Putting his hands down and slowly opening his eyes at the light, Hausmann realized that he was in a hospital room. That explained the antiseptic smell. He saw Reaper step over to the window and draw the curtains against the bright sun outside.
“The doctor figured you would have a hell of a headache this morning,” Reaper said as he looked at his friend. “Other than that, you should be fine.”
“You mean that shit that hit the fan last night happened?” Hausmann said. “All I really remember is Eagle bolting and a whole bunch of pain. That, and a lot of noise. Then things pretty much went away.”
A nurse came into the room and interrupted the conversation.
“Well, Mr. Hausmann, you look much better today than you did last night when your friend brought you in,” the nurse said as she started examining her patient. She touched a bandage on Hausmann’s head, causing the man to wince with pain.
“Hey, watch that,” Hausmann complained. “That hurts.”
“You cracked your skull against a tree and you’re lucky it only hurts,” the nurse said. “Now if I can finish my examination, Dr. Terry will come in here and decide whether to release you or not.”
Reaper decided this was one battle he didn’t want to witness and he left the room just as a doctor in green scrubs came through the door.
“Oh, Mr. Reaper,” Dr. Terry said as she almost bumped into Reaper. “You’re still here? I thought you had left last night.”
“I did,” Reaper said. “Came back an hour ago.”
“Well, I think you’ll be able to take your friend home as soon as he’s up and dressed. Just let me take a look at him.”
“That’ll be great, Doctor,” Reaper said. “I think I’ll go grab a cup of coffee in the lounge.”
Not particularly wanting to listen to his friend, or watch the doctor shine a light in Hausmann’s eyes, Reaper retreated from the room and headed down the hall. The small hospital had a comfortable lounge on the same floor as the room where Hausmann had spent the night. For Reaper, the idea of lying in bed for a while held real appeal. He’d been up all night dealing with the aftermath of the incident at the ranch, collecting two loose horses, and cleaning up a bloody pair of rottweilers.
Reaper was about halfway through his second paper cup of coffee when Hausmann came down the hall, accompanied by Dr. Terry. Hausmann was tucking in his shirt and looked up as they approached Reaper.
“Just make sure he takes it easy for a few days,” Dr. Terry told Reaper. “He can take that bandage off tomorrow. Try not to get it wet.
“You were lucky you didn’t break any bones, and the CAT scans showed that your skull and spine are all intact,” the doctor said as she turned to Hausmann. “You do have a concussion, so take it easy for a few days.” She shot a glance at Reaper, then back to Hausmann. “That means stay off the horses, stay out of the sun and away from loud noises, and I don’t advise washing the pain meds down with a beer.”
As the doctor walked away, Hausmann looked at Reaper.
“What did you tell her last night in the emergency room?” he said. “That doctor acts like she thinks I’m some kind of idiot.”
“Just the truth,” Reaper said as the two men walked out the door. “That you hit your head on a tree while out riding in the moonlight.”
“Oh, thanks a whole lot,” Hausmann said.
On the drive back to the ranch, Reaper brought Hausmann up to speed on what had happened the evening before, and the strange situation since then.
“I don’t know what the hell you did to the local cops to piss them off so much,” Reaper said as he drove the car, “but that sheriff’s deputy who finally showed up at the ranch last night acted as if I had made the whole thing up to cover a drunken horse-riding accident.
“He finally went out and spent a few minutes half-assed looking around the area by the river and the railroad tracks. That was enough for him to come to the brilliant conclusion that there wasn’t any evidence of a crime that he could find. To top his little visit off, he went on about it being against the law for a civilian to use force to apprehend or detain any illegals. We were supposed to call the authorities instead.
“Damn, if this is how your local sheriff acts, I’m not calling them for anything. I had the definite impression that if I had told him that the dogs had broken up that ambush, he would have impounded them to be checked for rabies!”
“I’m sorry you went through that, Reaper,” Hausmann said. “It doesn’t surprise me very much though. I’m pretty much on the locals’ shit list for the time being.”
“What the hell did you do?” Reaper asked, “Knock up the sheriff’s daughter?”
“No,” Hausmann said with a small smile. “That would have at least been something kept private. No, I made the mistake of defending an innocent man against a trumped-up murder charge. The only problem was, the man who was killed was a very well liked Border Patrol officer. The whole thing was covered in all of the local papers and the news. Was a nationwide story for a few days.”
“So if the guy didn’t do it,” Reaper said, “what’s the beef with you getting him off?”
“As far as the local law enforcement community was concerned,” Hausmann said. “They had their man. The Border Patrol officer was a longtime veteran of the force named Victor Langstrom. He was visiting an old buddy of his who had left the Patrol years back to go over to the DEA. There’s not a lot of love lost between the Border Patrol and the DEA, at least not among the officers in the field. They do the dirty work, tracking illegals and manning observation posts out in the desert all night. When they make a drug bust, especially a really big one, the DEA swoops in and scoops up the bad guys and they take the lion’s share of the credit. It keeps their all-important seizure rates up and that’s the bottom line with the people in Washington.”
“Same shit, different day,” Reaper said. “It sounds like the old bullshit about body counts back in Vietnam. Just keep the numbers up and ignore the real hard targets.”
“Pretty much,” Hausmann agreed, “but the drug wars around here are different than most people back East expect. A group of mules packing a load of pot or cocaine is about all that’s ever taken. Sometimes the loads can be pretty big. But the real important targets are the leaders of the cartels. With all of their money and the influence it buys, the Mexican government does damned little to bust them. The drug trafficking trade is probably the biggest cash business there is south of the border. The poverty down there is staggering. That’s why it’s easy to hire some mules to take the risks moving the product across the border to the people here. Offer a guy a couple of hundred bucks to carry a package, more money than he would normally see in six months, and he’s not going to ask a lot of questions.”
“So the business is worth big bucks and the bosses are hard to target,” Reaper said.
“Yeah,” Hausmann said. “They seem to be immune from prosecution most of the time, or at least real hard to nail down with enough evidence for a conviction. Over the last year or so, they’ve been thinning out their own ranks. There’s been a regular shooting war south of the border, north of it, too, but to a much smaller extent. Big shakeups in the cartels.”
“So that’s what the man you defended was involved in?” Reaper said.
“No, not at all,” Hausmann said. “Sam Duran, his name’s Salim but everyone calls him Sam. He was one of the good guys. Used to be a Border Patrol officer himself back in the day. Worked for the State Department before that. Then he transferred over to the DEA, thought he could make a bigger difference there. Was a hell of an undercover agent and made multimillion-dollar arrests. Personally took down tons of coke, heroin, and pot. But he never forgot what it was like to be an officer on the ground. When a cop, sheriff’s department, or the Border Patrol made a bust, he saw to it they kept the credit. It didn’t exactly endear him to his superiors, but he never seemed to care about that.”
“So how did he get charged with killing an officer?”
“That was t
he strange thing,” Hausmann said, “and it was why I took the case in the first place. He retired last year after he had to kill a man during a big king-pin’s takedown—some young guy he had known while undercover. Bothered him so much he took an early retirement. So it didn’t make any sense that he would get in a fight and kill an old friend he had known for years—but that’s what the investigators said.
“You have to know that when a fellow officer goes down, every Border Patrol man for miles comes in to help on the investigation. They turned over every rock and pebble between Texas and the California state line. Didn’t find a damned thing. The only thing that did turn up was a gun in the man’s backyard. Didn’t have any fingerprints on it, and the serial number was cut off, but ballistics matched it up to the bullet that killed Langstrom.
“It was nothing but circumstantial evidence, and weak evidence at that. The case should never have even gone to an indictment. But the pressure was on to come up with a perp, and the federal prosecutor in charge wanted to make a name for himself. So he painted a picture of a corrupt ex-undercover DEA agent who killed an old friend who was going to expose him.”
“Expose him?” Reaper said. “Expose what?”
“Oh, Sam’s got money,” Hausmann said, “and plenty of it. But he inherited it from his old man. The Duran ranch was a big place when it was a running concern. But Sam lives out there alone now, he’s the only member of the family still alive. You live alone, have money, and used to be involved in the drug business, even as an undercover agent, that’s enough for ignorant people who are just looking to take a man down.”
“So you got him off?” Reaper asked as they pulled into the long driveway on the Dogbone Ranch.
“Wasn’t that big a deal,” Hausmann said, “except to Sam, of course. The motive was weak to the point of being nonexistent. No prints on the murder weapon, no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence at all that I was ever shown. And some tracking of foreign bank accounts that were never shown to have had a direct, personal attachment to Duran.
“Like I said, the case should have never gone anywhere and I got it dismissed. But that means there’s an open murder of a fellow officer still on the books. There’s no suspects, the trail is cold and all of the extra manpower on the job have gone back to their posts. Sam is guilty in the court of public opinion, that’s all. But that’s enough for some people. And that’s why the local law-enforcement community does not think highly of someone who got a cop killer off.
“And what the hell are those?” Hausmann asked as they went through the electric gate.
“Those are the Prowler RTVs from Diamondback Tactical. Came down this morning. They just unloaded and parked them. We can put them in the garage later.”
“Damn,” Hausmann exclaimed, “they look like some pretty stripped-down, mean-ass dune buggies.”
“That’s pretty much what they are,” Reaper said. “Only they’re a hell of a lot tougher than a dune buggy. And they really stand out in the accessory department—passenger side seats, roll bars, places you can strap just about anything on board. Oh, and there’s gun mounts.”
“Cool,” said Hausmann. “Can we play with them?”
“We have to hold off on playing with them for a bit,” said Reaper. “Right now we have to deal with the welcoming committee.”
Though Major was the only one barking, the rottweilers were letting their exuberance show as they bounded up to the car. The muscular dogs were bouncing into the air as they demonstrated their pleasure at seeing the car and Hausmann back home. The joy of the dogs was at having their “pack” once more complete. This made their world a steady, understandable thing in dog terms.
Still walking a bit stiffly, but with his full bushy tail wagging, Major had given up the shade of the tree to come up to the car. Even Jarhead, bringing up the rear of the procession, panting, bouncing, and drooling came outside to meet them. The thick-bodied bulldog had no real tail to wag, so he settled for just wiggling his butt back and forth.
“Dogs, you gotta love them,” Hausmann said as he turned to Reaper. “They really let you know that you’re welcomed.”
“And what do they do when you’re not welcome?” Reaper said.
“If you’re not a threat?” Hausmann said. “One of the rotts pees on your leg, that’s pretty much it.”
Stepping into the house, the parade of men and happy dogs moved into the cool interior of the tile floor and adobe walls. Passing through the hallway from the poolroom, the men went into the main part of the house where Hausmann immediately headed for one of the sofas in the living room. The living room, dining room, and kitchen being all along one wall of the house, Reaper turned and headed for the kitchen. Calling over his shoulder, “Want a cup of coffee? That stuff in the hospital was pretty bad, little better than instant.”
“Coffee?” said Hausmann. “All these looks and he can cook, too.”
“Well, somebody has to,” said Reaper, walking back from the kitchen carrying two cups of coffee. “The kitchen is spotless, do you have someone come in or just not use it much?”
“Yes,” Hausmann said, “to both. I have a cleaning lady come in twice a week. That, and I don’t cook much.”
“I noticed there wasn’t much in the way of food in the house,” Reaper said.
“Lots of takeout.”
“So, where do we go from here?” Reaper said as he sat down after handing Hausmann his cup of coffee.
“What do you mean?” said Hausmann.
“Well, just who the hell were those guys last night?” asked Reaper.
“No idea,” said Hausmann. “They shouldn’t have been illegals. Not even coyotes guarding drug mules carry suppressed submachine guns.”
“They had a lot more than that,” Reaper said. “What sounded like big-bore rifles, too. Sounded like G3s or something like them. And there was a bunch of them, four at least. If it weren’t for the dogs….”
Just then, the subjects of Reaper’s comments came thundering through the living room, rapidly closing the gap between the two rottweilers and the bulldog they were chasing. Catching up to Jarhead, Grunt clamped his jaws down on the sleeve of the jacket streaming along behind the bulldog. As the rott leaned back in a playful tug-of-war, Jarhead spun around and then just plunked his butt down on the floor. No matter how strong he was, the rottweiler was not going to pull anything from the English bulldog’s jaws. The two dogs were demonstrating the meeting of an irresistible force against an immovable object. The thing that was going to give up first was the fabric of the denim jacket between the two of them.
“Jarhead! Grunt!” Hausmann shouted as the cloth started to rip. “Drop that! Damn, Reaper, is that yours?”
“Never saw it before,” said Reaper.
Reluctantly, Jarhead let go of his end of the jacket.
“Grunt…” Hausmann said warningly. The young rottweiler tilted his head down and dropped the jacket on the floor.
“Where the hell did they get that?” Hausmann said as Reaper stood and picked up the jacket off the floor.
“My guess?” Reaper said. “This is from our friends last night. There’s blood all over the sleeve. Whoever was wearing it is hurting bad today.”
Holding the torn and filthy jacket out at arm’s length, Reaper turned it around to examine it. Blood spatters stained the faded blue denim fabric. Long rents in the sleeves gave mute indications of just where the blood had come from.
Going through the pockets, Reaper pulled out a folded page of torn newspaper. Unfolding the page, Reaper saw that he was holding a Spanish-language newspaper story with a large picture above the text. The photo was of Hausmann and Sam Duran coming out of the courthouse after Duran’s trial. Notes along the margins were hurriedly and faintly scrawled, but careful examination showed them to be addresses—Hausmann’s and Duran’s home addresses.
“Who were they, a hit team?” Hausmann asked.
“A hit team with a Spanish-language newspaper?” replied Reaper. “Did you pi
ss off some drug lord? Not get his people off?”
“I don’t take drug cases,” said Hausmann. “There’s something hot going on south of the border. Lots of shooting going on; bodies stacking up like cord wood, but nothing to involve me.”
“Damn,” Hausmann said as he picked up the telephone from the coffee table in front of him. “I wonder if they tried going after Duran as well?”
Dialing the phone, Hausmann held a handset up to his ear for a long moment. Finally, there was an answer. Walking into the kitchen, Reaper missed the conversation, but it was a short one. When he walked back into the room, Hausmann had hung up the phone but was staring at it as if it were going to bite him.
“So?” Reaper said.
“Sam’s dead,” Hausmann said in a dull voice. “That wasn’t him on the line, it was the sheriff’s deputy who’s at the crime scene. Duran was ambushed in his car when he came home last night. It wasn’t until this morning when his hired hand arrived that anyone even knew about it.
“His car is ripped to shit, he never had much of a chance at all. He went down with his .45 in his hand, but never got a shot off. They’re calling it a drug hit and basically writing it off. This is bullshit! Sam Duran never took a dishonest dollar in his life, and he hated drug dealers. Now whoever killed him is going to get away with it. All the sheriff’s office thinks is that the drug community is cleaning up its own.”
“Then there’s not a hell of a lot we can do for Duran directly,” Reaper said. “The best thing for us to do is track down whoever those fuckers were last night. I don’t think there’s much of a question that they were part of the hit that went down on Duran. It looks to me like our next step should be to check out where that firefight was last night. The sheriff’s deputy didn’t find anything, but he was only searching for a little while. I don’t think he looked around all that carefully. Could be there’s something out there worth finding. Is your head up for a ride?”
“For Sam? You bet your ass I am. Just not that damned horse again,” Hausmann said as he put his hand up to his temple.
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