The Sierrita County Sheriff’s Department was small—Buddy himself, two full-time deputies, Fred Kelso and Wayne Rushing, four reserve deputies, and a couple of volunteer dispatchers. Their responsibilities covered the entire county, including the town of Little Tucson, which had a constable but no police department. The town contracted with the county for law enforcement and emergency services.
Because of that smallness, the members of the department felt a special bond with each other, like they were family as much as coworkers. Buddy would have been worried about Fred even without that, of course, but Fred was almost like a little brother to him. Still a little raw at the job, maybe a bit too gung ho at times, but with all the makings of a good cop.
And according to the reports, he was down, maybe wounded. Maybe dead. Buddy didn’t know.
But he would soon, because he was getting close to the bank. He swung the car around a corner into Main Street.
His foot hit the brake, bringing the cruiser to a screeching halt as he saw the back end of a Ford Explorer sticking out from the ruined front of Hank Becerra’s accounting office. That would be the bad wreck Dusty had told him about. A county ambulance was already on the scene, red lights flashing brightly even in the brilliant sunshine. A couple of EMTs knelt on the sidewalk next to a young boy who sat there crying. Buddy didn’t recognize the kid right away.
He left the engine running and jumped out of the car. As he hurried over to the boy and the two paramedics, he called, “What happened?”
Before either of the EMTs could answer, the boy looked up at Buddy and yelled, “They took her! They made her drive off with them!”
The boy had quite a bit of blood on his face from a gash on his forehead. As he tried to scramble to his feet, one of the paramedics took hold of his arm and forced him to remain seated on the concrete sidewalk. “Take it easy, son. That’s a pretty bad knock you got on the head.”
Buddy leaned over, resting his hands on his knees, and asked, “Who are you talking about, son?”
“My mom! The guys who wrecked that truck! They took her and my baby sister!”
Hostages, Buddy thought, and the coldness inside him grew even chillier. Even without knowing the details, he could make a good guess as to what had happened. The guys in the Explorer must have robbed the bank. They were fleeing when they wrecked, so they grabbed the first car to come along and forced the driver to help them escape. This boy’s mother had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“What’s your name, son?”
“A-Andy.”
“What’s your last name?”
He sniffled. “Willard.”
“And your mother?”
“C-Carla Willard. Carla May, some people call her.”
Buddy kept his voice calm and level. “And you say your sister is in the car, too?”
Andy Willard nodded. “Y-yeah. Her name’s Emily. She’s in a carseat.”
“How many men were there?”
“T-two, I think. That’s all I saw. One of ’em grabbed me and threw me out of the car.”
“What kind of car is it?”
“It’s red.” He had to stop to think. “A Nissan. A little one. That’s all I know.”
Buddy squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks, Andy. You’ve been a big help. You let these nice paramedics take care of you now, all right?”
Andy nodded shakily.
“One more thing,” Buddy said. “Those two guys . . . did they have guns?”
Andy’s head bobbed up and down. “Uh-huh. Big guns. Like pistols, but funny-looking.”
Buddy could only guess the kid was talking about automatic weapons. That didn’t surprise him. These days, the bad guys had more firepower than the cops.
As Buddy straightened, Andy sobbed loudly and said, “I’m late for Bible School.”
Aren’t we all? Buddy thought.
One of the paramedics stood up and said quietly to him, “There’s one in the Explorer. The driver.”
Buddy nodded. “Anybody hurt in the building?”
“Nope. They were all lucky. The Explorer took out one of the secretary’s desks when it came through the wall, but she was in the back of the office making some copies when it happened.”
There was that to be thankful for, Buddy told himself as he moved closer to the Explorer, stepping over some rubble so that he could glance through the driver’s side window. The glass was shattered. He saw the figure slumped over the steering wheel. The guy’s head was a bloody mess. Buddy couldn’t tell if the injury had been caused by the wreck or by something else. That would be determined later. For now, the most important thing was that the guy was dead.
So there had been three of them. A wheelman and two who went into the bank. Those two had survived the crash and carjacked Carla May Willard.
Buddy hurried back to his car. As he drove toward the bank a couple of blocks away, he got on the radio and told Dusty to find out the license plate number of a red Nissan belonging to Carla May Willard and then get out an APB on it.
There was an ambulance in front of the bank, too, as well as a fire truck. Two paramedics were about to load a gurney into the back of the ambulance. Buddy jumped out of his car and hurried over to see who they had.
His jaw tightened at the sight of Fred Kelso’s pale, drawn face above the sheet that was pulled up to his neck. At least the sheet wasn’t over his face. He was still alive.
“Whattaya got?” Buddy asked the paramedics.
“His legs are shot to hell, Sheriff,” one of them replied. “He nearly bled out before we got here and got him stabilized. Doesn’t look like he was hit in the body, though, so he’s got a chance.”
Buddy nodded curtly. “Take good care of him. I don’t suppose he said anything?”
The EMT shook his head. “He was out cold when we got here. He may not ever wake up, Sheriff.”
Buddy didn’t want to think about that. He turned toward the door of the bank.
When he stepped inside, he saw that Wayne Rushing, his other full-time deputy, was already there. Buddy hadn’t seen Wayne’s car outside, but Wayne lived only a few blocks away. He could have run over here on foot when he heard the shooting. He was supposed to be off duty right now, and in fact he wore a pair of blue jeans instead of his uniform trousers. He had his uniform shirt on, though, and a Stetson cuffed to the back of his head. He was talking to some of the bank employees, who huddled together, still in shock.
Buddy stopped at the sight of a body lying on the tile floor. Someone had thrown a suit jacket over the man’s head and shoulders. Buddy’s teeth grated together as he recognized the security guard uniform—Al Trejo. From the blood on the front of his shirt and the way he wasn’t moving, Buddy knew he was dead.
Buddy had to close his eyes for a second. Al had worked for him as a deputy. They had been close, still got together for a beer fairly often, and they’d been planning to go hunting together in the fall.
Now Al would never drink another beer. Buddy would never hear his boisterous laugh again. Rage filled the sheriff. What sort of bastards could have done this?
He thought he knew the answer.
“Get me up to speed, Wayne,” he snapped as he went over to the deputy, carefully walking around Al Trejo’s body on the way.
Quickly, Wayne laid out the information he had already gathered from the witnesses. It had played out pretty much like Buddy suspected. Two men—young, Hispanic, strangers to Little Tucson—had walked into the bank while a third man had stayed outside in the vehicle. Al must have suspected something, because he had jumped to his feet and reached for his gun. One of the bastards shot him. Then the two of them cleaned out the bank. The people who worked in the bank weren’t sure what had happened outside. They hadn’t seen it, but they had heard a lot of shots.
That would have been Fred trying to apprehend the robbers, Buddy knew. He wondered if the autopsy on the dead man in the Explorer would find a bullet somewhere in him. Buddy found himself hoping that was t
he case. He hoped that Fred had gotten off at least one good shot before he was gunned down.
The radio clipped on Buddy’s belt crackled. Dusty Rhodes said, “Got a report of a red Nissan matchin’ the description of Miz Willard’s goin’ east out of town about fifteen minutes ago, Sheriff.”
Buddy acknowledged. He looked around and saw that one of the reserve officers had come into the bank. “Make sure this scene stays secure, Luis,” he said to the man. “Come on, Wayne.”
They hurried out of the bank. The other three reserve officers had just pulled up in their cars, civilian vehicles that had portable flashers set on top of them. Buddy pointed to one of the reserves. “Inside with Luis, Harry. Francisco, Lauren, follow Wayne and me. We’re looking for a red Nissan that headed east out of town a little while ago.”
“You want one of the ambulances to come along, too, Sheriff?” Lauren Henderson asked. She had been a police officer in Phoenix before moving down here and was one of the more experienced members of his force. Buddy would have liked to have her as a full-time deputy, but she didn’t want to be more than a reserve.
“What about the one down at Becerra’s?” he asked.
“The kid’s okay. They’re not going to transport him to the hospital, even though he’ll need to have a doctor examine him later. They can come along.”
Buddy nodded. “Let them know and then follow the rest of us.”
Lauren hurried off to take care of that. Buddy asked Wayne if he had his car here, and when the deputy shook his head no, the sheriff said, “Ride with me, then.”
Within moments, they were out of town, traveling at high speed toward the Sierrita Mountains. When Buddy glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw that not only were the two reserves’ cars and the ambulance following him, but one of the fire trucks was, too.
That was all right, he supposed. There was no telling what they would find out here.
He just hoped Carla May Willard and her baby were still alive.
6
Tom Brannon was relieved to see the sheriff’s car in the lead of the little convoy. He and Buddy Gorman had been friends since high school. Buddy had moved to Little Tucson from Chicago, and it had been quite a shock for him, going from a huge, bustling city in the Midwest to a small, sleepy town not far from the Mexican border. He’d had a hard time fitting in if Tom Brannon hadn’t spotted him reading a Doc Savage paperback on their first day of freshman year. Tom loved Doc, so they had struck up a friendship. The fact that Tom was an athlete and well-liked had opened a lot of doors for Buddy. He had wound up one of the most popular kids in school—despite the fact that he wouldn’t give up that darned Chicago Cubs cap.
They had been in the Army together, had watched each other’s back in ’Nam, and had come home together, Buddy to join the sheriff’s department as a deputy, Tom to work on the family ranch and then later open up the auto parts store on Main Street. As Buddy got out of his car and hurried toward the pickup, Tom felt like everything would be all right.
“Mrs. Willard, are you okay?” Buddy asked immediately.
She jerked her head in a nod. “My boy,” she said. “Andy? Is he—”
“He’s fine,” Buddy told her with a smile. “Got a cut on his head, and you’ll need to let a doctor take a look at him to make sure there’s nothing the paramedics missed, but he ought to be fine. He told us what happened. That’s a good boy you’ve got.”
“I . . . I know. Sometimes I forget, but . . . I know.” Carla May started to cry again.
Buddy looked a little wall-eyed, Tom thought. Like most men, he didn’t quite know how to deal with a sobbing, wailing female. He motioned for Lauren Henderson to take over. She put an arm around Carla May’s shoulders and gently led her toward the ambulance, where the paramedics could check her out.
Quietly, Tom said to Buddy, “They’ll need to do a rape kit on her. One of those bastards was just finishing up when I got here.”
Buddy nodded. “Poor gal. That’ll mean an HIV test and all that worry, too.” He rubbed his chin. “Speaking of those bastards . . . where are they? And how are you mixed up in this, Tom?”
He answered the second question first. “Just an innocent bystander. I was driving into town from my folks’ place and saw Carla May’s car parked out here. I didn’t recognize it at first, but I thought something might be wrong, so I drove up here to check.”
“Always got to be the Good Samaritan, don’t you?”
Tom shrugged, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s mighty lucky for Carla May that I was. One of ’em’s in the back of my pickup.” When Buddy moved his hand toward the butt of the revolver on his hip, Tom went on, “He’s not going anywhere. Got a fifty-pound bag of dog food on top of him.”
Buddy smiled faintly. “That’ll work. What about the other one?”
“Gone,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “I hated to let him get away, but I had Carla May to think of. Also, I’d knocked out the other one and figured I’d better get him trussed up while I had the chance. Didn’t want him comin’ to and jumping me.”
“No, I’d say you did the right thing. How’d you knock him out?”
“Tire iron. Used it to bust the other one’s arm, too.”
Buddy frowned at him. “You know, from what I’ve heard, those fellas were armed with automatic weapons.”
“Yeah.” Tom opened the door of the F-150. “There they are. I picked ’em up and put ’em on the seat. Figured you’d need them.”
The sheriff stared at the machine pistols for a long moment and then shook his head. “You went up against a couple of stone killers packing that much firepower with just a tire iron?”
“Well, I’d have preferred a cannon, say, but the tire iron was handy.”
Buddy Gorman laughed. “I never have been able to decide if you’re the bravest man I know, Tom, or the biggest damn fool.”
Tom looked at the prisoner in the back of the pickup. “What did they do, besides kidnapping and raping Carla May?”
“Robbed Little Tucson Savings.” A grim look came over Buddy’s face. “They killed Al Trejo, and shot up one of my deputies, too.”
Brannon felt heartsick. “Damn it, Buddy.”
“I know.”
“I guess it was Fred Kelso who got shot, since Wayne’s here with you.”
“That’s right.”
“How is he?”
“Don’t know,” Buddy said. “He was hit pretty bad, but the paramedics seemed to think he has a chance.”
“Lord, I hope so.” Tom glanced toward the back of the pickup. “I’m startin’ to wish I’d bashed the guy’s head in, like I thought about doing.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t. We’ll need him to testify. Plus you might have gotten in trouble for doing something like that.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “You mean I could get in trouble for busting the skull of a murdering, bank-robbing rapist?”
“Yeah, it’s a hell of a note, ain’t it? But you know things aren’t like they used to be, Tom. The criminals have all the rights now, not the victims.”
Tom Brannon just shook his head.
Wayne Rushing and Francisco Montero hauled the taped-up killer out of the back of Brannon’s pickup and put him in the rear seat of the sheriff’s car. Buddy said, “Follow us on into town, Tom. You’ll have to make a statement.”
“Sure. Louly can handle things at the store until I can get there.”
“You may have more things to worry about than working at the store.”
“How do you figure?” Tom asked with a frown.
“You’re going to be a hero. You captured a bank robber and killer and rescued a woman. Gonna be lots of spotlights focused on you for a while, pal.”
“There’s no need for that,” Tom insisted.
“But that’s the way it’ll be, like it or not. The worst of it, though, is the fact that the fella there probably belongs to M-15.”
Brannon’s eyebrows went up. “That gang from belo
w the border?”
“They’re not below the border anymore,” Buddy said. “They’re here, and after today, they’re gonna have one hell of a grudge against you, Tom.”
Enrique Colon tried not to let his face reveal just how much pain he was in. A doctor had set his broken arm and put a cast on it, but it still hurt like El Diablo. He had asked for something to ease the pain, but the doctor had refused, saying that Señor Montoya wanted to talk to him while his brain was still clear. Enrique didn’t know how clear his brain really was at the moment. How could any man think straight when he hurt so much?
Two men came into the back room of the cantina where Enrique waited. One of them motioned curtly for him to stand up. He got to his feet, swallowing hard as he did so. He didn’t know the men’s names, but he recognized their faces and the black T-shirts and black jeans they wore. They were Señor Montoya’s personal bodyguards and assistants. His segundos. Both were lean and dark-faced and moved with the easy, deadly grace of jaguars.
Enrique had good reason to be afraid of jaguars. One had nearly gotten him when he was just a boy back in El Salvador, near the village where he had grown up. It would have if he hadn’t been just a little faster on his feet than his younger brother . . . Sometimes, even after more than twenty years, he woke up at night sweating because he thought he could still hear Pablo’s screams.
“Upstairs,” one of the men grunted as they led Enrique out of the back room. He went with one of them in front of him and the other behind. They made him nervous, and he wished he was anywhere else now, instead of in this cantina in Nogales, just across the border from Arizona.
The thumping beat of the music from the main room penetrated easily, even back here in the rear of the building. So did the thick, cloying smell of marijuana smoke. The customers smoked pot openly, and so did a lot of the cantina’s employees. They all knew the law wouldn’t bother them. This place belonged to Ernesto Luis Montoya, and what little law there was in Nogales knew perfectly well that they were to steer clear of it.
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