Not Forgotten

by George Lee Miller

  The Dominion was an exclusive neighborhood that the Allison clan moved to after the world-class golf course was built in the 1980s. It had a high concentration of very pricy real estate that was home to some of the Spurs basketball players, a few Hollywood celebrities, and at least one famous country music singer. Rumor had it that a high-ranking Gulf Cartel boss also had a house there. The security gate was manned twenty-four hours a day and looked more like an entry point on the Mexican border with really nice landscaping instead of a housing development. The residents were serious about security and willing to pay for it.

  While I was wondering if Skeeter still had a connection working for the Dominion security who might help me gain access, Skeeter called back. Marcus had made another call. It was to the Allison family ranch in rural Edwards County. I asked Skeeter for GPS coordinates and hoped the security there wasn’t as airtight. It was the last place Marcus had called, and the most likely place for Danny to go.

  I took I-10 northwest, passed the turn to Grandpa’s ranch, and got off at Kerrville. From there I followed the Guadalupe River west through a narrow, winding limestone canyon, which blocked out cell phone reception. Unlike the trip to Grandpa’s ranch, which over the years showed increased cell coverage, the more isolated western edge of the Hill Country that approached the Mexican border seemed to resist civilization.

  The Allison spread was a sprawling forty-thousand-acre ranch that in its own way seemed part of the resistance. From the paved two-lane state highway, I turned south on a caliche road marked only by a row of mailboxes. There were no signs marking the road, and I gathered Allison wanted it that way. The white ribbon of caliche wound through rolling limestone hills covered with oak motts and cedar brush. I passed a pair of vultures floating in circles looking for carrion, their wide black wings buoyed by the updraft from the canyon. The road then dipped into the Nueces River bottom where giant pecan trees that gave the river its name, which meant nuts in Spanish, mixed with gnarled oak trees covered with ball moss. A tom turkey scurried across the road, stopped to take a closer look at my pickup, then disappeared behind an outcrop of gray, weathered limestone. It wasn’t hard to imagine Butch and Sundance making this trek and feeling safely hidden from anyone chasing them. There were tourist cabins farther downriver and a guest ranch along Hackberry Creek that fed into the Nueces, but nothing like the bloom of growth that threatened to overwhelm Grandpa’s ranch near Fredericksburg.

  After three more unmarked turns, the road emerged between two eight-foot game fences. The GPS showed I was getting close. In less than a mile, I spotted Rocky Mountain elk, tiny Asian sika deer, and a dozen giant, bluish Nilgai antelope grazing on the sparse, dry grass. All the animals stopped and stared at my pickup like they were as reluctant to be there as I was. I realized that if my meeting with Danny Allison went south, there was no one coming to my rescue. I’d only had cell phone reception twice since I’d left Kerrville.

  When I finally reached the main entrance to the Allison ranch, it looked more like an entry control point to a forward operating base in Afghanistan. There was a stone arch featuring the YA cattle brand in use since before the Civil War. The gate was set back fifty yards off the road, and concrete security barriers forced drivers to zigzag on approach. The stone guardhouse featured a Texas flag and a red-and-black Texas Tech banner along with four surveillance cameras that covered the front, the back, and down the fence in both directions. Before I finished the zigzag to the gate, a security guard in his late twenties that looked like one of the MMA fighters that worked out at Lucky’s gym stepped out of the guardhouse. He wore a black Heights Security uniform like the guard in front of Marcus’s house and the German at the drilling rig. I was definitely starting to see a pattern. His short-sleeve shirt was a size too small—some kind of stretch material that was tight around the chest and upper arms. The mustache covering his upper lip looked like the one Burt Reynolds wore in Smoky and the Bandit. He held his left hand up signaling me to stop and his right hand on the butt of what looked like a Glock 17.

  I got out of my pickup and held my hands at shoulder level. I didn’t want any misunderstanding. Burt looked jumpy, like he was new on the job.

  “Howdy,” I said, trying to sound like a friendly local rancher.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

  “I’m lookin’ for Danny Allison.” I took another step forward and put my hands down by my waist.

  Burt watched my move. He had some training. He kept his hand on the Glock. “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  I figured that confirmed Danny was there, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked about an appointment. “No. I wanna make one, now.”

  “You’ll have to call in at least twenty-four hours in advance.”

  I stepped closer. Inside his comfort zone. “I’m here now. Call him. My name’s Nick Fischer. Tell him it’s about Marissa Luna. He’ll see me.” I gave him my practiced I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass look and waited for his reaction.

  Burt decided to make the call. I waited while he went back to the guardhouse. I could see him through the window using the landline mounted on the wall.

  A few seconds later, he hustled out and punched in the key code for the gate. “You’re clear, Mr. Fischer. Sorry for the delay,” he said. He stood by the open gate while I drove up beside him. “Stay on the main road for two-point-six miles,” he said. “It’s paved to the house. Be careful of the animals. They’re usually near the road this time of day. Feedin’ time. Mr. Allison will be waiting.” He said “feedin’ time” like it was the highlight of his day.

  I pulled my .45 pistol from the glovebox and rested it on the console beside me. Getting into the Allisons’ isolated property was the easy part.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The paved road through Allison’s pasture had fewer potholes than the street in front of my house, probably because they had more money than the city of San Antonio, but the grass had turned brown in the late summer drought just like everyone else’s. No amount of money or maintenance could mitigate the effects of nature. I checked my odometer when I pulled away from the gate so I would know how far I would have to run in case things got out of hand. I was starting to wish I’d eaten breakfast or at least shared one of Skeeter’s plate-sized cinnamon rolls. The digital clock on the dash read five thirty. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet.

  The exotic animals rushed my pickup looking for food as if I was on a safari. The tiny spotted antelope came first. Ten of them. They were so close I could have petted them out the window. The Rocky Mountain elk herd was next, led by a trophy six-by-six bull. He stood in the middle of the road, daring me to drive off without leaving his daily hay ration. I couldn’t help him, so I honked the horn. The noise startled a kangaroo lounging near a mesquite tree. I wondered if they hunted them or raised them just for show. I also wondered if the animals missed their natural habitat or if they were like humans and just adapted to their surroundings. The tight security and exotic animals added to the strange aura that seemed to surround the Allison family.

  At two-point-two miles I topped a ridge overlooking the ranch compound. I’d seen towns with fewer buildings. Seven structures were larger than my house, including a three-story newer home and a horse barn with stalls for fifty horses. On the other end of the compound, corrals stretched over a ten-acre area. Near the road, there was a garage that could hold a small airplane. An older single-story structure sat behind the newer buildings, put together with smaller limestone rocks that were darker in color and weathered with age. It was obviously the original home. The design resembled Grandpa’s house. There was a massive oak tree in the yard whose limbs supported two kids’ swings and shaded a white picnic table. I counted five men working near the corrals. Two were loading hay on a one-ton flatbed truck. I guessed they were the crew the bull elk was waiting for. Danny’s bronze F-350 with the oversized tires and chrome roll bar was parked beside the garage.

  It didn’t look li
ke an ambush, but before I drove into the yard, I pulled my Colt AR-15 from behind the seat, locked in a twenty-round magazine, and jacked a shell in the chamber. I hadn’t lived through three deployments by taking unnecessary chances.

  I slipped my pickup into second gear and let it idle downhill toward the open garage. Danny strolled out of the original ranch house. He was carrying an AR-15 and had a pistol strapped on his waist. He looked anxious but wasn’t pointing the rifle at me. As I got closer, I noticed he had a bluish tint under both eyes and his nose was swollen from the pounding I had given him. His bottom lip was packed with snuff.

  I stayed in my pickup and watched Danny approach with the AR-15 slung over his left shoulder. If he made a move to point it in my direction, I was ready. I saw movement in the open garage. An older man in a straw cowboy hat stepped out of the shadows. He had a revolver in a leather holster on his waist and a look of concern on his weathered face.

  Danny’s eyes were glassy like he’d just polished off a six-pack or something stronger. The swelling made it difficult to hold the snuff in his bottom lip, and the brown tobacco juice dribbled down the peach fuzz on his chin. It was probably too painful to shave.

  There were two men standing in the shadows behind the cowboy. They wore the same black security uniform as Burt and the guard in front of Marcus’s house. Both carried AR-15s and wore tactical belts with pistols and extra ammo. Things were about to get western.

  Danny’s rifle sported a Marauder D-750 night-vision scope that probably cost more than my old pickup. The kind the shooter would have used to hit Sosa and fire at me along the river trail. The rifle also had a suppresser: an oversized tube with air vents attached to the end of the barrel to reduce the sound and recoil.

  Danny held up both hands. “Come for a rematch?” He tried to smile, but his swollen face interfered. He looked like he’d just come from the dentist. I kept the cowboy and the two guards in the corner of my eye while I unrolled the window.

  “Tell your boys to stand down,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Danny said to the guards. Both hesitated. “Mr. Fischer’s here for the evening hunt.”

  The guards reluctantly walked back inside the garage. The cowboy stayed where he was. Danny walked to my open window. He noticed the butt of my AR-15.

  “I wasn’t expecting you so early,” he said in a loud voice. He held his hand up to the open window. I shook it. He spoke under his breath without moving his swollen lips. “I told them you were here for the evening hunt. Take your rifle out of the pickup.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but having my rifle in my hand made me feel safer. I tucked the .45 behind my belt and stepped out.

  “Night hunting’s the best,” he said in a louder voice. “That’s when the hogs come out to feed. They’re out of control out here. Eating all the grazing reserved for the exotics.”

  We both glanced at the sky. The sun was already setting behind the rugged limestone cliff to the west, casting a shadow over the ranch compound and painting a handful of puffy clouds bright orange. It was easy to see that the first Allison had chosen this place for privacy and defense. The cliff made a wide U on the west and north side of the homestead. To the east and south, the terrain sloped downward providing a panoramic view. Comanches, outlaws, or a posse couldn’t approach without being seen for at least half a mile.

  “Tell me about Marissa,” I said.

  Danny threw me a nervous glance. “Quédate aquí, Juan. Iremos solos,” he said, indicating we would go alone.

  Juan shrugged. “Cómo no,” he said and walked into the barn.

  I was surprised that Danny was obviously fluent in Spanish. He was showing a side of himself that I hadn’t seen before.

  Danny waited until Juan was out of sight before turning back to me. “I’d rather talk away from the house. Do you mind?” It was a request, not a command—a tone I hadn’t heard him use before. Maybe the beating had softened him up.

  “Makes no difference to me,” I said.

  The cowboy reappeared driving a four-seater, all-terrain vehicle. He left the motor running, nodded to Danny.

  “Gracias, Juan,” Danny said.

  Juan walked toward the men loading hay.

  Danny hopped into the ATV, and I climbed into the passenger seat. He propped his rifle in the gun rack between the seats. I kept mine in my lap. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I wanted to be prepared. He took off on a caliche road that followed a creek that fed the main river.

  “Hogs like to come to water just after dark. They’re smart. You rarely see them in the daytime.” While he drove, he pulled a sixteen-ounce can of Lone Star beer from the ice chest on the back seat. He offered me one. I declined. He cracked his open and hung his head out the doorless side of the ATV. He used half the beer to wash the snuff from his mouth before he took a drink.

  Twilight was turning into night. The shadows from the cliff and the thick brush turned the countryside into a soft gray. Danny was doing twenty miles an hour on a dirt road without headlights. Brush slapped the sides of the vehicle. I let him go for fifteen minutes, keeping my arm in front of my face to protect it from the limbs, then I reached over and turned the key off. The ATV coasted to a stop. I took the key out of the ignition.

  “I don’t care about hunting hogs,” I said. I jammed my left leg against his AR-15. If Danny went for it, he wouldn’t be able to pull it from the gun rack. “Put your hands on the wheel,” I told him.

  He shifted uneasily, then followed orders. I unsnapped the holster on his waist and pulled out an Infinity .40 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol. Not a sidearm the average Joe could afford. Every Infinity weapon was made from each customer’s specifications. His was a beautiful collector’s piece. The stainless-steel barrel was hand engraved with what looked like a medieval knight doing battle with a fire-breathing dragon. It wasn’t hard to believe that Danny thought of himself as royalty.

  “Nice pistol,” I said.

  “Graduation present from Grandpa.” Danny talked fast. He was nervous.

  I eased my own pistol out of my pants so that I could sit back further in the seat. I pointed it in Danny’s general direction. The AR-15 was too bulky to maneuver in the small cab of the ATV, and I wanted to be ready when I told Danny I knew what he’d done.

  “How come security’s so tight? What’re y’all afraid of?”

  “We get all kinds of crazies up here. Animal rights activist groups and that kind,” he said. “We take precautions, but the anti-hunting crowd is persistent. The Allison name is a high-profile target. Sometimes they try to sneak on the ranch. Disrupt our hunts. That kind of thing.”

  “You know why I’m here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Marissa Luna,” he said.

  “She was murdered. You killed her, so she wouldn’t keep you from your inheritance.”

  His eyes got wide. He polished off the last of his beer. “You got that wrong.”

  “She was pregnant when she died. You’re the father. That’s capital murder.”

  Danny shifted in his seat. The crickets chirped a warning that darkness was coming. A frog on the creek bank joined them. A mourning dove cooed, searching for a mate. There was no wind. The air was dry and started to cool as soon as the sun went behind the cliff. I waited for Danny to speak. A minute stretched into two.

  Finally, he said: “That’s why you came to the gym… you got a blood sample?”

  “That’s right. I matched it to the fetal DNA from Marissa’s autopsy.”

  Danny packed his bottom lip with snuff. He seemed to need it to think clearly. “How’d you get the results so fast? Don’t that take months?”

  “You thought you had more time? Is that why you’re still here?”

  “I wasn’t gonna run. I didn’t kill her.” He spit out the door. “You saw the police report. It was an accident.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I swear to god,” he whispered.

  “Then
why are you trying to kill me? Why did you shoot my dog and threaten my family?” I grabbed his shirt collar and squeezed it tight around his neck.

  “I didn’t do any of that.”

  I loosened my grip before he could black out. “I saw the video surveillance from the dance club. You had a fight. You bought her a four-thousand-dollar bracelet. You told her to have an abortion. She wouldn’t do it.”

  “That’s not what happened. I wanted the baby,” he said. “That’s why we fought. She wanted to have an abortion.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “She promised to wait until we talked about it again. We were going to meet the next day, but she never made it to the meeting.”

  I shoved him back across the seat. “Where did you go that night?”

  “Home. The Dominion. I was there by one. You can check with security.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward?”

  He didn’t answer. He stared into the dark, like the answer was out there somewhere if he could just find it. We were so far from any lights that the Milky Way formed a banner over the night sky.

  “Detective Peterson came to my house. He asked a few questions. He checked my alibi. That was the end of it,” he said. Tomahawk had failed to mention this to me.

  “I know about the girls in Lubbock,” I said. “I tracked down your ex, Valerie Martin. She moved out of her trailer park and bought a BMW. There was another the year before. She moved back to China. How much did you pay her?”

  Danny spit out the door. “That’s one of the problems with being an Allison. Everybody knows the name and knows you’re rich. I tried to date girls that didn’t know or didn’t care. Valerie found out. She wanted money. She wanted everything. No one believes the guy. You’re guilty if you open your mouth. Marissa was different. She didn’t know who I was from Adam. She’d never heard of my family, and she didn’t want anything to do with them. She was refreshing. When she got pregnant, I was the one who wanted to make a family with her. She wanted a career. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. I would have taken care of her. That’s all the other girls wanted—my name and my family’s money. Marissa wanted to make it on her own.” There was just enough light to reflect off the tears forming in Danny’s eyes. If he was acting, he was good.