddy’s been running for forty years. We just never knew it.”
46
>> Rafter M Ranch
>> Outside Fort Davis, Texas
>> 1038 Hours (Central Time Zone)
“Must be a slow news day,” Estrella commented from the passenger seat. Her displeasure showed in her frown as she regarded the sight.
Will looked at the road ahead and curbed the impatience and frustration that filled him. Ahead, the road was choked by news vehicles and local gawkers. And not everyone had gotten there by car or pickup; a few horses grazed while they were tied to the fence that ran around the Rafter M.
“It’s a small town,” Will said. “Everybody here knows everybody else.”
“Or thinks they do,” Nita said from the backseat. “Till something like this happens.”
Tall and red-haired, the team’s medical examiner peered forward between the two front seats. Normally she was lean, but she was five months pregnant these days. Her hand unconsciously glided across her stomach as Will checked on her in the rearview mirror. She was only just starting to show.
“Small towns are good to live in,” Nita went on. “Everybody knows you. Of course, small towns are also bad to live in. Because everyone knows you.”
Will silently agreed. “Are you doing all right?”
Nita met his gaze in the rearview mirror and smiled self-consciously. “I’m fine.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to come out here if it hadn’t been Shel involved.”
“With Shel involved,” Nita told him, “I’d have been seriously irked if you hadn’t asked me.”
Will offered her a wan smile. Since she’d come to terms with the issues in her private life and rededicated herself to her husband and daughter, Nita carried a peace about her that Will couldn’t help noticing.
“What do you hope to find out here?” Nita asked.
“I don’t know,” Will answered honestly. “But with the lengths Victor Gant is going to, I want every edge I can get.”
A uniformed deputy waved him to a stop. Will rolled the window down.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you go any farther, sir,” the deputy said with polite efficiency.
“Who’s in charge of this investigation?” Will asked.
“That’d be Sheriff Conover, but he’s a mighty busy man right now.”
Will showed the deputy his NCIS ID. “Get him for me, would you?”
The deputy used the handi-talker on his shoulder and called for the sheriff.
Will got out of the rented car and stretched. He was dead tired. When Shel had called him last night and let him know everything that had transpired, Will had called the team in immediately and requisitioned a jet to get them to Fort Davis. Director Larkin had greased the wheels, and a jet had been standing by when Will arrived at the airport.
Maggie parked the second SUV they’d rented. With all the gear the team packed, they needed multiple vehicles. Remy parked a third SUV behind her, then got out and flashed his ID at the deputy who was trying to wave him off.
A couple minutes later, Sheriff Conover made his way through the crowd and reached Will. He was a tall, thick man with a fierce mustache, a big hat, and mirrored sunglasses.
“Commander Coburn?” the sheriff asked. His gruff voice matched his exterior.
Will nodded and offered his hand.
“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Conover said. “Pity it couldn’t be under more pleasant circumstances.”
“Where’s my agent?” Will asked as he took his hand back.
“Up to the house. Since he’s a trained forensics person, I figured it wouldn’t hurt none to have him help out some.”
“Some lawyer could argue that Gunnery Sergeant McHenry’s presence here could compromise the evidence. He has a vested interest.”
Conover smiled. “I figure a dumb attorney could work up to that song and dance, see how it flew for a judge at an inquest, but a smart one would realize we got a mess of dead bikers here that ain’t local. And this trouble followed Shel’s family home from your neck of the woods. Wasn’t nothing started here.”
Will nodded.
“More’n that,” Conover said, “I ain’t got enough boys out here to lock Shel out of this.” He paused. “I assume you people are gonna take over this investigation?”
“With the family of one of my team in danger like this? You know it.”
“They killed one of my deputies last night,” Conover said. “He was a good man. A family man. Shel tells me you’re good at what you do, so I’m gonna back your play. Anything you need from me, you consider it yours.”
“I appreciate that,” Will said.
>> 1052 Hours (Central Time Zone)
Don was sitting on the front porch steps and talking on a cell phone when Will arrived. When he saw Will, Don folded the phone, put it away, and got up.
“How are you doing?” Will asked.
“It’s tough,” Don admitted. “The main thing is that no one knows where Daddy is. Or if he’s all right. I’ve been praying about it since we found him gone.”
“The sheriff said he’d put a BOLO out on your father,” Will said. A BOLO was a Be On the LookOut order. It was usually accompanied by a description. In this case, the sheriff had posted pictures of Tyrel McHenry. “They’ll find him.”
Don hesitated. “Shel doesn’t think they will.”
“He’ll probably show up on his own once all the confusion dies down,” Will said. “He may have just lain down and gone to sleep somewhere out there.” He nodded at the pasture. He knew from talking to Shel and the sheriff that Tyrel McHenry had taken a horse and left the scene. “And Shel didn’t indicate there was any reason to think your father was injured when he left.”
Don gave Will a curious glance. “Shel didn’t tell you, did he?” he asked.
“I don’t understand.”
Helplessness showed in Don’s eyes. Desperation was in there too.
“Victor Gant told Shel that Daddy was a murderer,” Don said in a low voice. “Back in Jacksonville. Gant said that Daddy killed a man back in Vietnam all those years ago, and Gant was going to make sure that knowledge became public.”
Will listened as Don talked in low tones.
“Personally,” Don said when he finished, “I don’t see how it could be true. Daddy won’t ever win Father of the Year, but he’s a good man. What Victor Gant has accused him of, I just don’t see that happening.”
“Does Shel believe it?” Will asked.
Don paused, then nodded. “He does.”
That, Will thought, explained a lot of Shel’s strange behavior of late. “Where can I find Shel?”
“He’s inside. In Daddy’s room. Straight on back.”
>> 1055 Hours (Central Time Zone)
Will found Shel in the bedroom. The big Marine had a high-definition digital camera in hand and was capturing images of the broken window with slow deliberation. He glanced up and nodded at Will.
“You got here fast,” Shel commented.
“You asked me to come.” Will gazed around at the crime scene. It had been expertly marked off. Spent brass lay on the floor with markers beside the casings. He noticed immediately that no bullet holes adorned the walls.
“I hated to ask,” Shel said. He captured another image. “I know you’ve got a full plate with everything back at Camp Lejeune. The last thing you needed was this.”
“This,” Will said with deliberation, knowing that getting around to the subject of Tyrel McHenry was going to be difficult, “is connected to part of what I’ve got on my plate. Victor Gant is unfinished business.”
Shel nodded.
Will peered over the windowsill and down at the ground. Two dead bikers lay there.
“I told them they couldn’t move the bodies till after Nita got here,” Shel said. “She came, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Will said.
> “I owe her one.”
“She doesn’t keep count. None of us do.” Will glanced around the room again. “I don’t see any bullet holes.”
“They never got a shot off,” Shel said with a hint of pride. “Daddy sat in that corner there—” he pointed—“and took out the first man as he was coming through the window. The headshot. Then he crossed the room and took out the second. After that, he made his way to the barn and took off on his horse. He left another body.”
“Sounds like your father knows how to handle himself,” Will said.
Shel nodded. “More than I thought he did.”
“The sheriff told me he had a chopper in the air searching.”
A look of quiet contemplation filled Shel’s face. “Daddy don’t want to be found. He knows all that hardscrabble country out there like the back of his hand. He won’t be located till he’s good and ready to be located.”
“I thought maybe that was the case,” Will said.
Shel looked at him for a long moment. “You ran into Don out front, didn’t you? He told you what Victor Gant said about Daddy.”
Will didn’t hesitate. In all the years he’d dealt with Shel, there was no other way to handle the gunnery sergeant than in a straight-ahead fashion.
“Yeah,” Will said. “Don did.”
“I would have told you,” Shel said quietly. “But there’s no proof that anything Victor Gant said about my daddy is true.”
“Do you think it is?”
Angrily Shel took in a deep breath and let it out. “I do, Will. I looked into Daddy’s eyes and I saw the guilt there the way I’ve seen it dozens of times when we’ve had people in the interview rooms back at headquarters.”
Will accepted that. Shel was good at reading people. Will trusted the man’s instinct. “All right. The question remains, what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
Seeing the pain in Shel’s eyes and in the uncomfortable way he held his shoulders, Will softened his voice. “It’s hard to prosecute someone for murder when you don’t know who it is that he’s supposed to have killed.”
“I know. But I think I know who it was.” Shel walked over to the closet and lifted a small box from inside a recessed area. “I found this while I was poking around in here. It’s stuff Daddy must have brought back from Vietnam.” He took a picture out of the box and showed it to Will.
Will took the picture and studied the young man in it. “Do you know who this is?”
“His name’s Dennis Hinton. Private first class. Regular army. He was nineteen years old in that picture.”
“How do you know that?”
“His name’s on the back. That’s also how I know this is the man Daddy killed.”
Will turned the picture over and read the messy handwriting on the back.
Below it was another line of words that had been heavily underlined.
“It’s not exactly a confession,” Shel said hoarsely, “but it’s close enough. If we get testimony from Victor Gant.”
Will handed the picture back to Shel without saying anything.
“I’m hosed, Will,” Shel said in a tight voice. “If we don’t catch Victor Gant, maybe he keeps trying to kill me and gets lucky. Or now that Daddy’s gone, maybe he’ll try to get Don and his family. I’m not going to allow that, but I can’t protect Don’s family the way I need to if Victor Gant stays loose. So I’m going to bring him in.”
“And when Victor Gant is brought in, he’s going to testify against your father.”
“You see how it is,” Shel whispered.
“I do.”
“So I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m supposed to hope that Daddy is gone and I never see him again. Or if I’m supposed to help turn him over to the military court.” Shel paused. “Either way, my family loses.”
Will thought about everything that was put before them. Their cases often got complicated. Violence wasn’t neat. Not from the perpetrator’s point of view and not from the investigator’s.
But this . . .
Will didn’t even have the words for it.
“All my life,” Shel said, “I’ve always gone after the W. I always wanted the win. If I came up short, I was okay with that. I just pushed myself harder the next time.” He was silent for a moment. “But there’s no win here. No do-over. No matter what I do, I lose something.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said and wished he had more to give his friend than that. “Look, we’ve got the team here. Let’s see if we can find a room and talk. Figure out what we’re going to do. Then we’ll break this down just like we do everything else. One step at a time.”
“Sure,” Shel said. “But I got to tell you, Will, I’ll give you everything I’ve got, but my heart ain’t in this.”
“I know. But I’ll take you with whatever you can give.”
47
>> Rafter M Ranch
>> Outside Fort Davis, Texas
>> 1329 Hours (Central Time Zone)
“Hey, sweetie,” Estrella said, speaking her native Spanish. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, Mama,” her son, Nicky, said, replying in the same language. “Joe just brought us back from the ocean. It was really cool.”
A chill ghosted through Estrella when she thought about Nicky out on a boat in the open ocean. Even with Joe Tomlinson, who had practically grown up on water, it was a scary thing. That wasn’t a day trip she’d have planned for the two of them. She wasn’t a fan of deep water anyway.
During her time in the service she’d served aboard an antiaircraft carrier. The ship had been so big that most of the time there was none of the normal pitch and roll of smaller craft. Still, the first few weeks aboard the ship had left her weak and nauseous despite the medication the ship’s medic had signed off for her.
“I was wearing a life vest,” Nicky went on. He had a put-upon air. “I didn’t like it. It made me feel like a wimp. But Joe made me wear it.”
Estrella relaxed a little. She sat at the small desk that Shel had said he had done homework on throughout his childhood.
“Did Joe wear his vest?” Estrella asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, see? If Joe thinks the vest is important enough to wear one himself, then it must be.”
“Are you coming to get me today, Mama?”
Estrella stared at the two wide-screen computer monitors that split the work she was doing as they talked. “Not today. I’m sorry.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Joe has agreed to let you stay there a little longer. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sure. I like it here. Joe’s a lot of fun.”
That declaration hurt Estrella. Nicky was growing up without a father and there was nothing she could do about that. Worst of all, he was getting to the age where he wanted time with a father. Even when Estrella tried to do “dad” things with him, like fishing and camping and throwing a baseball in the park, Nicky was still aware of her being a “girl” when he felt he was supposed to be with a man.
“It’ll only be for a couple more days,” Estrella said, hoping that the crime scene in Texas wouldn’t take any longer than that. “So don’t get too comfortable there. And be a good boy, okay?”
“I’m always good,” Nicky said.
That, thankfully, was true. Despite the fact that Estrella had had to raise her son in a single-parent household and with a job that could be inordinately stressful, Nicky was a good son.
“I love you, baby,” she said.
“I’m not a baby.”
“You’ll always be my baby.”
“Mom . . . ,” Nicky protested.
“All right, I love you. If you need anything, call me. And tell Joe thanks for me.”
“I will. I love you too, Mom. Bye.”
Estrella folded her cell phone and put it away. You’re lucky to have him, she told herself. You have no reason to feel sad.
But she did. She’d never gotten
over Julian’s death, especially not the fact that he’d committed suicide only months before Nicky was born. That was still the deepest hurt of her life.
She turned her attention to the files she’d downloaded from the U.S. Army databases regarding servicemen in Vietnam and started reading. Once she’d had PFC Dennis Hinton’s name and had cross-referenced it with PFC Tyrel McHenry and Sergeant Victor Gant, a lot of the busywork had been eliminated.
What was left was a U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command report that was interesting.
Estrella knew that Will would want to see the CID report, but she also knew he was busy working the crime scenes. He was also there counseling Shel.
When she’d first heard about the attack on Tyrel McHenry, Estrella’s heart had gone out to Shel. She and the big Marine had been close friends since she’d joined the NCIS team shortly after he did. Part of it was the commonality of the Spanish language they shared, but part of it—Estrella suspected—was because they’d both been hurt by family. Julian had left her, and Tyrel had never been there for Shel. Both of them had holes in their hearts and lives that had affected them deeply.
And both of them were too stubborn to talk about their losses. They each believed the loss was theirs to carry alone.
But now Shel’s had gone past the point where he could carry it himself.
Estrella only hoped what she was finding out was going to be beneficial rather than hurtful. She was afraid that, just like the phone call to Nicky, it might be a little of both.
>> 1721 Hours
“Private First Class Dennis Leon Hinton was officially declared missing on October 17, 1967,” Estrella said.