“What’s going on?”
Kurston’s head was cocked, his eyes locked in deep frown. “All they’ve called is burglary.”
“Where?”
“Country Club,” Kurston said. “One of the houses. Don’t know who’s.”
“No shit?”
Barefield’s mayor lived at the Country Club, just off the first tee. The homes out there, generally between five hundred grand and a million a pop in a town where the average house went for about a hundred grand, were filled with movers and shakers.
“The cream of the corrupt crop,” I said.
“My old insurance agent lived out there a’fore he got popped for embezzling a million-and-a-half bucks from clients.” Kurston shook his head. “Ritzy place.”
I snorted. “Protected and safe behind those fucking eight foot walls and all their damned rent-a-cops.”
“Doesn’t seem so protected now,” Kurston said.
The radio came to life again as the responding officer arrived. “Burning,” he said, his voice thin and tiny through the electronics. “Get fire out here.”
Kurston nodded. “There it is. I knew it was more than a burglary.”
Two more cops radioed as they arrived, and they saw the same thing. Dispatchers responded, crawled all over each other to get more people to the scene. The air was full of dispatchers and I frowned. Usually, they were as cool as an ice age. But this was different...way different.
“Got a suspect,” someone shouted.
Not the cop who’d first radioed about the fire. Someone different, though I could hear the flames through his open mic.
“I see him,” a third cop said. “Gun gun gun!”
“Christ on a shingle,” Kurston said.
“Get down,” shouted the first cop. “Get down behind that—”
His voice went dead, but there had been no shots, at least not that I’d heard through the keyed mics. Now the dispatchers were all business, as though they’d shut out what might have happened. The dispatchers fell silent. Only one now spoke, calm and controlled, directing the players.
Somehow, the near silence was much more intimidating than the screeching of cops scared of a giant fire.
“All units...weapon spotted. All units, weapon spotted.”
Nothing else then, as though the cops had been swallowed into the belly of the beast, into the white whale’s monstrous gullet.
“They go quiet?”
“Yeah,” Kurston answered. “Don’t want him to know where they are.” He paused. “Sort of like the last few weeks with you.” A pause. “Sorry, that was shitty.” He rubbed his face, as though he could wipe away his words, and spoke again. “Listen, that number? On your arm? It’s Fagan’s birthday.”
I blinked. “What? His birthday.”
101645. October 16, 1945.
“Yeah.”
Kurston paced the floor, kept his head toward the scanner. He needs to be there, I knew. He needs to be running hot through town, lights and siren and ninety miles per hour toward the country club. He needs to be helping his friends and nailing the bad guy.
He’s a cop. It’s all he’s ever been. Hell, sixty years old and he’s got more than thirty years in already. The pension gets no better, but he can’t stop being a cop.
When the radio opened up again, there was an explosion of cops and firemen screaming for massive assistance. All the voices were backed by a cacophony of sirens and shouts, of ten-code.
“Three places burning.” Kurston’s voice was snare drum tight. “Three or four guys with guns. Probably just one, but lots of cops are seeing him now. They’re gonna be there for a good long while.” He banged a hand against Val’s soda machine. “Damnit.”
To change the subject, I said, “I’ve got a question for you, SuperCop.”
The nickname brought a reluctant, tiny grin to Kurston’s face. “What?”
I raised my arm, slapped the number. “If that’s his birthday, how come he couldn’t remember it?”
“A junkie. Probably fried his brains out years ago. Probably why he had to write down the towns where he’d worked and the banks where he might have opened that damned box.”
“He’s got a driver’s license, for fuck’s sake. His birthday’s on that.”
“It’ll be on his intake sheet, too.”
I frowned. “Intake sheet? You mean like a booking form?”
“Booking is county jail. Intake is state prison.”
“He’s going to prison? What for?”
“You didn’t kill the government man. I believe it in my soul, Darcy. You didn’t kill anybody. But I guess you were there, weren’t you?”
Fuck me. I’d gone from killing my father to killing a federal cop to maybe killing no one. After living with blood on my hands, a metaphoric Lady MacBeth, my brain refused to cough up my name without being followed by killer.
But if I wasn’t the killer, how come I hadn’t been able to remember anything beyond Fagan’s cackle, the buzz of the needle, and then waking up with the foot?
And the cash.
“It wasn’t real,” I said.
Kurston frowned. “What?”
“The money. It was counterfeit.”
Kurston licked his lips, swallowed. His face was a composed, but there were nervous cracks in it. “You know funny money well enough to say it’s funny money?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it? The plates? The Secret Service?”
“You think Fagan is smart enough to be involved?”
I shook my head. “Stupid enough. He came for a card game, thought he could get in and win a bundle. He even sat in on a hand, I think.”
“You remember that?”
I shrugged. “I might be making it up, but it’s what I see in my head. Something else was going on, something beyond the card game. Maybe Fagan stumbled into it and tried to get a new job brokering those plates.”
It fit. Fagan hadn’t returned to connect with his son, he had returned to land a minor score, which turned into a chance at a major score, which turned into murder.
And if he got to see his son, so much the fucking better, huh?
“Damnit.” I had walked out on Kurston to chase some bullshit dream that never had a snowball’s chance in Texas of coming true.
“Darcy,” Kurston said. “Take it easy. It wasn’t just the money. I’m sure he came to see you, too, and—”
“Bullshit.” My voice boomed. “He didn’t come for me, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Darcy, he told me he came straight to the house.”
“Grade A crap. He’d already been in town for three days.”
“No, he said he came straight—”
“No.” I shook my head. “Trust me. He’d been at the Triple D. He lied to you.”
“Damn,” Kurston said. “That’s almost hard to believe.”
My blood spiked in my veins, dumping adrenaline like chemicals spilling out of a derailed train car. I took a deep breath, licked my lips slowly, tried to get myself under control. “He asked where the tattoo parlor was. Before he asked who I was.”
I had been working on Kurston’s front gate, trying to rehang it plumb. The Continental had pulled up silently and the passenger’s window had come down. “Hey, you know where Staind Skin is?”
“Uh...no,” I had answered.
“Well, whatever, we can find it later,” Fagan had said. He climbed out of the car and offered a handshake. “I guess I’m your daddy, Darcy.”
There were no words, either from me or Kurston trimming the bushes up near the house. We both understood, clearly, what Fagan had said. For me, the words had hurt enough that I’d covered them over with everything else. For Kurston, at least from the look on his face, the words pissed him off.
“I would never have said ‘I guess.’” Kurston shook his head. “I am your daddy, Darcy, I wouldn’t give that up for anything.”
“The cash in the deposit box?”
He stared at me, frowning, for
a long moment. “You know, if this whole criminal thing doesn’t work out for you, you should try stand up, ’cause you’re funny as a kick to the crotch.”
I had hurt him...again. It was as though there was no way I couldn’t not hurt my step-father, no way I couldn’t not say the absolute worst possible thing. “I’m sorry. That was stupid. I go for humor, I usually miss pretty badly.”
“We’ve all got our crosses to bear,” Kurston said as the screen door banged open and closed.
“Crosses and petite women killers.”
Cope stood in the door way, his chest heaving, his hands shaking. But what I saw first, and what scared him silly, was the blood.
Cope’s face was covered in it.
“Fucking Christ’a’mighty.” I went to Cope’s side, grabbed his arm to lead him to a chair.
Cope jerked free, yanked a thumb over his shoulder. “Petunia’s in town, blasphemer. Down to the Dew Drop Inn, asking lotta questions.”
“Getting any answers?” Kurston asked.
Cope shook his head. “Helluva lotta hands on that tight ass though.”
“She did this to you?” I pulled a towel off the counter behind the chairs, handed it to Cope.
“Who y’all think, White-Boy?” He held the towel against his face. “Saw me, lost her mind.” He tried to laugh but the sound was as strangled as an unwanted mutt.
“Sounds a little pissed,” Kurston said.
“That finely honed cop sense, tell y’all that?”
Just then, headlights blasted through the front window and Petunia climbed out of an SUV.
Eight Hours, Two Minutes Ago
She stopped at the doorway, surveying the shop from behind her gun. When she came in, walking easily and confidently, she stood next to Val’s Dr Pepper machine.
“Petunia,” I said. “How’re the jeans?” I tried to keep my eyes away from the back office, away from where Kurston had disappeared, carrying the phone with him and yanking out his weapon to check the magazine.
“Had to buy another pair.” Her face screwed up in disgust. “Not my regular brand either.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so out here,” I said. “Probably don’t find too many pair of hundred dollar jeans in the west Texas desert.”
Petunia frowned. “What is it with you and getting your hands up? I told you last night I didn’t work that way now put them down.”
I put my hands down. Petunia flashed across the room, jammed her gun into my gut.
“One shot,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Why not just pop me in the head?” I asked. “Quicker.”
“Entirely too quick.”
“I thought you got shot.”
“Which only shows what happens when you think.” She smiled and shook her head sadly. “This is getting so tiresome.”
“And I’m getting fucking sick and tired of you. I don’t have your goddamned engraving plates.”
Petunia’s face lit up. “Engraving plates? Did you not tell me in Ft. Stockton you had no idea what I was talking about?”
“Figured it out, still don’t have them.”
Through the window, the SUV was plainly visible. Someone sat in the passenger’s seat, his head trained in our direction. A match flared, lit the tip of a cigarette.
That tiny glow, barely the size of a fingernail, punctured something in my head. A memory, a piece of a memory, a fleck of one. I grabbed at it, tried to get hold of it enough to see its shape and size, to taste and smell it.
But there was only the memory of seeing a cigarette burning.
“Pick up a friend in Ft. Stockton?”
She winked. “Don’t worry about my friends, worry about the plates.”
“You’re like a bad broken record.”
“I am like so many things, Darcy.” She turned to Cope, but kept the gun stuffed in my gut. “I thought I hit you hard enough to put you down.”
“I’m’a pretty tough old bird.”
She nodded. “I’m getting that now.”
“Why y’all wanna put this old man down?”
“Oh, dear sexy, Mr. Cope. I couldn’t have you warning our friend here.” She moved the gun to Darcy’s throat. “Or his copper father. Excuse me, step-father. I didn’t mean to hurt you: I just wanted you down and out.”
“Aww, baby, y’all didn’t hurt me too much. I can take it, I’m a man.”
“I’ll bet you are. You two did a bad thing. You left me to die in that horrible crash.”
“So you’re dead, then?” I asked.
“No, but the night does hold promise, doesn’t it?”
Her smile was huge and somehow infectious. The last thing I wanted was to stand here and feel something for this whack job.
“You two have had quite the day, haven’t you?”
“Been a bloody one,” Cope said. He took a step toward her, kept the smile on his face. “Got me some ribs though, so it wasn’t all bad.”
“Ooohhh, tasteless, I like it.” She giggled and pushed me to one of the chairs. “Let’s have a little talk.”
“Not interested.” I tried to put some steel into my voice, but failed.
“Trust me, you’re interested in whatever I am,” Petunia said. “You’re putting a girl to a lot of trouble.”
The way she said it shriveled any steel I might have had. “I don’t mean to, really. But I don’t have any plates. I never saw any plates, I never heard about any plates until you asked about them.”
“Petunia?” Cope asked. “Might be there’s some cognac here. Wanna blow?”
“Kept cool right next to the Lagavulin, no doubt. I’d be surprised if there were even an old can of Lucky Lager.”
“I’ll go take a look,” Cope said. He turned, but she stopped him.
“Just have a seat, Mr. Cope. We’ve got a bit of talking to do, then, if I don’t hear the right answer, we’ll move on.”
“That don’t sound any too good,” Cope said.
She sighed. “No, I don’t think it will be. Now, first of all, where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy’s dead,” I said. “Remember? I killed him.”
“Nice try. I’m talking about Daddy #2.” She looked around the shop, craned her head a bit to see into the backroom. “He can’t have gone far, not with a bullet hole in him.”
“Doctor,” Cope said. “Feeling a bit puny so he went to the doc’s.”
“Ah. So Detective Kurston gets shot in the head, a rogue doctor fixes him up, he gets to feeling weak, and you let him drive himself to said doctor’s place. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Calm down, Petunia,” I said.
“I’ll calm down when I have Jefe Arabalo’s plates. I’ll calm down when this bullshit is over and done with and I can get back to La Ciudad De Mexico, where I have some congac and I can get my jeans replaced. Until then, don’t—tell—me—shit.”
“How about I tell you then?” Kurston said.
He stood exactly where she had stood moments before: In the doorway, gun in hand, a tight bead drawn on her. Through the window, slipped around the building, tramping through the weeds, to the door. “Cope, call the cops.”
“Yes, Cope,” Petunia said. “Call Barefield PD. I’m sure they’ll get right over here, with all the free cops they have right now.”
She had caused the chaos across town. To get everyone as far from this place as she could.
“That was you?” I asked. “The man they saw with the gun?”
Petunia laughed. “A homeless man who had a plan for fifty bucks. But they’ll chase him down for a while yet. And they’ll do traffic control for the fires. Don’t worry, we’ll be uninterrupted.”
“Fine,” Kurston said, his voice nearly a growl. “We’ll go a different route. Put the gun down and I won’t kill you.”
“You won’t kill me anyway, Officer. Not with your boy in the line of fire, not when you’re already suspended for mucking about in this case. Adding a body would foul things up so badly you’d never get ba
ck to your beloved PD. Besides, it’s not your style.”
Kurston leaned in close to Petunia. I could smell the acrid tang of his after shave mixed with beer and the antibiotic cream soaking his head wound. “We’re talking about my son. Styles are changing, lady.”
“Listen to me, old man. You leave your gun where it is as long as you want. I’m going to keep mine on Mr. Darcy until he gives me what I want. Shoot me and...what? Will I have a muscle contraction? Will I have a sympathetic squeeze? Chances are quite good my gun will fire.” She took a deep breath. “Your call.”
I tried to swallow my heart back down. It got stuck in my throat.
“Fine, I’ll just pop you in the head, no muscle contraction.”
“Damn, y’all know too much about this shit,” Cope said. His hands shook as he lowered himself slowly into one of the barber chairs.
“Right now, I just want to know about the plates,” Kurston said, his voice quieter than it had been.
“We all want to know about the plates,” Petunia said. Her voice spiraled up into the barbershop. “That’s what all this bullshit is about.”
“Don’t lose y’all’s cool, Petunia.”
“Piss on that shit, that boat already sailed. Eight plates. One mil for the set. Fagan was brokering the deal.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
Fagan, both the man I’d never known and the man I’d had gotten to know, didn’t have the brains or the balls to handle that kind of sale.
“Surely you’re not calling me a liar.”
I shook my head. “No, but Fagan isn’t smart enough. If that’s what you believe, then he was screwing you just as badly as he was me.”
Her laugh was nothing but seductive breath. She leaned close and gave my ear a lick. “Not quite as badly as you, huh? After all, he was only a business partner for Jefe Arabalo.”
“So Fagan had access to the plates?” Kurston asked. “He was taking delivery, getting them to you, taking Jefe Arabalo’s money and getting that back to the seller?”
“That was the deal he worked out with my employer.”
“Seems like a lot of moving parts for what should have been a simple plan. Why give them to you? If he worked out the deal with Arabalo, why not just take them to Arabalo?”
She laughed. “Yeah, because he is more than smart enough to get them across the border.”
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