Wildburn (A Whicher Series Novella)

by John Stonehouse

  Butch studies the flags outside the judge's office.

  “What time will Lopez get here?”

  “Supposed to be within the hour,” Butch says.

  Down the corridor, double-doors swing open. A prisoner in orange coveralls steps out—young, Hispanic, male—flanked by two guards. He's handcuffed, chains jingling at his waist and legs. The three men walk down the corridor, dead eyes straight ahead.

  Butch slumps forward.

  Whicher glances at him. “You look like you want to throw up.”

  At the end of the corridor the guards and prisoner exit through another set of doors.

  “Best friend Juanita could have right now is her attorney,” Whicher says. “Even if the judge agrees bail again, it's going to be way high—you can't afford to stake her more.”

  Butch cranes his head around. “I can't go home.”

  Whicher sets one boot on top of the other. “I need to talk with Brandon Lynch. I have to head down to Gaines.”

  “Let me come.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “No.” Whicher looks his friend in the eye. “No, you don't. I'll call the drilling company, find out exactly Lynch's known movements. He's tied to a rig twenty-four hours a day—no way there won't be witnesses.”

  “To what?”

  “What time he set out from the site in Scurry. What time he showed up in Gaines.”

  “You think he could've been there?” Butch says. “In Torero?”

  The marshal stands, fits his hat. Squares it. He doesn’t answer.

  Gaines County, TX.

  * * *

  The steel structure of the rig tower rises a hundred feet into the West Texas sky. Outside the supervisor's trailer, Whicher surveys the camp—little more than a flattened clearing in the scrub mesquite. Scattered about is a crew house, site trailers, tool stores, piles of gear. The noise of diesel engines is cut with shouts and bangs. Above it all, a red-tailed hawk hovers, wings flickering in the prairie wind.

  The door of the supervisor's trailer opens. A man steps out—gnarled-looking, in his fifties, wearing a denim shirt, a white hard hat.

  “Mister Sullivan?”

  The man nods. “Don't mean to keep you waiting. I got a rig to run, anything goes wrong it's me that carries the can.”

  High up on the drilling tower, a derrick hand balances on a monkey-board. Floor hands connect up the drill string—fast, brutal motion, swinging oversize clamps.

  “How many folk are permanently on the site, here?” Whicher says.

  “Upwards of twenty,” Sullivan says. “There's a day crew, a night crew, safety people in and out. We'll get drivers, swampers, cement crews, trucks delivering parts...”

  The revs rise on a big diesel motor, drowning out the man's voice.

  Black smoke churns across the site. Whicher thinks of showing up with Juanita, the night before—nobody paying much attention.

  Sullivan watches a hoist move thick steel cable, chains spinning up under tension. “People are blowing in and out of here the whole time.”

  A length of pipe rises in the air. Above the rig floor, the derrick man waits, under full sun, to set the pipe in the rig.

  “They all work for you?” Whicher says.

  Sullivan shakes his head. “Operating company contracts out all services. The rig's rented. Just till the drilling program's complete.”

  “How about Brandon Lynch?”

  “Him included.”

  “He's a contractor? Who's he report to?”

  “Long as he's here, he reports to me.”

  On the rig floor, the hands finish coupling the drill string—they step away fast.

  A young guy covered in gray mud, grabs a length of hose, starts to sluice down the gear.

  “The rig over in Scurry County,” Whicher says, “the rig Lynch came in from—they have the same set up out there?”

  “They're running a double, we're a triple.”

  The marshal looks at him.

  “We'll take three in the stand, in the derrick. They'll take two. Apart from that it's about the same.”

  “Same size crew?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I spoke with the supervisor...”

  “O' Leary, I know him.”

  “He says he was off shift the night before last. Wednesday. But the driller saw Lynch leave—around ten. That be about right, for when he left?”

  Sullivan spreads his hands. “If that's what the guy told you.”

  “How come he didn't clear it with O' Leary—if he's supervisor?”

  “Man can't be on shift twenty-four hours. On call, yes—but not on shift. Driller's the next guy to the supervisor, in seniority. If the well's stable, if they didn't need a mud engineer, the driller could okay it.”

  “Lynch checks with the driller—then he can take off?”

  Sullivan eyes the men on the rig. “Call the drilling fluids company, they'll tell you what time he was told to quit.” He turns to the marshal. “Lynch tells me he has to leave, it have something to do with you coming around?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “I told him he can't.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need a mud engineer, can't run without one, it's too dangerous. He can't go till they find somebody else.”

  “What if he does?”

  “He does that, he's finished in this business.”

  On the rig floor, the men step back in position—the youngster with the hose turns it on himself, blasting mud off his face and neck. Beneath the grime, his hard hat glints orange—blood orange, a strange point of color in the gray filth.

  “What's going on with Lynch?” Sullivan says. “He's been acting kind of strange.”

  “There was an incident at his house yesterday. Serious incident. How well you know the guy?”

  “Hardly know him at all.”

  “What you think of him?” Whicher says.

  “In this business, they come and go, you don't get to know a bunch about 'em. Lynch knows his job. He can fix mud, keep it right.”

  “That a hard thing to do?”

  “It's plenty hard.” Sullivan lifts a hand, points at the roughnecks on the rig floor. “But not like that.”

  “How long those guys work a shift?”

  “Twelve hours.”

  “That's some serious hardball.”

  “They're making hardball money.”

  “Everybody work like that?” Whicher says. “In twelve hour shifts?”

  “If nothing breaks.”

  Whicher studies the crew a moment. “And does it break?”

  “Not if I can help it.” Sullivan shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  The marshal watches the crew; the speed, the force, the physical energy.

  “Faster we can drill it, the better,” Sullivan says. “A guy like Lynch, he's here for that. On twenty-four hour call to stop things breaking.”

  “Folk on the rig,” Whicher says, “y'all test 'em for narcs?”

  “Narcotics?” Sullivan looks at him. “In-house they get a standard ten-panel, prior to employment.”

  “In-house?”

  The supervisor leans against a guard rail. “Employed directly by us. We'll test urine. Breathalyze at random. Independent landmen, I guess it's different, I can't account for everybody coming on the site.”

  “How about Lynch?”

  “He's a sub, he works for the drilling fluids company.”

  “He's independent?”

  Sullivan nods. He looks hard at the marshal. “How come you're asking me a question like that?”

  On the bare caliche at the back of the drill site, Brandon Lynch paces by his red Ram pickup.

  A cigarette dangles from his hand, wild hair back-lit in the sun. “What's happening with my house, man?”

  “Did you call the sheriff's department?”

  “I called a bunch of times.” Lynch tugs at his work shirt. “I'm trying to
get on back—I can't get off the site.”

  Whicher adjusts the brim of the Resistol against the glare of light.

  The young man screws up his face. “If you found out somebody was shot to death at your house, you'd just relax? Take it easy?”

  Whicher doesn't reply.

  “They're sending somebody. Another mud guy. They ought to be out here now.”

  “You can't go in the house,” Whicher says. “Not till the sheriff tells you.”

  “My own house?”

  “That's a crime scene.”

  Lynch takes a draw on the cigarette.

  “Y'all want to be doing that?” The marshal looks at him. “Around a drilling rig?”

  Lynch hawks, spits. “Eighty feet from the bore hole I can do what I like.”

  Whicher eyes the outline of the steel tower. “I spoke with the supervisor in Scurry—O' Leary. He says you left around ten, night before last.”

  The young man scratches at his tangled hair.

  “You checked out, told the driller. Driller says he can't exactly recall.”

  Lynch puts the cigarette to his mouth.

  “You reckoned to show up here around three o' clock in the morning? A hundred miles. How come it took you so long?”

  “I slept. I went to sleep in my truck. I drove a spell, then parked up. Caught an hour or two.”

  “In your truck?”

  “I live out of the damn thing, don't I?”

  “How come you didn't drive on here, sleep here?”

  Lynch angles his head toward the rig. “You hear that thing, the sound of that? That thing don't quit at night.”

  “Whereabouts you stop?”

  “Lamesa.”

  “Whereabouts in Lamesa?”

  The young man shakes his head. “I came off of one-eighty, drove toward town. There's a truck stop greasers use, I parked up in the lot.”

  “You see anybody?”

  “Nope.”

  “Buy anything?”

  Lynch stares.

  “Was the truck stop open?”

  “I was driving, I got tired, I was near Lamesa, I figured to stop awhile. That's it.”

  “You're saying nobody saw your ass?”

  “Don't matter if they saw me or not.”

  “I'd get to thinking on that,” Whicher says. “I'd get to thinking on it fast.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lamesa, Dawson County, TX.

  * * *

  Fifty miles away, in a truck stop off the one-eighty loop, makeshift stalls sit beneath bright parasols, the stalls selling watermelon, corn and figs.

  To one side of a pitted gravel lot a restaurant building backs on to a gas station and store. Whicher leaves the Silverado among the rigs and trailers by the stalls.

  At the entrance to the restaurant building, ice cold air is ramming over the door.

  Men are lined up at every cash register, buying burritos and fried chicken, sixes of canned soda, energy drinks.

  The marshal scans the folk working the counter, mostly young, Hispanic. A middle-aged guy in a snap-front shirt chews a pen top, writing something on a clipboard.

  Whicher steps around a delivery of bottled water. He takes out the Marshals Service badge and ID.

  The man with the clipboard looks up, sees him. He steps to the end of the counter.

  “I take a minute of your time?” Whicher says. “I can see y'all are busy.”

  “Rigs are hiring,”

  Whicher runs an eye over the place. “You get a lot of oil-field workers here?”

  The man nods. “About half our business is greasers.”

  “Tell me something,” Whicher says, “you guys stay open overnight?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You don't?”

  “We close up around eleven-thirty.” The man puts down the clipboard. “You can still get gas, the pumps'll take a card.”

  “You running CCTV?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where y'all keep the footage from the cameras?”

  The man looks at him a moment. “Not here.”

  “You have a security company handle it?”

  “Yes, sir, they keep it around a month. Just long enough for credit card fraud to show up, that kind of thing.”

  “Y'all have cameras out in the lot?”

  The man shakes his head. “We have two cameras in here, plus three outside—filming the pumps.”

  “That's it?”

  “Customers can use the parking at their own risk.”

  Whicher looks out the wide glass window to the trucks and cars. “You get folk staying overnight?”

  “There'll be trucks there most nights”

  “Any trouble?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If I needed to take a look at that CCTV footage, who do I have to ask?”

  The man turns back behind the counter, reaching to a stack of business cards by a coffee machine. He takes one, hands it to Whicher. “The main office number is right on there.”

  The marshal takes it. “You don't happen to know a guy name of Lynch?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Brandon Lynch?”

  The man's face is blank.

  “He works on the rigs,” Whicher says. “Guy's a mud engineer.”

  “Should I know him?”

  “I'm just asking.”

  The man shakes his head.

  Whicher tips a finger to the brim of his hat. “Appreciate your time.”

  He steps from the counter, heads outside into a wall of heat.

  Across the lot he opens up the cab of the Silverado, starts the motor, sets the A/C to max.

  He stands by his truck a minute, leaning his elbows on the roof.

  Out on the highway, traffic is flowing free. He watches shapes moving along the road, eye drawn north toward the outline of a water tower, a grain elevator beyond it. Box-like warehouses line the strip—car dealers, workshops. A quarter mile on is a mesh wire fence, a row of garage doors set behind it—the doors all painted up a dark orange. For a moment, he thinks of the hand at the drilling rig—the hard hat he wore an orange color—blood orange, like the paint on the doors.

  Beneath the hood of the Silverado a switch clicks, the revs drop a couple hundred.

  Whicher opens up the driver side. Climbs inside to cool air.

  Lubbock.

  May as well head back to Lubbock.

  Juanita's attorney, Evelyn Lopez, would be there. He could talk with her, see what the judge decided. See if Butch had gone back to Amarillo.

  He knocks the truck into drive, rolls across the gravel by a watermelon stand.

  A guy in a straw hat watches from a folding camp chair.

  Whicher's cell phone rings.

  He takes it from his jacket, checks the screen, not recognizing the number.

  He comes off the gas, brakes the truck to a stop.

  “Whicher.”

  “This is Motley County Sheriff's department, marshal. Deputy Pierce. Sheriff McCoy asked me to call.”

  “Pierce, you still working?”

  “We don't get a homicide here every day of the week.”

  “Amen to that,” Whicher says.

  “Sheriff asked me to call about the car seen yesterday—parked in front of Brandon Lynch's house. We think we might have it tracked down. We found a record of a vehicle in Lubbock fitting the description.”

  “You traced it?”

  “Sheriff thought you'd want to know.”

  Whicher takes up the notepad and pen from the passenger seat. “Go ahead.”

  “Got an '81 Chevrolet Camaro—in metallic green. Sheriff was thinking if the neighbor saw it, Mrs Gomez—if we can get a picture of it, she could see if it was the one.”

  “Let me have the address.”

  “I already tried calling the address on file. But it's registered to a carny.”

  “It's what?”

  “A carnival worker. There's nobody there.”

  Whicher sets down
the pen. “Did y'all get a name?”

  “Yessir. Zamora. Emilio Zamora. That's the name we got on the file right here.”

  Chapter Ten

  An hour up the highway from Lamesa, Whicher drives into Lubbock on the raised pontoons of the interstate—a wide view to the horizon, all the way out over flat terrain.

  Downtown is off left, the mid and high rise office buildings stark in the afternoon sun.

  In the near distance he can see the old court house, an ochre yellow glow. He peels off the exit ramp for 13th and Broadway, passing chemical refineries, an industrial park. The road swings beneath the interstate. He makes a turn onto Avenue E.

  At the intersection with Broadway, he rolls to a halt to wait at the stop light. Left will take him downtown to the Sheriff's Department and Border Patrol. Juanita Jones will be waiting at the new court house building, in one of the holding cells.

  If he makes a right, heads east beneath the railroad bridge, he'll come out at the fairground, the Panhandle South Plains Fair.

  He waits at the stop light—thinks of Emilio Zamora. If Zamora owned the Camaro, he'd have to come up with something—a reason the car had been parked on Brandon Lynch's yard the day of a murder.

  The marshal thinks of Butch, of Juanita—gut instinct tells him; let Juanita speak first.

  He flips the blinker.

  The stop lights shift to green.

  He makes the left, drives downtown past the parking lots, the bail bond offices, a Greyhound bus station—truck tires rumbling on the red brick road.

  At the rear of the courthouse, the first-floor interview room is a cramped, stark space.

  Under harsh lighting, Evelyn Lopez is seated at a chipped metal desk. She's wearing a charcoal suit, short black hair framing a tough Latina face. Juanita Jones sits at her side in a plastic chair—sleeveless dress and the sweater gone now, replaced with county-issue blue coveralls.

  Lopez flicks through a sheaf of papers ranged in front of her on the desk.

  Juanita's eyes burn a spot on the floor.

  “The judge wants a report,” Lopez says.

  Whicher nods.

  “There'll be no decision regarding additional charges until the report is back.”

  The marshal looks to Juanita, and back to the attorney.