Still, they hadn’t gotten close. Back then there was a rather silly tradition of seniors treating sophomores not as friends, but more as pesky little brothers. They seldom developed friendships. Seniors considered themselves far too important to be bothered with kids two years behind them. Far too superior to waste their valuable time. The seniors considered themselves school royalty, and seldom gave audience to lowly underclassmen.
They’d become friends later though, Randy and Stan. Randy had stood at the doorway of Stan’s office many times, as they talked of the Westerners’ chances of taking the district title. Of the girls they once knew, and about what happened to this teacher or that.
Reliving the memories as he looked around the abandoned and trashed-out store made Randy a bit melancholy.
He actually found himself smiling as he remembered the time he’d spent with his friends here. It was as though he’d been temporarily swept back to more joyous times. To times when his greatest concern was what he was cooking for dinner that particular night, and whether there was a ball game on TV.
It was the first time he smiled in days.
Then his smile quickly disappeared when his nose caught a now familiar scent.
The putrid aroma of decaying flash.
He tried to follow it, but it was as elusive as it was slight.
It appeared to be coming from Stan’s office.
“No.”
It was less a comment than a plea.
He worked his way to the tiny office, which was really little bigger than a walk-in closet.
The scent grew stronger as he got closer to the office, and his disposition grew ever more dim.
“Not you, Stan.”
He pushed open the door and saw the body, curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the office.
It wasn’t Stan.
The body was rotted almost completely away. Was little more than bones, really.
It was impossible to say who lay there before him, his skull destroyed by a gunshot wound.
But it wasn’t Stan.
Stan was diminutive in stature. With red hair.
This was a big man. Six feet, at least. And the tuft of hair which still clung stubbornly to the bony skull was dark in color. Almost jet black.
As added confirmation, the body was dressed in khaki pants and a red plaid shirt.
Stan was a fashionable gent, who believed the only way he’d ever find a quality girlfriend was to dress better than his competition.
Stan wouldn’t be caught dead in khaki and plaid.
Apparently this guy would.
Whoever he was.
He surveyed the scene around him.
It was obviously a murder scene. The man was shot in the back of the head, and there was no gun present.
From the condition of the body, he must have been here since the early days of the blackout.
Perhaps one of the first looters on the scene, who had something someone else wanted.
Or maybe a target of opportunity, for an old enemy who’d seen the blackout as coverage for carrying out an old vendetta.
There’d been a lot of that going on lately.
In the end, it didn’t really matter.
The Lubbock Police Department was no longer investigating homicides.
They simply lacked the resources and personnel to do so.
Killers these days were quite literally… well… getting away with murder.
Tom’s murder, though, was different.
Tom was a Texas Ranger. And the Rangers wouldn’t cotton to one of their own being gunned down.
Tom’s killer would be hunted down.
And he’d be punished.
And if he had accomplices, they’d be punished too.
Randy would make sure of that.
Still, though, he had to perform his duty, even if it meant delaying his hunt a little bit longer.
He took a candle and lighter from his saddlebag and used them to light his way to the back of the store. Beneath a huge sign which announced “MOVING SUPPLIES” he took three heavily cushioned furniture blankets from a tall stack.
They were black in color with no ornamentation.
“Fitting,” he muttered to himself.
Back at Stan’s office he removed a pair of latex gloves from his back right pocket. He’d taken to carrying a couple of pair to work with him each day.
On good days he returned home without using them.
On particularly bad days he had to use the same second pair several times, hoping they didn’t break on him.
He said a silent prayer that today wasn’t going to be one of those days.
The body was light. It had wasted away to almost nothing. After only about fifteen minutes or so, his task was done. The victim was wrapped securely, the bundle taped at head and feet, and deposited at the curb in front of the store.
“Company C, this is Ranger Maloney.”
“Go ahead, Randy.”
Major Shultz was getting a bit lax about radio discipline.
“Sir, would you pass on to the city I just put a body in front of Riley’s Hardware Store on 82nd Street.”
“Ten four. I’ll let ‘em know.”
Randy paused for just a moment, debating on telling the major about his next mission. But then he thought better of it. If his fellow Rangers knew he was going after Tom’s killer they’d want to provide him backup.
Every last one of them. They’d ride from all areas of the city to help him in his hunt.
And they all had their own missions to perform.
Randy still felt he’d let Tom down.
This was his job to handle.
Chapter 43
Around the back of the store, Randy found Buddy’s tracks in the softened ground, just as the old man said he would. It had rained heavily the day before the informant had seen Tom’s pony, and the big horse’s hooves sunk easily into the ground.
Randy could see the horse was favoring his right front leg.
He hoped he wasn’t suffering.
Randy had tracked white tails throughout west Texas with his father as a boy. He knew how to tell when the animal was running or walking. When he stopped to graze. Whether he was injured or sick. And how to tell whether a track was days or mere hours old.
He’d never tracked a horse before.
Or a man on horseback.
But he expected the process was more or less the same.
He led Trigger through a massive park, once filled with laughing children and romping dogs. Now filled with trash and despair.
In the center of the lake was a rainwater retention pond. The city once stocked the pond with fingerlings of perch and catfish in the early spring.
He wondered if there were any fish left.
He stopped and let Trigger quench his thirst.
“Whoa, boy. You can’t drink up all the water or the fish will die.”
Trigger raised his big head from the water, turned it to one side, and huffed loudly.
Then he went back to drinking.
So much for Randy’s opinion.
When he was done, Trigger backed away from the water and raised his head. Randy took the slack from the reins and headed to the east, around the lake.
There were no other horse tracks near the water.
That could mean the man who killed Tom lived close by and didn’t see the need in watering his horse before he set out from the park.
Or, it could mean he was an insensitive fool who saw no real need to care for a horse he stole.
When Randy met back up with Buddy’s tracks he noticed once again the horse was favoring his right front leg.
And he feared the latter might be the case.
The tracks were easy to follow until he got to the pavement.
Then Randy got at least one of the answers to his questions.
A horseman would have walked his pony through the grassy front yards once he was on residential streets. It would have been much kinder to his horse.
This rider was uncaring and foolish, and cut his horse no such break. He rode on the hard pavement, past house after house with soft green grass growing in their front yards.
Randy had another reason to dislike the man he was trailing.
Not that he needed one.
Tracking a horse on pavement, of course, was infinitely harder. They left no obvious tracks.
But it hadn’t been particularly windy in previous days, and that helped.
The dirt clods the horse dropped onto the pavement right after he walked out of the park had dried out, but the winds hadn’t yet scattered them.
And there were just enough of them to tell Randy which street to follow, since the clods headed directly toward Raleigh Avenue.
That’s where Randy’s luck died.
He followed Raleigh for three blocks, and was ready to call it quits for the day when he saw something on the pavement ahead of him.
As he drew closer he smiled.
Horse droppings.
He stepped from his horse to examine them further. They were about two days old, maybe three. They jived with the tracks and told Randy he was still headed in the right direction.
He looked at the street sign.
88th Street and Raleigh Avenue.
From here, the bad man could have gone in any one of three different directions. He might even have doubled back, to throw off anyone who might be tracking him.
But Randy doubted it. Anyone who was worried about leaving a trail wouldn’t have ridden his horse through the soft grass of a park to begin with. And he would have taken care to clean up any droppings the horse deposited on city streets.
No, his man was out there. Randy wasn’t sure exactly where.
But he’d find him. There was no doubt in his mind.
He stepped down one more time and reached into one of his saddlebags. From the bag he took out his fishing kit, then removed a spool of ultra fine line.
Chapter 44
The following day was muster day and Randy kept a tight lip on what he considered his personal homicide case.
It wasn’t necessarily that he wanted to solve the case himself. He realized he was only one man, and that many of the other Rangers had more experience in investigations than he had.
No, it was something else entirely. He felt personally responsible for Tom’s death. If going after Tom’s killers was a dangerous affair, he certainly didn’t want any other officers to be gunned down as well.
And if Randy went after them alone and got gunned down himself?
Well, perhaps that would just be his penance for suggesting he and Tom split up to begin with.
Several Rangers approached him to ask whether he’d seen Tom’s horse. It was pretty much believed by all that Tom’s killer was a neighbor of Tom’s. Or at least lived in the same general area.
It was also a given he probably wouldn’t run, since under the present circumstances there weren’t a lot of resources to throw at him.
Most of the company believed, therefore, that he was in the same general area where Tom was gunned down, and would eventually be spotted.
Randy couldn’t bring himself to lie to his friends and fellow Rangers.
The best he’d give them was a “No. I haven’t seen his horse yet. But I will.”
It technically was the truth. Maybe not the whole truth. But it would have gotten him through testimony in a trial without committing perjury.
He didn’t feel good about it.
At this particular muster, when most of the Rangers were telling jokes or making friendly chit-chat, Randy sat on the low wall adjacent to the building’s steps and pondered several things.
He wondered if he was being overly stubborn. After all, it was Tom’s working alone which got him killed. Regardless of whether one believed it was Randy’s fault.
Perhaps the best way to avoid any further Ranger casualties was to limit the number of Rangers on that particular case.
It never dawned on Randy that perhaps it wasn’t his decision to make. That perhaps he should report to the major what he found, and let the major decide how to handle it. After all, that was the whole purpose of having a company commander.
But Randy never considered that.
Randy was deep in thought, wondering whether Amy was right. Maybe he did have a death wish and didn’t even know it. Maybe his subconscious wanted him to go it alone so he could be killed in the line of duty while pursuing Tom’s killers.
Maybe it was Randy’s way of allowing himself to be punished for letting Tom go out alone.
And letting him die.
It would be a heck of a way to bring his family legacy to a close.
Randy was still in his own little world when Major Shultz brought him back to the briefing he was giving.
“Randy!”
Randy suddenly looked up, and realized all eyes were on him.
“Uh… yes, sir?”
“Did you hear a single goddamn word I said?”
“Um… no sir. Sorry.”
Major Shultz stomped a foot in exasperation and demanded, “Then get your head out and pay attention. I’m damn sure not gonna repeat this shit a third time.”
“Yes, sir,” he sheepishly replied while blushing a bright red.
Major Shultz started again.
“Okay. This is for the exclusive benefit of Ranger Maloney, who thought it appropriate to take a nap when he should have been listening.”
He was seething.
“Texas Tech University has asked for our assistance. Actually, they asked the Lubbock Police Department first, but the LPD is overtasked. As the primary law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the citizens in this fair city, they’re taking the brunt of the workload. They view us as gravy. As nice to have. As augmentees for their operation.
“And in a nutshell, we are.
“So they suggested Tech ask us instead. They came to see me yesterday with a request, and I’ve deemed it reasonable and told them we would honor it.”
“A request for what?” someone in the back asked.
“For escort service.”
“Huh? You mean, like hookers and stuff?”
“No, dummy. And stop it with the stupid questions or you’ll join Maloney on my current shit list.”
“Sorry.”
“Texas Tech had one of the finest agricultural schools in the world. And they’re going to help pull this city’s ass out of the fire. But they need our help to do it.”
He had everybody’s attention. Everyone was intrigued, but no one dared ask him to elaborate any faster than he was going to.
“The stores have run out of bottled water. That’s okay, because the taps are running again. Slowly, but there’s enough water to go around as long as people don’t waste it.
“The experts have taken a survey of the available food in the grocery stores and wholesale warehouses, as well as the tractor trailers stranded on the roads within the city limits.
“According to their calculations, the city has enough food to get everybody until early to mid-summer next year. That’s as long as we enforce the laws against hoarding. We expect you to be watching out for that.
“The biggest problem, according to the city’s experts, isn’t the lack of food. It’s the lack of seeds.”
Chapter 45
The dummy in the back, also known as Sergeant Burt Wagner, risked joining Randy on the major’s shit list by observing, “But there’s seeds in the stores.”
Major Shultz was cooling off and growing a bit more patient. He ignored the interruption and went on.
“Yes. But there aren’t enough to go around.
“The city has confiscated all the corn and wheat seeds at the seed stores on the outskirts of town. There wasn’t as much as they’d hoped.
“I don’t have to tell you that around here, cotton is king. More than seventy percent of the area farmers grow the fluffy stuff or sorghum, which is fine for cows but probably not something your family wants to munch on
.
“Still, they say there’s enough wheat and corn seeds to pass around to all the neighborhoods. With some expert guidance from the Tech people, each of the neighborhoods will be able to clear enough residential land to grow corn and wheat as their subsistence crops.”
“That doesn’t explain the need for escorts.”
Shultz snarled, “Well if you’ll shut the hell up I’ll explain it to you.”
“Sorry.”
“The neighborhoods will be able to grow wheat and corn next year. They’ll be able to survive on it if they have to. But nobody wants a daily diet of corn and wheat. They’ll need other things to augment their diets. That’s where the escort detail will come in.
“Tech has four horse-drawn wagons at their Ag barn. They used to use them during parades and at tailgate parties. Now they’re going to put them to a much better use, in my opinion.
“They’ll be sending wagon teams out to every supermarket in the city. Also every fruit and vegetable stand, every produce distributor. Every school cafeteria. Every place in town there might be fresh produce.
“And before any of you smartasses point out that the fruits and vegetables are all rotten now, they know that. They won’t be gathering the produce to eat it. They’ll be gathering it to harvest the seeds from it.”
A couple of the Rangers’ heads bobbed up and down and they smiled, as the light finally came on and they figured out what the major was driving at.
“The way it’s going to work is, the wagons will be dispatched all over town. They’ve split the city into four sections, and each team will work its own area. The school will provide a driver and three helpers with each team. But they didn’t want their students vulnerable to random acts of violence, or to someone who wanted to steal their horses.
“So they’ve asked us to provide security, by dispatching a Ranger to ride along with them.”
Sergeant Wagner said, “So we’ll be babysitting?”
Shultz ignored the question and went on.
“I’ll make up a schedule so everybody gets a turn. When you’re scheduled, you’ll be expected to get up early enough to report to the Texas Tech fountain at oh seven hundred hours. If you live too far away and want to, you can camp out here at the office the night before.”
A Whole New World: Ranger: Book 2 Page 13