“Stick around awhile longer,” Hammond said curtly.
Stark shrugged. He could sit here all day if he had to. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but he could do it.
True to his word, Hammond had the other blast site photographed and examined, too. It was late in the afternoon by now. Stark was hungry, having missed lunch. There was nothing in the pickup to eat, and anyway, every time he glanced toward the wreckage, he lost his appetite for a while.
Finally, Hammond talked on the radio some more, then trudged over to him and said, “Why don’t you get out of the pickup for a minute, Stark?”
“What is it?” Stark asked as he dropped to the ground and rested a hand on the windowsill of the opened door. “You decide to let me go at last?”
“Not exactly.” Several deputies had drifted over with Hammond, and now they moved up closer to him and Stark. “John Howard Stark, you’re under arrest. Turn around so that you can be placed in handcuffs.”
For a second, Stark’s brain couldn’t comprehend what he was hearing. “Under arrest?” he repeated. “What the hell for?”
“Murder,” Hammond said.
All Stark could do was stare at him for a long moment. Then he exploded. “Murder! What in blazes are you talkin’ about, Hammond?”
The sheriff jerked a thumb toward the ruined pickup. “You’re being arrested for the murders of three victims, positive identities unknown, presumably Hubert Cornheiser, Everett Hatcher, and William R. Smathers.”
“You’re out of your damn mind! Those boys were my friends. I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“I thought you were on the scene a little too conveniently, Stark,” Hammond went on, as if he hadn’t heard Stark’s response to that wild accusation. “You were trying to throw suspicion off yourself by being found on the scene.”
Stark shook his head. “That’s the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”
Again Hammond ignored him. “I had some of my deputies go out to your ranch and have a look around. They found a couple of used RPG tubes hidden in your barn, Stark. What did you do, miss with the first grenade before you zeroed in with the second one?”
This was insane, almost beyond Stark’s comprehension. “Why would I blow up three of my best friends?” he yelled, waving an arm toward the wreckage.
The deputies closed in more, as if they thought Stark was about to attack the sheriff.
Hammond smiled faintly. “I’ve heard rumors about a falling-out between you and the rest of your so-called vigilantes, Stark. Seems they thought you’ve gotten a little power-mad since you’ve become such a celebrity. The rest of them had had enough, but you wouldn’t let them quit. You’d lose your place in the spotlight if the rest of your gang deserted you.”
Stark shook his head. Madness, sheer madness. But Hammond wasn’t through.
“My informants tell me that you’ve been trying to buy arms on the black market. Rifles and pistols aren’t enough for you anymore. You want to have your own private little army, so you need things like rocket-propelled grenades. And I guess you tested out a couple of them today and got rid of the men who must have threatened to expose your crazy scheme.”
“This is crazy, all right,” Stark muttered, “but I’m not the one who’s a lunatic.”
Hammond was back to ignoring him. “Now turn around so you can be cuffed, or my men will take you into custody by force.” Hammond rested his hand on the butt of the pistol at his waist. “After seeing what you did to Cornheiser, Hatcher, and Smathers, I almost hope you do resist arrest, Stark.”
Hammond might kill him, Stark thought. He probably had orders from Ramirez not to, but he could always claim that Stark had attacked him and given him no choice. Stark stood there tensely for a couple of heartbeats longer, then slowly turned around and placed his hands behind his back.
The pieces of this puzzle were clicking into place in his brain. It had all the earmarks of an elaborate revenge plot. Just coming after him and attempting to kill him wasn’t enough to satisfy Ramirez anymore. The lull over the past few days had been just the calm before the storm. Three of Stark’s friends were dead, and Stark himself was being arrested for the crime. No doubt the “evidence” that Hammond’s deputies had found in Stark’s barn had been planted there. Ramirez would probably get one hell of a kick out of this when he heard about it.
The cuffs clicked into place around Stark’s wrists. They chafed just as much as they had the other time he’d been arrested. This was getting to be a damned unpleasant habit.
Hammond grabbed Stark’s arm and shoved him roughly toward the cruisers. “Take him back to town and lock him up,” he ordered a couple of the deputies. “Be sure and read him his rights. Everything by the book, boys. We don’t want any judge throwing this one out.”
“If a judge throws it out, it’ll be because he knows you’re insane as well as corrupt, Hammond,” Stark said.
Hammond’s hands clenched into fists, but he didn’t throw a punch. He was being too careful for that. This was the culmination of a plan designed to humiliate and humble John Howard Stark.
“Take him,” Hammond hissed.
But it was only the first step in the Vulture’s revenge, Stark thought.
As bad as this was, he sensed that worse was coming.
Twenty-eight
When the car with Stark in the backseat drove out through the gate to Hubie’s ranch, Stark saw Devery’s pickup parked on the shoulder of the river road. Devery was leaning against the fender, but he straightened and lunged forward as he spotted Stark in the cruiser.
“John Howard!” he yelled. “John Howard, what happened?”
Stark leaned forward and hunched his shoulders up, lifting his hands so that Devery could see they were cuffed behind him. “Call Sam!” Stark shouted as the deputy at the wheel stomped the gas and sent the car spurting away. He didn’t know if Devery had heard him or not. If not, he hoped that his friend had been able to read his lips.
Stark settled back against the rear seat and twisted his neck to look behind the car. He saw Devery’s pickup pulling out onto the road to follow the cruiser. Stark couldn’t be sure, but he thought that Devery was talking on the phone as he drove. He hoped Sam Gonzales was in his office today.
The ride into Del Rio seemed longer than it really was. Stark felt as if he’d been hit between the eyes by a two-by-four. Not only were three of his best friends suddenly, gruesomely dead, but he was being blamed by the law for it.
Of course, he didn’t believe for a second that Sheriff Hammond really thought he was responsible for what had happened to Hubie, W.R., and Everett. Hammond knew good and well that Stark hadn’t killed them. The very elaborateness of the plot against him—rocket-propelled grenades hidden in his barn, for God’s sake!—indicated that Hammond was probably in on it. At the very least, Hammond had received “anonymous” tips telling him what to do, and he must have known those tips came from Ramirez.
But it was unlikely either he or his attorney would be able to prove any of that, Stark thought. He wasn’t by nature a despairing man, but it seemed to him now that the jaws of the trap had closed securely on him.
By the time they reached Del Rio things didn’t appear any more promising to Stark. He looked for Sam Gonzales but didn’t see the lawyer. The deputies took him into the jail, went through the whole rigmarole of photographing, fingerprinting, and booking him again. When he asked to be allowed to make a phone call, one of the deputies said, “As soon as the sheriff gets back, he’ll tend to that.”
Stark was put into a holding cell. His gun, belt, boots, hat, and everything in his pockets had been taken away from him. He sat down on the bunk as the door of the cell clanged shut. The sound put his teeth on edge.
He had been there about half an hour, staring at the floor without really seeing it, when the door down the corridor opened and footsteps approached the cell. They stopped just outside, and a deputy peered in through the reinforced glass window set in the door at eye
level. A key rattled in the lock.
“Your lawyer’s here,” the deputy said as the door swung open. “Come on out.” He stepped back, a hand on the butt of his pistol. Two more deputies stood nearby, Stark saw as he stepped into the hall. Both of them were ready to draw and fire, too, if need be.
“You boys must think I’m Clyde Barrow come back to life,” Stark said.
“Who?” asked one of the deputies. He was maybe twenty-two years old.
Stark just shook his head and said, “Never mind. Just take me to my lawyer.”
When one of the deputies opened the door to an interview room furnished with a table and two chairs, though, it wasn’t Sam Gonzales whom Stark saw sitting at the table. It was Devery Small. He had put on a tie, but other than that he still wore jeans and a khaki work shirt. His Stetson sat on the table.
“Thank y’all,” he said to the deputies. “That’ll be all for now. I got to talk to my client in, uh, private. Confidential-like. You know.”
Stark walked into the room. The deputies didn’t try to stop him. As he sat down across the table from Devery, the door closed.
Stark leaned forward and hissed, “What the hell are you doin’?” He threw a glance at the mirror on the wall, knowing it was probably one of those two-way jobs. Hammond might have the room bugged, too, even though such things were supposed to be illegal.
“Take it easy, John Howard,” Devery replied. “Are you all right? Anybody try to hurt you?”
“I’m fine, just flabbergasted to find myself under arrest again. Where’s Sam?”
“He said he couldn’t get here for a while and for me to come to the jail and say I was your lawyer and demand to see you. I got the feelin’ he was afraid Hammond an’ his boys might try somethin’ funny, and he wanted a witness on hand so’s they’d behave themselves.”
Stark snorted. “Hammond’s not going to do anything to me. If I’m right about what’s going on here, he’s got his marchin’ orders, and they don’t include killing me.”
“John Howard, what is goin’ on?” Tears shone in Devery’s eyes. “Is it true what I’m hearin’, that Hubie and W.R. and Everett are all dead?”
Stark nodded grimly. “I’m afraid so. Barring some sort of miracle, they’re all gone . . . and after the past couple of months, I don’t reckon I believe in miracles anymore.”
Devery put his head down and stared at the table for a long moment, breathing hard as he struggled to control the emotions coursing through him. Finally, when he was able to look up again, he said, “Ramirez?”
“There’s no one else who could have been behind it,” Stark said.
“But . . . he hates you worse’n anybody else. You’re the one he’s tried to have killed in the past. Why go after Hubie and the other fellas?”
Stark spread his hands. “Look around, Devery. Three of my best friends are dead, and I’m in jail charged with killing them.”
“Yeah,” Devery said, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I reckon I can see it. He wants you to suffer, John Howard. It’s just pure meanness, plain and simple.”
Stark couldn’t argue with that. Pure meanness was about as good a description as he had ever heard of Ernesto Ramirez.
“What do we do now?” Devery asked. “We got to get you outta here. This ain’t right.”
“That’ll be Sam’s job. There’s nothing you can do, Devery, except see to it that Elaine stays safe.”
Devery nodded again. “You got it. Your place’ll be guarded round the clock.”
For a while they commiserated with each other over the deaths of their friends, sharing memories of Hubie, W.R., and Everett. Then, suddenly, the door of the interview room was jerked open and Hammond strode in, an angry expression on his flushed face.
“This ain’t your lawyer,” he snarled as he pointed a finger at Devery. “You’re under arrest for . . . for impersonating an attorney, you little pissant!”
“No, he’s not,” Sam Gonzales said from behind Hammond. “Devery works for me part-time as a legal assistant, and as such he was entitled to see our client.”
Devery wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Uh, yeah, that’s right. I’m one o’ them, whatcha call ’em, pair of eagles.”
Hammond grimaced, his lips drawing back from his teeth. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get out,” he snapped. “And I ain’t gonna forget about this!”
Devery grabbed his hat, got to his feet, and hurried out of the room, giving Stark one last reassuring glance as he departed.
Coolly, Sam Gonzales stepped past Hammond and set his briefcase on the table. “I’ll need to talk to my client now, Sheriff,” he said. “I’ll thank you to leave us alone.”
Hammond moved closer to Sam and put his face only inches away from the lawyer’s. “You think you’re so goddamned smart,” the sheriff said between clenched teeth. “But you’re really just a dumb pepper belly.”
Gonzales paled, but he kept his temper under control. “You should leave now, Sheriff,” he said quietly. “You really should . . . unless you want to violate Mr. Stark’s rights even more than they’ve already been violated.”
Hammond shook his head and pointed at Stark. “Nobody’s violated his rights. Nobody! Everything’s been done strictly by the book, and I dare you to prove otherwise . . . greaser.”
Sam reached for his briefcase, and Stark saw the lawyer’s fingers trembling slightly as he undid the catches. “I’ll talk to you later, Sheriff,” he managed to say.
Hammond finally swung around and went to the door. He cast a baleful glance at both Stark and Gonzales before he went out and slammed the door behind him.
“Thanks, Sam,” Stark said.
“For what? I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You didn’t haul off and hit Hammond in the mouth. That’s gotta be helpful.”
Sam smiled thinly. “You’re probably right. But it sure would have felt good.” He took a deep breath, opened the briefcase, took out a legal pad and a pen, and said, “All right. What the hell’s going on here, John Howard?”
Stark spent the next half hour telling Gonzales about the worried phone call from Devery, his hurried drive over to Hubie’s ranch and out to Comanche Ridge, and the grisly discovery he’d made in the canyon leading to Solomon Wash. Sam’s normally pleasant, round face became grim and drawn as he listened.
“I’d heard the rumors,” he muttered when Stark was finished, “but that’s not like hearing it firsthand. I’m sorry, John Howard. That must have been an awful experience for you.”
“Yeah, but not as bad as it was for Hubie, W.R., and Everett.”
“I’ll do everything I can for their families. Right now, though, it’s more important to do what I can for you. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Stark thought about it for a minute and then shook his head. “You know as much about it as I do.”
“What do you think Ramirez’s ultimate goal is?”
“To make life as miserable as possible for me before he finally kills me?” Stark guessed.
“You think he still wants to have you assassinated?”
“It seems likely. Unless he gets such a kick out of the idea of me going to prison that he decides to let that play out.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sam said. “A man like Ramirez probably has plenty of contacts inside the penitentiary. If you’re convicted and sent to prison, he could have you killed there any time he wanted.” Sam hesitated. “But he might have even worse things in mind.”
A humorless smile stretched Stark’s mouth under the dark mustache. “You’re not tellin’ me anything that I haven’t already thought about, Sam.”
Gonzales put away his legal pad and pen and closed the briefcase. Briskly, he said, “Other than the circumstantial evidence of you being on the scene, which really doesn’t amount to anything, the main thing supporting Hammond’s case against you is the fact that those grenade launchers were found in your barn. Our first course of action is to attack tha
t search as unlawful, and therefore get the evidence thrown out.”
“Anyway,” Stark said, “isn’t it obvious that if I’d used those damn grenades, I wouldn’t have kept the launchers in my own barn?”
Gonzales shrugged. “Killers do odd things, John Howard. They hang on to evidence for no good reason, and it ultimately winds up convicting them. Not that I’m saying you’re a killer. I don’t believe that for a second.” He hesitated, then asked, “But I’ll have to know . . . where were you this morning?”
Stark’s mouth quirked. “I was out checking fence . . . alone.”
“Nobody saw you? Nobody can swear that you were on your ranch all morning?”
“Nope,” Stark said with a shake of his head. “Not that I know of. I don’t have an alibi that’ll hold up.”
“Well, you shouldn’t need one,” Gonzales said confidently. “We’ll get this whole mess tossed out at the arraignment, if they don’t decide to drop it before then. I can’t imagine Wilfredo letting Hammond bully him into looking like a fool, again.”
Stark nodded. He hoped Gonzales was right.
But after today’s shocking incidents, he no longer felt that confident about anything.
Except for the fact that the world was going to hell, and he was going right along for the ride.
Elaine came to see him that evening. Devery was with her, and he said, “I tried to tell her you wanted her to lie low out at the ranch, John Howard, but that wife o’ yours is mighty stubborn.”
Stark pulled Elaine into his arms and hugged her. “That’s the truth,” he told Devery as he grinned over Elaine’s shoulder.
She punched him lightly in the stomach. “Is that any way to talk about somebody who came to see you and make you feel better?”
Stark leaned down and kissed her, not caring that Devery and one of the deputies were standing right there a few feet away. “You make me feel better, all right. The whole world makes more sense when you’re around.”
Vengeance Is Mine Page 29